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Clara Schumann

Clara Josephine Schumann (née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital by lessening the importance of purely virtuosic works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto (her Op. 7), chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.

She grew up in Leipzig, where both her father Friedrich Wieck and her mother Mariane were pianists and piano teachers. In addition, her mother was a singer. Clara was a child prodigy, and was trained by her father. She began touring at age eleven, and was successful in Paris and Vienna, among other cities. She married the composer Robert Schumann, on 12 September 1840, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him. She gave the public premieres of many works by her husband and by Brahms.

After Robert Schumann's early death, she continued her concert tours in Europe for decades, frequently with the violinist Joseph Joachim and other chamber musicians. Beginning in 1878, she was an influential piano educator at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, where she attracted international students. She edited the publication of her husband's work. Schumann died in Frankfurt, but was buried in Bonn beside her husband.

Several films have focused on Schumann's life, the earliest being Träumerei (Dreaming) of 1944. A 2008 film, Geliebte Clara (Beloved Clara), was directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms. An image of Clara Schumann from an 1835 lithograph by Andreas Staub was featured on the 100 Deutsche Mark banknote from 1989 to 2002. Interest in her compositions began to revive in the late 20th century, and her 2019 bicentenary prompted new books and exhibitions.

Family
Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich Wieck and his wife Mariane (née Tromlitz). Her mother was a famous singer in Leipzig who performed weekly piano and soprano solos at the Gewandhaus. Clara's parents had irreconcilable differences, in part due to her father's unyielding nature. Prompted by an affair between her mother and Adolph Bargiel, her father's friend, the Wiecks were divorced in 1825, with Mariane later marrying Bargiel. Five-year-old Clara remained with her father while Mariane and Bargiel eventually moved to Berlin, limiting contact between Clara and her mother to written letters and occasional visits.

Child prodigy
From an early age, Clara's father planned her career and life down to the smallest detail. She started receiving basic piano instruction from her mother at the age of four. After her mother moved out, she began taking daily one-hour lessons from her father. They included subjects such as piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition, and counterpoint. She then had to practice for two hours every day. Her father followed the methods in his own book, Wiecks pianistische Erziehung zum schönen Anschlag und zum singenden Ton ("Wieck's Piano Education for a Delicate Touch and a Singing Sound.") Her musical studies came largely at the expense of her broader general education, although she still studied religion and languages under her father's control of the family.

Clara Wieck made her official debut on 28 October 1828 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, at age nine. The same year, she performed at the Leipzig home of Ernst Carus, director of the mental hospital at Colditz Castle. There, she met another gifted young pianist who had been invited to the musical evening, Robert Schumann, who was nine years older. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to stop studying law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father. While taking lessons, he rented a room in the Wieck household and stayed about a year.

From September 1831 to April 1832, Clara toured Paris and other European cities, accompanied by her father. In Weimar, she performed a bravura piece by Henri Herz for Goethe, who presented her with a medal with his portrait and a written note saying: "For the gifted artist Clara Wieck". During that tour, the violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was also in Paris, offered to appear with her. Her Paris recital was poorly attended because many people had fled the city due to an outbreak of cholera. The tour marked her transition from a child prodigy to a young woman performer.

Success in Vienna
From December 1837 to April 1838, at the age of 18, Wieck performed a series of recitals in Vienna. Franz Grillparzer, Austria's leading dramatic poet, wrote a poem entitled "Clara Wieck and Beethoven" after hearing her perform Beethoven's Appassionata sonata during one of these recitals. She performed to sell-out crowds and laudatory critical reviews; Benedict Randhartinger, a friend of Franz Schubert, gave her an autographed copy of Schubert's Erlkönig, inscribing it "To the celebrated artist, Clara Wieck." Chopin described her playing to Franz Liszt, who came to hear one of Wieck's concerts and subsequently praised her extravagantly in a letter that was published in the Parisian Revue et Gazette Musicale and later, in translation, in the Leipzig journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. On 15 March, she was named a Königliche und Kaiserliche Österreichische Kammer-virtuosin ("Royal and Imperial Austrian Chamber Virtuoso"), Austria's highest musical honor.

An anonymous music critic, describing her Vienna recitals, said: "The appearance of this artist can be regarded as epoch-making... In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give."

Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann was a little more than nine years older than Wieck. In 1837, when she was 18, he proposed to her and she accepted. Robert then asked her father for her hand in marriage. Friedrich was strongly opposed to the marriage, and refused his permission. Robert and Clara decided to go to court and sue him. The judge allowed the marriage, which took place in Schönefeld church on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday, when she attained majority status. From then on, the couple maintained a joint musical and personal diary of their life together.

In February 1854, Robert Schumann had a mental collapse, attempted suicide, and was admitted, at his request, to a sanatorium in the village of Endenich near Bonn, where he stayed for the last two years of his life. In March 1854, Brahms, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, and Julius Otto Grimm spent time with Clara Schumann, playing music for her and with her to divert her mind from the tragedy. Brahms composed some private piano pieces for her to console her: four piano pieces and a set of variations on a theme by Robert Schumann that she had also written variations on a year earlier, as her Op. 20. The music by Brahms was not intended to be published, but for her alone. Brahms later thought to publish them anonymously, but eventually they were issued as his four Ballades, Op. 10, and Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9. Brahms dedicated the variations to both Schumanns, hoping that Robert would be released soon and rejoined with his family.

For the entire two years of Robert Schumann's stay at the institution, his wife was not permitted to visit him, while Brahms visited him regularly. When it was apparent that Robert was near death, she was finally admitted to see him. He appeared to recognize her, but could only speak a few words. Robert Schumann died two days later, on 29 July 1856.

Joseph Joachim
The Schumanns first met violinist Joseph Joachim in November 1844, when he was 14 years old. A year later, Clara Schumann wrote in her diary that in a concert on 11 November 1845, "little Joachim was very much liked. He played a new violin concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, which is said to be wonderful." In May 1853, they heard Joachim play the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. She wrote that he played "with a finish, a depth of poetic feeling, his whole soul in every note, so ideally, that I have never heard violin-playing like it, and I can truly say that I have never received so indelible an impression from any virtuoso." A lasting friendship developed between Clara and Joseph, which for more than forty years never failed her in things great or small, never wavered in its loyalty.

Over her career, Schumann gave over 238 concerts with Joachim in Germany and Britain, more than with any other artist. The two were particularly noted for their playing of Beethoven's violin sonatas.

Johannes Brahms

In early 1853, the then-unknown 20-year-old Johannes Brahms met Joachim and made a very favorable impression. Brahms received from him a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and thus presented himself at the Schumanns' home in Düsseldorf. Brahms played some of his piano solo compositions for the Schumanns, and they were deeply impressed. Robert published an article highly lauding Brahms, and Clara wrote in the diary that Brahms "seemed as if sent straight from God".

During Robert Schumann's last years, confined to an asylum, Brahms was a strong presence for the Schumann family. His letters indicate his strong feelings for Clara. Their relationship has been interpreted as somewhere between friendship and love, and Brahms always maintained the utmost respect for her, as a woman and a talented musician.

Brahms played his First Symphony for her before its premiere. She gave some advice about the Adagio, which he took to heart. She expressed her appreciation of the Symphony as a whole, but mentioned her dissatisfaction with the endings of the third and fourth movements. She was the first to perform many of his works in public, including the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, a solo piano work written by Brahms in 1861.

Concert tours
Clara Schumann first toured England in April 1856, while her husband was still living but unable to travel. She was invited to play in a London Philharmonic Society concert by conductor William Sterndale Bennett, a good friend of Robert's. She was displeased with the little time spent on rehearsals: "They call it a rehearsal here if a piece is played through once." She wrote that musical "artists" in England "allow themselves to be treated as inferiors." She was happy, though, to hear the cellist Alfredo Piatti play with "a tone, a bravura, a certainty, such as I never heard before". In May 1856, she played Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor with the New Philharmonic Society conducted by Dr Wylde, who as she said had "led a dreadful rehearsal" and "could not grasp the rhythm of the last movement". Still, she returned to London the following year and continued to perform in Britain for the next 15 years.

In October–November 1857, Schumann and Joachim went on a recital tour to Dresden and Leipzig. St. James's Hall in London, which opened in 1858, hosted a series of "Popular Concerts" of chamber music. Joachim visited London annually beginning in 1866. Schumann also spent many years in London participating in the Popular Concerts with Joachim and the celebrated Italian cellist Carlo Alfredo Piatti. Second violinist Louis Ries (nephew of composer Ferdinand Ries) and violist J. B. Zerbini usually played on the same concert programs. George Bernard Shaw, the leading playwright and also a music critic, wrote that the Popular Concerts helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England.

In January 1867, Schumann toured Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, along with Joachim, Piatti, Ries, and Zerbini. Two sisters, Louisa and Susanna Pyne, singers and managers of an opera company in England, and a man named Saunders, made all the arrangements. She was accompanied by her oldest daughter Marie, who wrote from Manchester to her friend Rosalie Leser that in Edinburgh the pianist "was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore, so had Joachim. Piatti, too, is always tremendously liked." Marie also wrote: "For the longer journeys we had a saloon [car], comfortably furnished with arm-chairs and sofas... the journey ... was very comfortable." On this occasion, the musicians were not "treated as inferiors".

Concerts
Schumann still performed actively in the 1870s and 1880s. She performed extensively and regularly throughout Germany during these decades, and had engagements in Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. When in Basel, Switzerland, she often stayed with the Von der Mühll family. She continued her annual winter-spring concert tours of England, giving 16 of them between 1865 and 1888, often with violinist Joachim.

She took a break from concert performances, beginning in January 1874, cancelling her usual England tour due to an arm injury. In July, she consulted a doctor, who having massaged the arm, advised her to practice for only one hour a day. She rested for the remainder of the year before returning to the concert stage in March 1875. She had not fully recovered, and experienced more neuralgia in her arm again in May, reporting that she "could not write on account of my arm". By October 1875, she had recovered enough to begin another tour in Germany.

In addition to solo piano recitals, chamber music, and accompanying singers, she continued to perform frequently with orchestras. In 1877, she performed Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto in Berlin, with Woldemar Bargiel conducting, her half-brother by her mother's second marriage, and had tremendous success. In 1883, she performed Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with the newly-formed Berlin Philharmonic, and was enthusiastically celebrated, although she was playing with an injured hand in great pain, having fallen on a staircase the previous day. Later that year she played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto (with her own cadenzas) with Joachim conducting the same orchestra, again to great acclaim.

In 1885, Schumann once again joined Joachim conducting Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, again playing her own cadenzas. The following day, she played her husband's Piano Concerto with Bargiel conducting. "I think I played fresher than ever", she wrote to Brahms, "What I liked very much about the concert was that I was able to give Woldemar the direction of it, who had longed for such an opportunity for years."

She played her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891. The last work she played was Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, in a version for two pianos, with James Kwast.

Teaching

In 1878, Schumann was appointed the first piano teacher of the new Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt. She had chosen Frankfurt among offers from Stuttgart, Hannover, and Berlin, because the director, Joachim Raff, had accepted her conditions: she could not teach more than 1-1/2 hours per day, was free to teach at her home, and had four months of vacation and time off for short tours in winter. She demanded two assistants, with her daughters Marie and Eugenie in mind.

She was the only woman on the faculty. Her fame attracted students from abroad, including Britain and the United States. She trained only advanced pupils, mostly young women, while her two daughters gave lessons to beginners. Among her 68 known students who made a musical career were Natalia Janotha, Fanny Davies, Nanette Falk, Amina Goodwin, Carl Friedberg, Leonard Borwick, Ilona Eibenschütz, Adelina de Lara, Mary Wurm, Marie Olson and Jane Roeckel. The Konservatorium held events to celebrate her 50th year on stage in 1878 and her 60th career anniversary ten years later. She held the teaching post until 1892 and contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

Death
Clara Schumann suffered a stroke on 26 March 1896, and died on 20 May at age 76. She was buried in Bonn at Alter Friedhof next to her husband, according to her own wish.

Family life
Robert Schumann gave his wife a diary on their wedding day. His first entry indicates that it should act as an autobiography of the family's personal lives, especially of the couple, and of their desires and accomplishments in the arts. It also functioned as a record of their artistic endeavors and growth. She fully accepted the arrangement of a shared diary, as evidenced by her many entries. It demonstrates her loyal love for her husband, with a desire to combine two lives into one artistically, although this life-long goal involved risks.

The couple remained joint partners in both family life and their careers. She premiered many of his works, from solo piano works to her own piano versions of his orchestral works.

She often took charge of finances and general household affairs. Part of her responsibility included earning money by giving concerts, though she continued to play throughout her life, not just for the income but because she was an artist by training and nature. The burden of family duties increased over time and narrowed her ability as an artist. As a flourishing composer's wife, she was limited in her own explorations.

She was the main breadwinner for her family and the sole one after her husband was hospitalized and then died. She gave concerts and taught, and she did most of the work of organizing her own concert tours. She hired a housekeeper and a cook to keep house while she was away on her long tours.

Clara and Robert Schumann had eight children:
 * Marie (1841–1929)
 * Elise (1843–1928)
 * Julie (1845–1872)
 * Emil (1846–1847)
 * Ludwig (1848–1899)
 * Ferdinand (1849–1891)
 * Eugenie (1851–1938)
 * Felix (1854–1879).

Her life was punctuated by tragedy. Her husband was permanently institutionalized after a mental collapse. Her eldest living son Ludwig suffered from mental illness like his father and, in her words, eventually had to be "buried alive" in an institution. She became deaf in later life, and she often needed a wheelchair. Not only did her husband predecease her, but so did four of their children. Their first son, Emil, died in 1847, aged only 1. Their daughter Julie died in 1872, leaving two small children aged only 2 and 7, then raised by their grandmother. In 1879, their son Felix died aged 24. In 1891, their son Ferdinand died at the age of 41, leaving his children to her care.

Their oldest child Marie was of great support and help to her mother, taking the position of household cook. Marie also dissuaded her mother from continuing to burn letters that she had received from Brahms which he had asked her to destroy. Another daughter, Eugenie, who had been too young when her father died to remember him, wrote a book, Erinnerungen (Memoirs), published in 1925, covering her parents and Brahms.

Schumann famously rescued her children from violence during the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. On the evening of 3 May, Robert and Clara heard that the revolution against King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony for not accepting the "constitution for a German Confederation" had arrived in Dresden. Most family members left and hid in a "neighbourhood security brigade", but on 7 May, she bravely walked back to Dresden to rescue her three children who had been left with a maid, defying a pack of armed men who confronted her, then walked back out of the city through the dangerous areas again.

Performance repertoire
During her lifetime, Schumann was an internationally renowned concert pianist. Over 1,300 concert programs from her performances throughout Europe between 1831 through 1889 have been preserved. She championed the works of her husband and other contemporaries such as Brahms, Chopin and Mendelssohn.

The Schumanns were admirers of Chopin, especially of his Variations on "Là ci darem la mano", and she played the piece herself. When she was 14 and her future husband 23, he wrote to her: "Tomorrow precisely at eleven o'clock I will play the adagio from Chopin's Variations and at the same time I shall think of you very intently, exclusively of you. Now my request is that you should do the same, so that we may see and meet each other in spirit."

In her early years, her repertoire, selected by her father, was showy and in the style common to the time, with works by Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Adolf von Henselt, Sigismond Thalberg, Henri Herz, Johann Peter Pixis, Carl Czerny and her own compositions. She turned to including compositions by Baroque composers such as Domenico Scarlatti and Johann Sebastian Bach, but performed especially contemporary music by Chopin, Mendelssohn and her husband, whose music did not attain popularity until the 1850s.

In 1835, she performed her Piano Concerto in A minor with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by Mendelssohn. On 4 December 1845, she premiered Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in Dresden. Following the advice of Brahms she performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor at the Hanoverian court and in Leipzig.

Along with Arabella Goddard she was one of the first woman pianists to perform Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata in public, doing so on two occasions before 1856. Her busiest years as a performer were between 1856 and 1873, after her husband's death. During this period, she experienced success as a performer in Britain, where her 1865 performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto in G major was met with enormous applause. As a chamber musician, she often gave concerts with violinist Joachim. In her later career, she frequently accompanied lieder singers in recitals.

Compositions
As part of the broad musical education given to her by her father, Clara Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. Clara wrote that "composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound". Her Op. 1 was Quatre Polonaises pour le pianoforte composed in 1831, and Op. 5 4 Pièces caractéristiques in 1836, all piano pieces for her recitals. She wrote her Piano Concerto in A minor at age 14, with some help from her future husband. She planned a second piano concerto, but only a Konzertsatz in F minor from 1847 survived.

After her marriage, she turned to lieder and choral works. The couple wrote and published one joint composition in 1841, setting a cycle of poems by Friedrich Rückert called Liebesfrühling (Spring of Love) in Zwölf Lieder auf F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling, her Op. 12 and his Op. 37. Her chamber works include the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (1846) and Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22 (1853), inspired by her husband's birthday. They were dedicated to Joachim, who performed them for George V of Hanover, who declared them a "marvellous, heavenly pleasure".

As she grew older, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly, writing, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" Her husband also expressed concern about the effect on her composing output:

"Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out."

She produced one to eight compositions every year beginning at age 11, until her output stopped in 1848, producing only a choral work that year for her husband's birthday and leaving her second piano concerto unfinished. These two works, while reserved for her opus 18 and 19, were never published. Five years later, however, when she was 34 in 1853, the year she met Brahms, she engaged in a flurry of composing, resulting in 16 pieces that year: a set of piano variations on an "Album Leaf" of her husband (his Op. 99 No. 4), eight "Romances" for piano solo and for violin and piano, and seven songs. These works were published a year later, after Robert's confinement, as her Op. 20 through 23.

For the next 43 years of her life, she only composed piano transcriptions of works by her husband and Brahms, including 41 transcriptions of Robert Schumann's lieder (commissioned by a publisher in 1872), and a short piano duet commissioned for a friend's wedding anniversary in 1879. In the last year of her life, she left several sketches for piano preludes, designed for piano students, as well as some published cadenzas for her performances of Beethoven and Mozart piano concertos.

Most of Clara Schumann's music was never played by anyone else and largely forgotten until a resurgence of interest in the 1970s. Today her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded.

Editor
Schumann was the authoritative editor, aided by Brahms and others, of her husband's works for the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. She also edited 20 sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, letters (Jugendbriefe) by her husband in 1885, and his piano works with fingering and other instructions (Fingersatz und Vortragsbezeichnungen) in 1886.

"War of the Romantics"
In the early 1840s the Schumanns were interested in the works of Franz Liszt and his young composer friends of what eventually became known as the New German School, but in the second half of the decade they both became openly hostile toward Liszt because of their more musically conservative outlook and beliefs, Clara more so than Robert, as she had long been the more conservative aesthete in the Schumann marriage. By the mid-1850s, after Robert's decline, the young Brahms had joined the cause, and to promote her ideals and protect what she saw as an attack on her husband's beliefs, she, Brahms, and Joseph Joachim formed a group of conservative musicians who defended Robert Schumann's critical ideals of the legacy and respectability of music, the pinnacle of which had been Beethoven.

The opposing side of this "War of the Romantics", a group of radical progressives in music (most of them from Weimar) led by Liszt and Richard Wagner, desired to escape composing under the shadow of Beethoven, but to transcend the old forms and ideas of what music had been and instead create what music should be for the future. The Weimar school promoted the idea of program music, while both the Schumanns and Brahms of the Leipzig/Berlin school were strict in their stance that music must and can only be absolute music, a term derisively coined by Wagner.

One of Clara Schumann's difficulties with Liszt stemmed from a philosophical difference in performance practice. He believed that the artist, through physical and emotional performance, interpreted music for the audience. When he performed, Liszt flailed his arms, tossed his head, and pursed his lips, inspiring a Lisztomania across Europe which has been compared to the Beatlemania of female fans of The Beatles over a century later. Clara, in contrast, came to believe that the personality of the musician should be suppressed so that the composer's vision would be clearly evident to listeners.

Partisans led active campaigns with public demonstrations at concerts, writings published in the press denigrating reputations, and other public slights designed to embarrass their adversaries. Brahms published a manifesto for the "Serious Music" side on 4 May 1861, signed by Clara Schumann, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, Woldemar Bargiel, and twenty others, which decried the purveyors of the "Music of the Future" as "contrary to the innermost spirit of music, strongly to be deplored and condemned". The New Weimar Club, a formal society with Liszt at its center, held an anniversary celebration of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the magazine Robert Schumann had founded, in his birthplace Zwickau, and conspicuously neglected to invite members of the opposing party, including his widow, Clara. Clara Schumann ceased to perform any of Liszt's works, and she suppressed her husband's dedication to Liszt of his Fantasie in C major when she published his complete works. When she heard that Liszt and Richard Wagner would be participating in a Beethoven centenary festival in Vienna in 1870, she refused to attend.

In describing the works of the opposing school, Clara Schumann was particularly scathing of Wagner, writing of his Tannhäuser, that he "wears himself out in atrocities", describing Lohengrin as "horrible", and referring to Tristan und Isolde as "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life". She also complained that Wagner had spoken of her husband, Mendelssohn, and Brahms in a "scornful" way. Wagner had poked fun at the musical conservatives in an essay, portraying them as "a musical temperance society" awaiting a Messiah. She held Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in very low esteem and wrote to Brahms, describing it as "a horrible piece". Bruckner's symphonies were seen as representative of the New Music due to their advanced harmony, massive orchestration and extended time-scale. Schumann was more impressed, however, with the early First Symphony in F minor by Richard Strauss; this was before Strauss began composing the highly programmatic music for which he later became famous.

Brahms secretly held Wagner's music in high esteem, and eventually publicly praised Liszt's works as well. Several of the proponents and signers of the manifesto, including Joachim, relented and joined the "other side". The controversy eventually died down, but Clara Schumann remained steadfast in her disapproval of the New German School's music.

Impact during her lifetime

Although Schumann was not widely recognized as a composer for many years after her death, she had a lasting effect as a pianist. Trained by her father to play by ear and memorize, she gave public performances from memory as early as age thirteen, a fact noted as exceptional by her reviewers. She was one of the first pianists to perform from memory, making it the standard for concerts. She was also instrumental in changing the kind of program expected of concert pianists. In her early career, before her marriage, she played the customary bravura pieces designed to showcase the artist's technique, often in the form of arrangements or variations on popular themes from operas, written by virtuosos such as Thalberg, Herz, or Henselt. As it was customary to play one's own compositions, she included at least one of her own works in every program, such as Variations on a Theme by Bellini (Op. 8) and the popular Scherzo (Op. 10). However, as she became a more independent artist, her repertoire contained mainly music by leading composers.

Schumann influenced pianists through her teaching, which emphasized expression and a singing tone, with technique subordinated to the intentions of the composer. One of her students, Mathilde Verne, carried her teaching to England where she taught, among others, Solomon. Another of her students, Carl Friedberg, carried the tradition to the Juilliard School in America, where his students included Nina Simone, Malcolm Frager, and Bruce Hungerford.

She was also instrumental in getting the works of Robert Schumann recognized, appreciated and added to the repertoire. She promoted his works tirelessly throughout her life.

Film
Clara Schumann has been portrayed on screen many times. Träumerei (Dreaming), the oldest known Schumann film, premiered on 3 May 1944 in Zwickau. Possibly the best-known film is Song of Love (1947) starring Katharine Hepburn as Clara, Paul Henreid as Robert, and Robert Walker as Brahms.

In 1954, Loretta Young portrayed her on The Loretta Young Show in Season 1, Episode 26: The Clara Schumann Story (first aired on 21 March 1954), in which she supports the composing career of her husband, played by George Nader, alongside Shelley Fabares and Carleton G. Young.

Two more recent German films are Frühlingssinfonie (Spring Symphony) (1983), starring Nastassja Kinski as Clara, and the 2008 Helma Sanders-Brahms' film Geliebte Clara (Beloved Clara), where she is portrayed by Martina Gedeck.

Theater
Clara Schumann's life has been explored in the chamber opera Clara by composer Victoria Bond and librettist Barbara Zinn-Krieger and the two-act opera Ghost Variations by composer Tony Manfredonia and librettist Aiden K. Feltkamp. Twin Spirits, a live theatrical performance involving a chamber ensemble of actors, singers, and musicians, also delves into Clara Schumann's life story.

Banknote and conservatory
An image of Clara Schumann from an 1835 lithograph by Andreas Staub was featured on the 100 Deutsche Mark banknote from 2 January 1989 until the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2002. The back of the banknote shows a grand piano she played and the exterior of Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium. The great hall of the conservatory's new building is named after her.

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title: Clara Schumann


text:
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is awarded periodically by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Governors Awards ceremonies to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production". The award is named for Irving Thalberg, head of the Production Division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who developed the company's reputation for sophisticated films. The trophy itself is a bust of Thalberg rather than the familiar "Oscar" statuette. However, it is still counted as an "Honorary Oscar".

The award was established in 1937 and was first presented at the 10th Academy Awards, in March 1938. Since 2009, it has been presented at the separate Governors Awards rather than at the main Academy Awards ceremony.

The Award has been awarded 39 times to date. Katharine Hepburn made her only appearance at an Oscar ceremony to present the award to her long-time friend Lawrence Weingarten at the 46th Academy Awards ceremony in 1974.

Other nominees
The 11th Academy Awards, where the award was won by Hal B. Wallis, marks the only occasion for which non-winning nominations were announced. The other nominees were: Samuel Goldwyn, Joe Pasternak, David O. Selznick, Hunt Stromberg, Walter Wanger, Darryl F. Zanuck.

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

title: Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award


text:
Talk:Felony/Archive 1

Classes of Felonies
Describe the new page here.DISTINGUISH THE DIFFERENT CASSES OF FELONY AND CHARGES RECIEVED —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.12.102.32 (talk)
 * Depends on the state that you are talking about. In Iowa, Class A Felonies are considered the worst and result in incarceration for any term of years, up to year, without parole. Class D Felonies are the least offensive felonies, but felonies nonetheless. --Ted 19:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Expunging Convictions
Can a felony be expunged? Or how can we go about having it expunged? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.253.34 (talk)
 * Depends on the laws of the State that you were convicted in (or Federal laws if convicted in federal court). --Ted 19:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Divorce from Felony Conviction
''In addition, some states consider a felony conviction to be grounds for an uncontested divorce. '' - I assume this is US states? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pakaran (talk • contribs)
 * Yes. It says as much in the article. "In the United States felons...," etc. --Eric 17:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Editorial
I think the circumstances should be taken into consideration especially if convicted with under the infulence of narcotics. If after a period of time the individual stays clean and sober the felony should be dropped down to a misdaminor not only if it is their first offence. Sometimet it takes more than one time or chances to "get it for good" Like me!!! Now I can only live in limited areas because of my past and have limited employment opportunites reguardless if i persue my education or not. It sucks. Spiritually and Physically Clean in Arizona —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.15.190.75 (talk)
 * Hi. While your input is appreciated, this is not a place for editorializing. Our articles explain how things are, not how they ought to be. Cheers! bd2412  T 21:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Funding refused for expunging federal felony convictions
"...the U.S. Congress has refused to fund the federal agency mandated with handling the applications of convicted felons to have their record expunged. This means that, in practice, federal felons cannot have their records expunged."

 * I can't find any reference or mention to this with almost an hour of googling. Can someone point me in the right direction or provide a citation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.76.74.68 (talk)

Voting rights of convicted Felons
"A civil sanction imposed on U.S. citizens convicted of a felony includes the loss of competence to serve on a grand or petit jury or to vote in elections even after release from prison. ... However the convicted person may regain his ability to serve as a juror and vote as part of a general restoration of civil rights following completion of sentence."
 * This text is ambiguous leaves it unclear as to whether voting rights are or are not restored after the sentence is served. If it varies it should say so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.19.57.138 (talk)

Federal employment for convicted Felons
Does a felony conviction as a sex offender preclude a person from working in a federal civil service job? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.53.3.5 (talk)

I need info. Plz. help! thanks!

 * I got a felony in 1990. Tonight looking at my charges on NC DOC, I realized that this charge did not show Felony...It showed: MISD.(PRE-STRUCTURE) (in the charge(s)) My question is: What is this ? And what does it mean? (68.110.142.38 02:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC))
 * Judging by the abbreviations:
 * NC
 * DOC
 * Felony
 * MISD. (PRE-STRUCTURE)
 * Funny that you don't really know what crime you have been charged and/or convicted of. Being charged with a crime is one thing. Being convicted (formally tried and found guilty of) is another thing. If you were convicted of a misdemeanor, that is not the same as a felony. At most you would pay substantial fines (hundreds or thousands of dollars) and serve petty jail time. --Ted 00:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Felony/Archive 1


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Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is awarded periodically by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) at the Governors Awards ceremonies for an individual's "outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes". Prior to 2009 and in 2021, this award was presented during the main Oscars ceremony. The award category was instituted in 1956 and first awarded at the 29th Academy Awards, in March 1957. Unlike the Academy Award of Merit, the awards are restricted with the nomination and voting limited to industry professionals that are members of the Board of Governors of AMPAS.

History
The award is named after Danish American screen actor and humanitarian Jean Hersholt (1886–1956), who served as president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund for 18 years. He also served as president of AMPAS from 1945 to 1949. Winners of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award are presented with an Academy Award Oscar statuette. As of the 92nd Academy Awards, there have been 39 awards presented, two of which were posthumous.

title: Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award


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Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder (born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-born filmmaker and screenwriter. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards (among 21 nominations), a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.

Wilder became a screenwriter while living in Berlin. The rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany saw him move to Paris. He then moved to Hollywood in 1934, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Ninotchka (1939). Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir Double Indemnity (1944), based on the novel by James M Cain with a screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Wilder won the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for The Lost Weekend (1945), which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a string of critically acclaimed films, including the Hollywood drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he won his second screenplay Academy Award; Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953) and Sabrina (1954). Wilder directed and co-wrote three films in 1957: The Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon and Witness for the Prosecution. During this period, Wilder also directed Marilyn Monroe in two films, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959). In 1960, Wilder co-wrote, directed and produced the critically acclaimed film The Apartment. It won Wilder Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Other notable films Wilder directed include One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), The Fortune Cookie (1966) and Avanti! (1972).

Wilder received various honors for his distinguished career including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990, the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and the BAFTA Fellowship Award in 1995. He also received the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement and the Producers Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award. *
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
 * Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Early life
Samuel Wilder (שמואל װילדער Shmuel Vilder ) was born on June 22, 1906, to a family of Polish Jews in Sucha, a small town in Poland, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Years later in Hollywood, he would describe it as being "Half an hour from Vienna. By telegraph." His parents were Eugenia (née Dittler) and Max Wilder. His mother described him as a "rambunctious kid"; inspired by Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows, which she saw while living briefly in New York, she nicknamed him "Billie", which he changed to "Billy" upon moving to America.

Wilder's elder brother, W. Lee Wilder, was also a filmmaker. His parents had a successful cake shop in Sucha's train station that flourished into a chain of railroad cafes. Eugenia and Max Wilder did not persuade their son to join the family business. Max moved to Kraków to manage a hotel before moving to Vienna and dying when Billy was 22 years old. After the family moved to Vienna, Wilder became a journalist instead of attending the University of Vienna. In 1926, jazz band leader Paul Whiteman was on tour in Vienna where he was interviewed by Wilder. Whiteman liked young Wilder enough that he took him with the band to Berlin, where Wilder was able to make more connections in entertainment.

Before achieving success as a writer, he was a taxi dancer in Berlin.

Early work
After writing crime and sports stories as a stringer for local newspapers, he was eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin tabloid. Developing an interest in film, he began working as a screenwriter. From 1929 to 1933 he produced twelve German films. He collaborated with several other novices (Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak) on the 1930 film People on Sunday. Eschewing the German Expressionist styles of F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, People on Sunday was considered as a groundbreaking example of the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity movement in German cinema. Furthermore, this genre of Strassenfilm ("street film") paved way to the birth of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. He wrote the screenplay for the 1931 film adaptation of a novel by Erich Kästner, Emil and the Detectives, also screenplays for the comedy The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931), the operetta Her Grace Commands (1931) and the comedy A Blonde Dream (1932), all of them produced in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin. In 1932 Wilder collaborated with the writer and journalist Felix Salten on the screenplay for "Scampolo". After Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Wilder went to Paris, where he made his directorial debut film Mauvaise Graine (1934). He relocated to Hollywood prior to its release. Wilder's mother, grandmother and stepfather were all victims of the Holocaust. For decades it was assumed that it happened at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, but while researching Polish and Israeli archives, his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter discovered in 2011 that they were murdered in different locations: his mother, Eugenia "Gitla" Siedlisker, in 1943 at Plaszow; his stepfather, Bernard "Berl" Siedlisker, in 1942 at Belzec; and his grandmother, Balbina Baldinger, died in 1943 in the ghetto in Nowy Targ.

After arriving in Hollywood in 1934, Wilder continued working as a screenwriter. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the government after his six-month card expired in 1934, an episode reflected in his 1941 Hold Back the Dawn. Wilder's first significant success was Ninotchka, a collaboration with fellow German immigrant Ernst Lubitsch. The romantic comedy starred Greta Garbo (generally known as a tragic heroine in film melodramas), and was popularly and critically acclaimed. With the byline "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received). Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. Brackett described their collaboration process: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler." "Wilder followed Ninotchka with a series of box office hits in 1942, including Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, and his directorial debut film The Major and the Minor.

1940s
His third film as director, the film noir Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, was a major hit. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress; Wilder co-wrote it with Raymond Chandler. The film not only set conventions for the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but is a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. Based on James M. Cain's novel, it featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. While the book was popular with the reading public, it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code because adultery was central to the plot.

In 1945, the Psychological Warfare Department of the United States Department of War produced an American documentary film directed by Wilder. The film known as Death Mills, or Die Todesmühlen, was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanuš Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version.

Two years later, Wilder adapted from Charles R. Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend into a film of the same name. It was the first major American film with a serious examination of alcoholism, another difficult theme under the Production Code. It follows an alcoholic writer (Ray Milland) opposing the protestations of his girlfriend (Jane Wyman). The film earned critical acclaim after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and competed in the main competition, where it received the Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, and four Academy Awards including for Best Picture. Wilder earned the Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay and Milland won Best Actor. The film remained to be one of the three films, winning both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d' Or, alongside Marty and Parasite.

1950s
In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the cynical noir comedy film Sunset Boulevard. It follows a reclusive silent film actress (Gloria Swanson), who dreams of a comeback with delusions of her greatness from a bygone era. She accompanies an aspiring screenwriter (William Holden), who becomes her gigolo partner. This critically acclaimed film was the final film Wilder collaborated with Brackett. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards; together Wilder and Brackett won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

In 1951, Wilder directed Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival) starring Kirk Douglas in a tale of media exploitation of a caving accident. The idea had been pitched over the phone to Wilder's secretary by Victor Desny. Desny sued Wilder for breach of an implied contract in the California copyright case Wilder v Desny, ultimately receiving a settlement of $14,350. Although a critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation has grown over the years. The following year, Wilder announced plans to direct and produce a film version of the Sophocles tragedy Oedipus Rex, adapted for the screen by Walter Reisch. They planned to shoot the film on location in Greece in Technicolor, but it never went into production.

Subsequently, Wilder directed three adaptations of Broadway plays, war drama Stalag 17, for which William Holden won the Best Actor Academy Award, romantic comedy Sabrina, for which Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress, and romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch, which features the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train. Wilder was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the first two films and shared a nomination for Best Screenplay for the second. He was interested in doing a film with one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden Age. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. He held discussions with Groucho Marx concerning a new Marx Brothers comedy, tentatively titled A Day at the U.N. The project was abandoned after Chico Marx died in 1961.

In 1957, three films Wilder directed were released: biopic The Spirit of St. Louis, starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh, romantic comedy Love In The Afternoon—Wilder's first screenplay with I. A. L. Diamond, who would become his regular partner—featuring Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and Audrey Hepburn, and courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution, featuring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton. Wilder received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the last film.

In 1959, Wilder reunited with Monroe in the United Artists released Prohibition-era farce film Some Like It Hot. It was released, however, without a Production Code seal of approval, which was withheld due to the film's unabashed sexual comedy, including a central cross-dressing theme. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis played musicians disguised as women to escape pursuit by a Chicago gang. Curtis's character courts a singer (Monroe), while Lemmon is wooed by Joe E. Brown – setting up the film's final joke in which Lemmon reveals that his character is a man and Brown blandly replies "Well, nobody's perfect". A box office success, the film was lightly regarded by film critics during its original release, although it did receive six Academy Award nominations, including for Best Director and Best Screenplay. But its critical reputation grew prodigiously; in 2000, the American Film Institute selected it as the best American comedy ever made. In 2012, the British Film Institute decennial Sight and Sound poll of the world's film critics rated it as the 43rd best movie ever made, and the second-highest-ranking comedy.

1960s
In 1960, Wilder directed the comedy romance film The Apartment. It follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon), who allows his coworkers to use his apartment to conduct extramarital affairs until he meets an elevator woman (Shirley MacLaine). The film was a critical success with The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, who called the film "gleeful, tender, and even sentimental" and Wilder's direction "ingenious". The film received ten Academy Awards nominations and won five awards, including three for Wilder: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Wilder directed the Cold War political farce film One, Two, Three (1961), starring James Cagney, which won critical praise with Variety writing, "Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is a fast-paced, high-pitched, hard-hitting, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Story is so furiously quick-witted that some of its wit gets snarled and smothered in overlap." It was followed by the romantic comedy Irma la Douce (1963) starring Lemmon and MacLaine. The film was the fifth highest-grossing film of the year. Wilder received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for his screenplay. Wilder then wrote and directed the sex comedy film Kiss Me, Stupid starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston, who was a last minute replacement for ailing Peter Sellers. The film was criticized by some critics for vulgarity, with Bosley Crowther blaming the film for giving American movies the reputation of "deliberate and degenerate corruptors of public taste and morals". A. H. Weiler of the New York Times called the film "pitifully unfunny". Wilder gained his final Academy Award nomination and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for the screenplay of The Fortune Cookie. It was the first film pairing Jack Lemmon with Walter Matthau. (The film was titled Meet Whiplash Willie in the United Kingdom.) In 1970, he directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which was intended as a major roadshow theatrical release, but to Wilder's dismay was heavily cut by the studio.

Final films
He directed the comedy film Avanti!, which follows a businessman (Lemmon) attempting to retrieve the body of his deceased father from Italy. Wilder received two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination. Wilder directed The Front Page based on the Broadway play of the same name. It was a significant financial success with low budget. His final films, Fedora and Buddy Buddy, failed to impress critics or the public, although Fedora has since been re-evaluated and is now considered favorably. Wilder had hoped to make Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark as his final film, saying "I wanted to do it as a kind of memorial to my mother and my grandmother and my stepfather," who had all been murdered in the Holocaust. He praised Steven Spielberg's adaptation, Schindler's List. To those who denied the Holocaust, Wilder wrote in a German newspaper, "If the concentration camps and the gas chambers were all imaginary, then please tell me—where is my mother?"

Directorial style
Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's films have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Once a subject was chosen, he would begin to visualize in terms of specific artists. His belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations. Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard. Regarding Wilder's more comedic films, Roger Ebert wrote: "he took the characters seriously, or at least as seriously as the material allowed, and got a lot of the laughs by playing scenes straight."

For Stalag 17, Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden (Holden had wanted to make his character more likable; Wilder refused). At a casting meeting, Wilder reportedly said, "I'm tired of clichéd typecasting—the same people in every film." An example of this is Wilder's casting of Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and The Apartment. MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer. Humphrey Bogart shed his tough-guy image to give one of his warmest performances in Sabrina. James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's One, Two, Three. Wilder coaxed a very effective performance out of Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson in Sunset Boulevard, Robert Strauss in Stalag 17, Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, Elsa Lanchester in Witness for the Prosecution, Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Jack Kruschen in The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment and Irma la Douce and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Wilder mentioned Lemmon, and was the first director to pair him and Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Wilder and Lemmon worked on seven films.

Wilder opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He co-created the "Committee for the First Amendment", of 500 Hollywood personalities and stars to "support those professionals called upon to testify before the HUAC who had classified themselves as hostile with regard to the interrogations and the interrogators". Some anti-Communists wanted those in the cinema industry to take oaths of allegiance. The Screen Directors Guild had a vote by show of hands. Only John Huston and Wilder opposed. Huston said, "I am sure it was one of the bravest things that Billy, as a naturalized German, had ever done. There were 150 to 200 directors at this meeting, and here Billy and I sat alone with our hands raised in protest against the loyalty oath."

Wilder was not affected by the Hollywood blacklist. Of the blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten' he said, "Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest were just unfriendly." In general, Wilder disliked formula and genre films. Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously. In Ball of Fire, his burlesque queen 'Sugarpuss' points at her sore throat and complains "Pink? It's as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore." Later, she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housemaid the name "Franco".

Retirement
Wilder received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1986. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1988, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Wilder became well known for owning one of the finest and most extensive art collections in Hollywood, mainly collecting modern art. As he described it in the mid-80s, "It's a sickness. I don't know how to stop myself. Call it bulimia if you want – or curiosity or passion. I have some Impressionists, some Picassos from every period, some mobiles by Calder. I also collect tiny Japanese trees, glass paperweights, and Chinese vases. Name an object and I collect it." Wilder's artistic ambitions led him to create a series of works of his own. By the early '90s, Wilder had amassed many plastic-artistic constructions, many of which were made in collaboration with artist Bruce Houston. In 1993, art dealer Louis Stern, a longtime friend, helped organize an exhibition of Wilder's work at his Beverly Hills gallery. The exhibition was titled Billy Wilder's Marché aux Puces and the Variations on the Theme of Queen Nefertete segment was notably popular. This series featured busts of the Egyptian queen wrapped à la Christo, or splattered à la Jackson Pollock, or sporting a Campbell's soup can in homage to Andy Warhol.

Personal life and death
Wilder married Judith Coppicus on December 22, 1936. The couple had twins, Victoria and Vincent (born 1939), but Vincent died shortly after birth. They divorced in 1946. Wilder met Audrey Young while filming The Lost Weekend. They were married on June 30, 1949.

Wilder died of pneumonia on March 27, 2002. He was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. A French newspaper, Le Monde, titled the front-page obituary: "Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody is perfect", a reference to the last line of Some Like It Hot.

Legacy

"'Don't be boring'. — Billy Wilder"

Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He directed two of film noir's definitive films, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. Along with Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers, he leads the list of films on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs and he earned the top spot on it with Some Like It Hot. Also on the list are The Apartment and The Seven Year Itch, which he directed, and Ball of Fire and Ninotchka, which he co-wrote. The AFI listed Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies. Wilder was ranked 6th in director's poll on Sight & Sound's 2002 list of The Greatest Directors of All Time. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ranked Wilder at No. 24 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list. Wilder was ranked at No. 19 on Empire's "Top 40 Greatest Directors of All-Time" list in 2005. In 2007, Total Film magazine ranked Wilder at No. 13 on its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list. Wilder was voted at No. 4 on the "Greatest Directors of 20th Century" poll conducted by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo.

Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Anthony Lane writes that Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment are "part of the lexicon of moviegoing" and that Some Like It Hot is a "national treasure." Roger Ebert asked, "Of all the great directors of Hollywood's golden age, has anybody made more films that are as fresh and entertaining to this day as Billy Wilder's?...And who else can field three contenders among the greatest closing lines of all time?", citing the closing lines of Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment. Ron Shelton recalls encountering Wilder:

"I was in a restaurant about six months after Bull Durham came out. And a man came over and said 'Somebody would like to see you.' And I looked over and it was Billy Wilder. And I went over and he said, 'Great fuckin' picture, kid!'And I thought that was a good a review as you could have.'"

When Belle Époque won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech: "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so thank you, Mr. Wilder." According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando, it's God." French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius thanked Billy Wilder in the 2012 Best Picture Oscar acceptance speech for The Artist: "I would like to thank the following three people, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, and I would like to thank Billy Wilder." Wilder's 12 Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when Woody Allen received a 13th nomination for Deconstructing Harry. In 2017, Vulture.com named Wilder the greatest screenwriter of all time. He directed fourteen actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder's epitaph, a paraphrase of the last line of Some Like It Hot, is "I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect."

Awards and honors
Wilder received twenty-one nominations at the Academy Awards, winning six. In total, he received twelve nominations for his screenwriting, eight for his direction, and one for producing. He won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for both The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Apartment (1960). The former was awarded the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival, and the latter also won him the BAFTA Award for Best Film. Wilder garnered eight Directors Guild of America Award nominations, with the sole win for his work on The Apartment. He received seven nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Director for The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard (1950). He won seven Writers Guild of America Awards including two Laurel Awards for Screenwriting Achievement. He garnered a number of lifetime achievement awards including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the BAFTA Fellowship, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, and the Honorary Golden Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival.

title: Billy Wilder


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Orem, Utah

Orem is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States, in the northern part of the state. It is adjacent to Provo, Lindon, and Vineyard and is approximately 45 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Orem is one of the principal cities of the Provo-Orem, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Utah and Juab counties. The 2020 population was 98,129, while the 2010 population was 88,328 making it the 5th most populous city in Utah. Utah Valley University is located in Orem.

History
At one time the area was known as Sharon, a Biblical name for a mostly level strip of land running between mountains and the sea, and the name of the Vermont birth town of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Another former name was Provo Bench. In an apparent attempt to attract more investment to the town and provide an easy way for the large population of farmers with orchards to ship produce, in 1914 it was named after Walter C. Orem, President of the Salt Lake and Utah Railroad in the early 1900s. Orem was incorporated on May 5, 1919.

Arts and culture
Orem is renowned for the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, and its Summerfest celebration and parade in June is a popular local attraction.

Geography
Orem is located at 40.29889°N, -111.69639°W (40.298753, -111.696486). Situated in a high desert, with an average elevation of 4,756 feet. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 18.4 sqmi, all land. The city is located near the eastern shore of Utah Lake, bordering Provo on the east and south, Vineyard to the west, Lindon contiguous to the north, and Mount Timpanogos/Wasatch Mountain range to the east.

2020 census
As of 2011 the 88,112 residents of Orem had a racial and ethnic composition of 89.3% white, 0.9% black or African American, 0.9% Native American, 1.6% Asian, 0.5% Pacific Islander Americans, 4% non-Hispanics reporting some other race, 2.9% two or more races reported and 14.8% Hispanic, as Orem has a large Mexican American community with other Latinos residing in the city. This contrasts with the census of 2000, which showed a racial makeup of 90.80% White, 0.33% African American, 0.73% Native American, 1.45% Asian, 0.86% Pacific Islander, 3.64% from other races, and 2.18% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.56% of the population.

The 2000 Census counted 84,324 people, 23,382 households, and 19,079 families. The population density at that time was 4,572.6 /mi2. There were 24,166 housing units at an average density of 1,310.4 /mi2. There were 23,382 households, out of which 48.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 69.0% were married couples living together, 9.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 18.4% were non-families. 12.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.57 and the average family size was 3.93.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 35.4% under the age of 18, 17.4% from 18 to 24, 25.8% from 25 to 44, 14.5% from 45 to 64, and 6.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 24 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.2 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $52,703, and the median income for a family was $59,066. Males had a median income of $42,249 versus $30,742 for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,971. About 10.3% of families and 13.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16% of those under age 18 and 6% of those age 65 or over.

As of 2002, over 97% of all church-going citizens of Orem are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Due to the high numbers of Latter-day Saints in the area, Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple in Orem on October 5, 2019. The temple is located a half mile south of the Interstate 15 exit at University Parkway on South Geneva Road.

Education
Orem is located in the Alpine School District and is home to three high schools, three junior high schools, and 14 elementary schools. Stevens-Henager College is also located in Orem, as is an education center of Utah State University.

Utah Valley University

Utah Valley University is a public university operated by the state of Utah. UVU is one of the United States' only Open Enrollment Universities offering acceptance to all applicants. As a university, UVU offers a wide variety of bachelor's and master's degrees. UVU is the largest and fastest growing public university in Utah with its attendance of over 43,000 undergraduates. The campus's notable features include the UCCU Center, the Digital Learning Center library, the Hal Wing Track and Field Complex, and the Woodbury School of Business. The Roots of Knowledge stained glass display is located in the Fulton Library on campus.

Government
The city of Orem is governed by a council-manager system. The mayor and council members are elected and serve part-time, while the city manager is appointed and serves full-time. There are six city council members that serve alongside the mayor. The mayor and city council are elected to staggered four year terms. List of mayors of Orem (years served):
 * B. M. Jolley (1941-1945)
 * J. W. Gillman (1946-1953)
 * Ray E. Loveless (1953)
 * Leland Jarman (1954-1957)
 * Luzell Robbins (1958)
 * V. Emil Hansen (1958-1959)
 * Melbourne D. Wallace (1960-1961)
 * G. Milton Jameson (1962-1965)
 * James E. Mangum (1966-1967)
 * Winston M. Crawford (1968-1973)
 * James E. Mangum (1974-1981)
 * Delance W. Squire (1982-1985)
 * S. Blaine Willes (1986-1991)
 * Joyce Johnson (1991)
 * Stella Welsh (1992-1997)
 * Joseph Nelson (died in office) (1998-1999)
 * Chris Yandow (1999-1999)
 * Jerry C. Washburn (2000-2011) Died on September 26, 2011, after a long battle with cancer.
 * James T. Evans (2011-2014)
 * Richard F. Brunst, Jr. (2014-2021)
 * David A. Young (2022-Current)

Economy
Orem has a wide variety of stores and businesses. Orem is also home to University Place, the oldest mall in Utah County, opened in March 1973.

Top employers
According to the city's 2023 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:

Company startups
Several notable companies started in Orem:
 * Blendtec
 * Bluehost
 * Caldera
 * Chess.com
 * Fishbowl Inventory
 * Flexsim
 * Mity-Lite
 * Novell (now owned by Micro Focus)
 * Omniture (now owned by Adobe Systems)
 * PowerQuest
 * Wahoo Studios
 * NinjaBee, subdivision of Wahoo Studios
 * WordPerfect (now owned by Corel, was at one time, when first named Satellite Software International [SSI], headquartered in the basement of the Orem City offices)
 * Zuka Juice

Sports

Orem has been home to a number of professional sports teams in addition to being the home to Utah Valley University's Wolverines athletic teams. The Orem Owlz minor league baseball team, a rookie league affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels, began play in 2005. The Owlz won 5 championships and had more than 90 major league players as part of the team. The Owlz played their home games at UCCU Ballpark on the campus of Utah Valley University. The stadium has a capacity of 5,000 spectators. The Owlz competed in the Pioneer League against teams from Colorado, Idaho, Montana and one team in Utah - the Ogden Raptors. They relocated to Windsor, Colorado, in 2021 and became the Northern Colorado Owlz.

Orem has also been the home to two indoor football teams as well as a G League professional basketball team. In 1998, the Utah Catzz played their only season in the Professional Indoor Football League as the league only lasted one season. The Utah Flash was an NBA G League affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers that was established in 2007.

Public transit
Several modes of transportation are available in Orem. The Utah Transit Authority operates the Frontrunner train, Utah Valley Express (UVX) bus rapid transit and regular bus service in the city. The Orem station serves Utah Transit Authority's FrontRunner train. The UVX route runs from Orem Central Station through UVU and along University Parkway through Orem's uptown near its southern boundary with Provo, which is where the opposite end of the bus line is located.

Major highways
The road system includes an Interstate highway, US highways, state highways, and city-maintained roads. Interstate 15 runs through the west side of Orem with four interchanges in the city. US Highway 89 (State Street) runs northwest–southeast through the middle of the city, while US Highway 189 (University Avenue) passes through a short section of northeast Orem. There are also four state routes that pass through the city - SR-52 (800 North/Canyon Parkway), SR-114 (Geneva Road), SR-241 (1600 North), and SR-265 (University Parkway).

Notable people
Notable groups include:
 * Alan Ashton - owns land of Thanksgiving Point and is co-founder of WordPerfect
 * Ben Cahoon - receiver for the Montreal Alouettes
 * William Campbell - California state legislator
 * James C. Christensen - fantasy, religious and surrealism artist
 * Ally Condie - New York Times bestselling author of the Matched series
 * LaVell Edwards - BYU football coach
 * Travis Hansen - former guard for Atlanta Hawks; co-founder of Eddy
 * Brett Helquist- illustrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events
 * Gary Herbert - former Governor of the State of Utah
 * Chelsie Hightower - So You Think You Can Dance season 4 finalist and professional ballroom dancer on Dancing with the Stars
 * Allison Holker - So You Think You Can Dance season 2 finalist
 * Julianne Hough - professional ballroom dancer on Dancing with the Stars and singer, born in Orem
 * John S. K. Kauwe III - Biologist and president of Brigham Young University–Hawaii
 * Paul Kruger - NFL linebacker for the Cleveland Browns
 * Chad Lewis - NFL tight end
 * Bert McCracken - lead vocals of the rock band The Used, was born in Provo but grew up in Orem
 * Donny Osmond - American actor and singer
 * Marie Osmond - American actress and singer
 * Noelle Pikus-Pace - 2005 overall World Cup Skeleton title winner and silver medalist at 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics
 * Shauna Rohbock - silver medalist in women's bobsleigh at the Turin 2006 Olympics
 * Thomas Sederberg - Creator of the T-spline
 * Howard Tayler - author of Schlock Mercenary
 * Erin Thorn - WNBA guard
 * Dan Wells - author of the I Am Not a Serial Killer and Partials Sequence
 * Rock band The Used
 * The Aces (indie pop band)

City parks
Orem has more than 20 parks throughout the city. In 2017, the Orem Splash Pad opened at Palisade Park. The Splash Pad uses 1,000 gallons per minute and has a weave spray nozzle as well as 22 other spray nozzles. The Skate Park opened in 2002 and has a quarter acre of cemented space for extreme sport use. City Center Park is home to the annual Orem Summerfest as well as concerts and other cultural events. City parks include:

 * Bonneville Park
 * Cascade Park
 * Cherry Hill Park
 * City Center Park
 * Community park
 * Foothill Park
 * Geneva Park
 * Hillcrest Park
 * Lakeside Sports Park
 * Mt. Timpanogos Park
 * Nielson's Grove Park
 * Northridge Park
 * Orchard Park
 * Palisade Park
 * Scera Park
 * Sharon Park
 * Skate Park
 * Spring Water Park
 * Westmore Park
 * Windsor Park

Sister cities
Orem has one sister city in 🇨🇳 Ürümqi, China, according to the Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah Sister Cities Coalition.

title: Orem, Utah


text:
Paul Muni

Paul Muni (born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund; September 22, 1895 – August 25, 1967) was an American stage and film actor from Chicago. He started his acting career in the Yiddish theater and during the 1930s, he was considered one of the most prestigious actors at the Warner Bros. studio and was given the rare privilege of choosing his own parts.

Muni often played powerful characters, such as the lead role in Scarface (1932), and was known for his intense preparation for his parts, often immersing himself in the study of the real characters' traits and mannerisms. He was also highly skilled in makeup techniques, a talent that he had learned from his parents, who were also actors, and from his early years on stage with the Yiddish theater in Chicago. At the age of 12, he played the stage role of an 80-year-old man, and in the film Seven Faces, he played seven characters.

Muni appeared in 22 films and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times, winning the award for his role in the 1936 film The Story of Louis Pasteur. He also starred in numerous Broadway plays and won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in the 1955 production of Inherit the Wind.

Early life and career
Muni was born in 1895 as Frederich Meier Weisenfreund to a Jewish family in Lemberg, Galicia, then Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine). His Hebrew name was Meshilem. His parents were Salli (born Khaya Tsilke Fishler) and Phillip Weisenfreund. He learned Yiddish as his first language. When he was seven, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1902; they settled in Chicago. As a boy, he was known as "Moony". He started his acting career in the Yiddish theatre in Chicago with his parents, who were both actors. As a teenager, he developed skill in creating makeup, which enabled him to play much older characters. Film historian Robert Osborne notes that Muni's makeup skills were so creative that for most of his roles, "he transformed his appearance so completely, he was dubbed 'the new Lon Chaney.'" In his first stage role at the age of 12, Muni played the role of an 80-year-old man. He was quickly recognized by Maurice Schwartz, who signed him to perform in his Yiddish Art Theater.

A 1925 New York Times article mentioned Sam Kasten's and Muni's performances at the People's Theater among the highlights of the year's Yiddish theater season, describing them as second only to Ludwig Satz.

Muni began acting on Broadway in 1926. His first role was that of an elderly Jewish man in the play We Americans, written by playwrights Max Siegel and Milton Herbert Gropper. It was the first time that he had acted in English.

In 1921, he married Bella Finkel (February 8, 1898 – October 1, 1971), an actress in the Yiddish theatre and daughter of Moishe Finkel. They remained married until Muni's death in 1967.

Hollywood
In 1929, Muni was signed by Fox. His name was simplified and anglicized to Paul Muni (derived from his nickname of youth "Moony"). His acting talents were quickly recognized, and he received an Oscar nomination for his first film, The Valiant (1929), although the film fared poorly at the box office. His second film, Seven Faces (also 1929), was also a financial failure. Unhappy with the roles offered to him, he returned to Broadway, where he starred in a major hit play, Counsellor at Law.

Muni soon returned to Hollywood to star in provocative pre-Code films such as Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (both 1932). For his role in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Muni was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. His acclaim as a result of his performance impressed Warner Bros., which signed him to a long-term contract, publicizing him as "the screen's greatest actor."

Scarface, part of a cycle of gangster films at the time, was written by Ben Hecht and directed by Howard Hawks. Critic Richard Corliss noted in 1974 that while it was a serious gangster film, it also "manages both to congratulate journalism for its importance and to chastise it for its chicanery, by underlining the newspapers' complicity in promoting the underworld image."

In 1935, Muni persuaded Warner Bros. to take a financial risk by producing the successful historical biography The Story of Louis Pasteur. This became Muni's first of many biographical roles. Until that film, most Warner Bros. stories had originated from current events and major news stories, with the notable exceptions of George Arliss's earlier biographical films Disraeli, Alexander Hamilton and Voltaire. Muni won an Oscar for his performance.

Muni played other historical figures, including Émile Zola in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), for which he was again nominated for an Oscar. The film won Best Picture and was interpreted as indirectly attacking the repression of Nazi Germany. He also played the lead role in Juarez (1939).

In 1937, Muni played a Chinese peasant with a new bride in a film adaptation of Pearl Buck's novel The Good Earth. The film was a recreation of a revolutionary period in China and included special effects for a locust attack and the overthrow of the government. Because Muni was not of Asian descent, when producer Irving Thalberg offered him the role, he said, "I'm about as Chinese as [President] Herbert Hoover."

Dissatisfied with life in Hollywood, Muni chose not to renew his contract. He returned to the screen only occasionally in later years for such roles as Frédéric Chopin's teacher in A Song to Remember (1945). In 1946, he played a rare comic role in Angel on My Shoulder.

Later career
Muni then focused most of his energies on stage work, and occasionally on television roles. In 1946, he appeared on Broadway in A Flag is Born, written by Ben Hecht, to help promote the creation of a Jewish state in Israel. This play was directed by Luther Adler and co-starred Marlon Brando. Years later, in response to a question put to him by Alan King, Brando stated that Muni was the greatest actor he ever saw. At London's Phoenix Theatre on July 28, 1949, Muni began a run as Willy Loman in the first British production of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. He took over from Lee J. Cobb, who had played the principal role in the original Broadway production. Both productions were directed by Elia Kazan.

In 1952, Muni traveled to Italy to star in Stranger on the Prowl directed by Joseph Losey, partly as an act of solidarity and support for blacklisted friends living abroad in exile.

A few years later, during 1955 and 1956, Muni had his biggest stage success in the United States as the crusading lawyer, Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow), in Inherit the Wind, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. In late August 1955, Muni was forced to withdraw from the play due to a serious eye ailment causing deterioration in his eyesight. He was later replaced by actor Melvyn Douglas.

In early September 1955, Muni, then 59 years old, was diagnosed with a tumor of the left eye. The eye was removed in an operation at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. His right eye was reported to be normal. In early December 1955, Muni returned to his starring role as Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind.

His last movie role was as an aging doctor in The Last Angry Man (1959), and he was again nominated for an Oscar. After that, Muni mostly retired from acting to deal with failing eyesight and other health problems. He made his final screen appearance on television, in a guest role on the dramatic series Saints and Sinners in 1962.

Acting techniques, reputation and legacy
Muni was noted for his intense preparation for his roles, especially the biographies. While preparing for The Story of Louis Pasteur, Muni said, "I read most everything that was in the library, and everything I could lay my hands on that had to do with Pasteur, with Lister, or with his contemporaries." He did the same in preparing for his role as Henry Drummond, based on Clarence Darrow, in the play Inherit the Wind. He read what he could find, talked to people who knew Darrow personally, and studied physical mannerisms from photographs of him. "To Paul Muni, acting was not just a career, but an obsession", writes The New York Times. They note that despite his enormous success both on Broadway and in films, "he threw himself into each role with a sense of dedication." Playwright Arthur Miller commented that Muni "was pursued by a fear of failure."

As Muni was born into an acting family, with both of his parents professional actors, "he learned his craft carefully and thoroughly." On stage, "a Muni whisper could reach the last balcony of any theater", writes the Times. It wrote that his style "had drawn into it the warmth of the Yiddish stage", in which he made his debut at the age of 12. In addition, his technique in using makeup "was a work of art." Combined with acting which followed no "method", he perfected his control of voice and gestures into an acting style that was "unique."

Film historian David Shipman described Muni as "an actor of great integrity", noting he meticulously prepared for his roles. Muni was widely recognized as eccentric if talented: he objected to anyone wearing red in his presence, and he could often be found between sessions playing his violin. Over the years, he became increasingly dependent on his wife, Bella, a dependence which increased as his failing eyesight turned to blindness in his final years. Muni was "inflexible on matters of taste and principle", once turning down an $800,000 movie contract because he was not happy with the studio's choice of film roles.

Although Muni was considered one of the best film actors of the 1930s, some film critics such as David Thomson and Andrew Sarris, accuse him of overacting. Thomson described Muni as "a crucial negative illustration in any argument as to what constitutes screen acting."

German director William Dieterle, who directed him in his three biopics, also frequently accused him of overacting, despite his respect for the actor.

Personal life
In his private life, Muni was considered to be very shy and was uncomfortable with being recognized in public. He enjoyed reading and taking walks with his wife in secluded sections of Central Park.

Muni campaigned for the reelection of President Herbert Hoover in 1932.

After retiring from acting, he lived in California. In his den, which he called his "Shangri-La", he spent time reading books and listening to the radio.

Death
Muni died of a heart disorder in Montecito, California in 1967 at the age of 71. He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood.

Legacy and honors
Muni had four official Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning for The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and receiving official nominations for I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and The Last Angry Man (1959). His nomination for the film The Valiant (1929) is unofficial because at the 2nd Academy Awards, acting nominees were not announced, only the winners' names. Muni's performance in Black Fury was not nominated for an Oscar.
 * New York Film Critics Circle Award for The Life of Emile Zola
 * Tony Award for Best Actor in Inherit the Wind
 * A star was installed in his honor on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6435 Hollywood Blvd.
 * A film musical titled Actor: The Paul Muni Story (1978) was based on his life, with Herschel Bernardi starring.
 * A biography titled Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni (1974) was written by Jerome Lawrence.

In popular culture
Referring to his childhood during the Great Depression, Hawkeye Pierce in the "Hawkeye" episode of the television series M*A*S*H* says: "You knew where you stood in those days. Franklin Roosevelt was always president, Joe Louis was always the champ, and Paul Muni played everybody."

Muni and George Raft appeared as characters in the fifth season of Boardwalk Empire, meeting with Al Capone to discuss the film Scarface.

Comedian and actor Paul Mooney took his stage name, which was also his childhood nickname, from Muni.

Radio appearances
Lux Radio Theater. "The Life of Emile Zola". May 8, 1939 Calvalcade of America. "Edwin Booth". March 31, 1941 The Free Company. "The Miracle Of The Danube". April 27, 1941 Calvalcade of America. "Bolivar, The Liberator". October 6, 1941 Calvalcade of America. "Eagle's Nest". December 28, 1942 Radio Hall of Fame. "No Uncommon Clay". April 30, 1944 Suspense Theater. "The Search For Henri Leferve". July 6, 1944 Arch Ololer's Plays. "This Living Book". October 11, 1945 Academy Award Theater. April 13, 1946 Eternal Light. "And It Came To Pass". December 7, 1947 Studio One. "Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse". January 20, 1948 Calvalcade of America. "Alerting of Dr. Pomerantz". February 16, 1948 Calvalcade of America. "Garden Key". November 8, 1948 Biography in Sound. "Clarence Darrow". September 13, 1956

title: Paul Muni