title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In his first cabinet meeting, held on 4 April 2017, the decision was taken to forgive loans to nearly 87 lakh (8,700,000) small and marginal farmers of Uttar Pradesh, amounting to . For India's Independence Day celebrations in 2017, his government singled out Muslim religious schools, requiring them to provide video evidence that their students had sung the Indian national anthem.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In 2017, his government ordered withdrawal of around 20,000 "politically motivated" cases, including those against himself and other politicians.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: Adityanath ordered the forming of "quasi"-vigilante anti-"romeo" squads. He imposed a blanket ban on cow-smuggling and a stay on UPPSC civil service exam results, exams and interviews until further order. He imposed a ban on the vices of tobacco, "paan" and "gutka" in government offices across the state, and compelled officials to pledge to devote 100 hours every year for the Swachh Bharat Mission. More than 100 "black sheep" policemen were suspended by the Uttar Pradesh police.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: Since 2017 chief minister Adityanath had ordered the closing of many slaughterhouses. As a direct consequence, the tanneries that sourced raw leather from the slaughterhouses were impacted. Several tanneries were also ordered to be shut down. The tannery industry was estimated to be worth 50,0000 crore ₹ in 2017. The industry directly or indirectly gave employment to more than 10 lakh people. Since 2018, through executive orders, CM Adityanath had closed around 200 tanneries out of a total of more than 400 that were active in Jajamau, Kanpur.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In the first 10 months of his first term, he conducted four police encounters per day. National human rights commission issued a notice to the state government and a bench of three judges from the Supreme Court of India warned and issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government in this case.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: Committee Against Assault on Journalists found that 138 cases of persecution of journalists were registered under Yogi Adityanath's term in Uttar Pradesh between 2017 and February 2022.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: After the Citizenship Amendment Act protests in Uttar Pradesh, he put up hoardings with names, photographs and addresses of protestors. Only after the order of the High Court, which called his government's action “shameless” and an “unwarranted interference in privacy”, the posters were removed.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: Recent NCRB data has revealed that crimes against women and children have significantly reduced under the Yogi Adityanath administration. 378 cases of communal violence were registered across the country, of which just one case was registered in Uttar Pradesh. According to the data, 18,943 cases were registered for crime against children in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 and it came down to 16,838 in 2021. The cases of crime against women decreased from 59,853 in 2019 to 56,083 in 2021. Crime against women have decreased by 6.2% in 2021 compared to 2019. There has been a decrease of 11.11% in crimes against children. The cybercrime too has decreased in the state. In 2019, 11,416 cases of cybercrime were registered, which went down to 8,829 in 2021, registering a fall of 22.6%.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In July 2018, Adityanath, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Moon Jae-in, president of South Korea, inaugurated the world's largest smartphone manufacturing factory in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. His government was credited for making 50 megawatts of power and a 22-km-long electricity line in a record four months for the Samsung mobile plant.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In November 2019, Uttar Pradesh government along with Ministry of Defense laid the foundation stone of Defence Industrial Corridor project in Jhansi. Yogi Adityanath held consultations with private firms in order to increase private investment in the defense corridor project.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: The "New York Times" relayed analysts' estimations of Adityanath as a candidate for Prime Minister of India in 2024, provided he "delivers on some fronts". In August 2020, India Today's "Mood of the nation" survey showed Adityanath as the best-performing chief minister in India.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In September 2020, Adityanath asked his government to devise a strategy to prevent "religious conversions in the name of love", and even considered passing an ordinance for the same if needed. On 31 October, Adityanath announced that a Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 to curb "Love Jihad" would be passed by his government.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: The Uttar Pradesh state cabinet cleared Adityanath's ordinance on 24 November 2020. following which it was approved and signed by state Governor Anandiben Patel on 28 November 2020.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In July 2021, Adityanath introduced the UP population control draft bill 2021–2030. On the event of World Population Day, the chief minister unveiled the policy on reducing the population growth for the forthcoming years. There were also several benefits announced based on the laid single child and two-child policies. He said the state population policy focused on efforts to increase the accessibility of contraceptive measures issued under the Family Planning Programme and provide a proper system for safe abortion. This policy also received lots of reactions and criticisms from other political parties. It was said that this policy mainly focused on the upcoming general elections in the state. The opposition Congress in the state has called it a "political agenda" and the Samajwadi Party said it is "murder of democracy".


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: On 10 March 2022, with the announcement of the legislative assembly results, BJP-led NDA alliance secured 273 seats with incumbent Chief minister Yogi getting his second term. Yogi and his party wrote history, being the first chief minister to return to power, after completing a full 5-year term in office. BJP is also the first party to return to power consecutively after 37 years. He was only the third chief minister, in the history of Uttar Pradesh's political history to complete a full 5-year term as the chief minister of the state after Mayawati of BSP and Akhilesh Yadav belonging to the Samajwadi Party.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In the buildup to the assembly elections, Yogi successfully used a campaign with a bulldozer as its main image, earning him the tag "bulldozer baba". The term had initially been used as a taunt by an opposition party. His speeches during the polls included hate speeches against Muslims, promoting religious polarization and Hindu supremacy. Further, his speeches included the idea that rights of Hindus are at odds with that of Muslims, where he repeatedly conflated Muslims with terrorists and criminals, and the opposition parties as appeasers of Muslims.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: On 3 January 2016, a day after the terrorist attack on an Indian air force base in Pathankot allegedly by Pakistani terrorists, Adityanath compared Pakistan to Satan.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: Adityanath had praised the then US President Donald Trump's decision to enact a ban on citizens from 7 Muslim-majority countries entering the United States and has called for India to adopt similar policies to tackle terrorism.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In 2010, when opposing the Women's Reservation Bill, Adityanath said that reservation doesn't affect women's domestic responsibilities such as childcare. He added that if men develop feminine traits they become gods, but if women develop masculine traits they become demons.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In an undated video that surfaced on YouTube during August 2014, Adityanath, reportedly during a public speech at Azamgarh, referring to the religious conversions due to inter-religious marriages, has said, "if they take one Hindu girl, we will take 100 Muslims girls." In the same video, he continues by saying, "if they kill one Hindu, there will be 100 that we" and pauses, as the gathered crowd shouts: "kill".


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In February 2015, while speaking at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s ‘Virat Hindu Sammelan’, Adityanath commented: "If given a chance, we will install statues of Goddess "Gauri", "Ganesh" and "Nandi" " — Hindu deities — "in every mosque."


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In June 2015, Adityanath, while talking about Surya Namaskara, and Yoga said that those who want to avoid Yoga can leave "Hindustan". He "requested" those who see communalism in the Sun God to "drown themselves in the sea" or live in a dark room for the rest of their lives.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: During the intolerance debate in the Indian media in late 2015, Adityanath commented that actor Shah Rukh Khan was using the same "language" as Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed.


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In February 2020, he said publicly, "Muslims who chose to stay in India when it was partitioned following independence from Britain did the country "no favours"".


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In 2020, during Shaheen Bagh protests, he said “If they won’t understand words, they’ll understand bullets.”


title: Yogi Adityanath

text: In June 2021, he was accused of cursing an ANI reporter, though ANI refused to comment, but later allegations found not to be true.


title: Demeter

text: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter (; Attic: "Dēmḗtēr" ; Doric: "Dāmā́tēr") is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth. Although she is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Underworld. She is also called Deo (). In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like her other siblings but Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus.


title: Demeter

text: Through her brother Zeus, she became the mother of Persephone, a fertility goddess. One of the most notable Homeric Hymns, the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter", tells the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades and Demeter's search for her. When Hades, the King of the Underworld, wished to make Persephone his wife, he abducted her from a field while she was picking flowers, with Zeus' leave. Demeter searched everywhere to find her missing daughter to no avail until she was informed that Hades had taken her to the Underworld. In response, Demeter neglected her duties as goddess of agriculture, plunging the earth into a deadly famine where nothing would grow, causing mortals to die. Zeus ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother to avert the disaster. However, because Persephone had eaten food from the Underworld, she could not stay with Demeter forever but had to divide the year between her mother and her husband, explaining the seasonal cycle, as Demeter does not let plants grow while Persephone is gone.


title: Demeter

text: Her cult titles include Sito (), "she of the Grain", as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros (, "thesmos": divine order, unwritten law; , "phoros": bringer, bearer), "giver of customs" or "legislator", in association with the secret female-only festival called the Thesmophoria. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a religious tradition that predated the Olympian pantheon and which may have its roots in the Mycenaean period c. 1400–1200 BC.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele, and she was identified with the Roman goddess Ceres.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter may appear in Linear A as "da-ma-te" on three documents (AR Zf 1 and 2, and KY Za 2), all three dedicated to religious situations and all three bearing just the name ("i-da-ma-te" on AR Zf 1 and 2). It is unlikely that Demeter appears as "da-ma-te" in a Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscription (PY En 609); the word , "da-ma-te", probably refers to "households". On the other hand, , "si-to-po-ti-ni-ja", "Potnia of the Grain", is regarded as referring to her Bronze Age predecessor or to one of her epithets.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name "meter" () derived from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) "*méh₂tēr" (mother). In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that "Da" (), a word which corresponds to "Gē" () in Attic, is the Doric form of "De" (), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth". Liddell & Scott find this "improbable" and Beekes writes, "there is no indication that ["da"] means "earth", although it has also been assumed in the name of Poseidon found in the Linear B inscription "E-ne-si-da-o-ne", "earth-shaker". John Chadwick also argues that the "dā" element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with "earth".


title: Demeter

text: M. L. West has proposed that the word Demeter, initially "Damater", could be a borrowing from an Illyrian deity attested in the Messapic goddess "Damatura", with a form "dā-" ("earth", from PIE "*dʰǵʰ(e)m-") attached to -"matura" ("mother"), akin to the Illyrian god Dei-paturos ("dei-", "sky", attached to -"paturos," "father"). The Lesbian form "Dō-" may simply reflect a different colloquial pronunciation of the non-Greek name.


title: Demeter

text: According to a more popular theory, the element "De"- might be connected with "Deo", an epithet of Demeter and it could derive from the Cretan word "dea" (), Ionic "zeia" ()—variously identified with emmer, spelt, rye, or other grains by modern scholars—so that she is the Mother and the giver of food generally. This view is shared by British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison, who suggests that Démeter's name means "Grain-Mother", instead of "Earth-Mother".


title: Demeter

text: Wanax ("wa-na-ka") was her male companion (Greek: Πάρεδρος, "Paredros") in Mycenaean cult. The Arcadian cult links her to the god Poseidon, who probably substituted the male companion of the Great Goddess; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess (Cybele).


title: Demeter

text: An alternative Proto-Indo-European etymology comes through Potnia and Despoina, where "Des-" represents a derivative of PIE "*dem" (house, dome), and Demeter is "mother of the house" (from PIE "*dems-méh₂tēr"). R. S. P. Beekes rejects a Greek interpretation, but not necessarily an Indo-European one.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter was frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was also sometimes pictured with her daughter Persephone. However, Demeter is not generally portrayed with any of her consorts; the exception is Iasion, the youth of Crete who lay with her in a thrice-ploughed field and was killed afterward by a jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter is assigned the zodiac constellation Virgo, the Virgin, by Marcus Manilius in his 1st-century Roman work Astronomicon. In art, the constellation Virgo holds Spica, a sheaf of wheat in her hand and sits beside constellation Leo the Lion.


title: Demeter

text: In Arcadia, she was known as "Black Demeter". She was said to have taken the form of a mare to escape the pursuit of her younger brother, Poseidon, and having been raped by him despite her disguise, she dressed all in black and retreated into a cave to mourn and to purify herself. She was consequently depicted with the head of a horse in this region.


title: Demeter

text: In epic poetry and Hesiod's "Theogony", Demeter is the Corn-Mother, the goddess of cereals who provides grain for bread and blesses its harvesters. This was her main function at Eleusis, and she became panhellenic. In Cyprus, "grain-harvesting" was "damatrizein".


title: Demeter

text: The central theme in the Eleusinian Mysteries was the reunion of Persephone with her mother, Demeter when new crops were reunited with the old seed, a form of eternity.


title: Demeter

text: According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals, and the Mysteries, which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.


title: Demeter

text: These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter's myths and mystery cults. In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong. Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter was also "zeidoros arοura", the Homeric "Mother Earth arοura" who gave the gift of cereals ("zeai" or "deai").


title: Demeter

text: In addition to her role as an agricultural goddess, Demeter was often worshipped more generally as a goddess of the earth. For example, in Arcadia, she was represented as snake-haired, holding a dove and dolphin, perhaps to symbolize her power over the Underworld, the air, and the water.


title: Demeter

text: In the cult of Flya, she was worshipped as "Anesidora" who sends up gifts from the Underworld. There was a temple of Demeter under this name in Phlya.


title: Demeter

text: In Sparta, she was known as Demeter-Chthonia (chthonic Demeter). The Athenians called the dead "Demetrioi", and this may reflect a link between Demeter and the ancient cult of the dead, linked to the agrarian belief that a new life would sprout from the dead body, as a new plant arises from buried seed. This was most likely a belief shared by initiates in Demeter's mysteries, as interpreted by Pindar: "Blessed is he who has seen before he goes under the earth; for he knows the end of life and knows also its divine beginning."


title: Demeter

text: In the mysteries of Pheneos in Arcadia, Demeter was known as "Cidaria". Her priest would put on the mask of Demeter, which was kept secret. The cult may have been connected with both the Underworld and a form of agrarian magic.


title: Demeter

text: Karl Kerényi asserted that poppies were connected with a Cretan cult which was eventually carried to the Eleusinian Mysteries in Classical Greece. In a clay statuette from Gazi, the Minoan poppy goddess wears the seed capsules, sources of nourishment and narcosis, in her diadem. According to Kerényi, "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis and it is almost certain that in the Cretan cult sphere opium was prepared from poppies."


title: Demeter

text: Robert Graves speculated that the meaning of the depiction and use of poppies in the Greco-Roman myths is the symbolism of the bright scarlet colour as signifying the promise of resurrection after death.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter's epithets show her many religious functions. She was the "Corn-Mother" who blesses the harvesters. Some cults interpreted her as "Mother-Earth". Demeter may be linked to goddess-cults of Minoan Crete and embody aspects of a pre-Hellenic Mother Goddess.


title: Demeter

text: Achaea, "Ἀχαία" (" probably from "achaine": loaf ,or "achos": grief"). She was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyraeans who had emigrated from Boeotia.


title: Demeter

text: Despoina, "Δέσποινα" ("mistress of the house"), a Greek word similar to the Mycenean "potnia". This title was also applied to Persephone, Aphrodite, and Hecate.


title: Demeter

text: Europa, "Εὐρώπη", "broad face or eyes" at Livadeia of Boeotia. She was the nurse of Trophonios to whom a chthonic cult and oracle was dedicated.


title: Demeter

text: Potnia, "Πότνια", ("mistress") in the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter". Hera especially, but also Artemis and Athena, are addressed as "potnia" as well.


title: Demeter

text: Thesmophoros, "Θεσμοφόρος", ("giver of customs" or "legislator"), a title connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals connected with marriage customs.


title: Demeter

text: The earliest recorded worship of a deity possibly equivalent to Demeter is found in Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos. The tablets describe the worship of the "two queens and the king", which may be related to Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. An early name which may refer to Demeter, "si-to-po-ti-ni-ja" (Sito Potnia), appears in Linear B inscriptions found at Mycenae and Pylos. In Crete, Poseidon was often given the title "wa-na-ka" ("wanax") in Linear B inscriptions, in his role as King of the Underworld, and his title " E-ne-si-da-o-ne" indicates his chthonic nature. In the cave of Amnisos, "Enesidaon" is associated with the cult of Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, who was involved with the annual birth of the divine child. During the Bronze Age, a goddess of nature dominated both in Minoan and Mycenean cults, and "Wanax" ("wa-na-ka") was her male companion (paredros) in the Mycenean cult. Elements of this early form of worship survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered: "the mighty Potnia had born a strong son."


title: Demeter

text: Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" ("to the Two Queens and the King":"wa-na-ssoi", "wa-na-ka-te"). The "Two Queens" may be related to Demeter and Persephone or their precursors, goddesses who were no longer associated with Poseidon in later periods.


title: Demeter

text: Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Selinus, Tegea, Thoricus, Dion (in Macedonia) Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna (Sicily), and Samothrace.


title: Demeter

text: Probably the earliest Amphictyony centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele (Ἀνθήλη), lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly, near Thermopylae.


title: Demeter

text: Mysian Demeter had a seven-day festival at Pellené in Arcadia. The geographer Pausanias passed the shrine to Mysian Demeter on the road from Mycenae to Argos and reports that according to Argive tradition, the shrine was founded by an Argive named Mysius who venerated Demeter.


title: Demeter

text: Even after Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica and banned paganism throughout the Roman Empire, people throughout Greece continued to pray to Demeter as "Saint Demetra", patron saint of agriculture. Around 1765-1766, the antiquary Richard Chandler, alongside the architect Nicholas Revett and the painter William Pars, visited Eleusis and mentioned a statue of a Caryatid as well as the folklore that surrounded it: they stated that it was considered sacred by the locals because it protected their crops. They called the statue "Saint Demetra", a saint whose story had many similarities to the myth of Demeter and Persephone, except that her daughter had been abducted by the Turks and not by Hades. The locals covered the statue with flowers to ensure the fertility of their fields. This tradition continued until the 19th century, when the statue was forcibly removed a few years later by Edward Daniel Clarke who presented it to the University of Cambridge.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter's two major festivals were sacred mysteries. Her Thesmophoria festival (11–13 October) was women-only. Her Eleusinian mysteries were open to initiates of any gender or social class. At the heart of both festivals were myths concerning Demeter as Mother and Persephone as her daughter.


title: Demeter

text: In the Roman period, Demeter became conflated with the Roman agricultural goddess Ceres through interpretatio romana. The worship of Demeter has formally merged with that of Ceres around 205 BC, along with the "ritus graecia cereris", a Greek-inspired form of cult, as part of Rome's general religious recruitment of deities as allies against Carthage, towards the end of the Second Punic War. The cult originated in southern Italy (part of Magna Graecia) and was probably based on the Thesmophoria, a mystery cult dedicated to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention". The new cult was installed in the already ancient Temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera, Rome's Aventine patrons of the plebs; from the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at Enna, in Sicily, was acknowledged as Ceres' oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognized as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Persephone. Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone after the latter's abduction into the Underworld by Hades (or Pluto). At the Aventine, the new cult took its place alongside the old. It did not refer to Liber, whose open and gender-mixed cult played a central role in plebeian culture as a patron and protector of plebeian rights, freedoms and values. The exclusively female initiates and priestesses of the new "greek style" mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician-dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality. Unmarried girls should emulate the chastity of Proserpina, the maiden; married women should seek to emulate Ceres, the devoted and fruitful mother. Their rites were intended to secure a good harvest and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries.


title: Demeter

text: Beginning in the 5th century BCE in Asia Minor, Demeter was also considered equivalent to the Phrygian goddess Cybele. Demeter's festival of Thesmophoria was popular throughout Asia Minor, and the myth of Persephone and Adonis in many ways mirrors the myth of Cybele and Attis.


title: Demeter

text: Some late antique sources syncretized several "great goddess" figures into a single deity. For example, the Platonist philosopher Apuleius, writing in the late 2nd century, identified Ceres (Demeter) with Isis, having her declare:


title: Demeter

text: I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven, the health-giving sea winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; ... the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; ... and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen Isis.


title: Demeter

text: Hesiod's "Theogony" (c. 700 BC) describes Demeter as the second daughter and child of Cronus and Rhea. Like her sisters and two of her brothers, she was swallowed as a newborn by her father due to his fear of being overthrown by one of his children; she was freed when her youngest brother Zeus made Cronus disgorge all his children by giving him a special potion.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter is notable as the mother of Persephone, described by both Hesiod and in the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter" as the result of a union with her younger brother Zeus. An alternate recounting of the matter appears in a fragment of the lost Orphic theogony, which preserves part of a myth in which Zeus mates with his mother, Rhea, in the form of a snake, explaining the origin of the symbol on Hermes' staff. Their daughter is said to be Persephone, whom Zeus, in turn, mates with to conceive Dionysus. According to the Orphic fragments, "After becoming the mother of Zeus, she who was formerly Rhea became Demeter."


title: Demeter

text: Before her abduction by Hades, Persephone was known as Kore ("maiden"), and there is some evidence that the figures of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld and Kore, daughter of Demeter, were initially considered separate goddesses. However, they must have become conflated by the time of Hesiod in the 7th century BC. Demeter and Persephone were often worshipped together and were often referred to by joint cultic titles. In their cult at Eleusis, they were referred to simply as "the goddesses", usually distinguished as "the older" and "the younger"; in Rhodes and Sparta, they were worshipped as "the Demeters"; in the Thesmophoria, they were known as "the thesmophoroi" ("the legislators"). In Arcadia they were known as "the Great Goddesses" and "the mistresses". In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called the "queens" (wa-na-ssoi).


title: Demeter

text: Both Homer and Hesiod, writing c. 700 BC, described Demeter making love with the agricultural hero Iasion in a ploughed field. According to Hesiod, this union resulted in the birth of Plutus.


title: Demeter

text: According to Diodorus Siculus, in his "Bibliotheca historica" written in the 1st century BC, Demeter and Zeus were also the parents of Dionysus. Diodorus described the myth of Dionysus' double birth (once from the earth, i.e. Demeter, when the plant sprouts) and once from the vine (when the fruit sprouts from the plant). Diodorus also related a version of the myth of Dionysus' destruction by the Titans ("sons of Gaia"), who boiled him, and how Demeter gathered up his remains so that he could be born a third time (Diod. iii.62). Diodorus states that Dionysus' birth from Zeus and his older sister Demeter was somewhat of a minority belief, possibly via conflation of Demeter with her daughter, as most sources state that the parents of Dionysus were Zeus and Persephone, and later Zeus and Semele.


title: Demeter

text: In Arcadia, a major Arcadian deity known as Despoina ("Mistress") was said to be the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon. According to Pausanias, a Thelpusian tradition said that during Demeter's search for Persephone, Poseidon pursued her. Demeter turned into a horse to avoid her younger brother's advances. However, he turned into a stallion and mated with the goddess, resulting in the birth of the horse god Arion and a daughter "whose name they are not wont to divulge to the uninitiated". Elsewhere, he says that the Phigalians assert that the offspring of Poseidon and Demeter was not a horse, but Despoina, "as the Arcadians call her".


title: Demeter

text: The goddess took Mecon, a young Athenian, as a lover; he was at some point transformed into a poppy flower.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter's daughter Persephone was abducted to the Underworld by Hades, who received permission from her father Zeus to take her as his bride. Demeter searched for her ceaselessly for nine days, preoccupied with her grief. Hecate then approached her and said that while she had not seen what happened to Persephone, she heard her screams. Together the two goddesses went to Helios, the sun god, who witnessed everything that happened on earth thanks to his lofty position. Helios then revealed to Demeter that Hades had snatched a screaming Persephone to make her his wife with the permission of Zeus, the girl's father. Demeter then filled with anger. The seasons halted; living things ceased their growth and began to die. Faced with the extinction of all life on earth, Zeus sent his messenger Hermes to the Underworld to bring Persephone back. Hades agreed to release her if she had eaten nothing while in his realm, but Persephone had eaten a small number of pomegranate seeds. This bound her to Hades and the Underworld for certain months of every year, either the dry Mediterranean summer, when plant life is threatened by drought, or the autumn and winter. There are several variations on the basic myth; the earliest account, the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter", relates that Persephone is secretly slipped a pomegranate seed by Hades and in Ovid's version, Persephone willingly and secretly eats the pomegranate seeds, thinking to deceive Hades, but is discovered and made to stay. Contrary to popular perception, Persephone's time in the Underworld does not correspond with the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendar, nor her return to the upper world with springtime. Demeter's descent to retrieve Persephone from the Underworld is connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries.


title: Demeter

text: The myth of the capture of Persephone seems to be pre-Greek. In the Greek version, Ploutos (πλούτος, wealth) represents the wealth of the corn that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars ("pithoi"). Similar subterranean "pithoi" were used in ancient times for funerary practices. At the beginning of the autumn, when the corn of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother, Demeter, for at this time, the old crop and the new meet each other.


title: Demeter

text: According to the personal mythology of Robert Graves, Persephone is not only the younger self of Demeter, she is in turn also one of three guises of the Triple Goddess – Kore (the youngest, the maiden, signifying young green grain), Persephone (in the middle, the nymph, representing the ripe grain waiting to be harvested), and Hecate (the eldest of the three, the crone, the harvested grain), which to a certain extent reduces the name and role of Demeter to that of the group name. Before her abduction, she is called Kore; and once taken, she becomes Persephone ('she who brings destruction').


title: Demeter

text: In the Orphic tradition, while she was searching for her daughter, a mortal woman named Baubo received Demeter as her guest and offered her a meal and wine. Demeter declined them both because she mourned the loss of Persephone. Baubo then, thinking she had displeased the goddess, lifted her skirt and showed her genitalia to the goddess, simultaneously revealing Iacchus, Demeter's son. Demeter was most pleased with the sight and delighted she accepted the food and wine. This tale survives in the account of Clement of Alexandria, a Christian who tried to discredit pagan practices and mythology. However, several Baubo figurines (figurines of women revealing their vulvas) have been discovered, supporting the story.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter's search for her daughter Persephone took her to the palace of Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. She assumed the form of an old woman and asked him for shelter. He took her in, to nurse Demophon and Triptolemus, his sons by Metanira. To reward his kindness, she planned to make Demophon immortal; she secretly anointed the boy with ambrosia and laid him in the hearth's flames to gradually burn away his mortal self. But Metanira walked in, saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright. Demeter abandoned the attempt. Instead, she taught Triptolemus the secrets of agriculture, and he, in turn, taught them to any who wished to learn them. Thus, humanity learned how to plant, grow and harvest grain. The myth has several versions; some are linked to figures such as Eleusis, Rarus and Trochilus. The Demophon element may be based on an earlier folk tale.


title: Demeter

text: Homer's "Odyssey" (c. late 8th century BC) contains perhaps the earliest direct references to the myth of Demeter and her consort Iasion, a Samothracian hero whose name may refer to bindweed, a small white flower that frequently grows in wheat fields. In the "Odyssey", Calypso describes how Demeter, "without disguise", made love to Iasion. "So it was when Demeter of the braided tresses followed her heart and lay in love with Iasion in the triple-furrowed field; Zeus was aware of it soon enough and hurled the bright thunderbolt and killed him." However, Ovid states that Iasion lived up to old age as the husband of Demeter. In ancient Greek culture, part of the opening of each agricultural year involved the cutting of three furrows in the field to ensure its fertility.


title: Demeter

text: Hesiod expanded on the basics of this myth. According to him, the liaison between Demeter and Iasion took place at the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia in Crete. Demeter, in this version, had lured Iasion away from the other revellers. Hesiod says that Demeter subsequently gave birth to Plutus.


title: Demeter

text: In Arcadia, located in what is now southern Greece, the major goddess Despoina was considered the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon Hippios (""Horse-Poseidon""). In the associated myths, Poseidon represents the river spirit of the Underworld, and he appears as a horse, as often happens in northern European folklore. The myth describes how he pursued his older sister, Demeter, who hid from him among the horses of the king Onkios, but even in the form of a mare, she could not conceal her divinity. Poseidon caught and raped his older sister in the form of a stallion. Demeter was furious at Poseidon's assault; in this furious form, she became known as "Demeter Erinys". Her anger at Poseidon drove her to dress all in black and retreat into a cave to purify herself, an act which was the cause of a universal famine. Demeter's absence caused the death of crops, livestock, and eventually of the people who depended on them (later Arcadian tradition held that it was "both" her rage at Poseidon and her loss of her daughter caused the famine, merging the two myths). Demeter washed away her anger in the River Ladon, becoming "Demeter Lousia", the "bathed Demeter".


title: Demeter

text: "In her alliance with Poseidon," Kerényi noted, "she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of grain or a mare." Moreover, she bore a daughter Despoina (: the "Mistress"), whose name should not be uttered outside the Arcadian Mysteries, and a horse named Arion, with a black mane and tail.


title: Demeter

text: At Phigaleia, a "xoanon" (wood-carved statue) of Demeter was erected in a cave which, tradition held, was the cave into which Black Demeter retreated. The statue depicted a Medusa-like figure with a horse's head and snake-like hair, holding a dove and a dolphin, which probably represented her power over air and water:


title: Demeter

text: Another myth involving Demeter's rage resulting in famine is that of Erysichthon, king of Thessaly. The myth tells of Erysichthon ordering all of the trees in one of Demeter's sacred groves to be cut down, as he wanted to build an extension of his palace and hold feasts there. One tree, a huge oak, was covered with votive wreaths, symbols of the prayers Demeter had granted, so Erysichthon's men refused to cut it down. The king used an axe to cut it down, killing a dryad nymph in the process. The nymph's dying words were a curse on Erysichthon. Demeter punished the king by calling upon Limos, the spirit of unrelenting and insatiable hunger, to enter his stomach. The more the king ate, the hungrier he became. Erysichthon sold all his possessions to buy food but was still hungry. Finally, he sold his daughter, Mestra, into slavery. Mestra was freed from slavery by her former lover, Poseidon, who gave her the gift of shape-shifting into any creature to escape her bonds. Erysichthon used her shape-shifting ability to sell her numerous times to make more money to feed himself, but no amount of food was enough. Eventually, Erysichthon ate himself.


title: Demeter

text: In a variation, Erysichthon tore down a temple of Demeter, wishing to build a roof for his house; she punished him the same way, and near the end of his life, she sent a snake to plague him. Afterwards, Demeter put him among the stars (the constellation Ophiuchus), as she did the snake, to continue to inflict its punishment on Erysichthon.


title: Demeter

text: In the Pergamon Altar, which depicts the battle of the gods against the Giants (Gigantomachy), remains to survive what seems to have been Demeter fighting a Giant labelled "Erysichthon."


title: Demeter

text: Once Tantalus, a son of Zeus, invited the gods over for dinner. Tantalus, wanting to test them, cut his son Pelops, cooked him and offered him as a meal to them. They all saw through Tantalus' crime except Demeter, who ate Pelops' shoulder before the gods brought him back to life.


title: Demeter

text: While travelling far and wide looking for her daughter, Demeter arrived exhausted in Attica. A woman named Misme took her in and offered her a cup of water with pennyroyal and barley groats, for it was a hot day. Demeter, in her thirst, swallowed the drink clumsily. Witnessing that, Misme's son Ascalabus laughed, mocked her, and asked her if she would like a deep jar of that drink. Demeter then poured her drink over him and turned him into a gecko, hated by both men and gods. It was said that Demeter showed her favour to those who killed geckos.


title: Demeter

text: Before Hades abducted her daughter, he had kept the nymph Minthe as his mistress. But after he married Persephone, he set Minthe aside. Minthe would often brag about being lovelier than Persephone and say Hades would soon come back to her and kick Persephone out of his halls. Demeter, hearing that, grew angry and trampled Minthe; from the earth then sprang a lovely-smelling herb named after the nymph. In other versions, Persephone herself is the one who kills and turns Minthe into a plant for sleeping with Hades.


title: Demeter

text: In an Argive myth, when Demeter arrived in Argolis, a man named Colontas refused to receive her in his house, whereas his daughter Chthonia disapproved of his actions. Colontas was punished by being burnt along with his house, while Demeter took Chthonia to Hermione, where she built a sanctuary for the goddess.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter pinned Ascalaphus under a rock for reporting, as sole witness, to Hades that Persephone had consumed some pomegranate seeds. Later, after Heracles rolled the stone off Ascalaphus, Demeter turned him into a short-eared owl instead.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter also turned the Sirens into half-bird monsters for not helping her daughter Persephone when she was abducted by Hades.


title: Demeter

text: Once, the Colchian princess Medea ended a famine that plagued Corinth by making sacrifices to Demeter and the nymphs.


title: Demeter

text: Demeter gave Triptolemus her serpent-drawn chariot and seed and bade him scatter it across the earth (teach humankind the knowledge of agriculture). Triptolemus rode through Europe and Asia until he came to the land of Lyncus, a Scythian king. Lyncus pretended to offer what's accustomed of hospitality to him, but once Triptolemus fell asleep, he attacked him with a dagger, wanting to take credit for his work. Demeter then saved Triptolemus by turning Lyncus into a lynx and ordered Triptolemus to return home airborne. Hyginus records a very similar myth, in which Demeter saves Triptolemus from an evil king named Carnabon who additionally seized Triptolemus' chariot and killed one of the dragons, so he might not escape; Demeter restored the chariot to Triptolemus, substituted the dead dragon with another one, and punished Carnabon by putting him among the stars holding a dragon as if to kill it.


title: Demeter

text: During her wanderings, Demeter came upon the town of Pheneus; to the Pheneates that received her warmly and offered her shelter, she gave all sorts of pulse, except for beans, deeming it impure. Two of the Pheneates, Trisaules and Damithales, had a temple of Demeter built for her. Demeter also gifted a fig tree to Phytalus, an Eleusinian man, for welcoming her in his home.


title: Demeter

text: In the tale of Eros and Psyche, Demeter, along with her sister Hera, visited Aphrodite, raging with fury about the girl who had married her son. Aphrodite asks the two to search for her; the two try to talk sense into her, arguing that her son is not a little boy, although he might appear as one, and there's no harm in him falling in love with Psyche. Aphrodite took offence at their words. Sometime later, Psyche in her wanderings came across an abandoned shrine of Demeter, and sorted out the neglected sickles and harvest implements she found there. As she was doing so, Demeter appeared to her and called from afar; she warned the girl of Aphrodite's great wrath and her plan to take revenge on her. Then Psyche begged the goddess to help her, but Demeter answered that she could not interfere and incur Aphrodite's anger at her, and for that reason, Psyche had to leave the shrine or else be kept as a captive of hers.


title: Demeter

text: When her son Philomelus invented the plough and used it to cultivate the fields, Demeter was so impressed by his good work that she immortalized him in the sky by turning him into a constellation, the Boötes.


title: Demeter

text: Hierax, a man of justice and distinction, set up sanctuaries for Demeter and received plenteous harvests from her in return. He neglected Poseidon in favour of Demeter, so the sea god destroyed all of her crops.


title: Demeter

text: Besides giving gifts to those who were welcoming to her, Demeter was also a goddess who nursed the young; all of Plemaeus's children born by his first wife died in a cradle; Demeter took pity on him and reared herself his son Orthopolis. Plemaeus built a temple to her to thank her. Demeter also raised Trophonius, the prophetic son of either Apollo or Erginus.


title: La Llorona

text: La Llorona (; "The Weeping Woman" or "The Wailer") is a Hispanic-American mythical vengeful ghost who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned.


title: La Llorona

text: Early colonial times provided evidence that the lore is pre-Hispanic, originating in the central highlands. However, La "Llorona" is most commonly associated with the colonial era and the dynamic between Spanish "conquistadores" and indigenous women. The most common lore about La "Llorona" includes her initially being an Indigenous woman who murdered her own children, which she bore from a wealthy Spaniard, after he abandoned her. The villainous qualities of La "Llorona", including infanticide and the murdering of one's own blood is assumed to be connected to the narrative surrounding Doña Marina, also known as La "Malinche", or Maltinzin in her original nomenclature. Today, the lore of La "Llorona" is well known in Mexico and the Southwestern United States.


title: La Llorona

text: The earliest documentation of La Llorona is traced back to 1550 in Mexico City. But there are theories about her story being connected to specific Aztec mythological creation stories. "The Hungry Woman" includes a wailing woman constantly crying for food, which has been compared to La Llorona's signature nocturnal wailing for her children. The motherly nature of La Llorona's tragedy has been compared to Chihuacoatl, an Aztec goddess deity of motherhood. Her seeking of children to keep for herself is significantly compared to Coatlicue, known as "Our Lady Mother" or Tonantsi (who's also comparable to the Virgen de Guadalupe, another significant mother figure in Mexican-culture), also a monster that devours filth or sin.


title: La Llorona

text: The legend of La Llorona is traditionally told throughout Mexico, Central America and northern South America.


title: La Llorona

text: Stories of weeping female phantoms are common in the folklore of both Iberian and Amerindian cultures. Scholars have pointed out similarities between and the of Aztec mythology, as well as Eve and Lilith of Hebrew mythology. Author Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of , published in "Mysterious New Mexico", found common elements of the story in a German folktale dating from 1486. also bears a resemblance to the ancient Greek tale of the demigoddess Lamia, in which Hera, Zeus' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia kills other women's children.


title: La Llorona

text: The Florentine Codex is an important text that originated in late Mexico in 1519, a quote from which is, "The sixth omen was that many times a woman would be heard going along weeping and shouting. She cried out loudly at night, saying, "Oh my children, we are about to go forever." Sometimes she said, "Oh my children, where am I to take you?"


title: La Llorona

text: While the roots of the legend appear to be pre-Hispanic, the earliest published reference to the legend is a 19th-century sonnet by Mexican poet Manuel Carpio. The poem makes no reference to infanticide, rather is identified as the ghost of a woman named Rosalia who was murdered by her husband.


title: La Llorona

text: The legend has a wide variety of details and versions. In a typical version of the legend, a beautiful woman named María marries a rich "ranchero / conquistador" to whom she bears two children. One day, María sees her husband with another woman and in a fit of blind rage, she drowns their children in a river, which she immediately regrets. Unable to save them and consumed by guilt, she drowns herself as well but is unable to enter the afterlife, forced to be in purgatory and roam this earth until she finds her children.


title: La Llorona

text: In another version of the story, her children are illegitimate, and she drowns them so that their father cannot take them away to be raised by his new wife. Recurring themes in variations on the myth include a white, wet dress, nocturnal wailing, and an association with water.


title: La Llorona

text: The legend of is deeply rooted in Mexican popular culture, her story told to children to encourage them not to wander off in the dark and near bodies of water such as rivers and lakes alone, and her spirit often evoked in artwork, such as that of Alejandro Colunga. is a yearly waterfront theatrical performance of the legend of set in the canals of the Xochimilco borough of Mexico City, established in 1993 to coincide with the Day of the Dead.


title: La Llorona

text: She can be seen in most parts of Mexico and children are typically warned to not go near rivers or lakes at night. Some say that if you hear her cries being distant it means she's close, and if they seem close that she's far. She usually has a loud cry kind of like a coyote/owl and typically screams " Ay mis hijos " meaning "oh my children".


title: La Llorona

text: According to the local legend, in Guatemala City lived a woman who had an affair with a lover. She became pregnant, gave birth to a child named Juan de la Cruz who she drowned so her husband would not know. The woman was condemned in the afterlife to search for her murdered son in every place where there's a pool of water. She does that by crying out for himhence her moniker of the Wailing Woman (). It is a popular scary legend that in one iteration or another has been told to generations of children. The terrifying cry of "Oh, my children!!" (Ay mis hijos!!) is well known due to the story. Additionally, one peculiar detail is that when a person hears the cry from afar means that the ghost is nearby, but if the cry is heard nearby, it means the ghost is afar. Someone unlucky enough to face the specter is "won over" to the afterlife, never to be seen again.


title: La Llorona

text: In the Southwestern United States, the story of is told to scare children into good behavior, sometimes specifically to deter children from playing near dangerous water. Also told to them is that her cries are heard as she walks around the street or near bodies of water to scare children from wandering around, resembling the stories of "El Cucuy". In Chumash mythology indigenous to Southern California, is linked to the , a mythological creature with a cry similar to that of a newborn baby.\


title: La Llorona

text: People have said they've have experience seeing "La Llorona" in southern parts of The United State such as Texas, California and New Mexico. Mainly areas that used to be part of Mexico.


title: La Llorona

text: The tale of "La Llorona" is set in the Venezuelan Llanos during the colonial period. "La Llorona" is said to be the spirit of a woman that died of sorrow after her children were killed, either by herself or by her family.


title: La Llorona

text: In Eastern Europe, the modern Rusalka is a type of water spirit in Slavic mythology. They come to be after a woman drowns due to suicide or murder, especially if they had an unwanted pregnancy. Then they must stay in this world for a period of time.


title: La Llorona

text: The story of first appeared on film in 1933's "La Llorona", filmed in Mexico. René Cardona's 1960 film "La Llorona" was also shot in Mexico, as was the 1963 horror film, "The Curse of the Crying Woman" directed by Rafael Baledón.


title: La Llorona

text: The 2008 Mexican horror film "Kilometer 31" is inspired by the legend of . Additionally the early 2000s saw a spate of low-budget movies based on , including:


title: La Llorona

text: In the 2017 Pixar film "Coco", "La Llorona", the Mexican folk song popularized by Andres Henestrosa in 1941 is sung by Alanna Ubach in her role as Mamá Imelda, joined by Antonio Sol as the singing voice of Ernesto de la Cruz.


title: La Llorona

text: In July 2019, James Wan, Gary Dauberman and Emilie Gladstone produced a film titled "The Curse of La Llorona" for Warner Bros. Pictures. The film was directed by Michael Chaves and stars Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez and Marisol Ramirez as La Llorona.


title: La Llorona

text: Also in 2019, Jayro Bustamante directed the Guatemalan film "La Llorona", starring María Mercedes Coroy, which screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.


title: La Llorona

text: "The Legend of La Llorona" was a film released in January 2022 and stars Danny Trejo, Autumn Reeser, and Antonio Cupo.


title: La Llorona

text: Mexican playwright Josefina López wrote "Unconquered Spirits", which uses the myth of as a plot device. The play premiered at California State University, Northridge's Little Theatre in 1995.


title: La Llorona

text: The novel "Paola Santiago and the River of Tears", the first part of a young adult trilogy by Tehlor Kay Mejia, is based on the legend of La Llorona. Also La Llorona was portrayed by a story, by the TV show called the Grimm.


title: La Llorona

text: "La Llorona" is a Mexican folk song popularized by Andres Henestrosa in 1941. It has since been covered by various musicians, including Chavela Vargas, Joan Baez, and Lila Downs.


title: La Llorona

text: North American singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela's debut album "La Llorona" (1997) explored the dark mysteries of Latin folklore. She combined a variety of musical genres including klezmer, gypsy jazz and Mexican folk music, all in the Spanish language. The album was certified Platinum in Canada, and it earned her a Canadian Juno Award for Best Global Artist in 1998.


title: La Llorona

text: Manic Hispanic, a rock band from Los Angeles, California, have a song titled "She Turned Into Llorona" on their 2003 album "Mijo Goes To Jr. College".


title: La Llorona

text: is an antagonist in the TV series "Supernatural", portrayed by Sarah Shahi in the pilot episode and by Shanae Tomasevich in "Moriah" and season 15.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Amandla Stenberg (born October 23, 1998) is an American actress. She was included in "Time"s list of Most Influential Teens in both 2015 and 2016, and has received several accolades, including a Teen Choice Award, an NAACP Image Award, and nominations for four Black Reel Awards and a Critics' Choice Award.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Stenberg made her acting debut with the film "Colombiana" (2011), and had her breakthrough playing Rue in the film "The Hunger Games" (2012), for which she won the Teen Choice Award for Best Chemistry. She had the recurring role of Macey Irving in the series "Sleepy Hollow" (2013–2014), voiced Bia in "Rio 2" (2014) and starred as Halle Foster in the sitcom "Mr. Robinson" (2015). She garnered acclaim for her portrayals of Maddy Whittier in "Everything, Everything" (2017) and Starr Carter in the film "The Hate U Give" (2018), the latter of which won her the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and earned her a nomination for the Critics' Choice Award for Best Young Actor/Actress. Stenberg also starred as Ruby in "The Darkest Minds" (2018), Leyna in "Where Hands Touch" (2018), Julie in the Netflix miniseries "The Eddy" (2020) and Alana Beck in "Dear Evan Hansen" (2021).


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Stenberg has been recognized for her outspoken views, particularly towards her activism for LGBT youth, which has received significant media coverage. In 2015, she made her musical debut as part of the folk-rock duo Honeywater. Her single, "Let My Baby Stay" was featured in her film "Everything, Everything".


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Amandla Stenberg was born in Los Angeles, California, the child of Karen Brailsford, an African-American spiritual counselor and writer, and Tom Stenberg, who is Danish. Her paternal grandmother had Greenlandic Inuit ancestry. Stenberg has two older half-sisters on her father's side.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Her first name means "power" or "strength" in the South African languages of IsiXhosa and Zulu. At age four, Stenberg started doing catalog modeling shoots for Disney. She has appeared in commercials for clients such as Boeing.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2011, she appeared in her first feature film, "Colombiana", as a younger version of Zoe Saldana's character. Her breakthrough came at the age of 14, when she was cast as Rue in the 2012 film "The Hunger Games". The film was a critical and financial success, and Stenberg's performance was praised. She received a number of awards and nominations, including a Black Reel Award nomination. In 2013, she was cast in the short film "Mercy" playing the daughter of Robin Thicke and Paula Patton; Thicke directed the film. Stenberg had a recurring role on season one of "Sleepy Hollow" from 2013 to 2014.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2013, Stenberg began performing on the violin and singing harmonies at Los Angeles venues with singer-songwriter Zander Hawley. In 2014, Stenberg voiced Bia in the animated film "Rio 2", which was a commercial success. In 2015, Stenberg released her first EP in August 2015 as the folk-rock duo Honeywater. In 2015, she released the video "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows". She played series regular Halle Foster on the short-lived series "Mr. Robinson", which ran in 2015. Stenberg co-wrote the comic book "Niobe: She is Life" with Sebastian Jones, which was illustrated by Ashley A. Woods, and published in November 2015. It is the first nationally distributed comic that has a black woman as its protagonist, author, and another as the artist.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2016, Stenberg appeared in the music video for "Lemonade" by Beyoncé, and won the BET YoungStars Award. In the same year, she signed with The Society, a modelling agency. Also in 2016, Stenberg had auditioned for the role of Shuri in the superhero film "Black Panther", however, she walked away because she felt that she was not right for the role. She told Variety in 2018: "It was so exhilarating to see it fulfilled by people who should have been a part of it and who deserved it and who were right for it. I just wasn't." The role was instead given to actress Letitia Wright.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2017, Stenberg and Sebastian Jones released "Niobe: She is Death", the second part of the trilogy. In the same year, she starred in the romantic drama "Everything, Everything", directed by Stella Meghie, and co-starring Nick Robinson. Her single, "Let My Baby Stay", was featured in the film's soundtrack. She received praise for her performance, and earned a Teen Choice Award nomination.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2018, she played the lead role of Starr Carter in the contemporary drama "The Hate U Give", based on the novel of the same name, which is about the Black Lives Matter movement. The film was received positively, and Stenberg received critical acclaim for her performance, with the magazine "Rolling Stone" writing "It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg's incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene." The film's director, George Tillman Jr. wrote that "She has this ability to make you feel like you're seeing the real deal, which comes from a level of dedication to the material that's rare at any age." She earned several awards and nominations for the role, which include winning an NAACP Image Award and being nominated for a Critics' Choice Award. In late 2018, Stenberg starred in Amma Asante's World War II drama "Where Hands Touch".


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2019, Stenberg portrayed Elizabeth Eckford, a 15-year-old girl who in 1957 was among a group of nine black students who were initially prevented from entering a racially segregated high school in Little Rock, during a segment on the television show "Drunk History" (2019). In May 2019, she joined the cast of the Netflix miniseries "The Eddy", which was released on May 8, 2020. That same month, she signed on to star in the remake of the 1996 thriller film "Fear". In August 2020, she was cast as Alana Beck in Stephen Chbosky's film adaptation of the broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen". She also collaborated with the show's composers, Pasek and Paul, on "The Anonymous Ones," a new song written specifically for her character, whose role was expanded upon from the stage version. In 2021, Stenberg was cast in the main role for the upcoming "Star Wars" series "The Acolyte".


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In 2016, Stenberg announced via Instagram that she would be studying filmmaking at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She ultimately decided against attending the school, as she found herself booking jobs, and instead chose to continue with her acting career.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: In January 2016, Stenberg came out as bisexual though she subsequently stated that pansexual was an accurate term as well. That March, Stenberg came out as non-binary, and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns. In June 2018, in an interview with "Wonderland" magazine, she came out as gay.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: From early 2018 to late 2018, Stenberg dated singer Mikaela Mullaney Straus, better known by her stage name King Princess. In a July 2017 interview, Stenberg said she had stopped using a smartphone, believing that such devices and social media can have a negative effect on mental health. In 2020, she spent three months living in Copenhagen in order to qualify for Danish citizenship.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: "Dazed" magazine named Stenberg "one of the most incendiary voices of her generation" when it featured her on its Autumn 2015 cover. She was included in "Time"s list of Most Influential Teens in 2015 and again in 2016. In 2016, she was included in the "SuperSoul 100" list of visionaries and influential leaders by Oprah Winfrey.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Stenberg is an intersectional feminist. She is outspoken about her political views in interviews and on social media and was named "Feminist of the Year" in 2015 by the Ms. Foundation for Women. She has spoken publicly on social media about cultural appropriation. Her video "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows" admonished Kylie Jenner for adopting that traditionally African-American hairstyle. In April 2016, Stenberg gave a speech at WE Day California, a WE Charity event.


title: Amandla Stenberg

text: Stenberg's accolades include an NAACP Image Award, a Teen Choice Award, and nominations for four Black Reel Awards and a Critics' Choice Award. She has also won awards for her activism.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". In 1996, "Entertainment Weekly" recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including "One Week" (1920), "The Playhouse" (1921), "Cops" (1922), and "The Electric House" (1922). He then moved to feature-length films; several of them, such as "Sherlock Jr." (1924), "The General" (1926), "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928), and "The Cameraman" (1928), remain highly regarded. "The General" is widely viewed as his masterpiece: Orson Welles considered it "the greatest comedy ever made...and perhaps the greatest film ever made". Keaton's art has inspired full academic study.


title: Buster Keaton

text: His career declined when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and lost his artistic independence. His wife divorced him, and he descended into alcoholism. He recovered in the 1940s, remarried, and revived his career as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Keaton (née Cutler), was when she went into labor. He was named Joseph to continue a tradition on his father's side (he was sixth in a line bearing the name Joseph Keaton) and Frank for his maternal grandfather, who disapproved of his parents' union. His father was Joseph Hallie "Joe" Keaton, who owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, or the Keaton Houdini Medicine Show Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side.


title: Buster Keaton

text: According to a frequently repeated story, which may be apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname Buster at the age of 18 months. After the child fell down a long flight of stairs without injury, an actor friend named George Pardey remarked, "Gee whiz, he's a regular buster!" After this, Keaton's father began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster. Keaton retold the anecdote over the years, including in a 1964 interview with the CBC's "Telescope". In Keaton's retelling, he was six months old when the incident occurred, and Harry Houdini gave him the nickname (though the family did not get to know Houdini until later).


title: Buster Keaton

text: At the age of three, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. Myra played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Keaton performed center stage. The young Keaton goaded his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton responded by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton's clothing to aid with the constant tossing. The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse, and occasionally, arrest. However, Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as "The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged", and the overall act as "The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage". Decades later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In 1914, he told the "Detroit News": "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton said he had so much fun that he sometimes began laughing as his father threw him across the stage. Noticing that this caused the audience to laugh less, he adopted his famous deadpan expression when performing.


title: Buster Keaton

text: The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. According to one biographer, Keaton was made to go to school while performing in New York, but only attended for part of one day. Despite tangles with the law, Keaton was a rising star in the theater. He stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Keaton's career quickly moved from vaudeville to film.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France with the United States Army's 40th Infantry Division during World War I. His unit remained intact and was not broken up to provide replacements, as happened to some other late-arriving divisions. During his time in uniform, he suffered an ear infection that permanently impaired his hearing.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton spent the summers of 1908–1916 "at the 'Actor's Colony' in the Bluffton neighborhood of Muskegon, along with other famous vaudevillians."


title: Buster Keaton

text: In February 1917, he met Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. Joe Keaton disapproved of films, and Keaton also had reservations about the medium. During his first meeting with Arbuckle, he was asked to jump in and start acting. Keaton was such a natural in his first film, "The Butcher Boy," he was hired on the spot. At the end of the day, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. He took the camera back to his hotel room where he dismantled and reassembled it by morning. Keaton later said that he was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire gag department. He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular, and contrary to Keaton's later reputation as "The Great Stone Face", he often smiled and even laughed in them. Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends, and Keaton was one of few people, along with Charlie Chaplin, to defend Arbuckle's character during accusations that he was responsible for the death of actress Virginia Rappe. (Arbuckle was eventually acquitted, with an apology from the jury for the ordeal he underwent.)


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1920, "The Saphead" was released, in which Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature. It was based on a successful play, "The New Henrietta", which had already been filmed once, under the title "The Lamb", with Douglas Fairbanks playing the lead. Fairbanks recommended Keaton to take the role for the remake five years later, since the film was to have a comic slant.


title: Buster Keaton

text: After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including "One Week" (1920), "The Playhouse" (1921), "Cops" (1922), and "The Electric House" (1922). Keaton then moved to full-length features.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton's writers included Clyde Bruckman, Joseph Mitchell, and Jean Havez, but the most ingenious gags were generally conceived by Keaton himself. Comedy director Leo McCarey, recalling the freewheeling days of making slapstick comedies, said, "All of us tried to steal each other's gagmen. But we had no luck with Keaton because he thought up his best gags himself and we couldn't steal "him!"" The more adventurous ideas called for dangerous stunts, performed by Keaton at great physical risk. During the railroad water-tank scene in "Sherlock Jr.", Keaton broke his neck when a torrent of water fell on him from a water tower, but he did not realize it until years afterwards. A scene from "Steamboat Bill, Jr." required Keaton to stand still on a particular spot. Then, the facade of a two-story building toppled forward on top of Keaton. Keaton's character emerged unscathed, due to a single open window. The stunt required precision, because the prop house weighed two tons, and the window only offered a few inches of clearance around Keaton's body. The sequence furnished one of the most memorable images of his career.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Aside from "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928), Keaton's most enduring feature-length films include "Our Hospitality" (1923), "The Navigator" (1924), "Sherlock Jr." (1924), "Seven Chances" (1925), "The Cameraman" (1928), and "The General" (1926). "The General", set during the American Civil War, combined physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline reenacted an actual wartime incident. Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy, and reviewers questioned Keaton's judgment in making a comedic film about the Civil War, even while noting it had a "few laughs."


title: Buster Keaton

text: It was an expensive misfire (the climactic scene of a locomotive plummeting through a burning bridge was the most expensive single shot in silent-film history), and Keaton was never entrusted with total control over his films again. His distributor, United Artists, insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements. Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, and his career in the early sound era was hurt as a result.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton's last three features had been produced and released independently, under Keaton's control, and fell short of financial expectations at the box office. In 1928 film executive Nicholas Schenck arranged a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Keaton's services. Keaton had little to say about the details of the MGM contract; he would no longer have any financial responsibility for his films, and even his salary had been pre-negotiated, without his own input. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd advised him against making the move, cautioning that he would lose his independence. But, given Schenck's desire to keep things "in the family" and Keaton's having to admit that his independent pictures hadn't done well, Keaton agreed to sign with MGM. He would later cite this as the worst business decision of his life in his autobiography.


title: Buster Keaton

text: He realized too late that the studio system MGM represented would severely limit his creative input. The giant studio was run along strict factory lines, with everything planned and budgeted in advance. The first of MGM's Keaton films was "The Cameraman" (1928), and Keaton sensed trouble immediately when he saw the script. "It was as long as "War and Peace"," Keaton recalled. "I took out 40 useless characters and a couple of subplots. These guys didn't realize -- they "still" don't realize -- that the best comedies are simple. I said, 'I'd like to do something with a drunk and a fat lady and a kid. Get 'em for me.' At my studio they would have the characters I wanted in 10 minutes. But not MGM. You had to requisition a toothpick in triplicate. I just stood there, and everybody is hassling."


title: Buster Keaton

text: When the studio began making talking films, Keaton was enthused about the new technology and wanted to make his next film, "Spite Marriage", with sound. MGM refused, because the film was more valuable in silent form; it could be shown around the world in theaters that had not converted to sound. Also, soundstages were then at a premium, and MGM usually reserved them for dramatic productions. MGM also forced Keaton to use a stunt double during some of the more dangerous scenes, something he had never done in his heyday, as MGM wanted badly to protect its investment. "...stuntmen don't get you laughs," Keaton had said.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times: once in English, once in Spanish, and once in either French or German. The actors would phonetically memorize the foreign-language scripts a few lines at a time and shoot immediately after. This is discussed in the TCM documentary "Buster Keaton: So Funny it Hurt", with Keaton complaining about having to shoot lousy films not just once, but three times.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton kept trying to persuade his bosses to let him do things his way. Production head Irving Thalberg would not permit Keaton to create a script from scratch because the studio had already purchased a stage property, "Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath", at the suggestion of Lawrence Weingarten, who was Thalberg's brother-in-law and Keaton's producer. However, Thalberg did allow Keaton to stage the gags, including long stretches of pantomime, and agreed to send a crew to Keaton's own mansion for exterior shots. The film version was released as "A Buster Keaton Production" in 1931.


title: Buster Keaton

text: The next project confirmed Keaton's fears about studio interference. He was handed a script titled "Sidewalks of New York" (1932), in which he played a millionaire becoming involved with a slum-neighborhood girl and a gang of rowdy kids. Keaton thought the premise was totally unsuitable, and was uncomfortable with his directors Jules White and Zion Myers, who emphasized blunt slapstick. "I went over (Weingarten's) head and appealed to Irving Thalberg to help get me out of the assignment. Irving was usually on my side, but this time he said, 'Larry likes it. Everybody else in the studio likes the story. You are the only one who doesn't.' In the end, I gave up like a fool and said 'what the hell?' Who was I to say I was right and everyone was wrong?" Keaton made the film anyway, and was amazed that it became his biggest boxoffice success.


title: Buster Keaton

text: MGM had been featuring comical musician Cliff Edwards in Keaton's films. The studio replaced Edwards, who had substance-abuse problems, with nightclub comedian Jimmy Durante. The laconic Keaton and the rambunctious Durante offered enough contrast to function as a team, resulting in three very successful films: "Speak Easily" (1932), "The Passionate Plumber" (1932), and "What! No Beer?" (1933). The latter was Keaton's last starring feature in his home country. (Thirty years later, both Keaton and Durante had cameo roles in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", albeit not in the same scenes.)


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton was so demoralized during the production of 1933's "What! No Beer?" that MGM fired him after the filming was completed, despite the film being a commercial hit. In 1934, Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, "Le Roi des Champs-Élysées". During this period, he made another film in England, "The Invader" (released in the United States as "An Old Spanish Custom" in 1936).


title: Buster Keaton

text: Upon Keaton's return to Hollywood in 1934, he made a screen comeback in two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures. Most of these 16 films are simple visual comedies, with many of the gags supplied by Keaton himself, often recycling ideas from his family vaudeville act and his earlier films. Keaton had a free hand in staging the films, within the studio's budgetary limits and using its staff writers. The Educational two-reelers have far more pantomime than his earlier talkies, and Keaton is in good form throughout. The high point in the Educational series is "Grand Slam Opera" (1936), featuring Keaton in his own screenplay as an amateur-hour contestant.


title: Buster Keaton

text: When the Educational series lapsed in 1937, Keaton returned to MGM as a gag writer, supplying material for the final three Marx Brothers MGM films: "At the Circus" (1939), "Go West" (1940), and "The Big Store" (1941); these were not as artistically successful as the Marxes' previous MGM features. Keaton also directed three one-reel novelty shorts for the studio, but these did not result in further directorial assignments.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1939, Columbia Pictures hired Keaton to star in 10 two-reel comedies; the series ran for two years, and comprise his last series as a starring comedian. The director was usually Jules White, whose emphasis on slapstick and farce made most of these films resemble White's famous Three Stooges shorts. Keaton's personal favorite was the series' debut, "Pest from the West", a shorter, tighter remake of Keaton's little-viewed 1934 feature "The Invader"; it was directed not by White but by Del Lord, a veteran director for Mack Sennett. Moviegoers and exhibitors welcomed Keaton's Columbia comedies.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton's personal life had stabilized with his 1940 marriage to MGM dancer Eleanor Norris, and now he was taking life a little easier, abandoning Columbia for the less strenuous field of feature films. Resuming his daily job as an MGM gag writer, he provided material for Red Skelton and gave help and advice to Lucille Ball.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton accepted various character roles in both "A" and "B" features. He made his last starring feature, "El Moderno Barba Azul" (1946), in Mexico; the film was a low-budget production, and it may not have been seen in the United States until its release on VHS in the 1980s, under the title "Boom in the Moon". The film has a largely negative reputation, with renowned film historian Kevin Brownlow calling it the worst film ever made.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949 and producers occasionally hired him for bigger "prestige" pictures. He had cameos in such films as "In the Good Old Summertime" (1949), "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), and "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956). In "In the Good Old Summertime", Keaton personally directed the stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson in their first scene together, where they bump into each other on the street. Keaton invented comedy bits where Johnson keeps trying to apologize to a seething Garland, but winds up messing up her hairdo and tearing her dress.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton also appeared in a comedy routine about two inept stage musicians in Charlie Chaplin's "Limelight" (released in 1952), recalling the vaudeville of "The Playhouse". With the exception of "Seeing Stars", a minor publicity film produced in 1922, "Limelight" was the only time in which the two would ever appear together on film.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1949, comedian Ed Wynn invited Keaton to appear on his CBS Television comedy-variety show, "The Ed Wynn Show", which was televised live on the West Coast. Kinescopes were made for distribution of the programs to other parts of the country, since there was no transcontinental coaxial cable until September 1951. Reaction was strong enough for a local Los Angeles station to offer Keaton his own show, also broadcast live, in 1950.


title: Buster Keaton

text: "Life with Buster Keaton" (1951) was an attempt to recreate the first series on film, allowing the program to be broadcast nationwide. The series benefited from a company of veteran actors, including Marcia Mae Jones as the ingenue, Iris Adrian, Dick Wessel, Fuzzy Knight, Dub Taylor, Philip Van Zandt, and his silent-era contemporaries Harold Goodwin, Hank Mann, and stuntman Harvey Parry. Keaton's wife Eleanor also was seen in the series (notably as Juliet to Keaton's Romeo in a little-theater vignette). The theatrical feature film "The Misadventures of Buster Keaton" was fashioned from the series. Keaton said that he canceled the filmed series himself, because he was unable to create enough fresh material to produce a new show each week.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton's periodic television appearances during the 1950s and 1960s helped to revive interest in his silent films. He appeared in the early television series "Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town". Whenever a TV show wanted to simulate silent-movie comedy, Keaton answered the call and guested in such successful series as "The Ken Murray Show", "You Asked for It", and "The Garry Moore Show", and "The Ed Sullivan Show". Well into his fifties, Keaton successfully recreated his old routines, including one stunt in which he propped one foot onto a table, then swung the second foot up next to it and held the awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you.' He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it—it "hurt"—but you had to care enough not to care."


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1954, Keaton and Eleanor met film programmer Raymond Rohauer, with whom they developed a business partnership to re-release his films. Actor James Mason had bought the Keatons' house and found numerous cans of films, among which was Keaton's long-lost classic "The Boat". Keaton had prints of the features "Three Ages", "Sherlock Jr.", "Steamboat Bill, Jr.", and "College" (missing one reel), and the shorts "The Boat" and "My Wife's Relations", which Keaton and Rohauer then transferred to Cellulose acetate film from deteriorating nitrate film stock.


title: Buster Keaton

text: From 1950 through 1964, Keaton made around 70 guest appearances on television variety shows, including those of Ed Sullivan and Garry Moore. Keaton also found steady work as an actor in TV commercials for Colgate, Alka-Seltzer, U.S. Steel, 7-Up, RCA Victor, Phillips 66, Milky Way, Ford Motors, Minute Rub, and Budweiser, among others. In a series of silent television commercials for Simon Pure Beer made in 1962 by Jim Mohr in Buffalo, New York, Keaton revisited some of the gags from his silent film days.


title: Buster Keaton

text: On April 3, 1957, Keaton was surprised by Ralph Edwards for the weekly NBC program "This Is Your Life". The program also promoted the release of the biographical film "The Buster Keaton Story" with Donald O'Connor. In December 1958, Keaton was a guest star in the episode "A Very Merry Christmas" of "The Donna Reed Show" on ABC. He returned to the program in 1965 in the episode "Now You See It, Now You Don't". In August 1960, Keaton played mute King Sextimus the Silent in the national touring company of the Broadway musical "Once Upon A Mattress". In 1960, he returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in a 1960 adaptation of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Much of the film was shot on location on the Sacramento River, which doubled for the Mississippi River setting of Twain's book. In 1961, he starred in "The Twilight Zone" episode "Once Upon a Time", which included both silent and sound sequences. He worked with comedian Ernie Kovacs on a television pilot tentatively titled "Medicine Man," shooting scenes for it on January 12, 1962—the day before Kovacs died in a car crash. "Medicine Man" was completed but not aired.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1961, Keaton appeared in promotional films for Maryvale, a housing development in the western part of Phoenix.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Meanwhile, Keaton's big-screen career continued. He had a cameo as Jimmy, appearing near the end of the film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963). Jimmy assists Spencer Tracy's character, Captain C. G. Culpepper, by readying Culpepper's ultimately-unused boat for his abortive escape. (The restored version of that film, released in 2013, contains a scene where Jimmy and Culpeper talk on the telephone. Lost after the comedy epic's "roadshow" exhibition, the audio of that scene was discovered and combined with still pictures to recreate the scene.)


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton starred in five films for American International Pictures: "Pajama Party" (1964), "Beach Blanket Bingo", "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini", and "Sergeant Deadhead" (all 1965), and "War Italian Style" (1966, co-starring the Italian comedy team of Franco and Ciccio). Director William Asher recalled:


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1965, Keaton starred in the short film "The Railrodder" for the National Film Board of Canada. He traveled from one end of Canada to the other on a motorized handcar, wearing his traditional pork pie hat and performing gags similar to those in films that he made 50 years before. The film is also notable for being his last silent screen performance. He played the central role in Samuel Beckett's "Film" (1965), directed by Alan Schneider.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In 1965 he appeared on the CBS television special "A Salute to Stan Laurel", a tribute to the comedian and friend of Keaton who had died earlier that year.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton's last commercial film appearance was in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1966), which was filmed in Spain in September–November 1965. He amazed the cast and crew by doing many of his own stunts, although the Thames Television documentary reported that his increasingly ill health did force the use of a stunt double for some scenes. His final appearance on film was in "The Scribe", a 1966 safety film produced in Toronto by the Construction Safety Associations of Ontario: he died shortly after completing it.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton started experimenting with parody during his vaudeville years, where most frequently his performances involved impressions and burlesques of other performers' acts. Most of these parodies targeted acts with which Keaton had shared the bill. When Keaton transposed his experience in vaudeville to film, in many works he parodied melodramas. Other favorite targets were cinematic plots, structures and devices.


title: Buster Keaton

text: One of his most biting parodies is "The Frozen North" (1922), a satirical take on William S. Hart's Western melodramas, like "Hell's Hinges" (1916) and "The Narrow Trail" (1917). Keaton parodied the tired formula of the melodramatic transformation from bad guy to good guy, which Hart's characters went through, known as "the good badman". He wears a small version of Hart's campaign hat from the Spanish–American War and a six-shooter on each thigh, and during the scene in which he shoots the neighbor and her husband, he reacts with thick glycerin tears, a trademark of Hart's. Audiences of the 1920s recognized the parody and thought the film hysterically funny. However, Hart himself was not amused by Keaton's antics, particularly the crying scene, and did not speak to Keaton for two years after he had seen the film. The film's opening intertitles give it its mock-serious tone, and are taken from "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" by Robert W. Service.


title: Buster Keaton

text: In "The Playhouse" (1921), he parodied his contemporary Thomas H. Ince, Hart's producer, who indulged in over-crediting himself in his film productions. The short also featured the impression of a performing monkey which was likely derived from a co-biller's act (called "Peter the Great"). "Three Ages" (1923), his first feature-length film, is a parody of D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916), from which it replicates the three inter-cut shorts structure. "Three Ages" also featured parodies of Bible stories, like those of Samson and Daniel. Keaton directed the film, along with Edward F. Cline. By this time, Keaton had further developed his distinct signature style that consisted of lucidity and precision along with acrobatics of ballistic precision and kineticism. Critic and film historian Imogen Sara Smith stated about Keaton's style:"the coolness and subtlety of his style [is] very cinematic in terms of recognising that the camera can pick up very, very small effects".


title: Buster Keaton

text: Film critic David Thomson later described Keaton's style of comedy: "Buster plainly is a man inclined towards a belief in nothing but mathematics and absurdity ... like a number that has always been searching for the right equation. Look at his face—as beautiful but as inhuman as a butterfly—and you see that utter failure to identify sentiment." Gilberto Perez commented on "Keaton's genius as an actor to keep a face so nearly deadpan and yet render it, by subtle inflections, so vividly expressive of inner life. His large, deep eyes are the most eloquent feature; with merely a stare, he can convey a wide range of emotions, from longing to mistrust, from puzzlement to sorrow." Critic Anthony Lane also noted Keaton's body language:


title: Buster Keaton

text: The traditional Buster stance requires that he remain upstanding, full of backbone, looking ahead... [in "The General"] he clambers onto the roof of his locomotive and leans gently forward to scan the terrain, with the breeze in his hair and adventure zipping toward him around the next bend. It is the "angle" that you remember: the figure perfectly straight but tilted forward, like the Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood of a Rolls-Royce... [in "The Three Ages"], he drives a low-grade automobile over a bump in the road, and the car just "crumbles" beneath him. Rerun it on video, and you can see Buster riding the collapse like a surfer, hanging onto the steering wheel, coming beautifully to rest as the wave of wreckage breaks.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Buster Keaton's comedy endures not just because he had a face that belongs on Mount Rushmore, at once hauntingly immovable and classically American, but because that face was attached to one of the most gifted actors and directors who ever graced the screen. Evolved from the knockabout upbringing of the vaudeville stage, Keaton's comedy is a whirlwind of hilarious, technically precise, adroitly executed, and surprising gags, very often set against a backdrop of visually stunning set pieces and locations—all this masked behind his unflinching, stoic veneer.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton designed and modified his own pork pie hats during his career. In 1964, he told an interviewer that in making "this particular pork pie", he "started with a good Stetson and cut it down", stiffening the brim with sugar water. The hats were often destroyed during Keaton's wild film antics; some were given away as gifts and some were snatched by souvenir hunters. Keaton said he was lucky if he used only six hats in making a film. He estimated that he and his wife Eleanor made thousands of hats during his career. Keaton observed that during his silent period, such a hat cost him around two dollars (~$27–33 in 2022 dollars); at the time of his interview, he said, they cost almost $13 (~$116 in 2022 dollars).


title: Buster Keaton

text: On May 31, 1921, Keaton married Natalie Talmadge, his leading lady in "Our Hospitality", and the sister of actresses Norma Talmadge (married to his business partner Joseph M. Schenck at the time) and Constance Talmadge, at Norma's home in Bayside, Queens. They had two sons: Joseph, called James (June 2, 1922 – February 14, 2007), and Robert (February 3, 1924 – July 19, 2009).


title: Buster Keaton

text: After Robert's birth, the marriage began to suffer. Talmadge decided not to have any more children, banishing Keaton to a separate bedroom; he dated actresses Dorothy Sebastian and Kathleen Key during this period. Natalie's extravagance was another factor, spending up to a third of her husband's earnings.


title: Buster Keaton

text: It was clear that Mr. Keaton and Mrs. Keaton had different ideas and lifestyles. Keaton had designed and built a modest but comfortable, cottage-like home as a surprise wedding gift for his bride. When she saw the little house, she flew into a rage: she thought the house was much too small, with no place for servants. Realizing that his bride wanted a palace, he sold the cottage to MGM executive Eddie Mannix at cost, and commissioned Gene Verge Sr. in 1926 to build a estate in Beverly Hills for $300,000, which was later owned by James Mason and Cary Grant. After attempts at reconciliation, she divorced him in 1932, and changed the boys' surname to "Talmadge". On July 1, 1942, the 18-year-old Robert and the 20-year-old Joseph made the name change permanent after their mother won a court petition.


title: Buster Keaton

text: With the failure of his marriage and the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, Keaton descended into alcoholism. He was briefly institutionalized, according to the Turner Classic Movies documentary "So Funny It Hurt". He escaped a straitjacket with tricks learned from Harry Houdini. In 1933, he married his nurse Mae Scriven during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing. Scriven claimed that she didn't know Keaton's real first name until after the marriage. She filed for divorce in 1935 after finding him with Leah Clampitt Sewell, the wife of millionaire Barton Sewell, in a hotel in Santa Barbara. They divorced in 1936 at great financial cost to Keaton. After undergoing aversion therapy, he stopped drinking for five years.


title: Buster Keaton

text: On May 29, 1940, Keaton married Eleanor Norris, who was 23 years his junior. She has been credited with salvaging his life and career. The marriage lasted until his death. Between 1947 and 1954, the couple appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris as a double act. She came to know his routines so well that she often participated in them in television revivals.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Despite being diagnosed with cancer in January 1966, he was never told he was terminally ill. Keaton thought that he was recovering from a severe case of bronchitis. Confined to a hospital during his final days, Keaton was restless and paced the room endlessly, desiring to return home. In a British television documentary about his career, his widow Eleanor told producers from Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit the day before he died. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.


title: Buster Keaton

text: Keaton was presented with a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards, held in April 1960. Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6225 Hollywood Boulevard (for television).