title: Ted Stevens

text: After winning the Republican nomination, Stevens challenged Democratic incumbent Ernest Gruening in the 1962 Senate election, though he was defeated. Afterwards, he was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1964 and became House majority leader in his second term. In 1968, Stevens ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, losing to Elmer Rasmuson, but was appointed to Alaska's other Senate seat when it became vacant later that year. As a Senator, Stevens played key roles in legislation that shaped Alaska's economic and social development, with Alaskans describing Stevens as "the state's largest industry". This legislation included the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. He was also known for his sponsorship of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which resulted in the establishment of the United States Olympic Committee.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In 2008, Stevens was embroiled in a federal corruption trial as he ran for re-election to the Senate. He was initially found guilty, and, eight days later, he was narrowly defeated by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Stevens was the most senior U.S. Senator to have ever lost a reelection bid. However, before his sentencing, the indictment was dismissed – effectively vacating the conviction – when a Justice Department probe found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. Stevens died on August 9, 2010, near Dillingham, Alaska, when a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter he and several others were flying in crashed en route to a private fishing lodge. Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and future NASA Deputy Administrator James Morhard survived the crash.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens was born November 18, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the third of four children, in a small cottage built by his paternal grandfather after the marriage of his parents, Gertrude S. (née Chancellor) and George A. Stevens. The family later lived in Chicago, where George Stevens was an accountant before losing his job during the Great Depression. Around this time, when Ted Stevens was six years old, his parents divorced, and Stevens and his three siblings went back to Indianapolis to reside with their paternal grandparents, followed shortly thereafter by their father, who developed problems with his eyes and went blind for several years. Stevens's mother moved to California and sent for Stevens's siblings as she could afford to, but Stevens stayed in Indianapolis helping to care for his father and a mentally disabled cousin, Patricia Acker, who also lived with the family. The only adult in the household with a job was Stevens's grandfather. Stevens helped to support the family by working as a newsboy, and would later remember selling many newspapers on March 1, 1932, when newspaper headlines blared the news of the Lindbergh kidnapping.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In 1934 Stevens's grandfather punctured a lung in a fall down a tall flight of stairs, contracted pneumonia, and died. Stevens's father, George, died in 1957 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of lung cancer. Stevens and his cousin Patricia moved to Manhattan Beach, California in 1938, by which time both of Stevens's grandparents had passed away, to live with Patricia's mother, Gladys Swindells. Stevens attended Redondo Union High School, participating in extracurricular activities including working on the school newspaper and becoming a member of a student theater group, a service society affiliated with the YMCA, and, during his senior year, the Lettermen's Society. Stevens also worked at jobs before and after school, but still had time for surfing with his friend Russell Green, son of the president of Signal Gas and Oil Company, who remained a close friend throughout Stevens's life.


title: Ted Stevens

text: After graduating from high school in 1942, Stevens enrolled at Oregon State University to study engineering, attending for a semester. With World WarII in progress, Stevens attempted to join the Navy and serve in naval aviation, but failed the vision exam. He corrected his vision through a course of prescribed eye exercises, and in 1943 he was accepted into an Army Air Force Air Cadet program at Montana State College. After scoring near the top of an aptitude test for flight training, Stevens was transferred to preflight training in Santa Ana, California; he received his wings early in 1944.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens served in the China-Burma-India theater with the Fourteenth Air Force Transport Section, which supported the "Flying Tigers", from 1944 to 1945. He and other pilots in the transport section flew C-46 and C-47 transport planes, often without escort, mostly in support of Chinese units fighting the Japanese. Stevens received the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying behind enemy lines, the Air Medal, and the Yuan Hai Medal awarded by the Chinese Nationalist government. He was discharged from the Army Air Forces in March 1946.


title: Ted Stevens

text: After the war, Stevens attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1947. While at UCLA, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Theta Rho chapter). He applied to law school at Stanford and the University of Michigan, but on the advice of his friend Russell Green's father to "look East", he applied to Harvard Law School, which he ended up attending. Stevens's education was partly financed by the G.I. Bill; he made up the difference by selling his blood, borrowing money from an uncle, and working several jobs including one as a bartender in Boston. During the summer of 1949, Stevens was a research assistant in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California (now the Central District of California).


title: Ted Stevens

text: While at Harvard, Stevens wrote a paper on maritime law which received honorable mention for the Addison Brown prize, a Harvard Law School award for the best essay by a student on a subject related to private international law or maritime law. The essay later became a "Harvard Law Review" article whose scholarship Justice Jay Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court praised 45 years later, telling the "Anchorage Daily News" in 1994 that the high court had issued a recent opinion citing the article. Stevens graduated from Harvard Law School in 1950.


title: Ted Stevens

text: After graduating, Stevens went to work in the Washington, D.C., law offices of Northcutt Ely. Twenty years earlier Ely had been executive assistant to Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur during the Hoover administration, and by 1950 headed a prominent law firm specializing in natural resources issues. One of Ely's clients, Emil Usibelli, founder of the Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy, Alaska, was trying to sell coal to the military, and Stevens was assigned to handle his legal affairs.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Early in 1952, Stevens married Ann Mary Cherrington, a Democrat and the adopted daughter of University of Denver Chancellor Ben Mark Cherrington. She had graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and during Truman's administration had worked for the State Department.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On December 4, 1978, the crash of a Learjet 25C on approach at Anchorage International Airport killed five of the seven aboard; Stevens survived (concussion, broken ribs), but his wife Ann didnot. Stevens would later state in an interview with the Anchorage Times "I can't remember anything that happened." Smiling, he added "I'm still here. It must be my Scots blood." The building which houses the Alaska chapter of the American Red Cross at 235 East Eighth Avenue in Anchorage is named in her memory; likewise a reading room at the Loussac Library.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens and Ann had three sons (Ben A. Stevens Sr., Walter, and Ted) and two daughters (Susan Covich and Elizabeth "Beth" Harper Stevens). Democratic Governor Tony Knowles appointed Ben to the Alaska Senate in 2001, where he served as the president of the state senate until the fall of 2006.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens spent many years living at the Knik Arms, a six-story residential building constructed in 1950 on the western edge of downtown Anchorage. In his earlier years in the Senate, he would often point to this residence when trying to drive home the point that he was not of means and had not achieved such through his Senate service.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens's last home was in Girdwood, a ski resort community near the southern edge of Anchorage's city limits, about by road from downtown. Originally purchased as a vacation home, Stevens later lived there full-time.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens was a survivor of prostate cancer and had publicly disclosed his cancer. He was nominated for the first Golden Glove Awards for Prostate Cancer by the National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC). He advocated the creation of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program for Prostate Cancer at the Department of Defense, which has funded nearly $750million for prostate cancer research. Stevens was a recipient of the Presidential Citation by the American Urological Association for significantly promoting urology causes.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In 1952, while still working for Northcutt Ely, Stevens volunteered for the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower, writing position papers for the campaign on western water law and lands. By the time Eisenhower won the election that November, Stevens had acquired contacts who told him, "We want you to come over to Interior." Stevens left his job with Ely, but a job in the Eisenhower administration didn't come through as a result of a temporary hiring freeze instituted by Eisenhower in an effort to reduce spending.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Instead, Stevens was offered a job with the Fairbanks, Alaska, law firm of Emil Usibelli's Alaska attorney, Charles Clasby, whose firm (Collins &Clasby) had just lost one of its attorneys. Stevens and his wife had met and liked both Usibelli and Clasby, and decided to make the move. Loading up their 1947 Buick and traveling on a $600 loan from Clasby, they drove across country from Washington, D.C., and up the Alaska Highway in the dead of winter, arriving in Fairbanks in February 1953. Stevens later recalled kidding Governor Walter Hickel about the loan. "He likes to say that he came to Alaska with 38 cents in his pocket," he said of Hickel. "I came $600 in debt." Ann Stevens recalled in 1968 that they made the move to Alaska "on a six-month trial basis".


title: Ted Stevens

text: In Fairbanks, Stevens cultivated the city's Republican establishment. He befriended conservative newspaper publisher C.W. Snedden, who had purchased the "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" in 1950. Snedden's wife Helen later recalled that her husband and Stevens were "like father and son". "The only problem Ted had was that he had a temper," she told a reporter in 1994, crediting her husband with helping to steady Stevens "like you would do with your children" and with teaching Stevens the art of diplomacy.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens had been with Charles Clasby's law firm for six months when Robert J. McNealy, a Democrat appointed as U.S. Attorney for Fairbanks during the Truman administration, informed U.S. District Judge Harry Pratt he would be resigning effective August 15, 1953, having already delayed his resignation by several months at the request of Justice Department officials newly appointed by Eisenhower. The latter had asked McNealy to delay his resignation until Eisenhower could appoint a replacement. Despite Stevens's short tenure as an Alaska resident and his relative lack of trial or criminal law experience, Pratt asked Stevens to serve in the position until Eisenhower acted. Stevens agreed. "I said, 'Sure, I'd like to do that,'" Stevens recalled years later. "Clasby said, 'It's not going to pay you as much money, but, if you want to do it, that's your business.' He was very pissed that I decided to go." Most members of the Fairbanks Bar Association were outraged at the appointment of a newcomer, and members in attendance at the association's meeting that December voted to support Carl Messenger for the permanent appointment, an endorsement seconded by the Alaska Republican Party Committee for the Fairbanks-area judicial division. However, Stevens was favored by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, by Senator William F. Knowland of California, and by the Republican National Committee, (Alaska itself had no Senators at this time, as it was still a territory). Eisenhower sent Stevens's nomination to the U.S. Senate, which confirmed him on March 30, 1954.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens soon gained a reputation as an active prosecutor who vigorously prosecuted violations of federal and territorial liquor, drug, and prostitution laws, characterized by Fairbanks area homesteader Niilo Koponen (who later served in the Alaska State House of Representatives from 1982 to 1991) as "this rough tough shorty of a district attorney who was going to crush crime". Stevens sometimes accompanied U.S. Marshals on raids. As recounted years later by Justice Jay Rabinowitz, "U.S. marshals went in with Tommy guns and Ted led the charge, smoking a stogie and with six guns on his hips." However, Stevens himself said the colorful stories spread about him as a pistol-packing D.A. were greatly exaggerated, and recalled only one incident when he carried a gun: on a vice raid to the town of Big Delta about southeast of Fairbanks, he carried a holstered gun on a marshal's suggestion.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens also became known for his explosive temper, which was focused particularly on a criminal defense lawyer named Warren A. Taylor who would later go on to become the Alaska Legislature's first Speaker of the House in the First Alaska State Legislature. "Ted would get red in the face, blow up and stalk out of the courtroom," a former court clerk later recalled of Stevens's relationship with Taylor. Later on, a former colleague of Stevens would "cringe at remembering hearing Stevens through the wall of their Anchorage law office berating clients." Stevens' wife, Ann, would make her husband read self-help books to try and calm him down, although this effort was to no avail. As one observer remembered: "He (Stevens) would lose his temper about the stupidest things. Even when you would agree with him, he got mad at you for agreeing with him."


title: Ted Stevens

text: In 1956, in a trial which received national headlines, Stevens prosecuted Jack Marler; a former Internal Revenue Service agent accused of failing to file tax returns. Marler's first trial, which was handled by a different prosecutor, had ended in a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. For the second trial, Stevens was up against Edgar Paul Boyko, a flamboyant Anchorage attorney who built his defense of Marler on the theory of no taxation without representation, citing the Territory of Alaska's lack of representation in the U.S. Congress. As recalled by Boyko, his closing argument to the jury was a rabble-rousing appeal for the jury to "strike a blow for Alaskan freedom", claiming that "this case was the jury's chance to move Alaska toward statehood." Boyko remembered that "Ted had done a hell of a job in the case," but Boyko's tactics paid off, and Marler was acquitted on April 3, 1956. Following the acquittal, Stevens issued a statement saying, "I don't believe the jury's verdict is an expression of resistance to taxes or law enforcement or the start of a Boston Tea Party. I do believe, however, that the decision will be a blow to the hopes for Alaska statehood."


title: Ted Stevens

text: In March 1956, Stevens's friend Elmer Bennett, legislative counsel in the Department of the Interior, was promoted by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay to the Secretary's office. Bennett successfully lobbied McKay to replace him in his old job with Stevens, and Stevens returned to Washington, D.C., to take up the position. By the time he arrived in June 1956, McKay had resigned in order to run for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Oregon, and Fred Andrew Seaton had been appointed to replace him. Seaton, a newspaper publisher from Nebraska, was a close friend of "Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" publisher C.W. Snedden, and in common with Snedden was an advocate of Alaska statehood, unlike McKay, who had been lukewarm in his support. Seaton asked Snedden if he knew any Alaskan who could come to Washington, D.C. to work for Alaska statehood; Snedden replied that the man he needed (Stevens) was already there working in the Department of the Interior. The fight for Alaska statehood became Stevens's principal work at Interior. "He did all the work on statehood," Roger Ernst, Seaton's assistant secretary for public land management, later said of Stevens. "He wrote 90 percent of all the speeches. Statehood was his main project." A sign on Stevens's door proclaimed his office as "Alaskan Headquarters", and Stevens became known at the Department of the Interior as "Mr. Alaska", sharing this nickname with Alaska's territorial delegate, E.L. Bob Bartlett


title: Ted Stevens

text: Efforts to make Alaska a state had been going on since 1943, and had nearly come to fruition during the Truman administration in 1950 when a statehood bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, only to die in the Senate. The national Republican Party opposed statehood for Alaska, in part out of fear that Alaska would elect Democrats to Congress, while the Southern Democrats opposed statehood, believing that the addition of 2 new pro-civil rights Senators would jeopardize the Solid South's control on Congressional law. At the time Stevens arrived in Washington, D.C., to take up his new job, a constitutional convention to write an Alaska constitution had just been concluded on the campus of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. The 55 delegates also elected three unofficial representatives (all Democrats) as unofficial delegates to Congress: Ernest Gruening and William Egan as U.S. Senators and Ralph Rivers as U.S. representative.


title: Ted Stevens

text: President Eisenhower, a Republican, regarded Alaska as too large and sparsely populated to be economically self-sufficient as a state, and furthermore saw statehood as an obstacle to effective defense of Alaska should the Soviet Union seek to invade it. Eisenhower was especially worried about the sparsely populated areas of northern and western Alaska. In March 1954, he had drawn a line on a map indicating his opinion of the portions of Alaska which he felt ought to remain in federal hands even if Alaska were granted statehood.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Seaton and Stevens worked with Gen. Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had served in Alaska; and Jack L. Stempler, a top Defense Department attorney, to create a compromise that would address Eisenhower's concerns. Much of their work was conducted in a hospital room at Walter Reed Army Hospital, where Seaton was being treated for back problems. Their work concentrated on refining the line on the map that Eisenhower had drawn in 1954, one which became known as the PYK Line after three rivers (the Porcupine, Yukon, and Kuskokwim) whose courses defined much of the line. The PYK Line was the basis for Section10 of the Alaska Statehood Act, which Stevens wrote. Under Section 10, the land north and west of the PYK Linewhich included the entirety of Alaska's North Slope, the Seward Peninsula, most of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the western portions of the Alaska Peninsula, and the Aleutian and Pribilof Islandswould be part of the new state, but the president would be granted emergency powers to establish special national defense withdrawals in those areas if deemed necessary. "It's still in the law but it's never been exercised," Stevens later recollected. "Now that the problem with Russia is gone, it's surplusage. But it is a special law that only applies to Alaska."


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens also took part (illegally) in lobbying for the statehood bill, working closely with the Alaska Statehood Committee from his office at Interior. Stevens hired Marilyn Atwood, daughter of "Anchorage Times" publisher Robert Atwood, who was chairman of the Alaska Statehood Committee, to work with him in the Interior Department. "We were violating the law," Stevens told a researcher in an October 1977 oral history interview for the Eisenhower Library. "[W]e were lobbying from the executive branch, and there's been a statute against that for a long time... We more or less, I would say, masterminded the House and Senate attack from the executive branch." Stevens and the younger Atwood created file cards on members of Congress based on "whether they were Rotarians or Kiwanians or Catholics or Baptists and veterans or loggers, the whole thing", Stevens said in the 1977 interview. "And we'd assigned these Alaskans to go talk to individual members of the Senate and split them down on the basis of people that had something in common with them." The lobbying campaign extended to presidential press conferences. "We set Ike up quite often at press conferences by planting questions about Alaska statehood," Stevens said in the 1977 interview. "We never let a press conference go by without getting someone to try to ask him about statehood." Newspapers were also targeted, according to Stevens. "We planted editorials in weeklies and dailies and newspapers in the district of people we thought were opposed to us or states where they were opposed to us so that suddenly they were thinking twice about opposing us."


title: Ted Stevens

text: The Alaska Statehood Act became law with Eisenhower's signature on July 7, 1958, and Alaska formally was admitted to statehood on January 3, 1959, when Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Proclamation.


title: Ted Stevens

text: After returning to Alaska, Stevens founded Stevens & Savage, a law firm in Anchorage. Stevens was then joined by H. Russel Holland, who later became a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, and the firm's name changed to Stevens, Savage & Holland. Stevens became a member of Operation Rampart, a group in favor of building the Rampart Dam, a hydroelectric project on the Yukon River. Elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1964, he became House Majority Leader in his second term.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens' service as a United States Senator was, at first, marked with instability and controversy. Mike Gravel had no issue with Stevens being the senior senator, because he was 7 years Stevens' junior, and Stevens had been in public service for longer than he had. Stevens was a party loyalist, and, even after losing the 1968 Republican primary, Stevens embarked on a state-wide campaign for the Republican nominee, Elmer Rasmuson, where Stevens attacked Gravel on his time as Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives. When they were being sworn in together in 1969, Stevens approached Gravel and apologized, asking if they could be friends and "let political bygones be bygones", so that they could work together. However, Gravel, unappreciative of Stevens' attacks, replied "I don't want to be your friend, Ted. I didn't appreciate you going around the state and lying about me." Gravel and Stevens never made it up, with Gravel later recalling of his relationship with Stevens: "We'd talk about things. I'd joke with him. He's got a sense of humor. But he didn't use it on me unless I was the butt of it."


title: Ted Stevens

text: The 2 Alaskan freshmen senators' first committee meeting in March 1969 would end up in disaster. Stevens was seated to the right of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs' chairman, powerful Washington senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, with Mike Gravel at Jackson's left. Jackson had always held a meeting at the start of a new Congress to let the members of the Committee have their say about what they thought the Committee's priorities should be. Ted stood up and took over the meeting, loudly stating: "The first priority of this committee had to be settlement of Alaska Native land claims. This committee hadn't had the guts to do it at statehood." By the end of the meeting, Stevens and Gravel had ended up in a shouting match, constantly interrupting and disrespecting each other. Reporters were covering the dispute as Stevens and Gravel boiled out into the hallway, fists raised. Both Stevens and Gravel gave statements to the press in a makeshift conference before Jackson interrupted, ending both the conference and the fight.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens' knowledge on Senate protocol remained small throughout the next few months, with one incident in April during the discussion of S.1830 leading to Stevens lecturing Jackson and the committee. However, Jackson put his foot down, stating "Now just a minute. You're new here and I want to tell you how these things are handled." Jackson had been a steadfast supporter of Alaska Statehood, and was always close with Alaska's U.S. Senators. Ed Weinberg would recall that: "Jackson treated Ted Stevens like Ted was an errant school boy and, in effect, made him sit in the corner with a dunce cap on. Jackson wasn't about to let Ted Stevens take over the hearings and the framing of this legislation."


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens' fiery attitude, however, greatly assisted Stevens in pushing the highly controversial nomination of Alaska Governor Wally Hickel to the office of Interior Secretary through the Senate, as well as passing numerous major bills, such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in 1973, something which endeared the Senator to President Richard Nixon, and, an act which Stevens had picked as his key legislative achievement in 2006, the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, along with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson. Stevens ability to do so helped propel him in popularity, allowing him to easily win re-election in 1970 in an upset. Stevens would continue to win re-election easily until his defeat in 2008 by Anchorage Mayor, Mark Begich, the son of former U.S. Representative from Alaska Nick Begich.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Later in his career, Stevens would bring in billions of dollars of pork barrel funding, something which Stevens was unapologetic for, once stating "I'm guilty of asking for pork, and I'm proud of the Senate for giving it to me."


title: Ted Stevens

text: After practicing private law for a year, Stevens ran for the U.S. Senate in 1962 and won the Republican nomination, defeating only trivial opposition. Stevens was considered a long-shot candidate against the popular former Governor and incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Ernest Gruening, and he lost in the general election by a 16-point margin, a margin which was much closer than expected, considering Bartlett's 27-point win in the prior election, the stronghold of the Democratic Party in Alaska, and the long service of Gruening. In 1968, Stevens once again ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost in the Republican primary to Anchorage Mayor Elmer E. Rasmuson. Rasmuson lost the general election to Democrat Mike Gravel. In December 1968, after the death of Alaska's other senator, Democrat Bob Bartlett, Governor Wally Hickel appointed Stevens to the seat. Since Gravel took office ten days after Stevens did, Stevens was Alaska's senior senator for all but ten days of his forty-year tenure in the Senate. However, on the account of Stevens' long career in public service, and age, Gravel took no issue with the situation.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In a special election in 1970, Stevens won the right to finish the remainder of Bartlett's term. He won the seat in his own right in 1972, and was reelected in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996 and 2002 elections. His final term expired in January 2009. Since his first election to a full term in 1972, Stevens never received less than 66% of the vote before his 2008 defeat for re-election.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens lost his Senate re-election bid in 2008. He won the Republican primary in August and was defeated by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich in the general election. He was the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history to lose re-election, beating out Warren Magnuson, who had served over 36 years before his defeat to Slade Gorton in 1980.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens, who would have been 90 years old on election day, had filed to run for a rematch against Begich in the 2014 election, but he was killed in a plane crash on August 9, 2010. Dan Sullivan would defeat Begich in the election by a margin of 3.1%.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens served as the Assistant Republican Leader (Whip) from 1977 to 1985. Stevens served as Acting Minority Leader during Howard Baker's run for president during the 1980 Republican primaries. In 1994, after the Republicans took control of the Senate, Stevens was appointed Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. Stevens became the Senate's President Pro Tempore when Republicans regained control of the chamber as a result of the 2002 mid-term elections, during which the previous most senior Republican senator and former President Pro Tempore Strom Thurmond retired.


title: Ted Stevens

text: After Howard Baker retired in 1984, Stevens sought the position of Republican (and then-Majority) leader, running against Bob Dole, Dick Lugar, Jim McClure and Pete Domenici. As Republican whip, Stevens was theoretically the favorite to succeed Baker, but lost to Dole in a fourth ballot, by a vote of 28 - 25.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee from 1997 to 2005, except for the 18 months when Democrats controlled the chamber. The chairmanship gave Stevens considerable influence among fellow Senators, who relied on him for home-state project funds. Even before becoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Stevens secured large sums of federal money for the State of Alaska. Due to Republican Party rules that limited committee chairmanships to six years, Stevens gave up the Appropriations gavel at the start of the 109th Congress, in January 2005. He was succeeded by Thad Cochran of Mississippi.


title: Ted Stevens

text: He chaired the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation during the 109th Congress, becoming the committee's ranking member after the Democrats regained control of the Senate for the 110th Congress. He resigned his ranking-member position on the committee due to his indictment.


title: Ted Stevens

text: At various times, Stevens also served as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate Ethics Committee, the Arms Control Observer Group, and the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Due to Stevens's long tenure and that of the state's sole congressman, Don Young, Alaska was considered to have clout in national politics well beyond its small population (the state was long the smallest in population and is currently 47th, ahead of only Wyoming, North Dakota, and Vermont).


title: Ted Stevens

text: On June 28, 2006, the Senate commerce committee was in the final day of three days of hearings, during which the Committee members considered more than two hundred amendments to an omnibus telecommunications bill. Stevens authored the bill, S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) cosponsored and spoke on behalf of an amendment that would have inserted strong network neutrality mandates into the bill. In between speeches by Snowe and Dorgan, Stevens gave a vehement 11-minute speech using colorful language to explain his opposition to the amendment. Stevens referred to the Internet as "not a big truck", but a "series of tubes" that could be clogged with information. Stevens also confused the terms "Internet" and "e-mail". Soon after, Stevens's interpretation of how the Internet works became a topic of amusement and ridicule by some in the blogosphere. The phrases "the Internet is not a big truck" and "series of tubes" became internet memes and were prominently featured on U.S. television shows including Comedy Central's "The Daily Show".


title: Ted Stevens

text: CNET journalist Declan McCullagh called "series of tubes" an "entirely reasonable" metaphor for the Internet, noting that some computer operating systems use the term 'pipes' to describe interprocess communication. McCullagh also suggested that ridicule of Stevens was almost entirely political, espousing his belief that if Stevens has spoken in a similar manner, yet in support of Net Neutrality, "the online chortling would have been muted or nonexistent."


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens was a long-standing proponent of logging and championed a plan that would allow of roadless old growth forest to be clear-cut. Stevens said this would revive Alaska's timber industry and bring jobs to unemployed loggers; however, the proposal would mean that thousands of miles of roads would be constructed at the expense of the United States Forest Service, judged to cost taxpayers $200,000 per job created.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens considered himself pro-abortion. According to "On the Issues" and NARAL, Stevens had a mildly anti-abortion voting record, despite some notable pro-abortion votes.


title: Ted Stevens

text: However, as a former member of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership, Stevens supported human embryonic stem cell research.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens was long an avowed skeptic of anthropogenic climate change. In early 2007, he acknowledged that humans were changing the climate, and began supporting legislation to combat climate change. "Global climate change is a very serious problem for us, becoming more so every day," he said at a Senate hearing in February 2007, adding that he was "concerned about the human impacts on our climate". But in September 2007, he claimed, "We're at the end of a long, long term of warming. 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll starting getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years." In fact, the scientific consensus on climate change is that the climate will keep warming as long as humans keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Reagan's veto). Stevens voted in favor of the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In December 2003, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that Stevens had taken advantage of lax Senate rules to use his political influence to obtain a large amount of his personal wealth. According to the article, while Stevens was already a millionaire "thanks to investments with businessmen who received government contracts or other benefits with his help," the lawmaker who was in charge of $800billion a year, writes "preferences he wrote into law," from which he then benefits.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On May 29, 2007, the "Anchorage Daily News" reported that the FBI and a federal grand jury were investigating an extensive remodeling project at Stevens's home in Girdwood. Stevens's Alaska home was raided by the FBI and IRS on July 30, 2007. The remodeling work doubled the size of the modest home. Public records show that the house was after the remodeling, and that the property was valued at $271,300 in 2003, including a $5,000 increase in land value. The remodel in 2000 was organized by Bill Allen, a founder of the VECO Corporation (an oil-field service company) and was alleged by prosecutors to have cost VECO and the various contractors $250,000 or more. However, the residential contractor who finished the renovation for VECO, Augie Paone, "believes the [Stevens's] remodeling could have costif all the work was done efficientlyaround $130,000 to $150,000, close to the figure Stevens cited last year." Stevens paid $160,000 for the renovations "and assumed that covered everything".


title: Ted Stevens

text: In June, the "Anchorage Daily News" reported that a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., heard evidence in May about the expansion of Stevens's Girdwood home and other matters connecting Stevens to VECO. In mid-June, FBI agents questioned several aides who worked for Stevens as part of the investigation. In July, "Washingtonian" magazine reported that Stevens had hired "Washington's most powerful and expensive lawyer", Brendan Sullivan Jr., in response to the investigation. In 2006, during wiretapped conversations with Bill Allen, shortly after the VECO offices were searched and Allen agreed to cooperate with the investigation, Stevens expressed worries over legal complications arising from the sweeping federal investigations into Alaskan politics. "The worst that can happen to us is we run up a bunch of legal fees, and might lose and we might have to pay a fine, might have to serve a little time in jail. I hope to Christ it never gets to that, and I don't think it will," Stevens said. Stevens continued, "I think they might be listening to this conversation right now, for Christ Sake." On the witness stand, Allen testified that VECO staff who had worked on his own house had charged "way too much", leaving him uncertainthat he would be embarrassed to bill Stevens for overpriced labor.


title: Ted Stevens

text: The Justice Department also examined whether federal funds that Stevens steered to the Alaska SeaLife Center may have enriched a former aide. However, no charges were ever filed.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In September 2007, "The Hill" reported that Stevens had "steered millions of federal dollars to a sportfishing industry group founded by Bob Penney, a longtime friend". In 1998, Stevens invested $15,000 in a Utah land deal managed by Penney; in 2004, Stevens sold his share of the property for $150,000.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On July 29, 2008, Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of failing to properly report gifts, a felony, and found guilty at trial three months later (October 27, 2008). The charges related to renovations to his home and alleged gifts from VECO Corporation, claimed to be worth more than $250,000. The charges were associated with those exposed in what became known as "Operation Polar Pen." The indictment followed a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for possible corruption by Alaskan politicians and was based in part on Stevens's extensive relationship with Bill Allen. Allen owned racehorses, including a partnership in the stud-horse "So Long Birdie", which included Stevens and eight others, and which was managed by Bob Persons. The FBI not only had calls between Allen and Stevens (made after Allen became a cooperating witness), they had thousands of wiretapped conversations involving the phones of both Allen and VECO Vice President Rick Smith. They had also videotaped meetings between Allen and state legislators at VECO's hotel suite in Juneau, the state capitol. Allen had testified that he bribed Ted's son Ben, the former Alaska Senate president. A former VECO employee said he did campaign fundraising work for Stevens while on VECO's payroll, a violation of federal law. Allen, then an oil service company executive, had earlier pleaded guilty (sentence suspended pending his cooperation in gathering evidence and giving testimony in other trials) to bribing several Alaskan state legislators. Stevens declared, "I'm innocent," and pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal district court on July 31, 2008. Stevens asserted his right to a speedy trial so he could have the opportunity to clear his name promptly and requested that the trial be held before the 2008 election.


title: Ted Stevens

text: U.S. District Judge in Washington, D.C. Emmet G. Sullivan, on October 2, 2008, denied the mistrial petition of Stevens's chief counsel, Brendan Sullivan, that made allegations of withholding evidence by prosecutors. Thus, the latter were admonished and would submit themselves for an internal probe by the United States Department of Justice. "Brady v. Maryland" requires prosecutors to give a defendant any material exculpatory evidence. Judge Sullivan had earlier admonished the prosecution for sending home to Alaska a witness who might have helped the defense.


title: Ted Stevens

text: The case was prosecuted by Principal Deputy Chief Brenda K. Morris, Trial Attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. WelchII; and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On October 27, 2008, Stevens was found guilty of all seven counts of making false statements. Stevens was only the fifth sitting senator to be convicted by a jury in U.S. history, and the first since Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ) in 1981 (although Senator David Durenberger (R-MN) pleaded guilty to a felony more recently, in 1995). Stevens faced a maximum penalty of five years per charge. His sentencing hearing was originally arranged February 25, but his attorneys told Judge Sullivan they would file applications to dispute the verdict by early December. However, it was thought unlikely that Stevens would spend significant time in prison.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Within a few days of his conviction, Stevens faced bipartisan calls for his resignation. Both parties' presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, were quick to call for Stevens to stand down. Obama said Stevens needed to resign to help "put an end to the corruption and influence-peddling in Washington". McCain said Stevens "has broken his trust with the people" and needed to step down, a call echoed by his running mate, Sarah Palin, governor of Stevens's home state. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as fellow Republican Senators Norm Coleman, John Sununu and Gordon Smith also called for Stevens to resign. McConnell said there would be "zero tolerance" for a convicted felon serving in the Senate, strongly hinting that he would support Stevens's expulsion from the Senate unless Stevens resigned first. Late on November 1, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed that he would schedule a vote on Stevens's expulsion, saying "a convicted felon is not going to be able to serve in the United States Senate." Had Stevens won his election, then been expelled, a special election would have been held to fill his seat through the remainder of the term, until January 2015. Some speculated that Palin would have tried to run for the Senate via such a special election. No sitting Senator has been expelled since the Civil War.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Nonetheless, during a debate with his opponent, Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Mark Begich, days after his conviction, Stevens continued to claim innocence. "I have not been convicted. I have a case pending against me, and probably the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct by the prosecutors that is known." Stevens also cited plans to appeal. On November 4, 2008, eight days after his conviction, Begich went on to defeat Stevens by 3,724 votes, a 1.3% margin. Stevens was the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history to lose re-election, beating out Warren Magnuson's record in 1980.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On November 13, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina announced he would move to have Stevens expelled from the Senate Republican Conference (caucus) regardless of the results of the election. (Absentee, provisional, and early ballots were, at the time, still being tallied in the close election.) Losing his caucus membership would cost Stevens his committee assignments. However, DeMint later decided to postpone offering his motion, saying that while there were enough votes to throw Stevens out, it would be moot if Stevens lost his reelection bid. Stevens ended up losing the Senate race, and on November 20, 2008, gave his last speech to the Senate, which was met with a loud standing ovation by the other members of the chamber.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In February 2009, FBI agent Chad Joy filed a whistleblower affidavit, alleging that prosecutors and FBI agents conspired to withhold and conceal evidence that could have resulted in acquittal. In his affidavit, Joy alleged that prosecutors intentionally sent a key witness, former VECO employee Robert Burnette "Rocky" Williams, who had testified before a grand jury in 2006, back home to Alaska. Williams had performed poorly during a mock cross-examination. The prosecution informed Judge Sullivan that it had concerns regarding the health of the witness. Williams was terminally ill, experiencing liver failure, which causes confusion. He died on December 30, 2008. Joy further alleged that the prosecutors intentionally withheld "Brady" material including redacted prior statements of a witness, and a memo from Bill Allen stating that Senator Stevens probably would have paid for the goods and services if asked. Joy further inferred that a female FBI agent had an inappropriate relationship with Allen, who also gave gifts to FBI agents and helped one agent's relative get a job.


title: Ted Stevens

text: As a result of Joy's affidavit and claims by the defense that prosecutorial misconduct had caused an unfair trial, Judge Sullivan ordered a hearing to be held on February 13, 2009, to determine whether a new trial should be ordered. At the February 13 hearing, Judge Sullivan held the prosecutors in contempt for having failed to deliver documents to Stevens's legal counsel.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On April 1, 2009, on behalf of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Paul O'Brien submitted a "Motion of The United States To Set Aside The Verdict And Dismiss The Indictment With Prejudice" in connection with case No. 08-231 . Federal judge Emmet G. Sullivan soon signed the order. Since it occurred prior to sentencing it had the effect of vacating Stevens's conviction. During the trial, Sullivan expressed concern and anger regarding prosecutorial conduct and related issues. Holder, who had taken office only three months earlier, was reportedly very angry at the prosecutors' apparent withholding of exculpatory evidence and wanted to send a message that prosecutorial misconduct would not be tolerated under his watch. After Sullivan held the prosecutors in contempt, Holder replaced the entire trial team, including top officials in the public integrity section. The final straw for Holder, according to numerous reports, was the discovery of a previously undocumented interview with Bill Allen, the prosecution's star witness, that raised the possibility prosecutors had knowingly allowed Allen to perjure himself. Allen said the fair market value of the repairs to the Stevenses' house was around $80,000, considerably less than the $250,000 he said it cost at trial. More seriously, Allen said in the interview that he didn't recall talking to Bob Persons, a friend of Stevens, regarding the repair bill for the Stevenses' house. This directly contradicted Allen's testimony at trial, in which he claimed Stevens asked him to give Persons a note Stevens sent him asking for a bill on the repair work. At trial, Allen said Persons had told him the note shouldn't be taken seriously because "Ted's just covering his ass." Even without the notes, Stevens's attorneys claimed Allen was lying about the conversation.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Later that day, Stevens's attorney, Brendan Sullivan, said Holder's decision was forced by "extraordinary evidence of government corruption". He also claimed that prosecutors not only withheld evidence but "created false testimony that they gave us and actually presented false testimony in the courtroom".


title: Ted Stevens

text: On April 7, 2009, federal judge Sullivan formally accepted Holder's motion to set aside the verdict and throw out the indictment, declaring "There was never a judgment of conviction in this case. The jury's verdict is being set aside and has no legal effect," and calling it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen. He also initiated a criminal contempt investigation of six members of the prosecution. Although an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility was already underway, Sullivan said he was not willing to trust it due to the "shocking and disturbing" nature of the misconduct.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Upon the release of the Special Counsel report, the Stevens defense team released an analysis of its own which stated, "The meticulous detail paints a picture of the government's shocking conduct in which prosecutors repeatedly ignored the law. The Report shows how prosecutors abandoned their oath of office and the ethical standards of their profession. They abandoned all decency and sound judgment when they indicted and prosecuted an 84-year old man who served his country in World WarII combat, and who served with distinction for 40 years in the U.S. Senate."


title: Ted Stevens

text: A statement issued by Stevens's widow Catherine said, "I can say that the Stevens family continues to be shocked by the depth and breadth of the government's misconduct."


title: Ted Stevens

text: Mark Bonner, associate professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law, has argued that the court acted improperly by appointing a special prosecutor. Moreover, he claims that the "Brady" standard is a very high bar, such that the judge should not have found any of the prosecutors in criminal contempt.


title: Ted Stevens

text: Stevens was voted Alaskan of the Century in 2000 by the Alaskan of the Year Committee. In the same year, the Alaska Legislature renamed the Anchorage airport, the largest in the state, to the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.


title: Ted Stevens

text: The Ted Stevens Foundation is a charity established to "assist in educating and informing the public about the career of Senator Ted Stevens". The chairman is Tim McKeever, a lobbyist who was treasurer of Stevens's 2004 campaign. In May 2006, McKeever said the charity was "nonpartisan and nonpolitical", and that Stevens does not raise money for the foundation, although he has attended some fund-raisers.


title: Ted Stevens

text: November 18, 2003, the Senator's 80th birthday, was declared Senator Ted Stevens Appreciation Day by Governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski.


title: Ted Stevens

text: When discussing issues that were especially important to him (such as opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling), Stevens wore a necktie with The Incredible Hulk on it to show his seriousness. Marvel Comics has sent him free Hulk paraphernalia and has thrown a Hulk party for him. On December 21, 2005, Stevens said the vote to block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge "has been the saddest day of my life".


title: Ted Stevens

text: On December 30, 2006, Stevens delivered a eulogy of Gerald R. Ford at the 38th President's funeral service. On April 13, 2007, Stevens was recognized as the longest-serving (38 years) Republican senator in history. (He served in total forty years and ten days.) Senator Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, referred to Stevens as "The Strom Thurmond of the Arctic Circle". Stevens held this record until he was overtaken by Orrin Hatch on January 13, 2017.


title: Ted Stevens

text: On August 9, 2010, Stevens and seven other passengers including former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe were aboard a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter plane when it crashed about 17 miles north of Dillingham, Alaska, while en route to a private fishing lodge. Stevens was confirmed dead in the crash via a statement from his family. He and others were aboard the single-engine plane registered to Anchorage-based GCI Communication.


title: Ted Stevens

text: As Stevens's death was confirmed, Alaskan and national political figures from all sides of the political spectrum spoke highly of the man many Alaskans knew as "Uncle Ted". Senator Lisa Murkowski said of Stevens: "His entire life was dedicated to public servicefrom his days as a pilot in World WarII to his four decades of service in the United States Senate. He truly was the greatest of the 'Greatest Generation.


title: Ted Stevens

text: The Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor honored Stevens with a plaque and a display of memorabilia of his wartime service in China-Burma-India. Senator Mark Begich, his successor, stated, "Over his four decades of public service in the U.S. Senate, Senator Stevens was a forceful advocate for Alaska who helped transform our state in the challenging years after Statehood" and former president George H. W. Bush released a statement that "Ted Stevens loved the Senate; he loved Alaska; and he loved his familyand he will be dearly missed." President Barack Obama said in a statement, "Ted Stevens devoted his career to serving the people of Alaska and fighting for our men and women in uniform."


title: Ted Stevens

text: Hundreds of Alaskans attended a memorial Mass for Stevens at Holy Family Cathedral in downtown Anchorage on August 16. On August 17, mourners paid their respects as he lay in a closed casket at All Saints Episcopal Church, also in downtown Anchorage, which was Stevens's home church. His funeral at Anchorage Baptist Temple on August 18 was attended by some three thousand people, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, former Governor Sarah Palin, then-Governor Sean Parnell and three other former governors, eleven senators, nine former senators, and two congressmen. Stevens was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on September 28.


title: Ted Stevens

text: In January 2019, the US Navy announced that a FlightIII would be named . It will be constructed at Huntington Ingalls Industries' Ingalls shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Mississippi.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: George Montgomery (born George Montgomery Letz; August 27, 1916 – December 12, 2000) was an American actor, best known for his work in Western films and television. He was also a painter, director, producer, writer, sculptor, furniture craftsman, and stuntman.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was born George Montgomery Letz in 1916, the youngest of 15 children of German immigrant parents, from Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine. He was born in Brady, in Pondera County, northern Montana near Great Falls. He was reared on a large ranch, where he learned to ride horses and work cattle as a part of daily life.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Letz boxed as a heavyweight for a short while before enrolling in the University of Montana in Missoula. He was active in school athletics and majored in interior design, but he left after one year.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was more interested in a career in film than in a college education. Therefore, he left Montana for Hollywood. Two days after his arrival there, he was working as a stunt man on a Greta Garbo film at MGM, "Conquest" (1937).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: At Republic Pictures, his cowboy skills gained him stunt work and a small acting part at the age of 18 in a 1935 Gene Autry film, "The Singing Vagabond".


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He followed this with bit parts and additional stunt work as "George Letz" in mostly low-budget films. These included "Springtime in the Rockies" (1937) with Autry; "The Purple Vigilantes" (1938) with Robert Livingston; the serial "The Lone Ranger" (1938); "Outlaws of Sonora" (1938) with Livingston; "The Old Barn Dance" (1938) and "Gold Mine in the Sky" (1938) with Autry; "Under Western Stars" (1938), with Roy Rogers; "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (1938) with Rogers.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Those had all been Westerns. He was in an African adventure tale "Hawk of the Wilderness" (1938) with Bruce Bennett (billed as Herman Brix, his real name) and the bigger-budgeted "Army Girl" (1938).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: In 1938, he appeared as one of the six men suspected of being the titular hero in "The Lone Ranger". That year, "Life" included him in a photo montage of "Hollywood's Movie-struck Kids" and described Montgomery, still using his full name, as "6 ft. 3 in. tall, weighs 210 lb., rides well, is superlatively handsome."


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He went back to Westerns in "Southward Ho" (1939) and "The Arizona Kid" (1939) with Rogers. He was in some non-Westerns such as "The Mysterious Miss X" (1939), "S.O.S. Tidal Wave" (1939), and "I Was a Convict" (1939), but mostly it was films such as "South of the Border" (1939) and "In Old Monterey" (1939) with Autry, "Saga of Death Valley" (1939); "Wall Street Cowboy" (1939), "Frontier Pony Express" (1939), "Rough Riders' Round-up" (1939) and "In Old Caliente" (1939) with Rogers; "The Night Riders" (1939) with John Wayne. He worked on Republic's (relatively) big-budget "Man of Conquest" (1939).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: His first film at the studio was "The Cisco Kid and the Lady" (1939), the first of the Cisco Kid series. Montgomery was billed fourth. He had a small role in "Star Dust" (1940), and a bigger one in "Young People" (1940), Shirley Temple's last film for Fox.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was fourth-billed in a "B" about pilots, "Charter Pilot" (1940) with Lloyd Nolan and Lynn Bari, and third-billed in "Jennie" (1940).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was promoted to leading roles in a melodrama written by Dalton Trumbo, "Accent on Love" (1941). Fox then starred him in some B Westerns: "Last of the Duanes" (1941), "Riders of the Purple Sage" (1941), and "The Cowboy and the Blonde" (1941).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was teamed with Carole Landis in "Cadet Girl" (1941). He was given the lead in an "A" when he top-lined "Orchestra Wives" (1942) with Ann Rutherford, a film best remembered today for giving a co-star role to Glenn Miller.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He starred in "Ten Gentlemen from West Point" (1942) with Maureen O'Hara, playing a role originally intended for Tyrone Power.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He was Ginger Rogers' love interest in "Roxie Hart" (1942) and played opposite Gene Tierney in "China Girl" (1942) for Henry Hathaway. All these films were popular at the box office.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: The following year, Montgomery starred with Betty Grable in the Walter Lang-directed film "Coney Island", which was his biggest hit to date. According to one obituary, "The actor's vocal mannerisms were often uncannily reminiscent of Clark Gable, and when he grew a moustache his similarities to the greater star were even more apparent. This was never more so than in "Coney Island".


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was announced for several films originally intended for Fox leading men Tyrone Power, who had joined the Marine Corps, and Henry Fonda, who had joined the Navy, including "Down the Sea to the Ships" and "Bird of Paradise" with Tierney. However, Montgomery wound up joining the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit in 1943 where he appeared in such training films as "Survival of the Fittest" (1944).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He returned to Fox in 1946, and played the lead in a musical "Three Little Girls in Blue" (1946). Fox then cast him as Philip Marlowe in "The Brasher Doubloon" (1947), a B-picture version of the novel "The High Window" by Raymond Chandler.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery was unhappy at Fox. The song "This is Always", Montgomery's major duet (albeit dubbed) with June Haver in "Three Little Girls in Blue", was cut, and he was assigned to a minor Western, "Belle Starr's Daughter" (1948). Montgomery left Fox in September 1947 unhappy with his roles.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: In 1950, he starred as the title role in "Davy Crockett, Indian Scout" for Edward Small. He went back to Fox for "Dakota Lil" (1950) and made "The Iroquois Trail" (1950) and "The Texas Rangers" (1951) for Small.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery tried a swashbuckler at Fox, "The Sword of Monte Cristo" (1951), then returned to Small for "Indian Uprising" (1951) and "Cripple Creek" (1952), "Gun Belt" (1953), and "The Lone Gun" (1954). For Sam Katzman, he made "The Pathfinder" (1952), "Fort Ti" (1952), "Jack McCall, Desperado" (1953), "The Battle of Rogue River" (1954), and "Seminole Uprising" (1955).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery worked for other producers: "Robbers' Roost" (1955); "Huk!" (1956), a war movie shot in the Philippines; "Canyon River" (1956); "Pawnee" (1957); "Black Patch" (1957); "Gun Duel in Durango" (1957) for Small; "Street of Sinners" (1957) a rare non-Western; "Last of the Badmen" (1957); "Man from God's Country" (1958); "The Toughest Gun in Tombstone" (1958); and "Badman's Country" (1958) as Pat Garrett.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: In the 1958–59 season, Montgomery starred in his own 26-episode NBC Western series, "Cimarron City" as Mayor Matt Rockford, with co-stars John Smith and Audrey Totter through his own production company Mont Productions. Montgomery claimed to have turned down the lead roles in the Western television series "Gunsmoke" and "Wagon Train". "Cimarron City" ran one season.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery made an Imperial adventure for MGM, "Watusi" (1959), a sequel to "King Solomon's Mines" (1950). He followed it with "King of the Wild Stallions" (1959).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He made guest appearances on a number of television shows, including NBC's "Bonanza" and "The Gisele MacKenzie Show".


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery turned director with "The Steel Claw" (1961), a war film shot in the Philippines, which he also co-wrote and in which he starred.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He was going to make "Outlaw of Red River" for Robert Lippert in Spain, but it appears to have not been made.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: As an actor, he was in the filmed in Spain "Battle of the Bulge" (1965) and "Django the Condemned" (1966). He was in "Hallucination Generation" (1967) an anti-LSD movie. Montgomery was in "" (1967), "Hostile Guns" (1967), "Warkill" (1968), and "Strangers at Sunrise" (1970) (shot in South Africa). He also worked the dinner and stock theatre circuit, appearing in productions of "Two for the Seesaw" and " A Hole in the Head".


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He planned to make a Vietnam War film "The Ho Chi Minh Trail" in Bangkok and the Philippines, but the film was cancelled.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery acted in and directed "Satan's Harvest" (1970) made in South Africa. He also starred in "The Leo Chronicles" (1972) and "The Daredevil" (1972) and helped produce "The Proud and Damned" (1972).


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: He also starred in the TV movie "Ride the Tiger" (1970) and made guest appearances on 1970s television shows including "The Odd Couple" and "The Six Million Dollar Man".


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: As a boy, George Montgomery had become an excellent wood craftsman. As an adult, he began building furniture, first for himself and then for a few friends. His skill was such that his hobby became a full-fledged cabinet-making business, in which he employed as many as 20 craftsmen.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery oversaw the furniture business for more than 40 years, and expanded his interest to house design. He became involved with the building of 11 homes for friends and family. His artistic instincts included learning how to sculpt in bronze. Self-taught, he sculpted upwards of 50 bronze sculptures of subjects such as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, and Ronald W. Reagan. He received renown in particular for a sculpture he did of Custer's Last Stand.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: His sculpture of his former wife, Dinah Shore, and their children is displayed at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery and singer Dinah Shore married on December 5, 1943. They had one child, Melissa Ann "Missy" Montgomery (born 1948). George and Dinah also adopted a son, John "Jody" David Montgomery, in 1954. They divorced in 1963. Missy Montgomery also became an actress.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: In 1963, Montgomery's private life made headlines when his housekeeper was charged in a failed attempt to kill him. Allegedly suffering from a fanatical attraction to her employer, the woman planned to shoot Montgomery, then commit suicide.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: Montgomery died at home on December 12, 2000, aged 84. After cremation, Montgomery's ashes were divided and interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery (Cathedral City) near his Palm Springs home and at the Highland Cemetery in Great Falls, Montana, near his birthplace.


title: George Montgomery (actor)

text: For his contribution to the television industry, George Montgomery has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6301 Hollywood Blvd. In 1995, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated in his honor. He is also honored with a statue in the square of Plentywood, Montana.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The Dragon Boat Festival () is a traditional Chinese holiday which occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, which corresponds to late May or June in the Gregorian calendar.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The English language name for the holiday is Dragon Boat Festival, used as the official English translation of the holiday by the People's Republic of China. It is also referred to in some English sources as Double Fifth Festival which alludes to the date as in the original Chinese name.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Duanwu (), as the festival is called in Mandarin Chinese, literally means "starting/opening horse", i.e., the first "horse day" (according to the Chinese zodiac/Chinese calendar system) to occur on the month; however, despite the literal meaning being "wǔ", "the [day of the] horse in the animal cycle", this character has also been interchangeably construed as "wǔ" () meaning "five". Hence "Duanwu", the "festival on the fifth day of the fifth month".


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The Mandarin Chinese name of the festival is "" () in Mainland China and Taiwan, and "Tuen Ng Festival" for Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia and Singapore.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: It is pronounced variously in different Chinese dialects. In Cantonese, it is romanized as "Tuen Ng Jit" in Hong Kong and "Tung Ng Jit" in Macau. Hence the "Tuen Ng Festival" in Hong Kong "Tun Ng" ("Festividade do Barco-Dragão" in Portuguese) in Macao.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The fifth lunar month is considered an unlucky month. People believed that natural disasters and illnesses are common in the fifth month. To get rid of the misfortune, people would put calamus, Artemisia, pomegranate flowers, Chinese ixora and garlic above the doors on the fifth day of the fifth month. Calamus is believed to be able to remove evil spirits because of its sword-like shape and strong garlic smell.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Another explanation to the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival comes from before the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC). The fifth month of the lunar calendar was regarded as a bad month and the fifth day of the month a bad day. Venomous animals were said to appear starting from the fifth day of the fifth month, such as snakes, centipedes, and scorpions; people also supposedly get sick easily after this day. Therefore, during the Dragon Boat Festival, people try to avoid this bad luck. For example, people may paste pictures of the five poisonous creatures on the wall and stick needles in them. People may also make paper cutouts of the five creatures and wrap them around the wrists of their children. Big ceremonies and performances developed from these practices in many areas, making the Dragon Boat Festival a day for getting rid of disease and bad luck.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The story best known in modern China holds that the festival commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan (–278 BC) of the ancient state of Chu during the Warring States period of the Zhou dynasty. A cadet member of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the emperor decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance and even accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured Ying, the Chu capital. In despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: It is said that the local people, who admired him, raced out in their boats to save him, or at least retrieve his body. This is said to have been the origin of dragon boat races. When his body could not be found, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan's body. This is said to be the origin of "zongzi".


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: During World War II, Qu Yuan began to be treated in a nationalist way as "China's first patriotic poet". The view of Qu's social idealism and unbending patriotism became canonical under the People's Republic of China after 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Despite the modern popularity of the Qu Yuan origin theory, in the former territory of the Kingdom of Wu, the festival commemorated Wu Zixu (died 484 BC), the Premier of Wu. Xi Shi, a beautiful woman sent by King Goujian of the state of Yue, was much loved by King Fuchai of Wu. Wu Zixu, seeing the dangerous plot of Goujian, warned Fuchai, who became angry at this remark. Wu Zixu was forced to commit suicide by Fuchai, with his body thrown into the river on the fifth day of the fifth month. After his death, in places such as Suzhou, Wu Zixu is remembered during the Dragon Boat Festival.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Although Wu Zixu is commemorated in southeast Jiangsu and Qu Yuan elsewhere in China, much of Northeastern Zhejiang including the cities of Shaoxing, Ningbo and Zhoushan celebrates the memory of the young girl Cao E (; AD 130–144) instead. Cao E's father Cao Xu () was a shaman who presided over local ceremonies at Shangyu. In 143, while presiding over a ceremony commemorating Wu Zixu during the Dragon Boat Festival, Cao Xu accidentally fell into the Shun River. Cao E, in an act of filial piety, decided to find her father in the river, searching for 3 days trying to find him. After five days, she and her father were both found dead in the river from drowning. Eight years later, in 151, a temple was built in Shangyu dedicated to the memory of Cao E and her sacrifice for filial piety. The Shun River was renamed Cao'e River in her honor. Cao E is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (; Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Some modern research suggests that the stories of Qu Yuan or Wu Zixu were superimposed onto a pre-existing holiday tradition. The promotion of these stories might be encouraged by Confucian scholars, seeking to legitimize and strengthen their influence in China. The relationship between zongzi, Qu Yuan and the festival, first appeared during the early Han dynasty.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The stories of both Qu Yuan and Wu Zixu were recorded in Sima Qian's "Shiji", completed 187 and 393 years after the events, respectively, because historians wanted to praise both characters.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Another theory, advanced by Wen Yiduo, is that the Dragon Boat Festival originated from dragon worship. Support is drawn from two key traditions of the festival: the tradition of dragon boat racing and "zongzi". The food may have originally represented an offering to the dragon king, while dragon boat racing naturally reflects a reverence for the dragon and the active "yang" energy associated with it. This was merged with the tradition of visiting friends and family on boats.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Another suggestion is that the festival celebrates a widespread feature of east Asian agrarian societies: the harvest of winter wheat. Offerings were regularly made to deities and spirits at such times: in the ancient Yue, dragon kings; in the ancient Chu, Qu Yuan; in the ancient Wu, Wu Zixu (as a river god); in ancient Korea, mountain gods (see Dano). As interactions between different regions increased, these similar festivals eventually merged into one holiday.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: In the early 20th Century the Dragon Boat Festival was observed from the first to the fifth days of the fifth month, and also known as the


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The first day of the fifth moon was a busy day for us all, as from the first to the fifth of the fifth moon was the festival of five poisonous insects, which I will explain later—also called the Dragon Boat Festival... Now about this Feast. It is also called the Dragon Boat Feast. The fifth of the fifth moon at noon was the most poisonous hour for the poisonous insects, and reptiles such as frogs, lizards, snakes, hide in the mud, for that hour they are paralyzed. Some medical men search for them at that hour and place them in jars, and when they are dried, sometimes use them as medicine. Her Majesty told me this, so that day I went all over everywhere and dug into the ground, but found nothing.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The festival was long marked as a cultural festival in China and is a public holiday in China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan (ROC). The People's Republic of China government established in 1949 did not initially recognize the Dragon Boat Festival as a public holiday but reintroduced it in 2008 alongside two other festivals in a bid to boost traditional culture.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Dragon Boat Festival is unofficially observed by the Chinese communities of Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Malaysia. Equivalent and related official festivals include the Korean Dano, Japanese Children's Day, and Vietnamese Tết Đoan Ngọ.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Three of the most widespread activities conducted during the Dragon Boat Festival are eating (and preparing) "zongzi", drinking realgar wine, and racing dragon boats.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Dragon boat racing has a rich history of ancient ceremonial and ritualistic traditions, which originated in southern central China more than 2500 years ago. The legend starts with the story of Qu Yuan, who was a minister in one of the Warring State governments, Chu. He was slandered by jealous government officials and banished by the king. Out of disappointment in the Chu monarch, he drowned himself into the Miluo River. The common people rushed to the water and tried to recover his body. In commemoration of Qu Yuan, people hold dragon boat races yearly on the day of his death according to the legend. They also scattered rice into the water to feed the fish, to prevent them from eating Qu Yuan's body, which is one of the origins of "zongzi".


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: A notable part of celebrating Dragon Boat Festival is making and eating zongzi with family members and friends. People traditionally wrap zongzi in leaves of reed, bamboo, forming a pyramid shape. The leaves also give a special aroma and flavor to the sticky rice and fillings. Choices of fillings vary depending on regions. Northern regions in China prefer sweet or dessert-styled zongzi, with bean paste, jujube, and nuts as fillings. Southern regions in China prefer savory zongzi, with a variety of fillings including marinated pork belly, sausage, and salted duck eggs.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Zongzi appeared before the Spring and Autumn Period and was originally used to worship ancestors and gods; in the Jin Dynasty, Zongzi became a festive food for the Dragon Boat Festival. Jin Dynasty, dumplings were officially designated as the Dragon Boat Festival food. At this time, in addition to glutinous rice, the raw materials for making zongzi are also added with Chinese medicine Yizhiren. The cooked zongzi is called "yizhi zong".


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The reason why the Chinese eat zongzi on this special day has many statements. The folk version is to hold a memorial ceremony for Quyuan. While in fact, Zongzi has been regarded as an oblation for the ancestor even before the Chunqiu period. From the Jin dynasty, Zongzi officially became the festival food and long last until now.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: 'Wu' (午) in the name 'Duanwu' in Chinese has a similar pronunciation as the number 5 in multiple dialects, and thus many regions have traditions of eating food that is related to the number 5. For example, the Guangdong and Hong Kong regions have the tradition of having congee made from 5 different beans.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Realgar wine or Xiong Huang wine is a Chinese alcoholic drink that is made from Chinese yellow wine dosed with powdered realgar, a yellow-orange arsenic sulfide mineral also known as "rice wine". It is often used as a pesticide against mosquitoes and other biting insects during the hot summers, and as a common antidote against poison in ancient Asia.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: In some regions of China, parents braid silk threads of 5 colors and put them on their children's wrists, on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival. People believe that this will help keep bad spirits and diseases away.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: Other common activities include hanging up icons of Zhong Kui (a mythic guardian figure), hanging mugwort and calamus, taking long walks, and wearing perfumed medicine bags. Other traditional activities include a game of making an egg stand at noon (this "game" implies that if someone succeeds in making the egg stand at exactly 12:00 noon, that person will receive luck for the next year), and writing spells. All of these activities, together with the drinking of realgar wine or water, were regarded by the ancients and some today as effective in preventing disease or evil while promoting health and well-being.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: In the early years of the Republic of China, Duanwu was celebrated as the "Poets' Day" due to Qu Yuan's status as China's first known poet. The Taiwanese also sometimes conflate the spring practice of egg-balancing with Duanwu.


title: Dragon Boat Festival

text: The sun is considered to be at its strongest around the time of summer solstice, as the daylight in the northern hemisphere is the longest. The sun, like the Chinese dragon, traditionally represents masculine energy, whereas the moon, like the phoenix, traditionally represents feminine energy. The summer solstice is considered the annual peak of male energy while the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, represents the annual peak of feminine energy. The masculine image of the dragon has thus associated with the Dragon Boat Festival.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: The Basement Tapes is the sixteenth album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and his second with the Band. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records. Two-thirds of the album's 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed by the Band, and were recorded in 1967, eight years before the album's release, in the lapse between the recording and subsequent release of "Blonde on Blonde" and "John Wesley Harding", during sessions that began at Dylan's house in Woodstock, New York, then moved to the basement of Big Pink. While most of these had appeared on bootleg albums, "The Basement Tapes" marked their first official release. The remaining eight songs, all previously unavailable, feature the Band without Dylan and were recorded between 1967 and 1975.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: During his 1965–1966 world tour, Dylan was backed by the Hawks, a five-member rock group who would later become famous as the Band. After Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident in July 1966, four members of the Hawks came to Dylan's home in the Woodstock area to collaborate with him on music and film projects. While Dylan was out of the public's eye during an extended period of recovery in 1967, he and the members of the Hawks recorded more than 100 tracks together, incorporating original compositions, contemporary covers, and traditional material. Dylan's new style of writing moved away from the urban sensibility and extended narratives that had characterized his most recent albums, "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde", toward songs that were more intimate and which drew on many styles of traditional American music. While some of the basement songs are humorous, others dwell on nothingness, betrayal and a quest for salvation. In general, they possess a rootsy quality anticipating the Americana genre. For some critics, the songs on "The Basement Tapes", which circulated widely in unofficial form, mounted a major stylistic challenge to rock music in the late sixties.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: When Columbia Records prepared the album for official release in 1975, eight songs recorded solely by the Band—in various locations between 1967 and 1975—were added to 16 songs taped by Dylan and the Band in 1967. Overdubs were added in 1975 to songs from both categories. "The Basement Tapes" was critically acclaimed upon release, reaching number seven on the "Billboard" Top LPs & Tape album chart. Subsequently, the format of the 1975 album has led critics to question the omission of some of Dylan's best-known 1967 compositions and the inclusion of material by the Band that was not recorded in Woodstock.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: By July 1966, Bob Dylan was at the peak of both creative and commercial success. "Highway 61 Revisited" had reached number three on the US album chart in November 1965; the recently released double-LP "Blonde on Blonde" was widely acclaimed. From September 1965 to May 1966, Dylan embarked on an extensive tour across the US, Australia and Europe backed by the Hawks, a band that had formerly worked with rock and roll musician Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawks comprised four Canadian musicians—Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson—and one American, Levon Helm. Dylan's audiences reacted with hostility to the sound of their folk icon backed by a rock band. Dismayed by the negative reception, Helm quit the Hawks in November 1965 and drifted around the South, at one point working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The tour culminated in a famously raucous concert in Manchester, England, in May 1966 when an audience member shouted "Judas!" at Dylan for allegedly betraying the cause of politically progressive folk music. Returning exhausted from the hectic schedule of his world tour, Dylan discovered that his manager, Albert Grossman, had arranged a further 63 concerts across the US that year.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his Triumph motorcycle near his home in Woodstock, New York, suffering cracked vertebrae and a mild concussion. The concerts he was scheduled to perform had to be cancelled. Biographer Clinton Heylin wrote in 1990 on the significance of the crash: "A quarter of a century on, Dylan's motorcycle accident is still viewed as the pivot of his career. As a sudden, abrupt moment when his wheel really did explode. The great irony is that 1967—the year after the accident—remains his most prolific year as a songwriter." In a 1969 "Rolling Stone" interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, "I had a dreadful motorcycle accident which put me away for a while, and I still didn't sense the importance of that accident till at least a year after that. I realized that it was a real accident. I mean I thought that I was just gonna get up and go back to doing what I was doing before... but I couldn't do it anymore."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Dylan was rethinking the direction of his life while recovering from a sense of having been exploited. Nine months after the crash, he told New York "Daily News" reporter Michael Iachetta, "Songs are in my head like they always are. And they're not going to get written down until some things are evened up. Not until some people come forth and make up for some of the things that have happened." After discussing the crash with Dylan, biographer Robert Shelton concluded that he "was saying there must be another way of life for the pop star, in which "he" is in control, not "they". He had to find ways of working to his own advantage with the recording industry. He had to come to terms with his one-time friend, longtime manager, part-time neighbor, and sometime landlord, Albert Grossman."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Rick Danko recalled that he, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson joined Robbie Robertson in West Saugerties, a few miles from Woodstock, in February 1967. The three of them moved into a house on Stoll Road nicknamed "Big Pink"; Robertson lived nearby with his future wife, Dominique. Danko and Manuel had been invited to Woodstock to collaborate with Dylan on a film he was editing, "Eat the Document", a rarely seen account of Dylan's 1966 world tour. At some point between March and June 1967, Dylan and the four Hawks began a series of informal recording sessions, initially at the so-called Red Room of Dylan's house, Hi Lo Ha, in the Byrdcliffe area of Woodstock. In June, the recording sessions moved to the basement of Big Pink. Hudson set up a recording unit, using two stereo mixers and a tape recorder borrowed from Grossman, as well as a set of microphones on loan from folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan would later tell Jann Wenner, "That's really the way to do a recording—in a peaceful, relaxed setting—in somebody's basement. With the windows open... and a dog lying on the floor."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: For the first couple of months, they were merely "killing time", according to Robertson, with many early sessions devoted to covers. "With the covers Bob was educating us a little", recalls Robertson. "The whole folkie thing was still very questionable to us—it wasn't the train we came in on... He'd come up with something like 'Royal Canal', and you'd say, 'This is so beautiful! The expression!'... He remembered too much, remembered too many songs too well. He'd come over to Big Pink, or wherever we were, and pull out some old song—and he'd prepped for this. He'd practiced this, and then come out here, to show us." Songs recorded at the early sessions included material written or made popular by Johnny Cash, Ian & Sylvia, John Lee Hooker, Hank Williams and Eric Von Schmidt, as well as traditional songs and standards. Linking all the recordings, both new material and old, is the way in which Dylan re-engaged with traditional American music. Biographer Barney Hoskyns observed that both the seclusion of Woodstock and the discipline and sense of tradition in the Hawks' musicianship were just what Dylan needed after the "globe-trotting psychosis" of the 1965–66 tour.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Dylan began to write and record new material at the sessions. According to Hudson, "We were doing seven, eight, ten, sometimes fifteen songs a day. Some were old ballads and traditional songs... but others Bob would make up as he went along... We'd play the melody, he'd sing a few words he'd written, and then make up some more, or else just mouth sounds or even syllables as he went along. It's a pretty good way to write songs." Danko told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "Bob and Robbie, they would come by every day, five to seven days a week, for seven to eight months." Hudson added, "It amazed me, Bob's writing ability. How he would come in, sit down at the typewriter, and write a song. And what was amazing was that almost every one of those songs was funny."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Dylan recorded around thirty new compositions with the Hawks, including some of the most celebrated songs of his career: "I Shall Be Released", "This Wheel's on Fire", "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)", "Tears of Rage" and "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere". Two of these featured his lyrics set to music by members of the Band: Danko wrote the music of "This Wheel's on Fire"; Manuel, who composed "Tears of Rage", described how Dylan "came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper... and he just said, 'Have you got any music for this?'... I had a couple of musical movements that fit... so I just elaborated a bit, because I wasn't sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn't run upstairs and say, 'What's this mean, Bob: "Now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse"?


title: The Basement Tapes

text: One of the qualities of "The Basement Tapes" that sets it apart from contemporaneous works is its simple, down-to-earth sound. The songs were recorded in mid-1967, the "Summer of Love" that produced the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", their most technically elaborate album. In a 1978 interview, Dylan reflected on the period: "I didn't know how to record the way other people were recording, and I didn't want to. The Beatles had just released "Sgt. Pepper" which I didn't like at all. I thought that was a very indulgent album, though the songs on it were real good. I didn't think all that production was necessary." Of the sound and atmosphere of the basement recordings, Barney Hoskyns wrote that "Big Pink itself determined the nature of this homemade brew." "One of the things is that if you played loud in the basement, it was really annoying, because it was a cement-walled room", recalled Robertson. "So we played in a little huddle: if you couldn't hear the singing, you were playing too loud."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Mike Marqusee describes how the basement recordings represented a radical change of direction for Dylan, who turned his back on his reputation for importing avant-garde ideas into popular culture: "At the very moment when avant-gardism was sweeping through new cultural corridors, Dylan decided to dismount. The dandified, aggressively modern surface was replaced by a self-consciously unassuming and traditional garb. The giddiness embodied, celebrated, dissected in the songs of the mid-sixties had left him exhausted. He sought safety in a retreat to the countryside that was also a retreat in time, or more precisely, a search for timelessness."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Dylan had married Sara Lownds in November 1965. By the time the basement sessions started in Big Pink around June 1967, he had two children: Maria (Sara's daughter from her first marriage) and Jesse Dylan. Anna Dylan was born on July 11, 1967. Both Heylin and biographer Sid Griffin suggest that recording had to move from Dylan's home to Big Pink when it became clear that the sessions were getting in the way of family life. Domesticity was the context of "The Basement Tapes", as Hudson said in "The Last Waltz": "Chopping wood and hitting your thumb with a hammer, fixing the tape recorder or the screen door, wandering off into the woods with Hamlet [the dog Dylan shared with the Band]... it was relaxed and low-key, which was something we hadn't enjoyed since we were children." Several "Basement Tapes" songs, such as "Clothes Line Saga" and "Apple Suckling Tree", celebrate the domestic aspects of the rural lifestyle.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: The intense collaboration between Dylan and the Hawks that produced the basement recordings came to an end in October 1967 when Dylan relocated to Nashville to record a formal studio album, "John Wesley Harding", with a different crew of accompanying musicians. The same month, drummer Levon Helm rejoined his former bandmates in Woodstock, after he received a phone call from Danko informing him that they were getting ready to record as a group. In his autobiography, Helm recalled how he listened to the recordings the Hawks had made with Dylan and remembered that he "could tell that hanging out with the boys had helped Bob to find a connection with things we were interested in: blues, rockabilly, R&B. They had rubbed off on him a little."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Dylan referred to commercial pressures behind the basement recordings in a 1969 interview with "Rolling Stone": "They weren't demos for myself, they were demos of the songs. I was being PUSHED again into coming up with some songs. You know how those things go." In October 1967, a fourteen-song demo tape was copyrighted and the compositions were registered with Dwarf Music, a publishing company jointly owned by Dylan and Grossman. Acetates and tapes of the songs then circulated among interested recording artists.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Peter, Paul and Mary, managed by Grossman, had the first hit with a basement composition when their cover of "Too Much of Nothing" reached number 35 on the "Billboard" chart in late 1967. Ian & Sylvia, also managed by Grossman, recorded "Tears of Rage", "Quinn the Eskimo" and "This Wheel's on Fire". In January 1968, Manfred Mann reached number one on the UK singles chart with their recording of "The Mighty Quinn". In April, "This Wheel's on Fire", recorded by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity, hit number five on the UK chart. That same month, a version of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" by The Byrds was issued as a single. Along with "Nothing Was Delivered", it appeared on their country-rock album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo", released in August. The Hawks, officially renamed the Band, recorded "This Wheel's on Fire", "I Shall Be Released" and "Tears of Rage" for their debut album, "Music from Big Pink", released in July 1968. Fairport Convention covered "Million Dollar Bash" on their 1969 album "Unhalfbricking".


title: The Basement Tapes

text: As tapes of Dylan's recordings circulated in the music industry, journalists became aware of their existence. In June 1968, Jann Wenner wrote a front-page "Rolling Stone" story headlined "Dylan's Basement Tape Should Be Released". Wenner listened to the fourteen-song demo and reported, "There is enough material—most all of it very good—to make an entirely new Bob Dylan album, a record with a distinct style of its own." He concluded, "Even though Dylan used one of the finest rock and roll bands ever assembled on the "Highway 61" album, here he works with his own band for the first time. Dylan brings that instinctual feel for rock and roll to his voice for the first time. If this were ever to be released it would be a classic."


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Reporting such as this whetted the appetites of Dylan fans. In July 1969, the first rock bootleg appeared in California, entitled "Great White Wonder". The double album consisted of seven songs from the Woodstock basement sessions, plus some early recordings Dylan had made in Minneapolis in December 1961 and one track recorded from "The Johnny Cash Show". One of those responsible for the bootleg, identified only as Patrick, talked to "Rolling Stone": "Dylan is a heavy talent and he's got all those songs nobody's ever heard. We thought we'd take it upon ourselves to make this music available." The process of bootlegging Dylan's work would eventually see the illegal release of hundreds of live and studio recordings, and lead the Recording Industry Association of America to describe Dylan as the most bootlegged artist in the history of the music industry.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: In January 1975, Dylan unexpectedly gave permission for the release of a selection of the basement recordings, perhaps because he and Grossman had resolved their legal dispute over the Dwarf Music copyrights on his songs. Clinton Heylin argues that Dylan was able to consent following the critical and commercial success of his album "Blood on the Tracks", released that same month: "After "Blood on the Tracks", "The Basement Tapes" no longer had the status of a final reminder of Dylan's lost genius". In 1975, as well, the Band purchased Shangri-La ranch in Malibu, California, which they transformed into their recording studio.


title: The Basement Tapes

text: Engineer Rob Fraboni was brought to Shangri-La to clean up the recordings still in the possession of Hudson, the original engineer. Fraboni had worked on Dylan's "Planet Waves" album, with backing by the Band, and the live Dylan–Band album "Before the Flood", both released in 1974. Fraboni has described Robertson as the dominant voice in selecting the final tracks for "The Basement Tapes" and reported that Dylan was not in the studio very often. The stereo recordings made by Hudson were remixed to mono, while Robertson and other members of the Band overdubbed new keyboard, guitar, and drum parts onto some of the 1967 Woodstock recordings. According to Fraboni, four new songs by the Band were also recorded in preparation for the album's official release, one of which, a cover of Chuck Berry's "Going Back to Memphis", did not end up being included. There is disagreement about the recording date of the other three songs: "Bessie Smith", "Ain't No More Cane" and "Don't Ya Tell Henry". While Fraboni has recalled that the Band taped them in 1975, the liner notes for the reissued versions of the Band's own albums state that these songs were recorded between 1967 and 1970. Ultimately, eight of the twenty-four songs on "The Basement Tapes" did not feature Dylan, several of the studio outtakes postdating the sessions at Big Pink. In justifying their inclusion, Robertson explained that he, Hudson and Dylan did not have access to all the basement recordings: "We had access to some of the songs. Some of these things came under the heading of 'homemade' which meant a Basement Tape to us." Robertson has suggested that the Basement Tapes are, for him, "a process, a homemade feel" and so could include recordings from a wide variety of sources. "The idea," he said, "was to record some demos for other people. They were never intended to be a record, never meant to be presented. It was somewhat annoying that the songs were bootlegged. The album was finally released in the spirit of 'well, if this is going to be documented, let's at least make it good quality.