#himself unable to adapt to the new theatre; he spent his later years as a director‚ interpreting the work of others as well as his own

[justforbooks]

By the mid-1950s, the singer Harry Belafonte had taken the lead role in an Oscar-nominated film, Carmen Jones; reached No 1 with his album Calypso, which helped find a mainstream audience for that musical style and became the first album ever to sell more than 1m copies; and headlined major venues around the US.

However, Belafonte found himself unable to use the main entrance to the Las Vegas hotels where he regularly performed – nor could he eat, stay or gamble in them. On tour in the south, he faced an evening curfew because of his skin colour. When he starred with Joan Fontaine in the then controversial film about an interracial relationship, Island in the Sun (1957), he was advised not to mention Fontaine in press interviews for fear of suggesting a romance between them. He learned that the power and respect that usually accompany fame and fortune could be largely illusory as far as black entertainers were concerned.

The enduringly handsome Belafonte, who has died aged 96, had great success not just as a honey-voiced singer and a compelling actor, but also as a passionate and erudite campaigner for civil rights.

The seeds of his ambition and his social conscience were sown by his tough childhood. Harold Bellanfanti was born in Harlem, New York, and raised in a cramped apartment. His parents came from the Caribbean. His father, also called Harold, had been born in Martinique and was an itinerant ship’s cook; his mother, Melvine, born in Jamaica, worked as a domestic servant.

When Harry was six, his father left the family.

The boy was sent by his mother to study in Jamaica, where his American accent made him feel like an outsider at school. In Jamaica, he loved visiting the banana markets; many years later, after his international success with The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), he observed: “Not by chance did that song become my signature. I knew of what I was singing.”

After a few years, Belafonte returned to New York, dropped out of high school and entered the navy. It was 1944 and he was 17. Two strokes of good fortune changed his life. First, he met Marguerite Byrd, a young teacher from a black middle-class family, who four years later became his wife. He abandoned the menial jobs he had been doing and, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, became a student and enrolled at Erwin Piscator’s drama school, where his peers included Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier. With the latter, Belafonte trained at the studio theatre of the pioneering American Negro theatre in Harlem.

Except for some off-Broadway shows, he found little work as an actor and began singing, mainly in jazz clubs, such as the Village Vanguard and the Royal Roost in New York, earning a reasonable living for a couple of years. He also began recording, including some of his own songs. Tiring of the routine, in 1950 he opened a small restaurant, the Sage, in Greenwich Village, entertaining customers with folk songs. This, and his attachment to calypsos (he became known as “the Calypso King”), changed his style, and he was soon performing in more prestigious venues. He had signed a deal with Jubilee Records in 1949, and his records began to sell. Throughout his career, he recorded dozens of albums, including live concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Belafonte won a Tony award in 1954 for his performance in the musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. By then, his film career was under way. After playing a headteacher in Bright Road (1953), he was cast in Otto Preminger’s 1954 movie version of the Broadway hit Carmen Jones, opposite Dorothy Dandridge. This all-black adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, in which both his and Dandridge’s voices were dubbed, was a considerable success.

In 1957, Belafonte had top 10 hits in the UK with The Banana Boat Song and the title track from Island in the Sun, before achieving his biggest recording success with Mary’s Boy Child, which spent seven weeks at No 1 in 1957 and was re-released for the following two Christmases.

He began to appear on television, toured successfully in Europe and recorded several programmes for BBC television, working for a fraction of his normal fee because he enjoyed the extended nature of the shows, which gave him time to develop his performance. He became one of the first major artists to tour with a multiracial band and he integrated black performers into orchestras in prestige venues where the musicians had been exclusively white.

Belafonte and Byrd divorced in 1957, and he married Julie Robinson, the first white dancer to work with the Katherine Dunham company. The breakdown of his marriage had led Belafonte to seek psychiatric treatment, and his psychiatrist’s husband, a stockbroker, subsequently became Belafonte’s agent and manager, replacing Jack Rollins, the man responsible for masterminding Belafonte’s early career.

The 1950s was a period of considerable civil rights activism for Belafonte, who cited his friend Martin Luther King as the dominant influence on his life. When they first met, in 1954, they were in their mid-20s. “His courage was really quite remarkable,” Belafonte recalled. He embraced King’s message of nonviolence and lent his support to protest movements. With King, Belafonte was one of those who planned the 1963 march on Washington.

In the following year, he helped to raise and then personally delivered, with the assistance of Poitier, $70,000 in cash to support the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Greenwood, Mississippi. Facing hostility from the Ku Klux Klan, the SNCC was striving to register black voters in the region. “In Mississippi’s vicious climate,” Poitier wrote, “the chances of a Klansman taking a potshot at me were actually pretty high.”

A television show, Tonight With Harry Belafonte (1959), brought Belafonte an Emmy, making him the first African American man to win the award. He returned to the screen in The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959); the story of racial conflict within the science-fiction genre worked effectively. In the same year he made a thriller, Odds Against Tomorrow, with a racial subtext behind the animosity between two criminals.

Belafonte won a Grammy for best folk performance in 1960 for a powerful album of chain gang songs, Swing Dat Hammer. In 1965 he won another Grammy for best folk recording for an album he made with Miriam Makeba, the anti-apartheid activist. But another musical collaboration, with Petula Clark on her TV special in 1968, raised Belafonte’s profile further. During their performance of the song On the Path of Glory, Clark held Belafonte’s arm – much to the objection of an executive from the show’s sponsor, who feared that this show of intimacy between a white woman and a black man would enrage southern audiences. Clark refused to cut the performance from the programme, which had a warm reception when it was broadcast.

Returning to acting in 1970, he played a black angel, sent to earth to help Zero Mostel, in The Angel Levine, which he co-produced. He fared better producing Buck and the Preacher (1972), directed by his co-star, Poitier. The pair’s subsequent film, Uptown Saturday Night (1974), proved less successful.

In the mid-1980s, inspired by the success of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, Belafonte helped to organise the charity single We Are the World, written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and recorded by an all-star lineup of musicians including Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Diana Ross. The song reached No 1 in the US and the UK and won a Grammy. In 1987 Belafonte replaced Danny Kaye as UNICEF's goodwill ambassador; that year he chaired an International Symposium of Artists and Intellectuals for African Children in Senegal.

Having played himself in the satires The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Belafonte made a third film for the director Robert Altman, who cast him as Seldom Seen, a gang boss and club owner, in Kansas City (1996), for which Belafonte received the New York Critics Circle award for best supporting actor. Although he had not taken a leading role in a feature film for nearly 20 years, he was sufficiently tempted by the part of the bigoted Thaddeus Thomas in White Man’s Burden (1995), opposite John Travolta. He also joined the cast of Bobby (2006), Emilio Estevez’s film about Bobby Kennedy, whom Belafonte knew in the 60s.

Belafonte belatedly considered entering full-time politics in the Democratic party, but work, social commitments and family took precedence. Among his ongoing social concerns over the years were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; a school for emotionally disturbed boys; the prevention of gang violence; and his own Belafonte Foundation of Music and Arts.

He remained a force to be reckoned with, in 2002 likening the then US secretary of state Colin Powell to a slave who “got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master, exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him”. He lent his support to the Occupy movement in 2011, and when asked in a Guardian interview the following year which living person he most despised, he replied: “George W Bush, for his betrayal of America.”

His autobiography, My Song (2011), was followed by a documentary about his life, Sing Your Song. His final film role was a cameo as a veteran activist in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018).

In 2008, following divorce from his second wife, he married Pamela Frank. She survives him, along with the two daughters of his first marriage, and the son and daughter from his second.

Harry Belafonte was one of the most important and influential campaigning black musicians in American history, though for the public at large he was better known for most of his career for the relaxed, middle-of-the-road image that he projected through his calypsos.

His true character was very different, for in the 60s he used his wealth, fame and organisational skills to bolster the civil rights campaign in the US and bring American attention to the apartheid regime in South Africa, playing a crucial role in promoting the careers of the South African musicians Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.

He was always a smartly dressed figure with a powerful physical presence and a glorious husky growl, but was also a man of considerable bravery. He took part in such major events as the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery – where he made speeches, but had to leave town lying on the floor of a car, along with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, to escape the Klansmen.

But the suave crooner of calypsos was regarded with suspicion by black power leaders because of his links with the white establishment. Belafonte had his own campaign for bringing change, and was quite happy to talk to white politicians, though in 1986 he turned down a request from governor Mario Cuomo to stand for the Democrats as senator in New York.

His agenda included forging links between black Americans and Africa, and in the 60s he helped to organise a trip to several African countries for SNCC activists, because he felt they needed to know more about the continent. But his most important role in Africa was in the anti-apartheid campaign, and his help for exiled South African musicians.

Belafonte first learned about Makeba after being approached in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel in London by Trevor Huddleston, the priest (and later bishop) who helped found the anti-apartheid movement. Belafonte helped her to obtain a visa to the US and then guided her to becoming an international celebrity. They often performed and toured together, with Makeba calling him “my big brother”, and it was with Belafonte that she performed in 1962 at President John F Kennedy’s birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden. Belafonte helped Masekela, also an exile in the US, by arranging a scholarship for him.

In 1988 Belafonte released the South African-influenced album Paradise in Gazankulu, which included the political songs Capetown and We Are the Wave, and in the same year he gave a powerful speech at the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday tribute at Wembley Stadium, watched by a television audience of hundreds of millions across the world. In 2003 he was reunited with Makeba, when they recorded an album together.

Throughout his career he always matched his genial persona with political commitment – and sometimes anger. A passionate campaigner for gun control in the US, he chastised fellow black Americans in 2013 for failing to speak up on the issue. The easy-going calypso singer and actor was also a major political force.

🔔 Harry Belafonte (Harold George Bellanfanti), singer, actor and activist, born 1 March 1927; died 25 April 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[possiblyimbiassed]

Series 4 - Sherlock’s adaptation of John’s blog?

A.K.A. John’s blog is a gold mine for Sherlock’s EMP!

[This is an updated version of a meta I posted some time ago, but there was some technical problems with the post so I’m not sure many people could read it. Also, now that John’s blog is no longer available on the original website, the links needed to be transferred to the Wayback Machine (X). Anyway, here comes a new, slightly altered, attempt:]

I was reading John’s blog post The Empty Hearse (X) when I spotted this:

I was out having dinner with my girlfriend when he sauntered back into my world. He was dressed as a waiter. BECAUSE HE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY. He genuinely thought it would be funny to surprise me. I think he was more surprised when I nutted him. But let’s not dwell on that because again, as the saying goes, life goes on.

Now, doesn’t this sound just a little bit too familiar? Some points in the blog post that especially stand out to me are these, that show up in an exaggerated version in S4 (my bolding):

John: “I think he was more surprised when I nutted him”. Later on, in the morgue scene of TLD, John beats and kicks Sherlock so severely that he’s hospitalized.

John: “He genuinely thought it would be funny to surprise me”. John in TLD (talking to Lestrade after having beaten up Sherlock): “We always saw it coming. But it was fun”.

John: “But let’s not dwell on that because again, as the saying goes, life goes on”. In TLD they do not dwell on that; in fact, the next time John sees Sherlock it’s like the beating in the morgue never happened; Sherlock seems to have somehow harmed himself…

And there’s more:

Only, of course, he comes back into my life which means I find myself being attacked, kidnapped and stuck in a bonfire. We still don’t know why that happened. It had nothing to do with the terrorist plot. It was terrifying though. One of the scariest moments of my life. Trapped. Unable to move. I could hardly breathe. And all I could hear were children! Singing and laughing like they were in a horror movie. Not knowing that I was trapped in the bonfire. And then someone set it alight and that was me gone. Just about. Sherlock and my girlfriend turned up in the nick of time and saved me. It was probably Sherlock himself. Set it all up just so he could save my life so I’d forgive him about what he did. Nah, I know it wasn’t really.

John describes how he felt like he was in a horror movie. In TFP we all feel like we’re in not just one horror movie, but a whole bunch of them!

John is “stuck in a bonfire”, but Sherlock (and - supposedly - Mary) saves him. In TFP John is trapped in a well, but Sherlock saves him.

John: “It was probably Sherlock himself. Set it all up just so he could save my life so I’d forgive him about what he did”. Ghost!Mary in TLD: “Basically he trashed himself on drugs so that you’d help him … so that you’d have something to do, something doctory.” In TLD the roles are reversed, but it’s basically the same idea, isn’t it?

We know from TAB that Sherlock was reading up on John’s blog – something he has probably been doing at least since John’s description of ASiP, even if he might not have payed much attention to it at first. But in TAB Mary asks out loud if Sherlock has been reading John’s blog:

And Sherlock confirms it:

On The Empty Hearse blog post (X) Sherlock even comments: “I see you haven’t spent the last two years working on your writing technique”. So Sherlock has definitely read this post.

To me it seems quite likely that the blog is the ‘John stuff’ Sherlock bases his Mind Palace scenarios on in S4; Sherlock has read and re-read John’s words on his blog after his own return, to try and figure out what John is thinking and feeling. Then he re-hashes these ideas in different scenarios to see what the results might be.

The Empty Hearse post could also be read metaphorically, as in John being terrified by the onslaught of emotions when Sherlock ‘saunters back into his world’ and all the conflicting feelings regarding Sherlock resurge in John’s mind. He can hardly breathe, and his heart is on fire…

But once you’ve started this kind of comparison it’s hard to stop; John’s blog is a gold mine! :) Here’s another one from The Hollow Client (X) where Sherlock’s wild imagination is demonstrated:

As we stared at the suit, Sherlock quickly formulated a number of solutions. Alan had been winding Jack up to the point where Jack genuinely believed he was invisible. Jack had wrapped himself in a complex set of mirrors so that it appeared as if he was invisible. Or had been wrapped up in the mirrors by Alan. He briefly considered invisible paint. Perhaps Jack and Alan were highly-advanced scientists (they weren’t, they were media students). We’d been drugged on the way in and taken to an exact replica of 221B Baker Street where a camera was projecting the suit into the chair. I did stop him at that point and ask who’d have done that. He shrugged and suggested ninjas. Then he continued… the suit was a hologram, Jack had never existed, Jack was dressed up in the same fabric as the chair…

So, we’ve had a lot of mirrors in S3 and S4, haven’t we? On one hand, there are literal mirrors visible in a great deal of the scenes. On the other hand there are other characters mirroring Sherlock and John to such an extent that the protagonists sometimes become ‘invisible’ and the mirror characters take over the show. A complex set of mirrors indeed. There are so many mirrors, in fact, that I won’t even bother to seek them out; even if you only watch a small part of the episodes, you can hardly miss them. 

And I strongly suspect that in S4 Sherlock’s been drugged and brought to his own imaginary version of 221B:

And the ninjas, who were, according to Sherlock, the causing agents of the suit deception? Well, here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a ninja (X):

A ninja (忍者, Japanese pronunciation: [ɲiꜜɲdʑa]) or shinobi (忍び, [ɕinobi]) was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. The functions of a ninja included espionage, deception, and surprise attacks.

Ninja figured prominently in legend and folklore, where they were associated with legendary abilities such as invisibility, walking on water and control over natural elements.

The archetypical ninjas seem to have been climbing buildings with ropes (X):

Sounds like anyone we’ve heard of? ;-)

And in TST we also have Charlie Wellsborough, this guy who made himself invisible by dressing up in the same fabric as a car seat:

This dressing up as furniture is not an entirely new idea, by the way. Here are pictures of Robert Downey Junior disguised as a chair in 221B in Guy Ritchie’s adaptation “Sherlock Holmes - a Game of Shadows”, 2011: 

I don’t know, but Sherlock seems to adapt almost every crazy idea that John has documented on the blog to play out scenarios on his Mind Theatre in S4. In fact, it seems to me that just the way BBC Sherlock is an adaptation of Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes, written by his alter ego John Watson, the most surrealistic parts of this show - HLV, TAB and the whole of S4 - is the detective’s own adaptation of John’s blog posts about Sherlock. And there also seems to be lots of references to the many other Holmes adaptations... 

Any thoughts?

@lukessense @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960) was an American actress of stage and film.

Sullavan began her career onstage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday.

Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 movies, four of which were opposite James Stewart in a popular partnership that included The Mortal Storm and The Shop Around the Corner. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Three Comrades (1938). She retired from the screen in the early 1940s, but returned in 1950 to make her last film, No Sad Songs for Me, in which she played a woman who was dying of cancer. For the rest of her career she would appear only on the stage.

Sullavan experienced increasing hearing problems, depression, and mental frailty in the 1950s. She died of an overdose of barbiturates, which was ruled accidental, on January 1, 1960, at the age of 50.

Sullavan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker, Cornelius Sullavan, and his wife, Garland Councill Sullavan. She had a younger brother, Cornelius, and a half-sister, Louise Gregory. The first years of her childhood were spent isolated from other children. She suffered from a painful muscular weakness in the legs that prevented her from walking, so that she was unable to socialize with other children until the age of six. After her recovery she emerged as an adventurous and tomboyish child who preferred playing with the children from the poorer neighborhood, much to the disapproval of her class-conscious parents.

She attended boarding school at Chatham Episcopal Institute (now Chatham Hall), where she was president of the student body and delivered the salutatory oration in 1927. She moved to Boston and lived with her half-sister, Weedie, while she studied dance at the Boston Denishawn studio and (against her parents' wishes) drama at the Copley Theatre. When her parents cut her allowance to a minimum, Sullavan defiantly paid her way by working as a clerk in the Harvard Cooperative Bookstore (The Coop), located in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Sullavan succeeded in getting a chorus part in the Harvard Dramatic Society 1929 spring production Close Up, a musical written by Harvard senior Bernard Hanighen, who was later a composer for Broadway and Hollywood.

The President of the Harvard Dramatic Society, Charles Leatherbee, along with the President of Princeton's Theatre Intime, Bretaigne Windust, who together had established the University Players on Cape Cod the summer before, persuaded Sullavan to join them for their second summer season. Another member of the University Players was Henry Fonda, who had the comic lead in Close Up.

In the summer of 1929 Sullavan appeared opposite Fonda in The Devil in the Cheese, her debut on the professional stage. She returned for most of the University Players' 1930 season. In 1931, she squeezed in one production with the University Players between the closing of the Broadway production of A Modern Virgin in July and its tour in September. She rejoined the University Players for most of their 18-week 1930–31 winter season in Baltimore.

Sullavan's parents did not approve of her choice of career. She played the lead in Strictly Dishonorable (1930) by Preston Sturges, which her parents attended. Confronted with her evident talent, their objections ceased. "To my deep relief", Sullavan later recalled. "I thought I'd have to put up with their yappings on the subject forever."

A Shubert scout saw her in that play as well and eventually she met Lee Shubert himself. At the time, Sullavan was suffering from a bad case of laryngitis and her voice was huskier than usual. Shubert loved it. In subsequent years Sullavan would joke that she cultivated that "laryngitis" into a permanent hoarseness by standing in every available draft.

Sullavan made her debut on Broadway in A Modern Virgin (a comedy by Elmer Harris), on May 20, 1931.

At one point in 1932 she starred in four Broadway flops in a row (If Love Were All, Happy Landing, Chrysalis (with Humphrey Bogart) and Bad Manners), but the critics praised Sullavan for her performances in all of them. In March 1933, Sullavan replaced another actor in Dinner at Eight in New York. Movie director John M. Stahl happened to be watching the play and was intrigued by Sullavan. He decided she would be perfect for a picture he was planning, Only Yesterday.

At that time Sullavan had already turned down offers for five-year contracts from Paramount and Columbia. Sullavan was offered a three-year, two-pictures-a-year contract at $1,200 a week. She accepted it and had a clause put in her contract that allowed her to return to the stage on occasion. Later on in her career, Sullavan would sign only short-term contracts because she did not want to be "owned" by any studio.

Sullavan arrived in Hollywood on May 16, 1933, her 24th birthday. Her film debut came that same year in Only Yesterday. She chose her scripts carefully. She was dissatisfied with her performance in Only Yesterday. When she saw herself in the early rushes, she was so appalled that she tried to buy out her contract for $2,500, but Universal refused.

In his November 10, 1933, review in The New York Herald Tribune, Richard Watts, Jr. wrote that Sullavan "plays the tragic and lovelorn heroine of this shrewdly sentimental orgy with such forthright sympathy, wise reticence and honest feeling that she establishes herself with some definiteness as one of the cinema people to be watched".[11] She followed that role with one in Little Man, What Now? (1934), about a couple struggling to survive in impoverished post–World War I Germany.

Originally, Universal was reluctant to make a movie about unemployment, starvation and homelessness, but Little Man was an important project to Sullavan. After Only Yesterday she wanted to try "the real thing". She later said that it was one of the few things she did in Hollywood that gave her a great measure of satisfaction. The Good Fairy (1935) was a comedy that Sullavan chose to illustrate her versatility. During the production, she married its director, William Wyler.

King Vidor's So Red the Rose (1935) dealt with people in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. It preceded by one year the publication of Margaret Mitchell's bestselling novel Gone With the Wind, and the novel's film adaptation by four years; the latter became a blockbuster. Sullavan played a childish Southern belle who matures into a responsible woman. The film also dealt with the situation of characters who were freed black slaves.

In Next Time We Love (1936), Sullavan plays opposite the then-unknown James Stewart. She had been campaigning for Stewart to be her leading man and the studio complied for fear that she would stage a threatened strike. The film dealt with a married couple who had grown apart over the years. The plot was unconvincing and simple, but the gentle interplay between Sullavan and Stewart saves the movie from being a soapy and sappy experience. Next Time We Love was the first of four films made by Sullavan and Stewart.

In the comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936), Sullavan played opposite her ex-husband Henry Fonda. The original script was rather pallid, and Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell were brought in to punch up the dialogue, reportedly at Sullavan's insistence. Sullavan and Fonda play a newly married couple, and the movie is a cavalcade of insults and quips. Her seventh film, Three Comrades (1938), is a drama set in post–World War I Germany. Three returning German soldiers meet Sullavan who joins them and eventually marries one of them. She gained an Oscar nomination for her role and was named the year's best actress by the New York Film Critics Circle.

Sullavan reunited with Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938). Stewart played a sweet, naive Texan soldier on his way to Europe (World War I) who marries Sullavan on the way. Her ninth film was the rather soapy The Shining Hour (1938), playing the suicidal sister-in-law to Joan Crawford. In The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Sullavan and Stewart worked together again, playing colleagues who do not get along at work, but have both responded to a lonely-hearts ad and are (without knowing it) exchanging letters with each other.

The Mortal Storm (1940) was the last movie Sullavan and Stewart did together. Sullavan played a young German girl engaged in 1933 to a confirmed Nazi (Robert Young). When she realizes the true nature of his political views, she breaks the engagement and turns her attention to anti-Nazi Stewart. Later, trying to flee the Nazi regime, Sullavan and Stewart attempt to ski across the border to safety in Austria. Sullavan is gunned down by the Nazis (under orders from her ex-fiance). Stewart, at her request, picks up the dying Sullavan and takes her by skis into Austria, so she can die in what was still a free country.

Back Street (1941) was lauded as one of the best performances of Sullavan's Hollywood career. She wanted Charles Boyer to play opposite her so much that she agreed to surrender top billing to him. Boyer plays a selfish and married banker and Sullavan his long-suffering mistress. Although he loves Sullavan, he is unwilling to leave his wife and family in favour of her. So Ends Our Night (1941) was another wartime drama. Sullavan (on loan for a one-picture deal from Universal) plays a Jewish girl perpetually on the move with falsified passport and identification papers and always fearing that the officials will discover her. On her way across Europe, she meets up with a young Jewish man (Glenn Ford) and the two fall in love.

A 1940 court decision obligated Sullavan to fulfill her original 1933 agreement with Universal, requiring her to make two more films for them. Back Street (1941) came first. The light comedy, Appointment for Love (1941), was Sullavan's last picture with that company. In the film, Sullavan appeared with Boyer again. Boyer's character marries Sullavan, who tells him that his past affairs mean nothing to her. She insists that each must have an apartment in the same building and that they meet only once a day, at seven o'clock in the morning.

Cry 'Havoc' (1943) is a World War II drama and a rare all-female film. Sullavan played the strong mother figure who keeps a crew of nurses in line in a dugout in Bataan, while they are awaiting the advance of Japanese soldiers who are about to take over. It was the last film Sullavan made with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After its completion, she was free of all film commitments. She had often referred to MGM and Universal as "jails". When her husband, Leland Hayward, tried to read her the good reviews of Cry 'Havoc', she responded with usual bluntness: "You read them, use them for toilet paper. I had enough hell with that damned picture while making it – I don't want to read about it now!"

Sullavan's co-starring roles with James Stewart are among the highlights of their early careers. In 1935, Sullavan had decided on doing Next Time We Love. She had strong reservations about the story, but had to "work off the damned contract". The script contained a role she thought might be ideal for Stewart, who was best friends with Sullavan's first husband, actor Henry Fonda. Years earlier, during a casual conversation with some fellow actors on Broadway, Sullavan predicted Stewart would become a major Hollywood star.

By 1936, Stewart was a contract player at MGM but getting only small parts in B-movies. At that time Sullavan worked for Universal and when she brought up Stewart's name, they were puzzled. The Universal casting people had never heard of him. At Sullavan's suggestion Universal agreed to test him for her leading man and eventually he was borrowed from a willing MGM to star with Sullavan in Next Time We Love.

Stewart had been nervous and unsure of himself during the early stages of production. At that time he had only had two minor MGM parts which had not given him much camera experience. The director, Edward H. Griffith, began bullying Stewart. "Maggie, he's wet behind the ears," Griffith told Sullavan. "He's going to make a mess of things."

She believed in Stewart and spent evenings coaching him and helping him scale down his awkward mannerisms and hesitant speech that were soon to be famous around the world. "It was Margaret Sullavan who made James Stewart a star," director Griffith later said. "And she did, too," Bill Grady from MGM agreed. "That boy came back from Universal so changed I hardly recognized him." Gossip in Hollywood at that time (1935–36) was that William Wyler, Sullavan's then-husband, was suspicious about his wife's and Stewart's private rehearsing together.

When Sullavan divorced Wyler in 1936 and married Leland Hayward that same year, they moved to a colonial house just a block down from Stewart.[22] Stewart's frequent visits to the Sullavan/Hayward home soon restoked the rumors of his romantic feelings for Sullavan. Sullavan and Stewart's second movie together was The Shopworn Angel (1938). "Why, they're red-hot when they get in front of a camera," Louis B. Mayer said about their onscreen chemistry. "I don't know what the hell it is, but it sure jumps off the screen."

Walter Pidgeon, who was part of the triangle in The Shopworn Angel later recalled: "I really felt like the odd-man-out in that one. It was really all Jimmy and Maggie ... It was so obvious he was in love with her. He came absolutely alive in his scenes with her, playing with a conviction and a sincerity I never knew him to summon away from her." Eventually the duo made four movies together between 1936 and 1940 (Next Time We Love, The Shopworn Angel, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Mortal Storm).

Sullavan took a break from films from 1943-50. Throughout her career, Sullavan seemed to prefer the stage to the movies. She felt that only on the stage could she improve her skills as an actor. "When I really learn to act, I may take what I have learned back to Hollywood and display it on the screen", she said in an interview in October 1936 (when she was doing Stage Door on Broadway between movies). "But as long as the flesh-and-blood theatre will have me, it is to the flesh-and-blood theatre I'll belong. I really am stage-struck. And if that be treason, Hollywood will have to make the most of it".

Another reason for her early retirement from the screen (1943) was that she wanted to spend more time with her children, Brooke, Bridget and Bill (then 6, 4 and 2 years old). She felt that she had been neglecting them and felt guilty about it.[25] Sullavan would still do stage work on occasion. From 1943–44 she played the sexually inexperienced but curious Sally Middleton in The Voice of the Turtle (by John Van Druten) on Broadway and later in London (1947). After her short return to the screen in 1950 with No Sad Songs for Me, she did not return to the stage until 1952.

Her choice then was as the suicidal Hester Collyer, who meets a fellow sufferer, Mr. Miller (played by Herbert Berghof), in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea. In 1953 she agreed to appear in Sabrina Fair by Samuel Taylor.

She came back to the screen in 1950 to do one last picture, No Sad Songs for Me. She played a suburban housewife and mother who learns that she will die of cancer within a year and who then determines to find a "second" wife for her soon-to-be-widower husband (Wendell Corey). Natalie Wood, then eleven, plays their daughter.

After No Sad Songs for Me and its favorable reviews, Sullavan had a number of offers for other films, but she decided to concentrate on the stage for the rest of her career.

In 1955–56 Sullavan appeared in Janus, a comedy by playwright Carolyn Green. Sullavan played the part of Jessica who writes under the pen name Janus, and Robert Preston played her husband. The play ran for 251 performances from November 1955 to June 1956.

In the late 1950s Sullavan's hearing and depression were getting worse. However, in 1959 she agreed to do Sweet Love Remembered by playwright Ruth Goetz. It was to be Sullavan's first Broadway appearance in four years. Rehearsals began on December 1, 1959. She had mixed emotions about a return to acting and her depression soon became clear to everyone: "I loathe acting", she said on the very day she started rehearsals. "I loathe what it does to my life. It cancels you out. You cannot live while you are working. You are a person surrounded by an unbreachable wall".

On December 18, 1955, Sullavan appeared as the mystery guest on the TV panel show What's My Line?.

Sullavan had a reputation for being both temperamental and straightforward. On one occasion Henry Fonda had decided to take up a collection for a 4th of July fireworks display. After Sullavan refused to make a contribution, Fonda complained loudly to a fellow actor. Then Sullavan rose from her seat and doused Fonda from head to foot with a pitcher of ice water. Fonda made a stately exit, and Sullavan, composed and unconcerned, returned to her table and ate heartily. Another of her blowups almost killed Sam Wood, one of the founders of the Motion Picture Alliance. Wood was a keen anti-Communist. He dropped dead from a heart attack shortly after a raging argument with Sullavan, who had refused to fire a writer on a proposed film on account of his left-wing views. Louis B. Mayer always seemed wary and nervous in her presence. "She was the only player who outbullied Mayer", Eddie Mannix of MGM later said of Sullavan. "She gave him the willies".

Sullavan was married four times. She married actor Henry Fonda on December 25, 1931, while both were performing with the University Players in its 18-week winter season in Baltimore at the Congress Hotel Ballroom on West Franklin Street near North Howard St. Sullavan and Fonda separated after two months and divorced in 1933.

After separating from Fonda, Sullavan began a relationship with Broadway producer Jed Harris. She later began a relationship with William Wyler, the director of her next movie, The Good Fairy (1935). They were married in November 1934, and divorced in March 1936.

Sullavan's third marriage was to agent and producer Leland Hayward. Hayward had been Sullavan's agent since 1931. They married on November 15, 1936. At the time of the marriage, Sullavan was pregnant with the couple's first child. Their daughter, Brooke, was born in 1937 and later became an actress. The couple had two more children, Bridget (1939 – October 17, 1960) and William III "Bill" (1941–2008), who became a film producer and attorney. In 1947, Sullavan filed for divorce after discovering that Hayward was having an affair with socialite Slim Keith. Their divorce became final on April 20, 1948.

In 1950, Sullavan married for a fourth and final time to English investment banker Kenneth Wagg. They remained married until her death in 1960.

Sullavan’s children, in particular Bridget and Bill, often proved rebellious and contrary. As a result of the divorce from Hayward, the family fell apart. Sullavan felt that Hayward was trying to alienate their children from her. When the children went to California to visit their father they were so spoiled with expensive gifts that, when they returned to their mother in Connecticut, they were deeply discontented with what they saw as a staid lifestyle.

By 1955, when Sullavan's two younger children told their mother that they preferred to stay with their father permanently, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Sullavan's eldest daughter, Brooke, later wrote about the breakdown in her 1977 autobiography Haywire: Sullavan had humiliated herself by begging her son to stay with her. He remained adamant and his mother had started to cry. "This time she couldn't stop. Even from my room the sound was so painful I went into my bathroom and put my hands on my ears". In another scene from the book, a friend of the family (Millicent Osborne) had been alarmed by the sound of whimpering from the bedroom: "She walked in and found mother under the bed, huddled in a foetal position. Kenneth was trying to get her out. The more authoritative his tone of voice, the farther under she crawled. Millicent Osborne took him aside and urged him to speak gently, to let her stay there until she came out of her own accord". Eventually Sullavan agreed to spend some time (two and a half months) in a private mental institution. Her two younger children, Bridget and Bill, also spent time in various institutions. Bridget died of a drug overdose in October 1960, while Bill died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in March 2008.

Sullavan suffered from the congenital hearing defect otosclerosis that worsened as she aged, making her more and more hearing impaired. Her voice had developed a throatiness because she could hear low tones better than high ones. From early 1957, Sullavan's hearing declined so much that she was becoming depressed and sleepless and often wandered about all night. She would often go to bed and stay there for days, her only words: "Just let me be, please". Sullavan had kept her hearing problem largely hidden. On January 8, 1960 (one week after Sullavan's death), The New York Post reporter Nancy Seely wrote: "The thunderous applause of a delighted audience—was it only a dim murmur over the years to Margaret Sullavan? Did the poised and confident mien of the beautiful actress mask a sick fear, night after night, that she'd miss an important cue?"

On January 1, 1960, at about 5:30 p.m., Sullavan was found in bed, barely alive and unconscious, in a hotel room in New Haven, Connecticut. Her copy of the script to Sweet Love Remembered, in which she was then starring during its tryout in New Haven, was found open beside her. Sullavan was rushed to Grace New Haven Hospital, but shortly after 6:00 p.m. she was pronounced dead on arrival.[38] She was 50 years old. No note was found to indicate suicide, and no conclusion was reached as to whether her death was the result of a deliberate or an accidental overdose of barbiturates. The county coroner officially ruled Sullavan's death an accidental overdose. After a private memorial service was held in Greenwich, Connecticut, Sullavan was interred at Saint Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Churchyard in Lancaster, Virginia.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Margaret Sullavan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1751 Vine Street. She was inducted, posthumously, into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981.

Sullavan's eldest daughter, actress Brooke Hayward, wrote Haywire, a best-selling memoir about her family, that was adapted into the miniseries Haywire that aired on CBS starring Lee Remick as Margaret Sullavan and Jason Robards as Leland Hayward.

[blackkudos]

Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was a noted American photographer, musician, writer and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans—and in glamour photography. As the first famous pioneer among black filmmakers, he was the first African-American to produce and direct major motion pictures—developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and creating the "blaxploitation" genre. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s (taken for a federal government project), for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. Parks also was an author, poet and composer.

Early life

Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Sarah (née Ross) and Jackson Parks, Nov. 30, 1912. He was the last child born to them. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.

He attended a segregated elementary school. The town was too small to afford a separate high school that would facilitate segregation of the secondary school, but blacks were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities, and they were discouraged from developing any aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land.

His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death. Soon after, he was sent to live with relatives. That situation ended with Parks being turned out onto the street to fend for himself at age 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player.

In 1929, he briefly worked in a gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he not only observed the trappings of success, but was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

Career

Photography

Beginnings

While working as a waiter in a railroad dining car, he began seeing the portfolios of photographers in picture magazines, and decided to become a photographer.

At the age of 25, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $7.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop. The photography clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women. Parks's photographic work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which, in turn, contributed to being asked to join the Farm Security Administration under the auspice of Roy Striker

Government photography

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

Working at the FSA as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C., named after the iconic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic—a legendary painting of a traditional, stoic, white American farm couple—which bore a striking, but ironic, resemblance to Parks' photograph of a black menial laborer. Parks "haunting" photograph shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag hanging on the wall, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capital city.

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired. He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle; other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.

(Parks overall body of work for the federal government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from contemporaries and historians than that of all other black photographers in federal service at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers of that era focus almost exclusively on Parks).

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group. He was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O.W.I. He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most striking work by Parks during that period included, Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Commercial and civic photography

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Following his resignation from the Office of War Information, Parks moved to Harlem and became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor, Liberman, hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years and he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than poised. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. His involvement with Life would last until 1972. For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. He became "one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."

His photographs for Life magazine, namely his 1956 photo essay, titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," illuminated the effects of racial segregation while simultaneously following the everyday lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: the Thronton’s, Causey’s, and Tanner’s. As curators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta note, while Parks’ photo essay served as decisive documentation of the Jim Crow South and all of its effects, he did not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were associated with that period instead, however, he "emphasized the prosaic details" of the lives of several families.

An exhibition of photographs from a 1950 project Parks completed for Life was exhibited in 2015 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, and he documented conditions in the community and the contemporary lives of many of his eleven classmates from the segregated middle school they attended. The project included his commentary, but the work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books on the subject of photography (particularly documentary photography), and in 1960 was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television. With his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree in 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film, with assistance from his friend, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as, blaxploitation. The blaxploitation genre was one in which negative stereotypes of black males being involved with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad, black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score, in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter.

In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the title role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P.".

Musician and composer

His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s.

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor, Dean Dixon, and his wife Vivian, a pianist, and with the help of the composer Henry Brant. He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader who had been assassinated.

Writing

Starting in the late-1940s, Parks began writing—a second career that would produce 15 books and lead to his role as a prominent black filmmaker—starting with books on the art and craft of photography. Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963). He authored several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs.

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction with Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the social ladder in turbulent early 20th-century New York. Parks' writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction that includes photographic instructional manuals and film-making books. During this period, Parks also wrote the poem "The Funeral".

Painting

A gallery exhibition of his photography-related, abstract oil paintings was held in 1981.

Essence magazine

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and served as its editorial director during the first three years of its circulation.

Personal life

Parks was married and divorced three times. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis during 1933 and they divorced in 1961. He married Elizabeth Campbell in 1962 and they divorced in 1973. Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree. At that time, his publisher assigned her to be his editor. They became romantically involved at a time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. They divorced in 1979. Candace Bushnell claims to have dated Parks in 1976, when she was 18 and he was 58. For many years, Parks was romantically involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, the railroad heiress and designer. Their relationship evolved into a deep friendship that endured throughout his lifetime.

Parks fathered four children: Gordon, Jr., David, Leslie, and Toni (Parks-Parsons). His oldest son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose talents resembled his father's, was killed in a plane crash in 1979 in Kenya, where he had gone to direct a film. Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon III, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm X honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of his daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

He died of cancer at the age of 93 while living in Manhattan, New York City, and is buried in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas.

Legacy preservation and archives

Several parties are recipient or heirs to different parts of Parks' archival record.

The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York (formerly in Chappaqua, New York), reports that it "permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media," The organization also says it "supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as 'the common search for a better life and a better world.'" That support includes scholarships for "artistic" students, and assistance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space with rotating photography exhibits, open free to the public, with guided group tours available by arrangement. The foundation also admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and institutions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Fort Scott reports that it holds dozens of Parks' photos, both given to the Museum by Parks, and various belongings bequeathed to the Museum by him upon his death. The collection includes "awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, tennis racquet, magazine articles, his collection of Life magazines and much more." The museum has also separately received some of Parks' cameras, writing desk and photos of him.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Library of Congress (LOC) reports that, in 1995, it "acquired Parks' personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other products of his... career."

The LOC was already home to a federal archive that included Parks' first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration (1942-1943), and for the Office of War Information (1943-1945).

In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its accolade "Living Legend", one of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC. The LOC also holds Parks's published and unpublished scores, and several of his films and television productions.

National Film Registry

Parks' autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his African-American, anti-hero action-drama Shaft, have both been selected to be permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the LOC for the National Film Registry.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The National Archives also hold the film, My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.08063A) -- a film about Parks and his production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree,—is preserved in the National Archives of the United States—along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Nortup's Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks' years in government service.

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution has an extensive list of holdings related to Gordon Parks, particularly photos.

Wichita State University

In 1991, Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks' home state of Kansas, awarded Parks its highest honor for achievement: the President's Medal. However, in the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 of his famous photos, WSU—for various reasons (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, and whether the University could adequately protect and preserve them) -- returned them, stunning and deeply upsetting Parks. A further snub came from Wichita's city officials, who also declined the opportunity to acquire many of Parks' papers and photos.

By 2000, however, WSU and Parks had healed their division. The university resumed honoring Parks and accumulating his work. In 2008, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected WSU as repository for 140 boxes of Parks’ photos, manuscripts, letters and other papers. In 2014, another 125 of Park's photos were acquired from the Foundation by WSU, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display at the university's Ulrich Museum of Art.

Kansas State University

The Gordon Parks Collection, in the Arts, Culture, and Humanities section of the Special Collections of Kansas State University primarily documents the creation of his film The Learning Tree.

Exhibitions

1997: Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. A career retrospective.

2015: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, [High Museum of Art Atlanta].

Awards

Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.

1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.

1961: Named "Magazine Photographer of the Year" (1960) by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.

1984: Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania

1989: The United States Library of Congress selects The Learning Tree as one of the first 25 films chosen for permanent preservation as part of the National Film Registry, deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" due to its being the first major studio feature film directed by an African American.

1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants.

2000: The Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.

2000: Library of Congress selects Parks' film Shaft for National Film Registry preservation, as well—deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant",

2000 (April): Library of Congress awards Parks its accolade "Living Legend"—honoring "artists, writers, activists, filmmakers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures and public servants who have made significant contributions to America's diverse cultural, scientific and social heritage"—one 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC.

2001: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York

2003: Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.

2002: Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

2002: Inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.

2004: The Art Institute of Boston awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

2008: An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building

Wikipedia