#American Goodwill Ambassadors

[film-classics]

Carmen Miranda - The Brazilian Bombshell

Carmen Miranda (born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Marco de Canaveses, Porto on February 9, 1909) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian singer. Nicknamed "The Brazilian Bombshell", she was known for her sass and signature fruit hat outfit that she wore in her American films.

Miranda was introduced to a composer while working at her family's inn, and she soon recorded her first single ("Não vá Simbora") in 1929.  She then signed a two-year contract with Rádio Mayrink Veiga, the most popular Brazilian station of the 1930s. Her rise to stardom in Brazil was linked to the growth of a native style of music: the samba.

At the invitation of US show business impresario, Lee Shubert, who saw her perform in Rio's Cassino da Urca, she came to Broadway and starred in hit musicals: The Streets of Paris and Sons o' Fun.

Her fame grew quickly, and she was formally presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a White House banquet shortly after her arrival in the US.

When news of Broadway's latest star (known as the Brazilian Bombshell) reached Hollywood, Twentieth Century-Fox offered her a contract in 1941. Her most memorable film performances are in the musical numbers of films such as Week-End in Havana (1941) and The Gang's All Here (1943).

After World War II, Miranda's films at Fox were produced in black-and-white, indicative of Hollywood's diminishing interest in her. As a result, Miranda decided to produce her own films to limited success. Although her film career was faltering, her musical career remained solid and she was still a popular nightclub attraction. She continued to tour the US, Europe, and Latin America.

After filming a segment for the NBC variety series The Jimmy Durante Show, where complained of feeling unwell, she died at home in Beverly Hills, California from a heart attack. She was 46 years old.

Legacy:

Was the first contract singer in Brazilian radio history; subsequently, the highest-paid radio singer in Brazil in the 1930s

Chosen by former Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas as a goodwill ambassador in the United States in 1939

Was the first Latin American star to have a block in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 1941

Was Hollywood's highest-paid entertainer and the top female taxpayer in the US in 1945, earning more than $200,000 that year

Has a museum in Rio de Janeiro, Museu Carmen Miranda, established in her honor in 1976

Received the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique Grande Oficial, a Portuguese order of knighthood, in 1995

Has a square in Hollywood named Carmen Miranda Square with a ceremony headed by honorary mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant and attended by Brazilian consul general Jorió Gama in 1998

Was one of 500 stars nominated for the American Film Institute's 50 greatest screen legends in 1999

Honored by the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro in 2005 and the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo in 2006 with a Carmen Miranda Forever exhibit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death

Bestowed the Ordem do Mérito Cultural by the Ministry of Culture of Brazil in 2009

Was a part of a set of commemorative US Postal Service Latin Music Legends stamps, painted by Rafael Lopez, in 2011

Commemorated in the 2016 Summer Olympics closing ceremony with a tribute

Honored with a Google Doodle on her 108th birthday in 2017

Was the first South American honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6262 Hollywood Boulevard for motion picture

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Jester Hairston

By Life Magazine via Google Images-Photographer Loomis Dean., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28896923

Jester Joseph Hairston (July 9, 1901 – January 18, 2000) was an American composer, songwriter, arranger, choral conductor and actor. He was regarded as a leading expert on black spirituals and choral music. His notable compositions include "Amen," a gospel-tinged theme from the film Lilies of the Field and a 1964 hit for the Impressions, and the Christmas song "Mary's Boy Child."

Hairston was born in Belews Creek, a rural community on the border of Stokes, Forsyth, Rockingham and Guilford counties in North Carolina. His grandparents had been slaves. At an early age, he and his family moved to Homestead, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, where he graduated from high school in 1921. Hairston was very young when his father was killed in a job-related accident. Hairston was raised by his grandmother while his mother worked. Hairston heard his grandmother and her friends talking and singing about plantation life and became determined to preserve this history through music.

Hairston initially majored in landscape architecture at Massachusetts Agricultural College in the 1920s. He became involved in various church choirs and choral groups, and accompanist Anna Laura Kidder saw his potential and became his benefactor. Kidder offered Hairston financial assistance to study music at Tufts University. from which he graduated in 1929. He was one of the first black students admitted to Tufts. Later he studied music at the Juilliard School.

Hairston pledged the Chi chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity in 1925. He worked as a choir conductor in the early stages of his career. His work with choirs on Broadway eventually led to singing and acting parts in plays, films, radio programs and television shows.

Hairston sang with the Hall Johnson Choir in Harlem for a time but was nearly fired from the all-black choir because he had difficulty with the rural dialects that were used in some of the songs. He had to shed his Boston accent and relearn the country speech of his parents and grandparents. Johnson had told him: "We're singing ain't and cain't and you're singing shahn't and cahn't and they don't mix in a spiritual." The choir performed in many Broadway shows, including The Green Pastures. In 1936, the choir was asked to visit Hollywood to sing for the film The Green Pastures. Russian composer Dimitri Tiomkin heard Hairston and invited him to what would become a 30-year collaboration in which Hairston arranged and collected music for films. In 1939, Hairston married Margaret Swanigan. He wrote and arranged spirituals for Hollywood films as well as for high school and college choirs around the country.

Hairston wrote the song "Mary's Boy Child" in 1956. He also arranged the song "Amen", which he dubbed for the Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field, and arranged traditional Negro spirituals.[16] Most of Hairston's film work was in the field of composing, arranging and choral conducting. He also acted in more than 20 films, mostly in small roles, some uncredited. Hairston starred in John Wayne's The Alamo (1960), in which he portrayed "Jethro," a slave owned by Jim Bowie. In 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird Hairston portrayed the uncredited role of the father of accused rapist Tom Robinson. In 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, Hairston portrayed the butler of a wealthy racist being investigated for murder. In both films, Hairston shot scenes along side men who won an Academy Award for Best Actor in those respective films for portraying white Southerners navigating their jobs through a racially divided culture.

In 1961, the U.S. State Department appointed Hairston as Goodwill Ambassador. He traveled all over the world teaching and performing the folk music of the slaves. In the 1960s, he held choral festivals with public high-school choirs, introducing them to Negro spiritual music, and sometimes led several hundred students in community performances. His banter about the history of the songs along with his engaging personality and sense of humor endeared him to many students.

During his nationwide travels, Hairston checked local phone books for other Hairstons and reunited many people on his family tree, both black and white. He composed more than 300 spirituals. He was the recipient of many honorary doctorates, including a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in 1972 and a doctorate in music from Tufts in 1977.

In his later years, Hairston served as a cultural ambassador for American music, traveling to numerous countries with choral groups that he had assembled. In 1985, he took the Jester Hairston Chorale, a multiracial group, to sing in China at a time when foreign visitors would rarely appear there.

Hairston died in Los Angeles of natural causes in 2000 at age 98. For his contribution to the television industry, Hairston has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard. He is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.

[barbarabielecki]

Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929–January 20, 1993). A legend in the film industry with Oscar, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy wins, in addition to a fashion icon and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. With her effective and proficient acting skills, she was ranked the 3rd greatest female screen legend by the American Film Institute in 1999. Hepburn was the embodiment of stylishness, beauty, sophistication, and charm. 📖📝🎞️

[livesunique]

Ms Luigia "Gina" Lollobrigida OMRI (4 July 1927 – 16 January 2023)

Destined to be called "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World", Ms Lollobrigida was the daughter of a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in the pictorial mountain village. She studied sculpture at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts, and started her career with minor Italian film roles before coming third in 1947’s Miss Italia pageant. 

After refusing a contract with Howard Hughes to make three pictures in the United States in 1950, Ms Lollobrigida gained for starring turns in 1952’s “Fanfan la Tulipe” and 1953’s “Bread, Love and Dreams,” the latter of which netted her a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actress.

Ms Lollobrigida’s first American film was “Beat the Devil,” a 1953 adventure comedy directed by John Huston that cast her opposite Humphrey Bogart. Over the course of the ’50s and ’60s, she starred in numerous French, Italian and European-shot American productions, with highlights including “Trapeze” with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” as Esmerelda, “Solomon and Sheba” with Yul Brynner, “Never So Flew” with Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen, “Come September” with Rock Hudson, and “Woman of Straw” with Sean Connery, and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” with Shelley Winters.

Her roles made her a major sex symbol of Italian cinema; in 1953, she won Italy’s David di Donatello award for Best Actress for her performance in the opera star Lina Cavalieri’s biopic “Beautiful But Dangerous,” known in Italian as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.” 

She later won two more David di Donatello Award for “Imperial Venus” and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” a Golden Medal of the City of Rome in 1986, a 40th Anniversary David in 1996 and a 50th Anniversary David in 2006. In 1961, she won the Golden Globes’ Henrietta Award for “World Fan Favorite,” and received nominations for “Falcon Crest” and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell.”

After the ’60s, Lollobrigida’s career began to slow down, but she continued to act intermittently, including in the 1995 Agnes Varda film “Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma,” and in ’80s TV shows such as CBS’ “Falcon Crest” and ABC’s “The Love Boat.” 

Ms Lollobrigida also developed a successful second career in photojournalism during the ’80s. She obtained an exclusive interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and also photographed many famous film stars, as well as publishing a number of books of her photographs.

In 2011 she made her final film appearance, playing herself in a cameo for the Italian parody film “Box Office 3D: The Filmest of Films.”

The screen legend sale of some of her 23 jewels from her Bulgari  collection at Sotheby’s in 2013 to help fund an international hospital for stem-cell research. 

On 16 October 1999, Lollobrigida was nominated as a Goodwill Ambassador of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Ms  Lollobrigida won the Berlinale Camera at the Berlin Film Festival in 1986, Karlovy Vary Film Festival special prize in 1995, and the Rome Festival’s career prize in 2008. In 2018, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ciao, Gina, Riposa in Pace

(Armando Pietrangeli, “Light and Shadow,” Gina Lollobrigida,1960, Trapeze 1956, Woman Of Rome,1954, Salomon & Sheba,1959, Come September, 1961,Un Bellissimo Novembre,1968, The Hunchback of Notre Dame,1956, In London to publicise her book of photographs titled Italia Mia,1974, Fidel Castro shot by Ms Lollobrigida,1974, Gina Lollobrigida pictured on July 11, 2022 in Rome).

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The Most Interesting & Intriguing Black 👩🏿 American ⚫ Actress 🤎 Of Television & Tv Movies Of Many Genres

Born On September 5th, 1989

Graham was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and raised in Los Angeles, California, United States. Her father, Joseph, is of Americo-Liberian descent, and her mother, Natasha, is Jewish (from a family from Poland and Russia). Graham's father was a music executive and the godfather of two of producer Quincy Jones' children. Her paternal grandfather was a UN Ambassador, serving for 40 years in the Netherlands, Sweden, Romania, and Kenya. Graham disclosed in an interview that her father left the music industry to work as a journalist under his father for the UN. Her maternal and paternal grandparents were refugees from the Holocaust and Liberia, and she credits them as an inspiration for her work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR.

She is an American actress, singer, dancer, and activist. She played Bonnie Bennett on The CW supernatural drama series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017). Her film credits include The Parent Trap (1998), 17 Again (2009), The Roommate (2011), Honey 2 (2011), Addicted (2014), and All Eyez on Me (2017). In music, Graham has released two extended plays and four studio albums.

In 2017, she played actress Jada Pinkett Smith in the Tupac biopic All Eyez on Me.

Graham starred in the Netflix romantic comedy films The Holiday Calendar (2018), Operation Christmas Drop (2020), and Love in the Villa (2022). She has also appeared in the 2018 apocalyptic thriller How It Ends. Graham is set to play singer and actress Diana Ross in the 2025 Michael Jackson biopic Michael.

Please Wish This Young & Dazzling Influential Multi Talented Black Mixed American Actress, Singer, Dancer, and Activist. A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

You Seen Her Act & Dance in Movies like Honey 2 & All Eyez On Me

You watched her Be Phenomenal in The CW'S 1# Supernatural Drama Series, The Vampire Diaries 🧛‍♂️ 🧛‍♀️

& She Has The Voice Of A Radiant Angel 😇 ✨

The 1 & The Only

MS. KATERINA ALEXANDRE HARTFORD GRAHAM AKA KAT GRAHAM 👩🏿🤎🖤 Kat Graham

HAPPY 35TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

TO YOU MS. GRAHAM 👩🏿🤎🖤 & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#KatGraham #TheVampireDiaries #Honey2 #AllEyezOnMe #HowItAllEnds #TheHolidayCalendar #OperationChristmasDrop #LoveInTheVilla #BonnieBennett

[myobsessionsspace]

Danai Gurira - The Activist

Award winning playwright and actress Gurira holds a Master of Fine Arts from Tisch, NYU and serves as an ambassador for an array of organisations:

Almasi Arts

Co-Founder

UN Goodwill Ambassador

Love Our Girls

Founder

View this post on Instagram

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Global Citizen

Supporter since 2016

PETA

With her dog Papi

WildAid Ambassador for Elephants

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Danai Gurira (@danaigurira)

And many more admirable causes from environmental, voting and civil rights, women and young children, arts and more

2023

2016 & 2017

🧡

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

Charles de Gaulle found the memory of D-Day so painful that he refused to participate in commemorations of the Normandy invasion during his 11 years as president of France. He did not invite heads of government to mark either the 20th anniversary in 1964 or the 25th in 1969. Old soldiers saluted; ambassadors laid wreaths.

President Dwight Eisenhower had tried to salve the French hurt in the statement he released for the 10th anniversary in 1954. The statement did not mention the United States or its armed forces. It praised by name three British commanders, three French, one Soviet—no Americans. It credited the victory to “the joint labors of cooperating nations,” and said “it depended for its success upon the skill, determination and self-sacrifice of men from several lands.” You might want to read it as a prophylactic antidote to the boast and bombast likely to fill the air today.

The experience of liberation was a complex thing for almost every country that experienced it from 1943 to 1945, but perhaps nowhere more than France. In the American imagination of 1944, France exists as a throng of cheering, welcoming faces, as women kissing GIs, as a landscape through which Allied tanks and trucks roar on their way to Germany. Depending on our mood, we romanticize the Resistance or excoriate collaborators—seldom caring to remember how ambiguously collaboration and resistance often blended together, or how often collaborators and resisters were the same people at different phases of the war or even different times of the same day.

To be liberated, first you must be defeated.

Everything about these D-Day anniversaries reminds the French of that humiliating sequence. When de Gaulle landed in Normandy for a one-day visit on June 14, he traveled back-and-forth across the English Channel in a British warship. De Gaulle’s ability to establish a provisional government depended on the permission of U.S. and British authorities—and so, ultimately, would the even more fraught question whether France would be accepted again as a major ally.

For four years, Vichy France had supplied and aided Germany. Vichy planes had bombed Gibraltar in 1940; Vichy tax collectors had extracted resources to pay the German occupiers. When Italy changed sides in 1943, it was treated as a liberated nation—but it was not accepted as a co-belligerent. France’s post-D-Day status utterly depended on British and American goodwill. For a man like de Gaulle, that dependency rankled.

De Gaulle’s famous speech of August 25, 1944, after the liberation of Paris, starkly reveals the fictions that would restore French pride.

“Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France! … It will not even be enough that we have, with the help of our dear and admirable Allies, chased him from our home for us to consider ourselves satisfied after what has happened. We want to enter his territory as is fitting, as victors.”

France did enter Germany as a victor. French armies, supplied by the United States, subordinate to U.S. command, were stood up in 1944–45. France was allotted an occupation zone in Germany and awarded a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. (Italy was not even invited to join the United Nations until 1955.) Allied officialdom agreed to believe de Gaulle’s story that the France that fought Nazi Germany was the only real France.

But everyone understood the story was not true. The French military defeat in 1940 had torn apart social wounds dating back decades and longer. Conservative and Catholic France reinterpreted the battles of 1940 as a debacle only of the liberal and secular France that had held the upper hand since the founding of the Third Republic in 1871 and especially since the Dreyfus affair that began in 1894. When the reactionary French writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration, he supposedly replied, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus.”

Most French business leaders and civil servants collaborated out of opportunism or necessity. The Germans held hundreds of thousands of captured French soldiers as hostages for years after 1940. But more than a few leading French people, including many intellectuals and churchmen, collaborated out of a species of conviction. A French cardinal led the recruitment of French volunteers to fight alongside the Germans in Russia in 1941. “How can I, in a moment so decisive, refuse to approve the common noble enterprise directed by Germany, dedicated to liberate Russia from the bonds that have held it for the last twenty-five years, suffocating its old human and Christian traditions, to free France, Europe, and the world from the most pernicious and most sanguinary monster that mankind has ever known, to raise the peoples above their narrow interests, and to establish among them a holy fraternity revived from the time of the Christian Middle Ages?” Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart wrote, in his endorsement of the Anti-Bolshevik Legion.

The loss of the war against Germany enabled such people to launch a much more congenial culture war at home, to purge France of “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” the slogan of 1789, and establish in its place “work, family, fatherland,” the slogan of Vichy. Since 1905, France had been defined as a secular state. The Catholic Church had been reduced to one sect among others: Protestant, Jewish, even Muslim. (In 1920, the French government had subsidized the building of a grand mosque in thanks for the First World War service of Muslim troops. The great military cemetery near Verdun has a special section for Muslim soldiers, their graves angled away from the others in order to face Mecca.)

Vichy put an end to all that. The defeat of France by Germany was ideologically reinterpreted as a victory of “deep France” over a shallow liberal metropolitan veneer. Subjugation was reinterpreted by Vichy ideologues as redemption. Enmity was shifted from the occupying Germans to the liberal commercial “Anglo-Saxons.” Vichy propagandists produced cartoons in which Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Popeye were depicted dropping bombs on France at the behest of Jewish masters.

Anti-Allied enmity was not difficult to stoke: Allied bombing before 1944 and Allied land forces after 1944 did more damage to French cities than the Germans had in the few weeks of combat in 1940. The port of Le Havre was bombed 132 times from 1940 to 1944. The final raids in September reduced the city center to rubble, killing 5,000, maiming and rendering homeless tens of thousands more. The modernist cityscape that replaced the former 18th- and 19th-century core remains an enduring monument to the price paid by the French people for their liberation.

Vichyite enthusiasm for anti-liberalism opened a strange fluidity in French politics during and after the war. The future leader of French socialism, François Mitterrand, began his political career on the far right of French politics and worked until 1943 as a civil servant in the Vichy government. As president after 1981, Mitterrand would raise minimum wages, cut the workweek to 39 hours, nationalize some financial institutions, and end the death penalty. He would even do what de Gaulle could never stomach: celebrate the D-Day anniversary.

It was Mitterrand who decided to invite Ronald Reagan to Normandy in 1984, where Reagan delivered one of the great speeches of his presidency. Yet Mitterrand, to the end of his career, remained friends with—and protected from prosecution for crimes against humanity—the Vichy police chief who deported tens of thousands of Jews to their death.

But the chief was not the only one protected, and Mitterrand was not the only protector. As the French journalist René Rémond quipped to Roger Cohen of The New York Times: “They all have something to hide.”

When Americans choose to remember this sad history, they do so from the privilege of an easier geography. As time has separated us from the Second World War, U.S. memories have become more triumphalist and self-aggrandizing. It is a remarkable thing to watch President Donald Trump’s preening and posing in the U.K. and France on this anniversary. France fell in 1940 in great part because the United States went AWOL from European peace and security after 1919. The U.S. was AWOL very much because of leaders who in their day espoused the same crass protectionism and isolationism—and even the same “America First” slogan—as Trump himself. . .

[barkingbonzo]

AUDREY HEPBURN

Audrey Kathleen Hepburn (née Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress. Recognized as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.

Born into an aristocratic family in Ixelles, Brussels, Hepburn spent parts of her childhood in Belgium, England and the Netherlands. She attended boarding school in Kent, England from 1936 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to the Netherlands. During the war, Hepburn studied ballet at the Arnhem Conservatory and by 1944, she performed ballet to raise money to support the Dutch resistance. Hepburn studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam beginning in 1945 and with Marie Rambert in London from 1948. She began performing as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions and then had minor appearances in several films. Hepburn rose to stardom in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) alongside Gregory Peck, for which she was the first actress to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. That year, she also won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.

Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films such as Sabrina (1954), in which Humphrey Bogart and William Holden compete for her affection; Funny Face (1957), a musical in which she sang her own parts; the drama The Nun's Story (1959); the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); the thriller-romance Charade (1963), opposite Cary Grant; and the musical My Fair Lady (1964). In 1967, she starred in the thriller Wait Until Dark, receiving Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. After that, Hepburn only occasionally appeared in films, one being Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery. Her last recorded performances were in the 1990 documentary television series Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. In 1994, Hepburn's contributions to a spoken-word recording titled Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She stands as one of few entertainers who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.

Hepburn won three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she received BAFTA's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and the Special Tony Award. Later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to UNICEF, to which she had contributed since 1954. Between 1988 and 1992, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia. In December 1992, Hepburn received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A month later, she died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63

[madamlaydebug]

An Actor with a Cause

Daniel Lebern “Danny” Glover is an African American actor, film director and political activist. Glover is well known for his roles as Detective Sergeant Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series and Mr. Albert Johnson in The Color Purple. A versatile actor on screen, stage and television, Danny Glover has also become known for his community activism and philanthropic work. In March 1998 he was appointed a United Nations goodwill ambassador. For more than 30 years, Glover has been trying to make a biopic about Toussaint Louverture, who led a successful rebellion in the 18th century.

Glover was born on July 22, 1946 in San Francisco, California, to Carrie (Hunley) and James Glover. His parents were postal workers, active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He attended George Washington High School in San Francisco, and the San Francisco State University (SFSU) in the late 1960s, without graduating. SFSU later awarded him an honorary degree. While attending SFSU, Glover was a member of the Black Students Union, which, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history. It helped create not only the first Department of Black Studies but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.

Glover trained at the Black Actors’ Workshop of the American Conservatory Theater. He made his Broadway debut in Athol Fugard’s production Master Harold…and the Boys, which led to his first leading role in the 1984 film Places in the Heart, which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The following year, Glover starred in two more Best Picture nominees: Peter Weir’s Witnessand Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple. In 1987, Glover partnered with Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weaponfilm and went on to star in three hugely successfulLethal Weapon sequels.

In 1994 he made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override. Also in 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory formed the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles, focusing on theatre by and about Black people. During his career, he has made several cameos, appearing, for example, in the Michael Jackson video “Liberian Girl” of 1987. Glover earned top billing for the first time in Predator 2, the sequel to the sci-fi action film Predator. That same year he starred in Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, for which which he executive produced and for which he won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor. On the small screen, Glover won an Image Award and a Cable ACE Award and earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the HBO movie Mandela. He has also received Emmy nominations for his work in the acclaimed miniseries Lonesome Dove and the telefilm Freedom Song. As a director, he earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Showtime’s Just a Dream.

Glover has had a variety of film, stage, and television roles, but as also gained respect for his wide-reaching community activism and philanthropic efforts, with a particular emphasis on advocacy for economic justice, and access to health care and education programs in the United States and Africa. For these efforts, Glover received a 2006 DGA Honor. Internationally, Glover has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program from 1998-2004, focusing on issues of poverty, disease, and economic development in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and serves as UNICEF Ambassador.

In 2005, Glover co-founded Louverture Films dedicated to the development and production of films of historical relevance, social purpose, commercial value and artistic integrity. For more than 30 years, Glover has been trying to make a film biography of Toussaint Louverture for his directorial debut. According to Glover, the film lacked ‘whyte heroes’, and hence whyte producers refuse to financially support the project unless the lead is surrounded by fictionalized historically inaccurate whyte heroes. In May 2006, the film had included cast members Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Mos Def, Isaach de Bankolé, and Richard Bohringer. Production, estimated to cost $30 million, was planned to begin in Poland, filming from late 2006 into early 2007. In May 2007, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez contributed $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who is a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. The contribution annoyed some Venezuelan filmmakers, who said the money could have funded other homegrown films and that Glover’s film was not even about Venezuela. In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover’s film, which is still in planning.

On April 6, 2009, Glover was given a chieftaincy title in Imo State, Nigeria. Glover was given the title Enyioma of Nkwerre, which means A Good Friend in the language of the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria.

[dumbass-duels]

hello i submitted a character yesterday and now i am here to deliver propaganda

Hank Yarbo from Corner Gas has GOT to be in this tournament. being stupid is LITERALLY what he's known for. in fact a character need only mention hank for others to understand what's going on. examples include: "hank-like" "hank-type stuff" "hank happened."

he thinks the word cocky has multiple Ks in it. he accidentally spray-painted a 68 on the water tower when it was supposed to say "grad '86" because he was painting upside down. he thinks it's "won't you take me to monkey town". he spent a whole episode trying to chase down a dog he thought was a reincarnation of an old cartoon character. he changed the password to his email so that another character couldn't guess it, but then he quickly forgot what it was. when an american comes to town, hank's chosen to be the "goodwill ambassador" and show the guy around but he ends up cracking jokes about how little americans know about canada and other such subjects the whole time, essentially just being a nuisance. he kissed his friend's mom on the lips by accident and was super weird about it afterward while she'd already moved on. instead of buying a wallet to save time finding his money, he bought a pair of cargo pants that he filled with random stuff. he still left his money in his truck. and these are only a FEW examples of this guy's dumbassery.

he's unemployed. he's in constant debt. he's a roughly 40-year-old man. he looks and sounds like a teenager. he once became a rodeo clown that helped the cops. the next episode he started a blog that nobody read. he drives a truck that needs constant repairs. he gets constantly made fun of by the other characters. he's probably autistic.

in conclusion: you should vouch for hank yarbo NOW! and watch corner gas while you're at it :)

this is a truly amazing essay, he gets a ‘certified dumbass’ award from me personally

[cozyaliensuperstar7]

Rest In Peace 🙏🏾 ❤️🕊

Michaela Mabinty DePrince (born Mabinty Bangura, 6 January 1995 – September 2024) was a Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer who danced with the Boston Ballet.

DePrince rose to fame after starring in the documentary First Position in 2011, which followed her and other young ballet dancers as they prepared to compete at the Youth America Grand Prix. With her adoptive mother, Elaine DePrince, she authored the book Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina (2014).

In 2013, DePrince danced with the Dance Theatre of Harlem as the youngest dancer in the history of the company, and, in 2013, was a soloist with the Dutch National Ballet. From 2016 to 2024, she was a goodwill ambassador with the Amsterdam-based organization War Child.

Born as Mabinty Bangura into a Muslim family in Kenema, Sierra Leone, she grew up as an orphan after her uncle brought her to an orphanage during the civil war. Her adoptive parents were told that her father was shot and killed by the Revolutionary United Front when she was three years old and that her mother starved to death soon after. Frequently malnourished, mistreated, and derided as a "devil's child" because of vitiligo, a skin condition causing depigmentation, she fled to a refugee camp after her orphanage was bombed.

In 1999, at the age of four, she and another girl, also named Mabinty, later given the name Mia, were adopted by Elaine and Charles DePrince, a couple from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and taken to the United States.

The DePrince family has had 11 children, including Michaela, nine of whom were adopted.

DePrince pursued a professional career despite encountering instances of racial discrimination: aged eight, she was told that she couldn't perform as Marie in The Nutcracker because "America's not ready for a Black girl ballerina." A year later, a teacher told her mother that Black dancers weren't worth investing money in.

DePrince was one of the stars of the 2011 documentary film First Position, which follows six young dancers vying for a place in an elite ballet company or school at the Youth America Grand Prix. She was awarded a scholarship to study at the American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of Ballet. She also performed on the television program Dancing with the Stars. In 2011, she made her European debut in Abdallah and the Gazelle of Basra with De Dutch Don't Dance Division, a dance company in The Hague, Netherlands. She returned a year later to dance The Sugar Plum Fairy in Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker at the Lucent Dance Theatre.

In 2012, she graduated from the American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York City, and joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem, where she was the youngest member of the company. Her professional debut performance was in the role of Gulnare in Mzansi Productions and the South African Ballet Theatre's premiere of Le Corsaire on 19 July 2012.

In July 2013, she joined the junior company of the Dutch National Ballet, based in Amsterdam.

In August 2014 she joined the Dutch National Ballet as an éleve (student). In 2015 she was promoted to the rank of coryphée. In 2016 she was promoted to the rank of grand sujet, and then to soloist at the end of the same year. When she first joined the Dutch National Ballet she was the only dancer of African origin. In 2016, she performed in the "Hope" sequence of Beyoncé's Lemonade.

DePrince cited Lauren Anderson, one of the first Black American principal ballerinas, as her role model.

In 2015, MGM acquired the film rights to DePrince's book Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina.

In 2018, MGM announced that Madonna would direct Taking Flight, a biopic on DePrince's life and career.

In 2019, DePrince produced a gala for War Child Holland which raised more than half a million dollars for children and youth affected by armed conflict.

In September 2020, DePrince announced that she was taking a leave of absence from the Dutch National Ballet. She started online coaching sessions with Charla Genn, a faculty member at the Juilliard School.

In 2021, DePrince joined the Boston Ballet as second soloist. She was drawn to Boston Ballet due to the company, which has many talented Black dancers, its culture, and its repertoire.

DePrince danced the leading role in Coppelia, a 2021 ballet film without dialogue that combines live dance with animation. It is a modernized version of a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann.

In 2015, It was reported that DePrince was in a relationship with ballet dancer Skyler Maxey-Wert, whom she also talked about in her book.

Her adoptive father, Charles DePrince, died in June 2020, but Michaela was unable to travel from Amsterdam to Atlanta to say good-bye and be with her family due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, further complicated by unrest due to the George Floyd protests. In September 2020, she took time off from her career to grieve and deal with her mental health through therapy.

Her death at the age of 29 was announced on 13 September 2024 via her Instagram page, which did not mention a cause of death.

Deepest condolences to her family and friends. 🙏🏾❤️🕊

[lboogie1906]

Harry Belafonte (Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was a singer, actor, and civil rights activist, who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. His career breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.

He is known for his recording of “The Banana Boat Song”, with its signature lyric “Day-O”. He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, shows tunes, and American standards. He has starred in several films, including the musical Carmen Jones, Island in the Sun, and Odds Against Tomorrow.

He was an early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and was a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. He has been an advocate for political and humanitarian causes, such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the USA for Africa. He has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush presidential administration. He acts as the ACLU celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues.

He has won three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. He received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #phibetasigma

[valkyries-things]

ANNE HATHAWAY // ACTRESS

“She is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009. She was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2015. She supports several charitable causes. She is a board member of the Lollipop Theatre Network, an organization that brings films to children in hospitals, and advocates for gender equality as a UN Women goodwill ambassador.”

[saintmeghanmarkle]

A tale of two brands: Beckham vs Sussex by u/Mickleborough

A tale of two brands: Beckham vs Sussex It seems to be open season on the Sussexes. And unlike normal hunting season, there’s no end date.The Telegraph has a piece about what the Sussexes can learn from the Beckhams, in terms of establishing themselves successfully in the US: archived / unarchived.Basically both are (cough) young couples (David‘s 48; Victoria‘s 49; Harry’s a baby at 38; Meghan’s a comparative spring chicken at 41). Both left the U.K. to establish themselves in the US. And where are they now?The Beckhams live in a $23m penthouse in Miami. The football / soccer team that David co-owns is now worth $600m, after starting out 3 years ago. Both are seen as having goals in life: David to build up his Inter Miami team; Victoria her fashion and beauty lines. People who’ve known them said that both have determination: consequently their growth has been ‘organic, natural, and above all, authentic’.Compare that with the Sussexes. They lost the Spotify contract after just 1 season, in the most public and humiliating way (being called grifters and talentless - by 2 separate powers in the business - isn’t a positive). No one‘s holding their breath about what they’ll do for Netflix. The article states that the success of Spare proves that the public are interested in their royal connections - not in themselves.The Beckhams have been working on their businesses for decades. The Sussexes have yet to find their USP (unique selling point) - which currently seems to be ‘a finite story that appears to be running out of road for their American audience’.A PR guru observes that the Beckhams use their platform ‘for good and not in a virtue-signalling way’. Compare this to the Sussexes, who ‘haven’t actually earned their stripes; what have they actually done? What have they brought into the US economy?’Another observes that the Sussexes lack the ‘humility’ of the Beckhams: ‘David is a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and has used his star power to do good work. But he never tried to eclipse that charity, whereas by contrast, the Archewell Foundation feels a bit of a personal flex as much as it’s a fundraiser. ‘The Beckhams, despite their wealth, are often pictured leading relatively normal lives, David buys his lunch from a popular, affordable Miami eatery and queues for coffee at neighbourhood joints. He also stood in line for 13 hours to pay his respects to the late Queen. The Sussexes, on the other hand, are closeted in Montecito (allegedly) and ask for lifts on Air Force One - not at all relatable.Another says that the Beckhams embody the American dream. ‘The Beckhams combine clear talent and prodigious hard work. In contracts the Sussexes exude entitlement in a very un-American way. That’s the ironic thing, because one of them is American!’Good humour goes a long way. Victoria has a good sense of humour and uses it to her advantage, cf ‘People like Meghan, who try to control the narrative and only present themselves in a perfect light, tend to forget that the public warms to a humour and the ability to show a flaw.’There’s the issue of family values. The Beckhams have been pictured with their children and extended family ‘while Harry, as we know, exposed a lot of family secrets. They’re now estranged from most relatives on both sides and this doesn’t play well.’To end: ’The Beckhams certainly live well, which Americans expect and admire, but they also spend their own money, and that is key. They’re not scrounges and they never have been.’ post link: https://ift.tt/Z9b1dwf author: Mickleborough submitted: July 30, 2023 at 08:09PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[chicago-geniza]

Think I am going to return to that short story "Salvage Ethnography." Wanting to write fiction that is critical and a little hostile but mostly funny, biting. Tár & Zubrzycki's new book pulled me back to the story, oddly--also the feeling that if I don't do something with all this fizzing frustration re: nearly everything I read about Jewishness & Eastern Europe, it will erupt out of me like some venomous froth. Basic premise it's one of those cultural exchange programs, summer, where American Jewish teens are taken to a Polish town for Holocaust tourism & shown around/given a penitent guided tour of the heritage restoration projects local residents are now undertaking, a sort of rapprochement project where American Jewish kids learn Poles aren't all antisemites and small-town Poles get to be ambassadors of goodwill and meet Jews in real life. In my story the teens are, uh, teens, & are very [eye-roll emoji] about the roles they've been conscripted into, but become fast friends & bond over dumb teen stuff, & on the penultimate night of the program get drunk in a restored Jewish cemetery & play Truth or Dare etc. Hauntings & hijinks ensue. It's a pastiche & parody of the Dybbuk/Dziady thing I am always banging on about and also one of the ghosts is a shitty teen too

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The Critically Acclaimed American Actor Of The 90's & The Last Great Actor Of The Early Days Of The Original MCU Before The Avengers

Born on August 18th, 1969

He is an American actor and producer. After graduating from Yale College in 1991 with a degree in history, he worked for a few months in Japan before moving to Manhattan to pursue an acting career. He gained recognition and critical acclaim for his debut in Primal Fear (1996), which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. His role as a redeemed neo-Nazi in American History X (1998) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also starred in the film Fight Club (1999), which garnered a cult following.

Norton established the production company Class 5 Films in 2003, and was director or producer of the films Keeping the Faith (2000), Down in the Valley (2005), and The Painted Veil (2006). He continued to receive praise for his acting roles in films such as The Score (2001), 25th Hour (2002), The Italian Job (2003), The Illusionist (2006), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). His biggest commercial successes have been Red Dragon (2002), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Incredible Hulk (2008), and The Bourne Legacy (2012). For his role in the black comedy Birdman (2014), Norton earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He has since directed and acted in the crime film Motherless Brooklyn (2019), and starred in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

Norton is an environmental activist and social entrepreneur. He is a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization that advocates for affordable housing, and serves as president of the American branch of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. He is also the UN Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity.

Please Wish This Esteemed & Dedicated American Actor In Cinema 🎥 & The Last Great MARVEL Actor To Portray THE BIG ANGRY GREEN GOLIATH WE ALL KNOW & LOVE 🟢😡

THE 1 & THE ONLY

MR. EDWARD HARRISON NORTON AKA DR. BRUCE BANNER AKA THE INCREDIBLE HULK 👨‍🔬🧪😡🟢 OF MARVEL'S THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008)

HAPPY 55TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MR. NORTON 👨 & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#EdwardNorton #PrimalFear #AmericanHistoryX #FightClub #TheItalianJob #RedDragon #TheIncredibleHulk #GlassOnionAKnivesOutMystery