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Merced, California

Merced (Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April 1, 1889, Merced is a charter city that operates under a council–manager government. It is named after the Merced River, which flows nearby.

Merced, known as the "Gateway to Yosemite", is less than two hours by automobile from Yosemite National Park to the east and Monterey Bay, the Pacific Ocean, and multiple beaches to the west. The community is served by the passenger rail service Amtrak, a minor, heavily subsidized airline through Merced Regional Airport, and three bus lines. It is approximately 110 mi from Sacramento, 130 mi from San Francisco, 55 mi from Fresno, and 270 mi from Los Angeles.

In 2005, the city became home to the 10th University of California campus, University of California, Merced (UC Merced), the first research university built in the U.S. in the 21st century.

History
The first Merced post office opened in 1870. Merced incorporated in 1889 and now operates under the council-manager form of government.

During World War II, the Merced County fairgrounds were the site of a temporary "assembly center" where Japanese Americans were detained after being removed from their West Coast homes under Executive Order 9066. 4,669 men, women and children from central California (with most coming from Merced County) were confined in the Merced Assembly Center from May 6 to September 15, 1942, when they were transferred to the more permanent Granada internment camp in Colorado.

Since 2005, Merced has been home to the University of California, Merced. Historic cultural attractions in the city include The Mainzer Theater which is known for its historic and architectural value, the County Courthouse Museum c. 1889, the Merced Multicultural Arts Center and the County Library.

Also within a short distance from the city limits are the Castle Air Museum, Lake Yosemite, and Merced Falls. The city of Merced along with its surrounding cities are serviced by the Merced Sun-Star and the Merced County Times. The Merced Sun-Star daily newspaper has a circulation of 14,219 daily and 18,569 Saturday in the Merced area. The paper was sold to U.S. Media in 1985 and was acquired by The McClatchy Company in January 2004. Homes at the median level in Merced had lost 62% of their value from the second quarter of 2006, when they peaked at $336,743, the biggest drop anywhere in the country, according to data provided to Forbes by Local Market Monitor, a Cary, North-Carolina-based real-estate research firm. Home prices have since rebounded, with the median sale price in April 2018 at $247,000. The current average being $358,000. Terry Ruscoe of Merced-Yosemite Realty, noted investors from outside of the Valley were helping to drive up home prices. Ruscoe said, "A tremendous amount of out-of-town buyers. Our primary client comes from the LA area or the Bay Area. We see a lot of them coming in and buying properties, even coming in now when the prices are moving up quickly because they know they can rent those."

The metro area went to a 14.2% unemployment rate in December 2013. Having since recovered to a rate of 8.7% in April 2018. Some efforts have been directed towards diversifying its economy and are showing a lowering trend in the overall unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

During the Great Recession Merced suffered one of the greatest property price collapses in the country and house prices at the end of 2009 had fallen to 1998 levels, according to Zillow, making housing affordable compared to many other California locations.

The economy has traditionally relied upon agribusiness and upon the presence of Castle Air Force Base. Over the past twenty years, more diversified industry has entered the area, including printing, fiberglass boat building, warehousing and distribution, and packaging industries.

In September 1995, Castle Air Force Base closed after phasing down over the previous three years. This affected residential real estate and some sectors of the retail and service economies, but overall retail continued to increase. Industrial development is increasing in the area. It is now known as the Castle Airport Aviation and Development Center. The Castle Air Museum remains at the site.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 23.3 sqmi.

Merced is approximately 110 mi southeast of San Francisco and 275 mi northwest of Los Angeles.

A major groundwater plume containing the contaminant PCE was discovered in Merced in 1987. Subsequently, drilling of new water wells was severely restricted.

Climate
Merced has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk), with its annual precipitation falling just short of a mediterranean climate. The city features very hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. There are an average of 99.7 days with highs of 90 °F or higher and an average of 27.8 days with lows of 32 °F or lower. The record highest temperature of 116 F was recorded on September 6, 2022. The record lowest temperature of 15 °F was recorded on December 24, 1990.

The wettest year was 1998 with 21.98 in and the driest year was 2013 with 3.79 in. The most rainfall in one month was 8.00 in in January 1909. The most rainfall in 24 hours was 2.20 in, which occurred on January 30, 1911, and March 9, 1911.

 * Notes:

Top employers
According to the city's Official Website the top employers in the city are:

In the summer of 2014, the Castle Commerce Center's call center closed, subtracting 400 jobs from AT&T's share of employment.

Agriculture
Merced is ranked as the sixth-top producing county in California. In 2019, Merced County generated $3.271 billion in total value of production. The top five commodities from 2019 in Merced are:

Education
Merced is home to a community college, Merced College and the University of California Merced. UC Merced now enrolls 8,321 undergraduate and 772 graduate students for a total of 9,093 students, as reported in the university's fall 2021 census. Of the 2021-2022 undergraduate degrees awarded, the top degrees were: 19% Biological Sciences, 16% Psychology, 11% Management, and 10% Computer Science Engineering. The University of California, Merced campus opened in late 2005 northeast of the city limits. UC Merced enrolled about 7,967 students during the 2017–2018 academic year. Merced is served by the Merced City School District, which has five main middle schools, Cruickshank Middle School, Herbert Hoover Middle School, Rivera Middle School, Weaver Middle School and Tenaya Middle School. There are also 14 elementary schools in this district. Merced Union High School District has three major public high school campuses, Merced High School, Golden Valley High School, and El Capitan High School as well as a few smaller campuses offering alternative education. Merced's community college, Merced College, has an enrollment of 8,996 students as of January 2021.

Health
Mercy Medical Center Merced. A 2016 Community Health Assessment prepared by the Merced County Department of Public Health (MCDPH), determined that top health topics that affect Merced and Merced county are heart disease and stroke; diabetes; access to health care; and drug and alcohol abuse. In 2017 the MCDPH published the Merced County Community Health Improvement Plan in an effort to "address health disparities and to promote health equity with the goal of health and wellness for all county residents."

2020
The Decennial Census of Population and Housing reported that the population in 2021 was 89,308. In 2021, the average income of an individual was $21,518, and for a household $49,973.

2010
The 2010 United States Census reported that Merced had a population of 78,959. The population density was 3,386.4 people per square mile. (1,307.5/km2). The racial makeup of Merced was 41,177 (52.2%) White, 4,958 (6.3%) African American, 1,153 (1.5%) Native American, 9,342 (11.8%) Asian, 174 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 17,804 (22.5%) from other races, and 4,350 (5.5%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 39,140 persons (49.6%).

The Census reported that 77,878 people (98.6% of the population) lived in households, 492 (0.6%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 588 (0.7%) were institutionalized.

There were 24,899 households, out of which 11,484 (46.1%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 10,958 (44.0%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 4,921 (19.8%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,941 (7.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,156 (8.7%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 167 (0.7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 5,356 households (21.5%) were made up of individuals, and 1,823 (7.3%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.13. There were 17,820 families (71.6% of all households); the average family size was 3.65.

The population was spread out, with 25,091 people (31.8%) under the age of 18, 10,475 people (13.3%) aged 18 to 24, 20,986 people (26.6%) aged 25 to 44, 15,484 people (19.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 6,922 people (8.8%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.6 males.

There were 27,446 housing units at an average density of 1,177.1 /sqmi, of which 10,637 (42.7%) were owner-occupied, and 14,262 (57.3%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 3.5%; the rental vacancy rate was 8.5%. 31,690 people (40.1% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 46,188 people (58.5%) lived in rental housing units.

2000
As of the census of 2000, there were 63,893 people, 20,435 households, and 14,631 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,216.7 PD/sqmi. There were 21,532 housing units at an average density of 1,084.0 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 57.4% White, 6.3% African American, 1.3% Native American, 12.4% Asian (mostly Hmong), 0.2% Pacific Islander, 23.2% from other races, and 5.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 26.4% of the population.

There were 20,435 households, out of which 42.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.2% contained married couples living together, 18.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.4% were "nonfamilies." 22.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.06 and the average family size was 3.62.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 34.7% under the age of 18, 11.4% from 18 to 24, 27.4% from 25 to 44, 17.1% from 45 to 64, and 9.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.3 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $30,429, and the median income for a family was $32,470. Males had a median income of $31,725 versus $24,492 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,115. About 22.4% of families and 27.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 10.1% of those age 65 or over.

Hmong community
Escaping persecution from Communist forces after the Laotian Civil War, Hmong refugees from Laos moved to the United States in the 1970s and '80s, first settling in Merced and other areas in the Central Valley of California. The Hmong could not initially take part in farming like they had expected, as the land was owned by other people. They could not get high end agricultural jobs because they did not speak sufficient English and Mexican migrants already held low end agricultural jobs. As such, a great many of Merced's Hmong collected social services and Hmong gangs arose, prompting other residents to perceive them as being the cause of economic troubles. As the Hmong settlement matured and the Hmong children gained English language skills, the town's overall attitude began to be more accepting of the Hmong community.

This acceptance is reflected in various services provided to the Hmong community. This includes the Merced Lao Family Community Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides social services to Hmong people, the Merced Department of Public Health's MATCH (Multidisciplinary Approach to Cross-Cultural Health) program, intending to draw Hmong patients into the health care system, a body of Hmong-speaking faculty and paraprofessionals (including college classes on Hmong culture and language), and media outlets for the Hmong community—cable television channel Channel 11 broadcasts programming to the Hmong community twice per week and radio station KBIF 900 AM airs programming oriented towards Hmong people.

While Merced has historically had a proportionally large portion of Hmong (in 1997, 12,000 of Merced's 61,000 residents were Hmong ), demographic shifts have reduced this. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 prompted a move of some Hmong to Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. More recently, many Hmong have gone to Alaska to work in crabbing and fishing industries that require little proficiency in English.

Black community
Through the years, Merced County has recognized many historic milestones. Some of those essential moments include the rise of Merced’s first Black mayor, Sam Pipes in 1983 and the visit by first lady Michelle Obama to UC Merced for the university’s 2009 commencement.

There’s also the story of the late Charles Ogletree, a Merced native who rose from poverty to become a respected Harvard Law professor. Ogletree taught both Barack and Michelle Obama at Harvard; he remained close to Barack Obama throughout his apolitical career.[13] Ogletree wrote opinion pieces on the state of race in the United States for major publications.[14] Ogletree also served as the moderator for a panel discussion on civil rights in baseball on March 28, 2008, that accompanied the second annual Major League Baseball civil rights exhibition game the following day between the New York Mets and the Chicago White Sox.[15]

Racial demographics
In 2010, Latinos became a majority population in Merced and Merced County as the agricultural industry brought in migrant farm laborers. The area's affordable housing prices attracted both Latino and Asian immigrants. Merced has large Asian-American (e.g. Hmong, followed by Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Filipino, Thai, Korean and Asian Indian) populations relative to the city and county's population size.

In Merced County, Black history goes back to before the Civil War. According to historian Sarah Lim, during the mid-1800s Blacks came to this region and California as enslaved persons, while others arrived as free settlers. The 2011 census reported that 9,837 Black or African Americans lived in Merced County

Crime
In 2021, Merced had approximately 4,000 violent crimes occur within the city. This means that with a population of just 89,303 people, in 2021, individuals had approximately a 4.5% chance of falling victim to a crime while living-in or visiting Merced. Of the crimes that occurred, roughly 1,200 were physical (such as assault, rape or homicide) and 2,500 were property-related (e.g. burglary and theft). However, these crimes occurring in 2021 resulted in 13 fatalities. With its high crime rate, Merced is considered one of the “50 most dangerous” Californian cities to live in.

Government
In the California State Legislature, Merced is in, and in.

In the United States House of Representatives, Merced is in.

Sports

 * UC Merced Bobcats: softball and other athletic programs. Merced High School and Golden Valley High School sponsor athletics as well.

Merced has a history of minor league baseball including the California League Merced Bears (1940s) and Atwater Angels (1970s) in nearby Atwater, California. There were the defunct Merced Black Bears of the Horizon Air Summer Series and the current Atwater Aviators of the Golden State Collegiate Baseball League.

Major highways

 * [[Image:California 59.svg|25px]] State Route 59
 * [[Image:California 99.svg|25px]] State Route 99
 * [[Image:California 140.svg|25px]] State Route 140

Air

 * Merced Regional Airport offers passenger service provided by Advanced Air, offering daily flights to Las Vegas International Airport (LAS) and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX.)
 * Castle Airport in nearby Atwater, California.

Bus

 * Greyhound, Intercalifornias, TUFESA and Fronteras del Norte serve Merced.
 * YARTS provides scheduled service into Yosemite National Park.
 * Merced County Transit, "The Bus", operates both regularly scheduled fixed route bus service and Dial-A-Ride (demand response) transportation services throughout Merced County.
 * CatTracks is UC Merced's bus service, which connects students, staff and faculty at the university to off-campus apartments, the off-campus Castle facilities, local amenities, the Amtrak station, and the downtown area. CatTracks also has a live map.

Rail

 * Amtrak San Joaquins provides passenger service.

High-speed rail
The California High-Speed Rail Authority February 2016 draft business plan, outlined the Merced station as not beginning service at the same time as the initial San Jose to Bakersfield route in 2025, but would likely open in 2029 instead. This would make the leg between the Central Valley and Pacheco Pass the first to be constructed. The Merced City Council vigorously opposed the delay in their city's station opening, noting Merced's volume of commuters seeking high-speed rail to access jobs in Silicon Valley. In response, the April 2016 revisions to the business plan indeed included Merced in the initial construction segment, initially as a single-track spur connecting only to the westbound track to the Bay Area, with build out of the full Wye happening later. The system will run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of over 200 miles per hour. In August 2022, the CAHSRA announced that it had received a $25,000,000 RAISE Grant to advance design work from Madera to Merced.

Sample trips in the California High Speed rail would include: Altamont Corridor Express Extension
 * Merced to Fresno - 30 minutes
 * Merced to Sacramento – 43 minutes
 * Merced to San Jose – 45 minutes
 * Merced to San Francisco – 1 hour and 15 minutes
 * Merced to Los Angeles – 1 hour and 40 minutes

The ACE regional rail system is pursuing an extension to Merced as a part of its broader Altamont Corridor Vision plan. The Final Environmental Impact Report for the Ceres-Merced extension was approved on December 3, 2021.

Notable people

 * Lloyd Allen, MLB pitcher
 * Ray Allen, NBA player
 * Jeff Ball, MLB player
 * Summer Bartholomew, Miss California USA 1975, Miss USA 1975
 * Michael Basinger, NFL player for the Green Bay Packers
 * Bruce Bowen, NBA player for the San Antonio Spurs
 * Jim Brewer, MLB pitcher
 * Tom Cable, NFL player and coach, former head coach of Oakland Raiders
 * Diana Serra Cary, child actress known as "Baby Peggy", writer, silent film historian and advocate for child actors
 * Alfonso Ocampo Chavez, MLS player for Seattle Sounders FC
 * Margaret Dingeldein, member of women's US Olympic water polo team at 2004 Athens Olympics
 * Tommy Duncan, singer with Bob Wills and Texas Playboys, buried in Merced
 * Marvin Eastman, mixed martial arts fighter
 * Doug Fister, MLB player for the Washington Nationals
 * John Flinn, MLB player for the Baltimore Orioles and Milwaukee Brewers
 * Dylan Floro, MLB player for the Washington Nationals
 * Brian Fuentes, MLB player for six teams
 * Katie Gallagher, finalist on reality television show Survivor: Palau
 * Jerry Garvin, MLB pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays
 * Jalen Green, NBA player for the Houston Rockets, selected 2nd overall in the 2021 Draft
 * Dave Henderson, MLB player for five teams
 * Salar Kamangar, Former CEO of YouTube, founding member of Google's product team
 * Philip H. Lathrop, Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated cinematographer
 * Janet Leigh, actress, star of Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock
 * Gerald Madkins, NBA player and executive
 * Blas Minor, MLB pitcher
 * Bill Mooneyham, MLB player for the Oakland Athletics
 * Demi Moore, actress, lived briefly in Merced
 * Dwayne Murphy, MLB player for the Oakland Athletics
 * Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School professor, and public intellectual
 * Curtis Partch, MLB player for the Cincinnati Reds
 * Mari-Lynn Poskin, member of the Kansas House of Representatives
 * Chris Pritchett, MLB player
 * Peter Rojas, Founder of Engadget
 * Dusty Ryan, MLB player for the New York Mets
 * Daniel Silva, best-selling novelist
 * Tony Slaton, NFL player for the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys
 * Cary Stayner, serial killer
 * Steven Stayner, kidnap victim
 * Rowena Granice Steele (1824–1901), American performer, editor, publisher
 * Joyce Sumbi (1935-2010), African-American librarian
 * Thad Tillotson, MLB player for the New York Yankees
 * Rick Williams, MLB pitcher for the Houston Astros
 * Steve Sanchez, Syndicated Radio Host Of The Steve Sanchez Show Las Vegas

title: Merced, California


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Tony Richardson

Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and playwrights during the 1950s, and was later a key figure in the British New Wave filmmaking movement.

His films Look Back in Anger (1959), The Entertainer (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) are considered classics of kitchen sink realism. He won the 1964 Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for the film Tom Jones. He was also a two-time BAFTA Award winner, and was twice nominated for the Palme d'Or.

With his wife Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson was the father to actresses Natasha Richardson and Joely Richardson.

Early life
Richardson was born in Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928 to Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist, and his wife, Elsie Evans (née Campion). Lived on the edge of Saltaire as a young child and kept grass snakes with his childhood friend Joan Naylor. He was Head Boy at Ashville College, Harrogate and attended Wadham College, University of Oxford. His Oxford contemporaries included Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher, Kenneth Tynan, Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. He had the unprecedented distinction of being the President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club (the ETC), in addition to being the theatre critic for the university magazine Isis. Those he cast in his student productions included Shirley Williams (as Cordelia), John Schlesinger, Nigel Davenport and Robert Robinson.

Career
In 1955, in his directing debut, Richardson produced Jean Giraudoux's The Apollo of Bellac for television with Denholm Elliott and Natasha Parry in the main roles. Around the same time he began to be active in Britain's Free Cinema movement, co-directing the non-fiction short Momma Don't Allow (also 1955) with Karel Reisz.

Part of the British "New Wave" of directors, he was involved in the formation of the English Stage Company, along with his close friend George Goetschius and George Devine. He directed John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre, and in the same period he directed Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then in 1957 he directed Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice in Osborne's next play The Entertainer, again for the Royal Court.

In 1959, Richardson co-founded Woodfall Film Productions with John Osborne and producer Harry Saltzman, and, as Woodfall's debut, directed the film version of Look Back in Anger (1959), his first feature film. The Entertainer (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), based on the novel by Alan Sillitoe, also were produced there. Many of Richardson's films, such as A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, were part of the acclaimed kitchen sink realism movement popular in Britain at the time, and several of his films continue to be held as cornerstones of the movement.

In 1964, Richardson received two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for Tom Jones (1963) based on the novel by Henry Fielding.

His next film was The Loved One (1965), in which he worked with established stars, including John Gielgud, Rod Steiger and Robert Morse, and worked in Hollywood both on location and on the sound stage. In his autobiography, he confesses that he did not share the general admiration of Haskell Wexler, who worked on The Loved One as both director of photography and a producer.

Among stars that Richardson directed were Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Rob Lowe, Milton Berle, Trevor Howard, David Hemmings, Nicol Williamson, Tom Courtenay, Lynn Redgrave, Marianne Faithfull, Richard Burton, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger, Katharine Hepburn, Seth Green, Tommy Lee Jones and Judi Dench. His musical composers included Antoine Duhamel, John Addison and Shel Silverstein. His screenwriters were Jean Genet, Christopher Isherwood, Terry Southern, Marguerite Duras, Edward Bond (adapting Vladimir Nabokov) and Edward Albee. Richardson and Osborne eventually fell out during production of the film Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). The basic issue was Osborne's unwillingness to go through the rewrite process, more arduous in film than it is in the theatre. Richardson had a different version. In his autobiography (p. 195), he writes that Osborne was angry at being replaced in a small role by Laurence Harvey to whom the producers had obligations. Osborne took literary revenge by creating a fictionalised and pseudonymous Richardson – a domineering and arrogant character whom everyone hated – in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam.

Richardson's work was stylistically varied. Mademoiselle (1966) was shot noir-style on location in rural France with a static camera, monochrome film stock and no music. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) was part epic and part animated feature. Ned Kelly (1970) was what might be called an Aussie-western. Laughter in the Dark (1969) and A Delicate Balance (1973) were psycho-dramas. Joseph Andrews (1977), based on another novel by Henry Fielding, was a return to the mood of Tom Jones.

In 1970, Richardson was set to direct a film about Vaslav Nijinsky with a script by Edward Albee. It was to have starred Rudolf Nureyev as Nijinsky, Claude Jade as Romola and Paul Scofield as Diaghilev, but producer Harry Saltzman cancelled the project during pre-production.

In 1974, he travelled to Los Angeles to work on a script (never produced) with Sam Shepard, and took up residence there. Later that year, he began work on Mahogany (1975), starring Diana Ross, but was fired by Motown head Berry Gordy shortly after production began, owing to creative differences.

He wrote and directed the comedy-drama The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), based on John Irving's novel of the same name and starring Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges and Rob Lowe. Although it was a box-office failure, the film received a positive critical reception.

Richardson made four more major films before his death. His last, Blue Sky (1994), was not released for nearly three years after he died. Jessica Lange won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film.

In 1966, Richardson is alleged to have financed the escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison of the spy and double agent George Blake.

Personal life
Richardson was married to English actress Vanessa Redgrave from 1962 to 1967. The couple had two daughters, Natasha (1963–2009) and Joely Richardson (born 1965), then he left Redgrave for French actress and singer Jeanne Moreau. In 1972, he had a relationship with Grizelda Grimond, who was a secretary for Richardson's former business partner Oscar Lewenstein, and daughter of British politician Jo Grimond. Grizelda Grimond gave birth to his daughter, Katharine Grimond, on 8 January 1973.

Death
Richardson was bisexual, but never acknowledged it publicly until 1985, the same year he contracted HIV. He died of complications from AIDS on 14 November 1991 at the age of 63.

Theatre
sources: Adler; Little & McLaughlin; Richardson

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tony Richardson


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Albert Finney

Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019) was an English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining fame for movie acting during the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer (1960), directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in theatre. He maintained a successful career in theatre, movies and television.

He is known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Two for the Road (1967), Scrooge (1970), Annie (1982), The Dresser (1983), Miller's Crossing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), Erin Brockovich (2000), Big Fish (2003), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and the James Bond movie Skyfall (2012), and for his performances on stage and television.

A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Silver Bear and Volpi Cup awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984), and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich (2000). He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical movie The Gathering Storm.

Early life
Finney was born in Salford, Lancashire, the youngest of three children and only son of Albert Finney, a bookmaker, and Alice (née Hobson). He was educated at Tootal Drive Primary School, Salford Grammar School, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), from which he graduated in 1956.

1955–1962: Early career
While at RADA Finney made an early television appearance playing Mr Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. The BBC filmed and broadcast the RADA students' performances at the Vanbrugh Theatre in London on Friday 6 January 1956. Other members of the cast included Roy Kinnear and Richard Briers. Finney graduated from RADA and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Finney was offered a contract by the Rank Organisation but refused it to perform for the Birmingham Rep. He was in a production of The Miser for Birmingham Rep, which was filmed for the BBC in 1956. Also for the BBC he appeared in The Claverdon Road Job (1957) and View Friendship and Marriage (1958). At Birmingham he played the title role of Henry V, and in 1958, made his London stage debut in Jane Arden's The Party, directed by Charles Laughton, who featured in the production along with his wife, Elsa Lanchester. In 1959 Finney appeared at Stratford in the title role of Coriolanus, replacing an ill Laurence Olivier. Finney guest featured for several episodes of Emergency-Ward 10 and was Lysander in a TV version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959) directed by Peter Hall.

Finney's first movie appearance was in Tony Richardson's The Entertainer (1960), with Laurence Olivier. Finney and Alan Bates played Olivier's sons. He made his movie breakthrough in the same year with his portrayal of a disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz's movie version of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), produced by Richardson. The movie was a success, being the third most popular movie in Britain that year. It earned more than half a million pounds of profit. Finney then did Billy Liar (1960) on stage and for British television. Finney had been chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's production of Lawrence of Arabia after a successful and elaborate screen-test that took four days to shoot. However, Finney baulked at signing a multi-year contract for producer Sam Spiegel and chose not to accept the role.

Finney created the title role in Luther, the 1961 play by John Osborne depicting the life of Martin Luther. He performed the role with the English Stage Company in London, Nottingham, Paris and New York. The original West End run at the Phoenix ended in March 1962, after 239 performances there, when Finney had to quit the cast to fulfil a contractual obligation with a movie company.

1963–1977
Finney featured in the Academy Award-winning 1963 movie Tom Jones, directed by Richardson and written by Osborne. Due to the success of Tom Jones, British exhibitors voted Finney the ninth most popular movie actor in 1963. Finney received 10% of the movie's earnings, which made him more than $1 million. Finney followed this with a small part in ensemble war movie The Victors (1963), which was not a success. He then made his Broadway debut in Luther in 1963. When that run ended he decided to take a year off and sail around the world. "People told me to cash in on my success while I was hot," he later said. "I'd been acting for about eight years and had only had one vacation ... Captain Cook had been a hero of mine when I was a kid, and I thought it would be exciting to go to some of the places in the Pacific where he'd been." The success of Tom Jones enabled Finney to produce his next film, Night Must Fall, in 1964, which he also featured in and which was directed by Reisz. A remake of the classic 1937 film of the same title, the movie was a failure and Finney's performance received poor reviews. Finney undertook a season of plays at the Royal National Theatre, including Miss Julie by August Strindberg in 1965. He resumed movie acting with Two for the Road (1967) co-featuring Audrey Hepburn. He and Michael Medwin formed a production company, Memorial Productions, which made Privilege (1967), directed by Peter Watkins; The Burning (1968), a short directed by Stephen Frears; and If.... (1968), directed by Lindsay Anderson. Memorial also did stage productions, such as A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which Finney performed in London and then Broadway. Memorial also produced some in which Finney did not appear, such as Spring and Port Wine and The Burgular. Memorial then made Charlie Bubbles (1968), which Finney featured in and also directed. Liza Minnelli made her feature debut in the movie. Finney later called it "the most intense sense of creation I've ever had." Finney featured in The Picasso Summer in 1969, and played the title role in the musical Scrooge in 1970.

Finney then made Gumshoe (1971), the first feature movie directed by Stephen Frears, for Memorial. Memorial continued to produce movies in which Finney did not appear: Spring and Port Wine (1970), with James Mason; Loving Memory (1971), an early directorial effort from Tony Scott; Bleak Moments (1971), the first feature from Mike Leigh; O Lucky Man! (1973) for Anderson; and Law and Disorder (1974); filmed in Hollywood. In 1972 Finney returned to stage after a six-year absence with Alpha Beta, which he later filmed for TV with Rachel Roberts. Memorial Productions stopped producing and Finney emphasized acting. "It was OK at first," he later said, "but in the end it was sitting in an office, pitching ideas to Hollywood and waiting for the phone to ring."

Finney played Agatha Christie's Belgian master detective Hercule Poirot in the movie Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Finney became so well known for the role that he complained that it typecast him for a number of years, "People really do think I am 300 pounds with a French accent", he said. He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

He announced he intended to direct a movie, The Girl in Melanie Klein, for Memorial, but it was not made.

Finney decided to take time off from features and focus on stage acting, doing classics at the National Theatre in London. "I felt that it needed commitment," he later said. "When you're making movies all the time, you stop breathing. You literally don't breathe in the same way that you do when you're playing the classics. When you have to deliver those long, complex speeches on stage, you can't heave your shoulders after every sentence. The set of muscles required for that kind of acting need to be trained. I really wanted to try and do justice to my own potential in the parts. I didn't want to be a movie actor just dropping in, doing Hamlet and taking off again. I wanted to feel part of the company."

Finney was at the National for more than three years during which he played in Hamlet, Macbeth, Tamburlaine, and plays by Anton Chekhov. Finney made a TV film Forget-Me-Not-Lane in 1975, which was written by Peter Nichols, and he also performed a brief role in The Duellists (1977), the first feature directed by Ridley Scott. He also released an album through Motown.

1981–1999
Finney had not played a major role in a feature movie in six years, and started to think about resuming work with cinema. The last two successful movies he had made were Scrooge and Orient Express in which he was heavily disguised. "Most Americans probably think I weigh 300 pounds, have black hair and talk with a French accent like Hercule Poirot," said Finney. "So I thought they should have a look at me while I was still almost a juvenile and kind of cute." Finney decided to make six movies in succession "so that I could relax and get back into it again. In order to feel really assured and comfortable in front of a camera, you've got to do it for a while." The first three were thrillers: Loophole (1981), with Susannah York; Wolfen (1981), directed by Michael Wadleigh; and Looker (1981), written and directed by Michael Crichton. He received excellent reviews for his performance in the drama Shoot the Moon (1982). Finney said the role "required personal acting; I had to dig into myself. When you have to expose yourself and use your own vulnerability, you can get a little near the edge." Less well received was his performance as Daddy Warbucks in the Hollywood movie version of Annie (1982), which was directed by John Huston. Finney said doing this movie after Shoot The Moon was "marvelous. I use a completely different side of myself as Warbucks. Annie is show biz; it's open, simple and direct. It needs bold, primary colors. I don't have to reveal the inner workings of the character, and that's a relief."

Finney featured in Peter Yates-directed movie The Dresser (1983) as Sir, a deteriorating veteran actor struggling through a difficult performance of King Lear. He earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He then played the title role for the TV movie Pope John Paul II (1984), his American television debut. Huston cast Finney in the lead role of Under the Volcano (1984), which earned both men great acclaim, including another Best Actor Oscar nomination for Finney. Finney played the lead role of Sydney Kentridge in The Biko Inquest, a 1984 dramatisation of the inquest into the death of Steve Biko which was filmed for television after a London run.

Finney performed on stage in Orphans in 1986, then did the movie version, directed by Alan J. Pakula. He had the lead in a television miniseries, The Endless Game (1989), written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Finney began the 1990s with the lead role in a film for HBO, The Image (1990). He received great acclaim playing the gangster boss in Miller's Crossing (1990), replacing Trey Wilson shortly before filming. Finney made an appearance at Roger Waters' The Wall – Live in Berlin (1990), where he played "The Judge" during the performance of "The Trial".

Finney featured in the BBC TV serial The Green Man, based on the Kingsley Amis novel. He followed it with The Playboys (1992) for Gillies MacKinnon; Rich in Love (1993) for Bruce Beresford; The Browning Version (1994) for Mike Figgis; A Man of No Importance (1994), for Suri Krishnamma; and The Run of the Country (1995) for Peter Yates. In 1994, Finney played a gay bus conductor in early 1960s Dublin in A Man of No Importance. He had the main role in Dennis Potter's final two plays, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (both 1996). In the latter he played a frozen, disembodied head. Finney did Nostromo (1997) for television, and Washington Square (1997) for Agnieszka Holland then made A Rather English Marriage (1998) with Tom Courtenay. He had supporting roles in Breakfast of Champions (1999) and Simpatico (1999).

2000–2019
Finney had his biggest success in several years with Erin Brockovich (2000), alongside Julia Roberts for Steven Soderbergh. His portrayal of real-life California lawyer Edward L. Masry earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his fifth and final Oscar nomination. Finney had a cameo in Soderbergh's Traffic (2000) and played Ernest Hemingway in Hemingway, the Hunter of Death (2001) for TV. He had the main role in Delivering Milo (2001) and in 2002 his critically acclaimed portrayal of Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm won him British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), Emmy and Golden Globe awards as Best Actor.

He also played the title role of the television series My Uncle Silas, based on the short stories by H. E. Bates, about a roguish but lovable poacher-cum-farm labourer looking after his great-nephew. The show played for two series broadcast in 2001 and 2003. Finney had a major role in Big Fish (2003) directed by Tim Burton, and did another cameo for Soderbergh in Ocean's Twelve (2004). He sang in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and the film of Aspects of Love (2005).

Finney was reunited with Ridley Scott in A Good Year (2006). He had support roles in Amazing Grace (2006), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), which reunited him with Murder on the Orient Express director Sidney Lumet. His final film role was in Skyfall (2012). A lifelong supporter of Manchester United Football Club, Finney narrated the documentary Munich, about the air crash that killed most of the Busby Babes in 1958, which was shown on United's TV channel MUTV in February 2008.

Theatre
He received Tony Award nominations for Luther (1964) and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1968),   and also starred on stage in Love for Love, Strindberg's Miss Julie, Black Comedy, The Country Wife, Alpha Beta, Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, Tamburlaine the Great, Another Time and, his last stage appearance, in 1997, "Art" by Yasmina Reza, which preceded the 1998 Tony Award-winning Broadway run.

He won an Olivier Award for Orphans in 1986 and won three Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Actor.

Finney never abandoned stage work and continued his association with the National Theatre Company in London, where he had performed during the mid-1960s in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard during the 1970s at the National Theatre.

Personal life and death
In 1957 Finney married actress Ann Jane Wenham Figgins ("Jane Wenham"); they had a son, Simon Finney, who works in the movie industry as a camera operator, and they were divorced during 1961. In 1970, Finney married French actress Nicole Dreyfus ("Anouk Aimée"), a union that lasted eight years. In 2006, he married Penelope Delmage, a travel agent. They remained together until Finney's death.

In May 2011, Finney disclosed that he had been receiving treatment for kidney cancer. According to a 2012 interview, he had been diagnosed with the disease five years earlier and had had surgery, followed by six rounds of chemotherapy. Finney died of a chest infection at the Royal Marsden Hospital on 7 February 2019; he was 82.

Awards and nominations
Finney declined the offer of a CBE in 1980, as well as a knighthood in 2000. He criticised such honours as "perpetuating snobbery".

Other awards
Other awards include: a Golden Laurel for his work on Scrooge (1970) and for his work on Tom Jones, for which he was the 3rd Place Winner for the "Top Male Comedy Performance" for 1964. He was honoured by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as Best Actor for Under the Volcano (which he tied with F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus), the National Board of Review Best Actor award for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actor award for Tom Jones.

Finney won two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role, for Erin Brockovich, and as a member of the acting ensemble in the film Traffic. He was also nominated for The Gathering Storm, for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries, but did not win.

He won the Silver Berlin Bear award for Best Actor, for The Dresser, at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1984.

He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, for Tom Jones, at the Venice Film Festival.

title: Albert Finney


text:
Anthony Quinn

Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), better known by his stage name Anthony Quinn, was an American actor. Born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a first-generation Irish-Mexican father, he was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental virility" in numerous critically acclaimed films both in Hollywood and abroad. His notable films include La Strada (1954), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Guns for San Sebastian (1968), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Across 110th Street (1972), The Message (1976), Lion of the Desert (1980), Jungle Fever (1991) and Seven Servants (1996). His starring performance in Zorba the Greek (1964) earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Quinn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice: for Viva Zapata! in 1952 and Lust for Life in 1956. In addition, he received two Academy Award nominations in the Best Leading Actor category, along with five Golden Globe nominations and two BAFTA Award nominations. In 1987, he was presented with the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. Through both his artistic endeavors and civil-rights activism, he remains a seminal figure of Latin-American representation in the media of the United States.

1915–1936: Childhood, studies and early acting

Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca was born April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution to Manuela "Nellie" (née Oaxaca) and Francisco "Frank" Quinn. Frank Quinn was born to an Irish immigrant father from County Cork and a Mexican mother. Frank reportedly rode with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, then later moved to the East Los Angeles neighborhood of City Terrace and became an assistant cameraman at a movie studio. In Quinn's autobiography, The Original Sin: A Self-portrait by Anthony Quinn, he denied being the son of an "Irish adventurer" and attributed that tale to Hollywood publicists. Quinn later said he was not accepted in Mexico because of his surname.

When he was six years old, Quinn attended a Catholic church and even contemplated becoming a priest, but at the age of 11, he joined the Pentecostals at the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which was founded and led by the evangelical preacher Aimee Semple McPherson. For a time, Quinn played in the church's band and was an apprentice preacher with the evangelist. "I have known most of the great actresses of my time, and not one of them could touch her," Quinn once said of the spellbinding McPherson, whom he credited with inspiring Zorba's gesture of the dramatically outstretched hand.

Quinn grew up first in El Paso, Texas, and later in East Los Angeles and in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, California. He attended Hammel Street Elementary School, Belvedere Junior High School, Polytechnic High School, and Belmont High School in Los Angeles, with future baseball player and General Hospital star John Beradino, but left before graduating. In June 1987, Tucson High School in Arizona awarded him an honorary high-school diploma.

As a young man, Quinn boxed professionally to earn money, then studied art and architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the designer's Arizona residence and his Wisconsin studio, Taliesin. The two men became friends. When Quinn mentioned that he was drawn to acting, Wright encouraged him. Quinn said he had been offered $800 per week by a film studio and did not know what to do. Wright replied, "Take it, you'll never make that much with me." During a 1999 interview on Private Screenings with Robert Osborne, Quinn said the contract was for only $300 per week.

1936–1952: Beginnings in cinema
After a short time performing on the stage, Quinn launched his film career performing character roles in the 1936 films The Plainsman (as a Cheyenne Indian after Custer's defeat with Gary Cooper), Parole (in which he made his debut), and The Milky Way, his first motion picture, although he was not credited. He played "ethnic" villains in Paramount films such as Dangerous to Know (1938) with Anna May Wong and Road to Morocco with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and played a more sympathetic Crazy Horse in They Died with Their Boots On with Errol Flynn.

A breakthrough in his career occurred in 1941, when he received an offer to play a matador in the bullfighting-themed Blood and Sand with Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth. In 1942, Quinn co-starred alongside Power in another critical and financial success, the swashbuckling adventure The Black Swan. In 1943, he had a role in the Oscar-nominated Western The Ox-Bow Incident. He co-starred in Sinbad the Sailor (1947) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Maureen O'Hara.

By 1947, Quinn had appeared in more than 50 films and had played a variety of characters, including Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Filipino freedom fighters, Chinese guerrillas, and Arab sheiks. He returned to the theater, replacing Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. In 1947, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

He returned to Hollywood in the early 1950s, and was cast in a series of B-adventures such as Mask of the Avenger (1951). He solidified his position as one of Hollywood's premier actors in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952), opposite Marlon Brando. Quinn's performance as Zapata's brother won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor while Brando lost the Oscar for Best Actor to Gary Cooper in High Noon. Quinn holds the distinction of being the first Mexican-American to win an Academy Award.

1953–1959: International films and career success

In the late 1950s, Quinn traveled to Rome, where he collaborated with several renowned Italian filmmakers and established himself as a star of world cinema. He worked with Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti in the Kirk Douglas film Ulysses, and starred as Attila the Hun, with Sophia Loren, in Attila. In 1953, he turned in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning La Strada (1954), opposite Giulietta Masina.

Quinn won his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of painter Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), alongside Kirk Douglas, who portrayed Vincent van Gogh. Quinn also starred as Quasimodo in the French-language film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Even after his return to the United States, Quinn continued to appear periodically in European films. His frequent portrayal of Italian characters and appearance in Italian films led to the popular misconception that he was, in fact, Italian.

1959–1969: Return to Hollywood and Broadway
The following year, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his part in George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind. Quinn starred in the film The Savage Innocents (1959) as Inuk, an Eskimo who finds himself caught between two clashing cultures. He teamed with Kirk Douglas once again in the Western Last Train from Gun Hill (1959).

He appeared on Broadway to great acclaim in Becket, as King Henry II to Laurence Olivier's Thomas Becket in 1960. Quinn's performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for best leading actor and Becket received the award for best play. An erroneous story arose in later years that during the run, Quinn and Olivier switched roles and Quinn played Becket to Olivier's King. In fact, Quinn left the production for a film, never having played Becket, and director Peter Glenville suggested a road tour with Olivier as Henry. Olivier happily agreed and Arthur Kennedy took on the role of Becket for the tour and brief return to Broadway.

As the decade ended, Quinn allowed his age to show and began his transformation into a major character actor. His physique filled out, his hair grayed, and his once smooth, swarthy face weathered and became more rugged. He played a Greek resistance fighter in The Guns of Navarone (1961), an aging boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight, and the Bedouin shaikh Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962). Lawrence of Arabia would go on to win the Oscar and Golden Globe for best picture, and Quinn received a Golden Globe nomination for best actor alongside co-star Peter O'Toole. He also played the title role in the 1961 film Barabbas, based on a novel by Pär Lagerkvist. In 1962, he returned to Broadway, playing the role of Caesario Grimaldi in the Tony Award-nominated Tchin-Tchin, and had the lead role in the film Requiem for a Heavyweight.

The success of Zorba the Greek in 1964 resulted in another Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Other films included The 25th Hour, The Magus, Guns for San Sebastian, and The Shoes of the Fisherman. In 1969, he starred in The Secret of Santa Vittoria with Anna Magnani; each was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

1970–1979: Television and later films

In 1970 Quinn starred as a liberal sociology professor in the campus unrest drama R. P. M., opposite Ann-Margret, and as a Smoky Mountains backwoodsman in A Walk in the Spring Rain, Ingrid Bergman's first American film in 20 years. In 1971, after the success of a TV movie named The City, where Quinn played Mayor Thomas Jefferson Alcala, he starred in the television series, The Man and the City. Quinn's subsequent television appearances were sporadic, including Jesus of Nazareth.

In 1972, he co-starred with Yaphet Kotto in the blaxploitation film Across 110th Street. He played NYPD Captain Frank Martelli, who along with Kotto, was investigating a robbery-homicide of Italian and Black gangsters in Harlem, New York City. He played the old racist, violent captain, against Kotto's modern, educated, enlightened lieutenant.

In 1976, Quinn starred in the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God (also known as The Message), about the origin of Islam, as Hamza, a highly respected uncle of Mohammad, the prophet of Islam. In 1981, he starred in Lion of the Desert. Quinn played real-life Bedouin leader Omar Mukhtar, who fought Benito Mussolini's Italian troops in the deserts of Libya.

In 1979, Quinn starred in the film The Passage, as a Basque shepherd during WWII. He was tasked with leading a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees, while pursued by Nazis. It also starred James Mason and Malcolm McDowell.

1980–1994: Final works

In 1983, he reprised his role as Zorba for 362 performances in a successful musical version, called Zorba, opposite fellow film co-star Lila Kedrova, reprising her role as Madame Hortense. Quinn performed in the musical both on Broadway and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

In 1990, he starred in The Old Man and the Sea, a television movie based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. Quinn's film career slowed during the 1990s, but he nonetheless continued to work steadily, appearing in Revenge (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), A Walk in the Clouds (1995) and Seven Servants (1996).

In 1994, Quinn played the role of Zeus in five television movies focusing on the legendary journeys of Hercules. These were, in order, Hercules and the Amazon Women, Hercules and the Lost Kingdom, Hercules and the Circle of Fire, Hercules in the Underworld, and Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur.

In 1995, Quinn starred in his last movie in a lead role in the film Seven Servants, by Daryush Shokof.

Relationships and children

Quinn's first wife was actress Katherine DeMille, the adopted daughter of Cecil B. DeMille; they wed in 1937. The couple had five children: Christopher (1938–1941), Christina (born December 1, 1941), Catalina (born November 21, 1942), Duncan (born August 4, 1945), and Valentina (born December 26, 1952). Their first child, Christopher, aged two, drowned in the lily pond of next-door neighbor W. C. Fields. During his marriage to DeMille, Quinn had an affair with the married actress Evelyn Keyes.

In 1965, Quinn and DeMille divorced because of his affair with Italian costume designer Jolanda Addolori (died 2016), whom he married in 1966. They had three children: Francesco Quinn (March 22, 1963 – August 5, 2011), Danny Quinn (born April 16, 1964), and Lorenzo Quinn (born May 7, 1966).

In the 1970s, during his marriage to Addolori, Quinn also had two children with Friedel Dunbar, an event producer in Los Angeles: Sean Quinn (born February 7, 1973) and Alexander Anthony Quinn (born December 30, 1976).

In the 1990s, Quinn had two children with his secretary Katherine Benvin; daughter Antonia Patricia Rose Quinn (born July 23, 1993) and son Ryan Nicholas Quinn (born July 5, 1996). His marriage with Addolori finally ended in divorce in August 1997. He then married Benvin in December 1997 and remained married to her until his death.

Civil-rights activism
Quinn, who experienced discrimination growing up in Los Angeles, participated in various civil-rights and social causes. He provided funding for Latino advocacy group the Spanish-Speaking People's Congress. He assisted in fundraising efforts for the legal defense of Mexican-American youth in the racially charged Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in 1942. While in Paris, several other prominent Americans and he composed a petition endorsing the 1963 March on Washington; the petition, which was reprinted in several high-profile publications, was intended to rally support among Americans living abroad, according to Elliott Miller, writing in CounterPunch. In 1969, Quinn visited with Native American student activists occupying Alcatraz Island in protest, promising to offer assistance. In 1970, Quinn was a panelist at the Mexican-American Conference. In 1971, he narrated a documentary film by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, discussing job discrimination faced by Hispanic Americans. He was a supporter of the United Farm Workers organization led by his friend and labor activist Cesar Chavez.

Painting and writing

Art critic Donald Kuspit explains, "Examining Quinn's many expressions of creativity together—his art, collecting, and acting—we can see that he was a creative genius."

Early in life, Quinn had an interest in painting and drawing. Throughout his teenaged years, he won various art competitions in California and focused his studies at Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles on drafting. Later, Quinn studied briefly under Frank Lloyd Wright through the Taliesin Fellowship — an opportunity created by winning first prize in an architectural design contest. Through Wright's recommendation, Quinn took acting lessons as a form of postoperative speech therapy, which led to an acting career that spanned over six decades.

Apart from art classes taken in Chicago during the 1950s, Quinn never attended art school; nonetheless, taking advantage of books, museums, and amassing a sizable collection, he managed to give himself an effective education in the language of modern art. By the early 1980s, his work had caught the eyes of various gallery owners and was exhibited internationally, in Mexico City, Los Angeles, New York City, and Paris. His work is now represented in both public and private collections throughout the world.

He wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997), a number of scripts, and a series of unpublished stories currently in the collection of his archive.

Death
Quinn spent his last years in Bristol, Rhode Island. He died of respiratory failure (due to complications from radiation treatment for lung cancer) on June 3, 2001, in Boston, at age 86. Quinn's funeral was held in the First Baptist Church in America in College Hill, Providence, Rhode Island. His wife asked for the permission of Bristol authorities to bury him in his favorite spot in the backyard of his house, near an old maple tree. They had bought the property in 1995; it had a view of the Narragansett Bay. Permission was granted and he was laid to rest there.

Tributes and legacy
On January 5, 1982, the Belvedere County Public Library in East Los Angeles was renamed in honor of Anthony Quinn. The present library sits on the site of his family's former home.

In 1984, artist Eloy Torrez produced a 70-foot-high (21 m) portrait mural of Quinn titled both Anthony Quinn and The Pope of Broadway in Los Angeles. It depicts Quinn in his famous Zorba the Greek role, and it remains one of the largest portrait murals in California. Both the portrait mural and Anthony Quinn himself are the subject of a 2018 Google Arts & Culture exhibit.

His birthplace of Chihuahua, Mexico, has a statue of Quinn doing his famous "Zorba the Greek" dance.

An Anthony Quinn Bay and Beach is in Rhodes, Greece, just 2.7 mi south of the village of Faliraki. Quinn bought the land during the filming of The Guns of Navarone in Rhodes, but it was reclaimed by the Greek government in 1984 due to a change in property law.

Since 2002, the National Council of La Raza has given the Anthony Quinn Award for Excellence in Motion Pictures as an ALMA Award. His widow, Katherine Benvin Quinn, established the Anthony Quinn Foundation, which advocates the importance of arts in education.

Awards and nominations

title: Anthony Quinn


text:
Talk:Assata Shakur

Shakur as Political Theorist
I'd like to suggest that this Wikipedia article list Shakur's political ideologies and treat her more like the political philosophers who have pages on Wikipedia. I know some people in this community view Shakur only as a criminal. There is a list of charges against her beneath her photo. But why is there no list of her ideologies? Why should she be treated differently from someone like Emma Goldman? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.12.36.123 (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Domestic terrorist
The descriptor should say that she is an domestic terrorist, however people keep removing it. As she was a member of a terrorist organization, that literally means she is a terrorist. Plus there are numerous instances of her committing terrorist acts. Removing the descriptor suggests political bias, as well as possibility racial bias.(Terrorists who are White, such as Timothy McVeigh, are always without fail labeled as terrorists) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:31b0:2c50:cdc:1656:ac11:d850 (talk) 09:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The lead of the article is intended to summarise the body of the text. Our content, in turn, summarises what the sources we use say. If they call her a terrorist, so will we; if they do not, we will not. We don't decide to use descriptors like that based on our own judgement, we do it based on what the sources tell us. I have removed the descriptor - please don't reinsert it unless you can point to the sources that describe her in those terms, and gain consensus on this talk page that it is the correct term to use. Please also don't accuse your fellow editors of political or racial bias on article talk pages - stick to the content, and sourcing. Thank you Girth Summit  (blether)  13:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * "Our content, in turn, summarises what the sources we use say. If they call her a terrorist, so will we; if they do not, we will not." Well, if we use your point, according to the FBI, (a legitimate and official source) she is designated as a terrorist Kaisersauce1 (talk) 04:31, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

 * It's a waste of time to engage with editors on any topic that's easily politicized. This site was compromised by liberal gatekeepers long ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fxwolf (talk • contribs) 22:06, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The FBI's opinion is not fact. See also MOS:TERRORIST. FDW777 (talk) 07:37, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Murder clarification
This article says: "The prosecution contended that Shakur shot and killed her companion, Zayd Shakur, and "executed" Trooper Foerster with his own weapon.[131]" From the NYTimes article cited: “He [Foerster] was executed with his own weapon,” Mr. Barone said. Trooper James Harper was wounded in the exchange and a companion of Mrs. Chesimard was shot dead…. Police authorities contend that Mrs. Chesimard shot and killed Mr. Costan [Zayd Shakur], who had been wounded in the exchange of gunfire with Trooper Harper." Police authorities is not the same as 'prosecution'. The police may have said Assata killed Zayd, but the NYTimes does not support saying the prosecution at the trial said this. 22:27, 20 July 2017 (UTC) CancerMom (talk) 22:14, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Joanne
It sounded so strange when people called me Joanne. Should that be JoAnne? Jack Upland (talk) 03:16, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

April 16, 1981 event
How relevant/interesting is the April 16, 1981 event?

> Investigators believe BLA member Joanne Chesimard, convicted in the 1973 killing of New Jersey State Police trooper Werner Foerster, was inside the van that morning, sources familiar with the case said. Niels.bom (talk) 11:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Assata Shakur


text:
René Goscinny

René Goscinny (, ; 14 August 1926 – 5 November 1977) was a French comic editor and writer, who created the Astérix comic book series with illustrator Albert Uderzo. He was raised primarily in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he attended French schools, as well as lived in the United States for a short period of time. There he met Belgian cartoonist Morris. After his return to France, they collaborated for more than 20 years on the comic series Lucky Luke (in what was considered the series' golden age).

He wrote Iznogoud with Jean Tabary. Goscinny also wrote a series of children's books known as Le Petit Nicolas (Little Nicolas) illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé.

Early life
Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926, to Jewish immigrants from Poland. His parents were Stanisław Simkha Gościnny, a chemical engineer from Warsaw, and Anna (Hanna) Bereśniak-Gościnna from Chodorków (modern-day Khodorkiv), a small village near Kyiv in Ukraine. Goscinny's maternal grandfather, Abraham Lazare Berezniak, founded a printing company. Claude, Goscinny's older brother, was six years older, born on 10 December 1920.

Stanisław and Anna had met in Paris and married in 1919. When René was two, the Gościnnys moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, because his father had been hired as a chemical engineer there. René had a happy childhood in Buenos Aires and studied in French-language schools there. He was often the "class clown", probably to compensate for a natural shyness. He started drawing very early on, inspired by the illustrated stories which he enjoyed reading.

In December 1943, the year after Goscinny graduated from lycée or high school, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). The youth had to go to work. The next year, he got his first job as an assistant accountant in a tyre recovery factory. After being laid off the following year, Goscinny became a junior illustrator in an advertising agency.

Goscinny, along with his mother, emigrated from Argentina and immigrated to New York, United States in 1945 to join her brother, Boris. To avoid service in the United States Armed Forces he travelled to France to join the French Army in 1946. He served at Aubagne in the 141st Alpine Infantry Battalion. Promoted to senior corporal, he became the appointed artist of the regiment and drew illustrations and posters for the army.

First works
The following year, Goscinny worked on an illustrated version of the Balzac novella The Girl with the Golden Eyes. In April of that year he returned to New York.

There he went through the most difficult period of his life. For a while, Goscinny was jobless, alone, and living in poverty. By 1948, though, he had begun working in a small studio, where he became friends with future MAD Magazine contributors Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Harvey Kurtzman. Goscinny became art director at Kunen Publishers, where he wrote four books for children.

Around this time he met two Belgian comic artists, Joseph Gillain, better known as Jijé, and Maurice de Bevere, also known as Morris. Morris lived in the US for six years, having already started his cartoon series Lucky Luke. (He and Goscinny collaborated on this, with Goscinny writing it from 1955 until his death in 1977, a period described as its golden age).

Georges Troisfontaines, chief of the World Press agency, convinced Goscinny to return to France in 1951 in order to work for his agency as the head of the Paris office. There he met Albert Uderzo, with whom he started a longtime collaboration. They started out with some work for Bonnes Soirées, a women's magazine for which Goscinny wrote Sylvie. Goscinny and Uderzo also launched the series Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior, in the magazine La Libre Junior.

In 1955, Goscinny, together with Uderzo, Jean-Michel Charlier, and Jean Hébrad, founded the syndicate Edipress/Edifrance. The syndicate launched publications such as Clairon for the factory union and Pistolin for a chocolate company. Goscinny and Uderzo cooperated on the series Bill Blanchart in Jeannot, Pistolet in Pistolin, and Benjamin et Benjamine in the magazine of the same name. Under the pseudonym Agostini, Goscinny wrote Le Petit Nicolas for Jean-Jacques Sempé in Le Moustique. It was later published in Sud-Ouest and Pilote magazines.

In 1956, Goscinny began a collaboration with Tintin magazine. He wrote some short stories for Jo Angenot and Albert Weinberg, and worked on Signor Spaghetti with Dino Attanasio, Monsieur Tric with Bob de Moor, Prudence Petitpas with Maurice Maréchal, Globul le Martien and Alphonse with Tibet, Strapontin with Berck and Modeste et Pompon with André Franquin. An early creation with Uderzo, Oumpah-pah, was also adapted for serial publication in Tintin from 1958 to 1962. In addition, Goscinny appeared in the magazines Paris-Flirt (Lili Manequin with Will) and Vaillant (Boniface et Anatole with Jordom, Pipsi with Godard).

Pilote and Astérix (1959)
In 1959, the Édifrance/Édipresse syndicate started the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote. Goscinny became one of the most productive writers for the magazine. In the magazine's first issue, he launched Astérix, with Uderzo. The series was an instant hit and remains popular worldwide. Goscinny also restarted the series Le Petit Nicolas and Jehan Pistolet, now called Jehan Soupolet. Goscinny also began Jacquot le Mousse and Tromblon et Bottaclou with Godard.

The magazine was bought by Georges Dargaud in 1960, and Goscinny became editor-in-chief. He also began new series like Les Divagations de Monsieur Sait-Tout (with Martial), La Potachologie Illustrée (with Cabu), Les Dingodossiers (with Gotlib) and La Forêt de Chênebeau (with Mic Delinx). With Tabary, he launched Calife Haroun El Poussah in Record, a series that was later continued in Pilote as Iznogoud. With Raymond Macherot he created Pantoufle for Spirou.

Family
Goscinny married Gilberte Pollaro-Millo in 1967. In 1968 their daughter Anne Goscinny was born. She also became an author.

Anne Goscinny, the daughter of René Goscinny, co-wrote the screenplay for Little Nicholas: Happy As Can Be, 2022 animation film with Michel Fessler and Massoubre.

Death

Goscinny died at 51, in Paris of a heart attack on 5 November 1977, during a routine stress test at his doctor's office. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Nice. In accordance with his will, most of his money was transferred to the chief rabbinate of France.

Goscinny's death occurred part-way through the writing of Asterix in Belgium (published in 1979, two years after his death). As a homage to Goscinny, Uderzo drew darkened skies and rain into the comic. The last panel on page 32 and all but the last panel on page 33 were drawn with grey skies and rain to mark the point at which Goscinny died. Most of the remaining panels in the book were drawn with leaden grey skies, but none have rain. There is a further tribute at the end of the book: near the lower left corner of the final panel, Uderzo drew a rabbit sadly looking over its shoulders towards Goscinny's signature. Regrettably, as printed (at least in the German edition) the outlines are too thick, even at 10X magnification, to make clear what the rabbit is doing.

After Goscinny's death, Uderzo began to write Asterix himself and continued the series, although at a much slower pace, until passing the series over in 2011 to writer Jean-Yves Ferri and illustrator Didier Conrad. Tabary similarly began to write Iznogoud himself, whereas Morris continued Lucky Luke with various other writers.

As a further tribute to Goscinny, Uderzo gave his late colleague's likeness to the Jewish character Saul ben Ephishul (Saul Nizahle in the German edition) in the 1981 album L'Odyssée d'Astérix ("Asterix and the Black Gold"), which is dedicated to Goscinny's memory.

Awards and honors

 * 1974: Adamson Award for best international comic strip artist, Sweden
 * 2005: Inducted in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame as a Judges' choice, U.S.

Since 1996, the René Goscinny Award is presented at the yearly Angoulême International Comics Festival in France as an encouragement for young comic writers.

According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, Goscinny, as of August 2017, was the 20th most-translated author, with 2,200 translations of his work.

On 23 January 2020, a life-sized bronze statue of Goscinny was unveiled near his former home in Paris. It was the first public statue in Paris dedicated to a comic book author.

title: René Goscinny


text:
Clostridium botulinum

Clostridium botulinum is a gram-positive, rod-shaped, anaerobic, spore-forming, motile bacterium with the ability to produce botulinum toxin, which is a neurotoxin.

C. botulinum is a diverse group of pathogenic bacteria. Initially, they were grouped together by their ability to produce botulinum toxin and are now known as four distinct groups, C. botulinum groups I–IV. Along with some strains of Clostridium butyricum and Clostridium baratii, these bacteria all produce the toxin.

Botulinum toxin can cause botulism, a severe flaccid paralytic disease in humans and other animals, and is the most potent toxin known to science, natural or synthetic, with a lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg in humans.

C. botulinum is commonly associated with bulging canned food; bulging, misshapen cans can be due to an internal increase in pressure caused by gas produced by bacteria.

C. botulinum is responsible for foodborne botulism (ingestion of preformed toxin), infant botulism (intestinal infection with toxin-forming C. botulinum), and wound botulism (infection of a wound with C. botulinum). C. botulinum produces heat-resistant endospores that are commonly found in soil and are able to survive under adverse conditions.

Microbiology
C. botulinum is a Gram-positive, rod-shaped, spore-forming bacterium. It is an obligate anaerobe, the organism survives in an environment that lacks oxygen. However, C. botulinum tolerates traces of oxygen due to the enzyme superoxide dismutase, which is an important antioxidant defense in nearly all cells exposed to oxygen. C. botulinum is able to produce the neurotoxin only during sporulation, which can happen only in an anaerobic environment.

C. botulinum is divided into four distinct phenotypic groups (I-IV) and is also classified into seven serotypes (A–G) based on the antigenicity of the botulinum toxin produced. On the level visible to DNA sequences, the phenotypic grouping matches the results of whole-genome and rRNA analyses, and setotype grouping approximates the result of analyses focused specifically on the toxin sequence. The two phylogenetic trees do not match because of the ability of the toxin gene cluster to be horizontally transferred.

Serotypes
Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) production is the unifying feature of the species. Seven serotypes of toxins have been identified that are allocated a letter (A–G), several of which can cause disease in humans. They are resistant to degradation by enzymes found in the gastrointestinal tract. This allows for ingested toxins to be absorbed from the intestines into the bloodstream. Toxins can be further differentiated into subtypes on the bases of smaller variations. However, all types of botulinum toxin are rapidly destroyed by heating to 100 °C for 15 minutes (900 seconds). 80 °C for 30 minutes also destroys BoNT.

Most strains produce one type of BoNT, but strains producing multiple toxins have been described. C. botulinum producing B and F toxin types have been isolated from human botulism cases in New Mexico and California. The toxin type has been designated Bf as the type B toxin was found in excess to the type F. Similarly, strains producing Ab and Af toxins have been reported.

Evidence indicates the neurotoxin genes have been the subject of horizontal gene transfer, possibly from a viral (bacteriophage) source. This theory is supported by the presence of integration sites flanking the toxin in some strains of C. botulinum. However, these integrations sites are degraded (except for the C and D types), indicating that the C. botulinum acquired the toxin genes quite far in the evolutionary past. Nevertheless, further transfers still happen via the plasmids and other mobile elements the genes are located on.

Toxin types in disease
Only botulinum toxin types A, B, E, F and H (FA) cause disease in humans. Types A, B, and E are associated with food-borne illness, while type E  is specifically associated with fish products. Type C produces limber-neck in birds and type D causes botulism in other mammals. No disease is associated with type G. The "gold standard" for determining toxin type is a mouse bioassay, but the genes for types A, B, E, and F can now be readily differentiated using quantitative PCR. Type "H" is in fact a recombinant toxin from types A and F. It can be neutralized by type A antitoxin and no longer is considered a distinct type.

A few strains from organisms genetically identified as other Clostridium species have caused human botulism: C. butyricum has produced type E toxin and C. baratii had produced type F toxin. The ability of C. botulinum to naturally transfer neurotoxin genes to other clostridia is concerning, especially in the food industry, where preservation systems are designed to destroy or inhibit only C. botulinum but not other Clostridium species.

Metabolism
Many C. botulinum genes play a role in the breakdown of essential carbohydrates and the metabolism of sugars. Chitin is the preferred source of carbon and nitrogen for C. botulinum. Hall A strain of C. botulinum has an active chitinolytic system to aid in the breakdown of chitin. Type A and B of C. botulinum production of BoNT is affected by nitrogen and carbon nutrition. There is evidence that these processes are also under catabolite repression.

Groups
Physiological differences and genome sequencing at 16S rRNA level support the subdivision of the C. botulinum species into groups I-IV. Some authors have briefly used groups V and VI, corresponding to toxin-producing C. baratii and C. butyricum. What used to be group IV is now C. argentinense.

Although group II cannot degrade native protein such as casein, coagulated egg white, and cooked meat particles, it is able to degrade gelatin.

Human botulism is predominantly caused by group I or II C. botulinum. Group III organisms mainly cause diseases in non-human animals.

Laboratory isolation
In the laboratory, C. botulinum is usually isolated in tryptose sulfite cycloserine (TSC) growth medium in an anaerobic environment with less than 2% oxygen. This can be achieved by several commercial kits that use a chemical reaction to replace O2 with CO2. C. botulinum (groups I through III) is a lipase-positive microorganism that grows between pH of 4.8 and 7.0 and cannot use lactose as a primary carbon source, characteristics important for biochemical identification.

Transmission and sporulation
The exact mechanism behind sporulation of C. botulinum is not known. Different strains of C. botulinum can be divided into three different groups, group I, II, and III, based on environmental conditions like heat resistance, temperature, and biome. Within each group, different strains will use different strategies to adapt to their environment to survive. Unlike other clostridial species, C. botulinum spores will sporulate as it enters the stationary phase. C. botulinum relies on quorum-sensing to initiate the sporulation process. C. botulinum spores are not found in human feces unless the individual has contracted botulism, but C. botulinum cannot spread from person to person.

Motility structures
The most common motility structure for C. botulinum is a flagellum. Though this structure is not found in all strains of C. botulinum, most produce peritrichous flagella. When comparing the different strains, there is also differences in the length of the flagella and how many are present on the cell.

Growth conditions and prevention
C. botulinum is a soil bacterium. The spores can survive in most environments and are very hard to kill. They can survive the temperature of boiling water at sea level, thus many foods are canned with a pressurized boil that achieves even higher temperatures, sufficient to kill the spores. This bacteria is widely distributed in nature and can be assumed to be present on all food surfaces. Its optimum growth temperature is within the mesophilic range. In spore form, it is a heat resistant pathogen that can survive in low acid foods and grow to produce toxins. The toxin attacks the nervous system and will kill an adult at a dose of around 75 ng. Botulinum toxin can be destroyed by holding food at 100 °C for 10 minutes; however, because of its potency, this is not recommended by the USA's FDA as a means of control.

Botulism poisoning can occur due to preserved or home-canned, low-acid food that was not processed using correct preservation times and/or pressure. Growth of the bacterium can be prevented by high acidity, high ratio of dissolved sugar, high levels of oxygen, very low levels of moisture, or storage at temperatures below 3 °C (38 °F) for type A. For example, in a low-acid, canned vegetable such as green beans that are not heated enough to kill the spores (i.e., a pressurized environment) may provide an oxygen-free medium for the spores to grow and produce the toxin. However, pickles are sufficiently acidic to prevent growth; even if the spores are present, they pose no danger to the consumer.

Honey, corn syrup, and other sweeteners may contain spores, but the spores cannot grow in a highly concentrated sugar solution; however, when a sweetener is diluted in the low-oxygen, low-acid digestive system of an infant, the spores can grow and produce toxin. As soon as infants begin eating solid food, the digestive juices become too acidic for the bacterium to grow.

The control of food-borne botulism caused by C. botulinum is based almost entirely on thermal destruction (heating) of the spores or inhibiting spore germination into bacteria and allowing cells to grow and produce toxins in foods. Conditions conducive of growth are dependent on various environmental factors. Growth of C. botulinum is a risk in low acid foods as defined by having a pH above 4.6 although growth is significantly retarded for pH below 4.9.

Taxonomic history
C. botulinum was first recognized and isolated in 1895 by Emile van Ermengem from home-cured ham implicated in a botulism outbreak. The isolate was originally named Bacillus botulinus, after the Latin word for sausage, botulus. ("Sausage poisoning" was a common problem in 18th- and 19th-century Germany, and was most likely caused by botulism.) However, isolates from subsequent outbreaks were always found to be anaerobic spore formers, so Ida A. Bengtson proposed that both be placed into the genus Clostridium, as the genus Bacillus was restricted to aerobic spore-forming rods.

Since 1959, all species producing the botulinum neurotoxins (types A–G) have been designated C. botulinum. Substantial phenotypic and genotypic evidence exists to demonstrate heterogeneity within the species, with at least four clearly-defined "groups" (see ) straddling other species, implying that they each deserve to be a genospecies.

The situation as of 2018 is as follows:

 * C. botulinum type G (= group IV) strains are since 1988 their own species, C. argentinense.
 * Group I C. botulinum strains that do not produce a botulin toxin are referred to as C. sporogenes. Both names are conserved names since 1999. Group I also contains C. combesii.
 * All other botulinum toxin-producing bacteria, not otherwise classified as C. baratii or C. butyricum, is called C. botulinum. This group still contains three genogroups.

Smith et al. (2018) argues that group I should be called C. parabotulinum and group III be called C. novyi sensu lato, leaving only group II in C. botulinum. This argument is not accepted by the LPSN and would cause an unjustified change of the type strain under the Prokaryotic Code. Dobritsa et al. (2018) argues, without formal descriptions, that group II can potentially be made into two new species.

The complete genome of C. botulinum ATCC 3502 has been sequenced at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2007. This strain encodes a type "A" toxin.

Diagnosis
Physicians may consider the diagnosis of botulism based on a patient's clinical presentation, which classically includes an acute onset of bilateral cranial neuropathies and symmetric descending weakness. Other key features of botulism include an absence of fever, symmetric neurologic deficits, normal or slow heart rate and normal blood pressure, and no sensory deficits except for blurred vision. A careful history and physical examination is paramount to diagnose the type of botulism, as well as to rule out other conditions with similar findings, such as Guillain–Barré syndrome, stroke, and myasthenia gravis. Depending on the type of botulism considered, different tests for diagnosis may be indicated.
 * Foodborne botulism: serum analysis for toxins by bioassay in mice should be done, as the demonstration of the toxins is diagnostic.
 * Wound botulism: isolation of C. botulinum from the wound site should be attempted, as growth of the bacteria is diagnostic.
 * Adult enteric and infant botulism: isolation and growth of C. botulinum from stool samples is diagnostic. Infant botulism is a diagnosis which is often missed in the emergency room.

Other tests that may be helpful in ruling out other conditions are:
 * Electromyography (EMG) or antibody studies may help with the exclusion of myasthenia gravis and Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS).
 * Collection of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein and blood assist with the exclusion of Guillan-Barre syndrome and stroke.
 * Detailed physical examination of the patient for any rash or tick presence helps with the exclusion of any tick transmitted tick paralysis.

Foodborne botulism
Signs and symptoms of foodborne botulism typically begin between 18 and 36 hours after the toxin gets into your body, but can range from a few hours to several days, depending on the amount of toxin ingested. Symptoms include:
 * Double vision
 * Blurred vision
 * Ptosis
 * Nausea, vomiting, and abdominal cramps
 * Slurred speech
 * Trouble breathing
 * Difficulty in swallowing
 * Dry mouth
 * Muscle weakness
 * Constipation
 * Reduced or absent deep tendon reactions, such as in the knee

Wound botulism
Most people who develop wound botulism inject drugs several times a day, so determining a timeline of when onset symptoms first occurred and when the toxin entered the body can be difficult. It is more common in people who inject black tar heroin. Wound botulism signs and symptoms include:
 * Difficulty swallowing or speaking
 * Facial weakness on both sides of the face
 * Blurred or double vision
 * Ptosis
 * Trouble breathing
 * Paralysis

Infant botulism
If infant botulism is related to food, such as honey, problems generally begin within 18 to 36 hours after the toxin enters the baby's body. Signs and symptoms include:
 * Constipation (often the first sign)
 * Floppy movements due to muscle weakness and trouble controlling the head
 * Weak cry
 * Irritability
 * Drooling
 * Ptosis
 * Tiredness
 * Difficulty sucking or feeding
 * Paralysis

Beneficial effects of botulinum toxin
Purified botulinum toxin is diluted by a physician for treatment of:
 * Congenital pelvic tilt
 * Spasmodic dysphasia (the inability of the muscles of the larynx)
 * Achalasia (esophageal stricture)
 * Strabismus (crossed eyes)
 * Paralysis of the facial muscles
 * Failure of the cervix
 * Blinking frequently
 * Anti-cancer drug delivery

Adult intestinal toxemia
A very rare form of botulism that occurs by the same route as infant botulism but is among adults. Occurs rarely and sporadically. Signs and symptoms include:
 * Abdominal pain
 * Blurred vision
 * Diarrhea
 * Dysarthria
 * Imbalance
 * Weakness in arms and hand area

Treatment
In the case of a diagnosis or suspicion of botulism, patients should be hospitalized immediately, even if the diagnosis and/or tests are pending. Additionally if botulism is suspected, patients should be treated immediately with antitoxin therapy in order to reduce mortality. Immediate intubation is also highly recommended, as respiratory failure is the primary cause of death from botulism.

In North America, an equine-derived heptavalent botulinum antitoxin is used to treat all serotypes of non-infant naturally occurring botulism. For infants less than one year of age, botulism immune globulin is used to treat type A or type B.

Outcomes vary between one and three months, but with prompt interventions, mortality from botulism ranges from less than 5 percent to 8 percent.

Vaccination
There used to be a formalin-treated toxoid vaccine against botulism (serotypes A-E), but it was discontinued in 2011 due to declining potency in the toxoid stock. It was originally intended for people at risk of exposure. A few new vaccines are under development.

Use and detection
C. botulinum is used to prepare the medicaments Botox, Dysport, Xeomin, and Neurobloc used to selectively paralyze muscles to temporarily relieve muscle function. It has other "off-label" medical purposes, such as treating severe facial pain, such as that caused by trigeminal neuralgia.

Botulinum toxin produced by C. botulinum is often believed to be a potential bioweapon as it is so potent that it takes about 75 nanograms to kill a person ( of 1 ng/kg, assuming an average person weighs ~75 kg); 1 kilogram of it would be enough to kill the entire human population.

A "mouse protection" or "mouse bioassay" test determines the type of C. botulinum toxin present using monoclonal antibodies. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with digoxigenin-labeled antibodies can also be used to detect the toxin, and quantitative PCR can detect the toxin genes in the organism.

C. botulinum in different geographical locations
A number of quantitative surveys for C. botulinum spores in the environment have suggested a prevalence of specific toxin types in given geographic areas, which remain unexplained.

title: Clostridium botulinum