Category: people

“A brunette, baby-faced beauty, both shapely and petite – most sources say she was under five feet tall” – she acted alongside the likes of Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo and Harold Lloyd during the 1920s and ’30s, making the transition from silents to talkies with relative ease.

After The Year of Magical Thinking, she says, “People would stop me in airports and tell me what it had done for them. I had no clue; I hadn’t done anything as far as I could see. … I’m not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself – there is a basic indifference toward people.”

“England, England, Barnes’ eighth novel, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1998, followed by Arthur & George in 2005. The author has also penned non-fiction, including a 2003 collection on cooking called The Pedant in the Kitchen.”

“[The] legendary writer, director and producer of original radio plays for CBS during the golden age of radio in the 1930s and ’40s … [created] landmark broadcasts ranging from celebrations of the Bill of Rights and the Allied victory in Europe to a light-hearted rhyming play about a demonic plot to overthrow Christmas.”

“[His] development of what he called the acoustic suspension woofer made it possible for music lovers to buy loudspeakers that were domestically acceptable” – because they weren’t the size of a refrigerator. “A guy’s wife could accept their presence on the bookshelf in the living room.”

“An actress is suing Amazon.com in federal court in Seattle for more than $1 million for revealing her age on its Internet Movie Database website and refusing to remove the reference when asked.”

“I was born in Japan, and there’s a Japanese bit of me that I wouldn’t notice: I made a conscious decision not to lose my parents’ language. Musically I flourished when I was speaking German – that was my real musical education – but the people I loved and who influenced me more than my teachers came through my third language, which is English.”

“Dogged by innuendo, courted by kings, Britain’s pioneering early actresses led lives every bit as colourful as any Restoration comedy. Now an exhibition shows them in the publicity shots of their day.”

“Highlights of his tenure include restructuring [the PSO’s] finances and signing conductor Mariss Jansons as music director.”

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith say that, contrary to popular belief, it was more likely he was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had “a malfunctioning gun”.