title: Boeing EA-18G Growler

text: On 27 February 2009, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced that 12 of the 24 Super Hornets on order would be wired on the production line for future fit-out as EA-18Gs. The additional wiring would cost A$35 million. On 23 August 2012, the Australian Government announced that 12 RAAF Super Hornets would be fitted with Growler capability at a cost of $1.5 billion, making the Royal Australian Air Force the only military other than the U.S. to operate the Growler's electronic jamming equipment.


title: Boeing EA-18G Growler

text: On 3 May 2013, the Australian Government announced that it will buy 12 new-build Growlers to supplement the existing Super Hornet fleet. Australia took delivery of the first of 12 Growlers on 29 July 2015. Uniquely, Australian Growlers will be equipped with the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting pod and will also have additional air-to-air weapons in the form of the AIM-9X missile. The aircraft will be operated by No. 6 Squadron RAAF. On 7 July 2017, the RAAF completed delivery of the 12 EA-18G Growlers with the arrival of the last Growler at RAAF Base Amberley, home of No. 6 Squadron RAAF.


title: Boeing EA-18G Growler

text: One of the Australian EA-18Gs was written off following an engine fire in January 2018, leaving the force with 11 of the type. On 29 January, an Australian EA-18G caught fire after an aborted takeoff at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada while participating in Exercise Red Flag 2018. The crew were able to exit the jet on the ground unharmed. An investigation found that one engine's high-pressure compressor had broken into three major pieces that severely damaged the lower airframe, right tailfin, and the other engine. The aircraft was written off on 15 August and the Australian Government is attempting to claim compensation for the loss of the A$125 million aircraft.


title: Boeing EA-18G Growler

text: On 9 December 2020, the Royal Australian Air Force had announced that the 11 EA-18G Growlers and 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets had been grounded after an incident occurred where the crew of a RAAF F/A-18F had to eject on takeoff which is under investigation.


title: Boeing EA-18G Growler

text: On 30 September 2021, the US State Department approved the sale of one EA-18G for Australia to replace one lost in an accident in 2018.


title: Boris Karloff

text: William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film "Frankenstein" (1931) (his 82nd film) established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) and "Son of Frankenstein" (1939). He also appeared as Imhotep in "The Mummy" (1932), and voiced the Grinch in, as well as narrating, the animated television special of Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1966), which won him a Grammy Award.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Aside from his numerous film roles (174 films), Karloff acted in many live stage plays and appeared on dozens of radio and television programs as well. For his contribution to film and television, Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 8 February 1960.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on 23 November 1887, at 36 Forest Hill Road, Dulwich, Surrey (now in London), England. His parents were Edward John Pratt (1826/7–1897), of the Indian Civil Service, where he worked for the salt revenue service, and Eliza Sara (born 1848), née Millard. Both his parents died when Karloff was young, and he was primarily raised by a half-sister and his elder siblings. His brother, Sir John Thomas Pratt, was a British diplomat. Karloff's father Edward John Pratt was Anglo-Indian, with a British father and Indian mother, meaning that Karloff was at least a quarter Indian, while Karloff's mother also had some Indian ancestry, thus Karloff had a relatively dark complexion that differed from his peers at the time. His mother's maternal aunt was Anna Leonowens, whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) were the basis of the musical "The King and I". Pratt was bow-legged, had a lisp, and stuttered as a young boy. He learned how to manage his stutter, but not his lisp, which was noticeable throughout his career in the film industry.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Pratt spent his childhood years in Enfield, in the County of Middlesex. He was the youngest of nine children, and following his mother's death was brought up by his elder siblings. After first attending Enfield Grammar School, he received a private education at Uppingham School and Merchant Taylors' School. Following this he attended King's College London, where he took studies aimed at a career with the British Government's Consular Service. However, in 1909, he left university without graduating and drifted, departing England for Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer, truck driver and did various odd jobs until happening upon stage acting, which led to a later film career. He also worked for BC Hydro Electric in Canada.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Pratt began appearing in theatrical performances in Canada in 1911 and during this period he chose "Boris Karloff" as his stage name. Karloff always claimed he chose the first name "Boris" simply because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that "Karloff" was a family name (from Karlov—in Cyrillic, Карлов—a name found in several Slavic countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria). Karloff's daughter, Sara, publicly denied any knowledge of Slavic forebears, "Karloff" or otherwise.


title: Boris Karloff

text: It has been speculated by film historians that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character named "Boris Karlov" in the novel "The Drums of Jeopardy". However, the novel was not published until 1920, at least eight years after Karloff had been using the name on stage and in films. (Warner Oland played "Boris Karlov" in a film version in 1931.) Another possible influence was thought to be a character in the Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel "The Rider (novel)" which features a "Prince Boris of Karlova", but as the novel was not published until 1915, the influence may be backward, that Burroughs saw Karloff in a play and adapted the name for the character.


title: Boris Karloff

text: One reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to the Pratt family. Whether or not his brothers (all dignified members of the British Foreign Service) actually considered young William the "black sheep of the family" for having become an actor, Karloff apparently worried they felt that way. He did not reunite with his family until he returned to Britain to make "The Ghoul" (1933), extremely worried that his siblings would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame. Instead, his brothers jostled for position around him and happily posed for publicity photographs upon their reunion with him. After the photo was taken, Karloff's brothers immediately started asking about getting a copy of their own. The story of the photo became one of Karloff's favorites.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Company in 1911 and performed in towns like Kamloops (British Columbia) and Prince Albert (Saskatchewan). After the devastating tornado in Regina on 30 June 1912, Karloff, who was in the midst of an engagement at the Regina Theatre, and other performers helped with clean-up efforts. He later took a job as a railway baggage handler and joined the Harry St. Clair Company that performed in Minot, North Dakota, for a year in an opera house above a hardware store.


title: Boris Karloff

text: While he was trying to establish his acting career, Karloff had to perform years of manual labour in Canada and the U.S. in order to make ends meet. Among this work, he spent one year laying track, digging ditches, shoveling coal, clearing land, and working with surveying parties for the B.C. Electric Railway Company, at the rate of $2.50 per hour. From this grueling work with the BCER and other employers, Karloff was left with back problems for the rest of his life. Because of his health, he did not enlist in World War I.


title: Boris Karloff

text: During this period, Karloff worked in various theatrical stock companies across the U.S. to hone his acting skills. Some acting companies mentioned were the Harry St. Clair Players and the Billie Bennett Touring Company. By early 1918 he was working with the Maud Amber Players in Vallejo, California, but because of the Spanish flu outbreak in the San Francisco area and the fear of infection, the troupe was disbanded. He was able to find work with the Haggerty Repertory for a while (according to the 1973 obituary of Joseph Paul Haggerty, he and Boris Karloff remained lifelong friends). According to Karloff, in his first film he appeared as an extra in a crowd scene for a Frank Borzage picture at Universal for which he received $5; the title of this film has never been traced.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Once Karloff arrived in Hollywood, he appeared in dozens of silent films, but the work was sporadic, and he often had to take up manual labour such as digging ditches or delivering construction plaster to make ends meet.


title: Boris Karloff

text: His first on-screen role was in a film serial, "The Lightning Raider" (1919) with Pearl White. He was in another serial, "The Masked Rider" (1919), the earliest of his film appearances that survived.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff could also be seen in "His Majesty, the American" (1919) with Douglas Fairbanks, "The Prince and Betty" (1919), "The Deadlier Sex" (1920) with Blanche Sweet, and "The Courage of Marge O'Doone" (1920). He played an Indian in "The Last of the Mohicans" (1920) with Wallace Beery and he would often be cast as an Arab or Indian in his early films.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff's first major role came in a film serial, "The Hope Diamond Mystery" (1920). He was Indian in "Without Benefit of Clergy" (1921) and an Arab in "Cheated Hearts" (1921) and villainous in "The Cave Girl" (1921). He was a maharajah in "The Man from Downing Street" (1922), a Nabob in "The Infidel" (1922) and had roles in "The Altar Stairs" (1922), "Omar the Tentmaker" (1922) (as an Imam), "The Woman Conquers" (1922), "The Gentleman from America" (1923), "The Prisoner" (1923) and the serial "Riders of the Plains" (1923).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff did a Western, "The Hellion" (1923), and a drama, "Dynamite Dan" (1924). He could be seen in "Parisian Nights" (1925), "Forbidden Cargo" (1925), "The Prairie Wife" (1925) and the serial "Perils of the Wild" (1925).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff went back to bit part status in "Never the Twain Shall Meet" (1925), directed by Maurice Tourneur, but he had a good support part in "Lady Robinhood" (1925) starring Evelyn Brent in the titular role.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff went on to be in "The Greater Glory" (1926), "Her Honor, the Governor" (1926), "The Bells" (1926) (as a mesmerist), "The Nickel-Hopper" (1926) with Mabel Normand, "The Golden Web" (1926), "The Eagle of the Sea" (1926), "Flames" (1926), "Old Ironsides" (1926) with Wallace Beery and Esther Ralston, "Flaming Fury" (1926), "Valencia" (1926), "The Man in the Saddle" (1926) with Hoot Gibson, "Tarzan and the Golden Lion" (1927) (as an African), "Let It Rain" (1927), "The Meddlin' Stranger" (1927), "The Princess from Hoboken" (1927), "The Phantom Buster" (1927) with Buddy Roosevelt, and "Soft Cushions" (1927).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff had roles in "Two Arabian Knights" (1927), "The Love Mart" (1927) with Noah Beery Sr., "The Vanishing Rider" (1928) (a serial), "Burning the Wind" (1928), "Vultures of the Sea" (1928), and "The Little Wild Girl" (1928).


title: Boris Karloff

text: He was in "The Devil's Chaplain" (1929), "The Fatal Warning" (1929) for Richard Thorpe, "The Phantom of the North" (1929), "Two Sisters" (1929), "Anne Against the World" (1929), "Behind That Curtain" (1929) with Warner Baxter, and "The King of the Kongo" (1929), a serial directed by Thorpe.


title: Boris Karloff

text: While one day sitting at the bus stop in the pouring rain, Lon Chaney Sr., 'The Man of a Thousand Faces', spotted Karloff and offered him a ride. Chaney told him "to find something different that will set you apart and is different from anything someone else has done or is willing to do and do it better".


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff had an uncredited bit part in "The Unholy Night" (1930) directed by Lionel Barrymore, and bigger parts in "The Bad One" (1930),"The Sea Bat" (1930) starring Charles Bickford and directed by Lionel Barrymore and Wesley Ruggles, and "The Utah Kid" (1930) directed by Thorpe.


title: Boris Karloff

text: A film which brought Karloff recognition was "The Criminal Code" (1931), a prison drama directed by Howard Hawks in which he reprised a dramatic part he had played on stage. In the same period, Karloff had a supporting role as a mob boss in Hawks' gangster film "Scarface" starring Paul Muni and George Raft, but the film was not released until 1932 because of difficult censorship issues.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He did another serial for Thorpe, "King of the Wild" (1931), then had support parts in "Cracked Nuts" (1931) with Wheeler and Woolsey, "Young Donovan's Kid" (1931) with Jackie Cooper, "Smart Money" (1931) with Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney in their only film together, "The Public Defender" (1931) with Richard Dix, "I Like Your Nerve" (1931) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta Young, and "Graft" (1931) with Regis Toomey and future agent Sue Carol.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Another significant role in the autumn of 1931 saw Karloff play a key supporting part as an unethical newspaper reporter in "Five Star Final" with Edward G. Robinson, a film about tabloid journalism which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He could also be seen in "The Yellow Ticket" (1931) with Elissa Landi, Lionel Barrymore and Laurence Olivier during Olivier's memorable first round in Hollywood, "The Mad Genius" (1931) with John Barrymore, "The Guilty Generation" (1931) with Robert Young and "Tonight or Never" (1931) with Gloria Swanson.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff acted in eighty-one movies before being discovered by James Whale and cast in "Frankenstein" (1931). Karloff's role as Frankenstein's monster was physically demanding – it necessitated a bulky costume with four-inch platform boots – but the costume and extensive makeup produced an iconic image. The costume was a job in itself for Karloff with the shoes weighing each and further aggravated his back problems. Universal Studios quickly copyrighted the makeup design for the Frankenstein monster that Jack P. Pierce had created.


title: Boris Karloff

text: It took a while for Karloff's stardom to be established with the public – he had small roles in "Behind the Mask" (1932), "Business and Pleasure" (1932) and "The Miracle Man" (1932).


title: Boris Karloff

text: As receipts for "Frankenstein" and "Scarface" flooded in, Universal gave Karloff third billing in "Night World" (1932), with Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke and George Raft.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff was reunited with Whale at Universal for "The Old Dark House" (1932), a horror movie based on the novel "Benighted" by J. B. Priestley, in which he finally enjoyed top billing above Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart; he was billed simply as "KARLOFF", a custom that Universal continued for several years. He was loaned to MGM to play the titular role in "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (also 1932), for which he had top billing.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Back at Universal, he was cast as Imhotep who is revived in "The Mummy" (1932), an original story inspired by the unsealing of Tutankhamun's tomb—though essentially narratively a remake of "Dracula" set in Egypt—conceived to continue the success of the "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" adaptations. "The Mummy" was as successful at the box-office as his other two films and Karloff was now established as a star of horror films. Like "Frankenstein", "The Mummy" would spawn a line of follow-up films, starting with "The Mummy's Hand "eight years later, however, Karloff would not reprise the iconic role, and instead, a new mummy character, Kharis, is introduced as played by Tom Tyler, with Lon Chaney Jr. assuming the role in further sequels.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff returned to England to star in "The Ghoul" (1933), then made a non-horror film for John Ford, "The Lost Patrol" (1934), for which his performance was highly acclaimed.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff was third billed in the Twentieth Century Pictures historical film "The House of Rothschild" (1934) with George Arliss, which was highly popular.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Horror, however, had now become Karloff's primary genre, and he gave a string of lauded performances in Universal's horror films, including several with Bela Lugosi, his main rival as heir to Lon Chaney's status as the leading horror film star. While the long-standing, creative partnership between Karloff and Lugosi never led to a close friendship, it produced some of the actors' most revered and enduring productions, beginning with "The Black Cat" (1934) and continuing with "Gift of Gab" (1934), in which both had cameos. Karloff reprised the role of Frankenstein's monster in "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) for James Whale. Then he and Lugosi were reunited for "The Raven" (1935). Billed only by his last name during this period, Karloff had top billing above Lugosi in all their films together despite Lugosi having the larger role in "The Raven".


title: Boris Karloff

text: For Columbia, Karloff made "The Black Room" (1935) then he returned to Universal for "The Invisible Ray" (1936) with Lugosi, more a science fiction film. Karloff was then cast in a Warner Bros. horror film, "The Walking Dead" (1936).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Because the Motion Picture Production Code (known as the Hays Code) began to be seriously enforced in 1934, horror films declined in the second half of the 1930s. Karloff worked in other genres, making two films in Britain, "Juggernaut" (1936) and "The Man Who Changed His Mind" (1936) which was released in the U.S. as "The Man Who Lived Again".


title: Boris Karloff

text: He returned to Hollywood to play a supporting role in "Charlie Chan at the Opera" (1936), then starred in a science fiction/ crime drama, "Night Key" (1937).


title: Boris Karloff

text: At Warners, he did two films with John Farrow, playing a Chinese warlord in "West of Shanghai" (1937) and a murder suspect in "The Invisible Menace" (1938).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff went to Monogram to play the title role of a Chinese detective in "Mr. Wong, Detective" (1938), which led to a series. Karloff's portrayal of the character is an example of Hollywood's use of yellowface and its portrayal of East Asians in the earlier half of the 20th century. He had another heroic role in "Devil's Island" (1939).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Universal found reissuing "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" led to success at the box-office and began to produce horror films again starting with "Son of Frankenstein" (1939). Karloff reprised his role, with Lugosi also starring as Ygor and top-billed Basil Rathbone as Frankenstein. This was Karloff's first Universal film since the original "Frankenstein" in which Karloff was not top billed as "KARLOFF", a custom that the studio had used for eight films in a row while Karloff was at the height of his career. Basil Rathbone held top billing for "Son of Frankenstein", and since Rathbone, Karloff and Lugosi were all billed above the title, billing Basil, Boris and Bela was hard to resist. Karloff was never billed by simply his last name again. Regarding "Son of Frankenstein", the film's director Rowland V. Lee said his crew let Lugosi "work on the characterization; the interpretation he gave us was imaginative and totally unexpected ... when we finished shooting, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he stole the show. Karloff's monster was weak by comparison."


title: Boris Karloff

text: After "The Mystery of Mr. Wong" (1939) and "Mr. Wong in Chinatown" (1939) he signed a three-picture deal with Columbia, starting with "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939). Karloff returned to Universal to make "Tower of London" (1939) with Rathbone, playing the murderous henchman of King Richard III.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff made a fourth Mr Wong film at Monogram "The Fatal Hour" (1940). At Warners he was in "British Intelligence" (1940), then he went to Universal to do "Black Friday" (1940) with Lugosi.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff's second and third films for Columbia were "The Man with Nine Lives" (1940) and "Before I Hang" (1940). In between he did a fifth and final Mr Wong film, "Doomed to Die" (1940).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff appeared at a celebrity baseball game as Frankenstein's monster in 1940, hitting a gag home run and making catcher Buster Keaton fall into an acrobatic dead faint as the monster stomped into home plate.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff finished a six picture commitment with Monogram with "The Ape" (1940). He and Lugosi appeared with Peter Lorre in a comedy at RKO, "You'll Find Out" (1941), then he went to Columbia for "The Devil Commands" (1941) and "The Boogie Man Will Get You" (1941).


title: Boris Karloff

text: An enthusiastic performer, he returned to the Broadway stage in the original production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" in 1941, in which he played a homicidal gangster enraged to be frequently mistaken for Karloff. Frank Capra cast Raymond Massey in the 1944 film, which was shot in 1941, while Karloff was still appearing in the role on Broadway. The play's producers allowed the film to be made conditionally: it was not to be released until the production closed. (Karloff reprised his role on television in the anthology series "The Best of Broadway" (1955), and with Tony Randall and Tom Bosley in a 1962 production on the "Hallmark Hall of Fame". He also starred in a radio adaptation produced by Screen Guild Theatre in 1946.)


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff returned to film roles in "The Climax" (1944), an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the success of "Phantom of the Opera" (1943). More liked was "House of Frankenstein" (1944), marking Karloff's "retirement" from playing the Monster, where instead, he comes full circle to play the villainous Dr. Niemann, a mad scientist fixated on life-experiments much like Henry Frankenstein, and pass the torch to actor Glenn Strange, who would play the Monster in subsequent films.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff made three films for producer Val Lewton at RKO: "The Body Snatcher" (1945), his last teaming with Lugosi, "Isle of the Dead" (1945) and "Bedlam" (1946).


title: Boris Karloff

text: In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg of the "Los Angeles Times", Karloff discussed his arrangement with RKO, working with Lewton and his reasons for leaving Universal. Karloff left Universal because he thought the Frankenstein franchise had run its course; the entries in the series after "Son of Frankenstein" were B-pictures. Berg wrote that the last installment in which Karloff appeared—"House of Frankenstein"—was what he called a " 'monster clambake,' with everything thrown in—Frankenstein, Dracula, a hunchback and a 'man-beast' that howled in the night. It was too much. Karloff thought it was ridiculous and said so." Berg explained that the actor had "great love and respect for" Lewton, who was "the man who rescued him from the living dead and restored, so to speak, his soul."


title: Boris Karloff

text: Horror films experienced a decline in popularity after the war, and Karloff found himself working in other genres.


title: Boris Karloff

text: For the Danny Kaye comedy, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947), Karloff appeared in a brief but starring role as Dr. Hugo Hollingshead, a psychiatrist. Director Norman Z. McLeod shot a sequence with Karloff in the Frankenstein monster make-up, but it was deleted from the finished film.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff appeared in a film noir, "Lured" (1947), and as an Indian in "Unconquered" (1947). He had support roles in "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" (1947), "Tap Roots" (1948), and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff" (1949).


title: Boris Karloff

text: During this period, Karloff was a frequent guest on radio programmes, whether it was starring in Arch Oboler's Chicago-based "Lights Out" productions (including the episode "Cat Wife") or spoofing his horror image with Fred Allen or Jack Benny. In 1949, he was the host and star of "Starring Boris Karloff," a radio and television anthology series for the ABC broadcasting network.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He appeared as the villainous Captain Hook in "Peter Pan" in a 1950 stage musical adaptation which also featured Jean Arthur.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He was nominated for a Tony Award for his work opposite Julie Harris in "The Lark," by the French playwright Jean Anouilh, about Joan of Arc, which he reprised years later on TV's "Hallmark Hall of Fame."


title: Boris Karloff

text: During the 1950s, he appeared on British television in the series "Colonel March of Scotland Yard," in which he portrayed John Dickson Carr's fictional detective Colonel March, who was known for solving apparently impossible crimes. Christopher Lee appeared alongside Karloff in the episode "At Night, All Cats are Grey" broadcast in 1955. A little later, Karloff co-starred with Lee in the film "Corridors of Blood" (1958).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff appeared in "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1952) and visited Italy for "The Island Monster" (1954) and then returned to Hollywood to appear in "Sabaka" (1954).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff, along with H. V. Kaltenborn, was a regular panelist on the NBC game show, "Who Said That?" which aired between 1948 and 1955. Later, as a guest on NBC's "The Gisele MacKenzie Show", Karloff sang "Those Were the Good Old Days" from "Damn Yankees" while Gisele MacKenzie performed the solo, "Give Me the Simple Life". On "The Red Skelton Show," Karloff guest starred along with actor Vincent Price in a parody of Frankenstein, with Red Skelton as "Klem Kadiddle Monster". He served as host and one of the stars of the anthology series "The Veil" (1958), a 12-episode Hal Roach TV series which was never broadcast at all due to financial problems at the producing studio; the complete series was later rediscovered in the 1990s and eventually released on DVD.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff made some horror films in the late 1950s: "Voodoo Island" (1957), "The Haunted Strangler" (1958), "Frankenstein 1970" (1958) (this time as the Baron), and "Corridors of Blood" (1958). Karloff donned the Frankenstein Monster make-up for the last time in 1962 for a Halloween episode of the TV series "Route 66", which also featured Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr.


title: Boris Karloff

text: During this period, he hosted and acted in a number of television series, including "Thriller" and Britain's "Out of This World".


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff went to Italy to appear in "Black Sabbath" (1963) directed by Mario Bava. He made "The Raven" (1963) for Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP). When "The Raven" had successfully wrapped shooting with time left in Karloff's contract, Corman conscribed a new story with the same sets to feature Karloff in "The Terror" (1963), with Jack Nicholson in the leading role and Karloff playing a baron who murdered his wife. He made a cameo in AIP's "Bikini Beach" (1964) and had a bigger role in that studio's "The Comedy of Terrors" (1964), directed by Jacques Tourneur, and travelled to England to make "Die, Monster, Die!" (1965) co-starring Nick Adams. British actress Suzan Farmer, who played his daughter in the film, later recalled Karloff was aloof during production "and wasn't the charming personality people perceived him to be", probably because he was in such intense pain in the 1960s.


title: Boris Karloff

text: In 1966, Karloff also appeared with Robert Vaughn and Stefanie Powers in the spy series "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.", in the episode "The Mother Muffin Affair", Karloff performing in drag as the titular character. That same year, he also played an Indian Maharajah on the installment of the adventure series "The Wild Wild West" titled "The Night of the Golden Cobra". Karloff's last film for AIP was "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini" (1966).


title: Boris Karloff

text: In 1967, he played an eccentric Spanish professor who believes himself to be Don Quixote in a whimsical episode of "I Spy" titled "Mainly on the Plains", which he filmed in Spain. "Cauldron of Blood", shot in Spain around the same time, and co-starring Viveca Lindfors, was only released in 1970 after Karloff's death.


title: Boris Karloff

text: In the mid-1960s, he enjoyed a late-career surge in the United States when he narrated the made-for-television animated film of Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and also provided the voice of the Grinch, although the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was sung by the American voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft. The film was first broadcast on CBS-TV in 1966. Karloff later received a Grammy Award for "Best Recording For Children" after the recording was commercially released. Because Ravenscroft (who never met Karloff in the course of their work on the show) was uncredited for his contribution to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!", his performance of the song was at times misattributed to Karloff.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He appeared in "Mad Monster Party?" (1967) and went to England to star in the second feature film of the British director Michael Reeves, "The Sorcerers" (1967).


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff starred in "Targets" (1968), the first feature film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, featuring two separate plotlines that converge into one. In one, a disturbed young man kills his family, then embarks on a killing spree. In the other, a famous horror-film actor confirms his retirement, agreeing to one last appearance at a drive-in cinema. Karloff starred as the retired horror film actor, Byron Orlok, a thinly disguised version of himself; Orlok (named both for Karloff himself and Count Orlok,) was facing an end of life crisis, which he resolves through a confrontation with the crazed gunman at the drive-in cinema.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Around the same time, he played the wheelchair-bound occult expert Professor Marsh in a British production titled "The Crimson Cult" ("Curse of the Crimson Altar", also 1968), which was the last Karloff film to be released during his lifetime.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He ended his career by appearing in four low-budget Mexican horror films: "Isle of the Snake People", "The Incredible Invasion", "Fear Chamber" and "House of Evil". This was a package deal with Mexican producer Luis Enrique Vergara. Karloff's scenes for all four films were directed by Jack Hill and shot back-to-back within one month in Los Angeles in the spring of 1968. The films were later completed in Mexico and theatrically released in the early 1970s. Karloff was originally slated to travel to Mexico to shoot the films, but he had emphysema and crippling arthritis. Only half of one lung was still functioning and he required oxygen between takes, so Hill arranged for Karloff to film his scenes in California.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Due to the unexpected sudden death of the producer Vergara, all four Mexican films were embroiled for a while in legal actions and were only released posthumously in 1971, with the last, "The Incredible Invasion", not released until 1972, more than two years after Karloff's death.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He recorded the title role of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" for the Shakespeare Recording Society (Caedmon Audio 1962). He also recorded the narration for Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra under Mario Rossi.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Records he made for the children's market included "Three Little Pigs and Other Fairy Stories", "Tales of the Frightened" (volume 1 and 2), Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories" and, with Cyril Ritchard and Celeste Holm, "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes", and Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark".


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff was credited for editing several horror anthologies, commencing with "Tales of Terror" (Cleveland and NY: World Publishing Co, 1943) (compiled with the help of Edmond Speare). This wartime-published anthology went through at least five printings to September 1945. It has been reprinted recently (Orange NJ: Idea Men, 2007). Karloff's name was also attached to "And the Darkness Falls" (Cleveland and NY: World Publishing Co, 1946); and "The Boris Karloff Horror Anthology" (London: Souvenir Press, 1965; simultaneous publication in Canada - Toronto: The Ryerson Press; US pbk reprint NY: Avon Books, 1965 retitled as "Boris Karloff's Favourite Horror Stories"; UK pbk reprints London: Corgi, 1969 and London: Everest, 1975, both under the original title), though it is less clear whether Karloff himself actually edited these.


title: Boris Karloff

text: "Tales of the Frightened" (Belmont Books, 1963), though based on the recordings by Karloff of the same title, and featuring his image on the book cover, contained stories written by Michael Avallone; the second volume, "More Tales of the Frightened", contained stories authored by Robert Lory. Both Avallone and Lory worked closely with Canadian editor and book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, who also ghost-edited a horror story anthology for horror film star Basil Rathbone.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff married six times. His wives included stage actress Grace Harding (married from 1910 to 1913), actress Olive de Wilton (from 1916 to 1919), musician Montana Laurena Williams (from 1920 to 1922) and actress Helen Vivian Soule (from 1924 to 1928).


title: Boris Karloff

text: His fifth marriage to Dorothy Stine lasted from 1930 until 1946. This marriage resulted in Karloff's only child, daughter Sara Karloff, being born on November 23, 1938 (which coincidentally was also Karloff's 51st birthday).


title: Boris Karloff

text: His sixth and final marriage, to Evelyn Hope Helmore, was in April 1946, immediately after his fifth divorce. They were still happily married 23 years later at the time of his death.


title: Boris Karloff

text: In 1958, Karloff's niece Diana Bromley was arrested and charged with murdering her two small children with a razor in Haslemere, England, then attempting to slash her own throat. She was the daughter of Karloff's brother Sir John Thomas Pratt.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Beginning in 1940, Karloff dressed as Father Christmas every Christmas to hand out presents to physically disabled children in a Baltimore hospital.


title: Boris Karloff

text: He never legally changed his name to "Boris Karloff." He signed official documents "William H. Pratt, a.k.a. Boris Karloff."


title: Boris Karloff

text: He was a charter member of the Screen Actors Guild, and he was especially outspoken due to the long hours he spent in makeup while playing Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy. He was an early member of the Hollywood Cricket Club.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Upon returning to England to live in 1959, his address was 43 Cadogan Square, London. In 1966, he bought 25 Campden House (in 29 Sheffield Terrace), Kensington W8, and Roundabout Cottage in the Hampshire village of Bramshott. A longtime heavy smoker, he had emphysema which left him with only half of one lung still functioning. He contracted bronchitis in late 1968 and was hospitalised at University College Hospital. He died of pneumonia at the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, in Sussex, on 2 February 1969, at the age of 81.


title: Boris Karloff

text: His body was cremated following a requested modest service at Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance. A memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden ("the Actors' Church"), London, where there is also a plaque.


title: Boris Karloff

text: During the run of "Thriller," Karloff lent his name and likeness to a comic book for Gold Key Comics based upon the series. After "Thriller" was cancelled, the comic was retitled "Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery". An illustrated likeness of Karloff continued to introduce each issue of this publication for more than a decade after his death (he wasn't involved however in writing or drawing the stories); the comic book lasted until the early 1980s (a Gold Key comic book series based upon "The Twilight Zone" that ran concurrently with Karloff's did the same thing with host Rod Serling's likeness after his death). In 2009, Dark Horse Comics began publishing reprints of "Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery" in a hardcover edition.


title: Boris Karloff

text: For his contribution to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1737 Vine Street for motion pictures, and 6664 Hollywood Boulevard for television. Karloff was featured by the U.S. Postal Service as Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy in its series "Classic Monster Movie Stamps" issued in September 1997. In 1998, an English Heritage blue plaque was unveiled in his hometown in London. The British film magazine "Empire" in 2016 ranked Karloff's portrayal as Frankenstein's monster the sixth-greatest horror movie character of all time.


title: Boris Karloff

text: Karloff acted in 13 episodes of the "Starring Boris Karloff" anthology TV/ radio series in 1949: this show was broadcast as both a TV show and a radio show simultaneously


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; ;  – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art, possibly after Hilma af Klint. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia)—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky "became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky" and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then "his spiritual outlook... was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society", and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944, three days prior to his 78th birthday.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia and was the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant. One of his great-grandmothers was Princess Gantimurova, a Mongolian princess. Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 1889 at age 25, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In "Looks on the Past", he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region's folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), were reflected in much of his early work.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: A few years later he first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing, "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul".


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky's creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire "inner necessity"; it was a central aspect of his art. Some art historians suggest that Kandinsky's passion for Abstract art began when one day, coming back home, he found one of his own paintings hanging upside down in his studio, and he stared at it for a while before realizing it was his own work, suggesting him the potential power of abstraction.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the impressionistic style of "Haystacks"; this, to him, had a powerful sense of colour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write about this experience:


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standard lyricism. He was also spiritually influenced by Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theory postulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles, and squares. Kandinsky's book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1910) and "Point and Line to Plane" (1926) echoed this theosophical tenet. Illustrations by John Varley in "Thought-Forms" (1901) influenced him visually.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited Gabriele Münter to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted, and their relationship became more personal than professional.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. The number of his existing paintings increased at the beginning of the 20th century; much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths of colour and recognisable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky's paintings did not feature any human figures; an exception is "Sunday, Old Russia" (1904), in which Kandinsky recreates a highly colourful (and fanciful) view of peasants and nobles in front of the walls of a town. "Couple on Horseback" (1907) depicts a man on horseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russian town with luminous walls across a blue river. The horse is muted while the leaves in the trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots of colour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism in the way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface. Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to express Kandinsky's experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was "The Blue Rider" (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider's cloak is medium blue, which casts a darker-blue shadow. In the foreground are more amorphous blue shadows, the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The blue rider in the painting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Some art historians believe that a second figure (perhaps a child) is being held by the rider, although this may be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction, allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became an increasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; it culminated in the abstract works of the 1911–1914 period. In "The Blue Rider", Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colours than in specific detail. This painting is not exceptional in that regard when compared with contemporary painters, but it shows the direction Kandinsky would take only a few years later.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow), until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. In 1908 he bought a copy of "Thought-Forms" by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1909 he joined the Theosophical Society. "The Blue Mountain" (1908–1909) was painted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain of blue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, with three riders and several others, crosses at the bottom. The faces, clothing, and saddles of the riders are each a single color, and neither they nor the walking figures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also are indicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of color in "The Blue Mountain" illustrates Kandinsky's inclination toward an art in which colour is presented independently of form, and in which each color is given equal attention. The composition is more planar; the painting is divided into four sections: the sky, the red tree, the yellow tree, and the blue mountain with the three riders.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky's paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and described more elaborate works as "compositions."


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on the history of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than from his paintings. He helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artists' Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group could not integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventional artistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed a new group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as August Macke, Franz Marc, Albert Bloch, and Gabriele Münter. The group released an almanac ("The Blue Rider Almanac") and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia via Switzerland and Sweden.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: His writing in "The Blue Rider Almanac" and the treatise "On the Spiritual in Art" (which was released in 1910) were both a defence and promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in the English-speaking world. As early as 1912, "On the Spiritual in Art" was reviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based "Art News." Interest in Kandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of "On the Spiritual in Art" in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year in Percy Wyndham Lewis's periodical "Blast," and Alfred Orage's weekly cultural newspaper "The New Age". Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain, however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists' Exhibition (organised by Frank Rutter) at London's Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work being singled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer Frederick Gore in "The Art News".


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Sadleir's interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky's first works entering a British art collection; Sadleir's father, Michael Sadler, acquired several wood-prints and the abstract painting "Fragment for Composition VII" in 1913 following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. These works were displayed in Leeds, either in the University or the premises of the Leeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: From 1918 to 1921, Kandinsky was involved in the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during this period, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on form and colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow of which he was the first director. His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by the radical members of the Institute as too individualistic and bourgeois. In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In May 1922, he attended the International Congress of Progressive Artists and signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists".


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The development of his works on forms study, particularly on points and line forms, led to the publication of his second theoretical book ("Point and Line to Plane") in 1926. His examinations of the effects of forces on straight lines, leading to the contrasting tones of curved and angled lines, coincided with the research of Gestalt psychologists, whose work was also discussed at the Bauhaus. Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised in his works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradations—as in "Yellow – red – blue" (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from the constructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The "Yellow – red – blue" (1925) of several main forms: a vertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; a multitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromatic circles and scattered, coloured checker-boards contribute to its delicate complexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main coloured masses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality of the work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observation—not only of forms and colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute and relative positions on the canvas and their harmony.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), formed in 1923 with Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Alexej von Jawlensky, which lectured and exhibited in the United States in 1924. Due to right-wing hostility, the Bauhaus left Weimar and settled in Dessau in 1925. Following a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany, settling in Paris.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Living in an apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-room studio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in his paintings—forms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist's inner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: This period corresponds to a synthesis of Kandinsky's previous work in which he used all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his final two major compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for many years. "Composition IX" has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose central form gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours and coloured bands stand out against the black background of "Composition X" as star fragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover a large maroon mass which seems to float in the upper-left corner of the canvas. In Kandinsky's work some characteristics are obvious, while certain touches are more discreet and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who deepen their connection with his work. He intended his forms (which he subtly harmonised and placed) to resonate with the observer's soul.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher," Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten "Compositions". The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend Gabriele Münter. Composition I (1910) was destroyed by a British air raid on the city of Braunschweig in Lower Saxony on the night of 14 October 1944.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of "Composition II"), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky's first three "Compositions." They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art", and then destroyed (along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists)


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Fascinated by Christian eschatology and the perception of a coming New Age, a common theme among Kandinsky's first seven "Compositions" is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it). Writing of the "artist as prophet" in his book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individual and social reality. Having a devout belief in Orthodox Christianity, Kandinsky drew upon the biblical stories of Noah's Ark, Jonah and the whale, Christ's resurrection, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation, Russian folktales and the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attempting to picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imagery as symbols of the archetypes of death–rebirth and destruction–creation he felt were imminent in the pre-World War I world.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: As he stated in "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (see below), Kandinsky felt that an authentic artist creating art from "an internal necessity" inhabits the tip of an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating and proceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is commonplace today; what is "avant garde" today (and understood only by the few) is common knowledge tomorrow. The modern artist–prophet stands alone at the apex of the pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow's reality. Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modern artists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: "Composition IV" and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypse by water ("Composition VI"), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritual communion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limits of words and images.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: As the "Der Blaue Reiter Almanac" essays and theorising with composer Arnold Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorised that (for example), yellow is the colour of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the colour of closure, and the end of things; and that combinations of colours produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. In 1871 the young Kandinsky learned to play the piano and cello.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky also developed a theory of geometric figures and their relationships—claiming, for example, that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theories are explained in "Point and Line to Plane" (see below).


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky's legendary stage design for a performance of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" illustrates his synaesthetic concept of a universal correspondence of forms, colors and musical sounds. In 1928 in the theater of Dessau, Wassily Kandinsky realized the stage production of "Pictures at an Exhibition". In 2015 the original designs of the stage elements were animated with modern video technology and synchronized with the music according to the preparatory notes of Kandinsky and the director's script of Felix Klee.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In another episode with Münter during the Bavarian abstract expressionist years, Kandinsky was working on his "Composition VI". From nearly six months of study and preparation, he had intended the work to evoke a flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth simultaneously. After outlining the work on a mural-sized wood panel, he became blocked and could not go on. Münter told him that he was trapped in his intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested he simply repeat the word "uberflut" ("deluge" or "flood") and focus on its sound rather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky painted and completed the monumental work in a three-day span.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Wassily Kandinsky's art has a confluence of music and spirituality. With his appreciation for music of his times and kinesthetic disposition, Kandinsky's artworks have a marked style of expressionism in his early years. But he embraced all types of artistic styles of his times and his predecessors i.e. Art Nouveau (sinuous organic forms), Fauvism and Blaue Reiter (shocking colours), Surrealism (mystery) and Bauhaus (constructivism) only to move towards abstractionism as he explored spirituality in art. His object-free paintings display spiritual abstraction suggested by sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation. Driven by the Christian faith and the inner necessity of an artist, his paintings have the ambiguity of the form rendered in a variety of colours as well as resistance against conventional aesthetic values of the art world.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: His signature or individual style can be further defined and divided into three categories over the course of his art career: Impressions (representational element), Improvisations (spontaneous emotional reaction), Compositions (ultimate works of art).


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: As Kandinsky started moving away from his early inspiration from Impressionism, his paintings became more vibrant, pictographic and expressive with more sharp shapes and clear linear qualities.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: But eventually, Kandinsky went further; rejecting pictorial representation with more synesthetic swirling hurricanes of colours and shapes, eliminating traditional references to depth, laying out bare and abstracted glyphs; but what remained consistent was his spiritual pursuit of expressive forms.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Emotional harmony is another salient feature in the later works of Kandinsky. With diverse dimensions and bright hues balanced through a careful juxtaposition of proportion and colours, he substantiated the universality of shapes in his artworks thus paving the way for further abstraction.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Wassily Kandinsky often used black in his paintings to heighten the impact of brightly coloured forms while his forms were often biomorphic approaches to bring surrealism in his art.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky's analyses on forms and colours result not from simple, arbitrary idea-associations but from the painter's inner experience. He spent years creating abstract, sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observing his own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his sense of colour. This subjective experience is something that anyone can do—not scientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what French philosopher Michel Henry calls "absolute subjectivity" or the "absolute phenomenological life".


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Published in Munich in 1911, Kandinsky's text, "Über das Geistige in der Kunst", defines three types of painting; "impressions", "improvisations" and "compositions". While impressions are based on an external reality that serves as a starting point, improvisations and compositions depict images emergent from the unconscious, though "composition" is developed from a more formal point of view. Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid—the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Colours on the painter's palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an "inner resonance"—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: "Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul. Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces on one who looks at it attentively. This inner necessity is the right of the artist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is not founded on such a necessity. Art is born from the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breath.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The obvious properties we can see when we look at an isolated colour and let it act alone, on one side is the warmth or coldness of the colour tone, and on the other side is the clarity or obscurity of that tone. Warmth is a tendency towards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form the first great, dynamic contrast. Yellow has an "eccentric" movement and blue a "concentric" movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away. Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whose violence can be painful and aggressive. Blue is a celestial colour, evoking a deep calm. The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility and calm, which is green.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Clarity is a tendency towards white, and obscurity is a tendency towards black. White and black form the second great contrast, which is static. White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility. Black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors. The mixing of white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is near that of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despair when it becomes dark, regaining little hope when it lightens.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Red is a warm colour, lively and agitated; it is forceful, a movement in itself. Mixed with black it becomes brown, a hard colour. Mixed with yellow, it gains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on its surroundings. When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to become purple, which is a cool red. Red and green form the third great contrast, and orange and purple the fourth.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In his writings, published in Munich by Verlag Albert Langen in 1926, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting—the "point" and the "line." He called the physical support and the material surface on which the artist draws or paints the "basic plane", or BP. He did not analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect on the observer.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and colour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated or resonate with other points or lines.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: A line is the product of a force which has been applied in a given direction: the force exerted on the pencil or paintbrush by the artist. The produced linear forms may be of several types: a "straight" line, which results from a unique force applied in a single direction; an "angular" line, resulting from the alternation of two forces in different directions, or a "curved" (or "wave-like") line, produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. A "plane" may be obtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: a "horizontal" line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; it possesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. A "vertical" line corresponds with height, and offers no support; it possesses a luminous, warm tonality close to white and yellow. A "diagonal" possesses a more-or-less warm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal or the vertical.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces a straight line corresponds with "lyricism"; several forces which confront (or annoy) each other form a "drama". The "angle" formed by the angular line also has an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (a triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (a circle), and similar to red for a right angle (a square).


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. Therefore, it is composed of horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomous entity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. This tonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and vertical lines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while the verticals impart a calm, warm tonality. The artist intuits the inner effect of the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonality he wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a living being, which the artist "fertilises" and feels "breathing".


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influences the tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, and contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition on the canvas. The "above" of the basic plane corresponds with looseness and to lightness, while the "below" evokes condensation and heaviness. The painter's job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings which are not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and the result of an effort towards inner beauty.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky's works which offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allow the reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes the time to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its own sensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of his soul.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: After graduating in 1892, Kandinsky married his cousin, Anja Chimiakin, and became a lecturer on Jurisprudence at the University of Moscow.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited Gabriele Münter to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted, and their relationship became more personal than professional. In 1911, the German expressionist painter was one of several artists joining Kandinsky in his Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) group, which ended with the onset of World War I.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Kandinsky and Münter became engaged in the summer of 1903, while he was still married to Anja, and travelled extensively through Europe, Russia and North Africa until 1908. He separated from Anja in 1911.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky travelled across Europe until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: He returned to Moscow in 1914 when the first World War broke out. In 1916, he met Nina Nikolaevna Andreevskaya (1899–1980), whom he married on 11 February 1917, when she was 17 or 18 and he was 50 years old. At the end of 1917 they had a son, Wsevolod, or Lodya as he was called in the family. Lodya died in June 1920. There were no more children.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: After the Russian Revolution, he had opportunities in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: He then moved to France with his wife, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 2012, Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's "Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8)", a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firm Volkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist's last record was set in 1990 when Sotheby's sold his "Fugue" (1914) for $20.9 million. On 16 November 2016 Christie's auctioned Kandinsky's "Rigide et courbé (rigid and bent)", a large 1935 abstract painting, for $23.3 million, a new record for Kandinsky. Solomon R. Guggenheim originally purchased the painting directly from the artist in 1936, but it was not exhibited after 1949, and was then sold at auction to a private collector in 1964 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The 1990 play "Six Degrees of Separation" refers to a "double-sided Kandinsky" painting. No such painting is known to exist; in the 1993 film version of the play, the double-sided painting is portrayed as having Kandinsky's 1913 painting "Black Lines" on one side and his 1926 painting "Several Circles" on the other side.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: The 1999 film "Double Jeopardy" makes numerous references to Kandinsky, and a piece of his, "Sketch", figures prominently in the plot-line. The protagonist, Elizabeth Parsons (Ashley Judd), utilises the registry entry for the work to track down her husband under his new alias. Two variations of the almanac cover of "Blue Rider" are also featured in the film.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 2014, Google commemorated Kandinsky's 148th birthday by featuring a Google Doodle based on his abstract paintings.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In the 2015 movie "Longest ride" there is a story within the story telling about Ruth and Ira. Ruth is interested in art and they visit the "Black Mountain College" where Ruth tells Ira about Kandinski who came along and broke all the laws of the discipline.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In Season 4 of Netflix’s Stranger Things, his 1903 colour woodblock "The Singer" can be seen in Nancy Wheeler’s bedroom. This specific season has strong themes about the power of music.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: A picture-book biography entitled "The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art" was published in 2014. Its illustrations by Mary GrandPre earned it a 2015 Caldecott Honor.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: His grandson was musicology professor and writer Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky (1918–2000), whose career was both focused on and centred in Russia.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In July 2001 Jen Lissitzky, the son of artist El Lissitzky, filed a restitution claim against the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland for Kandinsky's "Improvisation No. 10". A settlement was reached in 2002.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 2013 the Lewenstein family filed a claim for the restitution of Kandinsky's "Painting with Houses" held by the Stedelijk Museum. In 2020, a committee established by the Dutch minister of culture found fault with the behaviour of the Restitution Committee, causing a scandal where two of its members, including its chairman, resigned. Later that year, a court in Amsterdam ruled that the Stedelijk Museum could retain the painting from the Jewish Lewenstein collection, despite the Nazi theft. However, in August 2021 the Amsterdam City Council decided to return the painting to the Lewenstein family.


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: In 2017 Robert Colin Lewenstein, Francesca Manuela Davis and Elsa Hannchen Guidotti filed suit against Bayerische Landesbank ("BLB") for the restitution of Kandinsky's "Das Bunte Leben."


title: Wassily Kandinsky

text: Note: Several sections of this article have been translated from its French version: "Theoretical writings on art", "The Bauhaus" and "The great synthesis" artistic periods. For complete detailed references in French, see the original version at .


title: Harlem

text: Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.


title: Harlem

text: Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. In the 21st century, crime rates decreased significantly, and Harlem started to gentrify.


title: Harlem

text: The area is served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes. It contains several public elementary, middle, and high schools, and is close to several colleges, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and the City College of New York. Central Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 10. It is patrolled by the 28th and 32nd Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The greater Harlem area also includes Manhattan Community Districts 9 and 11 and several police precincts, while fire services are provided by four New York City Fire Department companies.


title: Harlem

text: Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as "Uptown" by locals. The three neighborhoods comprising the greater Harlem area—West, Central, and East Harlem—stretch from the Harlem River and East River to the east, to the Hudson River to the west; and between 155th Street in the north, where it meets Washington Heights, and an uneven boundary along the south that runs along 96th Street east of Fifth Avenue, 110th Street between Fifth Avenue to Morningside Park, and 125th Street west of Morningside Park to the Hudson River. "Encyclopædia Britannica" references these boundaries, though the "Encyclopedia of New York City" takes a much more conservative view of Harlem's boundaries, regarding only central Harlem as part of Harlem proper.


title: Harlem

text: Central Harlem is the name of Harlem proper; it falls under Manhattan Community District 10. This section is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east; Central Park on the south; Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west; and the Harlem River on the north. A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—situated on steeply rising banks, form most of the district's western boundary. Fifth Avenue, as well as Marcus Garvey Park (also known as Mount Morris Park), separate this area from East Harlem to the east. Central Harlem includes the Mount Morris Park Historic District.


title: Harlem

text: West Harlem (Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights) comprises Manhattan Community District 9 and does not form part of Harlem proper. The two neighborhoods' area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway/110th Street on the south; 155th Street on the north; Manhattan/Morningside Ave/St. Nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecombe Avenues on the east; and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northernmost section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights.


title: Harlem

text: East Harlem, also called Spanish Harlem or "El Barrio", is located within Manhattan Community District 11, which is bounded by East 96th Street on the south, East 138th Street on the north, Fifth Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the east. It is not part of Harlem proper.


title: Harlem

text: In the 2010s some real estate professionals started rebranding south Harlem and Morningside Heights as "SoHa" (a name standing for "South Harlem" in the style of SoHo or NoHo) in an attempt to accelerate gentrification of the neighborhoods. "SoHa", applied to the area between West 110th and 125th Streets, has become a controversial name. Residents and other critics seeking to prevent this renaming of the area have labelled the SoHa brand as "insulting and another sign of gentrification run amok" and have said that "the rebranding not only places their neighborhood's rich history under erasure but also appears to be intent on attracting new tenants, including students from nearby Columbia University".


title: Harlem

text: Multiple New York City politicians have initiated legislative efforts to curtail this practice of neighborhood rebranding, which when successfully introduced in other New York City neighborhoods, have led to increases in rents and real estate values, as well as "shifting demographics". In 2011, U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries attempted but failed to implement legislation "that would punish real estate agents for inventing false neighborhoods and redrawing neighborhood boundaries without city approval." By 2017, New York State Senator Brian Benjamin also worked to render illegal the practice of rebranding historically recognized neighborhoods.


title: Harlem

text: Politically, central Harlem is in New York's 13th congressional district. It is in the New York State Senate's 30th district, the New York State Assembly's 68th and 70th districts, and the New York City Council's 7th, 8th, and 9th districts.


title: Harlem

text: Before the arrival of European settlers, the area that would become Harlem (originally Haarlem) was inhabited by a Native American band, the "Wecquaesgeek", dubbed "Manhattans" or "Manhattoe" by Dutch settlers, who along with other Native Americans, most likely Lenape, occupied the area on a semi-nomadic basis. As many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established. The settlement of Harlem was formally incorporated in 1660 under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant.


title: Harlem

text: During the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground. It took a long time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century. After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868. The neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian. The New York and Harlem Railroad, as well as the Interborough Rapid Transit and elevated railway lines, helped Harlem's economic growth, as they connected Harlem to lower and midtown Manhattan.


title: Harlem

text: The Jewish and Italian demographic decreased, while the black and Puerto Rican population increased in this time. The early-20th century Great Migration of black people to northern industrial cities was fueled by their desire to leave behind the Jim Crow South, seek better jobs and education for their children, and escape a culture of lynching violence; during World War I, expanding industries recruited black laborers to fill new jobs, thinly staffed after the draft began to take young men. In 1910, Central Harlem population was about 10% black people. By 1930, it had reached 70%.


title: Harlem

text: Starting around the time of the end of World War I, Harlem became associated with the New Negro movement, and then the artistic outpouring known as the Harlem Renaissance, which extended to poetry, novels, theater, and the visual arts. So many black people came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama." Many settled in Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was 32.43% black. The 1930 census revealed that 70.18% of central Harlem's residents were black and lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street.


title: Harlem

text: However, by the 1930s, the neighborhood was hit hard by job losses in the Great Depression. In the early 1930s, 25% of Harlemites were out of work, and employment prospects for Harlemites stayed bad for decades. Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950. Several riots happened in this period, including in 1935 and 1943.


title: Harlem

text: There were major changes following World War II. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices in line with existing rent control regulations.


title: Harlem

text: The largest public works projects in Harlem in these years were public housing, with the largest concentration built in East Harlem. Typically, existing structures were torn down and replaced with city-designed and managed properties that would, in theory, present a safer and more pleasant environment than those available from private landlords. Ultimately, community objections halted the construction of new projects.


title: Harlem

text: From the mid-20th century, the low quality of education in Harlem has been a source of distress. In the 1960s, about 75% of Harlem students tested under grade levels in reading skills, and 80% tested under grade level in math. In 1964, residents of Harlem staged two school boycotts to call attention to the problem. In central Harlem, 92% of students stayed home. In the post-World War II era, Harlem ceased to be home to a majority of the city's black people, but it remained the cultural and political capital of black New York, and possibly black America.


title: Harlem

text: By the 1970s, many of those Harlemites who were able to escape from poverty left the neighborhood in search of better schools and homes, and safer streets. Those who remained were the poorest and least skilled, with the fewest opportunities for success. Though the federal government's Model Cities Program spent $100 million on job training, health care, education, public safety, sanitation, housing, and other projects over a ten-year period, Harlem showed no improvement. The city began auctioning its enormous portfolio of Harlem properties to the public in 1985. This was intended to improve the community by placing property in the hands of people who would live in them and maintain them. In many cases, the city would even pay to completely renovate a property before selling it (by lottery) below market value.


title: Harlem

text: After the 1990s, Harlem began to grow again. Between 1990 and 2006 the neighborhood's population grew by 16.9%, with the percentage of black people decreasing from 87.6% to 69.3%, then dropping to 54.4% by 2010, and the percentage of whites increasing from 1.5% to 6.6% by 2006, and to "almost 10%" by 2010. A renovation of 125th Street and new properties along the thoroughfare also helped to revitalize Harlem.


title: Harlem

text: In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem was the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American Black community. Though Harlem musicians and writers are particularly well remembered, the community has also hosted numerous actors and theater companies, including the New Heritage Repertory Theater, National Black Theater, Lafayette Players, Harlem Suitcase Theater, The Negro Playwrights, American Negro Theater, and the Rose McClendon Players.


title: Harlem

text: The Apollo Theater opened on 125th Street on January 26, 1934, in a former burlesque house. The Savoy Ballroom, on Lenox Avenue, was a renowned venue for swing dancing, and was immortalized in a popular song of the era, "Stompin' At The Savoy". In the 1920s and 1930s, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues in central Harlem, over 125 entertainment venues were in operation, including speakeasies, cellars, lounges, cafes, taverns, supper clubs, rib joints, theaters, dance halls, and bars and grills.


title: Harlem

text: 133rd Street, known as "Swing Street", became known for its cabarets, speakeasies and jazz scene during the Prohibition era, and was dubbed "Jungle Alley" because of "inter-racial mingling" on the street. Some jazz venues, including the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington played, and Connie's Inn, were restricted to whites only. Others were integrated, including the Renaissance Ballroom and the Savoy Ballroom.


title: Harlem

text: In 1936, Orson Welles produced his black "Macbeth" at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem. Grand theaters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were torn down or converted to churches. Harlem lacked any permanent performance space until the creation of the Gatehouse Theater in an old Croton aqueduct building on 135th Street in 2006.


title: Harlem

text: From 1965 until 2007, the community was home to the Harlem Boys Choir, a touring choir and education program for young boys, most of whom are black. The Girls Choir of Harlem was founded in 1989, and closed with the Boys Choir.


title: Harlem

text: From 1967 to 1969, the Harlem Cultural Festival took place in Mount Morris Park. Another name for this festival is "Black Woodstock". Artists like Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, and Gladys Knight performed here.


title: Harlem

text: Harlem is also home to the largest African American Day Parade, which celebrates the culture of African diaspora in America. The parade was started up in the spring of 1969 with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. as the Grand Marshal of the first celebration.


title: Harlem

text: Arthur Mitchell, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, established Dance Theatre of Harlem as a school and company of classical ballet and theater training in the late 1960s. The company has toured nationally and internationally. Generations of theater artists have gotten a start at the school.


title: Harlem

text: By the 2010s, new dining hotspots were opening in Harlem around Frederick Douglass Boulevard. At the same time, some residents fought back against the powerful waves of gentrification the neighborhood is experiencing. In 2013, residents staged a sidewalk sit-in to protest a five-days-a-week farmers market that would shut down Macombs Place at 150th Street.


title: Harlem

text: Uptown Night Market was founded in 2021 to celebrate cuisine, community, and culture. It is one of the largest night markets in Manhattan. The main attractions include musical performances, arts and crafts shows, and food.


title: Harlem

text: Many R&B/Soul groups and artists formed in Harlem. The Main Ingredient, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, Black Ivory, Cameo, Keith Sweat, Freddie Jackson, Alyson Williams, Johnny Kemp, Teddy Riley and others got their start in Harlem.


title: Harlem

text: Manhattan's contributions to hip-hop stems largely from artists with Harlem roots such as Doug E. Fresh, Big L, Kurtis Blow, The Diplomats, Mase or Immortal Technique. Harlem is also the birthplace of popular hip-hop dances such as the Harlem shake, toe wop, and Chicken Noodle Soup.


title: Harlem

text: Harlem's classical music birthed organizations and chamber ensembles such as Roberta Guaspari's Opus 118, Harlem Chamber Players, Omnipresent Music Festival BIPOC Musicians Festival, Harlem Quartet, and musicians such as violinist Edward W. Hardy.


title: Harlem

text: In the 1920s, African American pianists who lived in Harlem invented their own style of jazz piano, called stride, which was heavily influenced by ragtime. This style played a very important role in early jazz piano


title: Harlem

text: In 1938, jazz bandleader and singer Cab Calloway published the first dictionary by an African-American, "Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary", which became the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library. In 1939, Calloway published an accompanying book titled "Professor Cab Calloway’s Swingformation Bureau", which instructed readers how to apply the words and phrases from the dictionary. He released several editions until 1944, the last being "The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive". Poet Lemn Sissay observed that "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away."


title: Harlem

text: Religious life has historically had a strong presence in Black Harlem. The area is home to over 400 churches, some of which are official city or national landmarks. Major Christian denominations include Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists (generally African Methodist Episcopal Zionist, or "AMEZ" and African Methodist Episcopalian, or "AME"), Episcopalians, and Roman Catholic. The Abyssinian Baptist Church has long been influential because of its large congregation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a chapel on 128th Street in 2005.


title: Harlem

text: Many of the area's churches are "storefront churches", which operate in an empty store, or a basement, or a converted brownstone townhouse. These congregations may have fewer than 30–50 members each, but there are hundreds of them. Others are old, large, and designated landmarks. Especially in the years before World War II, Harlem produced popular Christian charismatic "cult" leaders, including George Wilson Becton and Father Divine.


title: Harlem

text: Mosques in Harlem include the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz (formerly Mosque No. 7 Nation of Islam, and the location of the 1972 Harlem mosque incident), the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood and Masjid Aqsa. Judaism, too, maintains a presence in Harlem through the Old Broadway Synagogue. A non-mainstream synagogue of Black Hebrews, known as Commandment Keepers, was based in a synagogue at 1 West 123rd Street until 2008.


title: Harlem

text: Many places in Harlem are official city landmarks labeled by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission or are listed on the National Register of Historic Places:


title: Harlem

text: The demographics of Harlem's communities have changed throughout its history. In 1910, black residents formed 10% of Harlem's population, but by 1930, they had become a 70% majority. The period between 1910 and 1930 was marked by the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities, including New York. Within the city, this era also witnessed an influx of black residents from downtown Manhattan neighborhoods, where blacks were feeling less welcome, to the Harlem area. The black population in Harlem peaked in 1950, with a 98% share of the population of 233,000. As of 2000, central Harlem's black residents comprised 77% of the total population of that area; however, the black population has recently declined as many African Americans move out and more immigrants move in.


title: Harlem

text: Harlem suffers from unemployment rates generally more than twice the citywide average, as well as high poverty rates. and the numbers for men have been consistently worse than the numbers for women. Private and governmental initiatives to ameliorate unemployment and poverty have not been successful. During the Great Depression, unemployment in Harlem went past 20% and people were being evicted from their homes. At the same time, the federal government developed and instituted the redlining policy. This policy rated neighborhoods, such as Central Harlem, as unappealing based on the race, ethnicity, and national origins of the residents. Central Harlem was deemed 'hazardous' and residents living in Central Harlem were refused home loans or other investments. Comparably, wealthy and white residents in New York City neighborhoods were approved more often for housing loans and investment applications. Overall, they were given preferential treatment by city and state institutions.


title: Harlem

text: In the 1960s, uneducated blacks could find jobs more easily than educated ones could, confounding efforts to improve the lives of people who lived in the neighborhood through education. Land owners took advantage of the neighborhood and offered apartments to the lower-class families for cheaper rent but in lower-class conditions. By 1999 there were 179,000 housing units available in Harlem. Housing activists in Harlem state that, even after residents were given vouchers for the Section 8 housing that was being placed, many were not able to live there and had to find homes elsewhere or become homeless. These policies are examples of societal racism, also known as structural racism. As public health leaders have named structural racism as a key social determinant of health disparities between racial and ethnic minorities, these 20th century policies have contributed to the current population health disparities between Central Harlem and other New York City neighborhoods.


title: Harlem

text: For census purposes, the New York City government classifies Central Harlem into two neighborhood tabulation areas: Central Harlem North and Central Harlem South, divided by 126th street. Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Central Harlem was 118,665, a change of 9,574 (8.1%) from the 109,091 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 9.5% (11,322) White, 63% (74,735) African American, 0.3% (367) Native American, 2.4% (2,839) Asian, 0% (46) Pacific Islander, 0.3% (372) from other races, and 2.2% (2,651) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 22.2% (26,333) of the population. Harlem's Black population was more concentrated in Central Harlem North, and its White population more concentrated in Central Harlem South, while the Hispanic / Latino population was evenly split.