title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph Churchill's political career (like that of his son) was not as successful as that of his father or grandfather Lord Randolph Churchill. In an attempt to assert his own political standing he announced in January 1935 that he was a candidate in the Wavertree by-election in Liverpool; on 6 February 1935, an Independent Conservative on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule. His campaign was funded by Lucy, Lady Houston, an eccentric ardent nationalist who owned the "Saturday Review". In an attempt to encourage Randolph, Lady Houston sent him a poem:


title: Randolph Churchill

text: The poem was widely disseminated in the press - but without the unflattering references to 'Socialist Mac[Donald],' who at the time was still Prime Minister of the Conservative-dominated National Government.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: His involvement was criticised by his father for splitting the official Conservative vote and letting in a winning Labour candidate, although Winston appeared to support Randolph on the hustings. Michael Foot was an eyewitness at Wavertree, where he blamed Baldwin's India policy for hurting the Lancashire cotton trade. When he asked rhetorically, "And who is responsible for putting Liverpool where she is today?" a heckler shouted, "Blackburn Rovers!". "He collected 10,000 Independent votes in a few days and handed the seat on a platter to the Labour Party" as Foot later put it.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In March 1935, again with financial backing from Lady Houston, he sponsored an Independent Conservative candidate, Richard Findlay, also a member of the British Union of Fascists, to stand in a by-election in Norwood. This attracted no backing from MPs or the press, and Findlay lost to the official Conservative candidate, Duncan Sandys, who in September that year became Randolph's brother-in-law, marrying his sister Diana. He had a violent row with his father about Norwood; Winston did not support him in any way this time, although he was suspected by other Conservatives of having done so. Duncan Sandys was the only one of Randolph's Conservative opponents to win; Randolph soon became jealous when Sandys joined the family and Churchill warmed to him.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Having blamed Baldwin and the party organization for his loss, Randolph libelled Sir Thomas White. Over the summer he was summoned to the High Court to pay damages of £1,000; when advised that without an apology his career in politics was over, he immediately backtracked.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph Churchill was an effective manipulator of the media, using his family name to obtain coverage in newspapers such as the "Daily Mail". In the November 1935 general election he stood as the official Conservative candidate at Labour-held West Toxteth; reportedly he was so unwelcome that they threw bananas. The Earl of Derby lent his support, and Randolph continued to aid the Conservative campaigning across the city. He stood for Parliament a third time, as a Unionist on 10 February 1936 in a by-election at Ross and Cromarty, opposed to the National Government candidacy of Malcolm MacDonald. Randolph's campaign was funded by Lady Houston for a third time. It was long and lively, carried out in wintry conditions in which Randolph and the other candidates drove many miles over narrow mountain tracks, carrying spades in their cars to dig themselves out of snowdrifts, to reach far areas of the large constituency. But although Randolph enjoyed it all enormously, he was defeated again. This embarrassed his father, who was hoping to be offered a Cabinet position at this time.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In September 1936, at his father's behest, Randolph pursued his younger sister Sarah to the US in a vain attempt to dissuade her from marrying the much older comedian Vic Oliver.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Lady Houston had backed Randolph's three attempts to stand for Parliament. He was better backed financially than his father had ever been. This support came to a halt when she died late in 1936. Freddie Birkenhead remarked that he was "unbowed but bloody as usual". Thereafter he used his employment as a Beaverbrook/Rothermere journalist to promote his political career and to warn of the dangers of Hitler. In 1937 he tried in vain to get an invitation from Unity Mitford to meet Hitler. The diarist "Chips" Channon speculated (15 April) that if Winston Churchill were to return to office under the new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain the outcome might be "an explosion of foolishness after a short time", war with Germany or even "a seat for Randolph". Churchill warned the House of Commons (19 July 1937) that there were twelve-inch Spanish howitzers trained on Gibraltar. Channon recorded that this reduced the House's sympathies for Franco, but that when the House learned that the source was "Master Randolph" (as he described him) MPs were merely amused.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Virginia Cowles first met Randolph in New York in the early 1930s. He helped her to get a visa to report from the USSR in February 1939. She praised his courage but wrote that "going out with him was like going out with a time bomb. Wherever he went an explosion seemed to follow. With a natural and brilliant gift of oratory, and a disregard for the opinions of his elders, he often held dinner parties pinned in a helpless and angry silence. I never knew a young man who had the ability to antagonise so easily." At a dinner at Blenheim for Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill's 18th birthday in July 1939 a drunk Randolph had to be removed after behaving badly to a woman who spurned his advances and starting a row with another man over Winston's reputation.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In August 1938, Randolph Churchill joined his father's old regiment, the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in the supplementary reserve, and was called up for active service on 24 August 1939. He was one of the oldest of the junior officers, and not popular with his peers. In order to win a bet, he walked the 106-mile round trip from their base in Hull to York and back in under 24 hours. He was followed by a car, both to witness the event and in case his blisters became too painful to walk further, and made it with around twenty minutes to spare. To his great annoyance, his brother officers did not pay up.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: On the outbreak of war Randolph's father was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He sent Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, along with Lieutenant Randolph Churchill, aboard (which was based at Plymouth at the time) to Cherbourg to bring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor back to England from their exile. Randolph was on board the destroyer untidily attired in his 4th Hussars uniform; he had attached the spurs to his boots upside down. The Duke was mildly shocked and insisted on bending down to fit Randolph's spurs correctly.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was in love with Laura Charteris (she did not reciprocate) but his mistress at the time was the American actress Claire Luce, who often visited him in camp. He appears to have decided that as Winston's only son it was his duty to marry and sire an heir in case he was killed, a common motivation among young men at the time. He quickly became engaged to Pamela Digby in late September 1939. It was rumoured that Randolph had proposed to eight women in the previous few weeks, and Pamela's friends and parents were not pleased about the match. She was charmed by Randolph's parents, both of whom warmed to her and felt she would be a good influence on him. They were married in October 1939. On their wedding night Randolph read her chunks of Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". She managed to become pregnant by the spring of 1940.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In May 1940 Randolph's father, to whom he remained close both politically and socially, became Prime Minister, just as the Battle of France was beginning. In the summer of 1940 Winston Churchill's secretary Jock Colville wrote ("Fringes of Power" p. 207) "I thought Randolph one of the most objectionable people I had ever met: noisy, self-assertive, whining and frankly unpleasant. He did not strike me as intelligent. At dinner he was anything but kind to Winston, who adores him". The polemic against appeasement "Guilty Men" (July 1940), in fact written anonymously by Michael Foot, Frank Owen, and Peter Howard, was wrongly attributed to Randolph Churchill.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was elected unopposed to Parliament for Preston at a wartime by-election in September 1940. Soon afterwards his son Winston was born on 10 October 1940. During the first year of marriage Randolph had no home of his own until Brendan Bracken found them a vicarage at Ickleford near Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Pamela often had to ask Winston to pay Randolph's gambling debts.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: It was widely suspected, including by Randolph himself, that secret orders had been given that the 4th Hussars were not to be sent into action (they were, as soon as Randolph transferred out). Randolph transferred to No. 8 (Guards) Commando. In February 1941 they were sent out, a six-week journey via the Cape of Good Hope and the East Coast of Africa, avoiding the Central Mediterranean where the Italian navy and Axis air forces were strong. Randolph, who was still earning £1,500 per annum as a Lord Beaverbrook journalist, lost £3,000 gambling on the voyage. Pamela had to go to Beaverbrook, who refused her an advance on Randolph's salary. Declining his offer of an outright gift (it is unclear whether submitting to his sexual advances was a condition), she sold her wedding presents, including jewellery; took a job in Beaverbrook's ministry, arranging accommodation for workers being redeployed around the country; sublet her home and moved into a cheap room on the top floor of The Dorchester (very risky during the Blitz). By accepting hospitality from others most evenings she was able to put her entire salary towards paying Randolph's debts. She may also have had a miscarriage at this time. The marriage was as good as over, and she soon began an affair with her future husband Averell Harriman, who was also staying at the Dorchester at the time.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Once in Egypt, Randolph served as a General Staff (Intelligence) officer at Middle East HQ. Averell Harriman visited Randolph in Cairo in June 1941 to bring him news of his family. Randolph, who himself had a long-term mistress and several casual girlfriends at the time, had no idea yet that he was being cuckolded. He had recently been reduced to tears on being told to his face by a brother officer how deeply disliked he was, something of which he had previously had no idea. On 28 October 1941 he was promoted to the war-substantive rank of captain (acting rank of major) and put in charge of Army information at GHQ. For a time he edited a newspaper, "Desert News", for the troops. He lived at Shepheard's Hotel. Anita Leslie, then in an ambulance company, wrote that "he could not cease trumpeting his opinions and older men could be seen turning purple with anger" and that he was "insufferable".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: On leave in January 1942, he criticised the Tories for exculpating Winston Churchill's decision to defend Greece and Crete. He was sensitive to the "co-operation and self-sacrifice" of parts of the Empire that in 1942 were in more immediate danger than the British Isles, mentioning Australia and Malaya which suffered under Japanese threats of invasion. He was scathing of Sir Herbert Williams' "Official Report" into the Conduct of the War.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: His father, who was under great stress following recent Japanese victories in the Far East, visited him briefly in Cairo in spring 1942. Randolph had a row with his parents so violent that Clementine thought Winston might have a seizure. In April 1942 he volunteered for the newly formed SAS – to his mother's dismay, because of the strain on his father. She contemplated cabling him forbidding him to go, but knew that Winston would want him to. He joined the SAS CO David Stirling and six SAS men on a mission behind enemy lines in the Libyan Desert to Benghazi in May 1942. The Benghazi Raid did not reach its goals and Randolph severely dislocated his back when his truck overturned in a road accident during the journey home. After a stay in Cairo he was invalided back to England. Randolph had sent few letters to Pamela, and many to Laura Charteris, with whom he was in love and who was in the process of getting divorced. Evelyn Waugh recorded that Pamela "hates him so much that she can't sit in a room with him". By November 1942 Randolph had formally left her; his parents, who adored their baby grandson Winston, sympathised with Pamela.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In November 1942 he visited Morocco to witness the American landings. Randolph encouraged the conversion of Vichy fighters to de Gaulle's army, submitting reports to Parliament on 23 February 1943. In May 1943 Randolph visited his father in Algiers, where he was celebrating the successful conclusion of the Tunisian Campaign. Randolph, along with his sister Sarah, accompanied his father to the Tehran Conference in November 1943. On the way back they quarrelled again about his failed marriage, which may have contributed to the serious heart attack which Winston Churchill suffered at Tunis. He visited his father, who was laid up with pneumonia, in Marrakesh in December 1943 (General Alexander gave him a lift on his plane). He was promoted to the temporary rank of major on 9 December.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph had encountered Fitzroy Maclean in the Western Desert Campaign. Winston Churchill agreed to Randolph accepting Maclean's offer to join his military and diplomatic mission (Macmis) to Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia, warning him not to get captured in case the Gestapo sent him Randolph's fingers one by one. He returned to England for training then in January or February 1944 he parachuted into Yugoslavia. Tom Mitford was also present in the group. He was later joined in Yugoslavia by Evelyn Waugh and Freddie Birkenhead. Round about this time he lost a bet to read various books of the Bible without speaking, but never paid up.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: After the German airdrop outside Tito's Drvar headquarters in June 1944 ("Operation Knight's Leap") Randolph was awarded the MBE in August, having been recommended for a Military Cross. Fitzroy Maclean reported highly of his abilities at this stage. However, Maclean wrote of their adventures together, and some of the problems Churchill caused him, in his memoir "Eastern Approaches". Tito had barely managed to evade the Germans and Churchill and Evelyn Waugh arrived on the island of Vis and met him on 10 July. In July 1944 he and Waugh were among the ten survivors of a Dakota crash. He suffered spinal and knee injuries. He cried when he learned that his servant had been killed, but behaved with "his usual loud rudeness" as an invalid. After discharge from hospital in Bari (in the "heel" of Italy), he convalesced with Duff and Diana Cooper in Algiers. His father visited him in Algiers on his way to Italy—they discussed French and British politics.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was ordered by Maclean to take charge of the military mission in Croatia. By September he was back in Yugoslavia, where Waugh recorded that he was drunk most days, needed to have things repeated back to him when sober, and behaved awfully even when sober. Waugh described him as "a flabby bully who rejoices in blustering and shouting down anyone weaker than himself and starts squealing as soon as he meets anyone as strong—he is a bore—with no intellectual invention or agility. He has a childlike retentive memory, and repetition takes the place of thought. He has set himself very low aims and has not the self-control to pursue them steadfastly." Lovell wrote that every observer, including Duff Cooper and Anita Leslie, recorded frequent "drunken ranting" from him at this period. On good days he could be excellent company. With Waugh he established a military mission at Topusko on 16 September 1944. One outcome was a formidable report detailing Tito's persecution of the clergy. It was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden (who also attempted to discredit Waugh) to save diplomatic embarrassment, as Tito was then seen as a required ally of Britain and an official "friend".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Tom Mitford, one of Randolph's few close friends, was killed in Burma, where the campaign was approaching its final stages, in March 1945.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Having been demobilised with the war-substantive rank of captain, Randolph received a reserve commission in the 4th Hussars as a second lieutenant on 28 May 1946. He was promoted to captain on 1 November 1947, and remained in the reserves for the next 14 years. He relinquished his commission on 28 May 1961, retiring an honorary major.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph's attendance in the Commons was irregular and patchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in July 1945. He had assumed he would hold his seat in 1945, but did not (he never actually won a contested election to Parliament).


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph had a blazing row with his father and Brendan Bracken at a dinner at Claridge's on 31 August. The argument was about his father's planned war memoirs, and Randolph stalked off from the table as he disliked being spoken to abruptly by his father in public. His father had misunderstood him to be talking about getting the help of a literary agent, whereas Randolph was in fact urging his father to get tax advice from lawyers, as indeed he eventually did. Randolph had to write later that day explaining himself.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was divorced from Pamela in 1946. His sister writes that after the war he led a "rampaging existence" as "he always had lances to break, and hares to start". He was loyal and affectionate, but "would pick an argument with a chair". Winston declared that he had a "deep animal love" for Randolph but that "every time we meet we seem to have a bloody row". Randolph believed that he could control his temper by willpower, but he could not do this when drunk and alcohol "fuelled his sense of thwarted destiny". His father no longer had the energy for argument, so reduced the time he spent with Randolph and the amount he confided in him. Randolph maintained good written relations with his mother, but she could not stand arguments and often retreated to her room when he visited. She was able to help him out of his financial difficulties, which he acknowledged, "spared him much humiliation".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: As Winston Churchill's relations with his son cooled, he lavished affection on a series of surrogate sons, including Brendan Bracken and Randolph's brothers-in-law Duncan Sandys and, from 1947, Christopher Soames, as well as, to a certain extent, Anthony Eden. Randolph loathed all these men. He had still not entirely abandoned his youthful fantasy of one day becoming Prime Minister, and resented Eden's position as his father's political heir. Randolph used to refer to Eden as "Jerk Eden".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Noël Coward quipped that Randolph was "utterly unspoiled by failure". He was blackballed from the Beefsteak Club and on one occasion was slapped twice across the face by Duff Cooper at the Paris Embassy for making an obnoxious remark. He reported on the Red Army parade from Moscow. He was still trying to persuade Laura Charteris to marry him. Although they were on-off lovers, she told friends that Randolph needed a mother rather than a wife. In 1948 he tried to persuade Pamela to take him back, but she declined and, having converted to Catholicism, obtained a full annulment, soon beginning a relationship with Gianni Agnelli. Randolph accepted that he could never have Laura, with whom he had been in love for much of his adult life.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: He courted June Osborne, his junior by eleven years. She was the daughter of Australia-born Colonel Rex Hamilton Osborne, D.S.O., M.C., of Little Ingleburn, Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Mary Lovell describes her as "a vulnerable and needy girl-woman". They had a stormy three-month courtship, during which at one point June, high on a mixture of Benzedrine and wine, ran toward the River Thames and threatened suicide, calling the police and accusing Randolph of indecent assault when he tried to prevent her. Evelyn Waugh wrote to Randolph (14 October 1948) that June "must be possessed of magnificent courage" to marry him. On 23 October he wrote to June at Randolph's request, urging her to see Randolph's good side, calling him "a domestic and home-loving character who has never had a home". Randolph and June were married in November 1948.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph's son Winston, then aged eight, remembered June as "a beautiful lady with long, blonde hair" who made an effort to bond with her young stepson. Diana Cooper guessed at once after their honeymoon that Randolph and June were unsuited to one another. They had a daughter, Arabella (1949–2007). His sister later wrote that "He does not seem to have possessed the aptitudes for marriage". The marriage soon deteriorated and on one occasion he reduced Queen's Restaurant in Sloane Square to silence by shouting at June over dinner that she was "a paltry little middle-class bitch always anxious to please and failing owing to her dismal manners". Eventually another diner remonstrated with him for speaking to his wife in that way; Randolph rebuked him for interfering in a private conversation, only to be told that it sounded like a public conversation to him.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph stood unsuccessfully for the Parliamentary seat of Plymouth Devonport in February 1950. His opponent Michael Foot wrote that he talked as though Plymouth belonged to him, and issued "a brilliant cascade of abuse" in all directions, including his own party workers.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph reported on the Korean War from August 1950, six weeks after the initial North Korean invasion of the south. The American and South Korean forces were bottled into a perimeter around Pusan and Taegu. His father gave him a handwritten letter of introduction to General Douglas MacArthur. This was dangerous work: 17 war correspondents were killed, either by enemy fire or in air crashes, including the correspondents of "The Times" and the "Daily Telegraph". Randolph was wounded on patrol near the Naktong River. Before seeking treatment he insisted on finishing his copy and giving it to the crew of a plane bound for Hong Kong.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: While dining in Hong Kong, he had an altercation with the restaurant staff, who then proceeded to get the manually-operated lift stuck between floors, and to "accidentally" get grease on his new sharkskin suit while hauling him out. While Winston Churchill was researching his biography of his father, Alan Whicker, who had been Randolph's dining companion for the evening, confirmed the account which Randolph had given to his son at the time. He returned to Korea to report on the Inchon Landings, the liberation of Seoul and the UN forces' crossing of the 38th Parallel. He then returned to the UK for an operation (6 February 1951) on his wounded leg.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Mary Lovell records that repeated stories of Randolph's drunkenness, foul temper and financial difficulties date from this period. On one occasion, probably around this time, he became drunk and abusive in the first class cabin of a BOAC flight and had to be put off the plane at the earliest opportunity (the incident was hushed up to avoid embarrassing his father). Evelyn Waugh visited him in hospital, noting that there was no sign of his wife June, and observed that he had thought his own life dull "but when I see the alternative I am consoled".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was involved in an altercation on board a train at Nottingham on 22 February 1951. He was denied entry to the locked restaurant car by a railway employee, then later asked by the same man to leave the reserved seat in which he had been sitting. While he stood smoking in the corridor, the man (by Randolph's account) taunted him that he was "in the soup again". Randolph called the man "a bastard". At the next station Randolph was questioned by a plain-clothes policeman who had been summoned to board the train. The railwayman actually "was" illegitimate and he sued Randolph for slander, his lawyers arguing that it was "not in the public interest" for this fact to be revealed. The eminent barrister Sir Hartley Shawcross finally persuaded him to withdraw his lawsuit after eighteen months of correspondence.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: He stood for Parliament for Devonport again in 1951. In 1951, as in 1950, Foot and Randolph exchanged invective in public, but got on well in private, often meeting for a drink at the end of the day when Randolph had been deserted by his own party workers, with whom he had a poor relationship. Foot and his wife Jill Craigie would sometimes even escort Randolph back to his train. Michael Foot later said to one of Randolph's researchers: "You and I belong to the most exclusive club in London: the friends of Randolph Churchill".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Having lost every parliamentary contest he ever fought (he had got in unopposed in 1940), he was desperately disappointed not to be able to get back into Parliament as the Conservatives returned to power.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In the days after the 1951 general election, while his father was forming a government, Randolph amused himself by ringing up Conservative MPs who hurried to the phone on being told that "Mr Churchill" wished to speak to them urgently, assuming that they were about to be offered a ministerial position. During the post-war era Anthony Eden remained the Prime Minister's designated successor, yet when Eden married Clarissa Churchill in 1952, Randolph could hardly contain his utter contempt for his cousin's new husband. He dubbed his ranting phone calls the "Eden Terror". Randolph had long been jealous of Anthony Eden, and often wrote articles critical of him in the "London Evening Standard". These articles helped to harm Eden's reputation. Eden did not reply in public, but complained privately to John Colville.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph was a Gold Staff Officer at the Coronation in 1953. In a speech at a Foyle's literary luncheon at the Dorchester in September 1953 Randolph, who "had had a few drinks" asked why a rich man like the press baron Lord Rothermere (his former employer) needed to "prostitute" himself by printing details about the private lives of public figures, which Randolph described as "pornography for pornography's sake". Rothermere was not initially worried by this or the next speech. Randolph repeated his accusation at the Manchester Publishing Association on 7 October 1953 and in another speech. His lawyer and Sir Hartley Shawcross had both urged him to go ahead.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: When sober Randolph could still be excellent company, as even his mother admitted, and could even switch off his "temper" when told that lunch was ready. He was assisted by Alan Brien to write the life of Lord Derby; while researching it in 1953, Randolph and June lived at Oving House near Aylesbury, which got him away from White's Club and his gambling friends. The family trustees agreed to buy Stour House, East Bergholt, near Colchester. For the first time he had a proper home of his own.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: However, his marriage continued to deteriorate, with occasional reports that he had blacked his wife's eye or that she had left to stay with friends, or that she had flung all her clothes out of a window. There was one furious row at Chequers, described as "gruesome" by June and "his familiar rudeness" by Mary Lovell. He called his brother-in-law Christopher Soames "a shit" and Eden "a jerk" while his father, still Prime Minister at the time, was so "shaken with fury" that he seemed about to have a seizure. Randolph retired upstairs for a further noisy row with his wife, declaring that he would never see his father again. Sir Winston patched up the argument at 1am. June finally left him in the summer of 1954.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Even on the eve of his father's resignation, Randolph told his cousin Clarissa Eden that he did not approve of her husband becoming Prime Minister.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Winston Churchill had declined a peerage at the end of the Second World War in 1945 (being offered the Dukedom of Dover), and then did so again on his retirement in 1955 (when he was offered the Dukedom of London), ostensibly so as not to compromise his son's political career by preventing him from serving in the House of Commons (life peerages, titles not inherited by sons, were not created until 1958). The main reason was actually that Winston himself wanted to remain in the Commons—but by 1955, when his father resigned as Prime Minister, Randolph's political career was "already hopeless".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph introduced his father to Aristotle Onassis, on whose yacht "Christina" he was often to cruise, in January 1956.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: He set up a private company, "Country Bumpkins", to market his pamphlet "What I said about the Press" (in his speeches in 1953), which most newsagents refused to stock, and soon found himself involved in a libel case. He was carefully briefed on precise details both of facts and of the intricacies of the law. He was very quick-witted under cross-examination. His political opponent Michael Foot spoke on his behalf in court in October 1956, risking his own job on the "Daily Herald". He was awarded £5,000 damages in 1958. His son writes that he had been "completely self-controlled".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: There is evidence that on a trip to the USA in this period, he fathered a daughter, Rhonda Noonan, in Oklahoma whom he placed for a closed adoption. Paternity has not been established since no biological relative will comment on the question or provide a DNA sample to establish a likely blood relationship.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In January 1958 June filed for divorce from Randolph. He fell in love with Natalie Bevan when she called on him, a case of the 'thunderbolt' of sudden infatuation, witnessed by Patrick Kinross who was there at the time. She was accepted as his companion by the Churchill family, visiting Chartwell, Hyde Park Gate and the "Christina". Although they became lovers in the late 1950s, Natalie remained married to her husband and never lived with Randolph.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In November 1958 he gatecrashed a dinner in his father's honour at the British Embassy in Paris (Sir Winston was receiving the Croix de Liberation from Charles de Gaulle, now returned to power in France); to general relief his mother, with whom he had not spoken in two years, addressed him as "dear boy".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In November and December 1958 Randolph published six articles in the "Daily Express" about the Suez Crisis. Soon afterward he published "The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden" (1959). Questions were asked about it in the House, and Evelyn Waugh called the book "despicable". Clement Attlee reviewed the book as "singularly offensive and inaccurate" and wrote that "Readers of this book will not learn much about Sir Anthony Eden, but they should get a full appreciation of Mr Randolph Churchill". Sir Winston was deeply embarrassed about the book: Attlee later told Eden that Churchill had told him that he should have made his review stronger, while Sir Winston told Eden that he saw little of Randolph these days and that whenever they met, as Eden recorded, "they only had a flaming row. Clemmie nodded sad assent". Eden's biographer Robert Rhodes James described the book as "a diatribe … best forgotten".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Since February 1959, as soon as it was clear that Nigel Nicolson was in trouble with his local Association, Randolph's open wish to be MP for Bournemouth was the subject of much press talk. He was not shortlisted for interview by the local Conservative Association in May. This was his last attempt to enter Parliament; it had not helped his case that in Liverpool 25 years earlier he had said "I don't want to go into Parliament to represent a lot of stuffy old ladies in Bournemouth, I want to fight for really hard-pressed people".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph inherited something of his father's literary flair, carving out a successful career for himself as a journalist. He edited the "Londoner's Diary" in the "Evening Standard" and was one of the best-paid gossip columnists on Fleet Street. He edited collections of his father's speeches, which were published in seven books between 1938 and 1961.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Although he had no sentimental illusions about colonial peoples, he had no time for regimes based on supposed white superiority. He reported on Cyprus (where the British Army was fighting insurgents in the late 1950s) and Algeria (where French rule was coming to an end in the late 1950s and early 1960s). He particularly disliked the police state of South Africa, and on entering the country he was detained in customs for insisting on giving his thumbprint in ink (as a black person was expected to do) rather than signing the relevant entry form, until it was confirmed that he was entitled to do so. He obtained an interview with Hendrik Verwoerd, who was surrounded by revolver-toting bodyguards after addressing a rally in Boer territory. He particularly abhorred the Sharpeville Massacre, believing that "10 London bobbies" could have dispersed the crowd relatively peacefully.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 1960 Randolph published the life of Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby (described by Robert Blake as "a reputable if rather dull book" about a "dull man") to prove to the trustees of his father's papers that he was fit to write his official biography. In May 1960 Sir Winston Churchill approved of Randolph's writing his life. "At last his life had found a purpose" his son later wrote.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Natalie Bevan declined his proposal of marriage in August 1960, but by then they had settled into a stable relationship. Winston Churchill (the younger) never heard Randolph have a row with her. Jonathan Aitken and Michael Wolff were eyewitnesses to Bobby Bevan bringing Natalie over for the evening and waiting patiently downstairs while she and Randolph enjoyed a "Cinq à sept". His divorce from his wife June became final in 1961. The locals called him "the Beast of Bergholt" and he had a reputation for not paying small tradesmen. His researchers included Martin Gilbert, Michael Wolff, Franklin Gannon, Milo Cripps, Michael Molian, Martin Mauthner and Andrew Kerr.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Jonathan Aitken first met him at Cherkley Court, the home of Aitken's great-uncle Lord Beaverbrook, where he was having a stand-up blazing row with the journalist Hugh Cudlipp who had made the mistake of criticising his father. In the early 1960s, after they had spoken together at an Oxford Union debate the previous evening, Randolph invited Aitken to drive him back to London and join him for lunch with his parents at 28 Hyde Park Gate. After Randolph had insisted on stopping three times for drinks on the way, they arrived late and with Randolph smelling of drink. Aitken beat a hasty retreat as Randolph had a blazing row with his mother while Sir Winston, then in his late 80s, turned red, shook his legs and beat his walking sticks together with anger.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Winston Churchill's secretary Anthony Montague Browne recorded an incident on board Aristotle Onassis's yacht in June 1963, in which Randolph "erupted like Stromboli", shouting abuse at his aged father, whom he accused of having connived for political reasons with his then wife's affair with Averell Harriman during the war, and calling a female diner who attempted to intervene "a gabby doll". Browne wrote that "[n]othing short of hitting him over the head with a bottle" would have stopped him. ... I had previously discounted the tales I had heard of Randolph. Now I believed them all." Sir Winston, too old to argue back, was physically shaking with rage, so that it was feared he might have another stroke, and afterwards made clear that he wanted his son off the boat. As he was taken off the next day (Onassis had got rid of him by arranging for him to interview the King of Greece) he was in tears, declaring his love for his father.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph often reported on American politics, and in Washington, DC he often stayed with his former fiancée Kay Halle, who was by then an important Washington hostess during the Democratic administrations of the 1960s. Parties with Washington insiders were often enlivened by his displays of what Aitken describes as Randolph's "boorish aggression and drunken bad manners". The American journalist Joseph Alsop stalked off from one conversation muttering that Randolph should entitle his memoirs "How to Lose Friends and Influence Nobody".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In October 1963 he was in Washington (where he phoned through the news of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's illness and impending resignation to President Kennedy). He flew home then travelled to Blackpool, where the Conservative Party Conference was in session. Randolph supported Lord Hailsham for the leadership rather than Macmillan's deputy Rab Butler. He knocked on the door of Butler's hotel room and urged him to withdraw from the contest, stressing the 60 telegrams which had been sent to him in support of Hailsham, many of them concocted by his team at East Bergholt. He distributed "Q" (for "Quintin", Lord Hailsham's first name) badges, pinning them on people; he tried to pin one on Lord Dilhorne's buttock without his noticing, but accidentally stabbed him with the pin, causing him to bellow with pain. After talking to Jonathan Aitken, who was working for Selwyn Lloyd at the time, he put £1,000 on the eventual winner Alec Douglas-Home at 6–1 to countervail his bet on Hailsham. Maurice Macmillan, Julian Amery and others were heard to say of Randolph's antics on behalf of Hailsham "if anyone can balls it up, Randolph can". He still hoped, somewhat unrealistically, for a peerage in Macmillan's resignation honours at the end of 1963.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 1964 Churchill published "The Fight for the Party Leadership". The former Cabinet minister Iain Macleod wrote a review in "The Spectator" strongly critical of Randolph's book, and alleging that Macmillan had manipulated the process of "soundings" to ensure that Butler was not chosen as his successor. Robert Blake wrote that Randolph was "blown out of the water" by Macleod's article (17 January 1964) and "for once … had no comeback".


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 1964 Randolph was laid low by bronchopneumonia which left him so frail he could only whisper. Later in the year he had a tumour, which turned out to be benign, removed from his lung. His mother visited him frequently in hospital after his lung operation. Randolph and Evelyn Waugh had barely spoken for 12 years, but they restored friendly relations that spring; Waugh commented that "It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it."


title: Randolph Churchill

text: At his father's funeral in January 1965 Randolph walked for an hour in the intense cold, despite being not yet fully recovered from his lung operation. After his father's death, Randolph's relations with his mother, whose approval he had always craved, mellowed a little. Randolph organised a luncheon party for her 80th birthday at the Café Royal on 1 April 1965. She often sought and took his advice. He wrote a memoir of his early life, "Twenty-One Years", published in 1965.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Winston Churchill's doctor Lord Moran published "The Struggle for Survival" in May 1966. Randolph wrote to "The Times" criticising him for publishing within 16 months of his patient's death and contrary to the wishes of the family. Diana Mosley wrote to her sister Nancy Mitford that at least Moran had not told the truth about Churchill's children: "Randolph vile & making him cry" while Diana was being given electric shocks for hysteria and Sarah was frequently being arrested.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph never fully recovered from his 1964 operation. By this time his health was in serious decline. He had been consuming 80–100 cigarettes and up to two bottles of whisky per day for 20 years, far in excess of his father's consumption. Drink had long since destroyed his youthful good looks. Accompanied by Natalie Bevan, he often spent winters in Marrakesh and summers in Monte Carlo, sometimes visiting Switzerland. His kidneys were failing, so he seldom drank alcohol any more, and ate little, becoming emaciated. Mary Lovell writes that "though he still behaved with the arrogance of Louis XIV he was less explosive". Natalie spent the days with him before returning to her own house after helping him to bed.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 1966 Randolph published the first volume of the official biography of his father. He and his team of researchers carried on working on his father's biography despite his being mortally ill and it brought him fulfilment which he had not previously known. He had finished only the second volume and half a dozen companion volumes by the time of his death in 1968. Five volumes were planned (it eventually ran to eight, under the guidance of Sir Martin Gilbert).


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 1966 he signed a contract with the American politician Robert F. Kennedy to write a biography of his elder brother, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated in 1963. As a consequence, Randolph obtained access to the Kennedy archives, but he died before beginning work, on the day that Robert was assassinated.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph Churchill died of a heart attack in his sleep at his home, Stour House, East Bergholt, Suffolk and was found by one of his researchers the next morning, 6 June 1968. He was 57, and although he had been in poor health for years, his death was unexpected.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: He is buried with his parents (his mother outliving him by almost a decade) and all four of his siblings (Marigold was previously interred in Kensal Green Cemetery in London) at St Martin's Church, Bladon near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: H.G. Wells in "The Shape of Things to Come", published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Randolph was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering ""brilliant pacifist speeches [which] echo throughout Europe"", but fail to end the war.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: Randolph Churchill was played by Nigel Havers in the Southern Television's 1981 drama series, "", set in the decade Winston (played by Robert Hardy) was out of office and Randolph himself attempted to enter parliament.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: In 2002, Randolph Churchill was portrayed by actor Tom Hiddleston in "The Gathering Storm", the BBC – HBO co-produced television biographical film about Winston Churchill in the years just prior to World War II.


title: Randolph Churchill

text: ITV TV docudrama "Churchill's Secret", a screenplay based on the book "The Churchill Secret: KBO" by Jonathan Smith. Broadcast in 2016, it starred Michael Gambon, and depicted Winston Churchill during the summer of 1953 when he suffered a severe stroke, precipitating therapy and resignation; the character of Randolph was played by the English actor Matthew Macfadyen.


title: Norman Lear

text: Norman Milton Lear (born July 27, 1922) is an American television screenwriter, film and television producer who has produced, written, created, or developed over 100 shows. Lear is known for many popular 1970s sitcoms, including the multi-award winning "All in the Family" as well as "Maude", "Sanford and Son", "One Day at a Time," "The Jeffersons", and "Good Times".


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear has continued to actively produce television, including the 2017 remake of "One Day at a Time" and the Netflix revival of "Good Times" in 2022.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear has received many awards, including five Emmys, the National Medal of Arts, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He is a member of the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Lear is also known for his political activism and funding of liberal and progressive causes and politicians. In 1980, he founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way to counter the influence of the Christian right in politics, and in the early 2000s, he mounted a tour with a copy of the Declaration of Independence.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Jeanette ("née" Seicol) and Hyman "Herman" Lear, a traveling salesman. He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown (1925–2015). Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. His mother was originally from Ukraine, while his father's family was from Russia.


title: Norman Lear

text: When Lear was nine years old and living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds. Lear thought of his father as a "rascal" and said that the character of Archie Bunker (whom Lear depicted as white Protestant on the show) was in part inspired by his father, while the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother. However, Lear has said the moment which inspired his lifetime of advocacy was another event which he experienced at the age of nine, when he first came across infamous anti-semitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set. Lear has also said he would hear more of Coughlin's radio sermons over time, and found out that Coughlin would at times find different ways to promote anti-semitism by also targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes," such as US President Franklin Roosevelt.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear enlisted in the United States Army in September 1942. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; he also has talked about bombing Germany in the European theater. Lear flew 52 combat missions and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army in 1945, and his fellow World War II crew members are featured in the books "Crew Umbriago", by Daniel P. Carroll (tail gunner), and "772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men, The Memories", by Turner Publishing and Co.


title: Norman Lear

text: After World War II Lear had a career in public relations. The career choice was inspired by his Uncle Jack: "My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me. He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That's the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew." Lear decided to move to California to restart his career in publicity, driving with his toddler daughter across the country.


title: Norman Lear

text: His first night in Los Angeles, Lear stumbled upon a production of George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" at the 90-seat theater-in-the-round Circle Theater off Sunset Boulevard. One of the actors in the play was Sydney Chaplin, the son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. Charlie Chaplin, Alan Mowbray, and Dame Gladys Cooper sat in front of Lear, and after the show was over, Charlie Chaplin performed.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer called Ed Simmons. Simmons and Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door. Throughout the 1950s, Lear and Simmons turned out comedy sketches for television appearances of Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others. They frequently wrote for Martin and Lewis when they appeared on the "Colgate Comedy Hour" and a 1953 article from "Billboard" magazine stated that Lear and Simmons were guaranteed a record-breaking $52,000 each to write for five additional Martin and Lewis appearances on the "Colgate Comedy Hour" that year. In a 2015 interview with Vanity Magazine, Lear said that Jerry Lewis had hired him and Simmons as writers for Martin and Lewis three weeks before the comedy duo made their first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950. Lear also acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for "The Martin and Lewis Show" for three years.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer and asked to salvage the new CBS sitcom starring Celeste Holm, "Honestly, Celeste!", but the program was canceled after eight episodes. During this time he became the producer of NBC's short-lived (26 episodes) sitcom "The Martha Raye Show", after Nat Hiken left as the series director. Lear also wrote some of the opening monologues for "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show" which aired from 1956 to 1961. In 1959, Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called "The Deputy", starring Henry Fonda.


title: Norman Lear

text: Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director (he wrote and produced the 1967 film "Divorce American Style" and directed the 1971 film "Cold Turkey", both starring Dick Van Dyke), Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC. They rejected the show after two pilots were taped: "Justice for All" in 1968 and "Those Were the Days" in 1969. After a third pilot was taped, CBS picked up the show, known as "All in the Family". It premiered January 12, 1971, to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971–72 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years. After falling from the #1 spot, "All in the Family" still remained in the top ten, well after it became "Archie Bunker's Place". The show was based loosely on the British sitcom "Till Death Us Do Part", about an irascible working-class Tory and his socialist son-in-law.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear's second big TV sitcom, "Sanford and Son", was also based on a British sitcom, "Steptoe and Son", about a west London junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show "Sanford and Son" was an instant hit. Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including "Maude", "The Jeffersons" (as with "Maude" a spin-off of "All in the Family"), "One Day at a Time", and "Good Times" (which was a spinoff of "Maude").


title: Norman Lear

text: Most of these Lear sitcoms shared three features; they were shot on videotape in place of film, used a live studio audience, and dealt with the social and political issues of the day. "Maude" is generally considered to be based on Lear's wife Frances, something she herself confirmed, with Charlie Hauck serving as main producer and writer.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who also produced "All in the Family", "Sanford and Son", "What's Happening!!", "Maude", and "The Jeffersons". Yorkin split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writer/producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein; however only two of their shows lasted longer than a year: "What's Happening!!" and "Carter Country". The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions and was founded in 1958. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications ("T.A.T." stood for the Yiddish phrase "Tuchus Affen Tisch", which meant "Putting one's ass on the line.") in 1974, which co-existed with Tandem Productions and was often referred to in periodicals as Tandem/T.A.T. The Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s. TAT produced the influential and award-winning 1981 film "The Wave" about Ron Jones' social experiment.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear also developed the cult favorite TV series "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" ("MH MH") which was turned down by the networks as "too controversial" and placed it into first run syndication with 128 stations in January 1976. A year later, Lear added another program into first-run syndication along with "MH MH", "All That Glitters". He planned in 1977 to offer three hours of prime-time Saturday programming directly having stations place his production company in the position of an occasional network.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1977, African American screenwriter Eric Monte filed a lawsuit accusing ABC and CBS producers Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and others of stealing his ideas for "Good Times", "The Jeffersons", and "What's Happening!!" Monte received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from "Good Times" and one percent ownership of the show. Monte, due to his lack of business knowledge and experience as well as legal representation, would not receive royalties for other shows which he created. However, Lear and other Hollywood producers, outraged over the lawsuit, blacklisted Eric Monte and labeled him too difficult to work with.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1980, Lear founded the organization People for the American Way for the purpose of counteracting the Christian right group Moral Majority which had been founded in 1979. In the fall of 1981, Lear began a 14-month run as the host of a revival of the classic game show "Quiz Kids" for the CBS Cable Network. In January 1982, Lear and Jerry Perenchio bought Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation. In January 1982, after merging with company with T.A.T. Communications, the Avco was dropped, and the combined entity was renamed as Embassy Communications, Inc. Embassy Pictures was led by Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner.


title: Norman Lear

text: In March 1982, Lear produced an ABC television special titled "I Love Liberty", as a counterbalance to groups like the Moral Majority. Among the many guests who appeared on the special was conservative icon and the 1964 U.S. presidential election's Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.


title: Norman Lear

text: On June 18, 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications to Columbia Pictures (then owned by the Coca-Cola Company), which acquired Embassy's film and television division (including Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $485 million of shares of The Coca-Cola Company. Lear and Perenchio split the net proceeds (about $250 million). Coca-Cola later sold the film division to Dino De Laurentiis and the home video arm to Nelson Holdings (led by Barry Spikings).


title: Norman Lear

text: The brand Tandem Productions was abandoned in 1986 with the cancellation of "Diff'rent Strokes", and Embassy ceased to exist as a single entity in late 1986, having been split into different components owned by different entities. The Embassy TV division became ELP Communications in 1988, but shows originally produced by Embassy were now under the Columbia Pictures Television banner from 1988 to 1996 and the Columbia TriStar Television banner from 1996 to 2002.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear's Act III Communications was founded in 1986 and in the following year, Thomas B. McGrath was named president and chief operating officer of ACT III Communications Inc after previously serving as senior vice president. On February 2, 1989, Norman Lear's Act III Communications formed a joint venture with Columbia Pictures Television called "Act III Television" to produce television series instead of managing.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1997, Lear and Jim George produced the Kids' WB series "Channel Umptee-3". The cartoon was the first to meet the Federal Communications Commission's then-new educational programming requirements.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 2003, Lear appeared on "South Park" during the "I'm a Little Bit Country" episode, providing the voice of Benjamin Franklin. He also served as a consultant on the episodes "I'm a Little Bit Country" and "Cancelled". Lear has attended a "South Park" writers' retreat, and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear is spotlighted in the 2016 documentary "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You". In 2017, Lear served as executive producer for "One Day at a Time", the reboot of his 1975-1984 show of the same name that premiered on Netflix starring Justina Machado and Rita Moreno as a Cuban-American family. He has hosted a podcast, "All of the Above with Norman Lear", since May 1, 2017. On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled "". In 2020, it was announced that Lear and Act III Productions would executive produce a revival of "Who’s The Boss?"


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts to Lear, noting, "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." Also in 1999, he and Bud Yorkin received the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.


title: Norman Lear

text: On May 12, 2017, Lear was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event took place in the Clive Davis Theater at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.


title: Norman Lear

text: The Woody Guthrie Prize is given annually to an artist who exemplifies the spirit and life work of Guthrie by speaking for the less fortunate through music, literature, film, dance or other art forms and serving as a positive force for social change in America. Previous honorees include Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Kris Kristofferson.


title: Norman Lear

text: On August 3, 2017, it was announced that the Kennedy Center had made Lear, along with Carmen de Lavallade, Lionel Richie, LL Cool J, and Gloria Estefan, a recipient of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors. US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were scheduled to be seated with the honorees during the Kennedy Center ceremony, which took place on December 3, 2017, and they were planning to host a reception with them at the White House earlier in the evening. Variety magazine's senior editor Ted Johnson reacted saying "That in and of itself will be an interesting moment, as Lear and Estefan have been particularly outspoken against Trump and his policies." It was afterwards announced that Lear would boycott the White House reception. In the end, the President and First Lady did not attend. The Producers Guild of America instituted the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television in his honour and he was a recipient in 2005.


title: Norman Lear

text: In addition to his success as a TV writer and producer, Lear is an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes. The only time that he did not support the Democratic candidate for President was in 1980. He supported John Anderson because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia. In the 1970s and 1980s, the group discussed progressive and liberal political issues, and worked together to fund them. They helped to fund the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg who had released the "Pentagon Papers", and they backed the struggling progressive magazine "The Nation" to keep it afloat. In 1975, they formed the Energy Action Committee to oppose Big Oil's powerful lobby in Washington.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1981, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right. PFAW ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. PFAW succeeded in stopping Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, is an advocate for the advancement of secularism.


title: Norman Lear

text: Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias. In the January 21, 1987 issue of "The Christian Century", Lear associate Martin E. Marty (a Lutheran professor of church history at the University of Chicago Divinity School between 1963 and 1998) rejected those allegations, stating the television producer honored religious moral values and complimenting Lear's understanding of Christianity. Marty noted that while Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism, the television producer was a follower of Judaism.


title: Norman Lear

text: In a 2009 interview with US News journalist Dan Gilgoff, Lear rejected claims by right-wing Christian nationalists that he was an atheist and prejudiced against Christianity. Lear holds religious beliefs and has integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign. He does believe that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking. In a 2014 interview with "The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles" journalist Rob Eshman, Lear described himself as a "total Jew" but said he was never a practicing one.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 1989, Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business until it ended in 1998. He announced in 1992 that he was reducing his political activism. In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It was later named the Norman Lear Center in recognition.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear serves on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He has written articles for "The Huffington Post". Lear is a trustee emeritus at The Paley Center for Media.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 2001, Lear and his wife, Lyn, purchased a Dunlap broadside—one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence—for $8.1 million. John Dunlap printed about 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. 25 copies survive today and only four of those are in private hands; those four are promised to public collections. The others belong to city halls, public libraries, historical societies, and universities.


title: Norman Lear

text: Not a document collector, Lear said in a press release and on the "Today" show that his intent was to tour the document around the United States so that the country could experience its "birth certificate" firsthand. Through the end of 2004, the document traveled throughout the United States on the Declaration of Independence Roadtrip, which Lear organized, visiting several presidential libraries, dozens of museums, as well as the 2002 Olympics, Super Bowl XXXVI, and the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. Lear and Rob Reiner produced a filmed, dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence—the last project filmed by famed cinematographer Conrad Hall—on July 4, 2001, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The film is introduced by Morgan Freeman and Kathy Bates, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Mel Gibson, Whoopi Goldberg, Graham Greene, Ming-Na Wen, Edward Norton, Winona Ryder, Kevin Spacey, and Renée Zellweger appear as readers. It was directed by Arvin Brown and scored by John Williams.


title: Norman Lear

text: In 2004, Lear established Declare Yourself which is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign created to empower and encourage eligible 18- to 29-year-olds in America to register and vote. It has registered almost 4 million young people.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear was one of 98 "prominent members of Los Angeles' Jewish community" who signed an open letter supporting the proposed nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the United States. The letter called for the passage of the bill and warned that the ending of the agreement by Congress would be a "tragic mistake".


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear has been married three times. He was married to Frances Loeb, publisher of "Lear's" magazine from 1956 to 1985. They separated in 1983, with Loeb eventually receiving $112 million from Lear in their divorce settlement. In 1987 he married his current wife, producer Lyn Davis. Lear is a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal. On July 27, 2022, he turned 100.


title: Norman Lear

text: Lear plays the protagonist in the video to "Happy Birthday to Me," the first single on musician and actor Paul Hipp's 2015 album "The Remote Distance".


title: Norman Lear

text: The top of my bucket list always included a desire to sing. More than that — a desire to enchant an audience with my voice. I ached to be Sinatra or Tormé for just a night. You say a night's too much? How about just one song?" My friend, actor, singer-guitarist and composer, Paul Hipp, wrote the happy birthday song when he turned fifty. I loved it and asked if I could perform it as I turn ninety-three. That was the result, and I don't care what you say, I love it.


title: Norman Lear

text: Note: The above chart does not include the made-for-television movies "The Wave", which aired on October 4, 1981, or "Heartsounds", which aired on September 30, 1984.


title: Cooper Manning

text: Cooper Archibald Manning (born March 6, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and television personality who is the host of the television show "The Manning Hour" for Fox Sports as well as principal and senior managing director of investor relations for AJ Capital Partners. He is the eldest son of former professional football quarterback Archie Manning, and the older brother of former professional football quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Eli Manning.


title: Cooper Manning

text: Born on March 6, 1974 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Manning is the first child of Archie and Olivia Manning. He played football at Isidore Newman School as a wide receiver, having a breakout season as a senior with his brother Peyton at quarterback.


title: Cooper Manning

text: Manning was a highly ranked prospect out of high school and ended up committing to the University of Mississippi, Archie's and later his brother Eli's alma mater. When practices started in the summer before school, Manning felt some numbness in his fingers and toes, so he went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to be diagnosed. There he was told that he had spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spine and pinching of the nerves. Manning accepted the diagnosis and immediately ended his playing career.


title: Cooper Manning

text: In honor of Cooper, Peyton donned his brother's jersey number, 18, when he began his professional career in the National Football League in 1998.


title: Cooper Manning

text: Manning was a partner of Scotia Howard Weil, an energy investment boutique with offices in Houston and New Orleans. The firm holds an annual energy conference that attracts representatives for top-level investors, public energy companies, private energy companies, private equity firms, and other commercial lenders from around the world.


title: Cooper Manning

text: During the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans, he hosted his own segment on "The Dan Patrick Show", titled "Manning on the Street." On September 13, 2015, Manning joined the broadcast team of "Fox NFL Kickoff". In 2016, AJ Capital Partners added Manning to its executive team as principal and senior managing director of investor relations. AJ Capital Partners is a private real estate company based in Chicago, Illinois, focused on building a portfolio of hotels and resorts, most notably, the company's in-house brand, Graduate Hotels, a collection of boutique design-driven hotels in university-anchored markets across the US. Other projects have included restorations of existing hotels and development of new properties, several located in Chicago, such as Chicago Athletic Association, Soho House Chicago, Thompson Chicago, and Hotel Lincoln.


title: Cooper Manning

text: Cooper has three children: two sons and a daughter. Cooper's son Arch plays quarterback at Isidore Newman School, the same school where his father and uncles played, and is the top-ranked pro-style quarterback prospect in the class of 2023 according to 247Sports. Cooper's oldest child, daughter May, played volleyball at Academy of the Sacred Heart, and is a freshman at the University of Virginia, which her mother Ellen attended. She won the Louisiana state volleyball championship with Sacred Heart in 2020. His younger son Heid plays center alongside Arch at Newman.


title: Tartarus

text: In Greek mythology, Tartarus (; ) is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans. Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato's "Gorgias" (), souls are judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment. Tartarus is also considered to be a primordial force or deity alongside entities such as the Earth, Night, and Time.


title: Tartarus

text: In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld. In ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools, Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the light and the cosmos are born.


title: Tartarus

text: In the Greek poet Hesiod's "Theogony" ( late 8th century BC), Tartarus was the third of the primordial deities, following after Chaos and Gaia (Earth), and preceding Eros, and was the father, by Gaia, of the monster Typhon. According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia.


title: Tartarus

text: Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall nine days before it reached the earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from earth to Tartarus. In the "Iliad" ( 8th century BC), Zeus asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth." Similarly the mythographer Apollodorus, describes Tartarus as "a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky."


title: Tartarus

text: While according to Greek mythology the realm of Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard. Zeus killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans. The gods of Olympus eventually triumphed. Cronus and many of the other Titans were banished to Tartarus, though Prometheus, Epimetheus, and female Titans such as Metis were spared. Other gods could be sentenced to Tartarus as well. Apollo is a prime example, although Zeus freed him. The Hecatonchires became guards of Tartarus' prisoners. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, he threw him into "wide Tartarus".


title: Tartarus

text: Originally, "Tartarus" was used only to confine dangers to the gods of Olympus. In later mythologies, Tartarus became a space dedicated to the imprisonment and torment of mortals who had sinned against the gods, and each punishment was unique to the condemned. For example:


title: Tartarus

text: According to Plato ( 427 BC), Rhadamanthus, Aeacus and Minos were the judges of the dead and chose who went to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus judged Asian souls, Aeacus judged European souls and Minos was the deciding vote and judge of the Greek. Souls regarded as unjust or perjured would go to Tartarus. Those who committed crimes seen as curable would be purified there, while those who committed crimes seen as uncurable would be eternally damned, and demonstrate a warning example for the living. In Gorgias, Plato writes about Socrates telling Callicles, who believes might makes right, that doing injustice to others is worse than suffering injustice, and most uncurable inhabitants of Tartarus were tyrants whose might gave them the opportunity to commit huge crimes. Archelaus I of Macedon is mentioned as a possible example of this, while Thersites is said to be curable, because of his lack of might. According to Plato's Phaedo, the uncurable consisted of temple robbers and murderers, while sons who killed one of their parents during a status of rage but regretted this their whole life long, and involuntary manslaughterers, would be taken out of Tartarus after one year, so they could ask their victims for forgiveness. If they should be forgiven, they were liberated, but if not, would go back and stay there until they were finally pardoned. In the Republic, Plato mentions the Myth of Er, who is said to have been a fallen soldier who resurrected from the dead, and saw their realm. According to this, the length of a punishment an adult receives for each crime in Tartarus, who is responsible for a lot of deaths, betrayed states or armies and sold them into slavery or had been involved in similar misdeeds, corresponds to ten times out of a hundred earthly years (while good deeds would be rewarded in equal measure).


title: Tartarus

text: In Roman mythology, sinners (as defined by the Roman societal and cultural mores of their time) are sent to Tartarus for punishment after death. Virgil describes Tartarus in great detail in the . He described it as expansive. It is surrounded by three perimeter walls, beyond which flows a flaming river named "the Phlegethon. To further prevent escape, a hydra with fifty black, gaping jaws, sits atop a gate that screeches when opened. They are flanked by adamantine columns, a substance that, like diamond, is so hard, nothing can cut through it.


title: Tartarus

text: Inside the walls of Tartarus sits a wide-walled castle with a tall, iron turret. Tisiphone, one of the Erinyes who represents vengeance, stands sleepless guard at the top of the turret lashing her whip. Roman mythology describes a pit inside extending down into the earth twice as far as the distance from the lands of the living to Olympus. The twin sons of the Titan Aloeus were said to be imprisoned at the bottom of this pit.


title: Tartarus

text: Tartarus occurs in the Septuagint translation of Job (40:20 and 41:24) into Koine Greek, and in Hellenistic Jewish literature from the Greek text of the Book of Enoch, dated to 400–200 BC. This states that God placed the archangel Uriel "in charge of the world and of Tartarus" (20:2). Tartarus is generally understood to be the place where 200 fallen Watchers (angels) are imprisoned.


title: Tartarus

text: Reference to the watchers of the book of Enoch is also observed in Jude 1:6-7 where scripture describes Angels being bound by chains under everlasting darkness, and 2 Peter 2:4 which further describes fallen angels committed to chains in Tartarus.


title: Tartarus

text: In "Hypostasis of the Archons" (also translated 'Reality of the Rulers'), an apocryphal gnostic treatise dated before 350 AD, Tartarus makes a brief appearance when Zōē (life), the daughter of Sophia (wisdom) casts Ialdabaōth (demiurge) down to the bottom of the abyss of Tartarus.


title: Tartarus

text: In The Book of Thomas, Tartaros is claimed by Jesus to be the place where those who hear the word of Judas Thomas and "turn away or sneer" are to be sent. These damned will be handed over to the angel or power Tartarouchos.


title: Tartarus

text: In the New Testament, the noun "Tartarus" does not occur but "tartaroō" ("ταρταρόω", "throw to Tartarus"), a shortened form of the classical Greek verb "kata-tartaroō" ("throw down to Tartarus"), does appear in 2 Peter 2:4. Liddell–Scott provides other sources for the shortened form of this verb, including Acusilaus (5th century BC), Joannes Laurentius Lydus (4th century AD) and the Scholiast on Aeschylus' "Eumenides", who cites Pindar relating how the earth tried to "tartaro" "cast down" Apollo after he overcame the Python. In classical texts, the longer form "kata-tartaroo" is often related to the throwing of the Titans down to Tartarus.


title: Tartarus

text: The English Standard Version is one of several English versions that gives the Greek reading Tartarus as a footnote:


title: Tartarus

text: Adam Clarke reasoned that Peter's use of language relating to the Titans was an indication that the ancient Greeks had heard of a Biblical punishment of fallen angels. Some Evangelical Christian commentaries distinguish Tartarus as a place for wicked angels and Gehenna as a place for wicked humans on the basis of this verse. Other Evangelical commentaries, in reconciling that some fallen angels are chained in Tartarus, yet some not, attempt to distinguish between one type of fallen angel and another.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Danny Thomas (born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz; January 6, 1912 – February 6, 1991) was an American actor, singer, nightclub comedian, producer, and philanthropist. He created and starred in one of the most successful and long-running situation comedies in the history of American network television, the "Danny Thomas Show". In addition to guest roles on many of the comedy, talk, and musical variety programs of his time, his legacy includes a lifelong dedication to fundraising for charity. Most notably, he was the founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, a leading center in pediatric medicine with a focus on pediatric cancer. St. Jude now has affiliate hospitals in eight other American cities as of early 2020.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Already a successful entertainer, Thomas began his film career in 1947, playing opposite child actress Margaret O'Brien in "The Unfinished Dance" (1947) and "Big City" (1948). He then starred in the long-running television sitcom "Make Room for Daddy" (later, "The Danny Thomas Show" from the fourth season onwards) from 1953 to 1964, in which he played the lead role of Danny Williams. He was the father of Marlo Thomas, Terre Thomas, and Tony Thomas.


title: Danny Thomas

text: One of 10 children, Danny Thomas was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912, in Deerfield, Michigan, to Charles Yaqoob Kairouz and his wife Margaret Taouk. His parents were Maronite Catholic immigrants from Bsharri, Lebanon. Thomas was raised in Toledo, Ohio, attending St. Francis de Sales Church, Woodward High School, and finally the University of Toledo, where he was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Bishop Samuel Stritch of Toledo confirmed Thomas in the Catholic Church. Stritch, a native of Tennessee, was a lifelong spiritual advisor for Thomas, and would later advise him to locate the St. Jude Hospital in Memphis. He married Rose Marie Cassaniti in 1936, a week after his 24th birthday.


title: Danny Thomas

text: In 1932, Thomas began performing on radio in Detroit at WMBC on "The Happy Hour Club". Thomas first performed under his anglicized birth name, "Amos Jacobs Kairouz." After he moved to Chicago in 1940, Thomas did not want his friends and family to know he went back into working clubs where the salary was better, so he came up with the pseudonym "Danny Thomas" (after two of his brothers).


title: Danny Thomas

text: He was living in Ward 6, Toledo, Lucas County, Ohio, according to the 1920 United States Census as Amos Jacobs, the same in the 1930 Census, and in 1940 living in Ward 2, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, as Amos J. Jacobs, a radio and theatrical artist. Further, the 1930 Census states his parents were born in Syria; while the 1920 census states that they were born in "Seria," and that their mother tongue is "Serian." At the time, Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire (until 1920) and Lebanese immigrants were identified as Syrians in most of the world and as Turks in Latin America.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas first reached mass audiences on network radio in the 1940s playing shifty brother-in-law Amos in "The Bickersons", which began as sketches on the music-comedy show "Drene Time", starring Don Ameche and Frances Langford. Thomas also portrayed himself as a scatterbrained Lothario on this show. His other network radio work included a stint as Jerry Dingle the postman on Fanny Brice's "The Baby Snooks Show". In the early 1950s he made several appearances on the popular NBC variety program, "The Big Show", hosted by stage legend Tallulah Bankhead.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas also had his own radio program, "The Danny Thomas Show". The 30-minute weekly variety show was on ABC from 1942 to 1943 and on CBS from 1947 to 1948.


title: Danny Thomas

text: After his two late 1940s films with Margaret O'Brien, Thomas appeared with Betty Grable in the musical "Call Me Mister" (1951). He then starred in "The Jazz Singer" opposite the popular contemporary vocalist Peggy Lee, a 1952 remake of the 1927 original. He portrayed songwriter Gus Kahn opposite Doris Day in the 1951 film biography "I'll See You in My Dreams."


title: Danny Thomas

text: In 1952, Thomas recorded several Arabic folk songs with Toufic Barham for a Saint Jude Hospital Foundation fundraiser record. The songs later appeared on the re-issue album" The Music of Arab-Americans: A Retrospective Collection". From 1952 through 1974, Thomas also recorded a number of vocal albums on his own, as well as participating on other albums.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas enjoyed a successful 11-year run (1953–1964) on "Make Room for Daddy," later known as "The Danny Thomas Show". Jean Hagen, Sherry Jackson, and Rusty Hamer were his first family. The Hagen character died offscreen in 1956 and was replaced by Marjorie Lord; Angela Cartwright also joined the cast at this time playing Danny's stepdaughter. Sherry Jackson left the series in 1958, and Penny Parker replaced her in the 1959–1960 season. Parker was written out of the series with her marriage to the character Patrick Hannigan, played by comedian Pat Harrington, Jr.


title: Danny Thomas

text: On January 1, 1959, Thomas appeared with his other "Make Room for Daddy" child stars, Angela Cartwright and Rusty Hamer, in an episode of NBC's "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford."


title: Danny Thomas

text: The show was produced at Desilu Studios, where Lucille Ball was appearing alongside Desi Arnaz in "I Love Lucy," and it featured several guest stars who went on to star in their own shows, including Andy Griffith ("The Andy Griffith Show", "Mayberry RFD"), Joey Bishop, and Bill Bixby ("My Favorite Martian" and others). He also scored a major success at the London Palladium, in the years when many big American stars appeared there. In 1963, in an episode called "Oh, the Clancys," the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem appeared as Marjorie Lord's Irish cousins and sang "Brennan on the Moore."


title: Danny Thomas

text: Angela Cartwright (who spoke about her on- and off-camera relationship with her television stepfather, Danny Thomas, on a groundbreaking ABC TV show, "Make Room for Daddy") had said: "I thought Danny was hilarious and he was always cracking me up. He was loud and gregarious, nothing like my real dad who is far more reserved than that. So, it was fun to be able to make smart remarks and get away with it. I would never have talked to my real parents that way, but in the make-believe world of the Williams family I got away with that." Cartwright also added that by the time Thomas' show had ended, she wanted to join the cast of "The Sound of Music": "I went on an interview for the part of Brigitta. I was still filming "The Danny Thomas Show", but I knew the series was coming to an end. After several auditions, I was the first von Trapp cast. I asked Danny Thomas if he would let me out of my contract so I could be in the movie and he was very gracious to let me out of the last show of the season. He didn't have to do that and I am very grateful he did."


title: Danny Thomas

text: In 1965 and 1966, Thomas presented "The Wonderful World of Burlesque", featuring Lucille Ball, Jerry Lewis, Don Adams, Carol Channing, Andy Griffith, Sheldon Leonard, and Shirley Jones.


title: Danny Thomas

text: "The Danny Thomas Hour" is an American anthology television series that was broadcast on NBC during the 1967–1968 television season.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas became a successful television producer (with Sheldon Leonard and Aaron Spelling among his partners) of "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "The Andy Griffith Show", "That Girl" and "The Mod Squad". Thomas also produced three series for Walter Brennan: "The Real McCoys", "The Tycoon", and "The Guns of Will Sonnett" on ABC during the late 1950s and 1960s. Thomas often appeared in cameos on shows he produced, including his portrayal of the tuxedoed, droll alien Kolak, from the planet Twilo, in the "Dick Van Dyke Show" science-fiction spoof, "It May Look Like a Walnut".


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas was responsible for Mary Tyler Moore's first "big break" in acting. In 1961, Carl Reiner cast her in "The Dick Van Dyke Show" after Thomas personally recommended Moore. He had remembered her as "the girl with three names" whom he had turned down earlier, but rediscovered her after a lengthy search through photos and records.


title: Danny Thomas

text: In the early 1970s, Thomas reunited most of his second "Daddy" cast (Marjorie Lord, Rusty Hamer, and Angela Cartwright) for a short-lived update of the show, "Make Room for Granddaddy". Premised around Danny and Kathy Williams caring for their grandson by daughter Terry, who was away with her husband who was serving in the Military, and stationed in Japan, the show lasted one season.


title: Danny Thomas

text: By the mid-1970s, Thomas' son Tony had become an accomplished television producer. Tony, along with Paul Junger Witt, formed Witt/Thomas Productions in 1975, and was responsible for his father's next three (and ultimately final) starring vehicles. Thomas returned to series TV in the NBC sitcom, "The Practice", from January 1976 to January 1977, and after that "I'm a Big Girl Now", which aired on ABC from 1980 to 1981.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas was guest of honor in "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" that aired December 15, 1976, on NBC. He guest-starred in "In Full Command," the March 18, 1978, series finale of the long-running detective drama "Kojak", as a corrupt superior officer in the police department, in an episode directed by series star Telly Savalas. He also appeared in the 1988 TV movie "Side by Side", opposite Milton Berle and Sid Caesar.


title: Danny Thomas

text: The last series in which Thomas was a headlining star was "One Big Family", which aired in syndication during the 1986–1987 season. The situation comedy's premise was set around a semi-retired comedian whose grandchildren were orphaned after their parents were killed in a car accident.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas, like many actors prominent in television, endorsed commercial products. In particular, two companies that featured him in their advertising were Maxwell House, whose instant coffee he endorsed (though it had no decaffeinated variant at the time, he later claimed he had been endorsing a "decaffeinated" instant coffee and the coffee he actually drank had a high caffeine content), and Philips Norelco's "Dial-A-Brew" version of its short-lived "Better Cup Of Coffee" line of electric drip coffee-makers. One of his other "commercials" was actually a public-service message, with fund-raising goals, for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.


title: Danny Thomas

text: As a "starving actor", Thomas had made a vow: If he found success, he would open a shrine dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. After becoming a successful actor in the early 1950s, his wife joined him and began traveling the United States to help raise funds to build St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He fervently believed "no child should die in the dawn of life." With help from Dr. Lemuel Diggs and close friend Anthony Abraham, an auto magnate in Miami, Florida, Thomas founded the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1962. Since its inception, St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and around the world, continuing the mission of finding cures and saving children. Dr. Peter C. Doherty of St. Jude's Immunology Department, was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for key discoveries on how the immune system works to kill virus-infected cells.


title: Danny Thomas

text: St. Jude's has grown to include eight affiliate hospitals across the United States. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with annual expenses, as of 2018, of over $1.4 billion funded by nearly $1.5 billion in donations. Further, the World Health Organization has named St. Jude's as its first "Collaborating Center for Childhood Cancer" to help increase survival rates on rare pediatric cancer from 20% to as much as 60% by 2030.


title: Danny Thomas

text: Danny Thomas was a struggling young comic when he met Rose Marie Mantell (born Rose Marie Cassaniti) (1914–2000), who had a singing career with her own radio show in Detroit, Michigan, and was the daughter of Marie "Mary" Cassaniti (1896–1972), a drummer and percussionist for "Marie's Merry Music Makers". They were married on January 15, 1936, and had three children, Margaret Julia ("Marlo"), Theresa ("Terre"), and Charles Anthony ("Tony") Thomas. The Thomas children followed their parents into entertainment in various capacities—Marlo as an actress and producer, Tony as a television producer, and Terre as an accomplished singer-songwriter. Danny's brother, Thomas Yaqoob, using the name Tom Jacobs, appeared on "Make Room For Daddy" and "The Andy Griffith Show".


title: Danny Thomas

text: Thomas was initiated to the Freemasonry in Prudence Lodge No. 958, Chicago, passed, and raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason at Gothic Lodge #270 F&AM located at Hamilton Square, New Jersey, on March 15, 1984, by special dispensation of the New Jersey Grand Master. During May 1985, he was made a 32° Mason and also a Noble in Al Malaikah Shrine located at Los Angeles, California. Thomas also filmed the introduction to the Masonic Service Association's movie, "When the Band Stops Playing".


title: Danny Thomas

text: A devout Roman Catholic, Thomas was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre by Pope Paul VI in recognition of his services to the church and the community. He was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan presented Thomas with a Congressional Gold Medal honoring him for his work with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Thomas was one of the original owners of the Miami Dolphins, along with Joe Robbie, but he sold his share soon after the purchase. He was an avid golfer, claimed a ten golf handicap, and competed with Sam Snead in a charity event. Two PGA Tour tournaments bore his name: the Danny Thomas-Diplomat Classic in south Florida in 1969 and, along with co-founder Vernon Bell, the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic from 1970 to 1984. He was also the first non-Jewish member of the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles.


title: Danny Thomas

text: In 1991, Thomas died after a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills, a hospital spokesman said. Two days previously he had celebrated St. Jude Hospital's 29th anniversary and filmed a commercial, which aired posthumously. He is interred in a mausoleum on the grounds of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside his wife.


title: Danny Thomas

text: A stretch of roadway in Memphis is locally known as Danny Thomas Boulevard. The road, built in the 1960s to partially reroute U.S. Highway 51 around downtown, runs from E.H. Crump Boulevard (U.S. 70/79/64) to North Parkway/A.W. Willis Avenue (Tennessee State Route 1), passing through St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's campus on a viaduct.


title: Danny Thomas

text: For Thomas' contribution to the television industry, in February 1960 he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Danny Thomas

text: In 1965, Danny Thomas was appointed as a Special Deputy Sheriff by Ben Clark, who was a long standing Riverside County Sheriff and a recognized "trail blazer" in terms of professionalizing the law enforcement profession in California and the United States.


title: Danny Thomas

text: On February 16, 2012, the United States Postal Service issued a first-class forever stamp honoring Thomas as an entertainer and humanitarian. The Danny Thomas Forever Stamp shows an oil-on-panel painting depicting a smiling, tuxedo-clad Thomas in the foreground and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in the background.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: "Ghostwire: Tokyo" is an action-adventure game played from a first-person perspective. The player can use various psychic and paranormal abilities to defeat the ghosts and spirits haunting Tokyo. Combat director Shinichiro Hara described the combat as "karate meets magic", as the player character utilizes hand movements inspired by Kuji-kiri hand gestures to cast spells. When an enemy loses most of their health, its core is exposed and the player can use takedown moves to destroy it. By defeating these spirits and collecting Yokai, the character will collect spirit points and resources used to upgrade their abilities.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: The game begins with a spirit (Kazuhiko Inoue) flying over the scene of a traffic collision. The spirit is looking for a body to possess and decides on a boy named Akito (Kensuke Nishi) who was rendered unconscious from the accident. Akito wakes up, still in control of his body except for his right hand, which is under control of the spirit. Soon after, a terrifying fog rolls in, turning anyone caught in it into a spirit, but Akito is spared thanks to the spirit possessing him. A man in a Hannya mask (known only as Hannya (Shunsuke Sakuya)) appears on the digital signs near the area and uses a spell to summon evil entities, sealing the disembodied spirits of the civilians away in cages all across Shibuya. Akito is told by the spirit he needs to hunt Hannya down to stop him, but Akito convinces the spirit to let him go check on his sister, Mari (Asami Seto), who is in a coma at the local hospital.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: The spirit grants Akito spirit-based powers to help him fight his way to Mari's room, but find that Hannya has beat them there and wants to use Mari for some sort of ritual. When Akito tries to interfere, Hannya stabs him through the chest and kidnaps Mari. As he lays dying, Akito has a flashback, showing that Mari is comatose due to a house fire. Akito talks to the spirit (who tells Akito to call him KK) and agrees to help him stop Hannya. KK saves Akito's life and tells him to go to a safe house KK had set up before he died.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: At the safe house, KK reveals he was part of a team of investigators who tried to stop Hannya but failed. KK sends Akito to the Kagerie Observation tower to scan the town for clues, where they spot one of Hannya's allies going into an underground train station. The two follow and find an underground shrine where Hannya and his allies are preparing for their ritual. KK reveals that Hannya plans to steal enough souls to destroy the barrier between the world of the living and the dead so Hannya can resurrect his dead wife and daughter. Hannya and the others escape, leaving Akito to fight Hannya's ally, but in the course of the fight the enemy's mask gets blown off, revealing it is actually a puppet made from KK's human body. The puppet capitalizes on KK's shock to separate KK from Akito and seal him away, leaving Akito powerless.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: Akito manages to escape to the surface and heads back to KK's safe house to figure out how to find him. There he meets one of KK's old partners, Rinko, who gives him KK's commuter pass case and a picture of KK's wife and son. Rinko also helps Akito use his lingering connection to KK to find and reunite with him. Just as the two reunite, a pillar of light appears, showing that Hannya has started his ritual. The two pursue after Hannya and confront him. Hannyo's two other allies revealing themselves to be puppets made from Hannya's wife and daughter. Akito defeats the daughter puppet, but is delayed enough for Hannya to unleash a giant spirit monster upon the town and escape into the toxic fog.


title: Ghostwire: Tokyo

text: Unable to follow on foot, KK reveals that Rinko made a custom made motorcycle capable of passing through the fog. After collecting additional parts to complete the bike, the two travel to Tokyo Tower and confront the mother puppet. At the top of the tower, Hannya takes Mari and jumps into the mouth of the giant spirit monster. Akito is attacked by the KK puppet again but manages to destroy it.