title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson's mother, Naomi, died at 37 in early 1895, and he was in a state of withdrawal for seven months. He spent time at the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a progressive reformatory/home for orphans run by the Xaverian Brothers in Baltimore. After being introduced to show business in 1895 by Al Reeves, Asa and Hirsch became fascinated by it, and by 1897 the brothers were singing for coins on local street corners, using the names "Al" and "Harry". They often used the money to buy tickets to the National Theater. They spent most of their days working different jobs as a team.


title: Al Jolson

text: In the spring of 1902, Jolson accepted a job with Walter L. Main's circus. Although Main had hired him as an usher, Main was impressed by Jolson's singing voice and gave him a position as a singer during the circus's Indian Medicine Side Show segment. By the end of the year, the circus had folded and Jolson was again out of work. In May 1903, the head producer of the burlesque show "Dainty Duchess Burlesquers" agreed to give Jolson a part in one show. He performed "Be My Baby Bumble Bee", and the producer agreed to keep him, but the show closed by the end of the year. He avoided financial troubles by forming a vaudeville partnership with his brother Hirsch, a vaudeville performer known as Harry Yoelson. The brothers worked for the William Morris Agency. Jolson and Harry formed a team with Joe Palmer. During their time with Palmer, they were able to gain bookings in a nationwide tour. However, live performances were falling in popularity as nickelodeons attracted audiences; by 1908, nickelodeon theaters were dominant throughout New York City. While performing in a Brooklyn theater in 1904, Jolson began performing in blackface, which boosted his career. He began wearing blackface in all of his shows.


title: Al Jolson

text: In late 1905, Harry left the trio after an argument with Jolson. Harry had refused his request to take care of Joe Palmer, who was in a wheelchair. After Harry's departure, Jolson and Palmer worked as a duo but were not particularly successful. By 1906 they agreed to separate, and Jolson was on his own. He became a regular at the Globe and Wigwam Theater in San Francisco and was successful nationwide as a vaudeville singer. He took up residence in San Francisco, saying the earthquake-devastated people needed someone to cheer them up. In 1908, Jolson, needing money for himself and his new wife, Henrietta, returned to New York. In 1909, his singing caught the attention of Lew Dockstader, the producer and star of Dockstader's Minstrels. Jolson accepted Dockstader's offer and became a blackface performer.


title: Al Jolson

text: According to "Esquire" magazine, "J.J. Shubert, impressed by Jolson's overpowering display of energy, booked him for "La Belle Paree", a musical comedy that opened at the Winter Garden in 1911. Within a month Jolson was a star. From then until 1926, when he retired from the stage, he could boast an unbroken series of smash hits."


title: Al Jolson

text: On March 20, 1911, Jolson starred in his first musical revue at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City. "La Belle Paree" helped start his career as a singer. Opening night drew a large crowd, and he became popular with the audience by performing Stephen Foster songs in blackface. The show closed after 104 performances. After "La Belle Paree", he accepted an offer to perform in the musical "Vera Violetta" which opened on November 20, 1911, and like "La Belle Paree" it was a success. In the show, he again sang in blackface and became so popular that his weekly salary of $500 (based on his success in "La Belle Paree") was increased to $750.


title: Al Jolson

text: After "Vera Violetta" closed, Jolson starred in another musical, "The Whirl of Society", propelling his career on Broadway to new heights. During his time at the Winter Garden, Jolson told the audience, "You ain't heard nothing yet" before performing additional songs. In the play, he debuted his signature blackface character "Gus". Winter Garden owner Lee Shubert signed Jolson to a seven-year contract with a salary of $1,000 a week. Jolson reprised his role as "Gus" in future plays and by 1914 achieved so much popularity with theater audiences that his $1,000-a-week salary was doubled. In 1916, "Robinson Crusoe, Jr." was the first musical in which he was the star. In 1918, his acting career was pushed further after he starred in the hit musical "Sinbad". It became the most successful Broadway musical of 1918 and 1919. "Swanee" was added to the show and became composer George Gershwin's first hit recording. Jolson added "My Mammy". By 1920, he had become the biggest star on Broadway.


title: Al Jolson

text: His next play, "Bombo", became so successful that it went beyond Broadway to performances nationwide. It led Lee Shubert to rename his theater Jolson's 59th Street Theatre. At the age of 35, Jolson was the youngest man in American history to have a theatre named after him. But on the opening night of "Bombo", the first performance at the new theatre, he suffered from stage fright, walking up and down the streets for hours before showtime. Out of fear, he lost his voice backstage and begged the stagehands not to raise the curtains. But when the curtains went up, he "was [still] standing in the wings trembling and sweating". After being shoved onto the stage by his brother Harry, he performed, then received an ovation he would never forget: "For several minutes, the applause continued while Al stood and bowed after the first act." He refused to go back on stage for the second act, but the audience "stamped its feet and chanted 'Jolson, Jolson', until he came back out". He took 37 curtain calls that night and told the audience, "I'm a happy man tonight."


title: Al Jolson

text: In March 1922, he moved the production to the larger Century Theater for a benefit performance to aid injured Jewish veterans of World War I. After taking the show on the road for a season, he returned in May 1923, to perform "Bombo" at the Winter Garden. The reviewer for "The New York Times" wrote, "He returned like the circus, bigger and brighter and newer than ever... Last night's audience was flatteringly unwilling to go home, and when the show proper was over, Jolson reappeared before the curtain and sang more songs, old and new."


title: Al Jolson

text: "I don't mind going on record as saying that he is one of the few instinctively funny men on our stage," wrote reviewer Charles Darnton in the "New York Evening World". "Everything he touches turns to fun. To watch him is to marvel at his humorous vitality. He is the old-time minstrel man turned to modern account. With a song, a word, or even a suggestion he calls forth spontaneous laughter. And here you have the definition of a born comedian."


title: Al Jolson

text: Before "The Jazz Singer", Jolson starred in the talking film "A Plantation Act". This simulation of a stage performance by Jolson was presented in a program of musical shorts, demonstrating the Vitaphone sound-film process. The soundtrack for "A Plantation Act" was considered lost in 1933 but was found in 1995 and restored by The Vitaphone Project.


title: Al Jolson

text: Warner Bros. picked George Jessel for the role, as he had starred in the Broadway play. When Sam Warner decided to make "The Jazz Singer" a musical with the Vitaphone, he knew that Jolson was the star he needed. He told Jessel that he would have to sing in the movie, and Jessel balked, allowing Warner to replace him with Jolson. Jessel never got over it and often said that Warner gave the role to Jolson because he agreed to help finance the film.


title: Al Jolson

text: Harry Warner's daughter, Doris, remembered the opening night, and said that when the picture started she was still crying over the loss of her beloved uncle Sam. He was planning to be at the performance but died suddenly at the age of 40, the day before. But halfway through the 89-minute movie she began to be overtaken by a sense that something remarkable was happening. Jolson's "Wait a minute" line provoked shouts of pleasure and applause from the audience, who were dumbfounded by seeing and hearing someone speak on a film for the first time. So much so that the double-entendre was missed at first. After each Jolson song, the audience applauded. Excitement mounted as the film progressed, and when Jolson began his scene with Eugenie Besserer, "the audience became hysterical."


title: Al Jolson

text: According to film historian Scott Eyman, "by the film's end, the Warner brothers had shown an audience something they had never known, moved them in a way they hadn't expected. The tumultuous ovation at curtain proved that Jolson was not merely the right man for the part of Jackie Rabinowitz, alias Jack Robin; he was the right man for the entire transition from silent fantasy to talking realism. The audience, transformed into what one critic called, 'a milling, battling mob' stood, stamped, and cheered 'Jolson, Jolson, Jolson!'"


title: Al Jolson

text: Vitaphone was intended for musical renditions, and "The Jazz Singer" follows this principle, with only the musical sequences using live sound recording. The moviegoers were electrified when the silent actions were interrupted periodically for a song sequence with real singing and sound. Jolson's dynamic voice, physical mannerisms, and charisma held the audience spellbound. Costar May McAvoy, according to author A. Scott Berg, could not help sneaking into theaters day after day as the film was being run. "She pinned herself against a wall in the dark and watched the faces in the crowd. In that moment just before 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie,' she remembered, 'A miracle occurred. Moving pictures really came alive. To see the expressions on their faces, when Joley spoke to them ... you'd have thought they were listening to the voice of God.'" "Everybody was mad for the talkies," said movie star Gregory Peck in a "Newsweek" interview. "I remember 'The Jazz Singer,' when Al Jolson just burst into song, and there was a little bit of dialogue. And when he came out with 'Mammy,' and went down on his knees to his Mammy, it was just dynamite."


title: Al Jolson

text: With Warner Bros. Al Jolson made his first "all-talking" picture, "The Singing Fool" (1928), the story of an ambitious entertainer who insisted on going on with the show even as his small son lay dying. The film was even more popular than "The Jazz Singer". "Sonny Boy", from the film, was the first American record to sell one million copies.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson continued to make features for Warner Bros. similar in style to "The Singing Fool". These included "Say It with Songs" (1929), "Mammy" (1930), and "Big Boy" (1930). A restored version of "Mammy", with Jolson in Technicolor sequences, was first screened in 2002. Jolson's first Technicolor appearance was a cameo in the musical "Showgirl in Hollywood" (1930) from First National Pictures, a Warner Bros. subsidiary. However, these films gradually proved a cycle of diminishing returns due to their comparative sameness, the regal salary that Jolson demanded, and a shift in public taste away from vaudeville musicals as the 1930s began. Jolson returned to Broadway and starred in the unsuccessful "Wonder Bar".


title: Al Jolson

text: Warner Bros. allowed him to make "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" with United Artists in 1933. It was directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Ben Hecht. Hecht was also active in the promotion of civil rights: "Hecht film stories featuring black characters included "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum", co-starring Edgar Connor as Jolson's sidekick, in a politically savvy rhymed dialogue over Richard Rodgers music."


title: Al Jolson

text: "The New York Times" reviewer wrote, "The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no Mammy song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director, Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny ... a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire..." Another review added, "A film to welcome back, especially for what it tries to do for the progress of the American musical..."


title: Al Jolson

text: In 1934, he starred in a movie version of his earlier stage play "Wonder Bar", co-starring Kay Francis, Dolores del Río, Ricardo Cortez, and Dick Powell. The movie is a "musical "Grand Hotel", set in the Parisian nightclub owned by Al Wonder (Jolson). Wonder entertains and banters with his international clientele." Reviews were generally positive: ""Wonder Bar" has got about everything. Romance, flash, dash, class, color, songs, star-studded talent and almost every known requisite to assure sturdy attention and attendance... It's Jolson's comeback picture in every respect."; and, "Those who like Jolson should see Wonder Bar for it is mainly Jolson; singing the old reliables; cracking jokes which would have impressed Noah as depressingly ancient; and moving about with characteristic energy."


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson's last Warner vehicle was "The Singing Kid" (1936), a parody of Jolson's stage persona (he plays a character named Al Jackson) in which he mocks his stage histrionics and taste for "mammy" songs — the latter via a number by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen titled "I Love to Singa", and a comedy sequence with Jolson doggedly trying to sing "Mammy" while The Yacht Club Boys keep telling him such songs are outdated.


title: Al Jolson

text: According to jazz historian Michael Alexander, Jolson had once griped that "People have been making fun of Mammy songs, and I don't really think that it's right that they should, for after all, Mammy songs are the fundamental songs of our country." (He said this, in character, in his 1926 short "A Plantation Act".) In this film, he notes, "Jolson had the confidence to rhyme 'Mammy' with 'Uncle Sammy'", adding "Mammy songs, along with the vocation 'Mammy singer', were inventions of the Jewish Jazz Age."


title: Al Jolson

text: The film also gave a boost to the career of black singer and bandleader Cab Calloway, who performed a number of songs alongside Jolson. In his autobiography, Calloway writes about this episode:


title: Al Jolson

text: "The Singing Kid" was not one of the studio's major attractions (it was released by the First National subsidiary), and Jolson did not even rate star billing. "I Love to Singa" later appeared in Tex Avery's cartoon of the same name. The movie also became the first important role for future child star Sybil Jason in a scene directed by Busby Berkeley. Jason remembers that Berkeley worked on the film although he is not credited.


title: Al Jolson

text: His next movie—his first with Twentieth Century-Fox—was "Rose of Washington Square" (1939). It stars Jolson, Alice Faye and Tyrone Power, and included many of Jolson's best known songs, although several songs were cut to shorten the movie's length, including "April Showers" and "Avalon". Reviewers wrote, "Mr Jolson's singing of "Mammy", California, Here I Come and others is something for the memory book" and "Of the three co-stars this is Jolson's picture ... because it's a pretty good catalog in anybody's hit parade." The movie was released on DVD in October 2008. 20th Century Fox hired him to recreate a scene from "The Jazz Singer" in the Alice Faye-Don Ameche film "Hollywood Cavalcade". Guest appearances in two more Fox films followed that same year, but Jolson never starred in a full-length feature film again.


title: Al Jolson

text: After the George M. Cohan film biography, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky believed that a similar film could be made about Al Jolson. Skolsky pitched the idea of an Al Jolson biopic and Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures agreed. It was directed by Alfred E. Green, best remembered for the pre-Code "Baby Face" (1933), with musical numbers staged by Joseph H. Lewis. With Jolson providing almost all the vocals, and Columbia contract player Larry Parks playing Jolson, "The Jolson Story" (1946) became one of the biggest box-office hits of the year. In a tribute to Jolson, Larry Parks wrote, "Stepping into his shoes was, for me, a matter of endless study, observation, energetic concentration to obtain, perfectly if possible, a simulation of the kind of man he was. It is not surprising, therefore, that while making "The Jolson Story", I spent 107 days before the cameras and lost eighteen pounds in weight."


title: Al Jolson

text: Parks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Although the 60-year-old Jolson was too old to play a younger version of himself in the movie, he persuaded the studio to let him appear in one musical sequence, "Swanee", shot entirely in long shot, with Jolson in blackface singing and dancing onto the runway leading into the middle of the theater. In the wake of the film's success and his World War II tours, Jolson became a top singer among the American public once more. Decca signed Jolson and he recorded for Decca from 1945 until his death, making his last commercial recordings for the company.


title: Al Jolson

text: According to film historian Krin Gabbard, "The Jolson Story" goes further than any of the earlier films in exploring the significance of blackface and the relationships that whites have developed with blacks in the area of music. To him, the film seems to imply an inclination of white performers, like Jolson, who are possessed with "the joy of life and enough sensitivity to appreciate the musical accomplishments of blacks". To support his view he describes a significant part of the movie:


title: Al Jolson

text: This has been a theme which was traditionally "dear to the hearts of the men who made the movies". Film historian George Custen describes this "common scenario, in which the hero is vindicated for innovations that are initially greeted with resistance... [T]he struggle of the heroic protagonist who anticipates changes in cultural attitudes is central to other white jazz biopics such as "The Glenn Miller Story" (1954) and "The Benny Goodman Story" (1955)". "Once we accept a semantic change from singing to playing the clarinet, "The Benny Goodman Story" becomes an almost transparent reworking of "The Jazz Singer" ... and "The Jolson Story"."


title: Al Jolson

text: A sequel, "Jolson Sings Again" (1949), opened at Loew's State Theatre in New York and received positive reviews: "Mr. Jolson's name is up in lights again and Broadway is wreathed in smiles", wrote Thomas Pryor in "The New York Times". "That's as it should be, for "Jolson Sings Again" is an occasion which warrants some lusty cheering..." Jolson did a tour of New York film theaters to plug the movie, traveling with a police convoy to make timetables for all showings, often ad libbing jokes and performing songs for the audience. Extra police were on duty as crowds jammed the streets and sidewalks at each theater Jolson visited. In Chicago, a few weeks later, he sang to 100,000 people at Soldier Field, and later that night appeared at the Oriental Theatre with George Jessel where 10,000 people had to be turned away.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson had been a popular guest star on radio since its earliest days, including on NBC's "The Dodge Victory Hour" (January 1928), singing from a New Orleans hotel to an audience of 35 million via 47 radio stations. His own 1930s shows included "Presenting Al Jolson" (1932) and "Shell Chateau" (1935), and he was the host of the "Kraft Music Hall" from 1947 to 1949, with Oscar Levant as a sardonic, piano-playing sidekick. Jolson's 1940s career revival was nothing short of a success despite the competition of younger performers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and he was voted the "Most Popular Male Vocalist" in 1948 by a poll in "Variety". The next year, Jolson was named "Personality of the Year" by the Variety Clubs of America. When Jolson appeared on Bing Crosby's radio show, he attributed his receiving the award to his being the only singer of any importance not to make a record of "Mule Train", which had been a widely covered hit of that year (four different versions, one of them by Crosby, had made the top ten on the charts). Jolson joked about how his voice had deepened with age, saying "I got the clippetys all right, but I can't clop like I used to."


title: Al Jolson

text: In addition to his contribution to motion pictures as a performer, he is responsible for the discovery of two major stars of the golden age of Hollywood. He purchased the rights to a play he saw on Broadway and then sold the movie rights to Jack Warner (Warner Brothers which was the studio that had made "The Jazz Singer") with the stipulation that two of the original cast members reprise their roles in the movie. The play became the movie "Penny Arcade", and the actors were Joan Blondell and James Cagney, who both went on to become contract players for the studio. The two were major ingredients in gangster movies, which were lucrative for the studio.


title: Al Jolson

text: Cagney won his Academy Award for his role in Warner Brothers' "Yankee Doodle Dandy", which at the time was the studio's highest-grossing movie. The award is rarely given to performers in musicals. Ironically, Cagney, who became known for his tough guy movie roles, also made a contribution to movie musicals, like the man who had discovered him. While Jolson is credited for appearing in the first movie musical, Cagney's Academy Award-winning movie was the first movie Ted Turner chose to colorize.


title: Al Jolson

text: When Jolson appeared on Steve Allen's KNX Los Angeles radio show in 1949 to promote "Jolson Sings Again", he offered his curt opinion of the burgeoning television industry: "I call it smell-evision." Writer Hal Kanter recalled that Jolson's own idea of his television debut would be a corporate-sponsored, extra-length spectacular that would feature him as the only performer, and would be telecast without interruption. Even though he had several TV offers at the time, Jolson was apprehensive about how his larger than life performances would come across in a medium as intimate as television. He finally relented in 1950, when it was announced that Jolson had signed an agreement to appear on the CBS television network, presumably in a series of specials. However, he died suddenly before production began.


title: Al Jolson

text: Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor shook Jolson out of continuing moods of lethargy due to years of little activity and "... he dedicated himself to a new mission in life... Even before the U.S.O. began to set up a formal program overseas, Jolson was deluging War and Navy Department brass with phone calls and wires. He requested permission to go anywhere in the world where there was an American serviceman who wouldn't mind listening to 'Sonny Boy' or 'Mammy'... [and] early in 1942, Jolson became the first star to perform at a GI base in World War II".


title: Al Jolson

text: From a 1942 interview in "The New York Times": "When the war started ... [I] felt that it was up to me to do something, and the only thing I know is show business. I went around during the last war and I saw that the boys needed something besides chow and drills. I knew the same was true today, so I told the people in Washington that I would go anywhere and do an act for the Army." Shortly after the war began, he wrote a letter to Steven Early, press secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, volunteering "to head a committee for the entertainment of soldiers and said that he "would work without pay ... [and] would gladly assist in the organization to be set up for this purpose". A few weeks later, he received his first tour schedule from the newly formed United Services Organization (USO), "the group his letter to Early had helped create".


title: Al Jolson

text: He did as many as four shows a day in the jungle outposts of Central America and covered the string of U.S. Naval bases. He paid for part of the transportation out of his own pocket. Upon doing his first, and unannounced, show in England in 1942, the reporter for the "Hartford Courant" wrote, "... it was a panic. And pandemonium ... when he was done the applause that shook that soldier-packed room was like bombs falling again in Shaftsbury Avenue."


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson was officially enlisted in the United Service Organizations (USO), the organization which provided entertainment for American troops who served in combat overseas. Because he was over the age of 45, he received a "Specialist" rating that permitted him to wear a uniform and be given the standing of an officer. While touring in the Pacific, Jolson contracted malaria and had to have his left lung surgically removed. In 1946, during a nationally broadcast testimonial dinner in New York City, given on his behalf, he received a special tribute from the American Veterans Committee in honor of his volunteer services during World War II. In 1949, the movie "Jolson Sings Again" recreated some scenes showing Jolson during his war tours.


title: Al Jolson

text: In 1950, according to Jolson's biographer Michael Freedland, "the United States answered the call of the United Nations Security Council ... and had gone to fight the North Koreans... [Jolson] rang the White House again. 'I'm gonna go to Korea,' he told a startled official on the phone. 'No one seems to know anything about the USO, and it's up to President Truman to get me there.' He was promised that President Truman and General MacArthur, who had taken command of the Korean front, would get to hear of his offer. But for four weeks there was nothing... Finally, Louis A. Johnson, Secretary of Defense, sent Jolson a telegram. 'Sorry for delay but regret no funds for entertainment – STOP; USO disbanded – STOP.' The message was as much an assault on the Jolson sense of patriotism as the actual crossing of the 38th Parallel had been. 'What are they talkin' about', he thundered. 'Funds? Who needs funds? I got funds! I'll pay myself!'"


title: Al Jolson

text: On September 17, 1950, a dispatch from 8th Army Headquarters, Korea, announced, "Al Jolson, the first top-flight entertainer to reach the war-front, landed here today by plane from Los Angeles..." Jolson traveled to Korea at his own expense. "[A]nd a lean, smiling Jolson drove himself without letup through 42 shows in 16 days."


title: Al Jolson

text: Before returning to the U.S., General Douglas MacArthur, leader of UN forces, gave him a medallion inscribed "To Al Jolson from Special Services in appreciation of entertainment of armed forces personnel ‑ Far East Command", with his entire itinerary inscribed on the reverse side. A few months later, an important bridge, named the "Al Jolson Bridge", was used to withdraw the bulk of American troops from North Korea. The bridge was the last remaining of three bridges across the Han River and was used to evacuate UN forces. It was demolished by UN forces after the army made it safely across in order to prevent the Chinese from crossing.


title: Al Jolson

text: Alistair Cooke wrote, "He [Jolson] had one last hour of glory. He offered to fly to Korea and entertain the troops hemmed in on the United Nations precarious August bridgehead. The troops yelled for his appearance. He went down on his knee again and sang 'Mammy', and the troops wept and cheered. When he was asked what Korea was like he warmly answered, 'I am going to get back my income tax returns and see if I paid enough.'" Jack Benny, who went to Korea the following year, noted that an amphitheater in Korea where troops were entertained, was named the "Al Jolson Bowl".


title: Al Jolson

text: Ten days after returning from Korea, he agreed with RKO Pictures producers Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna to star in "Stars and Stripes for Ever", a movie about a USO troupe in the South Pacific during World War II. The screenplay was to be written by Herbert Baker and to co-star Dinah Shore. But Jolson had overexerted himself in Korea, especially for a man who was missing a lung. Two weeks after signing the agreement, he died of a heart attack in San Francisco. A few months after his death, Defense Secretary George Marshall presented the Medal for Merit for Jolson, "to whom this country owes a debt which cannot be repaid". The medal, carrying a citation noting that Jolson's "contribution to the U.N. action in Korea was made at the expense of his life", was presented to Jolson's adopted son as Jolson's widow looked on.


title: Al Jolson

text: Despite their close relationship while growing up, Harry Jolson (Al's older brother) did show some disdain for Jolson's success over the years. Even during their time with Jack Palmer, Jolson was rising in popularity while Harry was fading. After separating from "Al and Jack", Harry's career in show business sank. On one occasion Harry offered to be Jolson's agent, but Jolson rejected the offer, worried about the pressure he would face from his producers for hiring his brother. Shortly after Harry's wife Lillian died in 1948, the brothers became close once again.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson's first marriage, to Henrietta Keller (1889–1967), took place in Alameda, California, on September 20, 1907. His name was given as Albert Jolson. The couple divorced in 1919. In 1920, he began a relationship with Broadway actress Alma Osbourne (known professionally as Ethel Delmar); the two were married in August 1922; she divorced Jolson in 1928.


title: Al Jolson

text: In the summer of 1928, Jolson met young tap dancer, and later actress, Ruby Keeler in Los Angeles (Jolson would claim it was at Texas Guinan's night club) and was dazzled by her on sight. Three weeks later, Jolson saw a production of George M. Cohan's "Rise of Rosie O'Reilly", and noticed she was in the show's cast. Now knowing she was going about her Broadway career, Jolson attended another one of her shows, "Show Girl", and rose from the audience and engaged in her duet of "Liza". After this moment, the show's producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, asked Jolson to join the cast and continue to sing duets with Keeler. Jolson accepted Ziegfeld's offer and during their tour with Ziegfeld, the two started dating and were married on September 21, 1928. In 1935, Al and Ruby adopted a son, Jolson's first child, whom they named "Al Jolson Jr." In 1939, however—despite a marriage that was considered to be more successful than his previous ones—Keeler left Jolson. After their 1940 divorce, she remarried, to John Homer Lowe, with whom she would have four children and remain married until his death in 1969.


title: Al Jolson

text: In 1944, while giving a show at a military hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Jolson met a young X-ray technologist, Erle Galbraith. He became fascinated with her and more than a year later he was able to track her down and hired her as an actress while he served as a producer at Columbia Pictures. After Jolson, whose health was still scarred from his previous battle with malaria, was hospitalized in the winter of 1945, Erle visited him and the two quickly began a relationship. They were married on March 22, 1945. During their marriage, the Jolsons adopted two children, Asa Jr. (born 1948) and Alicia (born 1949), and remained married until his death in 1950.


title: Al Jolson

text: After a year and a half of marriage, his new wife had never seen him perform in front of an audience, and the first occasion came unplanned. As told by actor-comedian Alan King, it happened during a dinner by the New York Friars' Club at the Waldorf Astoria in 1946 to honor the career of Sophie Tucker. Jolson and his wife were in the audience with a thousand others, and George Jessel was the emcee.


title: Al Jolson

text: Without warning, during the middle of the show, Jessel said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the easiest introduction I ever had to make. The world's greatest entertainer, Al Jolson." King recalls what happened next:


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson was a Republican who supported Warren G. Harding in 1920 and Calvin Coolidge in 1924 for president. As "one of the biggest stars of his time, [he] worked his magic singing "Harding, You're the Man for Us" to enthralled audiences ... [and] was subsequently asked to perform "Keep Cool with Coolidge" four years later... Jolson, like the men who ran the studios, was the rare showbiz Republican." Jolson publicly campaigned for Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. By the next presidential election (1936), he was back to supporting Republican Alf Landon and would not support another Democrat for president during his life.


title: Al Jolson

text: While playing cards in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel at 335 Powell Street in San Francisco, Jolson died of a massive heart attack on October 23, 1950. His last words were said to be "Oh ... oh, I'm going." He was 64.


title: Al Jolson

text: After his wife received the news of his death by phone, she went into shock, and required family members to stay with her. At the funeral, police estimated that upwards of 20,000 people showed up, despite the threat of rain. It became one of the biggest funerals in show business history. Celebrities paid tribute: Bob Hope, speaking from Korea via shortwave radio, said the world had lost "not only a great entertainer, but also a great citizen". Larry Parks said that the world had "lost not only its greatest entertainer, but a great American as well. He was a casualty of the [Korean] war." Scripps-Howard newspapers drew a pair of white gloves on a black background. The caption read, "The Song Is Ended."


title: Al Jolson

text: He was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. Jolson's widow purchased a plot at Hillside and commissioned his mausoleum to be designed by well-known black architect Paul Williams. The six-pillar marble structure is topped by a dome, next to a three-quarter-size bronze statue of Jolson, eternally resting on one knee, arms outstretched, apparently ready to break into another verse of "Mammy". The inside of the dome features a huge mosaic of Moses holding the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and identifies Jolson as "The Sweet Singer of Israel" and "The Man Raised Up High".


title: Al Jolson

text: On the day he died, Broadway dimmed its lights in Jolson's honor, and radio stations all over the world paid tributes. Soon after his death, the BBC presented a special program entitled "Jolson Sings On". His death unleashed tributes from all over the world, including a number of eulogies from friends, including George Jessel, Walter Winchell, and Eddie Cantor. He contributed millions to Jewish and other charities in his will.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to radio, motion pictures, and the recording industry.


title: Al Jolson

text: In 2000, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. Jolson is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.


title: Al Jolson

text: The U.S. Postal Service honored him by issuing a 29-cent stamp that was unveiled by Erle Jolson Krasna, Jolson's fourth wife, at a ceremony in Lincoln Center on September 1, 1994. This stamp was one of a series honoring popular American singers, which included Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Ethel Merman, and Ethel Waters. In 2006, Jolson had a street in New York named after him with the help of the Al Jolson Society.


title: Al Jolson

text: In October 2008, the documentary "Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer", directed by German filmmaker Andrea Oberheiden, premiered at the 50th Lübeck Nordic Film Days, Lübeck, Germany, and won 1st Prize at an annual film competition in Kiel a few weeks later. In November 2007, a documentary short by the same director, "A Look at Al Jolson", was winner at the same festival.


title: Al Jolson

text: According to music historians Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold: "During his time he was the best known and most popular all-around entertainer America (and probably the world) has ever known, captivating audiences in the theatre and becoming an attraction on records, radio, and in films. He opened the ears of white audiences to the existence of musical forms alien to their previous understanding and experience ... and helped prepare the way for others who would bring a more realistic and sympathetic touch to black musical traditions." Black songwriter Noble Sissle, in the 1930s, said "[h]e was always the champion of the Negro songwriter and performer, and was first to put Negroes in his shows". Of Jolson's "Mammy" songs, he adds, "with real tears streaming down his blackened face, he immortalized the Negro motherhood of America as no individual could."


title: Al Jolson

text: However, Jolson's signature style, loud and passionate, was soon eclipsed by the cooler and more intimate style of the crooners, singers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, who dominated the pop charts in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. While Jolson could and did croon, his basic style was formed in the era when a singer needed to project to the back of a theater with his own physical power; later singers who developed in the microphone era were freed from this constraint.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson often performed in blackface makeup. Performing in blackface makeup was a theatrical convention of many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel show. According to film historian Eric Lott:


title: Al Jolson

text: In the retrospective view of a later era, however, the use of blackface has come to be viewed as implicit racism. Music critic Ted Gioia, commenting on Jolson's use of blackface, wrote:


title: Al Jolson

text: Historians have described Jolson's blackface and singing style as metaphors for Jewish and black suffering throughout history. Jolson's first film, "The Jazz Singer", for instance, is described by historian Michael Alexander as an expression of the liturgical music of Jews with the "imagined music of African Americans", noting that "prayer and jazz become metaphors for Jews and blacks." Playwright Samson Raphaelson, after seeing Jolson perform his stage show "Robinson Crusoe", stated that "he had an epiphany: 'My God, this isn't a jazz singer', he said. 'This is a cantor!'" The image of the blackfaced cantor remained in Raphaelson's mind when he conceived of the story which led to "The Jazz Singer".


title: Al Jolson

text: Upon the film's release, the first full-length sound picture, film reviewers saw the symbolism and metaphors portrayed by Jolson in his role as the son of a cantor wanting to become a "jazz singer":


title: Al Jolson

text: According to Alexander, Eastern European Jews were uniquely qualified to understand the music, noting how Jolson himself made the comparison of Jewish and African-American suffering in a new land in his film "Big Boy": In a blackface portrayal of a former slave, he leads a group of recently freed slaves, played by black actors, in verses of the classic slave spiritual "Go Down Moses". One reviewer of the film expressed how Jolson's blackface added significance to his role:


title: Al Jolson

text: Many in the black community welcomed "The Jazz Singer" and saw it as a vehicle to gain access to the stage. Audiences at Harlem's Lafayette Theater cried during the film, and Harlem's newspaper, "Amsterdam News", called it "one of the greatest pictures ever produced." For Jolson, it wrote: "Every colored performer is proud of him."


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson's legacy as the most popular performer of blackface routines was complemented by his relationships with African-Americans and his appreciation and use of African-American cultural trends. Jolson first heard jazz, blues, and ragtime in the alleys of New Orleans. He enjoyed singing jazz, often performing in blackface, especially in the songs he made popular such as "Swanee", "My Mammy", and "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody".


title: Al Jolson

text: As a Jewish immigrant and America's most famous and highest-paid entertainer, he may have had the incentive and resources to help improve racial attitudes. While "The Birth of a Nation" glorified white supremacy and the KKK, Jolson chose to star in "The Jazz Singer", which defied racial bigotry by introducing black musicians to audiences worldwide.


title: Al Jolson

text: While growing up, Jolson had many black friends, including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who became a prominent tap dancer. As early as 1911, at the age of 25, Jolson was noted for fighting discrimination on Broadway and later in his movies. In 1924, he promoted the play "Appearances" by Garland Anderson which became the first production with an all-black cast produced on Broadway. He brought a black dance team from San Francisco that he tried to put in a Broadway show. He demanded equal treatment for Cab Calloway, with whom he performed duets in the movie "The Singing Kid".


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson read in the newspaper that songwriters Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, neither of whom he had ever heard of, were refused service at a Connecticut restaurant because of their race. He tracked them down and took them out to dinner, "insisting he'd punch anyone in the nose who tried to kick us out!" According to biographer Al Rose, Jolson and Blake became friends and went to boxing matches together.


title: Al Jolson

text: Film historian Charles Musser notes, "African Americans' embrace of Jolson was not a spontaneous reaction to his appearance in talking pictures. In an era when African Americans did not have to go looking for enemies, Jolson was perceived a friend."


title: Al Jolson

text: Jeni LeGon, a black female tap dancer, recalls her life as a film dancer: "But of course, in those times it was a 'black-and-white world.' You didn't associate too much socially with any of the stars. You saw them at the studio, you know, nice—but they didn't invite. The only ones that ever invited us home for a visit was Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler."


title: Al Jolson

text: British performer Brian Conley, former star of the 1995 British play "Jolson", stated during an interview, "I found out Jolson was actually a hero to the black people of America. At his funeral, black actors lined the way, they really appreciated what he'd done for them."


title: Al Jolson

text: Noble Sissle, who was by then president of the Negro Actors Guild, represented that organization at his funeral.


title: Al Jolson

text: Jolson's physical expressiveness also affected the music styles of some black performers. Music historian Bob Gulla writes that "the most critical influence in Jackie Wilson's young life was Al Jolson." He points out that Wilson's ideas of what a stage performer could do to keep their act an "exciting" and "thrilling performance" was shaped by Jolson's acts, "full of wild writhing and excessive theatrics". Wilson felt that Jolson "should be considered the stylistic [forefather] of rock and roll."


title: Al Jolson

text: According to the "St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture": "Almost single-handedly, Jolson helped to introduce African-American musical innovations like jazz, ragtime, and the blues to white audiences ... [and] paved the way for African-American performers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters ... to bridge the cultural gap between black and white America."


title: Al Jolson

text: Amiri Baraka wrote, "the entrance of the white man into jazz ... did at least bring him much closer to the Negro." He points out that "the acceptance of jazz by whites marks a crucial moment when an aspect of black culture had become an essential part of American culture."


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: The Girlfriend Experience is an American anthology drama television series created, written, and directed by Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz that is broadcast on the premium cable network Starz. The first season stars Riley Keough as Christine Reade, a law student intern who also works as a high-end escort. Executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, it is based on the 2009 film of the same name. A 13-episode first season premiered on April 10, 2016, and all episodes were made available on Starz On Demand.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: On August 1, 2016, Starz renewed the series for a 14-episode second season, focusing on new characters and storylines, with Seimetz and Kerrigan returning. The second season premiered on November 5, 2017.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: In July 2019, Starz renewed the series for a 10-episode third season, which is written and directed by Anja Marquardt and stars Julia Goldani Telles. The third season premiered on May 2, 2021.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: Second-year Chicago-Burnham Law School student Christine Reade lands an internship at the law firm of Kirkland & Allen and struggles to balance her workload, expenses and classes. When her close friend Avery reveals that she has been working as an escort, she encourages Christine to tag along and introduces her to a friend of one of her clients, who is looking for an escort. Under the pseudonym "Chelsea Rayne", Christine works as a high-end escort specializing in providing "the girlfriend experience" (GFE), an array of sexual and other associated services intended to make the client feel both sexually and emotionally satisfied. Initially working for Avery's madam Jacqueline, Christine eventually strikes out on her own, experiencing pitfalls along the way as clients cross boundaries and she discovers corruption at Kirkland & Allen.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: The second season features two parallel storylines. One storyline, set in Washington, D.C., takes place during the upcoming U.S. midterm elections and follows Erica Myles, a finance director of a Republican super PAC, and Anna Garner, a GFE provider. Under intense pressure to deliver on her fundraising goals, Erica enlists Anna's help in blackmailing a high-powered dark money fundraiser. The other storyline, set in New Mexico, follows Bria Jones, a former high-end escort who enters the Witness Protection Program with her estranged thirteen-year-old step-daughter to escape an abusive relationship. However, she revives her career as an escort, which threatens Bria's new identity and well-being of her step-daughter and the U.S. Marshal put in charge of her.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: Iris, a neuroscience major, drops out of school and moves to London to join a tech start-up that is studying human behavior. As she begins to explore the transactional world of the girlfriend experience, she quickly learns that her client sessions provide her with a compelling edge in the tech world and vice versa.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: In June 2014, the series was greenlit by Starz, with a 13-episode order with the series being based upon "The Girlfriend Experience" which was directed by Steven Soderbergh who also serves as an executive producer on the series, while Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz, wrote and directed all 13 episodes and also serve as executive producers. In September 2014, Riley Keough was cast as the female lead. Shane Carruth composed the musical score for the series. Principal photography took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: In January 2017, it was announced that Louisa Krause, Anna Friel and Carmen Ejogo were cast as the three female leads of season 2. The second season features two parallel storylines, with Kerrigan and Seimetz each writing and directing their own storyline. In March, Narges Rashidi joined the cast of the series. Although there is no crossover between the storylines and Kerrigan and Seimetz worked independently, they did read each other's scripts. In an interview with "Variety", Kerrigan said: "We respected each other’s work, and I think we have mutual respect as filmmakers, so we read each other’s scripts and watched each other’s episodes, but really, we just did our own thing."


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: In September 2017, Kerrigan and Seimetz indicated that they would not return for a third season. Kerrigan explained, "Amy and I are going to bounce after season two which was always the plan to allow new filmmakers to come in."


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: In July 2019, Starz renewed the series for a 10-episode third season, to be written and directed by Anja Marquardt. Filming for the third season began on August 20, 2020, in London, England.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: The first season of "The Girlfriend Experience" received positive reviews from critics, earning a rating of 85% with an average score of 8.5 out of 10, based on 40 reviews, on the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. The site's critical consensus reads: "The darkly fascinating (and utterly bingeworthy) "The Girlfriend Experience" powers past any shortcomings with a breakout performance by Riley Keough." Metacritic provides a score of 78 out of 100 from 27 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Matt Zoller Seitz, reviewing for "Vulture", gave top praises to the series, stating that ""The Girlfriend Experience" is actually four or five shows rolled into one, and a big part of its specialness resides in those moments where it morphs from one thing into another", as well as giving high praise especially to the season finale: "[It] is the most daring, dense, allusive, and multilayered single episode of TV I’ve seen since the finale of season three of "Louie"".


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: The second season received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 74% rating with an average score of 9.4 out of 10 based on 19 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Girlfriend Experience" reinvents itself from a character study into an ensemble piece, thoughtfully unpacking thorny aspects of sexuality and providing rigorous programming for viewers who want to be both challenged and titillated". On Metacritic, it has a score of 72 out of 100 based on 6 reviews. Writing for Collider, Chris Cabin gave it a four star review and wrote that it's "one of the greatest seasons of television that 2017 has produced thus far." Writing for "Variety", Sonia Saraiya felt that while the second season was "still directed and produced beautifully, with a soundscape so precise and intimate that it is haunting and immersive in a way little else on television can even approach", sex work and "even the sex worker herself" had become "secondary to the aims of the filmmaker", particularly in "Erica & Anna," but that both storylines had fine qualities: "'Bria' is cinematically stunning, with a few sequences that are going to be hard to forget anytime soon. 'Erica & Anna' is a much more straightforward story, with a chilly aesthetic that makes 'House of Cards' look upbeat. But the relative opacity of 'Bria’s story' beats — and the oddly pat metaphors of 'Erica & Anna' — left me with the wish that these two well-matched directors might, you know, collaborate."


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: The third season has received somewhat positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, it has a score of 76 out of 100 based on 6 reviews.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: For the 74th Golden Globe Awards, Riley Keough was nominated for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film.


title: The Girlfriend Experience (TV series)

text: Amazon Video acquired rights to the series for the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Japan, with the series premiering on June 27, 2016, excluding Japan. The first season was released on Blu-ray and DVD in region 1 on August 2, 2016.


title: Don Shirley

text: Donald Walbridge Shirley (January 29, 1927 – April 6, 2013) was an American classical and jazz pianist and composer. He recorded many albums for Cadence Records during the 1950s and 1960s, experimenting with jazz with a classical influence. He wrote organ symphonies, piano concerti, a cello concerto, three string quartets, a one-act opera, works for organ, piano and violin, a symphonic poem based on the 1939 novel "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce, and a set of "Variations" on the 1858 opera "Orpheus in the Underworld".


title: Don Shirley

text: Born in Pensacola, Florida, Shirley was a promising young student of classical piano. Although he did not achieve recognition in his early career playing traditional classical music, he found success with his blending of various musical traditions.


title: Don Shirley

text: During the 1960s, Shirley went on a number of concert tours, some in Deep South states. For a time, he hired New York nightclub bouncer Tony "Lip" Vallelonga as his driver and bodyguard. Their story was dramatized in the 2018 film "Green Book", in which he was played by Mahershala Ali.


title: Don Shirley

text: Shirley was born on January 29, 1927, in Pensacola, Florida, to Jamaican immigrants, Stella Gertrude (1903–1936), a teacher, and Edwin S. Shirley (1885–1982), an Episcopal priest. His birthplace was sometimes incorrectly given as Kingston, Jamaica, because his label advertised him as being Jamaican-born. Shirley started to learn piano when he was two years old. By age three, he was playing the organ.


title: Don Shirley

text: He briefly enrolled at Virginia State University and Prairie View College, then studied with Conrad Bernier and Thaddeus Jones at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he received his bachelor's degree in music in 1953. He was known as "Dr. Shirley" for his two honorary doctorates.


title: Don Shirley

text: According to some sources, Shirley traveled to the Soviet Union to study piano and music theory at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music. According to his nephew, Edwin, his record label falsely claimed that he studied music in Europe to "make him acceptable in areas where a Black man from a Black school wouldn’t have got any recognition at all." According to trio cellist Jüri Täht, Donald never studied in the Soviet Union.


title: Don Shirley

text: In 1945, at the age of 18, Shirley performed the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A year later, Shirley performed one of his compositions with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.


title: Don Shirley

text: While a student at The Catholic University of America, Shirley was a finalist for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship in 1949, though he was not selected. Had he been selected, Mr. Shirley indicated that he would study "oriental languages" at Oxford rather than music.


title: Don Shirley

text: In 1949, he received an invitation from the Haitian government to play at the Exposition Internationale du Bi-Centenaire de Port-au-Prince, followed by a request from President Estimé and Archbishop Joseph-Marie Le Gouaze for a repeat performance the next week.


title: Don Shirley

text: Shirley was married to Jean C. Hill in Cook County, Illinois on December 23, 1952, but they later divorced.


title: Don Shirley

text: Discouraged by the lack of opportunities for black classical musicians, Shirley abandoned the piano as a career for a time. He studied psychology at the University of Chicago and began work in Chicago as a psychologist. There he returned to music. He was given a grant to study the relationship between music and juvenile crime, which had broken out in the postwar era of the early 1950s. While playing in a small club, he experimented with sound to determine how the audience responded. The audience was unaware of his experiments and that students had been planted to gauge their reactions.


title: Don Shirley

text: At Arthur Fiedler's invitation, Shirley appeared with the Boston Pops in Chicago in June 1954. In 1955, he performed with the NBC Symphony at the premiere of Duke Ellington's Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. He also appeared on TV on "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends".


title: Don Shirley

text: Shirley's first album as a leader was "Tonal Expressions", for Cadence Records. It reached No. 14 on "Billboard"'s Best-Selling Pop Albums chart in 1955. During the 1950s and 1960s, he recorded many albums for Cadence, experimenting with jazz with a classical influence. In 1961, his single "Water Boy" reached No. 40 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks. He performed in New York City at Basin Street East, where Duke Ellington heard him and they started a friendship.


title: Don Shirley

text: During the 1960s, Shirley went on a number of concert tours, some in Southern states, believing that he could change some minds with his performances. For his initial tour, in 1962, he hired New York nightclub bouncer Tony "Lip" Vallelonga as his driver and bodyguard. Their story is dramatized in the 2018 film "Green Book", the name of a travel guide for black motorists in the segregated United States. While the film depicts Shirley as estranged from his family and alienated from other African Americans, Shirley's surviving family members dispute this. They say he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, attended the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, and knew other African American artists and leaders. He also had three brothers with whom, according to his family, he kept in touch. Author David Hajdu, who met and befriended Shirley in the 1990s through composer Luther Henderson, wrote: "the man I knew was considerably different from the character Ali portrayed with meticulous elegance in "Green Book". Cerebral but disarmingly earthy, mercurial, self-protective, and intolerant of imperfections in all things, particularly music, he was as complex and uncategorizable as his sui generis music."


title: Don Shirley

text: In late 1968, Shirley performed the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto with the Detroit Symphony. He also worked with the Chicago Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra. He wrote symphonies for the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra. He played as soloist with the orchestra at Milan's La Scala opera house in a program dedicated to George Gershwin's music. Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky, who was an admirer of Shirley's, said of him, "His virtuosity is worthy of Gods."


title: India Gate

text: The India Gate (formerly known as the All India War Memorial) is a war memorial located near the Rajpath on the eastern edge of the "ceremonial axis" of New Delhi, formerly called duty path. It stands as a memorial to 84,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921 in the First World War, in France, Flanders, Mesopotamia, Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and the Far East, and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. 13,300 servicemen's names, including some soldiers and officers from the United Kingdom, are inscribed on the gate. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the gate evokes the architectural style of the memorial arch such as the Arch of Constantine, in Rome, and is often compared to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the Gateway of India in Mumbai.


title: India Gate

text: Following the Bangladesh Liberation war in 1972, a structure consisting of a black marble plinth with a reversed rifle, capped by a war helmet and bounded by four eternal flames, was built beneath the archway. This structure, called Amar Jawan Jyoti (Flame of the Immortal Soldier), has since 1971 served as India's tomb of the unknown soldier. India Gate is counted amongst the largest war memorials in India and every Republic Day, the Prime Minister visits the gate to pay their tributes to the Amar Jawan Jyoti, following which the Republic Day parade starts. India Gate is often a location for civil society protests.


title: India Gate

text: The India Gate was part of the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), which came into existence in December 1918 under the British rule for building war graves and memorials to soldiers who were killed in the First World War. The foundation stone of the gate then called the All India War Memorial, was laid on 10 February 1921, at 16:30, by the visiting Duke of Connaught in a ceremony attended by officers and men of the British Indian Army, Imperial Service Troops, the commander in chief, and Chelmsford, the viceroy. On the occasion, the viceroy is reported to have said, "The stirring tales of individual heroism, will live forever in the annals of this country", and that the memorial which was a tribute to the memory of heroes, "known and unknown", would inspire future generations to endure hardships with similar fortitude and "no less valor". The Duke also read out a message by the King, which said, "On this spot, in the central vista of the Capital of India, there will stand a Memorial Archway, designed to keep", in the thoughts of future generations, "the glorious sacrifice of the officers and men of the British Indian Army who fought and fell". During the ceremony, the Deccan Horse, 3rd Sappers and Miners, 6th Jat Light Infantry, 34th Sikh Pioneers, 39th Garhwal Rifles, 59th Scinde Rifles (Frontier Force), 117th Mahrattas, and 5th Gurkha Rifles


title: India Gate

text: Ten years after the foundation stone's laying on 12 February 1931, the memorial was inaugurated by Lord Irwin, who, on the occasion, said "those who after us shall look upon this monument may learn in pondering its purpose something of that sacrifice and service which the names upon its walls record." In the decade between the laying of foundation stone of the memorial and its inauguration, the rail-line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and the New Delhi Railway Station was opened in 1926.


title: India Gate

text: The gate, which is illuminated every evening from 19:00 to 21:30, today serves as one of Delhi's most important tourist attractions. Cars used to travel through the gate until it was closed to traffic. The Republic Day Parade starts from Rashtrapati Bhavan and passes around the India Gate. India gate is often a location for civil society protests, including demonstrations in response to the Nirbhaya rape case in 2012 and the Unnao rape case in 2017, and as part of the 2011 anti-corruption movement.


title: India Gate

text: In 2017, the India Gate was twinned with the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester, England, another Lutyens war memorial, following a very similar design but on a smaller scale. In a ceremony, India's high commissioner to the United Kingdom laid a wreath at the arch in Leicester and the British high commissioner to India laid one at the India Gate.


title: India Gate

text: The memorial gate was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who was not only the main architect of New Delhi but also a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission and one of Europe's foremost designers of war graves and memorials. He designed sixty-six war memorials in Europe, including the highly regarded Cenotaph in London in 1919, the first national war memorial erected after World War I, for which he was commissioned by David Lloyd George, the British prime minister.<ref name="The History Teacher /9 April"></ref> The memorial in New Delhi, like the Cenotaph in London, is a secular memorial, free of religious and "culturally-specific iconography such as crosses". Lutyens according to his biographer, Christopher Hussey, relied on the "elemental mode", a style of commemoration based on a "universal architectural style free of religious ornamentation".


title: India Gate

text: The India Gate, which has been called a "creative reworking of the Arc de Triomphe" has a span of and lies on the eastern axial end of Kingsway, present-day Kartavya Path, the central vista and main ceremonial procession route in New Delhi. The India Gate stands on a low base of red Bharatpur stone and rises in stages to a huge moulding. The shallow domed bowl at the top was intended to be filled with burning oil on anniversaries, but this is rarely done. The memorial-gate hexagon complex, with a diameter of about , covers approximately in area.


title: India Gate

text: The cornice of the India Gate is inscribed with Imperial suns while both sides of the arch have INDIA, flanked by the dates MCMXIV ('1914'; on the left) and MCMXIX ('1919'; on the right). Below the word INDIA, in capital letters, is inscribed:


title: India Gate

text: 13,313 names are engraved out of which 12,357 are Indian. Access to read the names on the memorial is restricted, though they can be seen on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website, which lists the names with their respective date of death, unit name, regiment, place on gate where name is inscribed, location, and other information).


title: India Gate

text: About east of the gate, at a junction of six roads, is a cupola, inspired by a sixth-century pavilion from Mahabalipuram. Lutyens used four Delhi Order columns to support the domed canopy and its "chhajja".


title: India Gate

text: In the autumn of 1930, Jagatjit Singh, the Maharaja of Kapurthala State, organized an appeal amongst the Indian princely rulers to erect a statue of King-Emperor George V in New Delhi to commemorate the sovereign's recent recovery from sepsis. As originally conceived, the statue would have depicted the monarch in marble riding in a howdah atop a red stone elephant; a canopy was not then included in the design. The final concept, approved by George V before his death, dispensed with the elephant, instead incorporating a red stone canopy and pedestal, with the pedestal standing tall. An tall marble statue of the King-Emperor wearing his Delhi Durbar coronation robes and Imperial State Crown, bearing the British globus cruciger and sceptre, was placed atop the pedestal, which bore the Royal Coat of Arms and the inscription GEORGE V R I, the "R I" designating him as 'Rex Imperator' or 'King Emperor'. The combined height of the statue and pedestal was ; while the pedestal and canopy were designed by Lutyens, the statue was designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger of the Royal Academy of Arts. The canopy was topped by a gilded Tudor Crown and bore the Royal Cyphers of George V, with the completed monument intended to "mark the loyalty and attachment of the Ruling Princes and Chiefs of India to the Person and Throne of the King-Emperor." Following the premature death of Jagger, the statue's head and crown were completed by one of his assistants in England and then shipped to India, while the remainder of the monument was carved in India.


title: India Gate

text: The statue's installation in the autumn of 1936, amidst the Indian independence movement, made it a target for Independence activists; on the night of 3 January 1943, during the Quit India movement, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and Manubhai Shah scaled the statue, smashed its nose and draped it with a large black cloth inscribed "Death to the Tyrant." The statue remained standing at its original site for two decades following the nation's independence in 1947, but certain political factions increasingly objected to its continued presence in its central location, particularly after the tenth anniversary of Independence and the centennial of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. On the night of 12–13 August 1958, the royal insignia of George V and the Tudor Crown atop the canopy were removed.


title: India Gate

text: With increasing pressure from Socialist members of Parliament, then-Deputy Minister Home Affairs Lalit Narayan Mishra stated in May 1964 that all British statuary would be removed from the national capital by 1966. Two days before Independence Day in 1965, members of the Samyukta Socialist Party overpowered two constables guarding the site, covered the statue in tar and defaced its imperial crown, nose and one ear, also leaving a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose at the monument. Despite the resulting adverse publicity and the growing controversy over the situation, the matter of relocating the statue dragged on for several years. The British government rejected a proposal to repatriate the monument to the United Kingdom, citing the lack of an appropriate site and sufficient funds, while the British High Commission in New Delhi declined to have the statue relocated to their compound, due to limited space. Efforts to move the statue to a Delhi park were strongly opposed by the nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which then held power in the city. Finally, in late 1968, the statue was removed from its position beneath the canopy and briefly placed in storage before being moved to Delhi's Coronation Park, where it joined other British Raj-era statues. During and after the statue's removal, it was often suggested that a statue of Mahatma Gandhi be placed under the canopy. The suggestion was even discussed in the Indian Parliament. In 1981, the government had in response to a question in the Parliament, confirmed that it was considering the installation of a Gandhi statue under the empty canopy, but nothing came of it.


title: India Gate

text: On 21 January 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose would be installed in the canopy at India Gate. The announcement came two days before the 125th anniversary of his birth. A 28 feet high and 6 feet wide 3D holographic statue of Bose was inaugurated at the site on 23 January 2022, celebrated as Parakram Diwas (Courage Day). On this occasion, an award in the name of Bose was instituted for the exemplary work in disaster management. On 8 September 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the newly-made statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose near the India Gate.


title: India Gate

text: Amar Jawan Jyoti, or the flame of the immortal soldier, is a structure consisting of black marble plinth, with reversed rifle, capped by war helmet, bound by four urns, each with the permanent light ("jyoti") from compressed natural gas flames, erected under the India gate to commemorate Indian soldiers martyred in the war of the liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971. It was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 26 January 1972, the twenty-third Indian Republic Day.


title: India Gate

text: Since the installation of the Amar Jawan Jyoti, it has served as India's tomb of the unknown soldier. It is staffed around the clock by the Indian armed forces. Wreaths are placed at the Amar Jawan Jyoti every Republic Day, Vijay Diwas, and Infantry Day by the Prime Minister and the Chiefs of the Armed Forces.


title: India Gate

text: On 21 January 2022 the Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate was merged with the Amar Jawan Jyoti at the National War Memorial.


title: India Gate

text: In July 2014, the government announced plans to construct a National War Memorial in the C-Hexagon (India Gate Circle), and an adjoining National War Museum. The cabinet allocated for the project. The National War Memorial was completed in January, 2019. Since January 2022, it houses the Amar Jawan Jyoti, or the "Flame of the Immortal Soldier".


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus (; ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to "Menoeceus", "Pythocles", and "Herodotus"—and two collections of quotes—the "Principal Doctrines" and the "Vatican Sayings"—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain happy ("eudaimonic"), tranquil lives characterized by "ataraxia" (peace and freedom from fear) and "aponia" (the absence of pain). He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neurosis is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should act ethically not because the gods punish or reward them for their actions but because, due to the power of guilt, amoral behavior would inevitably lead to remorse weighing on their consciences and as a result, they would be prevented from attaining "ataraxia".


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning he believed that only the senses are a reliable source of knowledge about the world. He derived much of his physics and cosmology from the earlier philosopher Democritus ( 460– 370 BC). Like Democritus, Epicurus taught that the universe is infinite and eternal and that all matter is made up of extremely tiny, invisible particles known as "atoms". All occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of atoms moving and interacting in empty space. Epicurus deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of atomic "swerve", which holds that atoms may deviate from their expected course, thus permitting humans to possess free will in an otherwise deterministic universe.


title: Epicurus

text: Though popular, Epicurean teachings were controversial from the beginning. Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic. It died out in late antiquity, subject to hostility from early Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages Epicurus was popularly, though inaccurately, remembered as a patron of drunkards, whoremongers, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen. Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period. Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia. As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ancient Greek education. As such, according to Norman Wentworth DeWitt, "it is inconceivable that he would have escaped the Platonic training in geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric." Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years. His "Letter of Menoeceus" and surviving fragments of his other writings strongly suggest that he had extensive training in rhetoric. After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. After the completion of his military service, Epicurus joined his family there. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus, and later those of Pyrrho, whose way of life Epicurus greatly admired.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as "confused". Instead, he insisted that he had been "self-taught". According to DeWitt, Epicurus's teachings also show influences from the contemporary philosophical school of Cynicism. The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was still alive when Epicurus would have been in Athens for his required military training and it is possible they may have met. Diogenes's pupil Crates of Thebes ( 365 – 285 BC) was a close contemporary of Epicurus. Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their "insolence and vulgarity", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness. Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus's "Letter to Menoeceus", possibly an early work of his, is written in an eloquent style similar to that of the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BC), but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid. Epicurus's epistemology also bears an unacknowledged debt to the later writings of Aristotle (384–322 BC), who rejected the Platonic idea of hypostatic Reason and instead relied on nature and empirical evidence for knowledge about the universe. During Epicurus's formative years, Greek knowledge about the rest of the world was rapidly expanding due to the Hellenization of the Near East and the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms. Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks. He may have had access to the now-lost writings of the historian and ethnographer Megasthenes, who wrote during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator (ruled 305–281 BC).


title: Epicurus

text: During Epicurus's lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education. Epicurus's opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought. Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism. In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene. Around this time, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, arrived in Athens, at the age of about twenty-one, but Zeno did not begin teaching what would become Stoicism for another twenty years. Although later texts, such as the writings of the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero, portray Epicureanism and Stoicism as rivals, this rivalry seems to have only emerged after Epicurus's death.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in 306 BC, where he remained until his death. There he founded The Garden (κῆπος), a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place, about halfway between the locations of two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy. The Garden was more than just a school; it was "a community of like-minded and aspiring practitioners of a particular way of life." The primary members were Hermarchus, the financier Idomeneus, Leonteus and his wife Themista, the satirist Colotes, the mathematician Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the most famous popularizer of Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception, and the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius lists female students such as Leontion and Nikidion. An inscription on the gate to The Garden is recorded by Seneca the Younger in epistle XXI of "Epistulae morales ad Lucilium": "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."


title: Epicurus

text: According to Diskin Clay, Epicurus himself established a custom of celebrating his birthday annually with common meals, befitting his stature as "heros ktistes" ("founding hero") of the Garden. He ordained in his will annual memorial feasts for himself on the same date (10th of Gamelion month). Epicurean communities continued this tradition, referring to Epicurus as their "saviour" (soter) and celebrating him as hero. The hero cult of Epicurus may have operated as a Garden variety civic religion. However, clear evidence of an Epicurean hero cult, as well as the cult itself, seems buried by the weight of posthumous philosophical interpretation. Epicurus never married and had no known children. He was most likely a vegetarian.


title: Epicurus

text: Diogenes Laërtius records that, according to Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract. Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end. Possible insights into Epicurus's death may be offered by the extremely brief "Epistle to Idomeneus", included by Diogenes Laërtius in Book X of his "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers". The authenticity of this letter is uncertain and it may be a later pro-Epicurean forgery intended to paint an admirable portrait of the philosopher to counter the large number of forged epistles in Epicurus's name portraying him unfavorably.


title: Epicurus

text: I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.


title: Epicurus

text: If authentic, this letter would support the tradition that Epicurus was able to remain joyful to the end, even in the midst of his suffering. It would also indicate that he maintained a special concern for the wellbeing of children.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus and his followers had a well-developed epistemology, which developed as a result of their rivalry with other philosophical schools. Epicurus wrote a treatise entitled , or "Rule", in which he explained his methods of investigation and theory of knowledge. This book, however, has not survived, nor does any other text that fully and clearly explains Epicurean epistemology, leaving only mentions of this epistemology by several authors to reconstruct it. Epicurus was an ardent Empiricist; believing that the senses are the only reliable sources of information about the world. He rejected the Platonic idea of "Reason" as a reliable source of knowledge about the world apart from the senses and was bitterly opposed to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, who not only questioned the ability of the senses to provide accurate knowledge about the world, but also whether it is even possible to know anything about the world at all.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus maintained that the senses never deceive humans, but that the senses can be misinterpreted. Epicurus held that the purpose of all knowledge is to aid humans in attaining "ataraxia". He taught that knowledge is learned through experiences rather than innate and that the acceptance of the fundamental truth of the things a person perceives is essential to a person's moral and spiritual health. In the "Letter to Pythocles", he states, "If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquility." Epicurus regarded gut feelings as the ultimate authority on matters of morality and held that whether a person feels an action is right or wrong is a far more cogent guide to whether that act really is right or wrong than abstracts maxims, strict codified rules of ethics, or even reason itself.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus permitted that any and every statement that is not directly contrary to human perception has the possibility to be true. Nonetheless, anything contrary to a person's experience can be ruled out as false. Epicureans often used analogies to everyday experience to support their argument of so-called "imperceptibles", which included anything that a human being cannot perceive, such as the motion of atoms. In line with this principle of non-contradiction, the Epicureans believed that events in the natural world may have multiple causes that are all equally possible and probable. Lucretius writes in "On the Nature of Things", as translated by William Ellery Leonard:


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus strongly favored naturalistic explanations over theological ones. In his "Letter to Pythocles", he offers four different possible natural explanations for thunder, six different possible natural explanations for lightning, three for snow, three for comets, two for rainbows, two for earthquakes, and so on. Although all of these explanations are now known to be false, they were an important step in the history of science, because Epicurus was trying to explain natural phenomena using natural explanations, rather than resorting to inventing elaborate stories about gods and mythic heroes.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil. He idiosyncratically defined "pleasure" as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of "ataraxia", meaning "untroubledness", a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. He argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife. In his "Letter to Menoeceus", Epicurus explains that people seek wealth and power on account of these fears, believing that having more money, prestige, or political clout will save them from death. He, however, maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions, and that death is therefore nothing to be feared. He writes in his "Letter to Menoeceus": "Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;... Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not." From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: "Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo" ("I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care"), which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quotation is often used today at humanist funerals.


title: Epicurus

text: Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood as an advocate of the rampant pursuit of pleasure, he, in fact, maintained that a person can only be happy and free from suffering by living wisely, soberly, and morally. He strongly disapproved of raw, excessive sensuality and warned that a person must take into account whether the consequences of his actions will result in suffering, writing, "the pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning." He also wrote that a single good piece of cheese could be equally pleasing as an entire feast. Furthermore, Epicurus taught that "it is not possible to live pleasurably without living sensibly and nobly and justly", because a person who engages in acts of dishonesty or injustice will be "loaded with troubles" on account of his own guilty conscience and will live in constant fear that his wrongdoings will be discovered by others. A person who is kind and just to others, however, will have no fear and will be more likely to attain "ataraxia".


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus distinguished between two different types of pleasure: "moving" pleasures (κατὰ κίνησιν ἡδοναί) and "static" pleasures (καταστηματικαὶ ἡδοναί). "Moving" pleasures occur when one is in the process of satisfying a desire and involve an active titillation of the senses. After one's desires have been satisfied (e.g. when one is full after eating), the pleasure quickly goes away and the suffering of wanting to fulfill the desire again returns. For Epicurus, static pleasures are the best pleasures because moving pleasures are always bound up with pain. Epicurus had a low opinion of sex and marriage, regarding both as having dubious value. Instead, he maintained that platonic friendships are essential to living a happy life. One of the "Principal Doctrines" states, "Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of life as a whole, far the greatest is the possession of friendship." He also taught that philosophy is itself a pleasure to engage in. One of the quotes from Epicurus recorded in the "Vatican Sayings" declares, "In other pursuits, the hard-won fruit comes at the end. But in philosophy, delight keeps pace with knowledge. It is not after the lesson that enjoyment comes: learning and enjoyment happen at the same time."


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and vain and empty. Natural and necessary desires include the desires for food and shelter. These are easy to satisfy, difficult to eliminate, bring pleasure when satisfied, and are naturally limited. Going beyond these limits produces unnecessary desires, such as the desire for luxury foods. Although food is necessary, luxury food is not necessary. Correspondingly, Epicurus advocates a life of hedonistic moderation by reducing desire, thus eliminating the unhappiness caused by unfulfilled desires. Vain desires include desires for power, wealth, and fame. These are difficult to satisfy because no matter how much one gets, one can always want more. These desires are inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we need. They are not natural and are to be shunned.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus' teachings were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician who introduced Greek medicine in Rome. Asclepiades introduced the friendly, sympathetic, pleasing and painless treatment of patients. He advocated humane treatment of mental disorders, had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages. His teachings are surprisingly modern; therefore Asclepiades is considered to be a pioneer physician in psychotherapy, physical therapy and molecular medicine.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus writes in his "Letter to Herodotus" (not the historian) that "nothing ever arises from the nonexistent", indicating that all events therefore have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or unknown. Similarly, he also writes that nothing ever passes away into nothingness, because, "if an object that passes from our view were completely annihilated, everything in the world would have perished, since that into which things were dissipated would be nonexistent." He therefore states: "The totality of things was always just as it is at present and will always remain the same because there is nothing into which it can change, inasmuch as there is nothing outside the totality that could intrude and effect change." Like Democritus before him, Epicurus taught that all matter is entirely made of extremely tiny particles called "atoms" (; "", meaning "indivisible"). For Epicurus and his followers, the existence of atoms was a matter of empirical observation; Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, cites the gradual wearing down of rings from being worn, statues from being kissed, stones from being dripped on by water, and roads from being walked on in "On the Nature of Things" as evidence for the existence of atoms as tiny, imperceptible particles.


title: Epicurus

text: Also like Democritus, Epicurus was a materialist who taught that the only things that exist are atoms and void. Void occurs in any place where there are no atoms. Epicurus and his followers believed that atoms and void are both infinite and that the universe is therefore boundless. In "On the Nature of Things", Lucretius argues this point using the example of a man throwing a javelin at the theoretical boundary of a finite universe. He states that the javelin must either go past the edge of the universe, in which case it is not really a boundary, or it must be blocked by something and prevented from continuing its path, but, if that happens, then the object blocking it must be outside the confines of the universe. As a result of this belief that the universe and the number of atoms in it are infinite, Epicurus and the Epicureans believed that there must also be infinitely many worlds within the universe.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus taught that the motion of atoms is constant, eternal, and without beginning or end. He held that there are two kinds of motion: the motion of atoms and the motion of visible objects. Both kinds of motion are real and not illusory. Democritus had described atoms as not only eternally moving, but also eternally flying through space, colliding, coalescing, and separating from each other as necessary. In a rare departure from Democritus's physics, Epicurus posited the idea of atomic "swerve" ( ""; ), one of his best-known original ideas. According to this idea, atoms, as they are travelling through space, may deviate slightly from the course they would ordinarily be expected to follow. Epicurus's reason for introducing this doctrine was because he wanted to preserve the concepts of free will and ethical responsibility while still maintaining the deterministic physical model of atomism. Lucretius describes it, saying, "It is this slight deviation of primal bodies, at indeterminate times and places, which keeps the mind as such from experiencing an inner compulsion in doing everything it does and from being forced to endure and suffer like a captive in chains."


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus was first to assert human freedom as a result of the fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms. This has led some philosophers to think that, for Epicurus, free will was "caused directly by chance". In his "On the Nature of Things", Lucretius appears to suggest this in the best-known passage on Epicurus' position. In his "Letter to Menoeceus", however, Epicurus follows Aristotle and clearly identifies "three" possible causes: "some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency." Aristotle said some things "depend on us" ("eph'hemin"). Epicurus agreed, and said it is to these last things that praise and blame naturally attach. For Epicurus, the "swerve" of the atoms simply defeated determinism to leave room for autonomous agency.


title: Epicurus

text: In his "Letter to Menoeceus", a summary of his own moral and theological teachings, the first piece of advice Epicurus himself gives to his student is: "First, believe that a god is an indestructible and blessed animal, in accordance with the general conception of god commonly held, and do not ascribe to god anything foreign to his indestructibility or repugnant to his blessedness." Epicurus maintained that he and his followers knew that the gods exist because "our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception", meaning that people can empirically sense their presences. He did not mean that people can see the gods as physical objects, but rather that they can see visions of the gods sent from the remote regions of interstellar space in which they actually reside. According to George K. Strodach, Epicurus could have easily dispensed of the gods entirely without greatly altering his materialist worldview, but the gods still play one important function in Epicurus's theology as the paragons of moral virtue to be emulated and admired.


title: Epicurus

text: Epicurus rejected the conventional Greek view of the gods as anthropomorphic beings who walked the earth like ordinary people, fathered illegitimate offspring with mortals, and pursued personal feuds. Instead, he taught that the gods are morally perfect, but detached and immobile beings who live in the remote regions of interstellar space. In line with these teachings, Epicurus adamantly rejected the idea that deities were involved in human affairs in any way. Epicurus maintained that the gods are so utterly perfect and removed from the world that they are incapable of listening to prayers or supplications or doing virtually anything aside from contemplating their own perfections. In his "Letter to Herodotus", he specifically denies that the gods have any control over natural phenomena, arguing that this would contradict their fundamental nature, which is perfect, because any kind of worldly involvement would tarnish their perfection. He further warned that believing that the gods control natural phenomena would only mislead people into believing the superstitious view that the gods punish humans for wrongdoing, which only instills fear and prevents people from attaining "ataraxia".