title: Victor Hugo

text: Weary of the constant moving required by military life, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold and settled in Paris in 1803 with her sons; she began seeing General Victor Fanneau de La Horie, Hugo's godfather who had been a comrade of General Hugo's during the campaign in Vendee. In October 1807 the family rejoined Leopold, now Colonel Hugo, Governor of the province of Avellino. In that city, Victor was taught mathematics by Giuseppe de Samuele Cagnazzi, elder brother of Italian scientist Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi. Sophie found out that Leopold had been living in secret with an Englishwoman called Catherine Thomas.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Soon Hugo's father was called to Spain to fight the Peninsular War. Madame Hugo and her children were sent back to Paris in 1808, where they moved to an old convent, 12 , an isolated mansion in a deserted quarter of the left bank of the Seine. Hiding in a chapel at the back of the garden was Victor Fanneau de La Horie, who had conspired to restore the Bourbons and been condemned to death a few years earlier. He became a mentor to Victor and his brothers.


title: Victor Hugo

text: In 1811 the family joined their father in Spain. Victor and his brothers were sent to school in Madrid at the while Sophie returned to Paris on her own, now officially separated from her husband. In 1812 Victor Fanneau de La Horie was arrested and executed. In February 1815 Victor and Eugene were taken away from their mother and placed by their father in the Pension Cordier, a private boarding school in Paris, where Victor and Eugène remained for three years while also attending lectures at Lycée Louis le Grand.


title: Victor Hugo

text: On 10 July 1816, Hugo wrote in his diary: “I shall be Chateaubriand or nothing”. In 1817 he wrote a poem for a competition organised by the Academie Française, for which he received an honorable mention. The Academicians refused to believe that he was only fifteen. Victor moved in with his mother to 18 the following year and began attending law school. Victor fell in love and secretly became engaged, against his mother's wishes, to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher. In June 1821 Sophie Trebuchet died, and Léopold married his long-time mistress Catherine Thomas a month later. Victor married Adèle the following year. In 1819, Victor and his brothers began publishing a periodical called .


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo published his first novel the year following his marriage (, 1823), and his second three years later ("Bug-Jargal", 1826). Between 1829 and 1840, he published five more volumes of poetry (, 1829; , 1831; , 1835; , 1837; and , 1840), cementing his reputation as one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by , the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France's pre-eminent literary figure during the early 19th century. In his youth, Hugo resolved to be " or nothing", and his life would come to parallel that of his predecessor in many ways. Like , Hugo furthered the cause of Romanticism, became involved in politics (though mostly as a champion of Republicanism), and was forced into exile due to his political stances.


title: Victor Hugo

text: The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo's early work brought success and fame at an early age. His first collection of poetry () was published in 1822 when he was only 20 years old and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. Though the poems were admired for their spontaneous fervor and fluency, the collection that followed four years later in 1826 () revealed Hugo to be a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Victor Hugo's first mature work of fiction was first published in February 1829 by Charles Gosselin without the author's name and reflected the acute social conscience that would infuse his later work. ("The Last Day of a Condemned Man") would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. , a documentary short story about a real-life murderer who had been executed in France, appeared in 1834 and was later considered by Hugo himself to be a precursor to his great work on social injustice, .


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo became the figurehead of the Romantic literary movement with the plays "Cromwell" (1827) and "Hernani" (1830). "Hernani" announced the arrival of French romanticism: performed at the Comédie-Française, it was greeted with several nights of rioting as romantics and traditionalists clashed over the play's deliberate disregard for neo-classical rules. Hugo's popularity as a playwright grew with subsequent plays, such as "Marion Delorme" (1831), "The King Amuses Himself" (1832), and "Ruy Blas" (1838). Hugo's novel ("The Hunchback of Notre-Dame") was published in 1831 and quickly translated into other languages across Europe. One of the effects of the novel was to shame the City of Paris into restoring the much-neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel. The book also inspired a renewed appreciation for pre-Renaissance buildings, which thereafter began to be actively preserved.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but a full 17 years were needed for to be realised and finally published in 1862. Hugo had used the departure of prisoners for the Bagne of Toulon in one of his early stories, "Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné" He went to Toulon to visit the Bagne in 1839 and took extensive notes, though he did not start writing the book until 1845. On one of the pages of his notes about the prison, he wrote in large block letters a possible name for his hero: " JEAN TRÉJEAN". When the book was finally written, Tréjean became Jean Valjean.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo was acutely aware of the quality of the novel, as evidenced in a letter he wrote to his publisher, Albert Lacroix, on 23 March 1862, "My conviction is that this book is going to be one of the peaks, if not the crowning point of my work." Publication of "Les Misérables" went to the highest bidder. The Belgian publishing house and undertook a marketing campaign unusual for the time, issuing press releases about the work a full six months before the launch. It also initially published only the first part of the novel ("Fantine"), which was launched simultaneously in major cities. Installments of the book sold out within hours and had enormous impact on French society.


title: Victor Hugo

text: The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; found it insincere, complained of its vulgarity, found within it "neither truth nor greatness", the brothers lambasted its artificiality, and – despite giving favourable reviews in newspapers – castigated it in private as "repulsive and inept". "Les Misérables" proved popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the National Assembly of France. Today, the novel remains his best-known work. It is popular worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, television, and stage shows.


title: Victor Hugo

text: An apocryphal tale has circulated, describing the shortest correspondence in history as having been between Hugo and his publisher Hurst and Blackett in 1862. Hugo was on vacation when was published. He queried the reaction to the work by sending a single-character telegram to his publisher, asking . The publisher replied with a single to indicate its success.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo turned away from social/political issues in his next novel, ("Toilers of the Sea"), published in 1866. The book was well received, perhaps due to the previous success of . Dedicated to the channel island of Guernsey, where he spent 15 years of exile, Hugo tells of a man who attempts to win the approval of his beloved's father by rescuing his ship, intentionally marooned by its captain who hopes to escape with a treasure of money it is transporting, through an exhausting battle of human engineering against the force of the sea and a battle against an almost mythical beast of the sea, a giant squid. Superficially an adventure, one of Hugo's biographers calls it a "metaphor for the 19th century–technical progress, creative genius and hard work overcoming the immanent evil of the material world."


title: Victor Hugo

text: The word used in Guernsey to refer to squid (, also sometimes applied to octopus) was to enter the French language as a result of its use in the book. Hugo returned to political and social issues in his next novel, ("The Man Who Laughs"), which was published in 1869 and painted a critical picture of the aristocracy. The novel was not as successful as his previous efforts, and Hugo himself began to comment on the growing distance between himself and literary contemporaries such as and , whose realist and naturalist novels were now exceeding the popularity of his own work.


title: Victor Hugo

text: His last novel, ("Ninety-Three"), published in 1874, dealt with a subject that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Though Hugo's popularity was on the decline at the time of its publication, many now consider "Ninety-Three" to be a work on par with Hugo's better-known novels.


title: Victor Hugo

text: After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was finally elected to the in 1841, solidifying his position in the world of French arts and letters. A group of French academicians, particularly , were fighting against the "romantic evolution" and had managed to delay Victor Hugo's election. Thereafter, he became increasingly involved in French politics.


title: Victor Hugo

text: On the nomination of King , Hugo entered the Upper Chamber of Parliament as a in 1845, where he spoke against the death penalty and social injustice, and in favour of freedom of the press and self-government for Poland.


title: Victor Hugo

text: In 1848, Hugo was elected to the National Assembly of the Second Republic as a conservative. In 1849, he broke with the conservatives when he gave a noted speech calling for the end of misery and poverty. Other speeches called for universal suffrage and free education for all children. Hugo's advocacy to abolish the death penalty was renowned internationally.


title: Victor Hugo

text: When Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) seized complete power in 1851, establishing an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. He moved to Brussels, then Jersey, from which he was expelled for supporting a Jersey newspaper that had criticised Queen Victoria. He finally settled with his family at Hauteville House in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, where he would live in exile from October 1855 until 1870.


title: Victor Hugo

text: While in exile, Hugo published his famous political pamphlets against Napoleon III, and . The pamphlets were banned in France but nonetheless had a strong impact there. He also composed or published some of his best work during his period in Guernsey, including , and three widely praised collections of poetry (, 1853; , 1856; and , 1859).


title: Victor Hugo

text: Like most of his contemporaries, Victor Hugo justified colonialism in terms of a civilizing mission and putting an end to the slave trade on the Barbary coast. In a speech delivered on 18 May 1879, during a banquet to celebrate the abolition of slavery, in the presence of the French abolitionist writer and parliamentarian Victor Schœlcher, Hugo declared that the Mediterranean Sea formed a natural divide between " ultimate civilisation and […] utter barbarism," adding "God offers Africa to Europe, Take it," to civilise its indigenous inhabitants.


title: Victor Hugo

text: This might partly explain why in spite of his deep interest and involvement in political matters he remained silent on the Algerian issue. He knew about the atrocities committed by the French Army during the French conquest of Algeria as evidenced by his diary but he never denounced them publicly; however in "Les Misérables", Hugo wrote: "Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in the case of India by the English, with more barbarism than civilization".


title: Victor Hugo

text: After coming in contact with Victor Schœlcher, a writer who fought for the abolition of slavery and French colonialism in the Caribbean, he started strongly campaigning against slavery. In a letter to American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, on 6 July 1851, Hugo wrote: Slavery in the United States! It is the duty of this republic to set such a bad example no longer... The United States must renounce slavery, or they must renounce liberty. In 1859 he wrote a letter asking the United States government, for the sake of their own reputation in the future, to spare abolitionist John Brown's life, Hugo justified Brown's actions by these words: "Assuredly, if insurrection is ever a sacred duty, it must be when it is directed against Slavery". Hugo agreed to diffuse and sell one of his best known drawings, "Le Pendu", an homage to John Brown, so one could "keep alive in souls the memory of this liberator of our black brothers, of this heroic martyr John Brown, who died for Christ just as Christ".


title: Victor Hugo

text: Victor Hugo fought a lifelong battle for the abolition of the death penalty as a novelist, diarist, and member of Parliament. "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" published in 1829 analyses the pangs of a man awaiting execution; several entries of Things Seen ("Choses vues"), the diary he kept between 1830 and 1885, convey his firm condemnation of what he regarded as a barbaric sentence; on 15 September 1848, seven months after the Revolution of 1848, he delivered a speech before the Assembly and concluded, "You have overthrown the throne. […] Now overthrow the scaffold." His influence was credited in the removal of the death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva, Portugal, and Colombia. He had also pleaded for Benito Juárez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico but to no avail.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Although Napoleon III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant he would have to curtail his criticisms of the government. It was only after Napoleon III fell from power and the Third Republic was proclaimed that Hugo finally returned to his homeland in 1870, where he was promptly elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.


title: Victor Hugo

text: He was in Paris during the siege by the Prussian Army in 1870, famously eating animals given to him by the Paris Zoo. As the siege continued, and food became ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was reduced to "eating the unknown".


title: Victor Hugo

text: During the Paris Commune – the revolutionary government that took power on 18 March 1871 and was toppled on 28 May – Victor Hugo was harshly critical of the atrocities committed on both sides. On 9 April, he wrote in his diary, "In short, this Commune is as idiotic as the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly." Yet he made a point of offering his support to members of the Commune subjected to brutal repression. He had been in Brussels since 22 March 1871 when in the 27 May issue of the Belgian newspaper "l’Indépendance" Victor Hugo denounced the government's refusal to grant political asylum to the Communards threatened with imprisonment, banishment or execution. This caused so much uproar that in the evening a mob of fifty to sixty men attempted to force their way into the writer's house shouting "Death to Victor Hugo! Hang him! Death to the scoundrel!".


title: Victor Hugo

text: Victor Hugo, who said "A war between Europeans is a civil war", was an enthusiastic advocate for the creation of the United States of Europe. He expounded his views on the subject in a speech he delivered during the International Peace Congress which took place in Paris in 1849. The Congress, of which Hugo was the President, proved to be an international success, attracting such famous philosophers as Frederic Bastiat, Charles Gilpin, Richard Cobden, and Henry Richard. The conference helped establish Hugo as a prominent public speaker and sparked his international fame, and promoted the idea of the "United States of Europe". On 14 July 1870 he planted the "oak of the United States of Europe" in the garden of Hauteville House where he stayed during his exile on Guernsey from 1856 to 1870. The massacres of Balkan Christians by the Turks in 1876 inspired him to write Pour la Serbie (For Serbia) in his sons' newspaper "Le Rappel". This speech is today considered one of the founding acts of the European ideal.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Because of his concern for the rights of artists and copyright, he was a founding member of the , which led to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. However, in 's published archives, he states strongly that "any work of art has two authors: the people who confusingly feel something, a creator who translates these feelings, and the people again who consecrate his vision of that feeling. When one of the authors dies, the rights should totally be granted back to the other, the people".


title: Victor Hugo

text: He was one of the earlier supporters of the concept of "domaine public payant", under which a nominal fee would be charged for copying or performing works in the public domain, and this would go into a common fund dedicated to helping artists, especially young people.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth and under the influence of his mother, he identified as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he became a non-practising Catholic and increasingly expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented spiritism during his exile (where he participated also in many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin) and in later years settled into a rationalist deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire. A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker".


title: Victor Hugo

text: After 1872, Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Catholic Church. He felt the Church was indifferent to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy. Perhaps he also was upset by the frequency with which his work appeared on the Church's list of banned books. Hugo counted 740 attacks on "Les Misérables" in the Catholic press. When Hugo's sons Charles and died, he insisted that they be buried without a crucifix or priest. In his will, he made the same stipulation about his own death and funeral.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Yet he believed in life after death and prayed every single morning and night, convinced as he wrote in "The Man Who Laughs" that "Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do".


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo's rationalism can be found in poems such as "Torquemada" (1869, about religious fanaticism), "The Pope" (1878, anti-clerical), "Religions and Religion" (1880, denying the usefulness of churches) and, published posthumously, "The End of Satan" and "God" (1886 and 1891 respectively, in which he represents Christianity as a griffin and rationalism as an angel). Vincent van Gogh ascribed the saying "Religions pass away, but God remains", actually by Jules Michelet, to Hugo.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugo himself particularly enjoyed the music of Gluck, Mozart, Weber and Meyerbeer. In , he calls the huntsman's chorus in Weber's "Euryanthe", "perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever composed". He also greatly admired Beethoven, and rather unusually for his time, he also appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries such as Palestrina and Monteverdi.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – with only one finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera "La Esmeralda", which was based on the character in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today, it has enjoyed a modern revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the 2007 and in a full orchestral version presented in July 2008 at .


title: Victor Hugo

text: On the other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility."


title: Victor Hugo

text: Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo's works from the 19th century until the present day. In particular, Hugo's plays, in which he rejected the rules of classical theatre in favour of romantic drama, attracted the interest of many composers who adapted them into operas. More than one hundred operas are based on Hugo's works and among them are Donizetti's "Lucrezia Borgia" (1833), Verdi's (1851) and "Ernani" (1844), and 's (1876).


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo's novels, as well as his plays, have been a great source of inspiration for musicians, stirring them to create not only opera and ballet but musical theatre such as and the ever-popular , London West End's longest running musical. Additionally, Hugo's poems have attracted an exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and numerous melodies have been based on his poetry by composers such as , , , , , , , , Rachmaninoff, and .


title: Victor Hugo

text: Today, Hugo's work continues to stimulate musicians to create new compositions. For example, Hugo's novel against capital punishment, "The Last Day of a Condemned Man", was adapted into an opera by , with a libretto by and premièred by their brother, tenor , in 2007. In Guernsey, every two years, the Victor Hugo International Music Festival attracts a wide range of musicians and the premiere of songs specially commissioned from such composers as , , , and and based on Hugo's poetry.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Remarkably, not only has Hugo's literary production been the source of inspiration for musical works, but also his political writings have received attention from musicians and have been adapted to music. For instance, in 2009, Italian composer Matteo Sommacal was commissioned by Festival "Bagliori d'autore" and wrote a piece for speaker and chamber ensemble entitled "Actes et paroles", with a text elaborated by Chiara Piola Caselli after Victor Hugo's last political speech addressed to the Assemblée législative, "Sur la Revision de la Constitution" (18 July 1851), and premiered in Rome on 19 November 2009, in the auditorium of the Institut français, Centre Saint-Louis, French Embassy to the Holy See, by Piccola Accademia degli Specchi featuring the composer Matthias Kadar.


title: Victor Hugo

text: When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. He was confident that he would be offered the dictatorship, as shown by the notes he kept at the time: "Dictatorship is a crime. This is a crime I am going to commit", but he felt he had to assume that responsibility. Despite his popularity, Hugo lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in 1872.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Throughout his life Hugo kept believing in unstoppable humanistic progress. In his last public address on 3 August 1879 he prophesied in an over-optimistic way, "In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live."


title: Victor Hugo

text: Within a brief period, he suffered a mild stroke, his daughter Adèle was interned in an insane asylum, and his two sons died. (Adèle's biography inspired the movie "The Story of Adele H.") His wife Adèle had died in 1868.


title: Victor Hugo

text: His faithful mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883, only two years before his own death. Despite his personal loss, Hugo remained committed to the cause of political change. On 30 January 1876, he was elected to the newly created Senate. This last phase of his political career was considered a failure. Hugo was a maverick and achieved little in the Senate. He suffered a mild stroke on 27 June 1878. To honour the fact that he was entering his 80th year, one of the greatest tributes to a living writer was held. The celebrations began on 25 June 1881, when Hugo was presented with a vase, the traditional gift for sovereigns. On 27 June, one of the largest parades in French history was held.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Marchers stretched from the , where the author was living, down the , and all the way to the centre of Paris. The paraders marched for six hours past Hugo as he sat at the window at his house. Every inch and detail of the event was for Hugo; the official guides even wore cornflowers as an allusion to Fantine's song in . On 28 June, the city of Paris changed the name of the Avenue d'Eylau to Avenue Victor-Hugo. Letters addressed to the author were from then on labelled "To Mister Victor Hugo, In his avenue, Paris". Two days before dying, he left a note with these last words: "To love is to act".


title: Victor Hugo

text: On 20 May 1885, "le Petit Journal" published the official medical bulletin on Hugo's health condition. "The illustrious patient" was fully conscious and aware that there was no hope for him. They also reported from a reliable source that at one point in the night he had whispered the following , "En moi c’est le combat du jour et de la nuit" – "In me, this is the battle between day and night". "Le Matin" published a slightly different version, "Here is the battle between day and night."


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo's death from pneumonia on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped the Third Republic and democracy in France. All his life he remained a defender of liberty, equality and fraternity as well as an adamant champion of French culture. In 1877, aged 75, he wrote, "I am not one of these sweet-tempered old men. I am still exasperated and violent. I shout and I feel indignant and I cry. Woe to anyone who harms France! I do declare I will die a fanatic patriot".


title: Victor Hugo

text: Although he had requested a pauper's funeral, he was awarded a state funeral by decree of President Jules Grévy. More than two million people joined his funeral procession in Paris from the to the , where he was buried. He shares a crypt within the with and . Most large French towns and cities have a street or square named after him.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo produced more than 4,000 drawings. Originally pursued as a casual hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo shortly before his exile when he made the decision to stop writing to devote himself to politics. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet between 1848 and 1851.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with colour. The surviving drawings are surprisingly accomplished and "modern" in their style and execution, foreshadowing the experimental techniques of Surrealism and Abstract expressionism.


title: Victor Hugo

text: He would not hesitate to use his children's stencils, ink blots, puddles and stains, lace impressions, "" or folding (e.g. Rorschach blots), "" or rubbing, often using the charcoal from matchsticks or his fingers instead of pen or brush. Sometimes he would even toss in coffee or soot to get the effects he wanted. It is reported that Hugo often drew with his left hand or without looking at the page, or during Spiritist séances, to access his unconscious mind, a concept only later popularised by Sigmund Freud.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo kept his artwork out of the public eye, fearing it would overshadow his literary work. However, he enjoyed sharing his drawings with his family and friends, often in the form of ornately handmade calling cards, many of which were given as gifts to visitors when he was in political exile. Some of his work was shown to, and appreciated by, contemporary artists such as van Gogh and ; the latter expressed the opinion that if Hugo had decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have outshone the artists of their century.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo married Adèle Foucher in October 1822. Despite their respective affairs, they lived together for nearly 46 years until she died in August 1868. Hugo, who was still banished from France, was unable to attend her funeral in Villequier where their daughter Léopoldine was buried. From 1830 to 1837 Adèle had an affair with Charles-Augustin Sainte Beuve, a reviewer and writer.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first child, Léopold, in 1823, but the boy died in infancy. On 28 August 1824, the couple's second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 28 July 1830.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo's eldest and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died in 1843 at the age of 19, shortly after her marriage to Charles Vacquerie. On 4 September, she drowned in the Seine at Villequier when the boat she was in overturned. Her young husband died trying to save her. The death left her father devastated; Hugo was travelling at the time, in the south of France, when he first learned about Léopoldine's death from a newspaper that he read in a café.


title: Victor Hugo

text: He wrote many poems afterward about his daughter's life and death, and at least one biographer claims he never completely recovered from it. His most famous poem is undeniably "Demain, dès l'aube" (Tomorrow, at Dawn), in which he describes visiting her grave.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo decided to live in exile after Napoleon III's coup d'état at the end of 1851. After leaving France, Hugo lived in Brussels briefly in 1851, and then moved to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey (1852–1855) and then to the smaller island of Guernsey in 1855, where he stayed until Napoleon III's fall from power in 1870. Although Napoleon III proclaimed a general amnesty in 1859, under which Hugo could have safely returned to France, the author stayed in exile, only returning when Napoleon III was removed from power by the creation of the French Third Republic in 1870, as a result of the French defeat at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War. After the Siege of Paris from 1870 to 1871, Hugo lived again in Guernsey from 1872 to 1873, and then finally returned to France for the remainder of his life. In 1871, after the death of his son Charles, Hugo took custody of his grandchildren Jeanne and Georges-Victor.


title: Victor Hugo

text: From February 1833 until her death in 1883, Juliette Drouet devoted her whole life to Victor Hugo, who never married her even after his wife died in 1868. He took her on his numerous trips and she followed him in exile on Guernsey. There Hugo rented a house for her near Hauteville House, his family home. She wrote some 20,000 letters in which she expressed her passion or vented her jealousy on her womanizing lover.


title: Victor Hugo

text: On 25 September 1870 during the Siege of Paris (19 September 1870 – 28 January 1871) Hugo feared the worst. He left his children a note reading as follows:


title: Victor Hugo

text: She saved my life in December 1851. For me she underwent exile. Never has her soul forsaken mine. Let those who have loved me love her. Let those who have loved me respect her.


title: Victor Hugo

text: For more than seven years, Léonie d’Aunet, who was a married woman, was involved in a love relationship with Hugo. Both were caught in adultery on 5 July 1845. Hugo, who had been a Member of the Chamber of Peers since April, avoided condemnation whereas his mistress had to spend two months in prison and six in a convent. Many years after their separation, Hugo made a point of supporting her financially.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo gave free rein to his sensuality until a few weeks before his death. He sought a wide variety of women of all ages, be they courtesans, actresses, prostitutes, admirers, servants or revolutionaries like Louise Michel for sexual activity. Both a graphomaniac and erotomaniac, he systematically reported his casual affairs using his own code, as Samuel Pepys did, to make sure they would remain secret. For instance, he resorted to Latin abbreviations ("osc." for kisses) or to Spanish ("Misma. Mismas cosas": The same. Same things). Homophones are frequent: "Seins" (Breasts) becomes Saint; "Poële" (Stove) actually refers to "Poils" (Pubic hair). Analogy also enabled him to conceal the real meaning: A woman's "Suisses" (Swiss) are her breasts – due to the fact that Switzerland is renowned for its milk. After a rendezvous with a young woman named "Laetitia" he would write "Joie" (Happiness) in his diary. If he added "t.n." ("toute nue") he meant she stripped naked in front of him. The initials "S.B." discovered in November 1875 may refer to Sarah Bernhardt.


title: Victor Hugo

text: The people of Guernsey erected a statue by sculptor Jean Boucher in Candie Gardens (Saint Peter Port) to commemorate his stay in the islands. The City of Paris has preserved his residences Hauteville House, Guernsey, and , Paris, as museums. The house where he stayed in Vianden, Luxembourg, in 1871 has also become a commemorative museum.


title: Victor Hugo

text: The Avenue Victor-Hugo in the 16th arrondissement of Paris bears Hugo's name and links the to the vicinity of the by way of the . This square is served by a Paris Métro stop also named in his honour. In the town of there is a main street, a school, hospital and several cafés named after Hugo, and a number of streets and avenues throughout France are named after him. The school was founded in his town of birth, in France. , located in Shawinigan, Quebec, was named to honour him. A street in San Francisco, Hugo Street, is named for him.


title: Victor Hugo

text: In the city of Avellino, Italy, Victor Hugo lived briefly stayed in what is now known as when reuniting with his father, , in 1808. Hugo would later write about his brief stay here, quoting ("It was a palace of marble").


title: Victor Hugo

text: A mosaic commemorating Hugo is located on the ceiling of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.


title: Victor Hugo

text: The London and North Western Railway named a 'Prince of Wales' Class 4-6-0 No 1134 after Hugo. British Railways perpetuated this memorial, naming Class 92 Electric Unit 92001 after him.


title: Victor Hugo

text: Hugo is venerated as a saint in the Vietnamese religion of , a new religion established in Vietnam in 1926.


title: Kherson

text: Kherson (, ) is a port city of Ukraine that serves as the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast. Located on the Black Sea and on the Dnieper River, Kherson is the home of a major ship-building industry and is a regional economic centre. In 2021, the city had an estimated population of 283,649.


title: Kherson

text: From March to November 2022, the city was occupied by Russian forces during their invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces recaptured the city on 11 November 2022.


title: Kherson

text: As the first new settlement in the "Greek project" of Empress Catherine and her favorite Grigory Potemkin, it was named after the ancient Greek city-colony of Chersonesus in Crimea. In Greek, () means 'peninsular shore'.


title: Kherson

text: The city was founded by decree of Catherine the Great on 18 June 1778 on the high bank of the Dnieper as a central fortress of the Black Sea Fleet after the Russian annexation of the territory in 1774. The city was established in place of the Russian-built fort or sconce "Saint Alexander" which existed at least since 1737 and also served as one of administrative centers of the Zaporizhian Sich and run by local Cossacks. The fort was built during the Russo-Turkish War and improved some 30 years later. Before 1737 in place of Kherson and Fort St.Alexandre, older maps show a settlement of Bilschowisce which carries Ukrainian-like transliteration.


title: Kherson

text: 1783 saw the city granted the rights of a district town and the opening of a local shipyard where the hulls of the Russian Black Sea fleet were laid. Within a year the Kherson Shipping Company began operations. By the end of the 18th century, the port had established trade with France, Italy, Spain and other European countries. Between 1783–1793 Poland's maritime trade via the Black Sea was conducted through Kherson by the "Kompania Handlowa Polska". In 1791, Potemkin was buried in the newly built St. Catherine's Cathedral. In 1803 the city became the capital of the Kherson Governorate.


title: Kherson

text: Industry, beginning with breweries, tanneries and other food and agricultural processing, developed from the 1850s.


title: Kherson

text: In 1897 the population of the city was 59,076 of which, on the basis of their first language, almost half were recorded as Great Russian, 30% as Jewish, and 20% Ukrainian.


title: Kherson

text: During the revolution of 1905 there were workers' strikes and an army mutiny (an armed demonstration by soldiers of the 10th Disciplinary Battalion) in the city.


title: Kherson

text: In the Russian Constituent Assembly election held in November 1917—the first and last free election in Kherson for 70 years—Bolsheviks who had seized power in Petrograd and Moscow received just 13.2 percent of the vote in the Governorate. The largest electoral bloc in the district, with 43 percent of the vote, was an alliance of Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), Russian Socialist Revolutionaries and the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party.


title: Kherson

text: The Bolsheviks dissolved SR-dominated Assembly after its first sitting, and proceeded to force from Kiev the Central Council of Ukraine (Tsentralna Rada) whose response to the Leninist coup had been to proclaim the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR). But, before the Bolsheviks could secure Kherson, they were obliged to cede the region under the terms of the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German and Austrian controlled Ukrainian State. After the withdrawal of German and Austrian forces in November 1918, the efforts of the UPR (the Petluirites) to assert authority were frustrated by a French-led Allied intervention which occupied Kherson in January 1919.


title: Kherson

text: In March 1919, the Green Army of local warlord Otaman Nykyfor Hryhoriv ousted the French and Greek garrison and precipitated the Allied evacuation from Odesa. In July, the Bolsheviks defeated Hryhoriv who had called upon the Ukrainian people to rise against the "Communist imposters" and their "Jewish commissars," and had perpetrated pogroms, including in the Kherson region. Kherson itself was occupied by the counter-revolutionary Whites before finally falling to the Bolshevik Red Army in February 1920. In 1922 the city and region was formally incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.


title: Kherson

text: The population was radically reduced from 75,000 to 41,000 by the famine of 1921–3, but then rose steadily, reaching 97,200 in 1939. In 1940, the city was one of the sites of executions of Polish officers and intelligentsia committed by the Soviets as part of the Katyn massacre.


title: Kherson

text: Further devastation and population loss resulted from the German occupation during the Second World War. The German occupation, which lasted from August 1941 to March 1944, contended with both Soviet and Ukrainian nationalist (OUN) underground cells. The Kherson district leadership of the OUN was headed by Bogdan Bandera (brother of OUN leader Stepan Bandera). The Germans operated a Nazi prison and the Stalag 370 prisoner-of-war camp in the city.


title: Kherson

text: In the post-war decades, which saw substantial industrial growth, the population more than doubled, reaching 261,000 by 1970. The new factories, including the Comintern Shipbuilding and Repairs Complex, the Kuibyshev Ship Repair Complex, and the Kherson Cotton Textile Manufacturing Complex (one of the largest textile plants in the Soviet Union), and Kherson's growing grain-exporting port, drew in labour from the Ukrainian countryside. This changed the city's ethnic composition, increasing the Ukrainian share from 36% in 1926 to 63% in 1959, while reducing the Russian share from 36 to 29%. The Jewish population never recovered from the Holocaust visited by the Germans: accounting for 26% of residents in 1926, their number had fallen to just 6% in 1959.


title: Kherson

text: With a turnout of 83.4% of eligible voters, 90.1% of the votes cast in Kherson Oblast affirmed Ukrainian independence in the national referendum of 1 December 1991. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kherson and its industries experienced severe dislocation. Over the following three decades, the population of both the city and the region declined, reflecting both a significant excess of deaths over live births and persistent net-emigration from the area.


title: Kherson

text: The 2014 pro-Russian unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine was marked in Kherson by a small demonstration of some 400 persons. Following Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, Kherson housed the office of the Ukrainian President's representative in Crimea.


title: Kherson

text: In July 2020, as part of the general administrative reform of Ukraine, the Kherson Municipality was merged as an urban hromada into newly established Kherson Raion, one of five raions in the Kherson Oblast of which the city remained the administrative centre.


title: Kherson

text: A "City Profile", part of the SCORE (Social Cohesion and Reconciliation) "Ukraine 2021" project funded by USAID, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the European Union, concluded that "more than 80% of citizens in Kherson city feel their locality is a good place to live, work, and raise a family". This was despite a low level of trust in the local authorities in whom corruption was perceived to be high. It also found that, while more inclined to express support for co-operation with Russia than for membership of the EU, "citizens in Kherson feel attached to their Ukrainian identity".


title: Kherson

text: In the last free elections before the 2022 Russian invasion, the Ukrainian local elections held on 25 October 2020, the results of Kherson City Council elections were as follows":"


title: Kherson

text: The parties widely perceived as pro-Russian, and Euro-skeptic, Opposition Platform, Volodymyr Saldo Bloc, and Party of Shariy (3.89%) had a combined vote of just over 30% of the total, and secured 20 out of the 54 seats on the city council. In the wake of the invasion, the Opposition Platform and the Party of Shariy were banned by the National Security Council for alleged ties to the Kremlin.


title: Kherson

text: The Volodymyr Saldo Bloc dissolved; its deputies in Kyiv joined the newly formed faction "Support to the programs of the President of Ukraine". From 26 April 2022, Volodymyr Saldo himself, who had been mayor of Kherson from 2002 to 2012, went on to serve the Russian occupiers, as head of the Kherson military–civilian administration.


title: Kherson

text: Kherson witnessed heavy fighting in the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Kherson offensive). As of 2 March the city was under Russian control, and as early as 8 March the Russian FSB was reported to be tasked with crushing resistance.


title: Kherson

text: Under the Russian occupation, locals continued to stage street protests against the invading army's presence and in support of the unity of Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian government, the Russian military sought to create a puppet Kherson People's Republic in the style of the Russian-backed separatist polities in the Donbas region and tried to coerce local councillors into endorsing the move, detaining those activists and officials who opposed their design.


title: Kherson

text: By 26 April 2022, Russian troops had taken over the city's administration headquarters and had appointed both a new mayor, former KGB agent Alexander Kobets, and ex-mayor Volodymyr Saldo as a new civilian-military regional administrator. The next day, Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that troops used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse a further pro-Ukraine rally in the city centre. In an indication of an intended split from Ukraine, on the 28th the new administration announced that from May it would switch the region's payments to the Russian ruble. Citing unnamed reports about alleged discrimination of Russian speakers, its deputy head, Kirill Stremousov said that "reintegrating the Kherson region back into a Nazi Ukraine is out of the question".


title: Kherson

text: On 30 May the Russian-backed occupation authority in Kherson claimed that it had started exporting last year's grain from Kherson to Russia. They would also be working on exporting sunflower seeds.


title: Kherson

text: On 6 June it was reported by the Ukrainian mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kolykhaiev, that the occupiers had conducted a meeting of more than 70 Russian sympathizers aimed at conducting a referendum on the region integrating the occupied areas into Russia. His sources told him that the dates discussed were two: in September or at the end of 2022. As a Russian election was going to take place on 11 September, the Kherson vote would be scheduled to coincide with that day. An elected official in Russia named Igor Kastyukevich had discussed this plan on 7 June, following the visit to Kherson of Sergei Kiriyenko, the deputy chief of staff of the Russian presidential administration.


title: Kherson

text: By June, the occupiers were switching Ukrainian schools to their educational curriculum and Russian SIM cards were on the market. Kolykhaiev witnessed the occupiers distributing Russian passports. A cafe frequented by the occupiers was bombed on 7 June and at least four people were injured. Stremousov said on 29 June that "The Kherson region will decide to join the Russian Federation and become a full-fledged subject as one unified state." On the same visit, Kiriyenko spoke at the United Russia party's humanitarian aid center in Kherson: "The Kherson region's admission into Russia will be complete, similar to Crimea,” recalling the 2014 Crimean status referendum.


title: Kherson

text: On 18 June it was announced that Russian FSB officers were in the process of moving from hotels to apartments that had been vacated by Ukrainians.


title: Kherson

text: In late June the first Russian bank opened in Kherson, while Oleksii Kovalov, an ex-member of the Ukrainian Servant of the People party, survived an assassination attempt after he had been appointed vice-president.


title: Kherson

text: On 24 June Dmytro Savluchenko, who led the Directorate for Family, Youth, and Sports of the Russian occupation administration, was assassinated by the explosion of a car bomb.


title: Kherson

text: On 5 July, Volodymyr Saldo announced that the former deputy head of government in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Sergei Yeliseyev, a graduate of the FSB Academy, was to assume the presidency of the oblast.


title: Kherson

text: On 28 August 2022 the vice-president of the occupation administration (Kovalev) was found shot dead inside his own apartment in Zaliznyi Port. His wife was stabbed in the same attack and she died later in the hospital.


title: Kherson

text: On 30 September 2022, the Russian Federation claimed to have annexed Kherson Oblast. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the proclaimed annexations with a vote of 143-5.


title: Kherson

text: Russian forces were ordered to withdraw from the city by defence minister Sergei Shoigu and regroup on the eastern side of the Dnieper on 9 November 2022. Ukrainian officials claimed that Russian troops were destroying bridges connecting the city to the other bank of the river. On 11 November, Ukraine announced that its forces had entered the city following the Russian withdrawal.


title: Kherson

text: Before retreat, Russian army destroyed infrastructure facilities of the city (communications, water, heat, electricity, TV tower), looted two main museums ( and the Art Museum), transporting their items to Crimean museums, and took away several monuments to historical figures.


title: Kherson

text: Kherson is connected to the national railroad network of Ukraine. There are daily long-distance services to Kyiv, Lviv and other cities.


title: Kherson

text: Kherson is served by Kherson International Airport. It operates a 2,500 x 42-meter concrete runway, accommodating Boeing 737, Airbus 319/320 aircraft, and helicopters of all series.


title: Kherson

text: There are 77 high schools as well as 5 colleges. There are 15 institutions of higher education, including:


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Jemaine Atea Mahana Clement (born 10 January 1974) is a New Zealand actor, comedian, musician and filmmaker. He has released several albums with Bret McKenzie as the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, and created a comedy series of the same name for both the BBC and HBO, for which he received six Primetime Emmy nominations.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: He has had featured parts in films such as "Dinner for Schmucks" (2010), "Men in Black 3" (2012), "People Places Things" (2015), "Humor Me" (2017) and "The Festival" (2018). He has also done voice-work for "Despicable Me" (2010), "Rio" (2011), "Rio 2" (2014), "Moana" (2016) and "The Lego Batman Movie" (2017). In 2014, he made his directorial debut with "What We Do in the Shadows", which he also co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in with Taika Waititi, and later adapted into a show for FX Television series of the same name. In 2022 he acted in the film Avatar 2.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement was born on 10 January 1974 in Masterton in the Wairarapa, and was raised there in a working-class family by his mother and grandmother Maikara with his two brothers. Clement is Ngāti Kahungunu through his mother, and a direct descendant of the rangatira Iraia Te Ama-o-te-rangi Te Whaiti, who is his tīpuna as his great-great-great grandfather. His Pākehā father, Robert, was employed at the freezing works and struggled with alcoholism, leaving home when Clement was a child. Robert would later become a stained glass artist in Midhurst, Taranaki; Jemaine would later reconnect with his father as an adult and now enjoys a "strong and loving" relationship with him.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement’s mother and grandmother were strong influences on him as a child, inspiring his sense of humour. Despite having a strong connection to his Māori ethnicity through visiting relatives regularly on trips to various marae, bans on the Māori language being spoken in schools meant Clement grew up in an almost entirely English-speaking environment. He has talked of his regrets about this and has emotionally spoken of the physical abuse his grandmother suffered at school for speaking te reo Māori.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: He attended Makoura College in Masterton. After finishing school he moved to Wellington, where he studied drama and film at Victoria University of Wellington. There he met Taika Waititi, with whom he went on to form So You're a Man and The Humourbeasts. In 2004, the Humourbeasts toured New Zealand in a stage show titled "The Untold Tales of Maui", a reworking of the traditional Maori legends of Māui. The duo received New Zealand's highest comedy honour, the Billy T Award. During his time in university, he also met Bret McKenzie, with whom he performed in Edinburgh, thus forming Flight of the Conchords.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement and McKenzie have toured internationally and released four CDs: "Folk the World Tour" in 2002, "The Distant Future" EP in 2007 (winner of 2008 Grammy for Best Comedy Album), "Flight of the Conchords" in 2008 and "I Told You I Was Freaky" in 2009. In 2005 the Conchords produced "Flight of the Conchords", a six-part comedy radio programme on BBC Radio 2. They appeared on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "The Late Late Show". After appearing in 2005 on HBO's "One Night Stand", the Conchords were offered their own 12-part HBO series, "Flight of the Conchords", which was based on their earlier BBC radio series of the same name. Its first season ran from June to September 2007, and was renewed for a second season, which aired on HBO in the US from January to March 2009. In December 2009, the Conchords announced the show would not have a third season.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement has appeared in several feature films. His debut was in the kung fu comedy "Tongan Ninja", directed by New Zealander Jason Stutter. He has worked with Stutter on two more movies to date: the low budget ghost comedy "Diagnosis: Death" and the drama "Predicament", based on the book by late New Zealand novelist Ronald Hugh Morrieson. Clement also has a role in American comedy "Gentlemen Broncos", directed by "Napoleon Dynamite"s Jared Hess. This role landed him a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. Though "Gentlemen Broncos" was almost universally panned by critics, some singled out Clement's performance for praise. In 2010, he voiced Jerry in "Despicable Me" and appeared in the film "Dinner for Schmucks". In 2011, he voiced Nigel in "Rio", and in 2012 he appeared as the primary antagonist Boris the Animal in "Men in Black 3". In 2012, Jemaine co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in a vampire mockumentary titled "What We Do in the Shadows" with Taika Waititi. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 19 January 2014. He also reprised his role as Nigel in "Rio 2".


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement has starred in television commercials internationally and provided voiceovers for many others in New Zealand. On 5 February 2006, Outback Steakhouse began running a series of television commercials starring Clement during Super Bowl XL in which Clement pretends to be Australian and feigns an Australian accent. One of the long-running gags of "Flight of the Conchords" is the traditional rivalry between New Zealand and Australia and the differences between their accents. The campaign ended in July 2006.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement has been involved in award-winning radio work. In 1999, Clement was a Radio Awards Winner as writer for "Trashed", for Channel Z, Wellington. In 2000, he was given a Special Radio Awards Commendation for "The Sunglass Store".


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Besides his television work on "Flight of the Conchords", Clement was a writer and cast member of the television shows "Skitz" and "Tellylaughs" in New Zealand. Clement, with fellow Conchord member Bret McKenzie, guest starred as a pair of camp counselors in "Elementary School Musical", the season premiere of the 22nd season of "The Simpsons", which aired on 26 September 2010.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement also played the role of a prisoner in a Russian gulag in the 2014 film "Muppets Most Wanted", a sequel to "The Muppets" (2011).


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement was featured as one of 2008's "100 Sexiest People" in a special edition of the Australian magazine "Who". Fellow Conchord member McKenzie appeared on the same list.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: In 2015, Clement voiced a "mind-reading fart" on an episode of the Adult Swim animated series "Rick and Morty", where he performed the song "Goodbye Moonmen". Clement also starred in the independent film, "People Places Things", which received positive reviews.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: In 2016, Clement lent his voice to Tamatoa, a giant coconut crab, in the Disney animated film "Moana", both in English, and the Māori dub. He based the character's voice on that of David Bowie.


title: Jemaine Clement

text: In 2017, Clement played Oliver Bird in the FX TV series "Legion". He also voiced Sauron in "The Lego Batman Movie".


title: Jemaine Clement

text: Clement's whānau did not have a car when he was a boy, and as a result he has never learnt to drive. In August 2008, Clement married his longtime girlfriend, theatre actress and playwright Miranda Manasiadis. Their son, Sophocles Iraia, was born in October 2008 in New York City and is named after Manasiadis's Greek great-grandfather Sophocles, and Clement's tipuna Iraia Te Ama-o-te-rangi Te Whaiti. They live in Wellington.


title: American Psycho

text: American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan investment banker. Alison Kelly of "The Observer" notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities".


title: American Psycho

text: A film adaptation starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. Producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer developed a musical adaptation for Broadway. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in December 2013.


title: American Psycho

text: Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, "American Psycho" follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by night. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues—where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette—to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Deeply concerned with his personal appearance, Bateman gives extensive descriptions of his daily aesthetics regimen.


title: American Psycho

text: After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates Paul's apartment as a place to host and kill more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn-out sequences of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and his grasp on sanity begins to slip. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions". These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. This narrative episode sees the first-person perspective shift to third-person and the subsequent events are, although not for the first time in the novel, described in terms pertaining to cinematic portrayal. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to an answering machine.


title: American Psycho

text: Later, Bateman revisits Paul Owen's apartment, where he had earlier killed and mutilated two prostitutes, carrying a surgical mask in anticipation of the decomposing bodies he expects to encounter. He enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, however, filled with strong-smelling flowers meant, perhaps, to conceal a bad odor. The real estate agent, who sees his surgical mask, fools him into stating he was attending the apartment viewing because he "saw an ad in the "Times"" (when in fact there was no such advertisement). She tells him to leave and never return.


title: American Psycho

text: Bateman's mental state continues to deteriorate and he begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. At the end of the story, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message he left on his machine, only to find the attorney amused at what he considers a hilarious joke. Mistaking Bateman for another colleague, Carnes claims that the Patrick Bateman he knows is too much of a coward to have committed such acts. In the dialogue-laden climax, Carnes stands up to a defiant Bateman and tells him his claim of having murdered Owen is impossible, because he had dinner with him twice in London just a few days prior.


title: American Psycho

text: The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation. The sign seen at the end of the book simply reads "This is not an exit".


title: American Psycho

text: According to literary critic Jeffrey W. Hunter, "American Psycho "is largely a critique of the "shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism". The characters are predominantly concerned with material gain and superficial appearances, traits indicative of a postmodern world in which the 'surface' reigns supreme. This leads Patrick Bateman to act as if "everything is a commodity, including people", an attitude that is further evident in the rampant objectification and brutalization of women that occurs in the novel. This distancing allows Bateman to rationalize his actions; in one scene in which he cannibalizes a victim, Bateman remarks "though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I'm doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing ..."


title: American Psycho

text: Patrick Bateman's consumption of what he views as nothing more than a piece of meat is an almost parodically literal interpretation of a monster created by consumer culture. This, combined with sex, violence, drugs, and other desires of the id, is how Bateman enacts his sociopathic violence in a superficial world.


title: American Psycho

text: Bateman's episodes of schizophrenia also shows clear signs on how he copes with being an affluent person living in a superficial world, fashioned on consumerism. As described by the critic Jennifer Krause in her intertextual analysis of the novel, which relies on the work of postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, Jameson "blames the schizophrenic's ills on the incoherence of postmodern media and capitalistic consumption".


title: American Psycho

text: Jameson's critique is expanded by Krause, who writes: "We can see a distinctly popular culture schizophrenia arise, a disease spread by the postmodern culture industry, which ruptures personality and isolates the fractured self. Though Jameson does not specifically reference two different types of schizophrenia in his writings, he implies an artistic schizophrenia versus a more popular form—one more or less accepted, and the other anathema. This raises questions about how popular culture might act as a potential cure for madness". On the one hand is a rich Wall Street banker, Bateman, concerned and very self-conscious about every detail of his physical appearance, expensive possessions, and control of the people and the world around him. On the other hand, is the inner self of Patrick Bateman, the aboriginal-self, who copes and relinquishes his outer complications and "fake" identity, created by consumerism, through violence on other human beings, who he finds consumable, and expresses absolute control of his desires and true self through his violent fantasies. His consumer, artificial self, proceeding in society as a wealthy consumer would live and spend his income, versus his natural self, who, instead of spending money, would hunt and prey on the weak and vulnerable, usually women, whom he deems expendable. Bateman treats the people around him just like any other consumer product, because of the void he still battles with and wishes to fulfill from within, hence, having dual personas, having the dull artificial identity, compared to his free limitless persona of his mind.


title: American Psycho

text: Observing another side of potential behavior coming from the affluent American society of consumerism is explained through C. Serpell: "Though serialized violence in "American Psycho" is an extension of the deadening effects of serialized consumer exchanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable, this point largely escaped the notice of the novel's harshest critics". Despite critics arguing over the aesthetic properties of the novel from rapid patterns and transitions of self-consciousness and murder, Serpell claims critics have overlooked the key themes and motives of the novel. Serpell bringing to light the patterns and trends Ellis expresses through Bateman, what the consequences of how "serialized consumer exchanges in an economy where commodities and bodies become interchangeable and indistinguishable", could affect society, and the way affluent people view others whether they are higher, lower, or the same in wealth or social status. The critic Thomas Heise states that "the uncertainty about the reality of Patrick's violence has become the chief critical debate on "American Psycho", and it serves as a convenient introduction to the entanglement of epistemology and ethics in the novel". Bateman's character and traits, according to Heise, challenge what readers understand as the social norms for the way the elite upper class think and react to society on a normal basis. Bateman's epistemology and ethics in regards to his actions and way of thinking throughout the novel is a reflection, through his violence, which raises the questions of the moral and ethical understanding of all individuals in Bateman's position and status, and how they might act and think similar or completely identical in a consumer world built on capitalism as people see in today's American society.


title: American Psycho

text: Citing the many bodies that are never found, Henry Bean wonders "is it possible that the murders themselves never occurred?" He continues:


title: American Psycho

text: It has often been noted that Patrick Bateman is an example of an unreliable narrator, and this feature of "American Psycho" has been the subject of discussion in several academic works.


title: American Psycho

text: Ellis later wrote that people assumed that "American Psycho" would end his career. It was originally to have been published by Simon & Schuster in March 1991, but the company withdrew from the project because of "aesthetic differences". Vintage Books purchased the rights to the novel and published the book after the customary editing process. The book was not published in hardcover in the United States until 2012, when a limited hardcover edition was published by Centipede Press, although a deluxe paperback was offered. Before its publication, Roger Rosenblatt of "The New York Times" approved of Simon & Schuster canceling the "worthless" book in a review called "Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away With Murder?". Ellis received numerous death threats and hate mail after the publication of "American Psycho". The "Los Angeles Times"s review—"the one good review in the national press", he said—resulted in "a three-page letter section of all these people canceling their subscriptions".


title: American Psycho

text: In the United States, the book was named the 53rd most banned and challenged book from 1990-1999 by the American Library Association.


title: American Psycho

text: In Germany, the book was deemed "harmful to minors" and its sales and marketing severely restricted from 1995 to 2000.


title: American Psycho

text: In Australia, the book is sold shrink-wrapped and is classified "R18" under national censorship legislation (i.e., the book may not be sold to those under 18 years of age). Along with other Category 1 publications, its sale is theoretically banned in the state of Queensland, and it may only be purchased shrink-wrapped. In Brisbane, the novel is available to those over 18 from all public libraries and can still be ordered and purchased (shrink-wrapped) from many book stores despite this prohibition. Ellis has commented on this: "I think it's adorable. I think it's cute. I love it". In New Zealand, the Government's Office of Film & Literature Classification has rated the book as R18 (i.e., the book may not be sold or lent in libraries to those under 18 years of age). It is generally sold shrink wrapped in bookstores.


title: American Psycho

text: Feminist activist Gloria Steinem was among those opposed to Ellis' book because of its portrayal of violence toward women. Coincidentally, Steinem is the stepmother of Christian Bale, who played Bateman in the film. This coincidence is mentioned in Ellis' mock memoir "Lunar Park".


title: American Psycho

text: Phil Collins, whose solo career is referenced in the book, recalled: "I didn't read it. At the time, I just thought, 'That's all we need: glorifying all this crap. I'm not interested'. Then the film came out, and I thought it was very funny".


title: American Psycho

text: A copy was found in possession of Wade Frankum, perpetrator of the 1991 Strathfield massacre. It was suggested that the novel had inspired Frankum.


title: American Psycho

text: During the trial of Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo, a copy was discovered in Bernardo's bedroom. The "Toronto Sun" reported that Bernardo "read it as his 'bible, though it turned out it actually belonged to his wife and accomplice Karla Homolka; it is unlikely Bernardo ever read it.


title: American Psycho

text: During the Duke lacrosse case, a team member named Ryan McFayden sent a profane email to several of his teammates alleging he was going to kill and skin some strippers. The administrators asserted the email was an imitation of Bateman. McFayden subsequently received numerous death threats.


title: American Psycho

text: In 2000, writer Guinevere Turner and writer/director Mary Harron adapted "American Psycho" into a dark, comic film released by Lions Gate Films in United States and Columbia Pictures in other territories. This screenplay was selected over three others, including one by Ellis himself. Bateman is played by Christian Bale with Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon in supporting roles. As a promotion for the film, one could register to receive e-mails "from" Patrick Bateman, supposedly to his therapist. The e-mails, written by a writer attached to the film and approved by Ellis, follow Bateman's life since the events of the film. "American Psycho" premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival where it was touted as the next "Fight Club". The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) gave the film an NC-17 rating for a scene featuring Bateman having a threesome with two prostitutes. The producers excised approximately 18 seconds of footage to obtain an R-rating for the film.


title: American Psycho

text: It polarized audiences and critics with some showering praise, others scorn. Upon its theatrical release, however, the film received positive reviews in crucial publications, including "The New York Times" which called it a "mean and lean horror comedy classic". Ellis said, "American Psycho was a book I didn't think needed to be turned into a movie", as "the medium of film demands answers", which would make the book "infinitely less interesting". The film received generally positive reviews.


title: American Psycho

text: A direct-to-video sequel, "American Psycho 2", was released and directed by Morgan J. Freeman. This film was not based on the novel or the original film, as its only connection with the original is the death of Patrick Bateman (played by Michael Kremko wearing a face mask), briefly shown in a flashback.


title: American Psycho

text: In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of "American Psycho", narrated by Pablo Schreiber, as part of its "Modern Vanguard" line of audiobooks. A Hungarian version of the novel was written by Attila Hazai (1967–2012) called "Budapesti skizo" ("Budapest Psycho", 1997); it was Hazai's best known work but as of his death never translated into English.


title: American Psycho

text: In 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was launched by Ellis and others to get a musical stage adaptation made. The premiere of the musical, with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik opened at the Almeida Theatre, London in December. The role of Patrick Bateman was played by Matt Smith. In 2015, the musical was workshopped in New York, with Benjamin Walker re-assuming the role of Patrick that he had originally taken on in 2011. It premiered in early 2016, but closed on June 5 of that year after a run of only 54 regular performances. In the announcement, they cited "stiff competition" from more well-known musicals like "Waitress", "Shuffle Along", and "Hamilton". A version of the musical is the focus of the musical episode titled "Chapter One Hundred and Twelve: American Psychos" of the sixth season from the series "Riverdale".


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor, director, and singer. Perkins is best remembered for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller "Psycho", which made him an influential figure in pop culture and in horror films. He often played distinctive villainous roles in film, though he was most renowned for his romantic leads. Perkins represented an era of vulnerable actors who straddled the line between masculinity and femininity, and he distinguished himself by playing unconfident characters.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Born in New York City, Perkins got his start as an adolescent in summer stock programs, although he acted in films before he set foot on a professional stage. His first film, "The Actress", costarring Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons and directed by George Cukor, was a disappointment save for an Oscar nod for its costumes, and Perkins returned to the boards instead. He made his Broadway debut in the Elia Kazan-directed "Tea and Sympathy" where he played Tom Lee, a "sissy" cured by the right woman. He was praised for the role, and after it closed, he turned to Hollywood once more, starring in "Friendly Persuasion" (1956) with Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best New Actor of the Year and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Rushes of the film led to Perkins landing a seven-year, semi-exclusive contract with Paramount Pictures. He was their last matinee idol.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Although "Friendly Persuasion" earned him much praise, Perkins solidified himself as a powerful actor in "Fear Strikes Out" the following year, which caused many to name him "the next James Dean" and "the greatest American actor under thirty." However, Paramount was more concerned with heterosexualizing Perkins's image, which led to a string of romantic roles alongside Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine. He was able to score the occasional serious role in the Broadway play "Look Homeward, Angel" (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award) and the 1959 film "On the Beach" with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner. Although he was once again cast as a romantic lead in Jane Fonda's film debut, "Tall Story", he was shortly thereafter cast as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960), which established him as a horror icon and garnered him a Bambi Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as both a Best Actor nomination and a win from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers. His acclaimed work in the 1960 horror-thriller also led to his being typecast, and in order to escape the same villainous roles, as well as the brutal homophobia he was being subjected to, Perkins bought himself out of his Paramount contract and fled to France, where he debuted in European film with "Goodbye Again" (1961). Even when paired with Oscar-winning actress Ingrid Bergman, he still distinguished himself as a talented performer, and the film earned him a Best Actor Bravo Otto nomination, a second career Bambi nomination, as well as his winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a Best Actor David di Donatello award.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: After a string of European films featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, Melina Mercouri, and Brigitte Bardot, Perkins returned to America in 1968 with his first American film after an eight-year hiatus, "Pretty Poison". He costarred with Tuesday Weld, and the film became a cult classic. In the film's wake, he starred in numerous commercially and critically successful films, such as "Catch-22" (1970), "Play It as It Lays" (1972), "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), and "Mahogany" (1975), the latter of which broke box-office attendance records. During this time, Perkins went through conversion therapy and married Berry Berenson in 1973. He also conceded to typecasting, starring in "Psycho II" (1983), "Psycho III" (1986) and "" (1990). His turn in the 1986 entry of the anthology earned Perkins a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actor. Additionally, he was involved in numerous television excursions. His last film, "In the Deep Woods", was a television film broadcast a month after his death in September 1992 from AIDS-related causes.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins was born April 4, 1932, in Manhattan, the son of stage and film actor Osgood Perkins (1892–1937) and his wife, Janet Esselstyn ("née" Rane; 1894–1979). His paternal great-grandfather was wood engraver Andrew Varick Stout Anthony. Perkins was also a descendant of "Mayflower" passengers John Howland, Myles Standish and William Brewster as well as Roger Conant. Through an entirely paternal line he was descended from John Perkins, who arrived in Boston from England in 1630 as part of the Puritan migration to New England.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Throughout his early years, Perkins did not see much of his father, who was busy in a variety of film and stage roles. The most prominent of these was his supporting role in the original motion picture adaptation of "Scarface", which was released the year Perkins was born. Perkins's only fond memories of his father came from a 1937 vacation to Fire Island, although they did little together on the trip. During this time, the Perkinses hired a French nanny, Jeanne, to look after their son. This led to Perkins becoming fluent in French, which would be useful years later when he moved to France.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Between his father's absences, Perkins was often surrounded by a feminine presence, the most insistent of which was his mother. "I became abnormally close to my mother," Perkins recalled to "People" in 1983, "and whenever my father came home I was jealous. It was the Oedipal thing in a pronounced form, I loved him but I also wanted him to be dead so I could have her all to myself." On September 21, 1937, Osgood Perkins died of a heart attack just after a successful opening night of his newest play, "Susan and God". His death caused Perkins to feel intensely guilty. "I was horrified," he said years later. "I assumed that my wanting him to be dead had actually killed him. I prayed and prayed for my father to come back. I remember long nights of crying in bed. For years I nursed the hope that he wasn't really dead. Because I'd see him on film, it was as if he were still alive. He became a mythic being to me, to be dreaded and appeased."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: After his father's death, Perkins was surrounded entirely by women once again. Besides his mother, a consistent female companion in Perkins's life was burgeoning playwright Michaela O'Harra, whom his mother had taken a liking to. Perkins's childhood friend, John Kerr, recalled about the relationship between O'Harra and Perkins's mother: "My mother said–I don't know if she used the word lesbian... but that was just [what it felt like] to me: 'Oh, they're having a lesbian relationship.' You know, something like that." Although her sexuality has been disputed, it is widely agreed that Perkins's mother was not heterosexual. It was also during this time that Perkins's mother began to sexually abuse him. "She was constantly touching me and caressing me. Not realizing what effect she was having, she would touch me all over, even stroking the inside of my thighs right up to my crotch." This behavior continued on into his adulthood.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: In 1942, when Perkins was ten, the family uprooted and moved to Boston. Due to her connections in the theatre industry, Janet was able to gain a position at the nearby American Theatre Wing's Boston Stage Door Canteen. Janet managed much of the canteen's activities, and the job gave them money to live off of. On days when she was busy, Perkins was sent to stay with his grandmother. Under his mother's neglect, Perkins began to rebel at the overcrowded public school he was attending, and he was soon labelled a "gifted drifter." To quell his rebellious habits, Janet shipped him off to Brooks School, forty minutes outside of Boston. The placement was disastrous: Perkins's childhood habit of stuttering returned again and he shied away from all athletics. Janet, however, forced him into baseball. It was the first time in his life where Perkins was overwhelmingly singled out for being "different." The pressure bore down on him, leading him to leave school in long absences during his second year after he came down with back-to-back cases of scarlet fever. Subsequently, Perkins sunk to the bottom of his class in grades. Perkins soon made a deal with his mother that if he got good grades, she would allow him to return to Boston the next year for schooling. That year, Perkins ranked in the top third of his class and inspired his headmaster to comment, "Tony Perkins is considerably more mature than the rest of his contemporaries, and is impatient with many of their schoolboy interests," and he was allowed to transfer.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: It was during this time that Perkins's absence of a father began to bear down on him again. "As Tony grew older and saw other boys with their fathers," Janet remembered, "he badly missed his own father. And the only identification he could have with his father was through theater... I began to realize that he was acquiring an unusual interest in [performing]... A friend was running a summer stock company, and I approached him to ask whether Tony might play some small parts." This launched Perkins's adolescent summer stock career. The first summer stock company Perkins played for was at the Brattleboro Summer Theater in Vermont, where he portrayed some minor parts in the plays "Junior Miss", "Kiss and Tell", and "George Washington Slept Here", and manned the box office. This earned him both twenty-five dollars a week and an Equity card.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Keeping her word, Janet sent Perkins to another school the following year named Browne & Nichols School. At the time, it was an all-boys school located in Cambridge, with a high percentage of football players and overly-masculine types. With smaller classes, Perkins stood out more, leading him to earn a reputation as the class magician and piano player. He was also renowned for his lisping Roddy McDowall impression, which he often performed in the halls between classes.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: In summer 1948, Perkins again returned to summer stock, this time under a different company. Janet had found a job as a manager for the Robin Hood Theatre in Arden, Delaware, where Perkins once again manned the box office and earned stage experience. His most memorable performance was in "Sarah Simple" where he played a near-sighted twin, though it was at the Robin Hood Theatre that Perkins first met Charles Williamson, the first boy he ever developed a crush on. The following school year, Perkins dove into academic activities. He joined the varsity tennis team and the glee club, and was made co-literary editor of the school paper, "The Spectator". Occasionally, he contributed articles. It was around this time that Perkins began to question his sexuality. Once again, Perkins felt singled out as the "other."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Around the time Perkins's sexuality began to burgeon, many of his fellow students were thinking about college. Many Browne & Nicholas alums were looking forward to a future at Harvard University, and Perkins, whose grades were too low to qualify, was the only student persuaded to attend Rollins College when a representative toured the school. However, this did not keep him from returning to Delaware that summer, where he once again worked at the Robin Hood, which was now one of the most prosperous and important summer stock programs in the country. It was there where he grew reacquainted with old friend Charles Williamson, going out to lunch with him and swimming together during breaks. It was at this time that Perkins developed a crush on Williamson, who recalled, "He never expressed his homosexuality during the summer of 1950. He did not act on it at all. At the time, I was very much in the closet and repressed. We both shared that." It was also around this time that Perkins played Fred Whitmarsh in the play "Years Ago", who he'd perform again just a few years later in the screen adaptation.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins did not experience a similar camaraderie at Rollins College that fall. Known as a Christian all-American school, Rollins College was nestled in the heart of Florida, and Perkins had arrived just after Congress had named homosexuals and Communists enemies of equal danger. There were a few exceptions: Fred Rogers, who would graduate the college the following year, let Perkins use his piano, something Perkins greatly appreciated. Perkins appeared in numerous stage productions at the school and moved around fraternities constantly, something which got on the nerves of Janet. It was at Rollins that Perkins reportedly first started experimenting with his sexuality and other men.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Shortly after Perkins's arrival, a large group of homosexual students, many of whom were Perkins's friends, were expelled from Rollins and even arrested after a fellow student beat one of them. However, due to Perkins's connections with the theater professor, he was spared. This only led to high levels of tension between him and the rest of the students, who now knew of Perkins's sexuality. This later led Perkins to transfer to the elite Columbia University.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: While still attending Rollins College, Perkins went out to California over summer vacation, hoping to make it into the movies. Having heard that MGM was making a screen adaptation of "Years Ago", he lingered on the lot, hoping a casting director would spot and test him. As Perkins later recalled:


title: Anthony Perkins

text: It was later that summer that Perkins learned he had been cast as Fred Whitmarsh in the film, now renamed "The Actress" (1953), alongside Jean Simmons and Spencer Tracy. He was also directed by George Cukor, who was a friend and collaborator of his late father. In the film, he played a fumbling Harvard student who chases the interest of Ruth Gordon Jones (Simmons), who wants to perform onstage despite her family's disapproval. The film was a commercial disappointment, although it scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins was first noticed when he replaced John Kerr on Broadway in the lead of "Tea and Sympathy" in 1954, where he was directed by the legendary Elia Kazan, who had been a friend of his father's. In the play, he took on the role of Tom Lee, a college student who is labelled as a "sissy" and fixed with the love of the right woman, in an almost autobiographical role. Perkins said years later, "It was the best part ever written for a young guy. I felt so involved with that particular play. In many ways, I "was" Tom Lee." Although homophobically written and resolved, the play was the only explicit work to hit Broadway depicting homosexuality and garnered a large gay following, therefore establishing Perkins in the gay-dominated theater world. It was through this audience that the production became a success, and many people thought Perkins was substantially better than his predecessor, John Kerr, who went on to play the role in the film adaptation. Joan Fickett, who played Perkins's love interest in the play, commented, "He was that boy. I'd seen John Kerr do it before, but Tony had a quality that was fantastic for the part–all the rawness and the hurt and the confusion, he just had. I found his performance tremendously poignant." The play's success and Perkins's tremendous performance renewed Hollywood interest in him.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: According to posthumous biographer Charles Winecoff, it was during the production of "Tea and Sympathy" that Perkins was drafted despite (or perhaps because of) the recent end of the Korean War. Without consulting anybody, he decided to tell the Selective Service he was a "practicing homosexual," which was an eligible way to be deemed unfit for service, rather than enter the military. Reportedly, this had disastrous results, leaving Perkins traumatized.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Just as his run in "Tea and Sympathy" was coming to an end, director William Wyler sent out his assistant, Stuart Millar, to search out talent on Broadway for his upcoming film, "Friendly Persuasion". It centered around a bristled family of Quakers during the Civil War, and he was scouting an actor to play the oldest of the Birdwell children, Josh. When Millar saw Perkins in "Sympathy", he gave him a page of script and let him to an audition. As Millar recalled: "About half a hour later, [Perkins] had the part. [William Wyler] was thrilled with the reading, he saw everything instantly. It was really one of the best, if not "the" best, readings I've ever seen."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins was soon after shipped out to Hollywood, where he began shooting alongside Dorothy McGuire and Gary Cooper, his screen mother and father. Perkins, a native New Yorker, did not know how to drive yet and regularly hitchhiked out from his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont to the set each day, something which became infamous and often talked about in fan magazines. His boyfriend, Tab Hunter, later taught him how to drive. Perkins's inexperience radiated almost childish naïveté, something which endeared him to Gary Cooper. "Coop was warm and gracious and kindly," Peter Mark Richman, who worked on the film, said. "He liked [Perkins and me] a lot, and Tony loved to hear him talk." The feeling was mutual between Perkins, Cooper, and even the director. Perkins was regularly praised by Wyler for his performance and Cooper began publicly endorsing Perkins's abilities. This led to Perkins and Cooper sharing the cover of the July 1956 issue of "Life". In the issue, Cooper spoke about Perkins in a fatherly manner: "I think he'd do well to spend a summer on a ranch," he commented about his younger costar. "It would toughen him up and he'd learn a lot from another kind of people." Cooper's daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, asserted that, although her father certainly admired Perkins, it could have also been for other reasons: "He had friends in Hollywood, in the acting community, who were gay, and they couldn't come out. He saw what an emotional toll it took on them. I know my father adored Tony Perkins. My father felt he was a hell of an actor."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Whatever the reason, this did not alter Perkins's performance. After rushes of the film were shared around, the advance praise of his performance became so strong that Paramount Pictures took an interest in him. They soon after signed him under a seven-year semi-exclusive contract, which gave him room to return to Broadway whenever he wanted. He was their last matinee idol and was called the "fifteen million dollar gamble."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins's first film for the studio was a 1957 biopic about Boston Red Sox baseball player Jimmy Piersall entitled "Fear Strikes Out". It followed his father's pressure to become a legendary baseball player and how it led to his highly publicized mental breakdown, as well as detailing his efforts to get better in a mental institution. The set of the film was hostile and riddled with homophobia, something which put Perkins on edge so much that the cast and crew feared he was actually having a mental breakdown while filming the scene. Although he wasn't nominated for any Oscars, his performance was widely praised by critics. "The Hollywood Reporter" proclaimed of the film: "Every recent young star has been compared to James Dean. From now on the standard is Tony Perkins."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: After this critical success, Perkins starred in the first of two Westerns, "The Lonely Man" (1957), with Jack Palance. Perkins played Riley Wade, whose father, Jacob (Palance), abruptly returns to his life after having abandoned his mother years before. Jacob fights with Riley's hatred for him throughout the film, desperate to reconnect with his estranged son after years of separation. Kim Stanley, a previous costar of Perkins's, was originally cast as his love interest but was replaced last-minute by Elaine Aiken in her film debut. Reportedly, the film set was riddled with tensions, most of which spawned from Palance's ultra-masculinity and Perkins's lack thereof. This was only heightened when filming was put behind schedule by an abrupt weather crisis that prevented outdoor production for a number of days. Still, a feeling of vitality remained. "We all thought this was an important picture we were making."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins's next film was also a Western, this time named "The Tin Star" (1957) with Henry Fonda. Originally, despite his burgeoning popularity, Perkins was not wanted for the project: "The producers, Bill Perlberg and George Seaton, told someone who told someone who told someone who told me that they wouldn't have me in their picture for a million dollars," Perkins admitted during filming. However, he auditioned for them as soon as he heard the news. In the film, Perkins played yet another pacifist, this time a sheriff named Ben Owens. After encountering an experienced bounty hunter, Morgan Hickman (Fonda), Ben has to prove himself worthy of his title in an ironic reflection of Perkins's troubles with Paramount. Perkins and Fonda took the hours-long drive out to set together in the same car, during which they became closely acquainted and shared stories of their private lives. Some cast members speculate that Perkins confided in Fonda about his sexuality during these drives. The film grossed over $1 million in the box office and was one of the biggest films of 1957. It is now considered a classic of the Western genre.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: At this time, "Friendly Persuasion" opened globally to huge critical and commercial success. The film was largely praised by critics, who took a liking to Perkins. The film earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best New Actor of the Year and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In a cover story in 1958, Newsweek hailed Perkins as "possibly the most gifted dramatic actor in this country under 30."


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Perkins released three pop music albums and several singles in 1957 and 1958 on Epic and RCA Victor under the name Tony Perkins. His single "Moon-Light Swim" was a moderate hit in the United States, peaking at number 24 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1957. 1958's "The Prettiest Girl in School," though a flop in the United States, was also popular in Australia. Many people believed he was inspired to pursue musical endeavors after the abrupt success of then-partner Tab Hunter, who had scored a number one hit on his debut record, "Young Love." To Hunter, Perkins was often heard joking "that his tremulous voice could make any happy love song sound sad." However, Perkins was not very committed to the music career, although he steadily produced full-length albums and a few EP's until as late as the mid-1960s.


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Despite being a life member of the Actors Studio and therefore open to many different acting business ventures, Perkins did not choose to act in a musical when he exerted the freedom of his studio contract in 1957 and returned to Broadway in "Look Homeward, Angel". The play was an autobiographical coming-of-age story about its writer, Thomas Wolfe, and he took on the role of Eugene Gant, with his mother being played by Jo Van Fleet. The play enjoyed a successful run, and in 1958, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, although the rehearsals were tumultuous. Van Fleet developed a reputation for her standoffish behavior and temper tantrums, leading to contention on the set. This was not made better by the fact that Tab Hunter, among others, came to see the show during tryouts. This manifested itself in a restrained performance from Perkins, something Hunter picked up on:


title: Anthony Perkins

text: Backstage, Tony asked what I thought of his performance, and I told him straight: "You're afraid to give vent to what you're truly feeling," I said. "You're only showing the side of yourself you want other people to see."... When I saw "Look Homeward, Angel" the second time, in late January, Tony had stripped away all preconceived ideas and was mesmerizing.