title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Upon its 30th anniversary in 1962, Radio City had nearly 200 million total patrons to date, more than the entire U.S. population at the time. The theater had shown 532 feature films to date; the most frequent actor was Cary Grant, who had appeared in 25 such films. Even so, officials had intended to close down Radio City Music Hall in 1962, one of several such unheeded announcements. Radio City closed temporarily in 1963 due to fears of a power failure, and the first full-day closure in its history took place on November 26, 1963, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. By 1964, Radio City had an estimated 5.7 million annual visitors, who paid ticket prices of between 99 cents and $2.75 (equivalent to between $ and $ in ). The theater had evolved to show fewer adult-oriented films, instead choosing to show films for general audiences. However, Radio City's operating costs were almost twice as high as those of smaller performance venues. In addition, with the loosening of regulations on explicit content, Radio City's audience was mostly relegated to families.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City was closed entirely for five days in March 1965 for its first full cleaning, which included changing the curtains and painting the ceiling. While the seating areas and floors had been cleaned regularly, the walls and ceilings had never been thoroughly cleaned and had accumulated a layer of dirt measuring almost thick. Two or three hundred workers cleaned the theater around the clock, and it reopened on March 8, 1965, with the film "Dear Heart". Repairs were also performed on the theater's organs during the nighttime. Also in 1965, Will Irwin and Rayburn Wright replaced Raymond Paige as the theater's musical directors following the latter's death. Russell V. Downing retired as Radio City's president in 1966 and was replaced by James F. Gould. As president of the Music Hall, Gould expanded its programming to include events such as rock concerts and wrestling matches before he retired in 1973. Radio City had its 200 millionth visitor in January 1967, a little less than two years after its renovation.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Tourism to New York City started to decline by 1969, which affected the theater's attendance. Even in the early 1970s, Radio City had five million visitors a year, more than the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty combined. However, the proliferation of subtitled foreign movies had reduced attendance at Radio City. Changes in film distribution made it difficult to secure exclusive bookings of many films, forcing Radio City's managers to show reruns. Radio City preferred to show only family-friendly movies, which further limited their film choices. As a result, popular films such as "Chinatown", "Blazing Saddles", and "The Godfather Part II" failed Radio City's screening criteria. By 1972, Radio City had fired the performers' unions as well as six of the 36 Rockettes. The theater's management donated a painting by Stuart Davis to the Museum of Modern Art to reduce Radio City Music Hall's tax burden. That October, Radio City was closed temporarily after officials could not reach an employment agreement with the theater's musicians. Though the theater reopened a few days later, this was the first time it had ever been closed due to staffing issues.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Another labor dispute in 1973 forced Radio City to cut back its policy of mixed films and stage shows. A total shutdown was only avoided when the musicians' union agreed to a three-year contract in which musicians would be paid for 38 weeks per year, rather than 52. This allowed Radio City's managers to schedule other forms of live entertainment for the theater during the remaining 14 weeks. These live shows were split into two periods of seven weeks. Radio City's managers attempted to draw patrons by using the stage for rock concerts, pop festivals, and telecasts of boxing matches. Nonetheless, the Music Hall continued to lose $600,000 a year by early 1975. It cost $55,000 a week just to rent the theater, plus another $20,000 for employee salaries. There were just 3.5 million visitors annually, despite high attendance during Christmas, Easter, and the summer. Yet again, rumors spread that the venue would close, but Radio City's managers denied these claims. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that Radio City was still more popular than other visitor attractions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Bronx Zoo.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: In 1977, annual attendance reached an all-time low of 1.5 million, a 70 percent decrease from the 5 million visitors reported in 1968. The theater needed about 4 million annual visitors to break even. By January 1978, Radio City was in debt, and officials stated that it could not remain open after April. Rockefeller Center president Alton Marshall announced that, due to a projected loss of $3.5 million for the upcoming year, Radio City Music Hall would close on April 12. This came after the theater had lost $2.3 million in 1977. Many of Radio City's regular patrons moved to the suburbs, and there was a lingering fear of crime in New York City. A lack of family-friendly movies was also a factor in the planned closure. One proposal included converting the theater into tennis courts, a shopping mall, an aquarium, a hotel, a theme park, or the American Stock Exchange. Despite the potential tax benefits of preserving the theater, Rockefeller Center's managers were uninterested in saving Radio City, as they were focused on the site's real-estate development potential. Huxtable claimed that the managers' approach was "singularly lacking in any creative or cultural sensitivities".


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall Ballet Company dance captain Rosemary Novellino formed the Showpeople's Committee to Save Radio City Music Hall. Lieutenant governor Mary Anne Krupsak, who had once been a Rockette, was also involved in the preservation efforts. The alliance made hundreds of calls to Rockefeller Center's manager; "The New York Times" described that the callers "jammed the switchboards" there. The Rockettes also protested outside New York City Hall. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held public hearings on whether to designate the theater's interior as a city landmark in March 1978. Of more than 100 speakers, most argued in favor of landmark status, but Rockefeller Center president Alton G. Marshall said that "landmark designation may well be the last nail in the Music Hall's coffin." In total, more than 100,000 people supported designating Radio City as a landmark. The LPC designated the interior as a city landmark on March 28.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Rockefeller Center Inc. filed a lawsuit to try to reverse the landmark designation, claiming that landmark status would be unattractive to potential investors, but the lawsuit was unsuccessful. Rockefeller Center Inc. indicated that it would demolish the theater had it succeeded in overturning the landmark designation. In April, just a few days before the planned closing date, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) voted to create a nonprofit subsidiary to lease Radio City. Plans for a 20-story mixed-use tower above Radio City were announced the same month, with rents from the proposed tower providing the necessary funds to keep the theater open. An alternative involving transferring the theater's air rights to another building in the complex was also privately discussed. The UDC and Rockefeller Center Inc. agreed on April 12 to keep Radio City open, just hours before it had been set to close. On May 12, 1978, Radio City Music Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City lost $2.3 million in the first ten months of 1978, despite the fact that a Frank Sinatra concert there had grossed more than $1.7 million. From April 13 to September 13, 1978, when the UDC operated the theater, losses totaled $1.2 million. The plans for an office building above the theater were recommended in a draft study that was published in February 1979. Davis Brody Associates had designed a 31-story office and hotel building that was to be cantilevered over the theater, with an entrance carved out of Radio City's Sixth Avenue lobby. The office building was ultimately not built. Robert F. Jani instead assumed control of Radio City's programming, with plans to restore the venue to its original condition. The film-plus-stage-spectacle format ended at the theater on April 25, 1979, with the screening of "The Promise". The theater was closed immediately afterward for renovation. It reopened with a ceremony on May 31, 1979.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: After the theater reopened to the public, Radio City started creating its own music concerts. Previously, the theater had only hosted events created by external producer. Time slots were set aside for movie screenings, but Radio City had mostly turned to stage shows. By January 1980, Radio City was hosting shows such as the stage adaptation of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and the "Rockettes Spectacular." However, the theatrical shows proved to be unpopular, so in 1983, the Radio City Music Hall shifted to creating music concerts and participating in the production of films and TV shows. The parent company, Radio City Music Hall Productions (a subsidiary of Rockefeller Center Inc.), started creating or co-creating films and Broadway shows such as "Legs" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs".


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: By the early 1980s, the LPC was considering designating the original Rockefeller Center complex as a city landmark, including the exterior of Radio City Music Hall. In 1983, the LPC held hearings to determine how much of Rockefeller Center should be protected as a landmark. The Rockefeller family and Columbia University acknowledged that the buildings were already symbolically landmarks, but their spokesman John E. Zuccotti recommended that only the block between 49th and 50th Streets be protected. By contrast, almost everyone else who supported Rockefeller Center's landmark status recommended that the entire complex be landmarked. The LPC granted landmark status to the exteriors of all of the original complex's buildings, including the previously unprotected exterior of Radio City Music Hall, on April 23, 1985. Rockefeller Center's original buildings also became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City finally recorded a net gain of $2.5 million in 1985, its first profit in three decades. This was partly attributed to the addition of music concerts, which appealed toward younger viewers. Radio City also started hosting televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the NFL Draft. A new golden curtain was installed at the main stage in January 1987. The curtain was the third one to be installed since Radio City's opening in 1932; it had last been replaced in 1965. Because of Radio City's historic status, the curtain had to be the same style, texture, and color as the previous curtains.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: In 1997, Radio City was leased to the Madison Square Garden Company (then known as Cablevision), providing funding to keep the Rockettes and the "Christmas Spectacular" at Radio City. In exchange, Cablevision would be able to renovate and manage the theater. Radio City was closed on February 16, 1999, for a comprehensive renovation. During the closure, many components were cleaned and modernized. The curtains were replaced, seats were reupholstered, carpets were relaid, and doorknobs and light fixtures were replaced. The renovation was originally projected to cost $25 million, but the cost increased to $70 million due to various additional tasks that surfaced during the extensive refurbishment. Radio City received a $2.5 million tax break from the Empire State Development Corporation, which was meant to accommodate the expenditure of up to $66 million in renovation costs. The theater reopened with a gala concert on October 4, 1999.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall announced a decision to remain open on March 12 and 13, 2020, amid a ban on gatherings of 500 or more in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. This decision initially stood in contrast to many other venues and public events in New York City, which had shut down. Radio City decided to remain closed after March 13, with no set reopening date, since other venues had also closed indefinitely. This affected events like the 74th Tony Awards, originally scheduled for June 7 but was then postponed after Radio City's closure. In early 2021, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Radio City would be able to open with limited capacity that April. Cuomo subsequently announced Radio City would reopen that June, without capacity limits or mask restrictions, but only to patrons who had received a COVID-19 vaccine.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Development firm Tishman Speyer submitted proposals to the LPC to construct a rooftop terrace on Radio City Music Hall, as well as a pedestrian bridge to 1270 Avenue of the Americas. These plans dated from an original proposal for the theater that was never carried out. The LPC approved the plans in March 2021. At the time, the terrace was scheduled to open in late 2021 and would only be usable by tenants of 1270 Avenue of the Americas and their guests. The garden opened in September 2021.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall is on the east side of Sixth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. Located in a niche partially under 1270 Avenue of the Americas, the theater is housed under the building's first setback on the seventh floor. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station, served by the , is on Sixth Avenue directly adjacent to the north end of the marquee, within the same structure that houses Radio City Music Hall.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Its exterior has a long marquee sign that wraps around the corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street, as well as narrower, seven-story-high signs on the north and south ends of the marquee's Sixth Avenue side; both signs display the theater's name in neon letters. The main entrance to Radio City was placed at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street, underneath the marquee. Although the theater's main entrance could have been placed anywhere along the Sixth Avenue frontage, the architects chose to place the entrance near the intersection of 50th Street, rather than in the middle of the block, because it was highly visible from the Broadway theater district to the west. Additionally, a corner site allowed the architects to place more doorways on the facade than a midblock site would have.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The theater's exterior also has visual features signifying its purpose. Above the entrance, Hildreth Meiere created six small bronze plaques of musicians playing different instruments, as well as three larger metal and enamel plaques signifying dance, drama, and song; these plaques denote the theater's theme. At one point, a tennis court was located on the theater's rooftop garden.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The interior contains a grand foyer, a large main auditorium, and stairs and elevators that lead to several mezzanines. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the theater had Art Deco decoration, whose sharp lines represented a break with the traditional ornate rococo ornament associated with movie palaces at the time. Donald Deskey coordinated the interior design process and designed some of the wallpaper, furniture, and other decor in Radio City. Deskey's geometric Art Deco designs incorporate glass, aluminum, chrome, bakelite, and leather; these materials are used the theater's wall coverings, carpet, light fixtures, and furniture. All of the theater's staircases were fitted with brass railings, an aspect of the Art Deco style.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Deskey commissioned textile designers Marguerita Mergentime and Ruth Reeves to create carpet designs and designs for the fabrics covering the walls. Reeves designed a carpet that contained musical motifs in "shades of red, brown, gold, and black", but her design was replaced in 1999. Mergentime also produced geometric designs of nature and musicians for the walls and carpets, which still exist. Deskey also created his own carpet design consisting of "singing head" depictions, which still exists. Rene Chambellan produced six "playful" bronze plaques of vaudeville characters, which are located in the lobby just above the entrances to the theater. Henry Varnum Poor designed all of Radio City's ceramic fixtures, especially the lighting bases.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The entrance to Radio City is at its southwestern corner, where there are adjacent ticket and advance sales lobbies. Both lobbies contain terrazzo floors and marble walls. The ticket lobby, accessible from Sixth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, is the larger of the two lobbies. There are four brass ticket booths: one each on the northern and southern walls and two booths in the center. Originally, six ticket booths were placed about from the main doors, dividing the lobby into corridors measuring wide. This permitted adequate traffic flow within the lobby while also making it difficult for crowds to congregate. Large black pillars support a low, slightly coffered ceiling. Circular light fixtures are set into the ceiling of the ticket lobby, within each of the slight indentations. The advance sales lobby, accessible from 50th Street just east of Sixth Avenue, contains a single ticket booth on the eastern wall. This location allowed the advance-sales booth to be distinguished from the general sales booths while also not blocking traffic flow.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: To the ticket lobby's east and the advance sales lobby's northeast is the elliptical grand foyer, whose four-story-high ceiling and dramatic artwork contrast with the compactness of the lobby. The space is about deep and extends the width of the auditorium. Two long, tubular chandeliers created by Edward F. Caldwell & Co. hang from the ceiling. The northern side of the grand foyer contains Ezra Winter's mural. A grand staircase, leading up to the first-mezzanine foyer, runs along the northern wall next to Winter's mural. Another set of stairs below the grand staircase descends from the northern side of the foyer to the main lounge one level below. A smaller staircase to the first-mezzanine lounge runs along the southern wall, connecting to a curved extension of that level's balcony. The southern and northern sides of the grand foyer, respectively leading to 50th and 51st Streets, contain shallow vestibules with red marble walls. The northern vestibule is used as the exit lobby, while the southern vestibule is an emergency exit. The grand foyer's eastern wall contains openings from the first, second, and third mezzanine levels, and the western wall contains mirrors within gold frames. Eleven doors leading to the Music Hall's auditorium are also located on the grand foyer's eastern side. Chambellan commissioned several plaques on the auditorium doors' exteriors, which resemble the vaudeville representations in the lobby and depict the types of performances in the Music Hall.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The foyer connects to four elevators that serve the main lounge level through the third mezzanine level. At ground level, a marble lobby for these elevators is to the west of the northern exit vestibule. Chambellan also designed the elevator doors with reliefs of musicians in atypical representations. The maple circular roundels inside the cabs were designed by Edward Trumbull and represent wine, women, and song.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Each of the three mezzanine levels has a men's smoking room, a women's lounge, and men's and women's restrooms. No two restrooms or lounges have the same design. A 1932 "New York Times" article described the reasons for such varied designs: "Since the auditoriums, men's lobbies, smoking rooms and women's lounges are used for a few hours only, decorative schemes are appropriate in them that would be too dramatic for a home."


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Architectural critic Douglas Haskell said of the auditorium: "The focus is the great proscenium arch, over high and feet wide, a huge semi-circular void. From that the energy disperses, like a firmament the arched structure rises outward and forward. The 'ceiling', uniting sides and top in its one great curve, proceeds by successive broad bands, like the bands of northern lights." In the theater's early years, the Federal Writers' Project noted that "nearly everything about the Music Hall is tremendous". At the time, Radio City had the world's largest orchestra; the most expansive theater screen; the heaviest proscenium arch in a theater; and the "finest precision dancers", the Rockettes.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The auditorium has around 5,960 seats. Around 3,500 of these seats are at the ground-level orchestra, while the remaining seats are distributed among the three mezzanines. The orchestra and mezzanine sections all contain reddish-brown plush seating throughout, as well as storage compartments under each seat, lights at the end of each row of seats, and more legroom space than in other theaters. Six aisles extend the length of the orchestra level, dividing each row into sections of up to 14 seats. The aisles measure wide at the rear, tapering to at the center and at the front. A crossover aisle separates the front one-third of the orchestra from the rear two-thirds. Each row of seats was originally placed apart, giving more legroom than in contemporary theaters.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The auditorium's ceiling contains eight telescoping bands, which Haskell described as the "northern lights". Each of the bands' edges contains a overlap with the next band, placed at intervals. In Joseph Urban's original plans, the ceiling was to be coffered but, after the cancellation of the Opera House, designers proposed many different designs for the proposed Music Hall's ceiling. The current design was put forth by Raymond Hood, who derived his band-system idea from a book that Urban had written. The arches are made of plaster and contain ridges every . The original plans had been to build the arches themselves in a curved shape, but this would have concentrated the sound onto several small spots. The walls are covered by intricate fabric silhouette patterns of performers and horses, which were created by Reeves. The radiating arches of the proscenium unite the large auditorium, allowing a sense of intimacy and grandeur. The ceiling arches also contain grilles that camouflage the air-conditioning system, amplifying equipment, and organ pipes. The sound system could be controlled by a light organ in front of the orchestra pit.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The Great Stage, designed by Peter Clark, measures ; it is placed within a proscenium arch that resembles a setting sun. Roxy reportedly envisioned the sunset design of the stage while traveling home from Europe on an ocean liner. There are two stage curtains; the main one is made of steel and asbestos, which can part horizontally, while the plush curtain behind it has several horizontal sections that can be raised or lowered independently of each other. The original curtain weighed three tons and measured wide by tall. The center of the stage contains a rotating floor measuring across. The floor is divided into three sections that can be lowered and raised either separately or in sync. The orchestra pit, which could fit 75 musicians, was placed on a "bandwagon" that was lifted from the basement and could move vertically or longitudinally. The bandwagon could also be lifted to the central opening. From the stage, it could be lowered back into the basement or moved to the side.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: There is a complex system of indirect cove lighting at the front of the stage, facing the audience. When Radio City first opened, it was equipped with all of the newest lighting innovations at the time, including lights that changed colors automatically and adjusted their own brightness based on different lighting levels in the theater.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The main lounge in the basement is about twice the size of the grand foyer above it. The walls are composed of black "permatex", which was a new material at the time of the Music Hall's construction. The ceiling has diamond-shaped light fixtures and is supported by six diamond-shaped piers, as well as three full-height piers of a similar shape that exist only for aesthetic purposes. The lounge is decorated with several artworks (see ). Deskey also designed the chrome furniture and the carpeting of the lounge. The lounge also contained a passageway to the "Forum", along Sixth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, where it linked with Rockefeller Center's other buildings.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The landing for Radio City's elevator bank is located on the northern side of the main lounge. A marble wall with three large columns comprises the western side of the lounge. A hallway extends off the eastern side of the lounge and leads to a men's smoking room and a women's lounge, which both connect to restrooms of their respective genders. The smoking room has a masculine theme with terrazzo floors, brown walls, and copper ceilings. The accompanying men's restroom has black-and-white tiles and simple geometric fixtures, which are duplicated in the men's restrooms on each mezzanine level. The women's lounge is mostly designed with the same soft colors as Witold Gordon's "History of Cosmetics Mural", located on the room's walls, although the wall area not covered by the mural is painted beige. The attached women's restroom is similar to the men's restroom on the same floor but contains vertical cylindrical lighting, stools, and circular mirrors above aqua sinks.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The offstage area of Radio City contains many rooms that allow all productions to be prepared on-site. The offstage rooms include a carpenter's studio, a scene shop, sewing rooms, dressing rooms for 600 people, a green room for performers' guests, and a dormitory. Two elevators are placed on either side of the stage, as well as a circular staircase. The female performers' restrooms and dressing rooms are placed as close as possible to the stage, and the male performers' dressing rooms are placed on the opposite side of the stage. This was in conformance with Roxy's belief that "happy performers make successful shows". Above the auditorium were two studios for Roxy, as well as a broadcast studio, rehearsal room, and two preview rooms.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The elevator system was designed by Peter Clark and built by Otis Elevators. The elevator system was so advanced that the U.S. Navy incorporated identical hydraulics in constructing World War II aircraft carriers; according to Radio City lore, during the war, government agents guarded the basement to hide the U.S. Navy's technological advantage.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The public areas of Radio City feature the work of many Depression-era artists, who were commissioned by Deskey as part of his general design scheme. The large mural in the grand foyer, "Quest for the Fountain of Eternal Youth", was painted by Ezra Winter and depicts a fable from a Native American tribe in Oregon. The murals on the wall of the grand lounge, which depict five eras of differing theater scenes, are collectively known as the "Phantasmagoria of the Theater" by Louis Bouche. Three female nudes cast in aluminum were commissioned for the theater, but Roxy thought that they were inappropriate for a family venue. Although the Rockefellers loved the sculptures, the only one that was displayed on opening night was "Goose Girl" by Robert Laurent, which is located on the first mezzanine and depicts a nude aluminum girl beside a slender aluminum goose. Since opening night the other two sculptures have been put on display at Radio City. "Eve" by Gwen Lux is displayed in the southwest corner of the grand foyer, and "Spirit of the Dance" by William Zorach is visible from the grand lounge.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Each of the public restrooms have adjoining lounges that display various works of art. The third-floor women's restroom contains the "Panther Mural" by Henry Billings, which is accompanied by Deskey's abstract wall coverings in the women's lounge. The women's lounge on the second mezzanine houses Yasuo Kuniyoshi's oil painting of "larger-than-life botanical designs" along the entire wall, which had originally been commissioned by Georgia O'Keeffe before she suffered a nervous breakdown and left the mural incomplete. Deskey created a wall covering for the men's lounge on the second mezzanine, containing masculine icons and nicotine motifs. He also designed the first-mezzanine women's lounge, a room full of mirrors with a blue-and-white carpet and frosted low-intensity lights. Witold Gordon painted a map with caricatures and stereotypical motifs in the men's lounge on the same floor, as well as a "History of Cosmetics Mural" in the women's lounge in the basement. Stuart Davis created "Men Without Women", a mural of masculine stereotypical pastimes in the basement-level men's lounge; the work was donated to the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 and loaned back to the Music Hall in 1999. Finally, Edward Buk Ulreich created a "Wild West Mural" on the third-mezzanine men's lounge.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall has two Wurlitzer theatre organs. The organ in the main theatre is the largest instrument built by the Wurlitzer company. It consists of 58 ranks of pipes and 4,178 pipes, played from twin 4-manual consoles located to the left and right of the stage, which permits two organists to play the instrument simultaneously. The broadcast booth atop the theatre contains a smaller (3-manual, 14 rank) Wurlitzer organ, although it has been unplayable for some time. Richard Leibert was Radio City's chief organist from its opening on December 27, 1932, until his retirement in 1971, at which time Raymond Bohr succeeded him. Both organ have been recorded extensively by Ashley Miller, Dick Leibert, Raymond Bohr, and Eddie Layton, and Leibert presented a daily program of organ music broadcast from the theater on the NBC Radio Network in the 1930s and 1940s.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Pink Floyd played at the Music Hall on March 17, 1973. The Grateful Dead played eight shows over nine days in October 1980, culminating on Halloween; two of the shows from this run were released as the video "". American new wave band Devo performed at Radio City Music Hall on October 31, 1981, during their New Traditionalists tour. In the 1980s, Liberace grossed $2.5 million from 14 performances with a combined audience of 82,000, setting a box-office record for Radio City Music Hall at the time. In 1986, the Norwegian group A-ha held two concerts there.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett performed at Radio City as part of their Cheek to Cheek Tour on June 19–23, 2015. The pair also performed on August 3 (Bennett's 95th birthday) and August 5, 2021, for Bennett's farewell concerts. Adele also performed a one-night-only concert at the Music Hall, which was recorded on November 17, 2015, and broadcast on NBC on December 14, 2015. In addition, Britney Spears performed at the theater for two sold-out shows as part of her on July 23 and 24, 2018. Christina Aguilera performed there for two sold out nights as part of the Liberation tour on October 3 and 4, 2018. Mariah Carey performed to a sold-out crowd as part of her Caution World Tour on March 25, 2019.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The "Radio City Christmas Spectacular" is an annual Christmas stage musical produced by MSG Entertainment, which operates the theater. A New York Christmas tradition since 1933, it features the women's precision dance team known as the Rockettes.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The Irish dance show "Riverdance" made its North American debut at the Music Hall in March 1996, breaking box-office records. Radio City Music Hall also hosted the Cirque du Soleil show "Zarkana" from June 2011 to September 2012.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall has been used for televised game shows such as "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!". For two weeks in November 1988, the theater hosted "Wheel of Fortune", which was taking its first road trip. "Saturday Night Live" announcer Don Pardo announced during the two weeks. Radio City Music Hall was also the site for "Jeopardy!" four-thousandth episode in May 2002, at which time the show's Million Dollar Masters invitational tournament also occurred. The theater hosted the show again in November 2007 for the nighttime show's 25th anniversary. The Music Hall was used again in November 2006 for a 2-week "Celebrity Jeopardy!" event.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: David Letterman hosted the "Late Night with David Letterman" Sixth Anniversary Special at Radio City Music Hall in 1988, and did so again for the show's Tenth Anniversary Special in 1992. The next year, Lyons Group (parent company of Barney & Friends at the time), taped a live stage show called "Barney Live in New York City" at the theater. In February 1998, Radio City Music Hall was a setting for the "Sesame Street" music special "Elmopalooza", with Jon Stewart, David Alan Grier and others with the cast of "Sesame Street" and the Muppets.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: In October 2001, the concert "" was simulcast live from the theater on The WB and TNT. The concert had been delayed following the September 11 attacks the month before.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: In 2013, it was announced that "America's Got Talent" would hold its live shows from the Radio City Music Hall starting with its eighth season that summer; it had held its live shows at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center for its seventh season to accommodate new judge Howard Stern. The move was also intended to take advantage of New York tax credits. "AGT" would broadcast its live rounds from Radio City Music Hall until Stern's departure in 2016, after which the show moved to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: The first sports event at Radio City Music Hall was a boxing card headlined by Roy Jones Jr. and David Telesco that took place on January 15, 2000. On April 13, 2013, Nonito Donaire faced Guillermo Rigondeaux in a boxing card held at Radio City Music Hall.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: In 2004, the WNBA's New York Liberty played six home games at Radio City while their then-regular home, Madison Square Garden, prepared to host the 2004 Republican National Convention. The Liberty played their first game in front of 5,945 fans against the Detroit Shock in July 2004. Courtside seats were stage left and stage right along the baseline and the Rockettes performed at halftime. The court from Madison Square Garden was moved to Radio City Music Hall during this time.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: Radio City Music Hall was the site of the NFL Draft between 2006 and 2014. Prior to being held in the Music Hall, the NFL Draft had been hosted at other locations in New York City since 1965, but after the 2014 draft, the National Football League hosted the draft in a series of other cities nationwide.


title: Radio City Music Hall

text: , The Broadway League has presented the Tony Awards, the annual ceremony for Broadway theatre, at Radio City Music Hall during most years since 1997. The Music Hall has also hosted the Grammy Awards, the annual ceremony presented by the Recording Academy for music, six times. The theater's first Grammys was in 1980, and its last Grammys was in 1998. The MTV Video Music Awards have been hosted at the theater twelve times from 1984 to 2018.


title: Wild rice

text: Wild rice, also called manoomin, Canada rice, Indian rice, or water oats, is any of four species of grasses that form the genus Zizania, and the grain that can be harvested from them. The grain was historically gathered and eaten in both North America and China, but eaten less in China, where the plant's stem is used as a vegetable.


title: Wild rice

text: Wild rice is not directly related to domesticated rice ("Oryza sativa" and "Oryza glaberrima"), although they are close cousins, all belonging to the tribe Oryzeae. Wild-rice grains have a chewy outer sheath with a tender inner grain that has a slightly vegetal taste.


title: Wild rice

text: The plants grow in shallow water in small lakes and slow-flowing streams; often, only the flowering head of wild rice rises above the water. The grain is eaten by dabbling ducks and other aquatic wildlife.


title: Wild rice

text: Texas wild rice is in danger of extinction due to loss of suitable habitat in its limited range and to pollution. The pollen of Texas wild rice can only travel about 30 inches away from a parent plant. If pollen does not land on a receptive female flower within that distance, no seeds are produced. Manchurian wild rice has almost disappeared from the wild in its native range, but has been accidentally introduced into the wild in New Zealand and is considered an invasive species there.


title: Wild rice

text: The genomes of northern and Manchurian wild rices have been sequenced. There appears to be a whole-genome duplication after the genus split from "Oryza".


title: Wild rice

text: The species most commonly harvested as grain are the annual species: "Zizania palustris" and "Zizania aquatica." The former, though now domesticated and grown commercially, is still often gathered from lakes in the traditional manner, especially by indigenous peoples in North America; the latter was also used extensively in the past. The stems and root shoots also contain an edible portion on the interior.


title: Wild rice

text: Native Americans and others harvest wild rice by canoeing into a stand of plants, and bending the ripe grain heads with two small wooden poles/sticks called "knockers" or "flails", so as to thresh the seeds into the canoe.


title: Wild rice

text: One person vans (or "knocks") rice into the canoe while the other paddles slowly or uses a push pole. The plants are not beaten with the knockers, but require only a gentle brushing to dislodge the mature grain. Some seeds fall to the muddy bottom and germinate later in the year. The size of the knockers, as well as other details, are prescribed in state and tribal law. By Minnesota statute, knockers must be at most diameter, long, and weight.


title: Wild rice

text: Several Native American cultures, such as the Ojibwe, consider wild rice to be a sacred component of their culture. The Ojibwe people call this plant "manoomin", meaning "harvesting berry" (commonly translated "good berry"). In 2018, the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe granted manoomin certain rights (sometimes compared to rights of nature or to granting it legal personhood), including the right to exist and flourish; in August 2021, the Ojibwe filed a lawsuit on behalf of wild rice to stop the Enbridge Line 3 oil sands pipeline, which puts the plant's habitat at risk.


title: Wild rice

text: Tribes that are recorded as historically harvesting "Zizania aquatica" are the Dakota, Menominee, Meskwaki, Ojibwe, Cree, Omaha, Ponca, Thompson, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago). Native people who utilized "Zizania palustris" are the Ojibwe, Ottawa/Odawa and Potawatomi. Ways of preparing it varied from stewing the grains with venison stock and/or maple syrup, making it into stuffings for wild birds, or even steaming it into sweets like puffed rice, or rice pudding sweetened with maple syrup. For these groups, the harvest of wild rice is an important cultural (and often economic) event. The "Omǣqnomenēwak" tribe were named "Omanoominii" by the neighboring Ojibwa after this plant. Many places in Illinois, Indiana, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Wisconsin are named after this plant, including Mahnomen, Minnesota, and Menomonie, Wisconsin; many lakes and streams bear the name "Rice", "Wildrice", "Wild Rice", or "Zizania".


title: Wild rice

text: Because of its nutritional value and taste, wild rice increased in popularity in the late 20th century, and commercial cultivation began in the U.S. and Canada to supply the increased demand. In 1950, James and Gerald Godward started experimenting with wild rice in a one-acre meadow north of Brainerd, Minnesota. They constructed dikes around the acre, dug ditches for drainage, and put in water controls. In the fall, they tilled the soil. Then, in the spring of 1951, they acquired of seed from Wildlife Nurseries Inc. They scattered the seed onto the soil, diked it in, and flooded the paddy. Much to their surprise, since they were told wild rice needs flowing water to grow well, the seeds sprouted and produced a crop. They continued to experiment with wild rice throughout the early 1950s and were the first to officially cultivate the previously wild crop.


title: Wild rice

text: In the United States, the main producers are California and Minnesota (where it is the official state grain), and it is mainly cultivated in paddy fields. In Canada, it is usually harvested from natural bodies of water; the largest producer is Saskatchewan. Wild rice is also produced in Hungary and Australia. In Hungary, cultivation started in 1974 on the rice field of Szarvas.


title: Wild rice

text: Manchurian wild rice (), gathered from the wild, was once an important grain in ancient China. It is now very rare in the wild, and its use as a grain has completely disappeared in China, though it continues to be cultivated for its stems.


title: Wild rice

text: The swollen crisp white stems of Manchurian wild rice are grown as a vegetable, popular in East and Southeast Asia. The swelling occurs because of infection with the smut fungus "Ustilago esculenta". The fungus prevents the plant from flowering, so the crop is propagated asexually, the infection being passed from mother plant to daughter plant. Harvest must be made between about 120 days and 170 days after planting, after the stem begins to swell, but before the infection reaches its reproductive stage, when the stem will begin to turn black and eventually disintegrate into fungal spores.


title: Wild rice

text: The vegetable is especially common in China, where it is known as gāosǔn (高筍) or jiāobái (茭白). In Japan it is known as makomodake (). Other names which may be used in English include coba and water bamboo. Importation of the vegetable to the United States is prohibited in order to protect North American species from the smut fungus.


title: Wild rice

text: Wild rice is relatively high in protein, the amino acid lysine and dietary fiber, and low in fat. Nutritional analysis shows wild rice to be the grain second only to oats in protein content per 100 calories. Like true rice, it does not contain gluten. It is also a good source of certain minerals and B vitamins. One cup of cooked wild rice provides 5% or more of the daily value of thiamin, riboflavin, iron, and potassium; 10% or more of the daily value of niacin, vitamin B, folate, magnesium, phosphorus; 15% of zinc; and over 20% of manganese.


title: Wild rice

text: Wild rice seeds can be infected by the highly toxic fungus ergot, which is dangerous if eaten. Infected grains have pink or purplish blotches or growths of the fungus, from the size of a seed to several times larger.


title: Wild rice

text: Anthropologists since the early 1900s have focused on wild rice as a food source, often with an emphasis on the harvesting of the aquatic plant in the Lake Superior region by the Anishinaabe people, also known as the Chippewa, Ojibwa and Ojibwe. The Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology published "The Wild Rice Gatherers in the Upper Great Lakes: A Study in American Primitive Economics" by Albert Ernest Jenks in 1901. In addition to his fieldwork interviewing members of various tribal communities, Jenks examined the accounts of explorers, fur traders and government agents from the early 1600s to the late 1800s to detail an "aboriginal economic activity which is absolutely unique, and in which no article is employed not of aboriginal conception and workmanship". His study further notes wild rice's importance in the fur-trading era because the region would have been nearly inaccessible if not for the availability of wild rice and the ability to store it for long periods of time. Wild rice's social and economic importance has continued into present times for the Anishinaabe and other north woods tribal members despite the availability of more easily obtainable food sources.


title: Wild rice

text: This continued use of wild rice from ancient to modern times has provided opportunities to examine the plant's processing by various cultures through the archaeological record they left behind during their occupation of seasonal ricing camps. Early ethnographic reports, tribal accounts and historical writings also inform archaeological research in the human use of wild rice. For example, geographer and ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft in the mid-1800s wrote about depressions in the ground on the shore of a lake with wild rice growing in the water. He wrote that wild rice processors placed animal hides in the holes, filled them with rice and stomped on the rice to thresh it. These jigging pits are part of the husking needed to process wild rice, and archaeologists see these holes in the soil stratigraphy in archaeological excavations today. Such historical records from the post-contact period in the Lake Superior region focus on Anishinaabe harvesting and processing techniques. Archaeological investigations of wild rice processing from the American era, before and after the creation of federal Indian reservations, also provide information on the loss of traditional harvesting areas, as 1800s fur trader and Indian interpreter Benjamin G. Armstrong wrote about outsiders "who claimed to have acquired title to all the swamps and overflowed lakes on the reservations, depriving the Indians of their rice fields, cranberry marshes and hay meadows".


title: Wild rice

text: Despite the close association of the Anishinaabe and wild rice today, indigenous use of this food for subsistence also predates their arrival in the Lake Superior region. The Anishinaabe today were part of a larger Algonquian group who left eastern North America on a centuries-long journey to the west along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. The Anishinaabe migration story details a vision to follow a giant clam shell in the sky to a place where the food grows on the water. This journey ended between the late 1400s and early 1600s in the Lake Superior wild rice country when they encountered the plant.


title: Wild rice

text: Archaeological and other scientific investigations have focused on the prehistoric exploitation of wild rice by humans, including: 1) the Anishinaabe, 2) so-called proto-Anishinaabe who may have later transformed into this culture from an earlier form, 3) other indigenous groups who exist today such as the Sioux people, and 4) archaeological-categorized cultures from the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods whose living lineages today are more difficult to identify. A seminal 1969 archaeological study indicated the prehistoric nature of indigenous wild rice harvesting and processing through radiocarbon dating, putting to rest argument made by some European-Americans that wild rice production did not begin until post-contact times. Researchers tested clay linings of thermal features and jigging pits associated with parching and threshing of the plant.


title: Wild rice

text: But a more precise dating of the antiquity of human use of wild rice and the appearance of the plant itself in lakes and streams have been the subjects of continuing academic debates. These disputes may be framed around these questions: When did wild rice first appear in various areas of the region? When was it plentiful enough to be harvested in quantities to be a significant food source? What is the relationship of wild rice to the introduction of pottery and to increases in indigenous populations in the past 2,000 years? "The use of wild rice by and its influence on prehistoric people in northeast Minnesota has led to much argument among archaeologists and paleoecologists".


title: Wild rice

text: As an example, archaeologists divide human occupation of northeast Minnesota into numerous time periods. They are: the Paleo-Indian period from 7,000 years ago (5000 BC) extending back to an uncertain time after the glaciers receded from the last Ice Age; the Archaic period from 2,500 to 7,000 years ago (5000–500 BC); the Initial Woodland period from 2,500 to 1,300 years ago (500 BC–700 AD); the Terminal Woodland period from 1,300 to 400 years ago (700–1600 AD); and the historical period after that time. These rough dates are open to debate and vary by location in the state.


title: Wild rice

text: In general, two lines of inquiry have focused on archaeological wild rice: 1) The radiocarbon dating of charred wild rice seeds or the associated charcoal left behind during the parching stage of rice production, and 2) Examination of preserved wild rice seeds associated with specific prehistoric pottery styles found in excavations of processing sites. Different pottery styles in northern Minnesota are linked to certain times in the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods stretching from around 500 BC to the time of contact between indigenous peoples and Europeans. To place this in context, "Although ceramics may have appeared as early as 2,000 BC in the southeastern United States, it is about 1,500 years later that they became evident in the Midwest". After European contact, indigenous wild rice processors generally abandoned ceramic vessels in favor of metal kettles.


title: Wild rice

text: The Initial Woodland period in northeast Minnesota marks the beginning of the use of pottery and burial mound building in the archaeological record. The Initial Woodland also experienced an increase in indigenous population. One hypothesis is that wild rice as a food source was related to these three developments.


title: Wild rice

text: An example of a northeast Minnesota wild rice location, the Big Rice site in the Superior National Forest, considered a classic Initial and Terminal Woodland period type site, illustrates the methods of archaeological investigations into the plant's use by humans through time. Archaeological techniques along with ethnographic records and tribal oral testimony, when taken together, suggest use of this particular lakeside site since 50 BC.


title: Wild rice

text: On its own, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of wild rice seeds and charcoal samples from the Big Rice itself indicated indigenous use of this site dating to 2,050 years ago.


title: Wild rice

text: Furthermore, all excavation levels that solely contained ceramics only used during the Initial Woodland period (known as Laurel pottery complex) also included wild rice seeds. This indicated the use of wild rice during the Initial Woodland period, according to the study.


title: Wild rice

text: Excavators have documented more than 50,000 pottery shards from the site from the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods. Specifically, researchers analyzed ceramic rimsherds of Laurel pottery from the Initial Woodland period and Blackduck, Sandy Lake and Selkirk pottery styles from the Terminal Woodland period. Each pottery type had wild rice seeds associated with it in the soil layers of archaeological deposits. These soil layers were not contaminated with pottery from other eras.


title: Wild rice

text: This suggests intensive exploitation of the site for wild rice processing through these time periods by different cultures. For example, archaeologists often associate Sandy Lake pottery with the Sioux people, who were later displaced by the Anishinaabe and possibly other Algonquian migrants. Archaeologists often associate Selkirk pottery with the Cree people, an Algonquian group.


title: Wild rice

text: An examination of the pollen sequence at Big Rice indicates that wild rice existed in "harvestable quantities" 3,600 years ago during the Archaic period. This date is 1,600 years before the AMS radiocarbon date of human-processed charred wild rice seeds at the site during the Initial Woodland period, although there is no archaeological evidence of human use of the wild rice at the site that far back in time as of yet.


title: Fares Fares

text: Fares was born in Beirut, Lebanon. His younger brother is director Josef Fares, and he has four sisters. In 1987, when Fares was 14 years old, his family moved to Sweden, residing in Örebro. They moved to escape the Lebanese Civil War and chose Sweden because they had relatives who had already lived there. Fares says he learned Swedish within three months of living in Sweden.


title: Fares Fares

text: From the age of 15, Fares acted in a local theater group in Örebro. When he was 19, he attended drama school in Mölnlycke near Gothenburg, Sweden. He spent six years working in the Theatre Tamauer.


title: Fares Fares

text: Fares has played major parts in his brother, director Josef Fares' films, including his debut acting performance in 2000's "Jalla! Jalla!" and 2003's "Kopps." He starred in "Bang Bang Orangutang" (2005) and "Kill Your Darlings" (2006).


title: Fares Fares

text: In 2010, Fares starred in the Swedish crime thriller "Easy Money" with Joel Kinnaman. The film was critically acclaimed and was picked up for American distribution by Harvey Weinstein. In 2012, Fares made his Hollywood debut in the Denzel Washington movie "Safe House." He played CIA officer Hakim in "Zero Dark Thirty." Fares had a role in "Child 44" (2014) with Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman. Fares played Senator Vaspar in the "Star Wars" franchise movie "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016).


title: Fares Fares

text: For 2013's "Kvinden i buret" (English title: "The Keeper of Lost Causes"), which was set in Denmark, Fares learned to speak Danish. "Keeper of Lost Causes" is based on a novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen, the first of four features based on his Department Q novels. Fares and Nikolaj Lie Kaas will appear in all four films. "Keeper of Lost Causes" was Denmark's top film of 2013. "Fasandræberne" (English title: "The Absent One") is the second film in the series. It also broke Danish film grosses, setting new records. The third film in the series, "A Conspiracy of Faith (Flaskepost fra P)," premiered in Denmark in March 2016 and in the United States in June.


title: Fares Fares

text: In 2014, Fares portrayed Fauzi Nadal in the TV show "Tyrant" on the FX Network. "Tyrant" was renewed for a second season, which began airing in the summer of 2015, and a third season in summer 2016. In 2018-2019 Fares appeared in the two HBO blockbuster series "Westworld" and "Chernobyl". In 2021, he portrayed the Forsaken Ishamael in "The Wheel of Time".


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Artificial cranial deformation or modification, head flattening, or head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is done by distorting the normal growth of a child's skull by applying force. Flat shapes, elongated ones (produced by binding between two pieces of wood), rounded ones (binding in cloth), and conical ones are among those chosen or valued in various cultures. Typically, the shape alteration is carried out on an infant, as the skull is most pliable at this time. In a typical case, headbinding begins approximately a month after birth and continues for about six months.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Intentional cranial deformation predates written history; it was practiced commonly in a number of cultures that are widely separated geographically and chronologically, and still occurs today in a few areas, including Vanuatu.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The earliest suggested examples were once thought to include Neanderthals and the Proto-Neolithic "Homo sapiens" component (9th millennium BCE) from Shanidar Cave in Iraq, The view that the Neanderthal skull was artificially deformed, thus representing the oldest example of such practices by tens of thousands of years, was common for a period. However, later research by Chech, Grove, Thorne, and Trinkaus, based on new cranial reconstructions in 1999, questioned the earlier findings and concluded: "we no longer consider that artificial cranial deformation can be inferred for the specimen". It is thought elongated skulls found among Neolithic peoples in Southwest Asia were the result of artificial cranial deformation.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The earliest written record of cranial deformation comes from Hippocrates in about 400 BCE. He described a group known as the Macrocephali or Long-heads, who were named for their practice of cranial modification.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: In the Old World, Huns also are known to have practised similar cranial deformation, as were the people known as the Alans. In Late Antiquity (300–600 CE), the East Germanic tribes who were ruled by the Huns, the Gepids, Ostrogoths, Heruli, Rugii, and Burgundians adopted this custom. Among the Lombards, the Burgundians and the Thuringians, this custom seems to have comprised women only. In western Germanic tribes, artificial skull deformations rarely have been found.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The practice of cranial deformation was brought to Bactria and Sogdiana by the Yuezhi, a tribe that created the Kushan Empire. Men with such skulls are depicted in various surviving sculptures and friezes of that time, such as the Kushan prince of Khalchayan.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Alchon kings are generally recognized by their elongated skull, a result of artificial skull deformation. Archaeologist Cameron Petrie wrote that "The depictions of elongated heads suggest that the Alchon kings engaged in skull modification, which was also practised by the Hun groups that appeared in Europe". The elongated skulls appears clearly in most of the portraits of rulers in the coinage of the Alkhon Huns, and most visibly on the coinage of Khingila. These elongated skulls, which they obviously displayed with pride, distinguished them from other peoples, such as their predecessors the Kidarites. On their coins, the spectacular skulls came to replace the Sasanian-type crowns which had been current in the coinage of the region. This practice is also known among other peoples of the steppes, particularly the Huns, and as far as Europe, where it was introduced by the Huns themselves.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: In the Americas, the Maya, Inca, and certain tribes of North American natives performed the custom. In North America the practice was known, especially among the Chinookan tribes of the Northwest and the Choctaw of the Southeast. The Native American group known as the Flathead Indians, in fact, did not practise head flattening, but were named as such in contrast to other Salishan people who used skull modification to make the head appear rounder. Other tribes, including both Southeastern tribes like the Choctaw and Northwestern tribes like the Chehalis and Nooksack Indians, practiced head flattening by strapping the infant's head to a cradleboard.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The practice of cranial deformation was also practiced by the Lucayan people of the Bahamas and the Taínos of the Caribbean.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The Visayans and the Bikolano people of the central islands of the Philippines practiced flattening the foreheads (and sometimes the back of the heads) widely in the pre-colonial period, particularly in the islands of Samar and Tablas. Other regions where remains with artificial cranial deformations have been found include Albay, Butuan, Marinduque, Cebu, Bohol, Surigao, and Davao. The pre-colonial standard of beauty among these groups were of broad faces and receding foreheads, with the ideal skull dimensions being of equal length and width. The devices used to achieve this include a comb-like set of thin rods known as , plates or tablets called , or padded boards called . These were bound to a baby's forehead with bandages and fastened at the back.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: They were first recorded in 1604 by the Spanish priest Diego Bobadilla. He reported that in the central Philippines, people placed the heads of children between two boards to horizontally flatten their skulls towards the back, and that they viewed this as a mark of beauty. Other historic sources confirmed the practice, further identifying it as also being a practice done by the nobility (tumao) as a mark of social status, although whether it was restricted to nobility is still unclear.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: People with the flattened foreheads were known as . People with unmodified crania were known as , which literally means "packed tightly" or "overstuffed", reflecting the social attitudes towards unshaped skulls (similar to the and distinctions in Visayan tattooing). People with flattened backs of the head were known as , but it is unknown whether were intentional.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Other body modification practices associated with Philippine artificial cranial deformation include blackened and filed teeth, extensive tattooing ("batok", which was also a mark of status and beauty), genital piercings, circumcision, and ear plugs. Similar practices have also been documented among the Melanau of Sarawak, the Minahasans of Sulawesi, and some non-Islamized groups in Sumatra.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Friedrich Ratzel reported in 1896 that deformation of the skull, both by flattening it behind and elongating it toward the vertex, was found in isolated instances in Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii, and the Paumotu group, and that it occurred most frequently on Mallicollo in the New Hebrides (today Malakula, Vanuatu), where the skull was squeezed extraordinarily flat.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: In Africa, the Mangbetu stood out to European explorers because of their elongated heads. Traditionally, babies' heads were wrapped tightly with cloth, called "Limpombo", in order to give them this distinctive appearance. The practice began dying out in the 1950s.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: The custom of binding babies' heads in Europe in the twentieth century, though dying out at the time, was still extant in France, and also found in pockets in western Russia, the Caucasus, and in Scandinavia. The reasons for the shaping of the head varied over time, from aesthetic to pseudoscientific ideas about the brain's ability to hold certain types of thought depending on its shape. In the region of Toulouse (France), these cranial deformations persisted sporadically up until the early twentieth century; however, rather than being intentionally produced as with some earlier European cultures, Toulousian Deformation seemed to have been the unwanted result of an ancient medical practice among the French peasantry known as "bandeau", in which a baby's head was tightly wrapped and padded in order to protect it from impact and accident shortly after birth. In fact, many of the early modern observers of the deformation were recorded as pitying these peasant children, whom they believed to have been lowered in intelligence due to the persistence of old European customs.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Deformation usually begins just after birth for the next couple of years until the desired shape has been reached or the child rejects the apparatus.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: There is no broadly established classification system of cranial deformations, and many scientists have developed their own classification systems without agreeing on a single system for all forms observed. An example of an individual system is that of E. V. Zhirov, who described three main types of artificial cranial deformation—round, fronto-occipital, and sagittal—for occurrences in Europe and Asia, in the 1940s.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: One modern theory is cranial deformation was likely performed to signify group affiliation, or to demonstrate social status. Such motivations may have played a key role in Maya society, aimed at creating a skull shape that is aesthetically more pleasing or associated with desirable cultural attributes. For example, in the Na'ahai-speaking area of Tomman Island and the south south-western Malakulan (Australasia), a person with an elongated head is thought to be more intelligent, of higher status, and closer to the world of the spirits.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: Historically, there have been a number of various theories regarding the motivations for these practices.


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: It has also been considered possible that the practice of cranial deformation originates from an attempt to emulate those groups of the population in which elongated head shape was a natural condition. The skulls of some Ancient Egyptians are among those identified as often being elongated naturally and macrocephaly may be a familial characteristic. For example, Rivero and Tschudi describe a mummy containing a fetus with an elongated skull, describing it thus:


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: P. F. Bellamy makes a similar observation about the two elongated skulls of infants, which were discovered and brought to England by a "Captain Blankley" and handed over to the Museum of the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society in 1838. According to Bellamy, these skulls belonged to two infants, female and male, "one of which was not more than a few months old, and the other could not be much more than one year." He writes,


title: Artificial cranial deformation

text: There is no statistically significant difference in cranial capacity between artificially deformed skulls and normal skulls in Peruvian samples.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Elena Delle Donne (born September 5, 1989) is an American professional basketball player for the Washington Mystics of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Delle Donne played college basketball for the Delaware Blue Hens from 2009 to 2013. She was drafted by the Chicago Sky with the second overall pick of the 2013 WNBA draft, and led the Sky to the 2014 WNBA Finals, where they were defeated by the Phoenix Mercury. Delle Donne was traded to the Washington Mystics in 2017 and led them to their first WNBA championship in 2019.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne has won two WNBA Most Valuable Player Awards (2015, 2019), been selected to six All-Star teams, and was the first WNBA player to join the 50–40–90 club. She was named to The W25, the league's list of the top 25 players of its first 25 years, in 2021.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne inherited her 6'5" (1.96 m) height from both her parents—her father, who played college golf, is 6'6" (1.98 m), and her mother is 6'2" (1.88 m). Her childhood was marked by a struggle to come to terms with her unusual height. According to a 2016 ESPN story, her first memory was going on a shopping trip when she was three years old and hearing other shoppers tell her mother that an 8-year-old should not be using a pacifier. In third grade, her class was assigned to measure themselves using lengths of paper; she was "humiliated" when her paper extended well beyond those of her classmates. Within two years of that incident, a doctor wanted to start her on injections to stunt her growth; her mother refused. By the time she was in eighth grade, she was already 6'0" (1.83 m). Additionally, according to the same ESPN piece Delle Donne had to come to terms with having "a body that could do a great many things that the body of her older sister, Lizzie, couldn't." Lizzie was born deaf and blind, is unable to speak, and also has cerebral palsy and autism. In another 2016 ESPN story, Delle Donne credits her mother with helping her accept her height:


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: She's 6–2 and my dad is 6–6, so she understood. She was like, "I'm telling you, one day you are going to realize how beautiful your height is." She would always tell me how unique I am and say, "Why try to be like the rest of the pack? Be your own person."


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne gained national recognition as a high school basketball star at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, Delaware. She led Ursuline to three straight Delaware State Championship titles and was ranked as the number-one overall high school recruit by Scout.com as well as a McDonald's All-American. She was the first and only student at Ursuline so far to score 2,000+ points during her high school career and also set the girls' high school national record for consecutive free throws made (80) in 2005–2006.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne was also named a WBCA All-American. She participated in the 2007 WBCA High School All-America Game, where she scored 17 points, and earned MVP honors for the Red team.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: She also participated in volleyball. Delle Donne won the volleyball DIAA state championship with Ursuline in 2007. She posted a season high 20 kills against Padua during a game involving the number one and two teams in the state.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Following an outstanding prep career during which she became the most highly touted women's basketball recruit since Candace Parker, Delle Donne received a basketball scholarship from the University of Connecticut. However, in early June 2008, Delle Donne abruptly dropped out of Connecticut's summer school program after just two days in Storrs. Delle Donne was very close to her family, especially her older sister, Lizzie, who has cerebral palsy and is blind and deaf. She was not ready to be separated from her family. Gene, Elena's brother and the middle child of the Delle Donne family, stated in a 2012 ESPN story on his younger sister:


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Her relationship with Lizzie is huge. It's so close. It's a big reason why she is such a homebody who came home from UConn, because she craves to be around Lizzie and to experience Lizzie grabbing her and sniffing her and just spend quality time with her.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: A week after leaving Connecticut, Delle Donne said by telephone from her home in Wilmington that she has "a lot of personal issues to fix. Only my family understands what's going on. Right now I am going to take a long personal break." She took a similar break prior to the 2007–08 season in high school.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: On August 16, 2008, Delle Donne announced she would not accept the scholarship due to burnout, and instead decided to enroll at the University of Delaware and join their volleyball team as a walk-on. She played middle hitter at UD for the 2008–09 season. The 2008 Delaware Blue Hens finished their season with a record of 19–16. They were 9–5 in their conference (Colonial Athletic Association) and won the conference tournament. They earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament, but lost to Oregon in the first round. Delle Donne did not continue on the volleyball team in 2009, but joined the basketball team.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: On June 2, 2009, Delle Donne announced that she would play basketball for the Blue Hens in the 2009–10 season as a redshirt freshman. In 2012, ESPN writer Graham Hays said about her return to the sport "it cannot be complete coincidence that it came the year Gene returned to Delaware and went to work for his dad's company." In a 2016 interview with ESPN, Delle Donne also recalled a trip she took during the summer of 2009 to the school that Lizzie was attending. While there, she met another woman at the school, a basketball fan who used a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, who told her, "Elena, do everything you can with your abilities, just like we do."


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne had a very productive freshman season. She averaged 26.7 points per game, the third-highest of all Division I women's basketball players. She scored 54 points in a loss against James Madison on February 18, 2010, which was the highest single-game point total by any Division I female basketball player that season. She was named the CAA Rookie of the Week six times, and the player of the week once during 2009–10.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: She was voted the CAA's "Player of the Year" and "Rookie of the Year" in women's basketball by CAA coaches, sports information directors and media. This was the first time a player had won both awards in one year since Old Dominion's Lucienne Berthieu did so in 1999. No men's player has ever won both awards in the same season.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In her sophomore season, the team started off well, but then Delle Donne began to develop flu-like symptoms. In a game against Penn State, she asked to be taken out of the game, something she had never done before. After many tests, the doctors finally diagnosed her with Lyme disease. She struggled the rest of the season, but she helped her team reach the finals of the conference tournament and an invitation to the Women's NIT.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: As a junior, Delle Donne led the nation in scoring, finishing the season with an average of 28.1 points per game. Her prowess attracted many fans to the Blue Hens games, with attendance rising 250 percent from the previous year. On February 16, 2012, Delle Donne scored 42 points in a win over Hofstra, eclipsing the 2,000 point mark for her career. Delaware were the CAA champions, qualifying for the 2012 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament. Delle Donne scored 39 out of the Blue Hens' first 56 points in their first round victory over UALR. Delaware led at halftime against Kansas in the next game, but despite Delle Donne's 34 points, the Jayhawks still won.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: During the 2012–13 season, Delle Donne again fought Lyme disease, missing four games due to the illness. Delle Donne returned on December 12 against Maryland and led the team with 19 points and 6 rebounds in a 69–53 loss. This game was the largest crowd (5,089) to ever to see a women's basketball game at the Bob Carpenter Center, the Blue Hens' homecourt.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne led her team in scoring in 22 regular season games during her senior season, as well as in rebounds in 12 games. She scored more than 30 points on five occasions, leading her team to a 27–3 regular season record entering CAA conference tournament play.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: After winning the CAA conference tournament, the Blue Hens were the #6 seed in their region of the 2013 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament. Delle Donne led them to victories over #11 West Virginia and #3 North Carolina. The Blue Hens then lost to #2 Kentucky, despite Delle Donne's 33 points.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Following her collegiate career, Delle Donne was one of twelve players to be invited to the 2013 WNBA Draft. She was selected second overall in that draft by the Chicago Sky, a team that went 14–20 in the 2012 season. In her professional debut, Delle Donne scored 22 points against fellow rookie Brittney Griner and the Phoenix Mercury, in a 102–80 victory. She led all players in votes for the 2013 WNBA All-Star Game, the first time a rookie had done so in league history. However, a concussion forced her to miss the game. After the All-Star break, Delle Donne returned to action, and continued to play at a high level. The Sky not only qualified for the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, but they also earned the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Delle Donne was named the 2013 Rookie of the Year.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: The 2014 regular season had Delle Donne playing only 16 games due to a flare-up of Lyme disease, averaging less than 19 minutes in the final seven games. Eventually, she rose up during the playoffs, helping the Sky defeat the Atlanta Dream in the first round, scoring 34 points—including a game-winning shot with 8.2 seconds left in overtime—as the Sky erased a 17-point deficit with 8:12 left in regulation in the deciding game. However, Delle Donne was elbowed while going for a rebound in the Atlanta series, and suffered a back injury that reduced her play time in the following round against the Indiana Fever. The Sky still got to the WNBA finals, but they lost to the Phoenix Mercury. Delle Donne played only ten minutes in the first game; she took medication to play 68 minutes and score 45 points over the final two games.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: On September 16, 2015, Delle Donne was named the WNBA MVP for the 2015 season. She scored a league-high 23.4 points per game, shot a career-high 95% from the free throw line, and was ranked third in the league in rebounding. She received 38 of 39 first-place votes. During the regular season, Delle Donne scored a career-high 45 points in an overtime win against the Atlanta Dream, while making 19 consecutive free throws, a WNBA record.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In the 2016 season, Delle Donne averaged 21.5 points per game, helping the Sky to another playoff berth as they finished 18–16. With the WNBA's new playoff format in effect, the Sky were the No. 4 seed in the league, which earned them a bye to the second round. Unfortunately, Delle Donne had suffered an injury on her right thumb in a loss to the Washington Mystics. Delle Donne had season-ending surgery that kept her out for the playoffs. Delle Donne played 28 games in the season before the injury. Without Delle Donne, the Sky still had a decent playoff run, advancing to the semifinals (the last round before the WNBA finals) where they lost 3–1 to the eventual champion Los Angeles Sparks.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: With Delle Donne approaching restricted free agent status and her rookie contract expiring in the 2017 offseason, she was traded to the Washington Mystics in exchange for Stefanie Dolson, Kahleah Copper and the second overall pick in the 2017 WNBA draft just a couple days before the start of free agency.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: On May 14, 2017, Delle Donne made her debut for the Mystics, scoring a team-high 26 points in an 89–74 win over the San Antonio Stars. On May 19, 2017, Delle Donne scored a season-high 27 points in a 99–89 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks. During Emma Meesseman's absence, Delle Donne played outside her natural position as the starting power forward for the Mystics. On July 14, 2017, Delle Donne suffered a sprained right ankle in a game against Indiana Fever, which caused her to miss the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game. On July 25, 2017, Delle Donne scored a new season-high of 29 points along with 10 rebounds in an 85–76 win against the San Antonio Stars after returning from her ankle injury. On August 1, 2017, Delle Donne suffered a left thumb injury while playing against the Atlanta Dream and was ruled out for two weeks. On August 25, 2017, she returned and scored 15 points in a 74–66 loss to the New York Liberty. On September 1, 2017, Delle Donne scored a new season-high of 37 points along with a career-high 6 three-pointers in a 110–106 overtime win against the Seattle Storm as the Mystics secured a playoff berth as the #6 seed in the league with an 18–16 record. In the first round elimination game, the Mystics defeated the Dallas Wings 86–76, Delle Donne scored 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. They advanced to the second round elimination game, where they defeated the #3-seeded New York Liberty, 82–68, advancing to the semi-finals, making it the first time in franchise history where the Mystics have advanced past the second round. Delle Donne scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the win. In the semi-finals, the Mystics were defeated by the Minnesota Lynx in a 3-game sweep.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In the 2018 season, with Meesseman sitting out the season to play for Team Belgium in the FIBA World Tournament, Delle Donne played at the power forward position in the starting lineup. On June 13, 2018, Delle Donne scored a season-high 36 points in a 95–91 victory over the Connecticut Sun. After scoring 23 points in a 77–80 loss to the Atlanta Dream, Delle Donne became the fastest player in WNBA history to score 3,000 points, completing the feat in 148 games. The previous record was held by Diana Taurasi and Seimone Augustus, who both completed the feat in 151 games. Delle Donne was voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game, receiving her fifth all-star appearance. By the end of regular season, Delle Donne averaged 20.7 ppg. The Mystics were the number three seed with a 22–12 record, receiving a bye to the second round elimination game. The Mystics defeated the Los Angeles Sparks, 96–64, advancing to the semi-finals for the second year in a row. Delle Donne scored 19 points in the victory. In the semi-finals, the Mystics faced the number 2 seed Atlanta Dream, Delle Donne scored 32 points in Game one, lifting the Mystics to an 87–84 victory. The Mystics ended up winning the series in a hard-fought five-game series, advancing to the WNBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. However, the Mystics were swept by the Storm in the Finals.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: During the 2019 season, Delle Donne was voted into the WNBA all-star game, making it her 6th all-star appearance and was also named Team Captain after receiving the top two votes among all-stars in the league for the new all-star game voting format. On July 30, 2019, Delle Donne scored a season-high 33 points in a 99–93 victory over the Phoenix Mercury. By the end of the season and with the help of Meesseman's return, the Mystics finished as the number 1 seed in the league with a 26–8 record, receiving a double-bye to the semi-finals. During the playoffs it was announced that Delle Donne had won the MVP award, making it her second career MVP award. She also made the All-WNBA First Team and finished the regular season with a new career-high in field goal percentage. In the semi-finals, the Mystics defeated the Las Vegas Aces 3–1 to advance to the WNBA Finals for the second year in a row, also making it Delle Donne's third finals appearance. During the finals, Delle Donne battled through injury, with a 1–0 Mystics' series lead, she left Game 2 with back spasms in which the Mystics lost, tying the series 1–1. However, she continued to play through injury for the rest of the series and help the Mystics win the WNBA championship after defeating the Connecticut Sun in five games, earning Delle Donne her first WNBA championship. Delle Donne also became the first woman to join the prestigious 50–40–90 club (50% field goals, 40% 3-point shooting and 90% free throws over a single season), marking great all-around shooters. Only nine men had previously achieved the feat in an NBA season: Larry Bird (twice consecutively), Steve Nash (four times in five seasons), Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Reggie Miller, Dirk Nowitzki, Mark Price, Malcolm Brogdon and Kyrie Irving.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In 2020, Delle Donne opted to sit out the entire season due to health concerns and preexisting risk factors with the COVID-19 pandemic. She had been denied medical opt out by the league despite recommendation by her physician to not play in the bubble to avoid any risk of exposure to the virus; however, the Mystics were able to resolve the issue and decided to pay Delle Donne her full salary for the season while being absent. Without Delle Donne and less of her supporting cast, the Mystics struggled to defend their title as they barely made the playoffs as the number 8 seed with a 9–13 record in the shortened 22-game season; they lost 85–84 to the Phoenix Mercury in the first round elimination game. Delle Donne was limited to three games during the 2021 WNBA season. During that season, she was named to The W25 as one of the top 25 players of the league's first 25 years.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Unlike the vast majority of WNBA players, Delle Donne has not played much professionally overseas, choosing instead to spend the traditional basketball season in the United States to help care for her sister, Lizzie. Her first experience in an overseas league did not come until 2017, when she signed a short-term deal to play for the Chinese team Shanxi in that league's playoffs. Her China sojourn ended prematurely when a flare-up of Lyme disease forced her to return to the US.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: During her college days, Delle Donne was selected to the 2011 USA Basketball Team for the World University Games played August 12–23 in Shenzhen, China. Delle Donne led the team to a gold medal with a perfect 6–0 record and averaged 15.7 points, 8.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists. In the Championship game won by the USA 101–66 over Taiwan, Delle Donne scored 18 points on 8–14 shooting and led the team with 11 rebounds and 8 assists.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: While Delle Donne was considered for the U.S. team at the 2014 World Championship, she was cut due to the back injury suffered in the WNBA Playoffs.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: On April 27, 2016, Delle Donne was named to the 2016 United States team that competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During the U.S. team's eighth gold medal campaign, she was a role player, starting off the bench in seven games and sitting out the game against China due to an eye injury received during practice. The U.S. team won the gold medal as they defeated Spain 101–72. Delle Donne is the sixth gold medalist hailing from Delaware.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Her parents are Ernie, a real estate developer, and Joanie. Her older brother, Gene, played college football as a tight end, first at Duke, then at Middle Tennessee. After he graduated from Middle Tennessee in 2009, he returned to Delaware to work for their father's company. Her older sister, Elizabeth (Lizzie), is blind, deaf, autistic and has cerebral palsy. Delle Donne normally cares for Lizzie during the WNBA offseason.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In 2008, during her senior year in high school, Delle Donne was diagnosed with Lyme disease after being bitten by an infected tick on the property of her family's home in Delaware. Delle Donne has stated that she takes "around 50 supplements a day" and maintains healthy eating to combat the disease. As a result of her condition, she opted not to play in the 2020 WNBA season to limit her exposure to the coronavirus.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: In February 2014, Delle Donne was named a Special Olympics Global Ambassador. She also played in the third annual NBA Cares Special Olympics Unified Basketball Game during All-Star weekend, alongside Special Olympics athletes, NBA legends and current WNBA and NBA players. Delle Donne plans to create The Elena Delle Donne Charitable Foundation, which will combine initiatives for both the Special Olympics and Lyme disease awareness.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Delle Donne announced her engagement to her longtime girlfriend Amanda Clifton in an August 2016 issue of "Vogue". On November 3, 2017, Delle Donne and Clifton married.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: Since being drafted in the WNBA, Delle Donne has signed multiple endorsement deals with different companies. In 2013, Delle Donne signed endorsement deals with Nike and DuPont, a science company which is based in her hometown Wilmington, Delaware. In 2015, Delle Donne signed a representation agreement with Octagon.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: She is also one of three WNBA players to have career mode icons in "NBA Live 19" alongside Candace Parker and Brittney Griner.


title: Elena Delle Donne

text: For their first match of March 2019, the women of the United States women's national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman they were honoring on the back; Emily Fox chose the name of Delle Donne.


title: Noblesse oblige

text: Noblesse oblige (; ; literally “nobility obliges”) is a French expression from a time when French (more specifically, Anglo-Norman) was the language of the English nobility, and retains in English the meaning that nobility extends beyond mere entitlement, requiring people who hold such status to fulfill social responsibilities. For example, a primary obligation of a nobleman could include generosity towards those around him. As those who lived on the nobles' land had obligations to the nobility, the nobility had obligations to their people, including protection at the least.


title: Noblesse oblige

text: According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the term suggests "noble ancestry constrains to honourable behaviour; privilege entails responsibility." The "Dictionnaire de l'Académie française" defines it thus:


title: Noblesse oblige

text: "OED" and others cite the source of the phrase as "Maxims" (1808) by Pierre Marc Gaston de Lévis, Duke of Lévis.


title: Noblesse oblige

text: "Noblesse oblige" is generally used to imply that wealth, power, and prestige come with responsibilities. In ethical discussion, the term is sometimes used to summarize a moral economy wherein privilege must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege or who cannot perform such duty. Recently, it has been used to refer to public responsibilities of the rich, famous and powerful, notably to provide good examples of behaviour or exceed minimal standards of decency. It has also been used to describe a person taking the blame for something in order to solve an issue or save someone else.


title: Noblesse oblige

text: An early instance of this concept in literature may be found in Homer's "Iliad". In Book XII, the hero Sarpedon delivers a speech in which he urges his comrade Glaucus to fight with him in the front ranks of battle. In Pope's translation, Sarpedon exhorts Glaucus thus:


title: Noblesse oblige

text: In "Le Lys dans la Vallée", written in 1835 and published in 1836, Honoré de Balzac recommends certain standards of behaviour to a young man, concluding: "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: "noblesse oblige"!" His advice included "others will respect you for detesting people who have done detestable things."


title: Noblesse oblige

text: The phrase is carved into Bertram Goodhue's Los Angeles Public Library on a sculpture by Lee Lawrie as part of Hartley Burr Alexander's iconographic scheme for the building.


title: Noblesse oblige

text: Some critics have argued that "noblesse oblige", while imposing on the nobility a duty to behave nobly, gives the aristocracy a justification for their privilege. Jurists Dias and Hohfeld have pointed out that rights and duties are "jural corelatives", which means that if someone has a right, "someone else" owes them a duty. Dias's reasoning was used in "Murphy v Brentwood District Council" (1991) to disapprove Lord Denning MR's judgment in "Dutton v Bognor Regis Urban District Council" (1972).


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: Life on Mars is a British television series broadcast on BBC One between 9 January 2006 and 10 April 2007. It tells the story of a Manchester police officer from 2006 (played by John Simm) who mysteriously finds himself working as a police officer in 1970s Manchester. "Life on Mars", and its sequel, "Ashes to Ashes", are notable for combining the mystery, supernatural, science fiction, time travel, period, and police procedural drama genres. It twice won the International Emmy Award for Best Drama Series and has inspired international remakes.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: An American adaptation of the series was produced by ABC and ran for one season from October 2008 to April 2009. A Spanish adaptation of the series was broadcast from April to June 2009. A Russian adaptation of the series entitled "The Dark Side of the Moon" was broadcast in November 2012. A Czech adaptation "World under the Head" was broadcast by Czech Television from January to March 2017. The South Korean adaptation began broadcasting in June 2018. In February 2019, the BBC announced the production of a Chinese version, to be set in the 1990s. A sequel to the series, "Ashes to Ashes", whose title references another David Bowie song, aired on BBC One from February 2008 to May 2010. A third and final series was reported as in development in 2020, although it has yet to enter production.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: "Life on Mars" tells the fictional story of Sam Tyler (John Simm), a policeman in service with the Greater Manchester Police (GMP). After being hit by a car in 2006, Tyler awakens in 1973 to find himself working for a predecessor of the GMP, the Manchester and Salford Police, at the same station and location as in 2006. Early on in the series, it becomes apparent to Tyler that he awakes as a Detective Inspector, one rank lower than his 2006 rank of Detective Chief Inspector. As part of the Criminal Investigation Department, Tyler finds himself working under the command of DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). Throughout the two series, the plot is based on the ambiguity of Tyler's predicament and the lack of clarity, to both the audience and the character, whether he has died, become comatose or travelled in time.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: The programme was conceived in 1998, when screenwriters Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah were sent on a break to the English seaside resort of Blackpool by Kudos Film & Television to think up programme ideas. Originally titled "Ford Granada" after the 1970s car, the series was rejected by the BBC. In response, Graham stated: "Back then, broadcasters just weren't comfortable with something like that, something that wasn't set in the real world and that had a fantasy element to it." According to Graham, the initial idea was for a humorous, pre-watershed programme that overtly mocked the styles and attitudes of the 1970s, with the comic actor Neil Morrissey envisaged as the central character.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: Later, Channel 4 drama executive John Yorke substantially redeveloped the original script, focusing on a double act between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt. Senior management eventually decided not to pursue the idea, with Graham stating that the reaction to the idea was: "It's going to be silly", as told to "Radio Times". The series eventually attracted the attention of BBC Wales' Julie Gardner, who persuaded the Head of Drama for the BBC, Jane Tranter, to commission the programme from BBC Wales for BBC One. John Yorke left Channel 4 to rejoin the BBC and together with Julie Gardner, he acted as joint commissioning editor on the show for its entire run.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: The programme's central character was originally to have been named "Sam Williams" but Kudos felt this not to be striking enough and requested Graham devise an alternative surname. Graham asked his young daughter for her opinion and she suggested "Sam Tyler", which became the character's name. Graham subsequently discovered that his daughter had named him after the "Doctor Who" character Rose Tyler. The initial geographical setting was to be London; this was then changed to Leeds and finally to Manchester, as part of a BBC initiative to make more programmes in the city. The name Sam Williams was subsequently used as a plot point in the second series.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: Eight one-hour episodes of "Life on Mars" were broadcast weekly on Monday nights at 9:00 pm by the BBC. The series episodes were mostly written by its creators Jordan, Graham and , later joined by Chris Chibnall as the fourth writer for the first series. For the second series, Graham, and Chibnall returned to write episodes, joined by Julie Rutterford, Guy Jenkin and Mark Greig.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: The second series was broadcast weekly at the same time as the first but on Tuesdays. According to Jane Featherstone, the show's executive producer, speaking in February 2006, a film version of the show was also a possibility: ""Life on Mars" was a very high concept idea and there was no doubt it would work on the big screen".


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: On 9 October 2006, it was confirmed that the second series of "Life on Mars" would be the last. Matthew Graham stated: "We decided that Sam's journey should have a finite life span and a clear-cut ending and we feel that we have now reached that point after two series". Graham's claim that two endings had been filmed was later revealed to be a ruse.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: The second series had a distinctive style of introduction on BBC One: after a brief collage of momentary images, such as several test cards and comedy writer and broadcaster Barry Took, a mock-up version of BBC1's 1970s blue-on-black rotating globe ident was used, although the design had to be modified to fit widescreen sets. This was accompanied by a bass-voiced continuity announcer in the style of that era. Viewers in Wales saw an original 'BBC Cymru Wales' mechanical globe with introductions provided by former BBC Wales announcers. Trailers for the show also used the 1970s style, including the rhombus-style BBC logo.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: In April 2020, creator Matthew Graham tweeted that a third series was in production. Set in Manchester and London, the series is initially planned to consist of four or five episodes. Ashley Pharoah confirmed the show will be called "Lazarus", once again after the name of a David Bowie song. Simm confirmed in January 2022 that he was involved, reprising his role as Sam Tyler along with Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt.


title: Life on Mars (British TV series)

text: David E. Kelley produced the pilot for an American version of the series for the ABC network, though he handed duties over to others for the series production. It premiered in October 2008, and was broadcast to minor critical and public acclaim where declining numbers led to cancellation in April 2009 after 17 episodes, though with sufficient lead to allow the storyline to be concluded.