Category: people

— tried to prevent Paul Robeson from entering the UK, new papers show. “The star, who died aged 77 in 1976, was regarded as a ‘nuisance’ by MI5 because of his outspoken left-wing views and support for black civil rights.” – BBC

— has been injured in a helicopter crash in the Sudan while making a film of her life. – CBC

In the midst of a messy divorce, Pavarotti’s wife turns in the singer for tax evasion. – Sydney Morning Herald (Daily Telegraph)

Margaret Edson has been widely celebrated for her play “Wit,” written nearly nine years ago, which finally took the theater world by storm last year. But, this kindergarten teacher continues to protest, I’m not a playwright. “I just wrote this one little play.” – Washington Post

Was George Orwell his own Big Brother? After compiling a list of “crypto-Communists and fellow-travelers” including Charlie Chaplin and writers George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck and J.B. Priestly, Orwell turned it over to British authorities. Was this an act of capitulation by the man who supposedly hated authority? – National Post (Canada)

• Sony chairman Norio Ohga is also a conductor. “When I was 60 years old I started conducting. I was invited to the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival,” recalls Ohga. “Our recording group recorded all my concerts [and] they decided to release a CD. Lorin Maazel heard this CD and immediately he wrote me a letter [saying], ‘You are such a wonderful musician, and I wish to invite you to the Pittsburgh Symphony.'” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura’s definition of art is simple. Picasso, yuchh. Matisse? Who’s that? “My good friend Steve (the governor’s former tag-team partner) would paint my official portrait.” – Chicago Tribune

“Nine years ago, Antonio J. Mendez, the son of a Nevada copper miner, retired from the CIA after a quarter-century. He had worked his way up from the lowly forgery unit – bogus signatures, altered documents, counterfeit currency and the like – to become head of the espionage agency’s division of disguise, with a rank equal to that of a two-star general. He created some of the CIA’s most elaborate, if little-known, productions – the ploys, skits, scams, masquerades and sleights of hand designed to dupe foreign agents and enemy surveillance teams.” – Washington Post

Pop-paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould seems to bring out the worst in science writer Robert Wright. For the last decade Wright has been writing inexplicably hostile reviews of Gould’s work – even his supporters detect an element of obsessive stalking. Until last December, when the New Yorker published the latest of Wright’s diatribes against the incredibly successful public intellectual, Gould has remained silent. Is Gould’s refusal to respond to Wright’s provocations the sign of a savvy alpha male or a passive-aggressive bully? – New York Magazine

As the Soviet Union’s much-vaunted culture machine began to break down after the country’s breakup, many Soviet artists fled to the West. Vladimir Spivakov, one of Russia’s top violinists and conductors and founder of the Moscow Virtuosi, chose to continue working in his homeland. Now he may take on the ambitious new Moscow Cultural Center. – The Telegraph (UK)