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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur's knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He becomes a rival of Merlin, who appears to be little more than a fraud, and gains the trust of King Arthur. Hank attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better. Hank is disgusted by how the Barons treat the commoners, and tries to implement democratic reforms. But in the end, he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur. Hank declares England a republic, but the Catholic Church, growing fearful of his power, issues an interdict against him.

Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. It is a satire of feudalism and monarchy that also celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the for-profit ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. Twain strongly praises the French Revolution, defending the Reign of Terror as a minor problem compared to the monarchy. It is among several works by Twain and his contemporaries that mark the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era of socioeconomic discourse. It is often cited as a formative example of the fledgling time travel genre.

Plot
Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of East Hartford, Connecticut, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England, where he meets King Arthur.

Many passages are quoted directly from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a late medieval collection of Arthurian legends that constitutes one of the main sources on the myth of King Arthur and Camelot. The frame narrator is a 19th-century man (ostensibly Mark Twain himself) who meets Hank Morgan in modern times and begins reading Hank's book in the museum in which they both meet. Later, characters in the story retell parts of it in Malory's original language. A chapter on medieval hermits also draws from the work of William Edward Hartpole Lecky.

Introduction to the "stranger"
The story begins as a first-person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to him by an "interested stranger" who is personified as a knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor.

After a brief tale of Sir Lancelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, taken directly from Le Morte d'Arthur, Hank Morgan enters and is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Hank is a superintendent because of his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with 2,000 subordinates. During a disagreement with his subordinates, he sustains a head injury when a man named "Hercules" hits him with a crowbar.

Hank wakes up underneath an oak tree, having no idea how he got there. Hank soon encounters the knight Sir Kay. Kay challenges him to a joust, which is quickly lost by the unweaponed, unarmored Hank as he scuttles up a tree. Kay captures Hank and leads him towards Camelot Castle. Upon recognizing that he has traveled back to the 6th century, Hank realizes that he is the de facto smartest person on Earth, and with his knowledge he should soon be running things.

Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress and is sentenced by them, particularly the magician Merlin, to burn at the stake on 21 June. By a stroke of luck, the date coincides with a historical solar eclipse in 528 of which Hank had learned in his earlier life. In prison, he sends the boy whom he christens Clarence (whose real name is Amyas le Poulet) to inform the king that he will blot out the sun if he is executed. Hank believes it is 20 June; however, it is actually the 21st when he makes his threat, the day that the eclipse will occur at 12:03 p.m. When the king decides to burn him, the eclipse catches Hank by surprise. However, he quickly convinces the people that he caused it. He makes a bargain with the king, is released, and becomes the second most powerful person in the kingdom. (Twain may have drawn inspiration for that part of the story from a historical incident in which Christopher Columbus exploited foreknowledge of a lunar eclipse.)

Hank is given the position of principal minister to the king and is treated by all with the utmost fear and awe. He proclaims that his only income will be taken as a percentage of any increase in the kingdom's gross national product, from his efforts as Arthur's chief minister.

The Takeover
Hank learns about medieval practices and superstitions. With his superior knowledge, he is able to outdo alleged sorcerers and miracle-working church officials. At one point, soon after the eclipse, people began gathering, hoping to see Hank perform another miracle. Merlin, jealous of Hank having replaced him both as the king's principal adviser and as the most powerful sorcerer of the realm, begins spreading rumors that Hank is a fake. Hank secretly manufactures gunpowder and a lightning rod, plants explosive charges in Merlin's tower, and places the lightning rod at the top and runs a wire to the explosive charges. He then announces (when storms are frequent) that he will soon call down fire from heaven and destroy Merlin's tower, challenging Merlin to use his sorcery to prevent it. Lightning strikes the rod, triggering the explosive charges, and leveling the tower, further diminishing Merlin's reputation.

Hank Morgan uses his authority and his knowledge to industrialize the country behind the back of the rest of the ruling class. His assistant is Clarence, a young boy he meets at court, whom he educates and gradually lets in on most of his secrets, and eventually comes to rely on heavily. Hank sets up secret schools, which teach modern ideas and modern English, thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts and secretly constructs hidden factories, which produce modern tools and weapons. He carefully selects the individuals he allows to enter his factories and schools.

As Hank gradually adjusts to his new situation, he begins to attend medieval tournaments. A misunderstanding causes Sir Sagramore to challenge him to a duel to the death. The combat will take place when Sagramore returns from his quest for the Holy Grail. Hank accepts and spends the next few years building up 19th-century infrastructure behind the nobility's back. He then undertakes an adventure with a wandering girl named the Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise, nicknamed "Sandy" by Hank, to save her royal "mistresses" held captive by ogres. On the way, Hank encounters Morgan le Fay. The "princesses", "ogres", and "castles" are all revealed to be actually pigs owned by peasant swineherds, but to Sandy, they still appear as royalty. Hank buys the pigs from the peasants, and the two leave.

On the way back to Camelot, they find a travelling group of pilgrims headed for the Valley of Holiness. Another group of pilgrims, however, comes from that direction and bears the news that the valley's famous fountain has run dry. According to legend, long ago the fountain had gone dry as soon as the monks of the valley's monastery built a bath with it. The bath was destroyed and the water instantly returned, but this time it has stopped with no clear cause. Hank is begged to restore the fountain although Merlin is already trying to do so. When Merlin fails, he claims that the fountain has been corrupted by a demon and that it will never flow again. Hank procures assistants from Camelot, who bring along a pump and fireworks for special effects. They repair the fountain and Hank "banishes" the demon. The fountain restored, Hank goes on to debunk another magician who claims to be able to tell what any person in the world is doing, including King Arthur. However, Hank knows via telephone that the king is riding out to see the restored fountain and not "resting from the chase" as the "false prophet" had claimed. Hank correctly states that the king will arrive in the valley.

Hank has an idea to travel among the poor disguised as a peasant to find out how they truly live. King Arthur joins him but has extreme difficulty in acting like a peasant convincingly. Arthur becomes somewhat disillusioned by seeing for himself the standard of life of his subjects. The two encounter villagers in a minor fiefdom of Arthur's realm, where Arthur is taken as a madman when he makes several outlandish and erroneous comments about agriculture. Hank attempts to teach the villagers about a rudimentary value theory of wages that they rebuff and, in Hank's zeal, to win the argument he accidentally acknowledges that a member of his audience overpaid a worker, a capital offence. The audience then forms a mob that chases Hank and Arthur down. They seem to be delivered from danger when a nobleman invites them into his entourage. But he enslaves them and sells them to another particularly ruthless enslaver, who takes them to London.

Hank steals a piece of metal in London and uses it to create a makeshift lockpick. However, before he can free the king, a man enters their quarters in the dark. Mistaking him for the slave driver, Hank starts a fight with him. They are both arrested. Hank lies his way out. But in his absence, the real slave driver has discovered Hank's escape. Since Hank was the most valuable slave, he was due to be sold the next day. The man becomes enraged and begins beating his other slaves, who fight back and kill him. All the slaves, including the king, will be hanged as soon as Hank is found. Hank is captured. But he and Arthur are rescued by a party of knights led by Lancelot, riding bicycles. Then, the king becomes extremely bitter against slavery and vows to abolish it when they get free, much to Hank's delight.

Sagramore returns from his quest and fights Hank, who defeats him and seven others, including Galahad and Lancelot, using a lasso. When Merlin steals Hank's lasso, Sagramore returns to challenge him again. This time, Hank kills him with a revolver. He proceeds to challenge the knights of Britain to attack him en masse, which they do. After he kills nine more knights with his revolvers, the rest break and flee. The next day, Hank reveals his 19th-century infrastructure to the country.

Interdict
Three years later, Hank has married Sandy, and they have a baby. When the child falls critically ill, Hank's doctors advise him to take his family overseas while the baby recovers. In reality, it is a ploy by the Catholic Church to get Hank out of the country. During the weeks that Hank is absent, Arthur discovers Guinevere's infidelity with Lancelot. That causes a war between Lancelot and Arthur, who is eventually killed by Sir Mordred.

The church then places the land under interdict, causing the people to revolt against Hank. Hank sees that something is wrong and returns to Britain. Clarence informs him of the war. As time goes on, Clarence gathers 52 teenage cadets, who are to fight against all of Britain. Hank's band fortifies itself in Merlin's Cave with a minefield, electric wire and Gatling guns. The Church sends an army of 30,000 knights to attack them. But they are slaughtered by the cadets.

However, Hank's men are now trapped in the cave by a wall of dead bodies and sickened by the miasma bred by thousands of corpses. Hank attempts to go offer aid to any wounded, but is stabbed by the first wounded man he tries to help, Sir Meliagraunce. He is not seriously injured but is bedridden. Disease begins to set in. One night, Clarence finds Merlin weaving a spell over Hank, proclaiming that he will sleep for 1,300 years. Merlin begins laughing deliriously but ends up electrocuting himself on one of the electric wires. Clarence and the others all apparently die from disease in the cave.

More than a millennium later, the narrator finishes the manuscript and finds Hank on his deathbed and dreaming about Sandy. He attempts to make one last "effect" but dies before he can finish it.

Genesis, composition and contemporary critical response
Twain's first encounter with the Morte d'Arthur occurred in 1880, when someone in his household bought Sidney Lanier's bowdlerized edition, The Boy's King Arthur. Whether he read this children's version or not is not known. However he certainly read the unexpurgated work after his close friend George Washington Cable recommended it to him in November 1884. The pair were travelling on the lecture circuit as the "Twins of Genius" during the winter of 1884-1885 when Cable spotted the Morte on the front table of a Rochester, New York bookstore that both were perusing. Cable pointed to the volume and said "you will never lay it down until you have read it cover to cover." Twain bought this copy and read it in nearly one sitting during a train ride to their next lecture date. After his own book's great success, Twain credited Cable for his inspiration, referring to him as "the Godfather of my book."

Soon thereafter, in December 1884, Twain conceived of the idea behind A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and worked on its realization between 1885 and 1889. The bulk of its composition was done at Twain's summer home at Elmira, New York and was completed at Hartford, Connecticut. It was first published in England by Chatto & Windus under the title A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur in December 1889.

Writer and critic William Dean Howells called it Twain's best work and "an object-lesson in democracy". The work was met with some indignation in Great Britain, where it was perceived as "a direct attack on [its] hereditary and aristocratic institutions".

Analysis
The book pokes fun at contemporary society, but the main thrust is a satire of romanticized ideas of chivalry, and of the idealization of the Middle Ages common in the novels of Sir Walter Scott and other 19th-century literature. Twain had a particular dislike for Scott, blaming his kind of romanticizing of battle for the southern states' deciding to fight the American Civil War. He writes in Life on the Mississippi: "It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. [...] Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war."

For example, the book portrays the medieval people as being very gullible, as when Merlin makes a "veil of invisibility" which, according to him, will make the wearer imperceptible to his enemies, though friends can still see him. The knight Sir Sagramor wears it to fight Hank, who pretends that he cannot see Sagramor for effect to the audience.

Hank Morgan's opinions are also strongly denunciatory towards the Catholic Church of the medieval period; the Church is seen by the Yankee as an oppressive institution that stifles science and teaches peasants meekness only as a means of preventing the overthrow of Church rule and taxation. The book also contains many depictions and condemnations of the dangers of superstition and the horrors of slavery.

The book provides evidence of Twain's growing interest in Georgist economics and social theory. This is particularly evident in the interpretative illustrations by Georgist activist Daniel Carter Beard. Twain approved each illustration, and the editors of The Mark Twain Encyclopedia considered the illustrations an essential part of the work.

George Orwell strongly disapproved of the book: "[Twain] squandered his time on boffooneries [such as] A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is a deliberate flattery of all that is worst and most vulgar in American Life" (i.e. the various American inventions and institutions Hank Morgan introduces into sixth-century Britain and whose excellence and superiority are taken for granted).

It is possible to see the book as an important transitional work for Twain, in that earlier, sunnier passages recall the frontier humor of his tall tales such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, while the corrosive view of human behavior in the apocalyptic latter chapters is more akin to darker, later Twain works such as The Mysterious Stranger and Letters from the Earth.

George Hardy notes, "The final scenes of 'Connecticut Yankee' depict massed cavalry attempting to storm a position defended by wire and machine guns—and getting massacred, none reaching their objective. Deduct the fantasy anachronism of the assailants being Medieval knights, and you get a chillingly accurate prediction of a typical First World War battle.... The modern soldiers of 1914 with their bayonets had no more chance to win such a fight than Twain's knights".

One frequently overlooked aspect of the book is the emotional intensity felt by Hank towards his family: wife Sandy and baby Hello-Central. Twain's own son, Langdon, died of diphtheria at the age of 19 months, which was likely reflected in Hello-Central's membranous croup. Twain also outlived two of his three daughters, but they both died after the completion of "Yankee." The last chapters of the book are full of Hank's pronouncements of love, culminating in his final delirium, where "an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you!" is worse than death.

As science fiction
While Connecticut Yankee is sometimes credited as the foundational work in the time travel subgenre of science fiction, Twain's novel had several important immediate predecessors. Among them are H. G. Wells's story "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888), which was a precursor to The Time Machine (1895). Also published the year before Connecticut Yankee was Edward Bellamy's wildly popular Looking Backward (1888), in which the protagonist is put into a hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up in the year 2000. Yet another American novel that could have served as a more direct inspiration to Twain was The Fortunate Island (1882) by Charles Heber Clark. In this novel, a technically proficient American is shipwrecked on an island that broke off from Britain during Arthurian times, and never developed any further.

Twain's book introduced what remains one of the main literary devices used in time travel literature—a modern person is suddenly hurled into the past, by some force completely beyond the traveler's control, is stuck there irrevocably, and must make the best of it—typically, by trying to introduce modern inventions and institutions into the past society. Several works considered classics of science fiction clearly follow on this pattern set by Twain, such as L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early." This strand of time travel literature is clearly distinct from that following the basic pattern of the Wells works, where the protagonist is in possession of a time machine and is able to travel at will back and forth in time. The literary device continues to see use throughout modern science fiction, from popular American time travel stories such as Michael Crichton's Timeline to Japanese Isekai like Handyman Saitō in Another World.

Adaptations and references
Since the beginning of the 20th century, this famous story has been adapted many times for the stage, feature-length motion pictures, and animated cartoons. The earliest film version was Fox's 1921 silent version. In 1927, the novel was adapted into the musical A Connecticut Yankee by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. A 1931 film, also called A Connecticut Yankee, starred Will Rogers. The story was adapted as an hour-long radio play on the October 5, 1947, broadcast of the Ford Theatre, starring Karl Swenson. A 1949 musical film featured Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming, with music by Jimmy Van Heusen and Victor Young. In 1960, Tennessee Ernie Ford starred in a television adaptation. In 1970, the book was adapted into a 74-minute animated TV special directed by Zoran Janjic with Orson Bean as the voice of the title character. In 1978 an episode of Once Upon a Classic, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", was an adaptation, which starred Paul Rudd and Tovah Feldshuh, with Richard Basehart as Arthur and Roscoe Lee Browne as Merlin. This episode was released as though a feature on VHS and laserdisc by MasterVision in 1987 with the cover title, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee..., and later as a double feature DVD with The Amazing Mr. Blunden. The DVD version, released by budget label East West DVD at a suggested retail price of $1, lacks the series intro and Bill Bixby's introduction. Also in 1979 was the Disney film Unidentified Flying Oddball, also known as A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. The TV series The Transformers had a second-season episode, "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court", that had a group of Autobots and Decepticons sent back to the Middle Ages. In 1988, the Soviet variation called New Adventures of a Yankee in King Arthur's Court appeared. More recently it was adapted into a 1989 television film by Paul Zindel which starred Keshia Knight Pulliam and René Auberjonois. In 1987, Disney even paid homage to the story in a first-season episode of DuckTales ("Sir Gyro de Gearloose"), in which Gyro builds a time machine and flees the modern age for the time of King Arthur, taking Huey, Dewey and Louie along for the adventure.

It has also inspired many variations and parodies, such as the 1979 Bugs Bunny special A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur's Court. A Knight for a Day is a 1946 Disney short film starring Goofy that is loosely inspired by the novel. In 1995, Walt Disney Studios adapted the book into the feature film A Kid in King Arthur's Court. Also in 1995, Philippe Ross played a transported high-schooler in A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, with Michael York as Merlin. A 1992 cartoon series, King Arthur & the Knights of Justice, could also be seen as deriving inspiration from the novel. Terry Pratchett's 1995 short story "Once and Future" tells a similar story of a time-traveller, Mervin, stranded in a pre-Arthurian "Avalon", who refers to himself as being like "the Connecticut Yankee". In 1998 Disney made another adaption with Whoopi Goldberg in A Knight in Camelot.

Several independent films produced during the 1990s drew inspiration from the novel, such as Army of Darkness (1992) and the fourth and fifth entries in the Trancers series. The 2001 film Black Knight similarly transports a modern-day American to Medieval England (but not in the time of King Arthur but in the year 1328), while adding a racial element to the time-traveller plot line.

In the Carl Sagan novel Contact, the protagonist, Eleanor Arroway, is reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, specifically the scene where Hank first approaches Camelot, when she finds out about her father's death. The quotation Bridgeport?' Said I. 'Camelot,' Said he" is also used later in the book, and the story is used as a metaphor for contact between civilizations at very different levels of technological and ethical advancement.

Yankee has also greatly influenced the premier Soviet sci-fi writers, Strugatsky Brothers, and their two seminal books. In humorous Monday Begins on Saturday Merlin's character is taken entirely from the Mark Twain's book, and he often references it. Hard to Be a God is essentially a remake of Yankee, concentrating on the moral and ethical questions of "civilizing the uncivilized." Its ending is almost identical to Yankee: both main protagonists crumble under the weight of dead bodies of those they tried to civilize.

The fifth season of TV series Once Upon a Time features Hank Morgan. He is introduced in the episode "Dreamcatcher" as Sir Morgan, a widower with a teenaged daughter, Violet, living in a Camelot that exists in a magical reality. Violet becomes a love interest for main character Henry Mills. Morgan does not appear on screen again, but is mentioned in later episodes. He and Violet, along with other Camelot residents, are transported to Storybrooke in the "real" world. When most of Arthur's court returns to Camelot, Violet informs Henry that she and her father will stay in Storybrooke, as her father is originally from Connecticut in the same world. A tie-in novel, Henry and Violet, confirms other details consistent with Twain's novel, such as Hank leaving Connecticut in the year 1889.

In the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series by James A. Owen, Hank appears in several books as a time-travelling "Messenger" recruited by Mark Twain. Hank is able to travel through time and space at will using an enchanted pocketwatch, which eventually suffers a malfunction that strands him in the time stream. (Sandy and Hello-Central are not mentioned in the series.)

The television series MacGyver includes a two-part adaptation ("Good Knight MacGyver", season 7, episodes 7 & 8, 1991) in which a modern-day engineer is transported to Arthur's court, where he uses his "magic" (science) to assist Merlin and save the king from a deadly plot. After over six seasons on the air, the second part is the only episode to ever reveal MacGyver's first name.


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June Cleaver

June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver is a principal character in the American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. June and her husband, Ward, are often invoked as the archetypal suburban parents of the 1950s. The couple are the parents of two sons, Wally and "Beaver". Wally is twelve years old and in the seventh grade when the series opens; Beaver is seven years old ("almost eight") and in the second grade. Episodes followed the escapades of Wally and Beaver and usually ended with a moral lesson delivered to the boys, but also often included reminders of childhood and minor lessons for the parents through the adventures of their boys. She was included in Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the time period 1957–1963.

June is played by Barbara Billingsley in both the pilot, "It's a Small World" (which aired in April 1957 on Studio '57), and in the original television series. Billingsley also plays the character in the show's television reunion movie, Still the Beaver (1983), and the show's sequel series, The New Leave It to Beaver (1985—1989). In the sequel series, Wally and Beaver are both parents, and June is a grandmother. Janine Turner played June in the 1997 spin-off film adaptation of the original series, Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley made a cameo appearance in the spin-off film as Aunt Martha.

Early life
June's birthplace is mentioned in one episode as East St. Louis while Ward is teasing her about her upbringing and they are discussing how they met. June attended boarding school as a youngster and was captain of the school's basketball team. At one point in her young years, she was a student of Cornelia Rayburn, the principal of Beaver's school. It is implied that June had an affluent upper middle class upbringing (contrasted with Ward's middle class childhood) which may in part account for June's fastidious and fashionable clothing tastes throughout the series. June mentions that she was taught a formal curtsey in the event that she married a diplomat and Aunt Martha frequently proudly refers to their common Bronson lineage. Ward also mentions the Bronson clan's concerns about Ward providing for June in a manner she is accustomed to at their wedding. June mentions her father occasionally. Apparently, he was a practical man, for, according to June, he discouraged her as a child from buying an opal ring in a jewelry store window and urged her instead to spend her money on a pair of galoshes.

Marriage
As a teen, June knew and dated Ward Cleaver, a farmer's son. Ward lived in nearby Shaker Heights. The two attended State college together. June kept her maiden name, Bronson, as one of her middle names after marrying Ward. Ward and June have two sons, Wally and Theodore aka "Beaver". June's older son, Wally, is a good student and popular with everyone while young Beaver has a difficult time staying out of trouble. The Cleavers live initially at 485 Mapleton Drive and move to 211 Pine Street at the beginning of the third season.

Home life

June is dedicated to her family; her interests outside the home are social events like weddings or school events like meetings and plays. She has ladylike pastimes: needlepoint, cake decorating, and arranging tea roses. She reads glossy but high-toned, tasteful women's magazines. In one episode, she entertains the ladies in her social club only to see the event ruined by Beaver's monkey who despoils the foods on the dining table. When the boys arrive home from school, June can be found in the kitchen chopping salad vegetables, basting a roast, or icing a cake. Her kitchen is immaculate. Like most TV middle class sitcom families of the era, the Cleavers eat breakfast and lunch in the kitchen while their dinners are full scale affairs in the dining room.

June's taste in home furnishings tends toward British upper class traditional. The front hall in the Pine Street house is adorned with reproductions of Gainsborough's The Blue Boy and Lawrence's "Pinkie" while two fauteuils grace either side of the hall door. A Monet hangs on one wall; a Constable hangs in the living room. A wing chair in the living room is upholstered in a chinoiserie print.

June is ladylike and slightly formal in personal appearance, always seen with perfectly coiffed hair and tasteful facial makeup. She is notorious among the show's fans for consistently being dressed as a party hostess, even when doing her housework or relaxing around the house. She wears stylish slacks about the house in a few early episodes, but for most of the series her wardrobe consists of simple but elegant dresses, suits, or skirts paired with blouses or sweaters and high-heeled pumps for shoes. Many of her most attractive housefrocks were worn throughout the series' run. She wears a pearl necklace in almost every scene, even when gardening.

June is thrilled when her sons are invited to cotillions and birthday parties but wrinkles her nose with disgust when they bring home wriggling earthworms or rain-soaked clothing. She was described by her husband in the series as a "former belle of East St. Louis."

June and Ward sleep in twin beds and have a portable television set in their room. Now and then, she drives the family's Ford Fairlane if she has a specific errand. Ward occasionally dries the dishes for her; at other times, she has to goad him to do minor chores or repairs around the house. June has occasional house help in the person of Minerva and in the later episodes a Mrs. Manners, who (according to Beaver) smells like gingerbread. June does not completely trust Ward's Uncle Billy because he fills her sons' heads with fancies of irresponsible living. She often places Ward in a position where he must "explain" or apologize for his uncle. She is happily married with never a suggestion otherwise on the show.

Relatives
In one episode, June has a sister named Peggy and an infant niece. She also has a spinster aunt named Martha Bronson (Madge Kennedy), who appears in a few episodes during the course of the series' run. No other relatives of hers appear on the show. June credits Martha with raising her, which suggests that June may have been a motherless child. Though if this was so, it is not said when her mother died, as June tells a story of how she told a lie in school and her mother made her get up in front of the class and admit she lied. In one episode she mentioned having lived with both of her biological parents as a child.

The New Leave It to Beaver
By the time the 1983 movie Still the Beaver aired on CBS, series star Hugh Beaumont had died. As a result, the writers and producers decided to make June a widow.

June still lives in the same home (211 Pine Street) as the original series was set. She lives in the home with her son, Beaver (now a businessman and co-owner of the Cleaver and Rutherford Co. with Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford) and two grandsons, Kip and Ollie. The living arrangement began when Beaver was divorced from his wife, Kimberly, and Beaver was unemployed; it continued after Beaver found work at a business owned by Fred Rutherford and after Beaver got fired for taking a fall for a mistake that Lumpy made and after Lumpy got fired too after confessing that Beaver took the fall for him, they decided to form a competing company together.

June is a member of the Mayfield City Council.

June has four grandchildren; in addition to Beaver's sons, Wally (an attorney) and his wife, Mary Ellen, have two children: Kelly (11 in 1985) and baby Kevin. Kevin was born in 1986 and age-advanced to 4 years old in the following season. Wally and his family live next door to his mother.

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title: June Cleaver


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Simon Hoggart

Simon David Hoggart (26 May 1946 – 5 January 2014) was an English journalist and broadcaster. He wrote on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator. Until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. His journalism sketches have been published in a series of books.

Personal life
Simon Hoggart was born on 26 May 1946 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, and educated at Hymers College in Kingston upon Hull, Wyggeston Boys' School in Leicester, and then King's College, Cambridge, where he excelled at history and English. He was the son of the literary scholar and sociologist Richard Hoggart, and Mary Holt Hoggart. His brother is the Times television critic Paul Hoggart. He lived in South London with his wife, Alyson, a clinical psychologist, and their two children, Amy and Richard. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in mid-2010 and died of the disease at Royal Marsden Hospital on 5 January 2014.

Career
Hoggart joined The Guardian in 1968, later becoming the American correspondent for The Observer, and occasional guest commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday. Having written on politics for some years in Punch magazine, Hoggart became the Parliamentary sketch writer for The Guardian in 1993. He also wrote a wine column for The Spectator. Hoggart's sketchwriting prowess was still admired into the 2010s – Total Politics note that in 2011 Hoggart had "been a regular tormenter of the prime minister," (David Cameron) "especially on the sensitive issue of the PM's bald patch, which Hoggart compared to "a goujon of plaice" from Marks and Spencer."

In the early 1980s, he chaired the radio comedy show The News Quiz, returning to the show in 1996 for another ten years. In March 2006, Hoggart presented his last edition of The News Quiz commenting: "I'm getting a bit clapped out and jaded, and I think that's beginning to show."

In 1998, he was part of BBC Radio 4's 5-part political satire programme Cartoons, Lampoons and Buffoons. He was also a contributor to the Grumpy Old Men and wrote for Punch magazine and an occasional column for New Humanist magazine (last entry May 2005). Hoggart was also an occasional celebrity panellist on BBC2's antiques quiz show Going, Going, Gone.

His published books form an eclectic list, including debunking the supernatural, anecdotes about Parliament, a biography, his thoughts about the United States, a serious political review and collected Christmas round-robin letters. He coined the phrase "the law of the ridiculous reverse", "which states that if the opposite of a statement is plainly absurd, it was not worth making in the first place".

When speculation appeared in the News of the World in December 2004 suggesting he was the "third man" in the Kimberly Quinn affair, Hoggart initially denied any involvement before issuing a statement admitting that he had an extra-marital affair with Quinn before her own marriage. The political sex scandal involving Quinn contributed to the resignation of David Blunkett from the Cabinet.

Books

 * Simon Hoggart, House of Fun, Guardian Books (2012) ISBN 978-1-78335-028-5, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart, Send Up the Clowns, Guardian Books (17 October 2011) ISBN 978-0-85265-243-5
 * Simon Hoggart, A Long Lunch: My Stories and I'm Sticking to Them John Murray (14 October 2010) ISBN 978-1-84854-397-3
 * Simon Hoggart, Life's Too Short to Drink Bad Wine Quadrille Publishing Ltd (18 September 2009) ISBN 978-1-84400-742-4
 * Simon Hoggart, The Hands of History: Parliamentary Sketches 1997–2007 (2007) ISBN 1-84354-679-5
 * Simon Hoggart and Emily Monk, Don't Tell Mum: Hair-raising Messages Home from Gap-year Travellers by Atlantic Books (27 December 2006) ISBN 978-1-84354-539-2
 * Simon Hoggart, The Hamster That Loved Puccini: The Seven Modern Sins of Christmas Round-Robin Letters (2005) ISBN 1-84354-474-1
 * Simon Hoggart, The Cat That Could Open the Fridge: A Curmudgeon's Guide to Christmas Round-Robin Letters (2004) ISBN 1-84354-357-5
 * Simon Hoggart, Punchlines: A Crash Course in English with John Prescott (2003) ISBN 0-7434-8397-9, on Prescottese language
 * Simon Hoggart, Playing to the Gallery: Parliamentary Sketches from Blair Year Zero (2002) ISBN 1-903809-66-5, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart and Steve Bell, Live Briefs: A Political Sketch Book (1996) ISBN 0-413-70970-1, parliamentary sketches, with the Guardian political cartoonist
 * Simon Hoggart, House of Correction (1995) ISBN 0-86051-998-8, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson, Bizarre Beliefs (1995) ISBN 1-86066-021-5, on "the human desire to believe the unbelievable"
 * Simon Hoggart, America: A User's Guide (1991) ISBN 0-00-637602-9, on his experiences living in the United States
 * Simon Hoggart (editor), House of Cards: A Selection of Modern Political Humour (1988) ISBN 0-241-12451-4
 * Simon Hoggart, House of Ill Fame (1985) ISBN 0-86051-350-5, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart, Back On the House (1982) ISBN 0-330-28148-8, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart, On the House: The Personalities and the Politics From the Irreverent "Punch" Column (1981) ISBN 0-330-26883-X, parliamentary sketches
 * Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (1981) ISBN 0-340-27600-2, biography of politician Michael Foot
 * Simon Hoggart and Alistair Michie,The Pact: The Inside Story of the Lib-Lab Government, 1977-8 (1978) ISBN 0-7043-3236-1
 * Bryan McAllister and Simon Hoggart, Little Boxes: A Selection of Bryan McAllister Cartoons From "The Guardian" (1977) ISBN 0-85265-024-8

Audiobooks

 * The News Quiz: The First 25 Years (BBC Radio Collection) (2003) ISBN 0-563-49402-6
 * Simon Hoggart's Pick of "The News Quiz": Vol 2 (2002) ISBN 0-563-52923-7
 * Simon Hoggart's Pick of "The News Quiz": Vol 1 (2000) ISBN 0-563-47762-8

title: Simon Hoggart


text:
1001 (number)

1001 is the natural number following 1000 and preceding 1002.

In mathematics
One thousand and one is a sphenic number, a pentagonal number, a pentatope number and the first four-digit palindromic number. Scheherazade numbers always have 1001 as a factor.

Divisibility by 7, 11 and 13
Two properties of 1001 are the basis of a divisibility test for 7, 11 and 13. The method is along the same lines as the divisibility rule for 11 using the property 10 ≡ -1 (mod 11). The two properties of 1001 are

1001 = 7 × 11 × 13 in prime factors 103 ≡ -1 (mod 1001)

The method simultaneously tests for divisibility by any of the factors of 1001. First, the digits of the number being tested are grouped in blocks of three. The odd numbered groups are summed. The sum of the even numbered groups is then subtracted from the sum of the odd numbered groups. The test number is divisible by 7, 11 or 13 iff the result of the summation is divisible by 7, 11 or 13 respectively.

Example:

Number under test, N = 22 872 563 219 Sum of odd groups, So = 219 + 872 = 1091 Sum of even groups, Se = 563 + 22 = 585 Total sum, S = So - Se = 1091 - 585 = 506 506 = 46 × 11

Since 506 is divisible by 11 then N is also divisible by 11. If the total sum is still too large to conveniently test for divisibility, and is longer than three digits, then the algorithm can be repeated to obtain a smaller number.

In other fields
In The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade tells her husband the king a new story every night for 1,001 nights, staving off her execution. From this, 1001 is sometimes used as a generic term for "a very large number", starting with a large number (1000) and going beyond it:

 * 1001 uses for...
 * 1001 ways to...

In Arabic, this is usually phrased as "one thousand things and one thing", e.g.:

 * The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, in Arabic Alf layla wa layla (ألف ليلة و ليلة), literally "One thousand nights and a night".

1001 was the name of a popular British detergent in the 1960s, supposedly with "1001 uses".

In the Mawlawiyyah order of Sufi Islam, a novice must complete 1001 days of prayer before becoming a dada, or junior teacher of the faith.

In many cases, including the title "Thousand and One Nights", 1001 is meant to indicate a "big number", and need not be taken literally. A book published in 2007 titled 40 Days & 1001 Nights describes a journey through the Islamic world.

Among them are recent books aiming to introduce significant works in various fields:
 * 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
 * 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
 * 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

There are also many film titles starting with 1001. For example:
 * Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales

The NBA draft lottery uses a lottery with 1,001 combinations by selecting four balls out of 14, then disregards the combination 11, 12, 13 and 14 to produce 1,000 outcomes.

"1001" was a hidden track on the Australian release of Two Shoes, the second album by the Cat Empire.

Buckminster Fuller called 1001 a Scheherazade number in his book Synergetics, since Scheherazade was the name of the story-telling wife in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

title: 1001 (number)


text:
Smith and Jones

Smith and Jones may refer to:

 * Smith (surname) and Jones (surname)
 * Smith & Jones instant noodles, a brand of instant noodles manufactured and sold in India by Capital Foods Ltd India.

It also may refer to the following television programs:
 * Alias Smith and Jones, an American Western television series
 * Alas Smith and Jones, a British television sketch comedy show
 * "Smith and Jones" (Doctor Who), an episode of the British television series Doctor Who

In fiction, the use of Smith and Jones as a pair of characters is sometimes used to convey a sense of intentional anonymity, as in the cases:
 * Agent Smith and Agent Jones from The Matrix
 * In the film Men in Black, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones portrayed two agents referred to as "Mr. Smith" and "Mr. Jones" in some promotional material

title: Smith and Jones


text:
Alias Smith and Jones

Alias Smith and Jones is an American Western television series that originally aired on ABC from January 1971 to January 1973. The show initially starred Pete Duel (and, after Duel's death, Roger Davis) as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, outlaw cousins who are trying to reform. The governor offers them a clemency deal on two conditions: that they keep the agreement a secret, and that they will remain wanted fugitives until the governor decides that they should receive a formal amnesty.

Plot
Operating primarily in Wyoming Territory (1868–1890), cousins Hannibal Heyes and Jedediah "Kid" Curry (whose boyish face spawned the nickname) are the two most successful outlaws in the history of the West. However, crime-fighting methods are evolving to foil them; safes are becoming harder to crack, trains more difficult to stop, and posses more adept at tracking them down.

Heyes, the brains of the Devil's Hole Gang, falls in disfavor with fellow members. Deciding to give up their life of crime, he and Curry learn of an amnesty program founded by the territorial governor. Through an old acquaintance, Sheriff Lom Trevors (James Drury in the pilot, alternately Mike Road and John Russell in the series), they contact the governor, who is unsure of how voters will react if he extends leniency to Heyes and Curry. He ultimately strikes a deal to grant them amnesty for their past crimes, with the stipulations that they must not discuss the agreement with anyone and that they will officially still be wanted men until such time as the governor decides that they deserve full clemency.

The cousins reluctantly accept the deal, but find life as law-abiding citizens to be more difficult than expected. Now calling themselves Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones, they find themselves tangling with lawmen, bounty hunters, operatives of the Bannerman Detective Agency (a fictional alias for the Pinkerton Detective Agency), and other nefarious figures. They are forced to rely on Heyes' silver tongue, Curry's fast draw, and occasionally a little help from friends on both sides of the law.

Cast and characters
Heyes was deemed "cunning," with Curry "gunning." Heyes/Smith was considered the brains of the duo and an excellent poker player. Curry/Jones was the master gun hand and the brawn. Usually, Heyes figured out ways to make money and save the twosome from precarious situations. Starting with "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap" (season two, episode 16), a slightly revamped introduction partially explained why the renowned duo did not split to evade capture—they were cousins. Roger Davis' original theme voiceover referred to the characters as "latter-day Robin Hoods." The new introduction replaced that description with the phrase "Kansas cousins." It remained so after Ralph Story reworked the introduction, once Davis assumed the Heyes role. After Davis took over as Heyes, his distinctive voice could no longer be used in the theme introduction. Ralph Story was brought in to provide narration for the series (he, rather than Davis, had done so in the pilot).

When the cousins were children, all four of their parents were slaughtered during the "border wars" just before the Civil War (q.v. Kansas-Missouri Border War) ("The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg", season two, episode 17). In "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap," Heyes remarks, "My cousin and I are not Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry." Curry also speaks of their "sage old grandfather." In the first episode with Davis, "The Biggest Game in the West" (season two, episode 19), Heyes shouts to Curry: "Yes sir! Cousin, you're all right!" In the episode "Don't Get Mad, Get Even," Curry and Heyes both make reference to their Irish grandfather Curry.

Recurring characters include:
 * Kyle Murtry (Dennis Fimple) and Wheat Carlson (Earl Holliman), members of the Devil's Hole Gang, formerly led by Heyes and Curry.
 * Harry Briscoe (J. D. Cannon) is a Bannerman detective who occasionally finds himself on the wrong side of the law.
 * Patrick "Big Mac" McCreedy (Burl Ives) and Señor Nestor Armendariz (Cesar Romero) are two ranchers on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border/Rio Grande waging a feud over a valuable bust which represents land that had been owned by Armendariz until the river temporarily switched course, moving the border with it, allowing MacCreedy to sell the land. Heyes and Curry get stuck in the middle.
 * Clementine "Clem" Hale (Sally Field) is an old friend who has no problem with blackmailing the reformed outlaws when necessary. Field had appeared in only one episode before Duel's death, and she could not return due to being pregnant with her second child. Several scripts intended for her were rewritten to feature Georgette "George" Sinclair, who was played by Michele Lee. In the third season, Field did appear as Clem one last time, doing love scenes with former Flying Nun co-star Alejandro Rey.
 * Soapy Saunders (Sam Jaffe) and Silky O'Sullivan (Walter Brennan) are retired confidence men on whom the boys call when in need of a large sum of cash and a good con to get them out of trouble.

Recasting of Hannibal Heyes
In the early morning hours of December 31, 1971, series star Pete Duel died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 31. He was reportedly suffering from depression and had been drinking heavily when he shot himself. Upon learning of Duel's death, executive producer Jo Swerling Jr. initially wanted to end the series, but ABC refused. Swerling later stated:

"ABC said, 'No way!' They said, 'You have a contract to deliver this show to us, and you will continue to deliver the show as best you can on schedule or we will sue you.' Hearing those words, Universal didn't hesitate for a second to instruct us to stay in production. We were already a little bit behind the eight ball on airdates. So, we contacted everybody, including Ben (Murphy), and told them to come back in. The entire company was reassembled and back in production by one o'clock that day shooting scenes that did not involve Peter — only 12 hours after his death."

Series writer, director, and producer Roy Huggins contacted actor Roger Davis (who provided narration for the series, and who had also appeared in episode 19 "Smiler with a Gun") the day of Duel's death to fill the role of Hannibal Heyes, and actor/voice man Paul Frees came in to loop Duel's unfinished ADR on "The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg". Davis was fitted for costumes the following day, and began reshooting scenes Duel had previously completed for an unfinished episode the following Monday. According to Swerling, the decision to continue production so soon after Duel's death was heavily criticized in the press at the time.

Development
Alias Smith and Jones began with a made-for-TV movie of the previous year called The Young Country about con artists in the Old West. It was produced, written, and directed by Roy Huggins, who served as executive producer of the show. Under the pseudonym John Thomas James, Huggins shared the writing credit on most episodes of the series that followed. It was broadcast on 17 March 1970 in the ABC Movie of the Week strand.

Roger Davis starred as Stephen Foster Moody, and Pete Duel had the secondary but significant role of Honest John Smith. Joan Hackett played a character called Clementine Hale; a character with the same name appeared in two Alias Smith and Jones episodes, played by Sally Field. This pilot was rejected, but Huggins was given a second chance and, with Glen A. Larson, developed Alias Smith and Jones. As with the previously rejected pilot The Young Country, this series pilot proper also aired as an ABC Movie of the Week.

It was made in the same spirit as many other American TV series of the time, from Huggins' own The Fugitive to Renegade, about fugitives on the run across America who get involved in the personal lives of the people they meet. The major difference was that Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were guilty of the crimes for which they were accused, but were trying to begin a noncriminal life.

The series was modeled on the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. (Universal contract player Ben Murphy was offered to the producers because he was considered a Paul Newman lookalike.) A number of similarities are seen between the film and the TV series: one of the lead characters in the film was called Harvey Logan (played by Ted Cassidy). In real life, Harvey Logan, also known by the nickname of Kid Curry, was an associate of the real Butch Cassidy, and unlike the TV version, was a cold-blooded killer.

The TV series also featured a group of robbers called the Devil's Hole Gang, loosely based on the Hole in the Wall Gang from which Cassidy recruited most of his outlaws. To lend them an element of audience sympathy, Heyes and Curry were presented as men who avoided bloodshed (though Curry did once kill in self-defense) and always were attempting to reform and seek redemption for their "prior ways".

The names "Smith" and "Jones" originated from a line in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when before one of their final hold-ups, the characters are outside a bank in Bolivia and Sundance turns to Butch and says: "I'm Smith and you're Jones."

Locations
Parts of the television series were filmed at Castle Valley and Professor Valley in Utah.

Cancellation
The series continued for another 17 episodes after the recasting of Hannibal Heyes, but never regained its popularity after the loss of Duel. This, as well as the fact that the long-prominent Western genre was giving way to police dramas, brought the show to an end on January 13, 1973. On January 16, 1973, Bonanza aired its final episode, leaving the 18-year-old Gunsmoke, the syndicated comedy western Dusty's Trail, and Kung Fu as the only Westerns scheduled for Fall 1973.

Home media
The entire series has been released on DVD.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the complete first season of Alias Smith and Jones in Region 2 on June 11, 2007.

Original tie-in novels
American Western author Todhunter Ballard, better known as W.T. Ballard, wrote six original novels based on the series, under his tie-in pseudonym "Brian Fox." Only the first two were published in the United States, by Award Books, between 1971 and 1972. The television series, however, was so popular in the UK that after first run episodes were exhausted, the first two novels were reprinted and distributed by London-based publisher Tandem Books, who also released the four additional titles, all in 1976. Since Award and Tandem were affiliated publishers, it's unclear if Award commissioned all six books and dropped the book series as the show's American popularity waned, unwittingly leaving the then-unpublished manuscripts to be rejuvenated later. or if Tandem returned to Ballard for the additional titles.

Each book is a standalone novel and they can be read in any order. Following, however, is the order of publication.
 * Dead Ringer (1971)
 * The Outlaw Trail (1972)
 * Cabin Fever (1976)
 * Apache Gold (1976)
 * Dragooned (1976)
 * Trick Shot (1976)

References in other works

 * The title was spoofed in the 1980s British comedy series Alas Smith and Jones.
 * In his comedy book Lolly Scramble, comedian Tony Martin makes reference to the irony of the opening narration "they never shot anyone!" with Duel only ultimately shooting himself. Even more bizarre, as Martin remarks, the person reading that line took over Duel's role.
 * In episode 6 of series 1 of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, while Reggie is pretending to be dead and staying in a bed-sit, the lights go out whenever the landlady watches BBC2, "she is an aficionado of Alias Smith and Jones".

title: Alias Smith and Jones


text: User:PrimeFan

title: User:PrimeFan


text:
China Drama Academy

The China Drama Academy was a Peking opera school in Kowloon, Hong Kong, known for being the childhood home of such famous actors as Jackie Chan (Yuen Lo), Sammo Hung (Yuen Lung), Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu and Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai). Famed filmmaker Yuen Woo-ping also attended the school for one year as a day student.

It was run from a small theatre in the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park by Master Yu Jim Yuen, a northern (北拳) kung fu practitioner and a very stern teacher. Children were usually enrolled for a period of 10 years, whilst Yu taught them the acrobatic and acting skills that would later introduce many of them into the world of Chinese theatre and movies.

Whilst attending the Peking opera school under the tutelage of Yu Jim Yuen, the students all adopted their sifu's given name "Yuen" as their family name.

Life in the school
Practice at the Peking Opera School was very strict. The students signed into contracts that would allow the instructors to punish them up until death. Training would take place up to 18 hours a day and included stretching, weapons training, acrobatics, martial arts and acting. In an interview in 2008, Jackie Chan described the experience:

"It was really arduous, we hardly had enough to eat, enough clothes to keep warm, training was extremely tiring, and Master could cane us anytime!"

Hung retorted:

...at that time, majority of the people in Hong Kong were poor. It was equally gruelling whichever profession you were in. We were considered fortunate. Our Master was an exceptional person, and he adopted Jackie Chan as his son, and doted on him the most. [..] Our Master took in many disciples, but he didn't take a single cent from us, and even slept on the floor together with us.

In Chan's biography, he elaborates on how students would be made to adopt the horse stance and other balancing poses, for long periods of time. If one student fell, they would be beaten and all students would be made to restart the exercise.

Whilst there, Chan earned the nickname "Double Boy" from the other students, because he would often have to endure twice the training as the other students, but had twice the spirit. According to his book I Am Jackie Chan, one of the reasons Chan excelled was because he had been "adopted" by Yu at the request of his parents. This meant any failure would have been a particular embarrassment, so he was made to practice for longer and often when others made mistakes, Chan was punished twice as hard as the perpetrator.

The Seven Little Fortunes
The Seven Little Fortunes, sometimes known as The Lucky Seven, were a performance troupe consisting of the China Drama Academy's most capable students. Aged as young as seven or eight years old, they travelled and showed their acrobatic and acting skills to domestic and Western audiences in theatres and venues such as Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park (a.k.a. Lai-yuen Amusement Park). The school also sent these students to work for movie studios as extras.

Though there were more than seven pupils in the troupe at any one time (some estimates say 14), only seven would appear in each performance. Jackie Chan was one of the Seven Little Fortunes and, when asked about his most famous pupil, Master Yu Jim Yuen said that Jackie was "not one of the best, but the naughtiest, yes."

Known members include Jackie Chan (Yuen Lo), Sammo Hung (Yuen Lung), Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai), Yuen Qiu, Yuen Tak, Yuen Tai, and Yuen Mo.  Painted Faces (1988) is a biographical film about The Seven Little Fortunes during their youth at the Peking Opera School.

title: China Drama Academy


text:
Barry Norman

Barry Leslie Norman (21 August 1933 – 30 June 2017) was a British film critic, television presenter and journalist. He presented the BBC's cinema review programme, Film..., from 1972 to 1998.

Early life
Born at St Thomas's Hospital, London, on 21 August 1933,  Norman was the eldest of three children of film director Leslie Norman, and Elizabeth Norman (née Crafford). He was brother of script editor and director Valerie Norman (making him the former brother-in-law of Bernard Williams). Norman was educated at a state primary school and then at Hurstpierpoint College in West Sussex – at the time, the college did not admit the sons of tradespeople and there was a lengthy debate as to whether his father's occupation as a film editor was a trade or not. At age 12 he went to Highgate School, then an all-boys independent school in North London from January 1946 until July 1951. He did not go to university, opting instead to study shipping management at Islington Technical College.

Career
Norman began his career in journalism with the West London newspaper The Kensington News. He later spent a period in South Africa working for The Star in Johannesburg, then moving to Salisbury, Rhodesia (now known as Harare, Zimbabwe) where he wrote for The Rhodesia Herald. In Africa he developed a hostility to the effects of apartheid.

When he returned to the UK, he became a gossip columnist for the Daily Sketch, and then show business editor of the Daily Mail until March 1971, when he was made redundant when the two papers merged. Subsequently, he wrote a column for The Observer and each Wednesday for The Guardian, also contributing leader columns to the newspaper. He was one of the collaborators with Wally Fawkes on the long-running cartoon strip Flook. He contributed a column to the Radio Times for many years, and wrote several novels.

He presented BBC1's Film... programme from 1972, becoming the sole presenter the following year. The theme was a recording of Billy Taylor playing his 1952 composition "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free". Norman's involvement was interrupted in 1982 by a brief spell presenting Omnibus. After returning to the Film series in 1983, Norman became increasingly irritated by the BBC's reluctance to screen it at a regular time, and in 1998 finally accepted an offer to work for BSkyB, where he remained for three years. Jonathan Ross took his place as the BBC programme's presenter.

In a 2013 article for the Radio Times, Norman listed what he considered to be the 49 best British films of all time. The list included The Cruel Sea (1953), Chariots of Fire (1981) and Skyfall (2012). Norman explained: "In most cases the criteria I used was whether these films were going to last; whether new generations of cinema goers would want to watch them in 20 years time [...] Most are quite old films, but they all appeal to this generation of film-goers as much as they did when they were first made."

Norman wrote and presented a number of documentary series for the BBC and ITV, including Hollywood Greats (1977–1983), Barry Norman's Guide to American Soaps (1985), Talking Pictures (1987) and Soaps Down Under in 1991.

In 1982 Norman presented Omnibus.

Norman was, together with Elton Welsby, the main anchorman for Channel 4's coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

Norman presented part of Comic Relief in 1990 and 1991.

He was for some years a regular radio broadcaster on BBC Radio 4. In 1974, he presented Today, and was the first chairman of The News Quiz. He was the original presenter of the BBC Radio 4 transport and travel show Going Places and of its sister travel magazine, Breakaway. Other shows included The Chip Shop, an early 1980s series dedicated to the emerging home computer industry. In 1996, he presented an interview series for BBC Radio 5 Live.

He was associated with the phrase "and why not?", which was often attributed to that of his puppet likeness on the satirical ITV show Spitting Image. Norman explained to Empire magazine in 2014, however, that it had originated from a Rory Bremner sketch show on Channel 4. Norman later adopted the phrase himself, and it is the title of his 2003 autobiography.

In 2008, Norman launched a brand of pickled onions using a recipe handed down through his family.

Personal life
He married author Diana Narracott on 12 October 1957; the couple lived in Datchworth, Hertfordshire, for many years, and both of their daughters (Samantha and Emma) were born there. Diana Norman died on 27 January 2011 at the age of 77. Norman's 2013 book See You in the Morning was written as a celebration of their life together.

Norman had a passion for cricket and wrote a book on the subject. He was a member of the MCC and enjoyed spending time at Lord's watching cricket.

Politics
He was a supporter of the Liberal Democrats, having been a supporter of the Labour Party until the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981. He named Shirley Williams as the politician he most admired.

Death
Barry Norman died in his sleep, aged 83, on 30 June 2017, at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage having been afflicted with lung cancer in his later years. A memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden in April 2018.

Tributes
Writing in The Guardian, journalist Dennis Barker and film critic Derek Malcolm said that Norman "perfected a flair for talking beguilingly about cinema to a mass television audience but in a way that did not make true aficionados wince. As the presenter and critic of BBC TV’s original Film 72 through to Film 98, he was knowledgeable without affectation, and he did not seem overawed by the industry's leading lights." Chief Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw wrote that Norman's "enthusiasm and love for film always shone through" and he was "an accessible, unpretentious surveyor of cinema". Mark Kermode wrote that "watching Barry Norman review films was a pleasure, an education, and an inspiration. Wit, knowledge and wry enthusiasm. He was the Master", and Jonathan Ross, who replaced him as presenter of the BBC's Film... series, described him as "a great critic and a lovely, lovely man".

Awards and honours

 * BAFTA's Richard Dimbleby Award, 1981.
 * Magazine Columnist of the Year, 1991.
 * Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), 1998.

title: Barry Norman


text:
Rebecca Front

Rebecca Louise Front (born 16 May 1964) is an English actress, writer and comedian. She won the 2010 BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for The Thick of It (2009–2012). She is also known for her work in numerous other British comedies, including the radio show On The Hour (1992), The Day Today (1994), Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge (1994), Time Gentlemen Please (2000–2002), sketch show Big Train (2002), and Nighty Night (2004–2005).

Front has also been seen in a number of dramatic roles, including Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent in Lewis (2006–2014), Mrs. Bennet in Death Comes to Pemberley (2013), Mrs. Landau in The Eichmann Show (2015), Vera in Humans (2015), and Death in Paradise (2019). Her theatre credits include the musicals Company and The Fix at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Sam Mendes.

Early life
Front was born in Stoke Newington, London, to Sheila and Charles Front. Her mother wrote children's books, which her father illustrated. Her father also designed the title-logo on the cover of The Beatles' album Rubber Soul. Her father is Jewish and her mother is of Jewish and Welsh descent. Front was brought up in Reform Judaism.

Front became involved in comedy while at St Hugh's College at the University of Oxford, where she read English and became the first female president of The Oxford Revue. She also trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Career
While at Oxford in 1984, Front took part in the revue Stop the Weak. The tour played in Oxford itself, the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, Edinburgh, Salisbury, and Romsey. In 1985, Front teamed up with Sioned Wiliam and Jon Magnusson to take the show The Bobo Girls go BOO to Edinburgh. She made a short promotional video on energy conservation with Michael Simkins in the late 1980s.

Front achieved a higher profile as a result of her work with Stewart Lee and Richard Herring on the radio shows Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World and On the Hour, and the television and radio series Fist of Fun. She went on to form a close professional association with Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Doon Mackichan and Steve Coogan, who all transferred with Front to The Day Today, the television version of On the Hour. Completing The Day Today were Patrick Marber, who was part of the 1984 Oxford University revue with Front and David Schneider, who took part in the 1985 revue. This cast continued to contribute to the Alan Partridge comedy canon throughout the 1990s.

In recent years Front has also become a fixture on comedy panel shows on British television and radio including The News Quiz, Have I Got News for You and If I Ruled The World. She has also had minor roles in The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Absolute Power and Absolutely Fabulous and she has also played straight acting roles in television drama, including You Can Choose Your Friends, The Rotters' Club, Kavanagh QC, Lewis and Jonathan Creek.

In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. From 2006, she has written columns for The Guardian. In 2007, she guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio drama The Mind's Eye. Between 2006 until 2014, Front had a recurring role as Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent on the detective drama series Lewis, the successor to Inspector Morse on ITV.

In 2009 and 2012, respectively, she appeared in the third and fourth series of political satire The Thick of It, playing Nicola Murray MP, Secretary of State for Citizenship and Social Affairs and in charge of the dysfunctional 'DoSAC', and later, Leader of the Opposition. Front featured in the 2010 BBC comedy series Grandma's House playing the part of Simon Amstell's mother Tanya, and Just William, as the mother of William Brown and also starred in the 2011 live-action 3D family comedy film Horrid Henry: The Movie as Henry's headmistress, Miss Oddbod.

In 2012 Front starred as the psychiatrist in the Sky Arts sketch series Psychobitches, where Front's character offers therapy to notable women of history and the present day, including Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Shelley, Enid Blyton, Eva Braun, Mary Pickford, Edith Piaf, and Anna Nicole Smith. The series aired on the British television channel Sky Arts 1. The first episode of a second series was broadcast on 25 November 2014. In 2013, she starred in the new Sky Living comedy The Spa, in the role of Alison Crabbe. She plays Cox in The Wrong Mans, a six-part comedy-thriller for BBC Two. The premiere was on 24 September 2013. She reprised this role in December 2014 for a special two-parter. She narrated Fox Wars which was broadcast on 22 October 2013.

In December 2013, Sky Atlantic aired a new comedy series called Little Cracker. The second programme in the series was an autobiographical story written by Front and her brother Jeremy. It concerns the time she witnessed the near-drowning of her father in a lake; that incident was closely followed by the death of her grandfather. The proximity of these two experiences caused Front considerable personal anguish. Front was eleven years old at the time and, because of the trauma she suffered, she went through a period of not wanting to attend school. The programme included a comedic treatment of this time in her life, followed by Front and her brother explaining the background to the story, and how they came to write and dramatise it. In the programme, Front was played by Lucy Hutchinson, and her father was played by the actor Richard Lumsden. Samantha Spiro played her mother and Front played her headmistress, Miss Dyson. Front's school friend character, Karen, was played by Imogen Front.

For their Christmas season, the BBC commissioned Death Comes to Pemberley, a three-part British television drama based on characters created by Jane Austen in her novel Pride and Prejudice. The first episode aired on BBC One at 8.15pm on Boxing Day 2013, was based on the best selling novel by P. D. James, the story returns to the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and involves its characters in a new tale of murder and emotional mayhem. Front played the part of Mrs Bennet.

In January 2014, Front appeared in the Midsomer Murders episode "Let Us Prey", about a serial killer who uses medieval torture methods to dispatch their victims. She appeared in the BBC series Outnumbered, playing the headmistress at Karen's school in early 2014. Front portrayed Fiona in the BBC Radio 4 series Love in Recovery. She also starred in the sitcom Up the Women as Helen Bute, the antagonist for three episodes in mid-2013 and a six-episode series in 2015. From 2014 to 2019, she narrated the Channel 4 series The Supervet.

In 2017, she co-wrote and appeared in the sitcom Shush! on BBC Radio 4, a sitcom set in a library.

Personal life
Front is married to Phil Clymer, previously a radio producer at the BBC World Service; they have two children. Front was part of the BBC English/World Service rep company.

Front's book Curious: True Stories and Loose Connections (published 2014) is a collection of autobiographical stories.

Jeremy Front, her brother, is a writer and comic actor. They have collaborated on writing and performance projects. The most recent is a series of spoof documentaries, Incredible Women, for BBC Radio 4.

title: Rebecca Front