IN: Eugene Louis Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895-1969) and Nina S. Gore (1903-1978). Vidal was born at the West Point cadet hospital because his first lieutenant father was the first aeronautics instructor of the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."

In 1956, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Gore Vidal as a screenplay writer with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the director William Wyler required a script doctor to rewrite the screenplay for Ben-Hur (1959), originally written by Karl Tunberg. As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, Vidal rewrote portions of the script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewriting the Ben-Hur screenplay, on location in Italy, Vidal negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his four-year contract with MGM. Thirty-six years later, in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995), Vidal explained that Messala's failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd), that Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenplay writer agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene. In turn, on learning of that script-doctor explanation, Charlton Heston said that Gore Vidal had contributed little to the script of Ben Hur. Despite Vidal's script-doctor resolution of the character's motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the "original author" of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay. Two plays, The Best Man: A Play about Politics (1960, made into a film in 1964) and Visit to a Small Planet (1955) were theatre and movie successes; Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. Two such movies are the cowboy movie Billy the Kid (1989), about William H. Bonney a gunman in the Lincoln County War (1878), occurred in the New Mexico territory and later an outlaw in the Western frontier of the U.S. and the Roman Empire movie Caligula (1979), from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed, because the producer, Bob Guccione, the director, Tinto Brass and the leading actor, Malcolm McDowell, rewrote the script and added extra sex and violence to increase the commercial success of a movie based upon the life of the Roman Emperor Caligula (AD 12-41), which is the fourth biography in The Twelve Caesars (AD 121), by Suetonius.

Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

OUT: the documentary film The Celluloid Closet (1995),

IN: Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 - August 9, 1995) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his work as the lead guitarist and as a vocalist with the band Grateful Dead, which came to prominence during the counterculture era in the 1960s. Although he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group. One of its founders, Garcia performed with the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career (1965-1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders-Garcia Band (with longtime friend Merl Saunders), the Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, Legion of Mary, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage (which Garcia co-founded with John Dawson and David Nelson).

Jerry Garcia's ancestors on his father's side were from Galicia in northwest Spain. His mother's ancestors were Irish and Swedish. He was born in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, California, on August 1, 1942, to Jose Ramon "Joe" Garcia and Ruth Marie "Bobbie" (nee Clifford) Garcia, who was herself born in San Francisco. His parents named him after composer Jerome Kern. Jerome John was their second child, preceded by Clifford Ramon "Tiff", who was born in 1937. Shortly before Clifford's birth, their father and a partner leased a building in downtown San Francisco and turned it into a bar, partly in response to Jose being blackballed from a musicians' union for moonlighting. Garcia was influenced by music at an early age, taking piano lessons for much of his childhood. His father was a retired professional musician and his mother enjoyed playing the piano. His father's extended family--who had emigrated from Spain in 1919--would often sing during reunions. Garcia experienced several tragedies during his youth. At age four, while the family was vacationing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, two-thirds of Garcia's right middle finger was accidentally cut off. Garcia and his brother Tiff were chopping wood. Jerry steadied a piece of wood with his finger, but Tiff miscalculated and the axe severed most of Jerry's middle finger. After his mother wrapped his hand in a towel, Garcia's father drove him over 30 miles to the nearest hospital. A few weeks later, Garcia -- who had not looked at his finger since the accident -- was surprised to discover most of it missing when the bandage he was wearing came off during a bath. Garcia later confided that he often used it to his advantage in his youth, showing it off to other children in his neighborhood. Less than a year after he lost most of his finger, his father died. Vacationing with his family near Arcata in Northern California in 1947, Garcia's father went fly fishing in the Trinity River, part of the Six Rivers National Forest. Not long after entering the river, Garcia's father slipped on a rock, lost his balance and was swept away by the river's rapids. He drowned before other fishermen could reach him. Although Garcia claimed he saw his father fall into the river, Dennis McNally, author of the book A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, argues Garcia formed the memory after hearing others repeat the story. Blair Jackson, who wrote Garcia: An American Life, lends weight to McNally's claim. Jackson's evidence was that a local newspaper article describing Jose's death failed to mention Garcia was present when he died.

Was he happy as a kid?

OUT:
His father was a retired professional musician and his mother enjoyed playing the piano. His father's extended family--who had emigrated from Spain in 1919--would often sing during reunions.