text_chunks:
<mask> (; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, author, filmmaker and actor. Regarded as the most important figure in French pop whilst alive, he was renowned for often provocative and scandalous releases which caused uproar in France, dividing its public opinion, as well as his diverse artistic output, which ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock,zouk,funk, reggae, and electronica. <mask>'s varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians. His lyrical works incorporated wordplay, with humorous, bizarre, provocative, sexual, satirical or subversive overtones. <mask> wrote over 550 songs, which have been covered more than 1,000 times by a range of artists. Since his death from a second heart attack in 1991, <mask>'s music has reached legendary stature in France, and he has become one of the country's best-loved public figures. He has also gained a cult following all over the world with chart success in the United Kingdom and the United States with "Je t'aime... moi non plus" and "Bonnie and Clyde", respectively.Biography

1928–1956: Early years
Lucien Ginsburg was born in Paris on 2 April 1928. He was the son of Jewish Ukrainian migrants, Joseph Ginsburg (27 March 1896, in Feodosia, Russian Empire — 22 April 1971, in Paris) and Olga (née Besman; 15 January 1894, in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) – 16 March 1985, in Paris), who fled to Paris via Istanbul after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Joseph Ginsburg was a classically trained musician whose profession was playing the piano in cabarets and casinos; he taught his children—Gainsbourg and his twin sister Liliane—to play the piano. Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the occupation of France by Germany during World War II. The identifying yellow star that Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg; in later years he was able to transmute this memory into creative inspiration. During the occupation, the Jewish Ginsburg family was able to make their way from Paris to Limoges, traveling under false papers. Limoges was in the Zone libre under the administration of the collaborationist Vichy government and still a perilous refuge for Jews.He attended the Lycée Condorcet high school in Paris but dropped out before completing his Baccalauréat. In 1945, Gainsbourg's (Ginsburg's) father enrolled him into Beaux-Arts de Paris, a prestigious art school, before switching to the Académie de Montmartre, where his professors included the likes of André Lhote and Fernand Léger. There, <mask> would meet his first wife Elisabeth "Lize" Levitsky, daughter of Russian aristocrats who was also a part-time model. They married on 3 November 1951 and were divorced by 1957. In 1948, he was conscripted by the military for twelve months of service in Courbevoie. He never saw action and spent the time playing dirty songs on his guitar, visiting prostitutes and drinking, later admitting that the service made him an alcoholic. Gainsbourg obtained work teaching music and drawing in a school outside of Paris, in Le Mesnil-le-Roi.The school was set up under the auspices of local rabbis, for the orphaned children of murdered deportees. Here, Gainsbourg heard the accounts of Nazi persecution and genocide, stories that resonated for Gainsbourg far into the future. 1957–1963: Early work
Gainsbourg was disillusioned as a painter as he lacked talent but earned his living working odd jobs and as a piano player in bars, usually as a stand-in for his father. He soon became the venue pianist at the drag cabaret club Madame Arthur. Whilst filling in a form to join the songwriting society SACEM, Gainsbourg decided to change his first name to <mask>, feeling that this was representative of his Jewish background and because, as his future partner Jane Birkin relates: "Lucien reminded him of a hairdresser's assistant". He chose Gainsbourg as his last name, in homage to the English painter Thomas Gainsborough, whom he admired. Gainsbourg had a revelation when he saw Boris Vian at the Milord l'Arsouille club whose provocative and humorous songs would influence his own compositions.At the Milord l'Arsouille, Gainsbourg accompanied singer and club star Michèle Arnaud on the guitar. In 1957, Arnaud and the club's director Francis Claude discovered, with amazement, the compositions of <mask> while visiting his house to see his paintings. The next day, Claude pushed <mask> on stage. Despite suffering from stage fright, he performed his own repertoire, including "Le Poinçonneur des Lilas", which describes the day in the life of a Paris Métro ticket man, whose job is to stamp holes in passengers' tickets. Gainsbourg describes this chore as so monotonous, that the man eventually thinks of putting a hole into his own head and being buried in another. He was given his own show by Claude and was eventually spotted by Jacques Canetti, who helped propel his career with a spot at the Théâtre des Trois Baudets and on his tours. In 1958, Arnaud began recording several interpretations of Gainsbourg's songs.His debut album, Du chant à la une !... (1958), was recorded  in the summer of 1958, backed by arranger Alain Goraguer and his orchestra, beginning a fruitful collaboration. It was released in September, becoming a commercial  and critical failure, despite winning the grand prize at L'Academie Charles Cross and the praise of Boris Vian, who compared him to Cole Porter. His next album, N° 2 (1959), suffered the same fate. He made his film debut in 1959 with a supporting role in the French-Italian co-production Come Dance with Me, starring his future lover Brigitte Bardot. In the following year, he featured as a Roman officer in the Italian sword-and-sandals epic-film The Revolt of the Slaves. He would continue playing "nasty characters" in similar productions, including Samson (1961) and The Fury of Hercules (1962).<mask>'s first commercial success came in 1960 with his single "L'Eau à la bouche", the title song from the film of the same name, for which he had composed the score. L'Étonnant <mask> Gainsbourg (1961), his third LP, included what would become one his best known songs from this period, "La Chanson de Prévert", which lifted lyrics from the Jacques Prévert poem  "Les feuilles mortes". After a night of drinking champagne and dancing with singer Juliette Gréco, Gainsbourg went home and wrote "La Javanaise" for her. They would both release versions of the song in 1962, but it is Gainsbourg's rendition that has endured. His fourth album, Serge Gainsbourg N° 4 was released in 1962, incorporated Latin and rock and roll influences whilst his next, Gainsbourg Confidentiel (1963), featured a more minimalistic jazz approach, accompanied only by a double bass and electric guitar. 1963–1966: Eurovision and involvement in the yé-yé movement

Despite initially mocking yé-yé, a style of French pop typically sang by young female singers, Gainsbourg would soon become one of its most important figures after writing a string of hits for artists like Brigitte Bardot, Petula Clark and France Gall. He had met Gall after being introduced by a friend as they were Philips Records labelmates, thus beginning a successful collaboration that would produce hits like "N'écoute pas les idoles", the frequently covered "Laisse tomber les filles" and "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", the latter of which was the Luxembourgian winning entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 1965.Inspired by the 4th movement (Prestissimo in F minor) from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, the song featured double entendres  and wordplay, a staple of Gainsbourg's lyrics. The controversially risqué "Les sucettes" ("Lollipops"), featured references to oral sex, unbeknownst to the 18-year-old Gall, who thought the song was about lollipops. Gall later expressed displeasure at Gainsbourg's antics, stating she felt "betrayed by the adults around me" in 2001. <mask> married a second time on 7 January 1964, to Françoise-Antoinette "Béatrice" Pancrazzi, with whom he had two children: a daughter named Natacha (b. 8 August 1964) and a son, Paul (born in spring 1968). He divorced Béatrice in February 1966.His next album, Gainsbourg Percussions (1964), was inspired by the rhythms and melodies of African musicians Miriam Makeba and Babatunde Olatunji. Olatunji later sued Gainsbourg for lifting three tracks from his 1960 album Drums of Passion. Nevertheless, the album has been hailed as being ahead of its time for its incorporation of world music and lyrical content depicting interracial love. Between 1965 and 1966, Gainsbourg composed the music and sung the words of science fiction writer André Ruellan for several songs made for a series of animated Marie-Mathematics shorts created by Jean-Claude Forest. He would reunite with Michèle Arnaud for the duet "Les Papillons Noirs" from her 1966 comeback record. 1967–1970: Famous muses and duets

In 1967, Gainsbourg wrote the script and provided the soundtrack for the musical comedy television film Anna starring Anna Karina in the titular role. Another Gainsbourg song, "Boum-Badaboum" by  Minouche Barelli, was entered by Monaco in the Eurovision Song Contest 1967, coming in fifth place.In that year, <mask> would have a brief but ardent love affair with Brigitte Bardot. One day she asked him to write the most beautiful love song he could imagine and, that night, he wrote the duets "Je t'aime... moi non plus" and "Bonnie and Clyde" for her. The erotic yet cynical  "Je t'aime", describing the hopelessness of physical love, was recorded by the pair in a small glass booth in Paris. But after Bardot's husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, became aware of the recording he demanded it be withdrawn. Bardot pleaded with  Gainsbourg not to release it and he complied. Bardot's LP Brigitte Bardot Show 67 contained four songs penned by Gainsbourg, including duets such as the playful "Comic Strip" and the string-laden "Bonnie and Clyde", which tells the story of the American criminal couple and was based on a poem written by Bonnie Parker herself. His own Initials B.B.(1968) included these duets and was his first album in nearly four years. It blended orchestral pop with the style of rock characteristic of London in the swinging sixties, where the album was largely recorded. <mask> borrowed heavily from  Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony for the title track, named after and dedicated to Bardot. Phillips subsidiary Fontana Records also issued the compilation LP Bonnie and Clyde (1968) comprising their duets and other previously recorded material. His percussion heavy 1968 single "Requiem pour un con" was performed onscreen by <mask> in the crime film Le Pacha, for which he was the composer. Shortly after being left by Bardot, <mask> was asked by Françoise Hardy to write a French version of the song "It Hurts to Say Goodbye". The result was "Comment te dire adieu", which is notable for its uncommon rhymes and has become one of Hardy's signature songs.In mid-1968 <mask> fell in love with the younger English singer and actress Jane Birkin, whom he met during the shooting of the film Slogan (1969). In the film, <mask> starred as a commercial director who has an affair on his pregnant wife with a younger woman, played by Birkin. <mask> also provided the soundtrack and dueted with Birkin on the title theme ""La Chanson de Slogan". The relationship would last for over a decade. In July 1971 they had a daughter, Charlotte, who would become an actress and singer. Although many sources state that they were married, according to their daughter Charlotte this was not the case. After filming Slogan, <mask> asked Birkin to re-record "Je t'aime..." with him.Her vocals were an octave higher than Bardot's, contained suggestive heavy breathing and culminated in simulated orgasm sounds. Released in February 1969, the song topped the UK Singles Chart after being temporarily banned due to its overtly sexual content. It was banned from the radio in several other countries, including Spain, Sweden, Italy and France before 11pm. The song was even publicly denounced by The Vatican. It was included on the joint album Jane Birkin/<mask>bourg, which also contained "Élisa" and new recordings of songs written by other artists including "Les sucettes", "L'anamour" and "Sous le soleil exactement". In 2017, Pitchfork named it the 44th best album of the 1960s. He and Birkin would share the screen in another Gainsbourg-scored film, Cannabis (1970), in which he played an American gangster who falls in love with a girl from a wealthy family.The 1970s

Following the success of "Je t'aime... moi non plus", his record company had expected <mask> to produce another hit. But after having already made a fortune, he was uninterested, deciding to "move onto something serious". The result was his 1971 concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson, which the tells story of an illicit relationship between the narrator and the teenage Melody Nelson after running her over in his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The album heavily features Gainsbourg's distinctive half-spoken, half-sung vocal delivery, loose drums, guitar, and bass evoking funk music, and lush string and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier. Despite only selling around 15,000 copies upon release, it has become highly influential and is often considered his magnum opus. An accompanying

masks:
Serge Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Serge
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Serge
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Serge Gains
Gainsbourg


text_chunks:
 television special starring <mask> and Birkin was also broadcast. He had a heart attack in May 1973, but refused to cut back on smoking and drinking.In 1975, he released the album Rock Around the Bunker, an album written entirely on the subject of National Socialism. Gainsbourg used black comedy, as he and his family had suffered during World War II, being forced to wear the yellow star as the mark of a Jew. Rock Around the Bunker belonged to the mid-1970s "retro" trend. The next year saw the release of another major work, L'Homme à tête de chou (Cabbage-Head Man), featuring the new character Marilou and sumptuous orchestral themes. Cabbage-Head Man is one of his nicknames, as it refers to his ears. Musically, L'homme à tête de chou turned out to be Gainsbourg's last LP in the English rock style he had favoured since the late 1960s. He would go on to produce two reggae albums recorded in Jamaica (1979 and 1981) and two electronic funk albums recorded in New York (1984 and 1987).In Jamaica in 1979, he recorded "Aux Armes et cætera", a reggae version of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise", with Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar and Rita Marley. Following harsh and anti-semitic criticism in right-wing newspaper Le Figaro by Charles de Gaulle biographer Michel Droit, his song earned him death threats from right-wing veteran soldiers of the Algerian War of Independence including Legionnaires, who were opposed to their national anthem being arranged in reggae style. In 1979, a show had to be cancelled, because an angry mob of French Army parachutists came to demonstrate in the audience. Alone onstage, Gainsbourg raised his fist and answered: "The true meaning of our national anthem is revolutionary" and sang it a capella with the audience. The soldiers joined them, a scene enjoyed by millions as French TV news broadcast it, creating more publicity. Shortly afterward, <mask> purchased the original manuscript of "La Marseillaise". He replied to his critics that his version was closer to the original as the manuscript actually features the words "Aux armes et cætera..." for the chorus.This album, described by legendary drummer Sly Dunbar as "Perhaps the best record he ever played on", was his biggest commercial success, including major hits "Lola Rastaquouère", "Aux armes et cætera", and a French version of Sam Theard's jazz classic "You Rascal You" entitled "Vieille canaille". Rita Marley and the I-Three would record another controversial reggae album with him in 1981, Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles. Bob Marley was furious, when he discovered that <mask> made his wife Rita sing erotic lyrics. Posthumous new mixes of "Aux Armes...", including dub versions by Soljie Hamilton and versions of both albums by Jamaican artists, were released as double "Dub Style" albums in 2003, to critical praise in France as well as abroad and to international commercial success. Although belatedly, Aux Armes Et Cætera – Dub Style and Mauvaises Nouvelles Des Étoiles – Dub Style further established Gainsbourg, posthumously, as an influential icon in European pop music. Final years

In 1982, Gainsbourg wrote an album for French rocker Alain Bashung, Play blessures. The album, although now considered a masterpiece by French critics, was a commercial failure.After a turbulent 13-year relationship, Jane Birkin left Gainsbourg. He still went on to write and produce three more albums for her: Baby Alone in Babylone (1983), Lost Song (1987), Amour des feintes (1990), with many songs being about their relationship (including "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve", which would be read by Catherine Deneuve during Gainsbourg's funeral in 1991). In the 1980s, near the end of his life, <mask> became a regular figure on French TV. His appearances were increasingly devoted to his controversial sense of humour and provocation. In March 1984, he burned three-quarters of a 500-French-franc bill on television to protest against taxes rising up to 74% of income. He would show up drunk and unshaven on stage: in April 1986, on Michel Drucker's live Saturday evening television show Champs-Élysées, with the American singer Whitney Houston, he objected to Drucker's translating his comments to Houston and in English stated: "I said, I want to fuck her"—Drucker, utterly embarrassed, insisted that this meant "He says you are great..." That same year, in another talk show interview, he appeared alongside Catherine Ringer, the well-known singer from Les Rita Mitsouko. <mask> spat out at her, "You're nothing but a filthy whore" to which Ringer replied, "look at you, you're just a bitter old alcoholic...you've become a disgusting old parasite."For many in France, this incident was the last straw, and much of his later work was overlooked since it was often done and performed while he was inebriated. After Gainsbourg's passing, Eddy Mitchell reported that their duet of "You Rascal You" had far fewer sales than would have normally been expected because of this. Michel Drucker, also, reported that he had a difficult time apologizing to Whitney Houston. After that particular incident, <mask> was never again really "clean" in public, almost always having a drink in his hand and a lit cigarette between his lips, thus disgusting many with his behavior and demeanor in all he said and did. Famous humorist Pierre Desproges, who commented the incident with Catherine Ringer, said that he had admired <mask> when he was alive (meaning to say that he was currently as good as dead), and that he was "the only genius looking like a garbage can" ("le seul génie qui ressemble à une poubelle"). His songs became increasingly eccentric during this period, ranging from the anti-drug "Aux Enfants de la Chance", to the highly controversial duet with his daughter Charlotte named "Lemon Incest". Yet he continued to produce albums and songs for women—typically women with a frail voice—some of them highly successful, like the aforementioned Baby Alone in Babylone (1983) and Amour des feintes (1990) for Jane Birkin, Variations sur le même t'aime (1990) for Vanessa Paradis, Pull marine (1983) for Isabelle Adjani, "White and Black Blues" for Joëlle Ursull (which came second at the 1990 Eurovision).His last official partner was Bambou. In 1986, they had a son, Lucien, known as Lulu. In 2010, Lise Lévitzky published a book called Lise et Lulu which raises the possibility of Gainsbourg being bisexual. In 2017, Constance Meyer published a book titled La jeune fille et Gainsbourg, in which she reveals that she had a love affair with the musician during his last years, which began in 1985 when, then aged 16, she sent him a love letter. In December 1988, while a judge at a film festival in Val d'Isère, he was extremely intoxicated at a local theatre where he was to do a presentation. While on stage he began to tell an obscene story about Brigitte Bardot and a champagne bottle, only to stagger offstage and collapse in a nearby seat. Subsequent years saw his health deteriorate.He had to undergo liver surgery but denied any connection to cancer or cirrhosis. His appearances and releases became sparser as he had to rest and recover in Vezelay. During these final years, he released Love on the Beat, a controversial electronic album with mostly sexual themes (exemplified by the titular song, for which he sampled actual sexual screams from Bambou), and his last studio album, You're Under Arrest, which presented more synth-driven songs, as well as two live albums. Film work
Acting

Gainsbourg appeared in nearly 50 film and television roles. In 1960, he co-starred with Rhonda Fleming in the Italian film La rivolta degli schiavi (The Revolt of the Slaves) as Corvino, the Roman Emperor Massimiano's evil henchman. In 1968 he wrote music for and appeared as himself in Le Pacha directed by Georges Lautner. In 1969, he appeared in William Klein's pop art satire Mr. Freedom, and in the same year he co-starred alongside Jane Birkin in The Pleasure Pit as well as in Slogan, for which he wrote the title song "La Chanson de Slogan".Also with Birkin, he acted in the French-Yugoslav film  (19 girls and one sailor) where he played a role of a partisan. They acted together again in Cannabis the following year, and again in Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye in 1973. He also made a brief appearance with Birkin in Herbert Vesely's 1980 film Egon Schiele – Exzess und Bestrafung. Directing
<mask> wrote and directed four feature films: Je t'aime moi non plus, Équateur, Charlotte for Ever, and Stan the Flasher. He also made a short film, Le Physique et le Figuré, and co-wrote the first color film made for French television "Anna." He directed a few music videos, including the controversial "Morgane de toi" for his friend Renaud, featuring a group of naked children running on a beach. Composing
Throughout his career, <mask> wrote the soundtracks for nearly 60 films and television programs.In 1996, he received a posthumous César Award for Best Music Written for a Film for Élisa, along with Zbigniew Preisner and Michel Colombier. Writing
<mask> Sokolov, a first person narrative where the titular protagonist recounts how he became a famous avant-garde painter by exploiting his uncontrollable and violent farts, generating the trademark shaky graphic style of his works which he calls "gazogrammes". Death and legacy

<mask>, who smoked five packs of unfiltered Gitane cigarettes a day, died on 2 March 1991 of a heart attack, a month shy of his 63rd birthday. He was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. French President François Mitterrand said of him, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire ... He elevated the song to the level of art." Since his death, <mask>'s music has reached legendary stature in France.He has also gained a following in the English-speaking world, with numerous artists influenced by his arrangements. One of the most frequent interpreters of <mask>'s songs was British singer Petula Clark, whose success in France was propelled by her recordings of his tunes. In 2003, she wrote and recorded La Chanson de Gainsbourg as a tribute to the composer of some of her biggest hits. The majority of Gainsbourg's lyrics are collected in the volume Dernières nouvelles des étoiles. The Parisian house in which <mask> lived from 1969 until 1991, at 5 bis Rue de Verneuil, remains a celebrated shrine, with his ashtrays and collections of various items, such as police badges and bullets, intact. The outside of the house is covered in graffiti dedicated to <mask>, as well as with photographs of significant figures in his life, including Bardot and Birkin. The French rock band BB Brunes was named after his song, "Initials B.B.".Film biopic
Comics artist Joann Sfar wrote and directed a feature film titled Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), which was released in France in 2010. <mask> is portrayed by Eric Elmosnino as an adult and Kacey Mottet Klein as a child. The film won three César Awards, including Best Actor for Elmosnino, and nominated for an additional eight. Exhibitions
In 2008, Paris' Cité de la Musique held the Gainsbourg 2008 exhibition, curated by sound artist Frédéric Sanchez. Discography

Studio albums

Live albums
 1980: Enregistrement public au Théâtre Le Palace (re-released in 2006 as Gainsbourg... et cætera – Enregistrement public au Théâtre Le Palace in an expanded edition)
 1986: Gainsbourg Live (Casino de Paris)
 1989: Le Zénith de Gainsbourg
 2009: 1963 Théâtre des Capucines

Compilation albums
2021: L'ALbum de sa vie (100 titles) (Peak FR: #19, BEL (Wa): #89)

Selected film scores
 1964: How Do You Like My Sister? 1967: Anna
 1968: Le Pacha
 1969: Slogan
 1970: Cannabis (instrumental)
 1976: Je t'aime moi non plus – Ballade de Johnny-Jane (instrumental)
 1977: Madame Claude (instrumental)
 1977: Goodbye Emmanuelle (instrumental)
 1980: Je vous aime (only three pieces sung by Gainsbourg)
 1986: Putain de film ! – B.O.F.Tenue de soirée

Singles and EPs
The majority of his EPs (represented in italics) were also released as 7-inch promo jukebox singles. Notes

Editions
 De Gainsbourg à Gainsbarre (1989, 1994, Philips)
A 207-track survey of Gainsbourg's career from 1959 to 1981 on nine CDs, issued both separately and in a box: Vol. 1 – Le Poinçonneur Des Lilas, 1959-1960; Vol. 2 – La Javanaise, 1961-1963; Vol. 3 – Couleur Café, 1963-1964; Vol. 4 – Initials B.B., 1966-1968; Vol. 5 – Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus, 1969-1971; Vol.6 – Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais, 1973-1975; Vol. 7 – L'Homme à Tête de Chou, 1975-1981; Vol. 8 – Aux Armes et Cætera, 1979-1981; and Vol. 9 – Anna, 1967–1980. A two-CD highlights collection, also called De Gainsbourg à Gainsbarre, was culled from this edition in 1990. The box was reissued in 1994 with two more discs containing the later albums Love on the Beat (1984) and You're Under Arrest (1987). Gainsbourg Forever (2001, Mercury)
An 18-CD box issued to mark the tenth anniversary of Gainsbourg's death containing each of his sixteen studio albums and the EP Essais Pour Signature (1958) in its original format (one per CD), plus a disc of rarities, Inédits, Les Archives 1958-1981.A separate 3-CD box, Le Cinéma de Serge <mask>: Musiques de Films 1959–1990 (2001, Mercury) covered his film music. <mask> Intégrale (2011, Philips)
A 20-CD, 271-track box issued to mark the twentieth anniversary of <mask>'s death. The first sixteen discs contain his studio albums and related tracks. They are followed by a disc of singles, a disc of television and radio recordings, and two discs of film

masks:
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourgguie
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Gainsbourg


text_chunks:
<mask> (;  – 14 February 1927) was a right-wing Russian military officer, publisher and journalist. Early life
Born in Kiev in the family of a general with German background, <mask> studied in high school in Kiev and in the Alexander Lyceum. From 1891 to 1892, he worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1893, he entered military service. Serving in the cavalry, he rose to the rank of colonel in 1911. In the years before World War I, he became involved in extreme right-wing politics, joining the Black-Hundredist Union of Archangel Michael and writing for right-wing publications. During the war, he commanded the Second Baltic cavalry regiment.He became personally acquainted with Tsarina Aleksandra for whom he developed a strong emotional attachment. There were even rumours of an affair. After the February Revolution, he left the army. Revolutionary Russia
After the October Revolution, he was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks for his role in an alleged plot to overthrow the Provisional Government. He pleaded not guilty and pointed to the absurdity of such charges by the Bolsheviks, as they had overthrown the Provisional Government themselves. He was sentenced to one year's imprisonment by the revolutionary tribunal but was released in early 1918. There, he met fellow right-wingers, including Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork, who became his friend and collaborator.In prison, he kept notes, which he later published. He made a dangerous journey to Kiev to fight with the White Army, where he was arrested and rescued by German forces and accompanied them in retreat to Germany. In 1919 he was in Berlin, where he published the short-lived right-wing newspapers/magazines Prizyv ("The Call") and Luch Sveta ("A Ray of Light"). <mask> personally introduced the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from Russia to Germany, and via his magazines, republished and promoted the Protocols while advocating the destruction of the world's Jewry. Later life
In the wake of the Kapp Putsch of March 1920, <mask> moved from Berlin to Munich. In 1921 he published in Russian a book, Krestny Put (The Way of the Cross"), translated into German as Via Dolorosa. There, in 1922, as a leading member of the conspiratorial Aufbau Vereinigung (Reconstruction Organisation) he had lengthy and detailed discussions with Adolf Hitler on ideological matters.Later that year, under suspicion for his involvement in the assassination of Russian émigré Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, he moved to France, where he died in 1927. Beliefs
<mask> was a loyal Russian monarchist with an aristocratic contempt for the masses. He was much influenced by the anti-Semitic speculations in <mask> Dostoyevsky's A Writer's Diary. He called for "Aryan peoples" to unite against the "Jewish plan for world domination". For Russia, he advocated a return to the strong authority of the  Tsar, which he hoped to restore, with German help. He also wanted Orthodoxy to unite with Catholicism and to learn from its methods in waging ideological war against the enemy, by anathematising the Freemasonry and all of Satan's servants "at Easter Week in all the churches and all the cathedrals of our homeland". Burbank comments that it would be "in other words a nationwide pogrom".Walter Laqueur describes his ideas as "a half-way house between the old Black Hundred and National Socialism" and claims that <mask> distinguished two kinds of anti-semitism: the "higher", concerned with restrictive laws against the Jews, and the "lower", the brutal and homicidal behaviour of the lower classes, which was terrible but essential if the Jewish menace, recently responsible for communist revolution, is finally to be laid to rest. David Redles mentions <mask>'s belief that the German and Russian peoples have to unite to defeat the Jews, which would result in world peace. Norman Cohn says that "in all his writings <mask> insists that one way or another the Jews must be got rid of". Although as a political programme his ideas could not be taken seriously, he correctly foresaw the propaganda success of the Protocols of Zion in Germany. According to Kellogg, neither <mask> nor his Aufbau colleagues publicly proposed "exterminating Jews along the lines of the National Socialist policy that became known as the Final Solution". Nevertheless, his apocalyptic language was so extreme that Laqueur concluded, "Vinberg is quite emphatic about this, the only solution is total physical extermination." Richard Pipes writes that "it was  <mask> and his friends who first called publicly for the physical extermination of the Jews", giving Laqueur as a reference.Notwithstanding Laqueur's conviction that his upper class ideas would have been of little interest or value to Hitler, <mask> appears to have been responsible for Hitler's conversion to the idea of worldwide Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy. Also many of Alfred Rosenberg's own ideas were said to have been lifted straight from the writings of his friend <mask>. Although his influence on Nazi thought declined following the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, when anti-Slav sentiment gained ascendancy in Nazi policy, Kellogg argues that the influence revived with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and that he bears some responsibility for the horrors that occurred. Bibliography
Ahad Ha'am. Taĭnyĭ vozhdʹ īudeĭskīĭ. : Perevod s frantsuzskago
[of Miss L. Fry by Th. <mask>, being an attempt to prove
the "Protokoly Sīonskikh Mudret︠s︡ov"
published in a work by S. A. Nilus
to be a work by U. Ginzberg].by Leslie Fry;  Thedor <mask> Vinberg Berlin, 1922. OCLC:	84780936
 Krestny Put (Via Dolorosa)- 1921

References

Bibliography
The Russian Roots of Nazism by Michael Kellogg (Cambridge, 2005)
 L'Apocalypse de notre temps; les dessous de la propagande allemande d'après des documents inédits by Henri Rollin (Paris: Gallimard, 1939) pp. 153 seq. Russia and Germany, a Century of Conflict by Walter Laqueur (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965) pp. 109 seq. Warrant for Genocide by Norman Cohn (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967) pp. 90, 139-140, 155-156, 184.Intelligentsia and revolution: Russian views of Bolshevism 1917-1922 by Jane Burbank. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924 by Richard Pipes London: Harvill, 1994. External links
 Hitler’s “Russian” Connection: White Émigré Influence on the Genesis of Nazi Ideology, 1917-1923

1868 births
1927 deaths
Antisemitism in Russia
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany
Members of the Russian Assembly
Military personnel from Kyiv
People from Kiev Governorate
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Russian anti-communists
Russian conspiracy theorists
Russian journalists
Russian military personnel of World War I
Russian monarchists
Russian untitled nobility
White Russian emigrants to Germany
White Russian emigrants to France

masks:
Fyodor Viktorovich Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Fyodor
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Vinberg
Viktorovich


text_chunks:
<mask> (16 October 1913 – 16 October 1957) was a French militant political activist. Initially a Trotskyist in the 1930s, he espoused fascism during World War II and joined the SS Charlemagne Division. Soon after the end of the war, <mask> became involved in numerous neo-fascist and white supremacist publications and parties. He wrote the 1950 book Théorie du racisme, deemed influential on the European far-right at large. <mask> died in a car accident in 1957, aged 44. According to scholar Nicolas Lebourg, "<mask>’s openly advertised racialism has paved the way to an anti-colonialist and anti-immigrant ethnopluralism celebrated by the New Right and then the Identitarians. Abandoning classic nationalism and Aryanism for the notion of a 'white world', <mask> clearly outlined the forthcoming themes of 'white genocide' and the ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government)."Biography

Early life and communist activism
<mask> <mask> was born on 16 October 1913 in Darnétal, Seine-Maritime. He became a communist sympathizer in high school after a trip to the Soviet Union. Aged 16 in 1930, <mask> joined the French Communist Youth and became the secretary of its local Le Havre section, before getting expelled from that group in 1934 after he supported Jacques Doriot's ideas of "common front" (front unique). <mask> then moved towards the Fourth International, joining Pierre Frank and Raymond Molinier around the journal La Commune. In March 1936, he became a founding member of the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) along with Frank and Molinier, and was elected to the party's Central Committee. <mask> was also a member the Le Havre employees trade union's council, but got expelled in February 1937 after he refused to follow the internal refereeing procedure. When the PCI was dissolved in December 1938 in order to merge into the Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party (POSP), <mask> withdrew from the group and continued his own journal, Le Prolétaire du Havre.His group sent an observer to the 3rd congress of the Internationalist Workers Party (POI) in January 1939, a rival organization of the PCI led by Pierre Naville and . In August 1939, <mask> was arrested for distributing pacifist propaganda. He wrote in his memoirs that he felt hatred for the Soviet Union and the Jews during the period 1934–1939. World War II
Enlisted in the French army in May 1940, <mask> was soon taken as a prisoner-of-war by the Germans. During the war, he moved away from his communist stance to become an open supporter of Nazism. In 1943, he enrolled in Nazi Germany's Compulsory Work Service. In April of the same year, the Internationalist Communist Committee published a "warning" about <mask>, dismissing him as a traitor to the Trotskyist cause.In February 1944, he joined the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF), then served as a staff sergeant within the SS Charlemagne Division. Post-war activism
On 3 May 1945, claiming to be an escapee from German camps, <mask> surrendered to the Americans and was repatriated to France. He spent 6 months in a French prison for serving in the German military, then returned to political activism. His wife Marie-Angèle Lamisse created a support group for former prisoners which served as the basis of the first organization Binet founded in 1945, the Republican Party for Popular Unity (PRUP). The group denounced "Slavic and American imperialism" and the cultural influence of the Vatican, adopted the slogan "France for the Real French! ", and tried to recruit leftists on radical nationalist slogans. According to scholar James G. Shields, the PRUP followed "an ideological hotchpotch mixing nationalism with Europeanism and socialist themes with collaborationist sympathies."The party, which militated "against the massive arrival of North African workers", had around 150 members when it joined forces with the Rassemblement Travailliste Français to contest the 1947 municipal elections. Following an electoral defeat, <mask> converted the PRUP into the Mouvement Socialiste d'Unité Française (MSUF) in 1948. The MSUF advocated the emergence of a Franco-German union which, according to them, was "alone capable of saving the white race from the invasion of the Negroes." Its periodical L'Unité led a campaign against the Épuration of Nazi collaborators and demanded the departure of Arabs from France to stop an alleged "African invasion". The party, which had 250 members at most, obtained financial aid from the Argentinian embassy and maintained relations with the Egyptian embassy, the Arab League and the Bruderschaft. The MSUF was banned by the French authorities in March 1949. <mask> founded the bulletin Le Drapeau Noir to defend "the demands of the soldiers of the East", that is former Waffen-SS and LVF members.His sympathizers belonged to the Front Noir, a clandestine organization that contemplated armed struggle in order to build a "new Europe" relying on fascism. The organization had linked with other neo-fascist groups abroad via a Front Noir International and a Secours Noir International, two organizations that acted as an "embryonic" and "ephemeral" transnational union of fascist activists according to political scientist Jean-Paul Gautier. <mask> also co-founded with fascist writer Saint-Loup the newspaper Combattant européen in March 1946, which claimed to fight the "colonization of Europe" by "negroes" and "Mongols" and advocated the union of former communist resistance fighters and the Waffen-SS in order to build "the European nation". From 1949 to 1952, Binet published two bulletins: L'Étincelle, which saw an irregular publication, and Sentinelle, where one could read the contributions of Jean-André Faucher, Karl-Heinz Priester or Gaston-Armand Amaudruz. In Sentinelle, <mask> advocated his views on "national socialism" and "scientific racism" while promoting the establishment of a "fascist international". New European Order
In July 1950, <mask> launched the magazine Le Nouveau Prométhée, which presented itself as "national-progressist" and tried to appear more mainstream, and where he developed his theories on "biological realism". The text published in the first issue was adapted the same year as a brochure entitled Théorie du racisme in order to serve as a doctrinal pamphlet advocating racial segregation.The magazine disappeared after one year of existence in 1951. The same year, <mask> founded the group Nation and Progress, which later inspired the Nationalist Movement of Progress and Nouvelle Droite leaders. <mask> also became close to Maurice Bardèche and the French National Committee. In 1951, he went to Malmö with Bardèche and attended the meeting that saw the formation of the European Social Movement, a neo-fascist alliance set up to bring together nationalists from all over Europe. However, <mask> soon broke from the new group which he felt did not go far enough in terms of racialism and anti-communism, and joined instead Amaudruz in establishing the Zurich-based New European Order (NEO) as a more radical alternative in 1951. The group called at its founding for a "European racial policy" in order to improve the European gene pool via eugenicist interventions and control of ethnic inter-marriages. <mask> aimed at federating the nationalists of Europe – from former Waffen-SS members to former resistance fighter – against what he called the Russo-American occupation of the continent by "niggers", "Mongols" and "Jews".Later life and death
In the later years of his life, <mask> worked as a librarian, running the small publishing house Comptoir National du Livre, then led a property development company called Baticoop. He died in a car accident on 16 October 1957 in Pontoise, the day of his 44th birthday. <mask> was buried in a mass grave until one of his followers bought him a burial place in 1971. Noted for his domineering personality, <mask> was not always popular among his far right colleagues, leading to allegations that some of them may have arranged his death. Fellow fascist writer Maurice Bardèche described him as a "fascist of the puritan type who spends his life founding parties and publishing roneotyped newspapers". Views and influence
<mask> advocated the "inequality of the human races" and "social racism", calling for the "purification of the French race of the elements which pollute it". His 1950 book Théorie du racisme ('Theory on racism') promotes the concept of "biological realism", that is the establishment of individual and racial inequalities based upon pseudo-scientific observations.<mask> argued that "interbreeding capitalism" (capitalisme métisseur) aimed at creating a "uniform inhumanity" (barbarie uniforme), and that only "a true socialism" could "achieve race liberation" through the "absolute segregation at both global and national level." In Contribution à une éthique raciste ('Contribution to a racist ethics'), published posthumously in 1975, <mask> defended the "superiority of the European man and the white race" and advocated a "racist revolution" to implement a "dictatorship of races". <mask>'s ideas, characterized by a worldwide "biological-cultural deal" where each group would remain sovereign in its own region, foreshadowed both the racialism of Europe-Action (1963–1966) and the ethno-pluralism of GRECE (1968–present). Scholars have also linked <mask>'s concept of "interbreeding capitalism" with Renaud Camus' idea of "global replacism" – a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic or cultural specificity" –, which forms the foundation of his Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Works
 Théorie du racisme, 1950. L'Évolution, l'homme, la race, 1952. Socialisme national contre marxisme, 1953; published again in 1978 with a preface by Gaston-Armand Amaudruz.Contribution à une éthique raciste, 1975; with a preface by Amaudruz. References

Bibliography

1913 births
1957 deaths
People from Seine-Maritime
French collaborators with Nazi Germany
French fascists
French neo-Nazis
French Trotskyists
Pan-European nationalism
Road incident deaths in France
French Waffen-SS personnel
French Army personnel of World War II
Former Marxists
French prisoners of war in World War II
World War II prisoners of war held by Germany

masks:
René Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
René Valentin
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet
Binet


text_chunks:
<mask> (; born 10 October 1971) is a Russian concert pianist and composer. He became a British citizen in 2002 and an Israeli citizen in 2013. He first came to international fame as a child prodigy. He has a wide repertoire and is especially known for his interpretations of the works of the Romantic era, particularly those of Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Ludwig van Beethoven. He is commonly viewed as a great successor of the Russian piano school because of the depth, lyricism and poetic quality of his interpretations. Early life and education
<mask> was born in Moscow. Recognized as a child prodigy at age six, he began piano studies at the Gnessin Music School in Moscow.At the school he became a student of Anna Kantor, who remained his only piano teacher. At the age of ten he made his debut performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor with the Ulyanovsk Symphony Orchestra. The year after that, he gave his first recital in Moscow. His talents were revealed to the international scene in 1984, at the age of twelve, when he played and recorded both of Chopin's piano concertos with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. Career

Concert pianist
<mask>'s first appearances outside Russia were in 1985 in Eastern Europe, followed a year later by his first tour of Japan. In 1987, at age sixteen, he made his West European debut at the Berlin Festival as well as his United Kingdom debut, alongside conductor Valery Gergiev and violinists Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin, at The Lichfield Festival.In 1988 he toured Europe with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov and also made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. In December of the same year he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Herbert von Karajan at the Berlin Philharmonic's New Year's Eve Concert which was broadcast internationally, with the performance repeated the following year at the Salzburg Easter Festival. In September 1990, he made his North American debut playing Chopin's two piano concertos with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and the first piano recital in Carnegie Hall's centennial season. In 1997, he gave the first solo piano recital in the history of The Proms in London. Kissin made regular recital tours of Europe, America and Asia. He has performed with nearly all the leading orchestras of the world, under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Myung-Whun Chung, Sir Colin Davis, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Giulini, Mariss Jansons, Herbert von Karajan, Dmitri Kitaenko, Jan Latham-Koenig, Emmanuel Krivine, James Levine, Sir Andrew Davis, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Georg Solti, Vladimir Spivakov, Yevgeny Svetlanov and Yuri Temirkanov.He has also performed chamber music with Martha Argerich, Mikhail Pletnev, Gidon Kremer, James Levine, Mischa Maisky, Thomas Quasthoff, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Karita Mattila, Dmitry Hvorostovsky, Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Natalia Gutman, Yuri Bashmet, Vladimir Spivakov, the Emerson String Quartet and others. Poetry
In addition to classical music, Kissin has given recitations of Russian and Yiddish poetry. Three CDs of Kissin's recitals from the classical and contemporary Yiddish poetry have been issued by the Forward Association. Writing
In 2018 <mask>'s autobiography  was published under the title of Memoirs and Reflections. In 2019, his book of poems, short stories and translations in Yiddish was published under the title “A Yiddisher Sheygets”. In 2021, his book of short stories and diaries in Yiddish was published under the title “Bloyz etlekhe minut gang” (“Only a few minutes by foot)”. Compositions
<mask> has composed numerous musical works which have been published by Henle Verlag.His String Quartet (2016) was recorded by the Kopelman Quartet on Nimbus Records and received its UK premiere on 26 February 2019 performed by the Endellion Quartet. Personal life
On 10 March 2017, <mask> married Karina Arzumanova, a childhood friend, in Prague, where they live. Awards and accolades
Many musical awards and tributes from around the world have been bestowed upon Kissin. In 1987 he received the Crystal Prize of the Osaka Symphony Hall for the best performance of the year in 1986 (his first performance in Japan). In 1991 he received the Musician of the Year Prize from the Chigiana Academy of Music in Sienna, Italy. He was special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards Ceremony, broadcast live to an audience estimated at over one billion, and became Musical America's youngest Instrumentalist of the Year in 1995. In 1997 he received the Triumph Award for his outstanding contribution to Russia's culture, one of the highest cultural honors to be awarded in the Russian Republic, and again, the youngest-ever awardee.He was the first pianist to be invited to give a recital at the BBC Proms (1997), and, in the 2000 season, was the first concerto soloist ever to be invited to play in the Proms opening concert. In May 2001 <mask> was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the Manhattan School of Music. In December 2003 in Moscow, he received the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia's highest musical honors. In June 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London. In March 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Hong Kong.

masks:
Evgeny Igorevich Kissin
Kissin
Kissin
Kissin
Kissin
Kissin
Kissin


text_chunks:
<mask> (April 1, 1848 – May 25, 1881), better known by his stage name <mask>, was an American dwarf and an entertainer associated with P. T. Barnum. In 1861, <mask> was touring New England with a circus when Barnum hired him to appear at the American Museum in New York City. Barnum gave <mask> the stage name <mask>, a wardrobe that included naval uniforms, and a miniature carriage in the shape of an English walnut. Nutt became one of the Museum's major attractions. <mask> was in love with Lavinia Warren, another dwarf at the American Museum. Lavinia was several years older than <mask>. She thought of him only as a "nice little boy".She married General Tom Thumb in a spectacular wedding masterminded by Barnum in 1863. <mask> went to the wedding as Thumb's best man, but resented his place in the show. He stayed away from women for a long time after the wedding. In 1879, he married Lilian Elston of Redwood City, California. <mask> toured the world between 1869 and 1872 with the Thumbs and Minnie Warren, Lavinia's sister. They returned to America rich beyond their dreams after appearing before royalty around the world. <mask> left Barnum's employ after a disagreement with the showman.He toured with a comic opera company, put together a variety show on the United States West Coast, and operated western saloons in Oregon and California. He returned to New York City, and died there of Bright's disease in May 1881. Birth and family
George Washington <mask> was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, to Major Rodnia <mask> (1810–1875), and his wife Maria (Dodge<mask> (1807–1859) of Goffstown, New Hampshire. Rodnia was a rich farmer, a Manchester city marshal, and a Manchester city councilman. The <mask>s had five children. The first, whose name and sex are not known, was born on 8 December 1837. James Dodge was born on 28 January 1838, and Rodnia Jr. on 11 October 1840.A daughter, Mary Ann, was born on 22 September 1844. According to <mask> family records, George Washington Morrison was born on 1 April 1848. <mask> and his wife were "large, hearty folk". Mr. <mask> weighed over . Their sons Rodnia Jr. and George Washington Morrison were dwarfs. In 1861, Rodnia Jr. was about  tall, and George was about . George weighed about .Ancestry
George's ancestors include <mask> (1698–1751), a weaver of English ancestry. William left Derry, Ireland, for North America in the early 18th century. He started a family in colonial New England. A part of Manchester was called Nutfield in the early days of colonization. A pond and a road near the pond were named for early Nutt colonists. P. T. Barnum and the American Museum

<mask>'s career as an entertainer may have started in 1854. He may have been a performer with a small circus in Manchester.The circus manager, William C. Walker, once wrote that he discovered <mask>. He also wrote that he was the first to show him. <mask> was being exhibited and touring the New England countryside with a manager named Lillie when P. T. Barnum learned of him. Lillie was charging as little as a nickel to see the boy whose education had been neglected. Barnum was disgusted. Lillie knew nothing about exhibiting the boy "in the proper style", as Barnum put it. Barnum met <mask> in 1861 when the boy went to the American Museum in New York City.In his autobiography, Barnum wrote that <mask> was "a most remarkable dwarf, who was a sharp, intelligent little fellow, with a deal of drollery and wit. He had a splendid head, was perfectly formed, and was very attractive, and, in short, for a 'showman' was a perfect treasure." Barnum knew <mask> could be a major museum attraction. He hired a lawyer to lure <mask> away from his manager. Following Barnum's orders, the lawyer offered <mask>'s parents a large sum of money to sign their son to a five-year contract. He promised them that the boy would be taught to be "a genteel, accomplished attractive little man". A contract was signed on 12 December 1861.Barnum hired the 13-year-old,  George and his 21-year-old,  brother, Rodnia Jr. The contract required Barnum to give both young men food, clothing, a place to live, and the costs of travel and medical care. Barnum promised to take care of the moral and academic education of the brothers. Salaries would start at US$12 per week with increases every year. The two brothers would each get $30 per week in the fifth and last year of their contract. They would also get 10% from the sales of their souvenir books and photographs, with at least $240 the first year and $440 the last year. At the end of the fifth year, they would receive a carriage and a pair of ponies from Barnum.Publicity campaign

Once the contract was signed, Barnum started a publicity campaign to prepare the public for <mask>'s debut. He let reporters think he was trying to hire the dwarf. When other showmen heard this rumor, they rushed in to offer <mask>'s parents huge sums of money to be the first to sign their son. Barnum was pleased. The publicity created much excitement. In a letter he leaked to reporters, he wrote that he was forced to outbid the competition. The showman claimed to have paid $30,000 to hire the dwarf.The boy then became known as "The $30,000 Nutt". Barnum gave the dwarf the stage name <mask>. In addition, he provided <mask> with a wardrobe that included miniature naval uniforms. For the Commodore's jaunts about town, the showman had a little carriage built for him. This carriage looked like an English walnut. The top of the vehicle was hinged. When the top was lifted, the little Commodore could be seen sitting inside.<mask>'s carriage was pulled by Shetland ponies. It was driven around New York by Rodnia Jr. dressed in the uniform of a coachman. Barnum thought these little trips about town the best form of advertisement. <mask>'s carriage is now in the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Debut

Commodore <mask> made his debut at Barnum's American Museum in February 1862. He was a great success. Some museum-goers believed they were being "humbugged" by Barnum though.They thought that <mask> was really General Tom Thumb in disguise. <mask> did look like the Tom Thumb of the past, but Thumb had aged and put on weight over the yearsa fact museum-goers either forgot or ignored. <mask> was a scamp; he took pleasure in the public's confusion, and encouraged the error. When <mask> debuted, Thumb was touring the American South and West. Barnum wanted to silence those with doubts at the Museum. He asked Thumb to cut his tour short, return to New York, and perform on the same stage with <mask>. Thumb returned to New York.The little men were billed as "The Two Dromios" and "The Two Smallest Men, and Greatest Curiosities Living." The exhibit opened on 11 August 1862. Despite what their eyes witnessed, some museum-goers still said that <mask> was Tom Thumb in disguise. Barnum wrote, "It is very amusing to see how people will sometimes deceive themselves by being too incredulous." About two months after his debut, <mask> met with New York City Police Department officers. He applied for and was given a policeman's job. He ordered a uniform.Then he sent a telegram to the officers of the Ninth Precinct telling them that he had just gotten a job on the Broadway Squadwith "extraordinary powers to arrest" people outside the Museum and to "take [them] upstairs". President Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln asked Barnum and <mask> to come to the White House in November 1862. When the two arrived, Lincoln left a cabinet meeting to welcome them. <mask> asked Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, if he was the man who was spending so much of Uncle Sam's money. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, interrupted to say that he was the man. "Well," said <mask>, "It is in a good cause, anyhow, and I guess it will come out all right." As Barnum and <mask> were on their way out, President Lincoln shook <mask>'s hand.He told the Commodore that he should "wade ashore" if his "fleet" was ever in danger. <mask> looked up and down Lincoln's long legs. "I guess, Mr. President", he said, "You could do that better than I could." Personal life

Lavinia Warren

Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump was a dwarf who taught school in her hometown of Middleborough, Massachusetts. She was traveling on a showboat-museum in the Midwest however when Barnum learned of her. He hired her in 1862. Her name was shortened to Lavinia Warren.She first appeared at the Museum in 1863. Warren was 21 years old,  tall, and weighed . Barnum billed her as "The Queen of Beauty". <mask> developed an "adolescent crush" on her, but would be disappointed. Barnum gave Lavinia a diamond and emerald ring. It did not fit her finger properly, so he told her to give the ring to <mask> as a token of her friendship. <mask> regarded the ring as a token of her love instead.He fell more in love with her than ever. Lavinia was uncomfortable with his attentions. She thought of herself as "quite a woman", but regarded <mask> as just a "nice little boy". Thumb was not appearing in New York City when Lavinia was hired, but he met her when he visited the Museum in the autumn of 1862. He told Barnum the same day that he had fallen in love with her. Thumb wanted Barnum on his side in this love affair (rather than on <mask>'s side), so he quietly promised Barnum he would marry Lavinia in a public ceremony. Barnum knew at once that such a spectacle would make him a fortune.He told Lavinia to take Thumb's romantic interest seriously. He reminded her that the little man was rich. Thumb's rival
<mask> knew that Thumb was in love with Lavinia. He was jealous. He had a fight with Thumb in a dressing room at the Museum. He threw him on the floor and beat him up. <mask> invited himself along when Lavinia was asked to Barnum's home for a weekend visit.Little did he know that Thumb and his mother would be there, too. <mask> left New York City on a train late Saturday night. He got to Barnum's house about 11 pm. He found Thumb and Lavinia alone in the downstairs parlor. Thumb had proposed, and Lavinia had accepted. <mask> only learned of their engagement a week later when Lavinia and Barnum told him. <mask> had a hard time forgiving both Thumb and Barnum for (as he termed it) this "dastardly" offense.Preparations
Lavinia's younger sister Minnie was much smaller than she was. Barnum thought she would make a good match for <mask>. He asked <mask> to think about marrying Minnie. <mask> told Barnum he had little faith in women. He said that he would not marry "the best woman living". Barnum wanted Minnie and <mask> to go to the wedding as Lavinia and Thumb's bridesmaid and best man. <mask> refused.Later, Thumb himself asked <mask> to be his best man. <mask> accepted. He told Barnum, "It was not your business to ask me. When the proper person invited me, I consented." Barnum's "Fairy Wedding"

Thumb and Lavinia were married at Grace Episcopal Church, New York City, on Tuesday 10 February 1863. <mask> and Minnie were best man and bridesmaid at the "Fairy Wedding". Police stopped traffic as people gathered in the streets to see the arrival of the wedding party.The wedding was scheduled to start at noon, but the bride did not arrive until 12:30 pm. Barnum led the wedding party down the center aisle. Two thousand people were invited to the wedding. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Horace Greeley, and General Ambrose Burnside were there. Members of the church complained about the "marriage of mountebanks". They became irate when they were told they could not sit in their own pews. Much of the public curiosity about the marriage was based on an interest in the sexual mechanics of Thumb and Lavinia.Barnum did not encourage or discourage this interest. The wedding reception was held in the Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway at 3 pm. The four little members of the wedding party stood on top of a grand piano so they could be seen by everyone. <mask> gave Lavinia a diamond ring as a wedding present. Americans loved the wedding. It was welcome relief from the horrors and sorrows of the war. World tour and aftermath

People around the world took great interest in the wedding.Barnum thought this was a chance to make a lot of money. He sent the members of the wedding party on long, successful tours of America and Europe. The four dwarfs were sent off againthis time on a grand tour of the world as The Tom Thumb Company. The four little people left the United States on 21 June 1869. They travelled  around the world, visited 587 cities and towns, and gave 1,471 performances of songs, speeches, and military drills. They returned to America in 1872. <mask> and Barnum argued after the tour.<mask> quit. He joined Harry Deakin's Lilliputian Comic Opera Company. This company toured America in an operetta called Jack, the Giant Killer. <mask> and his brother Rodnia put together a variety show. It played in Portland, Oregon. It was not a success. <mask> went to San Francisco, California, and put together another show.He tired of the life within a year and quit. Another show he put together about this time was not successful either. <mask> ran a couple of saloons in Oregon and San Francisco, but these were not successes. Last years

Newspapers reported at least four times that <mask> and Minnie were married. They were close friends, but never husband and wife. Minnie married a song and dance man who performed on roller skates named Edmund Newell. She died while having their baby in 1878.One day long after the wedding of the Thumbs, Barnum asked <mask> why he had not married. "Sir, my fruit is plucked", he said, "I have concluded not to marry until I'm thirty." His bride's height was of no concern, he said, but he did "prefer marrying a good, green country girl to anyone else." In 1879, <mask> married Miss Lilian Elston of Redwood City, California. He had met her while he was touring the American West. She was a bit shorter than most women, but not a dwarf. After his failures on the West Coast, <mask> went back to New York City.He bought a saloon. One day, he was caught selling liquor without a license. The New York City courts closed his saloon. <mask> was in charge of an amusement area called Rockaway Pier for a time. He returned to performing with an act called "Tally-Ho". Death
Early in 1881, <mask> had an attack of Bright's disease (nephritis). He was sick for more than two months.He died on 25 May 1881 at the Anthony House in New York City. <mask>'s wife cried over his coffin at the funeral. She called him her "dear little boy", and said that he was "so good". <mask> was buried in Merrill Cemetery at Manchester, New Hampshire. His grave is unmarked. It is thought that he was buried in a spot either next to or possibly between his parents, or between the siblings that were also interred in the family plot. <mask> had grown from his original  to , and weighed a little less than  at his death.In 1891, the editors of Appleton's Cyclopedia wrote, "<mask> was distinguished for large-hearted virtues that are often lacking in bigger men; his genial temper was allied to constancy and generosity that entitle his memory to the highest respect." The editors noted that <mask> was "for many years faithful to an early love." Notes

References

External links

 The Lost Museum

Entertainers with dwarfism
1848 births
1881 deaths
People from Manchester, New Hampshire
American circus performers

masks:
George Washington Morrison Nutt
Commodore Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Commodore Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Morrison Nutt
Nutt
) Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
William Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Commodore Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Nutt
Commodore Nutt
Nutt


text_chunks:
<mask> (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer. Best known for his distinctive supporting and character roles—typically lowlifes, eccentrics, bullies, and misfits—he acted in many films, including leading roles, from the early 1990s until his death in 2014. Born and raised in Fairport, New York, <mask> was drawn to theater in his youth after attending a stage production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons at age 12. <mask> studied acting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and began his screen career in a 1991 episode of Law & Order, starting to appear in films in 1992. He gained recognition for his supporting work, notably in Scent of a Woman (1992), Twister (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Happiness (1998), Patch Adams (1998), The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Along Came Polly (2004). He began to occasionally play leading roles, and for his portrayal of the author Truman Capote in Capote (2005), he won multiple accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. <mask>'s profile continued to grow and he received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances as a brutally frank CIA officer in Charlie Wilson's War (2007), a Catholic priest accused of pedophilia in Doubt (2008), and the charismatic leader of a Scientology-type movement in The Master (2012).While he mainly worked in independent films, including The Savages (2007) and Synecdoche, New York (2008), <mask> also appeared in Flawless (1999), and Hollywood blockbusters such as Twister (1996), Mission: Impossible III (2006), and in one of his final roles, as Plutarch Heavensbee in the Hunger Games series (2013–15). The feature Jack Goes Boating (2010) marked his debut as a filmmaker. <mask> was also an accomplished theater actor and director. He joined the off-Broadway LAByrinth Theater Company in 1995, where he directed, produced, and appeared in numerous stage productions. His performances in three Broadway plays—True West in 2000, Long Day's Journey into Night in 2003, and Death of a Salesman in 2012—all led to Tony Award nominations. <mask> struggled with drug addiction as a young adult and relapsed in 2012 after many years of abstinence. In February 2014, he died of combined drug intoxication.Remembered for his fearlessness in playing reprehensible characters, and for bringing depth and humanity to such roles, <mask> was described in his New York Times obituary as "perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation". Early life
<mask> was born on July 23, 1967, in the Rochester suburb of Fairport, New York. His mother, Marilyn O'Connor (née Loucks), came from nearby Waterloo and worked as an elementary school teacher before becoming a lawyer and eventually a family court judge. His father, Gordon Stowell <mask>, was a native of Geneva, New York, and worked for the Xerox Corporation. Along with one brother, Gordy, <mask> had two sisters, Jill and Emily. His ancestry included German and Irish. <mask> was baptized a Catholic and attended Mass as a child, but did not have a heavily religious upbringing.His parents divorced when he was nine, and the children were raised primarily by their mother. <mask>'s childhood passion was sports, particularly wrestling and baseball, but at age 12, he saw a stage production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and was transfixed. He recalled in 2008, "I was changed – permanently changed – by that experience. It was like a miracle to me". <mask> developed a love for the theater, and proceeded to attend regularly with his mother, who was a lifelong enthusiast. He remembered that productions of Quilters and Alms for the Middle Class, the latter starring a teenaged Robert Downey, Jr., were also particularly inspirational. At the age of 14, <mask> suffered a neck injury that ended his sporting activity, and he began to consider acting.Encouraged by his mother, he joined a drama club, and initially committed to it because he was attracted to a female member. Acting gradually became a passion for <mask>: "I loved the camaraderie of it, the people, and that's when I decided it was what I wanted to do." At the age of 17, he was selected to attend the 1984 New York State Summer School of the Arts in Saratoga Springs, where he met his future collaborators Bennett Miller and Dan Futterman. Miller later commented on <mask>'s popularity at the time: "We were attracted to the fact that he was genuinely serious about what he was doing. Even then, he was passionate." <mask> applied for several drama degree programs and was accepted to New York University's (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. Between graduating from Fairport High School and beginning the program, he continued his training at the Circle in the Square Theatre's summer program.<mask> had positive memories of his time at NYU, where he supported himself by working as an usher. With friends, he co-founded the Bullstoi Ensemble acting troupe. He received a drama degree in 1989. Career

1991-1995: Early career
After graduating, <mask> worked in off-Broadway theater and made additional money with customer service jobs. He made his screen debut in 1991, in a Law & Order episode called "The Violence of Summer", playing a man accused of rape. His first cinema role came the following year, when he was credited as "<mask>" in the independent film Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole. After this, he adopted his grandfather's name, <mask>, to avoid confusion with another actor.More film roles promptly followed, with appearances in the studio production My New Gun, and a small role in the comedy Leap of Faith, starring Steve Martin. Following these roles, he gained attention playing a spoiled student in the Oscar-winning Al Pacino film Scent of a Woman (1992). <mask> auditioned five times for his role, which The Guardian journalist Ryan Gilbey says gave him an early opportunity "to indulge his skill for making unctuousness compelling". The film earned US$134 million worldwide and was the first to get <mask> noticed. Reflecting on Scent of a Woman, <mask> later said, "If I hadn't gotten into that film, I wouldn't be where I am today." At this time, he abandoned his job in a delicatessen to become a professional actor. <mask> continued playing small roles throughout the early 1990s.After appearing in Joey Breaker and the critically panned teen zombie picture My Boyfriend's Back, he had a more notable role playing John Cusack's wealthy friend in the crime comedy Money for Nothing. In 1994, he portrayed an inexperienced mobster in the crime thriller The Getaway, starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and he subsequently appeared with Andy García and Meg Ryan in the romantic drama When a Man Loves a Woman. He then played an uptight police deputy who gets punched by Paul Newman – one of <mask>'s acting idols – in the drama Nobody's Fool. Still considering stage work to be fundamental to his career, <mask> joined the LAByrinth Theater Company of New York City in 1995. This association lasted the remainder of his life; along with appearing in multiple productions, he later became co-artistic director of the theater company with John Ortiz, and directed various plays over the years. <mask>'s only film appearance of 1995 was in the 22-minute short comedy The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, which satirized the film industry in an Elizabethan setting. He played the characters of Bernardo, Horatio, and Laertes alongside Austin Pendleton's Hamlet.1996-1999: Rising star
Between April and May 1996, <mask> appeared at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in a Mark Wing-Davey production of Caryl Churchill's The Skriker. Following this, based on his work in Scent of a Woman, he was cast by writer–director Paul Thomas Anderson to appear in his debut feature Hard Eight (1996). <mask> had only a brief role in the crime thriller, playing a cocksure young craps player, but it began the most important collaboration of his career. Before cementing his creative partnership with Anderson, <mask> appeared in one of the year's biggest blockbusters, Twister, playing a grubby, hyperactive storm chaser alongside Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. According to a People survey of Twitter and Facebook users, Twister is the film with which <mask> is most popularly associated. He then reunited with Anderson for the director's second feature, Boogie Nights, about the Golden Age of Pornography. The ensemble piece starred Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, and Burt Reynolds; <mask> played a boom operator, described by David Fear of Rolling Stone as a "complete, unabashed loser", who attempts to seduce Wahlberg's character.Warmly received by critics, the film grew into a cult classic, and has been cited as the role in which <mask> first showed his full ability. Fear commended the "naked emotional neediness" of the performance, adding that it made for compulsive viewing. <mask> later expressed his appreciation for Anderson when he called the director "incomparable". Continuing with this momentum, <mask> appeared in five films in 1998. He had supporting roles in the crime thriller Montana and the romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland, both of which were commercial failures, before working with the Coen brothers in their dark comedy The Big Lebowski. <mask> had long been a fan of the directors, and relished the experience of working with them. Appearing alongside Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, <mask> played Brandt, the smug personal assistant of the titular character.Although it was only a small role, he claimed it was one for which he was most recognized, in a film that has achieved cult status and a large fan base. Between March and April 1998, <mask> made 30 appearances on stage at the New York Theatre Workshop in a production of Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking, portraying an ex-heroin addict. <mask> took an unflattering role in Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), a misanthropic black comedy about the lives of three sisters and those around them. He played Allen, a strange loner who makes crude phone calls to women; the character furiously masturbates during one conversation, producing what film scholar Jerry Mosher calls an "embarrassingly raw performance". Jake Coyle of the Associated Press rated Allen as one of the creepiest characters in American cinema, but critic Xan Brooks highlighted the pathos that <mask> brought to the role. Happiness was controversial but widely praised, and <mask>'s role has been cited by critics as one of his best. His final 1998 release was more mainstream, as he appeared as a medical graduate in the Robin Williams comedy Patch Adams.The film was critically panned, but one of the highest-grossing of <mask>'s career. In 1999, <mask> starred opposite Robert De Niro as drag queen Rusty Zimmerman in Joel Schumacher's drama Flawless. <mask> considered De Niro the most imposing actor with whom he had appeared, and he felt that working with the veteran performer profoundly improved his own acting. <mask>'s ability to avoid clichés in playing such a delicate role was noted by critics, and Roger Ebert said it confirmed him as "one of the best new character actors". He was rewarded with his first Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. <mask> then reunited with Paul Thomas Anderson, where he was given an atypically virtuous role in the ensemble drama Magnolia. The film, set over one day in Los Angeles, features <mask> as a nurse who cares for Jason Robards' character.The performance was approved of by the medical industry, and Jessica Winter of the Village Voice considered it <mask>'s most indelible work, likening him to a guardian angel in his caring for the dying father. Magnolia has been included in lists of the greatest films of all time, and it was a personal favorite of <mask>'s. One of the most critically and commercially successful films of <mask>'s career was The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), which he considered "as edgy as you can get for a Hollywood movie". He played a "preppy bully" who taunts Matt Damon's Ripley in the thriller, a character which Jeff Simon of The Buffalo News called "the truest upper class twit in all of American movies". <mask>'s performance caught the attention of Meryl Streep, another of his cinematic idols: "I sat up straight in my seat and said, 'Who is that?' I thought to myself: My God, this actor is fearless. He's done what we all strive for – he's given this awful character the respect he deserves, and he's made him fascinating."In recognition of his work in Magnolia and The Talented Mr. Ripley, <mask> was named the year's Best Supporting Actor by the National Board of Review. 2000-2004: Established star

Following a string of roles in successful films in the late 1990s, <mask> had established a reputation as a top supporting player who could be relied on to make an impression with each performance. His film appearances were likened by David Kamp of GQ to "discovering a prize in a box of cereal, receiving a bonus, or bumping unexpectedly into an old friend". According to Jerry Mosher, as the year 2000 began, "it seemed <mask> was everywhere, poised on the cusp of stardom". <mask> had begun to be recognized as a theater actor in 1999, when he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor for the off-Broadway play The Author's Voice. This success continued with the 2000 Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's True West, where <mask> alternated roles nightly with co-star John C. Reilly, making 154 appearances between March and July 2000. Ben Brantley of The New York Times felt that it was the best stage performance of <mask>'s career, calling him "brilliant", and the actor earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play.The following year, <mask> appeared with Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, and John Goodman in a Delacorte Theater production of Chekhov's The Seagull – although Brantley felt that this performance was less fully realized. As a stage director, <mask>

masks:
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Phil Hoffman
Seymour
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman


text_chunks:
 received two Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Director of a Play: one for Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train in 2001, and another for Our Lady of 121st Street in 2003. In a 2008 interview, <mask> opined that "switching hats" between acting and directing helped him improve in both roles. David Mamet's comedy State and Main, about the difficulties of shooting a film in rural New England, was <mask>'s first film role of 2000 and had a limited release. He had a more prominent supporting role that year in Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe's popular coming-of-age film set in the 1970s music industry. <mask> portrayed the enthusiastic rock critic Lester Bangs, a task by which he felt burdened, but he managed to convey the real figure's mannerisms and sharp wit after watching him in a BBC interview. The following year, <mask> featured as the narrator and interviewer in The Party's Over, a documentary about the 2000 U.S. elections.He assumed the position of a "politically informed and alienated Generation-Xer" who seeks to be educated in U.S. politics, but ultimately reveals the extent of public dissatisfaction in this area. In 2002, <mask> was given his first leading role (despite joking at the time "Even if I was hired into a leading-man part, I'd probably turn it into the non-leading-man part") in Todd Louiso's tragicomedy Love Liza (2002). His brother Gordy wrote the script, which <mask> had seen at their mother's house five years earlier, about a widower who starts sniffing gasoline to cope with his wife's suicide. He considered it the finest piece of writing he had ever read, "incredibly humble in its exploration of grief", but critics were less enthusiastic about the production. A review for the BBC wrote that <mask> had finally been given a part that showed "what he's truly capable of", but few witnessed this as the film had a limited release and earned only US$210,000. Later in 2002, <mask> starred opposite Adam Sandler and Emily Watson in Anderson's critically acclaimed fourth picture, the surrealist romantic comedy-drama Punch-Drunk Love (2002), where he played an illegal phone-sex "supervisor". Drew Hunt of the Chicago Reader saw the performance as a fine example of <mask>'s "knack for turning small roles into seminal performances" and praised the actor's comedic ability.In a very different film, <mask> was next seen with Anthony Hopkins in the high-budget thriller Red Dragon, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, portraying the meddlesome tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds. His fourth appearance of 2002 came in Spike Lee's drama 25th Hour, playing an English teacher who makes a devastating drunken mistake. Both Lee and the film's lead Edward Norton were thrilled to work with <mask>, and Lee confessed that he had long wanted to do a picture with the actor, but had waited until he found the right role. <mask> considered his character, Jakob, to be one of the most reticent characters he had ever played, a straight-laced "corduroy-pants-wearing kind of guy." Roger Ebert promoted 25th Hour to one of his "Great Movies" in 2009, and along with A. O. Scott, considered it to be one of the best films of the 2000s. The drama Owning Mahowny (2003) gave <mask> his second lead role, starring opposite Minnie Driver as a bank employee who embezzles money to feed his gambling addiction. Based on the true story of Toronto banker Brian Molony, who committed the largest fraud in Canadian history, <mask> met with Molony to prepare for the role and help him play the character as accurately as possible.He was determined not to conform to "movie character" stereotypes, and his portrayal of addiction won approval from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Roger Ebert assessed <mask>'s performance as "a masterpiece of discipline and precision," but the film earned little at the box office. <mask>'s second 2003 appearance was a small role in Anthony Minghella's successful Civil War epic Cold Mountain. He played an immoral preacher, a complex character that <mask> described as a "mass of contradictions". The same year, from April to August, he appeared with Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy and Robert Sean Leonard in a Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Director Robert Falls later commented on the dedication and experience that <mask> brought to his role of alcoholic Jamie Tyrone: "Every night he ripped it up to an extent that he couldn't leave [the role]. Phil carried it with him."<mask> received his second Tony Award nomination, this time for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In 2004, he appeared as the crude, has-been actor friend of Ben Stiller's character in the box-office hit Along Came Polly. Reflecting on the role, People said it proved that "<mask> could deliver comedic performances with the best of them". 2005-2009: Critical acclaim

A turning point in <mask>'s career came with the biographical film Capote (2005), which dramatized Truman Capote's experience of writing his true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). <mask> took the title role for a project that he co-produced and helped come to fruition. Portraying the idiosyncratic writer proved highly demanding, requiring significant weight loss and four months of research – such as watching video clips of Capote to help him affect the author's effeminate voice and mannerisms. <mask> stated that he was not concerned with perfectly imitating Capote's speech, but he did feel a great duty to "express the vitality and the nuances" of the writer.During filming, he stayed in character constantly so as not to lose the voice and posture: "Otherwise," he explained, "I would give my body a chance to bail on me." Capote was released to great acclaim, particularly regarding <mask>'s performance. Many critics commented that the role was designed to win awards, and indeed <mask> received an Oscar, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, BAFTA, and various other critics' awards. In 2006, Premiere listed his role in Capote as the 35th-greatest movie performance of all time. After the film, several commentators began to describe <mask> as one of the finest, most ambitious actors of his generation. <mask> received his only Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his supporting role in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls (2005), about life in a New England town. He ultimately lost to castmate Paul Newman.In 2006, he appeared in the summer blockbuster Mission: Impossible III, playing the villainous arms dealer Owen Davian opposite Tom Cruise. A journalist for Vanity Fair stated that <mask>'s "black-hat performance was one of the most delicious in a Hollywood film since Alan Rickman's in Die Hard ", and he was generally approved of for bringing gravitas to the action film. With a gross of nearly US$400 million, it exposed <mask> to a mainstream audience. Returning to independent films in 2007, <mask> began with a starring role in Tamara Jenkins's The Savages, where Laura Linney and he played siblings responsible for putting their dementia-ridden father (<mask>) in a care home. Jake Coyle of the Associated Press stated that it was "the epitome of a <mask> film: a mix of comedy and tragedy told with subtlety, bone-dry humor, and flashes of grace". <mask> received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in The Savages. He next appeared in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, the final film by veteran director Sidney Lumet, where he played a realtor who embezzles funds from his employer to support his drug habit.Mosher comments that the character was one of the most unpleasant of <mask>'s career, but that his "fearlessness again revealed the humanity within a deeply flawed character" as he appeared naked in the opening sex scene. The film was received positively by critics as a powerful and affecting thriller. Mike Nichols's political film Charlie Wilson's War (2007) gave <mask> his second Academy Award nomination, again for playing a real individual – Gust Avrakotos, the CIA agent who conspired with Congressman Charlie Wilson (played by Tom Hanks) to aid Afghani rebels in their fight against the Soviet Union. Todd McCarthy wrote of <mask>'s performance: "Decked out with a pouffy '80s hairdo, moustache, protruding gut and ever-present smokes ... whenever he's on, the picture vibrates with conspiratorial electricity." The film was a critical and commercial success, and along with his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, <mask> was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award. The year 2008 contained two significant <mask> roles. In Charlie Kaufman's enigmatic drama Synecdoche, New York, he starred as Caden Cotard, a frustrated dramatist who attempts to build a scale replica of New York inside a warehouse for a play.<mask> again showed his willingness to reveal unattractive traits, as the character ages and deteriorates, and committed to a deeply psychological role. Critics were divided in their response to the "ambitious and baffling" film. Sonny Bunch of The Washington Times found it "impressionistic, inaccessible, and endlessly frustrating", likening <mask>'s character to "God, if God lacked imagination". Roger Ebert, on the contrary, named it the best film of the decade and considered it one of the greatest of all time, and Robbie Collin, film critic for The Daily Telegraph, believes <mask> gave one of cinema's best performances. <mask>'s second role of the year came opposite Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, where he played Father Brendan Flynn – a priest accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old African American student in the 1960s. <mask> was already familiar with the play and appreciated the opportunity to bring it to the screen; in preparing for the role, he talked extensively to a priest who lived through the era. The film had a mixed reception, with some critics such as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian suspicious of it as Oscar bait, but <mask> gained second consecutive Best Supporting Actor nominations at the Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, and was also nominated by the Screen Actors Guild.On stage in 2009, <mask> played Iago in Peter Sellars' futuristic production of Othello (with the title role by John Ortiz), which received mixed reviews. Ben Brantley, theatre critic of The New York Times, found it to be "exasperatingly misconceived", remarking that even when <mask> is attempting to "manipulate others into self-destruction, he comes close to spoiling everything by erupting into genuine, volcanic fury". <mask> also did his first vocal performance for the claymation film Mary and Max, although the film did not initially have an American release. He played Max, a depressed New Yorker with Asperger syndrome, while Toni Collette voiced Mary – the Australian girl who becomes his pen pal. Continuing with animation, <mask> then worked on an episode of the children's show Arthur and received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performer In An Animated Program. Later in the year, he played a brash American disc jockey opposite Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans in Richard Curtis's British comedy The Boat That Rocked (also known as Pirate Radio) – a character based on Emperor Rosko, a host of Radio Caroline in 1966. He also had a cameo role as a bartender in Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying.Reflecting on <mask>'s work in the late 2000s, Mosher writes that the actor remained impressive, but had not delivered a testing performance on the level of his work in Capote. The film critic David Thomson believed that <mask> showed indecisiveness at this time, unsure whether to play spectacular supporting roles or become a lead actor who is capable of controlling the emotional dynamic and outcome of a film. 2010-2014: Final years
<mask>'s profile continued to grow with the new decade, and he became an increasingly recognizable figure. Despite earlier reservations about directing for the screen, his first release of the 2010s was also his first as a film director. The independent drama Jack Goes Boating was adapted from Robert Glaudini's play of the same name, in which <mask> had starred and directed for the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2007. He originally intended only to direct the film, but decided to reprise the main role of Jack – a lonely limousine driver looking for love – after the actor he wanted for it was unavailable. The low-key film had a limited release, and was not a high earner, though it received many positive reviews.However, Dave Edwards of the Daily Mirror remarked that "<mask>'s directing debut delivers a film so weak I could barely remember what it was about as I left", while critic Mark Kermode appreciated the cinematic qualities that <mask> brought to the film, and stated that he showed potential as a director. In addition to Jack Goes Boating, in 2010 <mask> also directed Brett C. Leonard's tragic drama The Long Red Road for the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Steven Oxman of Variety described the production as "heavy handed" and "predictable", but "intriguing and at least partially successful". <mask> next had significant supporting roles in two films, both released in the last third of 2011. In Bennett Miller's Moneyball, a sports drama about the 2002 season of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, he played the coach Art Howe. The film was a critical and commercial success, and <mask> was described as "perfectly cast" by Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post, but the real-life Art Howe accused the filmmakers of giving an "unfair and untrue" portrayal of him. <mask>'s second film of the year was George Clooney's political drama The Ides of March, in which he played the earnest campaign manager to the Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney).The film was well-received and <mask>'s performance, especially in the scenes opposite Paul Giamatti – who played the rival campaign manager – was positively noted. <mask>'s work on the film earned him his fourth BAFTA Award nomination. In the spring of 2012, <mask> made his final stage appearance, starring as Willy Loman in a Broadway revival of Death of a

masks:
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Philip Bosco
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman
Hoffman