title: Akira (1988 film)

text: From contemporary reviews, Tony Rayns commented in "The Monthly Film Bulletin" that the narrative was paced at such "speed and complexity" that "viewers who come to it without prior knowledge of the "manga" (comic-strip) version tend to find it almost overpowering" concluding that "The film virtually demands to be 'read' alongside the "manga", and amounts to a kind of commentary on it." Discussing the story, Rayns found the film as "not particularly ground-breaking as science fiction" comparing the film to be between "Blade Runner" and "" with the films main achievement being "the sheer credibility of his vision of future-tech, as seen in fully though designs of vehicles, laboratory equipment" and that the film "yields some extremely arresting images in the film's closing scenes" and that "Simply as animation, "Akira" is an undoubted "tour de force"." "Variety" praises aspects of the film "from the imaginative and detailed design of tomorrow to the booming Dolby effects on the soundtrack" but criticizes the "slight stiffness in the drawing of human movement". "Chicago Tribune"'s Dave Kehr commends Otomo's "excellent animation-specific ideas: Vehicles leave little color trails as they roar through the night, and there are a number of dream sequences that make nice use of the medium's ability to confound scale and distort perspective".


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: From retrospective reviews, Anime News Network's Bamboo Dong commends the Limited Edition's DVD for its "superbly translated" English subtitles and the commendable English dubbing, which "sticks very close to the English translation, and the voice actors deliver their lines with emotion". THEM Anime's Raphael See applauds the film's "astounding special effects and clean, crisp animation". Chris Beveridge comments on the Japanese audio, which brings "the forward soundstage nicely into play when required. Dialogue is well placed, with several key moments of directionality used perfectly". Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" commends Otomo's artwork, stating "the drawings of Neo-Tokyo by night are so intricately detailed that all the individual windows of huge skyscrapers appear distinct. And these night scenes glow with subtle, vibrant color". Richard Harrison of "The Washington Post" comments on the pace of the film, stating that the author "has condensed the narrative sprawl of the comics to provide coherence, though there's a bit of ""Back to the Future Part II"" incompleteness to the story. That hardly matters, since the film moves with such kinetic energy that you'll be hanging on for dear life". Roger Ebert compares the film to "Mad Max", calling it "very gory, very gruesome, but entertaining in its own demented way." Kim Newman of "Empire" commends the film's "scintillating animated visuals, with not one – not one – computer-assisted shot in sight". Helen McCarthy in "500 Essential Anime Movies" claims that the anime "remains fresh and exciting, easily holding its own against the products of two decades of massive technical advancement". Meanwhile, in February 2004, Dan Persons of "Cinefantastique" listed the film as one of the "10 Essential Animations", simply referring to the film as "the film that changed everything."


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" was one of the four nominees for the 2007 American Anime Awards' "Best Anime Feature" award, but it lost to "".


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: Johnny Yong Bosch, Kaneda's voice actor in the Pioneer English dub, was nominated for Best Actor and Best Actor in a Comedy at American Anime Awards, but lost to fellow "Naruto" and "" voice actors Vic Mignogna and Dave Wittenberg, respectively.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "AKIRA: Original Soundtrack" ("Symphonic Suite AKIRA") was recorded by Geinoh Yamashirogumi (芸能山城組). The music was composed and conducted by musical director Shōji Yamashiro (pseudonym of Tsutomu Ōhashi), and performed by the collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi. The soundtrack draws heavily from traditional Indonesian gamelan music, in addition to elements of Japanese noh music.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: It features music which was additionally re-recorded for release. "Kaneda", "Battle Against Clown" and "Exodus From the Underground Fortress" are really part of the same song cycle — elements of "Battle Against Clown" can be heard during the opening bike sequence, for example. The score is generally sequenced in the same order that the music occurs in the film. The North American version featured extensive production notes by David Keith Riddick and Robert Napton.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "AKIRA: The Original Japanese Soundtrack"; an alternate soundtrack was also released. This version included music as it appeared in the film with dialogue and sound-effects albeit ordered out of sequence.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: The soundtrack spawned an album of electronica remixes from Bwana, called "Capsules Pride". Samples from the "Akira" soundtrack have also been featured in numerous other hip hop and electronic music tracks.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: In 1988, Taito released an "Akira" adventure game for the Famicom exclusively in Japan. Another "Akira" game for the Atari Jaguar, Super NES, Genesis and Sega CD was being developed, but canceled along with prospects of another "Akira" title for the Game Boy and Game Gear handheld consoles. International Computer Entertainment produced a video game based on "Akira" for the Amiga and Amiga CD32 in 1994. To coincide with the DVD release in 2002, Bandai released "Akira Psycho Ball", a pinball simulator for the PlayStation 2.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: Since 2002, Warner Bros. acquired the rights to create a live-action remake of "Akira" as a seven-figure deal. The live-action remake has undergone several failed attempts to produce it, with at least five different directors and ten different writers known to have been attached to it. By 2017, director Taika Waititi was named as the film's director for the live-action adaptation. Warner Bros. had scheduled the film for release on May 21, 2021, and filming was planned to start in California in July 2019. However, Warner Bros. put the work on indefinite hold just prior to filming as Waititi had chosen to first direct "", the sequel to "", which he had also directed.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" is widely regarded as one of the greatest animated movies of all time and prompted an increase in popularity of anime movies in the US and, generally, outside Japan. It is still admired for its exceptional visuals. In Channel 4's 2005 poll of the 100 greatest animations of all time featuring both film and television, "Akira" came in at number 16. On "Empire" magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time, "Akira" is number 440. It showed again on "Empire"s list of The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema, coming in at No. 51. IGN also named it 14th on its list of Top 25 Animated Movies of All-Time. The "Akira" anime also made "Time" magazine's list of top 5 anime DVDs. The film also made number 16 on "Time Out"s top 50 animated movie list and number 5 on the "Total Film" Top 50 Animated Films list. The film was ranked No. 1 by "Wizard's Anime" magazine on their "Top 50 Anime released in North America" list in 2001. It was ranked No. 4 on "The Hollywood Reporter" critic's list of "10 Best Animated Films for Adults" in 2016. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" selected "Akira" as his "Video Pick of the Week" in 1992 on "Siskel & Ebert and the Movies". For its wider 2001 release, he gave the film "Thumbs Up".


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" has also been regarded as one of the greatest action and science fiction films of all time. It was ranked number 22 on "The Guardian"s list of best sci-fi and fantasy films, included on Film4's list of top 50 science fiction films, and ranked number 27 on "Complex" magazine's list of 50 best sci-fi movies. "The Daily Telegraph" listed "Akira" as the fifth greatest action film of all time. Phelim O'Neill of the "Guardian" draws a parallel on "Akira"s influence on the science-fiction genre to "Blade Runner" and Stanley Kubrick's "". "Akira" is considered a landmark film in the cyberpunk genre, particularly the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre. The British Film Institute describes "Akira" as a vital cornerstone of the cyberpunk genre, along with "Blade Runner" and "Neuromancer". Rob Garratt of "South China Morning Post" calls "Akira" one of "the most influential sci-fi visions ever realised" on film, comparable to the influence of "Blade Runner". "Akira" is also credited as a breakthrough for adult animation, proving to global audiences that animation was not just for children.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: The ""Akira" slide" refers to a scene where Kaneda slides into view with his motorbike, as he uses a sideways slide to bring his bike to a halt, while the bike gives off a trail of smoke and electric sparks caused by the slide. It is regarded as one of the most iconic anime scenes of all time, widely imitated and referenced in many works of animation, film and television. The "Akira" slide appears in many dozens of animated works, including "" (1993), "You're Under Arrest" (1994), "Gargoyles" (1994), "Air Master" (2003), "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (2003-2009), "Yakitate Japan" (2004), "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go" (2005), "Teen Titans" (2005), "Gurren Lagann" (2007), "" (2003), "Yu-Gi-Oh" (2008-2016), "Fresh Pretty Cure" (2009), "Lupin III vs. Detective Conan" (2009), "" (2009), "Durarara" (2010), "Adventure Time" (2011), "Clarence" (2014), Ready Player One (2018) and "Marvel's Spider-Man" (2018), among many others. Several live-action films have also paid homage to the "Akira" slide, notably in "" (2009) and "Nope" (2022).


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" is regarded by many critics as a landmark anime film, one that influenced much of the art in the anime world that followed its release with many illustrators in the manga industry citing the film as an important influence. Manga author Masashi Kishimoto, for example, recalls becoming fascinated with the way the poster was made and wished to imitate the series' creator Katsuhiro Otomo's style. The film had a significant impact on popular culture worldwide. The film led the way for the growth in popularity of anime outside Japan as well as Japanese popular culture in the Western world. "Akira" is considered a forerunner of the second wave of anime fandom that began in the early 1990s and has gained a massive cult following since then. It is credited with setting the scene for anime franchises such as "Pokémon", "Dragon Ball" and "Naruto" to become global cultural phenomena. According to "The Guardian", the "cult 1988 anime taught western film-makers new ideas in storytelling, and helped cartoons grow up".


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" has influenced numerous works in animation, comics, film, music, television and video games. It inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk works, including manga and anime series such as "Ghost in the Shell", "Battle Angel Alita", "Cowboy Bebop", "Serial Experiments Lain", and "Elfen Lied", live-action Japanese films such as "", and video games such as Hideo Kojima's "Snatcher" and "Metal Gear Solid", and Squaresoft's "Final Fantasy VII". Outside of Japan, "Akira" has been cited as a major influence on Hollywood films such as "The Matrix", "Dark City", "Kill Bill", "Chronicle", "Looper", "The Dark Knight", "Midnight Special", "Inception", "Godzilla", and "", television shows such as "Batman Beyond" and "Stranger Things", and video games such as Core Design's "Switchblade", Valve's "Half-Life" series, and Dontnod Entertainment's "Remember Me". John Gaeta cited "Akira" as artistic inspiration for the bullet time effect in "The Matrix" films. "Akira" has also been credited with influencing the "Star Wars" franchise, including the prequel film trilogy and the "Clone Wars" film and television series. Todd McFarlane cited "Akira" as an influence on HBO animated television series "Spawn".


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: "Akira" has also influenced the work of musicians. The music video for the Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson song "Scream" (1995) features clips from "Akira". Kanye West cited "Akira" as a major influence on his work, and he paid homage to the film in the "Stronger" (2007) music video. Lupe Fiasco's album "Tetsuo & Youth" (2015) is named after Tetsuo Shima. The popular bike from the film, Kaneda's Motorbike, appears in Steven Spielberg's film "Ready Player One", and CD Projekt's video game "Cyberpunk 2077". "" video game developer Eidos Montréal also paid homage to the film's poster. The season four premiere of "Rick and Morty" ("") features a scene in which Morty, and then Rick, are transformed into a giant tendrilled monster that Jerry and Beth later refer to as "an Akira". The 2000 "South Park" episode "Trapper Keeper" has references to "Akira", such as one of the characters transforming into a giant blob organism before absorbing several other characters, not unlike the movie. The stage name of pornographic actress Asa Akira also comes from "Akira". The music video for Grimes' Delete Forever pays homage to Tetsuo's penultimate moments on the Olympic throne.


title: Akira (1988 film)

text: When Tokyo was chosen to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 2013 bidding process, several commentators claimed that "Akira" predicted the future event. In 2017, "Akira" was referenced in several Tokyo Olympic promotions. In February 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic and 147 days before the Olympics, a scene in "Akira" which calls for the cancellation of the 2020 Olympics (147 days before the event) led to a social media trend calling for the cancellation of the 2020 Olympics. The Summer Olympics were eventually postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Martha Elizabeth Beall Mitchell (September 2, 1918 – May 31, 1976) was the wife of John N. Mitchell, United States Attorney General under President Richard Nixon. Her public comments and interviews during the Watergate scandal were frank and revealing.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Martha Elizabeth Beall Jennings Mitchell was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on September 2, 1918, the only child of cotton broker George V. Beall and drama teacher Arie Beall Ferguson. She recalled later in life that as a child she mostly played with the children of her African-American "mammy", who lived with the Beall family, because other families lived at a distance. As a little girl she sang in a church choir, and her mother hoped she would become an opera singer.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: When she graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1937, her yearbook picture carried the quotation, "I love its gentle warble, I love its gentle flow, I love to wind my tongue up, And I love to let it go." She was dyslexic, and struggled to read aloud. She was fascinated by the arts, and dreamt of becoming an actress, attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and studied acting under Maude Adams, but her family would not allow it.<ref name="encyclopedia.com/mitchell-martha"></ref>


title: Martha Mitchell

text: She eventually transferred to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, joined Chi Omega and transferred the following year to the University of Miami. At Miami, she dated "Sonny" Capone and met Al Capone, and was president of Sigma Iota Chi. She ultimately received a Bachelor of Arts in history. After graduation, she was a seventh-grade teacher for a year in Mobile, Alabama, but left teaching after she decided she "despised" it. She returned to Pine Bluff in 1945 and, after World War II, she began work as a secretary at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. She was soon transferred (along with her boss, Brigadier General Augustin Mitchell Prentiss) to Washington, D.C.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In Washington, she met Clyde Jennings, Jr., a US Army officer from Lynchburg, Virginia. They married on October 5, 1946, in Pine Bluff and moved to Rye, New York. Soon after they wed, her husband was honorably discharged and became a traveling handbag salesman. With Jennings, she had a son, Clyde Jay Jennings in 1947, later a GAO investigator.<ref name="washingtonpost/1980/01/15"></ref> Jennings spent a lot of time away from home, which (according to Mitchell) led to the couple's separation on May 18, 1956, and eventual divorce on August 1, 1957.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: She once said as soon as she met John N. Mitchell that she was "impressed with his suaveness and intellect,". They married on December 30, 1957, settling in Rye, New York. Her new husband worked as a lawyer in Manhattan, earning a year and the couple purchased a home on the grounds of the Apawamis Club. In 1961 the Mitchells had a daughter, Marty. Though not Catholics, the Mitchells enrolled their daughter in Catholic school, which Mitchell believed had superior discipline.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: John Mitchell and Richard Nixon's professional careers converged when, on New Year's Eve 1966, their law offices combined to become Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander and Mitchell. Although their status as friends is debated, when Nixon was elected president in 1968 he appointed John Mitchell as his Attorney General. The position necessitated that the family move to Washington, D.C., and their home in the "fashionable" Watergate complex was estimated at the time to be worth .


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Mitchell first came to national attention after she remarked to a television reporter that the Washington, D.C., peace demonstrations held in November 1969 reminded her husband of the Russian Revolution. The statement increased her notoriety and coverage in the media. Mitchell had the custom of having an evening drink and then calling reporters with political gossip or information she had gleaned while rifling through her husband's papers or eavesdropping on his conversations. During this time, Mitchell's renown as an outspoken socialite grew, and she made regular appearances on television talk shows and variety shows, such as "Laugh-In".


title: Martha Mitchell

text: By November 1970, a Gallup poll indicated that 76 percent of Americans recognized who she was, and she was featured on the cover of "Time" in an issue about the most influential women of Washington. Her reputation for frank and uncensored talk that was generally in support of Republican issues led to her being nicknamed "Martha the Mouth" or "The Mouth of the South".


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Nixon selected John to head the Committee to Re-Elect the President (commonly abbreviated to CRP, or deridingly, CREEP) for the 1972 campaign. During the campaign Mitchell had begun to complain to her media contacts that the campaign had engaged in "dirty tricks" to win the election. A week before the June 1972 burglary of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate office building, the Mitchells had traveled to Newport Beach, California, to attend a series of fundraising events. While there, Mitchell's husband received a phone call about the incident and immediately held a press conference denying any CRP involvement.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Encouraging her to remain in California, Mitchell's husband returned to Washington. Meanwhile, John Mitchell enlisted their security agent, former FBI agent Steve King, to prevent her from learning about the break-in or contacting reporters. Despite these efforts, the following week, Mitchell acquired a copy of the "Los Angeles Times", learning that James W. McCord Jr., the security director of CRP and her daughter's bodyguard and driver, was among those arrested. This detail conflicted with the White House's official story that the break-in was unrelated to the CRP, and raised her suspicions. Mitchell unsuccessfully made attempts to contact her husband by phone, eventually telling one of his aides that her next call would be to the press.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: The following Thursday, June 22, Mitchell made a late-night phone call to Helen Thomas of United Press International, reportedly Mitchell's favorite reporter. Mitchell informed Thomas of her intention to leave her husband until he resigned from CRP. The phone call, however, abruptly ended. When Thomas called back, the hotel operator told her that Mitchell was "indisposed" and would not be able to talk. Thomas then called Mitchell's husband. Seemingly unconcerned, John Mitchell told Thomas, "[Martha] gets a little upset about politics, but she loves me and I love her and that’s what counts."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In her subsequent report of the incident, Thomas said that it was apparent someone had taken the phone from Mitchell's hand and the woman could be heard saying "You just get away." Thomas's account was widely covered in the news, and many media outlets made efforts to find Mitchell for an interview. A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the "New York Daily News", tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York. Kramer found "a beaten woman" who had "incredible" black and blue marks on her arms.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In the first of many interviews, Mitchell related how in the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in that California hotel and it was King who had pulled the phone cord from the wall. After several attempts to escape from the balcony, she was physically accosted by five men and was left needing stitches. Herbert W. Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer, was summoned to the hotel and he decided to call for a doctor to inject her with a tranquilizer. The incident left her fearing for her life.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Although the Watergate burglary was the leading story across all news formats, her reports were relegated to human-interest stories in major newspapers, including "The Times", "The Washington Post" and "The New York Daily News". Nixon aides, in an effort to discredit Mitchell, told the press that she had a "drinking problem", which was not entirely untrue. They suggested that she was convalescing in Silver Hill Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Connecticut.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Initially, Mitchell began contacting reporters when her husband's role in the scandal became known in an effort to defend him. She believed him to be a "fall guy" and encouraged him to turn against the President. Soon after the burglary, John resigned, citing his desire to spend more time with his family as the reason. In the meantime, corruption in the GOP had moved sharply into focus for the outspoken Martha.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In May 1973, she provided sworn testimony in a deposition at the offices of attorney Henry B. Rothblatt in connection with the Democratic Party's million civil suit against the CRP. The Mitchells separated in September 1973, with John suddenly moving out of the family home with their daughter. On January 1, 1975, he was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy for his involvement in the Watergate break-in; he served 19 months in a federal prison. They never saw each other again.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Because of her involvement in the scandal, she was discredited and abandoned by most of her family, except for her son, intermittently. It was not until February 1975 that McCord, having been convicted for his role in the Watergate burglary, admitted that Mitchell was, in his words, "basically kidnapped" and corroborated her story. He further asserted that H. R. Haldeman, as well as other top Nixon aides, had been "jealous" of her popularity in the media and had sought out ways to embarrass her. Nixon later told interviewer David Frost in 1977 that Martha was a distraction to John Mitchell, such that no one was minding the store, and "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate." King denies the kidnapping allegations, and has never been charged.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Garrett Graff, author of "Watergate: A New History", said that Mitchell's status as a whistleblower was ignored largely due to the misogyny of the era, resulting in her being written out of history. He has said that Mitchell "warned America about what was about to envelop the country, and she was ignored. She deserves a much bigger role in the way we tell the story of Watergate."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Mitchell was Presbyterian and, while in New York, attended Marble Collegiate Church. She began to write her memoirs in 1973, but fearing it would mean she would get no money from her husband, never signed a contract. In April 1974, she got a short-lived job as the guest host of the program "Panorama" on Washington's WTTG; it only lasted a week.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In 1975, Mitchell fell ill. As her health declined, she was called on by a small circle of friends that included her reporter friend and biographer Winzola McLendon. Her lawyer, in an ongoing alimony dispute, described her as "desperately ill, without funds and without friends". Her son cared for her and served as her occasional spokesman. In her final days, Mitchell subsisted on donations sent by sympathetic supporters.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Suffering the advanced stages of multiple myeloma, on May 31, 1976, Mitchell slipped into a coma and died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. She was 57 years old. Her funeral service was held at First Presbyterian Church. An anonymous donor sent a large arrangement of flowers that spelled "Martha was right."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: She was buried in the Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff with her mother and grandparents. Her daughter Marty and husband John Mitchell attended the burial, albeit arriving late to the service. It was later reported that John Mitchell, because he was still legally her husband, closed the service off to the public and only a handful of mourners attended. Despite John Mitchell's actions to keep crowds away, Pine Bluff residents, fans, and the press nonetheless lined the streets and area surrounding the cemetery.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: A November 1970 Gallup poll placed the public's opinion of her at 33% unfavorable to 43% favorable. She was known for her glamorous but "girly" fashion. Despite her fame as an outsized personality, those who knew her said she was often anxious before attending parties or public events, clutching her friend's arm, trembling, or even weeping.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: She refused to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth II at a garden party in July 1971, saying, "I feel that an American citizen should not bow to foreign monarchs." Scotland's Earl of Lindsay, a member of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland, wrote Mitchell a letter of reprimand, and in a statement to the press said, "There is always hope she may learn some manners. She is a stupid woman. If she is going to shout her mouth off like that, she is bound to get shouted at."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Myra MacPherson of "The Washington Post" wrote that "To many she was a brazen and bombastic woman, to others she was a heroine who attacked a liberal permissiveness they felt had brought chaos to the land."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Three years after Mitchell's death, Washington newswoman and Mitchell-collaborator Winzola McLendon released a biography titled "Martha: The Life of Martha Mitchell".


title: Martha Mitchell

text: Mitchell's birthplace and childhood home were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. A segment of U.S. Route 79 in Pine Bluff is designated the Martha Mitchell Expressway, and a bust of her at the Pine Bluff Civic Center bears a plaque reading "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: In 2022 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confirmed that in the spring of 1974 Mitchell had invited them to examine papers left behind by John Mitchell in their New York apartment. She is quoted as having said: "Please nail him. I hope you get the bastard."


title: Martha Mitchell

text: The first episode of the podcast "Slow Burn", entitled "Martha", chronicled her role in the Watergate scandal in 2017.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: "Gaslit", a political thriller television series based on the "Slow Burn" podcast, began airing in 2022, with Julia Roberts portraying Martha and Sean Penn playing John Mitchell.


title: Martha Mitchell

text: The "Martha Mitchell effect", in which a psychiatrist mistakenly or willfully identifies a patient's true but extraordinary claims as delusions, was named after her.


title: Deliverance

text: Deliverance is a 1972 American survival thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The screenplay was adapted by James Dickey from his 1970 novel of the same name. The film was a critical and box office success, earning three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations.


title: Deliverance

text: Widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted for a music scene near the beginning, with one of the city men playing "Dueling Banjos" on guitar with a banjo-picking country boy. It is also notorious for its brutal depiction of a sodomous rape, before which the victim is compelled to "squeal like a pig" by his attacker. In 2008, "Deliverance" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."


title: Deliverance

text: Four Atlanta businessmen—Lewis Medlock, Ed Gentry, Bobby Trippe and Drew Ballinger—decide to canoe down a river in the remote northern Georgia wilderness before it is dammed. Lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader; his close friend Ed has been on several trips but lacks Lewis's machismo, while Bobby and Drew are novices. En route to their launch site, the men (Bobby in particular) are condescending towards the locals, who are unimpressed by the "city boys". At a local gas station, Drew, with his guitar, engages a young banjo-playing boy in a musical duel ("Dueling Banjos"). The duel is mutually enjoyable, and some of the locals break into dance at the sound of it. However, the boy does not acknowledge Drew when prompted for a celebratory handshake.


title: Deliverance

text: The four friends travel in pairs and their two canoes become separated. Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men emerging from the woods, one carrying a shotgun and missing two front teeth. Following a verbal altercation, Bobby is forced by the men to undress and the unarmed man sodomizes him, demanding he "squeal like a pig", while Ed is bound to a tree and held at gunpoint. Just as Ed is about to be raped, Lewis sneaks up and kills the rapist using his bow and arrow; Ed retrieves the gun and the remaining mountain man flees into the woods. After a brief but hotheaded debate between Lewis and Drew, Ed and Bobby vote to side with Lewis's plan to bury the body and continue on as if nothing had happened. The four continue downriver but the canoes reach a dangerous stretch of rapids. As Drew and Ed reach the rapids in the lead canoe, Drew shakes his head and falls headlong into the water — it is unclear why.


title: Deliverance

text: The canoes collide on the rocks, spilling the three remaining men into the river. One of the canoes is smashed. Lewis breaks his femur and the others are washed ashore alongside him in a gorge. Lewis, who believes Drew has been shot, encourages Ed to climb to the top of the gorge and dispatch the other mountain man, whom they believe to be stalking them from above. Ed reaches an overhang and hides out until morning, when a man appears above him with a rifle; Ed clumsily shoots and manages to kill him, but falls backwards, stabbing himself with one of his own arrows in the process. The dead man seemingly has all his teeth, but on closer inspection, is revealed to be wearing dentures. Ed and Bobby weigh down the body in the river to ensure it will never be found, and when they encounter Drew's body downriver, they do the same.


title: Deliverance

text: Upon finally reaching the small town of Aintry, they take Lewis to the hospital. The men carefully concoct a cover story for the authorities about Drew's death, lying about their ordeal to Sheriff Bullard in order to escape a possible double murder charge. The sheriff does not believe them, but has no evidence to arrest them and tells the men to not do this kind of thing again and to never come back. The trio vow to keep their story of death and survival a secret for the rest of their lives. In the final scene, Ed awakens, startled by a nightmare in which a bloated hand rises from the lake.


title: Deliverance

text: Ned Beatty's wife, Belinda Beatty, and director John Boorman's son, Charley Boorman, have brief appearances as the wife and young child of Jon Voight's character.


title: Deliverance

text: "Deliverance" was shot primarily in Rabun County in northeastern Georgia. The canoe scenes were filmed in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton and on the Chattooga River. This river divides the northeastern corner of Georgia from the northwestern corner of South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot in Salem, South Carolina.


title: Deliverance

text: A scene was also shot at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church cemetery. This site has since been flooded and lies under the surface of Lake Jocassee, on the border between Oconee and Pickens counties in South Carolina. The dam shown under construction is Jocassee Dam near Salem, SC.


title: Deliverance

text: During the filming of the canoe scene, author James Dickey showed up inebriated and entered into a bitter argument with producer-director John Boorman, who had rewritten Dickey's script. They allegedly had a brief fistfight in which Boorman, a much smaller man than Dickey, suffered a broken nose and four shattered teeth. Dickey was thrown off the set, but no charges were filed against him. The two reconciled and became good friends, and Boorman gave Dickey a cameo role as the sheriff at the end of the film.


title: Deliverance

text: The inspiration for the Cahulawassee River was the Coosawattee River, which was dammed in the 1970s and contained several dangerous whitewater rapids before being flooded by Carters Lake.


title: Deliverance

text: Casting was by Lynn Stalmaster. Dickey had initially wanted Sam Peckinpah to direct the film. Dickey also wanted Gene Hackman to portray Ed Gentry whereas Boorman wanted Lee Marvin to play the role. Boorman also wanted Marlon Brando to play Lewis Medlock. Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed, while both Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis. Other actors who were considered for the film included Robert Redford, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty.


title: Deliverance

text: The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself. Reynolds requested to have one scene re-shot with himself in a canoe rather than a dummy as it tumbled over a real waterfall. Reynolds recalled his shoulder and head hitting rocks and floating downstream with all of his clothes torn off, then waking up with director Boorman at his bedside. Reynolds asked "How'd it look?" and Boorman said, "It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall."


title: Deliverance

text: Regarding the courage of the four main actors in the movie performing their own stunts without insurance protection, Dickey was quoted as saying all of them "had more guts than a burglar." In a nod to their stunt-performing audacity, early in the movie Lewis says, "Insurance? I've never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk".


title: Deliverance

text: Several people have been credited with the phrase "squeal like a pig", the now-famous line spoken during the graphic rape scene. Ned Beatty said he thought of it while he and actor Bill McKinney (who played Beatty's rapist) were improvising the scene. James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, wrote in his memoir about the film production, "Summer of Deliverance", that because Boorman had rewritten so much dialogue for the scene one of the crewmen suggested that Beatty's character should just "squeal like a pig". Boorman, in a DVD commentary he made for the film said the line was used because the studio wanted the male rape scene to be filmed in two ways: one for cinematic release and one that would be acceptable for television. As Boorman did not want to do that, he decided that the phrase "squeal like a pig", suggested by Rabun County liaison Frank Rickman, was a good replacement for the original dialogue in the script. Reynolds later recalled the scene as so uncomfortable cameramen avoided watching, and Reynolds opted to interrupt the filming. Reynolds said, "I asked John Boorman, the director, 'Why did you let it go that long?' He said, 'I wanted to take it as far as I could with the audience, and I figured you'd run in when it got too far.'"


title: Deliverance

text: The film's soundtrack brought new attention to the musical work "Dueling Banjos", which had been recorded numerous times since 1955. Only Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel were originally credited for the piece. The onscreen credits state that the song is an arrangement of the song "Feudin' Banjos", showing Combine Music Corp as the copyright owner. Songwriter and producer Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, who had written "Feudin' Banjos" in 1955, and recorded it with five-string banjo player Don Reno, filed a lawsuit for songwriting credit and a percentage of royalties. He was awarded both in a landmark copyright infringement case. Smith asked Warner Bros. to include his name on the official soundtrack listing, but reportedly asked to be omitted from the film credits because he found the film offensive.


title: Deliverance

text: No credit was given for the film score. The film has a number of sparse, brooding passages of music scattered throughout, including several played on a synthesizer. Some prints of the movie omit much of this extra music.


title: Deliverance

text: Boorman was given a gold record for the "Dueling Banjos" hit single; this was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Boorman recreated this scene in "The General" (1998), his biographical film about Cahill.


title: Deliverance

text: "Deliverance" was a box office success in the United States, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film of 1972, with a domestic take of over $46 million. The film's financial success continued the following year, when it went on to earn $18 million in North American "distributor rentals" (receipts).


title: Deliverance

text: "Deliverance" was well received by critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1972. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89% rating based on reviews from 62 critics, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The site's consensus states: "Given primal verve by John Boorman's unflinching direction and Burt Reynolds' star-making performance, "Deliverance" is a terrifying adventure."


title: Deliverance

text: Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It is a gripping horror story that at times may force you to look away from the screen, but it is so beautifully filmed that your eyes will eagerly return." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" called it "an engrossing adventure, a demonstrable labor of love" carried by Voight and Reynolds. Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" wrote that the film was "certainly a distinctive and gripping piece of work, with a deliberately brooding, ominous tone and visual style that put you in a grave, fearful frame of mind, almost in spite of yourself."


title: Deliverance

text: Not all reviews were positive. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film a mixed 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. He declared the film was "admittedly effective on the level of simple adventure" and had good performances, particularly from Voight and Reynolds. However, Ebert also wrote "Deliverance" "totally fails [in] its attempt to make some kind of significant statement about its action [...] It's possible to consider civilized men in a confrontation with the wilderness without throwing in rapes, cowboy-and-Indian stunts and pure exploitative sensationalism."


title: Deliverance

text: Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" wrote that the setting was "majestic" but it was "in the fleshing out that the script fumbles, and with it the direction and acting." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" was also generally negative, calling the film "a disappointment" because "so many of Dickey's lumpy narrative ideas remain in his screenplay that John Boorman's screen version becomes a lot less interesting than it has any right to be."


title: Deliverance

text: "Dueling Banjos" won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. The film was selected by "The New York Times" as one of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made", while the viewers of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom voted it #45 on a list of "The 100 Greatest Films". Reynolds later called it "the best film I've ever been in". However, he stated that the rape scene went "too far".


title: Deliverance

text: Following the film's release, Governor Jimmy Carter established a state film commission to encourage television and movie production in Georgia. The state has "become one of the top five production destinations in the U.S". Tourism increased to Rabun County by the tens of thousands after the film's release. By 2012, tourism was the largest source of revenue in the county, and rafting had developed as a $20 million industry in the region. Jon Voight's stunt double for this film, Claude Terry, later purchased equipment used in the movie from Warner Brothers. He founded a whitewater rafting adventure company on the Chattooga River, Southeastern Expeditions. Payson Kennedy, the stunt double for Ned Beatty, established the Nantahala Outdoor Center with his wife and Horace Holden along the Nantahala River in Swain County, North Carolina in 1972, the same year that "Deliverance" was released.


title: Neolithic

text: The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement.


title: Neolithic

text: It began about 12,000 years ago when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. The Neolithic lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.


title: Neolithic

text: In other places the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt, the Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period, 3150 BC. In China it lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture, and in Scandinavia the Neolithic lasted until about 2000 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: The term "Neolithic" is modern, based on Greek 'new' and 'stone', literally 'New Stone Age'. The term was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.


title: Neolithic

text: Following the ASPRO chronology, the Neolithic started in around 10,200 BC in the Levant, arising from the Natufian culture, when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming. The Natufian period or "proto-Neolithic" lasted from 12,500 to 9,500 BC, and is taken to overlap with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA) of 10,200–8800 BC. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas (about 10,000 BC) are thought to have forced people to develop farming.


title: Neolithic

text: By 10,200–8,800 BC farming communities had arisen in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs. By about 8000 BC, it included domesticated sheep and goats, cattle and pigs.


title: Neolithic

text: Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally distinctive Neolithic cultures, which arose completely independently of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery "before" developing agriculture.


title: Neolithic

text: In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC. Early development occurred in the Levant (e.g. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived a significant portion of their ancestry from the Anatolian hunter-gatherers (AHG), suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region.


title: Neolithic

text: The Neolithic 1 (PPNA) period began roughly around 10,000 BC in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe, dated to around 9500 BC, may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, as evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity, and may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering , contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho), Israel (notably Ain Mallaha, Nahal Oren, and Kfar HaHoresh), Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, and Byblos, Lebanon. The start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree.


title: Neolithic

text: The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated (animal husbandry and selective breeding).


title: Neolithic

text: In 2006, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains.


title: Neolithic

text: Settlements became more permanent, with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of mudbrick. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jericho). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. Some of the enclosures also suggest grain and meat storage.


title: Neolithic

text: The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8800 BC according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant (Jericho, West Bank). As with the PPNA dates, there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. This system of terminology, however, is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. A settlement of 3,000 inhabitants was found in the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. Considered to be one of the largest prehistoric settlements in the Near East, called 'Ain Ghazal, it was continuously inhabited from approximately 7250 BC to approximately 5000 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: Settlements have rectangular mud-brick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse could have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.


title: Neolithic

text: Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period. Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BC, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon domesticated animals, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in the Southern Levant, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq.


title: Neolithic

text: The Late Neolithic began around 6,400 BC in the Fertile Crescent. By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the Halafian (Turkey, Syria, Northern Mesopotamia) and Ubaid (Southern Mesopotamia). This period has been further divided into PNA (Pottery Neolithic A) and PNB (Pottery Neolithic B) at some sites.


title: Neolithic

text: The Chalcolithic (Stone-Bronze) period began about 4500 BC, then the Bronze Age began about 3500 BC, replacing the Neolithic cultures.


title: Neolithic

text: Around 10,000 BC the first fully developed Neolithic cultures belonging to the phase Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) appeared in the Fertile Crescent. Around 10,700–9400 BC a settlement was established in Tell Qaramel, north of Aleppo. The settlement included two temples dating to 9650 BC. Around 9000 BC during the PPNA, one of the world's first towns, Jericho, appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone wall, may have contained a population of up to 2,000–3,000 people, and contained a massive stone tower. Around 6400 BC the Halaf culture appeared in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia.


title: Neolithic

text: In 1981, a team of researchers from the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche, divided Near East Neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002, Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods.


title: Neolithic

text: They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BC at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Aswad.


title: Neolithic

text: Alluvial plains (Sumer/Elam). Low rainfall makes irrigation systems necessary. Ubaid culture from 6,900 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: Domestication of sheep and goats reached Egypt from the Near East possibly as early as 6000 BC. Graeme Barker states "The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium BC in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants" and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange. Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Egypt was from the Middle East.


title: Neolithic

text: The Pastoral Neolithic refers to a period in Africa's prehistory marking the beginning of food production on the continent following the Later Stone Age. In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies, the first form of African food production was mobile pastoralism, or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The term "Pastoral Neolithic" is used most often by archaeologists to describe early pastoralist periods in the Sahara, as well as in eastern Africa.


title: Neolithic

text: The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic or SPN (formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Rift Valley of East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic. They were South Cushitic speaking pastoralists, who tended to bury their dead in cairns whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots. Through archaeology, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, they conventionally have been identified with the area's first Afroasiatic-speaking settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest center of pastoralism and stone construction in the region.


title: Neolithic

text: In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BC, attested by one of the earliest farming sites of Europe, discovered in Vashtëmi, southeastern Albania and dating back to 6500 BC. In most of Western Europe in followed over the next two thousand years, but in some parts of Northwest Europe it is much later, lasting just under 3,000 years from c. 4500 BC–1700 BC. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange.


title: Neolithic

text: Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkans from 6000 BC, and in Central Europe by around 5800 BC (La Hoguette). Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving rise to Starčevo-Körös (Cris), Linearbandkeramik, and Vinča. Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs, though archaeologist Shan Winn believes they most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing.


title: Neolithic

text: The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija on the Mediterranean island of Gozo (in the Maltese archipelago) and of Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to around 3600 BC. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, Paola, Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated around 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and shows a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands. After 2500 BC, these islands were depopulated for several decades until the arrival of a new influx of Bronze Age immigrants, a culture that cremated its dead and introduced smaller megalithic structures called dolmens to Malta. In most cases there are small chambers here, with the cover made of a large slab placed on upright stones. They are claimed to belong to a population different from that which built the previous megalithic temples. It is presumed the population arrived from Sicily because of the similarity of Maltese dolmens to some small constructions found there.


title: Neolithic

text: With some exceptions, population levels rose rapidly at the beginning of the Neolithic until they reached the carrying capacity. This was followed by a population crash of "enormous magnitude" after 5000 BC, with levels remaining low during the next 1,500 years. Populations began to rise after 3500 BCE, with further dips and rises occurring between 3000 and 2500 BC but varying in date between regions. Around this time is the Neolithic decline, when populations collapsed across most of Europe, possibly caused by climatic conditions, plague, or mass migration.


title: Neolithic

text: Settled life, encompassing the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia in the region of Balochistan, Pakistan, around 7,000 BC. At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal "Nature" that the oldest (and first "early Neolithic") evidence for the drilling of teeth "in vivo" (using bow drills and flint tips) was found in Mehrgarh.


title: Neolithic

text: In South India, the Neolithic began by 6500 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ash mounds from 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu.


title: Neolithic

text: In East Asia, the earliest sites include the Nanzhuangtou culture around 9500–9000 BC, Pengtoushan culture around 7500–6100 BC, and Peiligang culture around 7000–5000 BC. The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000–5000 BC, Neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than , and the collection of Neolithic findings at the site encompasses two phases. Between 3000 and 1900 BC, the Longshan culture existed in the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas of northern China. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the population decreased sharply in most of the region and many of the larger centres were abandoned, possibly due to environmental change linked to the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.


title: Neolithic

text: The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains a living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of West Papua (Indonesian New Guinea). Polished stone adze and axes are used in the present day () in areas where the availability of metal implements is limited. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail.


title: Neolithic

text: In 2012, news was released about a new farming site discovered in Munam-ri, Goseong, Gangwon Province, South Korea, which may be the earliest farmland known to date in east Asia. "No remains of an agricultural field from the Neolithic period have been found in any East Asian country before, the institute said, adding that the discovery reveals that the history of agricultural cultivation at least began during the period on the Korean Peninsula". The farm was dated between 3600 and 3000 BC. Pottery, stone projectile points, and possible houses were also found. "In 2002, researchers discovered prehistoric earthenware, jade earrings, among other items in the area". The research team will perform accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to retrieve a more precise date for the site.


title: Neolithic

text: In Mesoamerica, a similar set of events (i.e., crop domestication and sedentary lifestyles) occurred by around 4500 BC, but possibly as early as 11,000–10,000 BC. These cultures are usually not referred to as belonging to the Neolithic; in America different terms are used such as Formative stage instead of mid-late Neolithic, Archaic Era instead of Early Neolithic, and Paleo-Indian for the preceding period.


title: Neolithic

text: The Formative stage is equivalent to the Neolithic Revolution period in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the southwestern United States it occurred from 500 to 1200 AD when there was a dramatic increase in population and development of large villages supported by agriculture based on dryland farming of maize, and later, beans, squash, and domesticated turkeys. During this period the bow and arrow and ceramic pottery were also introduced. In later periods cities of considerable size developed, and some metallurgy by 700 BC.


title: Neolithic

text: Australia, in contrast to New Guinea, has generally been held not to have had a Neolithic period, with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle continuing until the arrival of Europeans. This view can be challenged in terms of the definition of agriculture, but "Neolithic" remains a rarely used and not very useful concept in discussing Australian prehistory.


title: Neolithic

text: During most of the Neolithic age of Eurasia, people lived in small tribes composed of multiple bands or lineages. There is little scientific evidence of developed social stratification in most Neolithic societies; social stratification is more associated with the later Bronze Age. Although some late Eurasian Neolithic societies formed complex stratified chiefdoms or even states, generally states evolved in Eurasia only with the rise of metallurgy, and most Neolithic societies on the whole were relatively simple and egalitarian. Beyond Eurasia, however, states were formed during the local Neolithic in three areas, namely in the Preceramic Andes with the Norte Chico Civilization, Formative Mesoamerica and Ancient Hawaiʻi. However, most Neolithic societies were noticeably more hierarchical than the Upper Paleolithic cultures that preceded them and hunter-gatherer cultures in general.


title: Neolithic

text: The domestication of large animals (c. 8000 BC) resulted in a dramatic increase in social inequality in most of the areas where it occurred; New Guinea being a notable exception. Possession of livestock allowed competition between households and resulted in inherited inequalities of wealth. Neolithic pastoralists who controlled large herds gradually acquired more livestock, and this made economic inequalities more pronounced. However, evidence of social inequality is still disputed, as settlements such as Çatalhöyük reveal a striking lack of difference in the size of homes and burial sites, suggesting a more egalitarian society with no evidence of the concept of capital, although some homes do appear slightly larger or more elaborately decorated than others.


title: Neolithic

text: Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life. However, excavations in Central Europe have revealed that early Neolithic Linear Ceramic cultures (""Linearbandkeramik"") were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 and 4600 BC. These structures (and their later counterparts such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds, and henge) required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organise and direct human labour – though non-hierarchical and voluntary work remain possibilities.


title: Neolithic

text: There is a large body of evidence for fortified settlements at "Linearbandkeramik" sites along the Rhine, as at least some villages were fortified for some time with a palisade and an outer ditch. Settlements with palisades and weapon-traumatized bones, such as those found at the Talheim Death Pit, have been discovered and demonstrate that "...systematic violence between groups" and warfare was probably much more common during the Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period. This supplanted an earlier view of the Linear Pottery Culture as living a "peaceful, unfortified lifestyle".


title: Neolithic

text: Control of labour and inter-group conflict is characteristic of tribal groups with social rank that are headed by a charismatic individual – either a 'big man' or a proto-chief – functioning as a lineage-group head. Whether a non-hierarchical system of organization existed is debatable, and there is no evidence that explicitly suggests that Neolithic societies functioned under any dominating class or individual, as was the case in the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age. Possible exceptions to this include Iraq during the Ubaid period and England beginning in the Early Neolithic (4100-3000 BC). Theories to explain the apparent implied egalitarianism of Neolithic (and Paleolithic) societies have arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive communism.


title: Neolithic

text: The shelter of the early people changed dramatically from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic era. In the Paleolithic, people did not normally live in permanent constructions. In the Neolithic, mud brick houses started appearing that were coated with plaster. The growth of agriculture made permanent houses possible. Doorways were made on the roof, with ladders positioned both on the inside and outside of the houses. The roof was supported by beams from the inside. The rough ground was covered by platforms, mats, and skins on which residents slept. Stilt-house settlements were common in the Alpine and Pianura Padana (Terramare) region. Remains have been found in the Ljubljana Marsh in Slovenia and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austria, for example.


title: Neolithic

text: A significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle was to be brought about in areas where crop farming and cultivation were first developed: the previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transhumance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands. These developments are also believed to have greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more localized dwellings. This trend would continue into the Bronze Age, eventually giving rise to permanently settled farming towns, and later cities and states whose larger populations could be sustained by the increased productivity from cultivated lands.


title: Neolithic

text: The profound differences in human interactions and subsistence methods associated with the onset of early agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called the "Neolithic Revolution", a term coined in the 1920s by the Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe.


title: Neolithic

text: One potential benefit of the development and increasing sophistication of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crop yields, in other words, food supplies in excess of the immediate needs of the community. Surpluses could be stored for later use, or possibly traded for other necessities or luxuries. Agricultural life afforded securities that nomadic life could not, and sedentary farming populations grew faster than nomadic.


title: Neolithic

text: However, early farmers were also adversely affected in times of famine, such as may be caused by drought or pests. In instances where agriculture had become the predominant way of life, the sensitivity to these shortages could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to an extent that otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by prior hunter-gatherer communities. Nevertheless, agrarian communities generally proved successful, and their growth and the expansion of territory under cultivation continued.


title: Neolithic

text: Another significant change undergone by many of these newly agrarian communities was one of diet. Pre-agrarian diets varied by region, season, available local plant and animal resources and degree of pastoralism and hunting. Post-agrarian diet was restricted to a limited package of successfully cultivated cereal grains, plants and to a variable extent domesticated animals and animal products. Supplementation of diet by hunting and gathering was to variable degrees precluded by the increase in population above the carrying capacity of the land and a high sedentary local population concentration. In some cultures, there would have been a significant shift toward increased starch and plant protein. The relative nutritional benefits and drawbacks of these dietary changes and their overall impact on early societal development are still debated.


title: Neolithic

text: In addition, increased population density, decreased population mobility, increased continuous proximity to domesticated animals, and continuous occupation of comparatively population-dense sites would have altered sanitation needs and patterns of disease.


title: Neolithic

text: The identifying characteristic of Neolithic technology is the use of polished or ground stone tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used during the Paleolithic era.


title: Neolithic

text: Neolithic people were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones) and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a large scale was the polished stone axe above all other tools. Together with the adze, fashioning wood for shelter, structures and canoes for example, this enabled them to exploit their newly won farmland.


title: Neolithic

text: Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were also accomplished builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and villages. At Çatalhöyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives.


title: Neolithic

text: The peoples of the Americas and the Pacific mostly retained the Neolithic level of tool technology until the time of European contact. Exceptions include copper hatchets and spearheads in the Great Lakes region.


title: Neolithic

text: Most clothing appears to have been made of animal skins, as indicated by finds of large numbers of bone and antler pins that are ideal for fastening leather. Wool cloth and linen might have become available during the later Neolithic, as suggested by finds of perforated stones that (depending on size) may have served as spindle whorls or loom weights.


title: Neolithic

text: The world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Post Track in England, dates from 3838 BC and the world's oldest freestanding structure is the Neolithic temple of Ġgantija in Gozo, Malta.


title: Neolithic

text: "Note: Dates are very approximate, and are only given for a rough estimate; consult each culture for specific time periods."


title: Neolithic

text: "Periodization: The Levant: 9500–8000 BC; Europe: 5000–4000 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region."


title: Neolithic

text: "Periodization: The Levant: 8000–6000 BC; Europe: 4000–3500 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region."


title: Neolithic

text: "Periodization: Near East: 4500–3300 BC; Europe: 3000–1700 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region. In the Americas, the Eneolithic ended as late as the 19th century AD for some peoples."


title: Liberace

text: Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) was an American pianist, singer, and actor. A child prodigy born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, he enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame from the 1950s to 1970s, he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world with established concert residencies in Las Vegas and an international touring schedule. He embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage.


title: Liberace

text: Władziu Valentino Liberace (known as "Lee" to his friends and "Walter" to family) was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, on May 16, 1919. His father, Salvatore ("Sam") Liberace (1885–1977), was an immigrant from Formia in the Lazio region of central Italy. His mother, Frances Zuchowski (1892–1980), was born in Menasha, Wisconsin, of Polish descent. Liberace had an identical twin who died at birth. He had three surviving siblings: a brother George (who was a violinist), a sister Angelina, and younger brother Rudy (Rudolph Valentino Liberace, named after the actor due to his mother's interest in show business).


title: Liberace

text: Liberace's father played the French horn in bands and cinemas but often worked as a factory worker or laborer. While Sam encouraged music in his family, his wife, Frances (despite having been a concert pianist before her marriage), believed music lessons and a record player to be unaffordable luxuries. This caused family disputes. Liberace later stated, "My dad's love and respect for music created in him a deep determination to give as his legacy to the world, a family of musicians dedicated to the advancement of the art."


title: Liberace

text: Liberace began playing the piano at the age of four. While Sam took his children to concerts to further expose them to music, he was a taskmaster demanding high standards from the children in both practice and performance. Liberace's prodigious talent was evident from his early years. By the age of seven, he was capable of memorizing difficult pieces. He studied the technique of the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. At the age of eight, he actually met Paderewski backstage after a concert at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. "I was intoxicated by the joy I got from the great virtuoso's playing", Liberace said later. "My dreams were filled with fantasies of following his footsteps...Inspired and fired with ambition, I began to practice with a fervour that made my previous interest in the piano look like neglect." Paderewski later became a family friend as well as Liberace's mentor, to whom the protege never missed any opportunities to pay tribute.


title: Liberace

text: The Depression was financially hard on the Liberace family. In childhood, Liberace suffered from a speech impediment, and as a teen, from the taunts of neighborhood children, who mocked him for his effeminate personality, his avoidance of sports, and his fondness for cooking and the piano. Liberace concentrated on his piano playing with the help of music teacher Florence Kelly, who oversaw Liberace's musical development for 10 years. He gained experience playing popular music in theaters, on local radio, for dancing classes, for clubs, and for weddings.


title: Liberace

text: In 1934, he played jazz piano with a school group called "The Mixers" and later with other groups. Liberace performed in cabarets and strip clubs. Though Sam and Frances did not approve, their son was earning a living during hard times. For a while, Liberace adopted the stage name "Walter Busterkeys". He showed an interest in draftsmanship, design, and painting, and became a fastidious dresser and follower of fashion. By this time, he was already displaying a penchant for turning eccentricities into attention-getting practices, and earned popularity at school, despite some making him an object of ridicule.


title: Liberace

text: A participant in a formal classical music competition in 1937, Liberace was praised for his "flair and showmanship". At the end of a traditional classical concert in La Crosse in 1939, Liberace played his first requested encore, the popular comedy song "Three Little Fishies". He later stated that he played the popular tune in the styles of several different classical composers. The 20-year-old played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on January 15, 1940 at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, performing Liszt's Second Piano Concerto under the baton of Hans Lange, for which he received strong reviews. He also toured in the Midwest.


title: Liberace

text: Between 1942 and 1944, Liberace moved away from straight classical performance and reinvented his act to one featuring "pop with a bit of classics" or as he called it "classical music with the boring parts left out". In the early 1940s, he struggled in New York City, but by the mid- and late-1940s, he was performing in night clubs in major cities around the United States and "gained national exposure through his performance contracts with the Statler and Radisson hotel chains", largely abandoning the classical music altogether. He changed from a classical pianist to an entertainer and showman, unpredictably and whimsically mixing the serious with light fare, e.g., Chopin with "Home on the Range".


title: Liberace

text: For a while, he played piano along with a phonograph on stage. The gimmick helped gain him attention. He added interaction with the audience—taking requests, talking with the patrons, making jokes, giving lessons to chosen audience members. He began to pay greater attention to such details as staging, lighting, and presentation. The transformation to entertainer was driven by Liberace's desire to connect directly with his audiences, and secondarily from the reality of the difficult competition in the classical piano world.


title: Liberace

text: In 1943, he began to appear in Soundies (the 1940s precursor to music videos). He recreated two flashy numbers from his nightclub act, the standards "Tiger Rag" and "Twelfth Street Rag". In these films, he was billed as Walter Liberace. Both "Soundies" were later released to the home-movie market by Castle Films. In 1944, he made his first appearances in Las Vegas, which later became his principal venue.


title: Liberace

text: He was playing at the best clubs, finally appearing at the Persian Room in 1945, with "Variety" proclaiming, "Liberace looks like a cross between Cary Grant and Robert Alda. He has an effective manner, attractive hands which he spotlights properly, and withal, rings the bell in the dramatically lighted, well-presented, showmanly routine. He should snowball into box office." "The Chicago Times" was similarly impressed: He "made like Chopin one minute and then turns on a Chico Marx bit the next."


title: Liberace

text: During this time, Liberace worked to refine his act. He added the candelabrum as his trademark, inspired by a similar prop in the Chopin biopic "A Song to Remember" (1945). He adopted "Liberace" as his stage name, making a point in press releases that it was pronounced "Liber-Ah-chee". He wore white tie and tails for better visibility in large halls. Besides clubs and occasional work as an accompanist and rehearsal pianist, Liberace played for private parties, including those at the Park Avenue home of millionaire oilman J. Paul Getty. By 1947, he was billing himself as "Liberace—the most amazing piano virtuoso of the present day."


title: Liberace

text: He had to have a piano to match his growing presence, so he bought a rare, oversized, gold-leafed Blüthner Grand, which he hyped up in his press kit as a "priceless piano". Later, he performed with an array of extravagant, custom-decorated pianos, some encrusted with rhinestones and mirrors. He moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of North Hollywood in 1947 and was performing at local clubs, such as Ciro's and The Mocambo, for stars such as Rosalind Russell, Clark Gable, Gloria Swanson, and Shirley Temple. He did not always play to packed rooms, and he learned to perform with extra energy to thinner crowds, to maintain his own enthusiasm.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace created a publicity machine which helped to make him a star. Despite his success in the supper-club circuit, where he was often an intermission act, his ambition was to reach larger audiences as a headliner and a television, movie, and recording star. Liberace began to expand his act and made it more extravagant, with more costumes and a larger supporting cast. His large-scale Las Vegas act became his hallmark, expanding his fan base, and making him wealthy.


title: Liberace

text: His New York City performance at Madison Square Garden in 1954, which earned him a record $138,000 () for one performance, was more successful than the great triumph his idol Paderewski had made 20 years earlier. He was mentioned as a sex symbol in The Chordettes 1954 No. 1 hit "Mr. Sandman". By 1955, he was making $50,000 per week at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and had over 200 official fan clubs with a quarter of a million members. He was making over $1 million per year from public appearances, and millions from television. Liberace was frequently covered by the major magazines, and he became a pop-culture superstar, but he became the butt of jokes by comedians and the public.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace appeared on the March 8, 1956 episode of the TV quiz program "You Bet Your Life" hosted by Groucho Marx.


title: Liberace

text: Music critics were generally harsh in their assessment of his piano playing. Critic Lewis Funke wrote after the Carnegie Hall concert, Liberace's music "must be served with all the available tricks, as loud as possible, as soft as possible, and as sentimental as possible. It's almost all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries." Even worse, to said critics, was his apparent lack of reverence and fidelity to the great composers. "Liberace recreates—if that is the word—each composition in his own image. When it is too difficult, he simplifies it. When it is too simple, he complicates it." They referred to his as "sloppy technique" that included "slackness of rhythms, wrong tempos, distorted phrasing, an excess of prettification and sentimentality, a failure to stick to what the composer has written."


title: Liberace

text: Liberace once stated, "I don't give concerts, I put on a show." Unlike the concerts of classical pianists which normally ended with applause and a retreat off-stage, Liberace's shows ended with the public invited on-stage to touch his clothes, piano, jewelry, and hands. Kisses, handshakes, hugs, and caresses usually followed. A critic summed up his appeal near the end of Liberace's life: "Mr. Showmanship has another more potent, drawing power to his show: the warm and wonderful way he works his audience. Surprisingly enough, behind all the glitz glitter, the corny false modesty, and the shy smile, Liberace exudes a love that is returned to him a thousand-fold."


title: Liberace

text: Liberace mostly bypassed radio before trying a television career, thinking radio unsuitable given his act's dependency on the visual. Despite his enthusiasm about the possibilities of television, Liberace was disappointed after his early guest appearances on CBS's "The Kate Smith Show", and DuMont's "Cavalcade of Stars", with Jackie Gleason (later "The Jackie Gleason Show" on CBS). Liberace was particularly displeased with the frenetic camera work and his short appearance time. He soon wanted his own show where he could control his presentation as he did with his club shows.


title: Liberace

text: His first show on local television in Los Angeles was a smash hit, earning the highest ratings of any local show, which he parlayed into a sold-out appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. That led to a summer replacement program for Dinah Shore.


title: Liberace

text: The 15-minute network television program, "The Liberace Show", began on July 1, 1952, but did not lead to a regular network series. Instead, producer Duke Goldstone mounted a filmed version of Liberace's local show performed before a live audience for syndication in 1953 and sold it to scores of local stations. The widespread exposure of the syndicated series made the pianist more popular and prosperous than ever. His first two years' earnings from television netted him $7 million and on future reruns, he earned up to 80% of the profits.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace learned early on to add "schmaltz" to his television show and to cater to the tastes of the mass audience by joking and chatting to the camera as if performing in the viewer's own living room. He used dramatic lighting, split images, costume changes, and exaggerated hand movements to create visual interest. His television performances featured enthusiasm and humor.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace employed "ritualistic domesticity", used by such early TV greats as Jack Benny and Lucille Ball. His brother George often appeared as guest violinist and orchestra director, and his mother was usually in the front row of the audience, with brother Rudy and sister Angelina often mentioned to lend an air of "family". Liberace began each show in the same way, then mixed production numbers with chat, and signed off each broadcast softly singing "I'll Be Seeing You", which he made his theme song. His musical selections were broad, including classics, show tunes, film melodies, Latin rhythms, ethnic songs, and boogie-woogie.


title: Liberace

text: The show was so popular with his mostly female television audience, he drew over 30 million viewers at any one time and received 10,000 fan letters per week. His show was one of the first to be shown on British commercial television in the 1950s, where it was broadcast on Sunday afternoons by Lew Grade's Associated TeleVision. This exposure gave Liberace a dedicated following in the United Kingdom. Gay men found him appealing. According to author Darden Asbury Pyron, "Liberace was the first gay person Elton John had ever seen on television; he became his hero."


title: Liberace

text: In 1956, Liberace had his first international engagement, playing successfully in Havana, Cuba. He followed up with a European tour later that year. Always a devout Catholic, Liberace considered his meeting with Pope Pius XII a highlight of his life. In 1960, Liberace performed at the London Palladium with Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. (this was the first televised "command performance", now known as the "Royal Variety Performance", for Queen Elizabeth II).


title: Liberace

text: On July 19, 1957, hours after Liberace gave a deposition in his $25 million libel suit against "Confidential" magazine, two masked intruders attacked his mother in the garage of Liberace's home in Sherman Oaks. She was beaten and kicked, but her heavy corset may have protected her from being badly injured. Liberace was not informed about the assault until he finished his midnight show at the Moulin Rouge nightclub. Guards were hired to watch over Liberace's house and the houses of his two brothers.


title: Liberace

text: Despite successful European tours, his career had in fact been slumping since 1957, but Liberace built it back up by appealing directly to his fan base. Through live appearances in small-town supper clubs, and with television and promotional appearances, he began to regain popularity. On November 22, 1963, he suffered kidney failure, reportedly from accidentally inhaling excessive amounts of dry cleaning fumes from his newly cleaned costumes in a Pittsburgh dressing room, and nearly died. He later said that what saved him from further injury was being woken up by his entourage to the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Told by doctors that his condition was fatal, he began to spend his entire fortune by buying extravagant gifts of furs, jewels, and even a house for friends, but then recovered after a month.


title: Liberace

text: Re-energized, Liberace returned to Las Vegas, and upping the glamor and glitz, he took on the sobriquet "Mr. Showmanship". As his act swelled with spectacle, he famously stated, "I'm a one-man Disneyland." The costumes became more exotic (ostrich feathers, mink, capes, and huge rings), entrances and exits more elaborate (chauffeured onstage in a Rolls-Royce or dropped in on a wire like "Peter Pan"), choreography more complex (involving chorus girls, cars, and animals), and the novelty acts especially talented, with juvenile acts including Australian singer Jamie Redfern and Canadian banjo player Scotty Plummer. Barbra Streisand was the most notable new adult act he introduced, appearing with him early in her career.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace's energy and commercial ambitions took him in many directions. He owned an antiques store in Beverly Hills, California, and a restaurant in Las Vegas for many years. He even published cookbooks, the most famous of these being "Liberace Cooks", co-authored by cookbook guru Carol Truax, which included "Liberace Lasagna" and "Liberace Sticky Buns". The book features recipes "from his seven dining rooms" (of his Hollywood home).


title: Liberace

text: Liberace's live shows during the 1970s–80s remained major box-office attractions at the Las Vegas Hilton and Lake Tahoe, where he earned $300,000 a week.


title: Liberace

text: In 1970, Liberace competed against Irish actor Richard Harris for the purchase of the Tower House in Holland Park, west London. Harris eventually bought the house after discovering that Liberace had agreed to buy it, but had not yet put down a deposit. British entertainer Danny La Rue visited The Tower House with Liberace and later recounted in his autobiography a paranormal experience that he had there with him.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace made significant appearances on other shows such as "The Ed Sullivan Show", "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford", Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person", and on the shows of Jack Benny and Red Skelton, on which he often parodied his own persona. A new "Liberace Show" premiered on ABC's daytime schedule in 1958, featuring a less flamboyant, less glamorous persona, but it failed in six months, as his popularity began slumping.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for his contributions to the television industry. He continued to appear on television as a frequent and welcomed guest on "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar in the 1960s, with memorable exchanges with Zsa Zsa Gabor and Muhammad Ali, and later with Johnny Carson.


title: Liberace

text: He was Red Skelton's 1969 CBS summer replacement with his own variety hour, taped in London. Skelton and Lew Grade's production companies co-produced this program. In a cameo on "The Monkees", he appeared at an avant-garde art gallery as himself, gleefully smashing a grand piano with a sledgehammer as Mike Nesmith looked on and cringed in mock agony.


title: Liberace

text: In the "Batman" television series in 1966 with Adam West and Burt Ward, Liberace played a dual role as concert pianist Chandell and his gangster-like twin Harry, who was extorting Chandell into a life of crime as "Fingers", in the episodes "The Devil's Fingers" and "The Dead Ringers", both written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., who developed "Batman" for television. The episodes of this two-part story were, according to Joel Eisner's "The Official "Batman" Batbook," the highest-rated of all the show's episodes.


title: Liberace

text: His subsequent television appearances included episodes of "Here's Lucy" (1970), "Kojak", and "The Muppet Show" (both 1978), all as himself. His performances in the last of these included a "Concerto for the Birds", "Misty", "Five Foot Two", and a rendition of "Chopsticks". Television specials were made from Liberace's show at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1978-79 which were broadcast on CBS.


title: Liberace

text: In the 1980s, he guest-starred on television shows such as "Saturday Night Live" (on a 10th season episode hosted by Hulk Hogan and Mr. T), and the 1984 film "Special People". In 1985, he appeared at the first "WrestleMania" as the guest timekeeper for the main event.


title: Liberace

text: Even before his arrival in Hollywood in 1947, Liberace wanted to add acting to his list of accomplishments. His exposure to the Hollywood crowd through his club performances led to his first movie appearance in Universal's "South Sea Sinner" (1950), a tropical island drama starring MacDonald Carey and Shelley Winters, in which he was 14th-billed as "a Hoagy Carmichael sort of character with long hair". Liberace appeared as a guest star in two compilation features for RKO Radio Pictures. "Footlight Varieties" (1951) is an imitation-vaudeville hour and a little-known sequel, "Merry Mirthquakes" (1953), featured Liberace as master of ceremonies.


title: Liberace

text: In 1955, Liberace was at the height of his career when tapped by Warner Bros. for his first starring motion picture, "Sincerely Yours" (1955), a remake of "The Man Who Played God" (1932), as a concert pianist who turns his efforts toward helping others when his career is cut short by deafness. In April 1955, "Modern Screen" magazine claimed Doris Day had been most often mentioned as Liberace's leading lady, "but it is doubtful that Doris will play the role. Liberace's name alone will pack theatres and generous Liberace would like to give a newcomer a break." (Joanne Dru, an established movie actress, was the leading lady.) When "Sincerely Yours" was released in November, the studio mounted an ad and poster campaign with Liberace's name in huge, eccentric, building-block letters above and much larger than the title. "Fabulously yours in his first starring motion picture!" was a tag line. The other players and staff were smallish at the bottom. The film was a critical and commercial failure since Liberace proved unable to translate his eccentric on-stage persona to that of a movie leading man. Warner quickly issued a pressbook ad supplement with new "Starring" billing below the title, in equal plain letters: "Liberace, Joanne Dru, Dorothy Malone". TCM's Robert Osborne recalls a more dramatic demotion: When "Sincerely Yours" played first run at the Orpheum in Seattle, the billing was altered even more: Joanne Dru, Dorothy Malone, and Alex Nicol above the title (with big head shots of all three) and below the title in much smaller letters: "with Liberace at the piano". Originally, "Sincerely Yours" was meant to be the first of a two-picture movie contract, but it proved a massive box-office flop. The studio then bought back the contract, effectively paying Liberace not to make a second movie.


title: Liberace

text: The experience left Liberace so shaken that he largely abandoned his movie aspirations. He made two more big-screen appearances, but only in cameo roles. These were "When the Boys Meet the Girls" (1965), starring Connie Francis, where Liberace essentially played himself. He received kudos for his brief appearance as a casket salesman in "The Loved One" (1965), based on Evelyn Waugh's satire of the funeral business and movie industry in Southern California.


title: Liberace

text: The massive success of Liberace's syndicated television show was the main impetus behind his record sales. From 1947 to 1951, he recorded 10 discs. By 1954, it jumped to nearly 70. He released several recordings through Columbia Records including "Liberace by Candlelight" (later on Dot and through direct television advertising) and sold over 400,000 albums by 1954. His most popular single was "Ave Maria", selling over 300,000 copies. His theme song was "I'll Be Seeing You", which he would customarily sing rather than play on any of his various pianos.


title: Liberace

text: His albums included pop standards of the time, such as "Hello, Dolly!", and included his interpretations of the classical piano repertoire such as Chopin and Liszt, although many fans of classical music widely criticized them (as well as Liberace's skills as a pianist in general) for being "pure fluff with minimal musicianship". In his life, he received six gold records.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace's final stage performance was at New York's Radio City Music Hall on November 2, 1986; it was his 18th show over a tour of 21 days (from October 16), and the concert series grossed just over $2.5 million at the theater box office. His final television appearance was on Christmas Day that same year on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", which had actually been videotaped in Chicago over one month earlier.


title: Liberace

text: Liberace was conservative in his political and religious beliefs. He believed fervently in capitalism and was fascinated with royalty, ceremony, and luxury. He loved to socialize and was fascinated by the rich and famous. However, he still presented himself to his fans as one of them, a Midwesterner who had earned his success through hard work, and who invited them to enjoy it with him.


title: Liberace

text: In the later years of his life, having earned sudden wealth, Liberace spent lavishly, displaying extravagant materialism in his life and his act. In 1953, he designed and built his first celebrity house in Sherman Oaks, California on Valley Vista Blvd., located in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. The house featured a piano theme throughout, including a piano-shaped swimming pool which remains today. His dream home, with its lavish furnishings, elaborate bath, and antiques, added to his image. He leveraged his fame through hundreds of promotional tie-ins with banks, insurance companies, automobile companies, food companies, and even morticians. Liberace was an experienced pitchman and relied on the support of his vast audience of housewives. Sponsors sent him complimentary products, including his white Cadillac limousine, and he reciprocated enthusiastically: "If I am selling tuna fish, I believe in tuna fish."


title: Liberace

text: Others criticized his flashy but proficient piano playing, his non-stop promotions, and his gaudy display of success. Outwardly, he remained undeterred, once sending a letter to a critic, "Thank you for your very amusing review. After reading it, in fact, my brother George and I laughed all the way to the bank." He responded similarly to subsequent poor reviews, famously modifying it to "I cried all the way to the bank." In an appearance on "The Tonight Show" some years later, Liberace retold the anecdote to Johnny Carson, and finished by saying, "I don't cry all the way to the bank any more – I the bank!"