ProfilePaul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open-wheel IndyCar racing. He was also a committed philanthropist, co-founding Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2019, these donations have totaled over US$550 million. BiographyNewman was born January 26, 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the second son of Theresa Garth(1894–1982) and Arthur Sigmund Newman Sr. (1893–1950), who ran a sporting goods store where her mother worked as well. His father was Jewish, Paul's mother was a practitioner of Christian Science. Newman practised no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew. Newman showed an early interest in the theater; his first role was at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. At age 10, Newman performed at the Cleveland Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon. In 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. Initially, he enrolled in the Navy V-12 pilot training program at Yale University, but was dropped when his colorblindness was discovered. After the war, Newman completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio in 1949 and later attended the Yale School of Drama for one year. In 1949, Newman married Jackie Witte. They had a son, Scott (1950–1978), and two daughters, Susan (born 1953) and Stephanie Kendall (born 1954). Scott died in November 1978 from a drug overdose. Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son. In 1951, Newman decided to move with his family to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio He made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley in 1953. During this time Newman also started acting in television. His first credited role was in a 1952 episode of Tales of Tomorrow entitled "Ice from Space". In February 1954, Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean for East of Eden (1955). Dean won his part, but Newman did not. After James Dean's death, Newman replaced Dean in the role of a boxer in a television adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Battler", written by A. E. Hotchner(who later would become his friend and business partner), that was broadcast live on October 18, 1955. That performance led to his breakthrough role as Rocky Graziano in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956. Newman garnered much attention and acclaim for his role. In 1957, Newman starred in The Long, Hot Summer for which he won Best Actor at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. While filming, he reconnected with his co-star Joanne Woodward whom he met a few years ago. Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953, on the production of Picnic on Broadway. It was Newman's debut; Woodward was an understudy. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer in 1957, he divorced Jackie Witte and married Woodward in early 1958. They bought a home in Westport, Connecticut, one of the first Hollywood movie star couples to choose to raise their families outside California. They had three daughters: Elinor "Nell" Teresa (b. 1959), Melissa "Lissy" Stewart (b. 1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (b. 1965). Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. After his marriage to Woodward they appeared together in movies such as From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), A New Kind of Love (1963), Winning (1969), WUSA (1970), Harry & Son (1984), and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). He also directed four feature films starring his wife Woodward. In 1958, Newman garnered his first Academy Award nomination for his role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)a box-office smash, opposite Elizabeth Taylor. But his major films are mostly in the 60s and 70s, such as The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and leading roles in The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), The Verdict (1982), etc. Twenty-five years after The Hustler, Newman reprised his role of "Fast Eddie" Felson in the Martin Scorsese–directed film The Color of Money (1986), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor after being nominated 10 times. In 2003, Newman appeared in a Broadway revival of Wilder's Our Town, receiving his first Tony Award nomination for his performance. Newman's last movie appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road to Perdition opposite Tom Hanks, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His last onscreen appearance was in 2005 in the HBO mini-series Empire Falls for which he won a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy. Newman retired from acting in May 2007. Since his success in Hollywood, Paul Newman had been actively involved in philanthropy. In 1982, Newman founded Newman's Own with his friend With writer A. E. Hotchner. The brand started with salad dressing and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and wine, among other things. Newman established a policy that all proceeds, after taxes, would be donated to charity. He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner, Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Since then until his death, Paul Newman kept donating generously to various charities, institutions and causes. In 1983, Newman became a Major Donor for The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, matching a grant from Laurence Rockefeller. Newman was inspired to invest by his connection with Lee Strasberg, as Lee's then daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of The Mirror. Paul Newman remained a friend of the company until his death and discussed at numerous times possible productions in which he could star with his wife, Joanne Woodward. In June 1999, Newman donated $250,000 to Catholic Relief Services to aid refugees in Kosovo. On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College of which Newman once a student, announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund as part of the college's $230 million fund-raising campaign. Newman and Woodward were honorary co-chairs of a previous campaign. Newman was named the Most Generous Celebrity of 2008 by Givingback.org. He contributed $20,857,000 for the year of 2008 to the Newman's Own Foundation, which distributes funds to a variety of charities. In June 2008, it was widely reported in the press that Newmann had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment for the condition at the Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City. A. E. Hotchner, told the Associated Press in an interview in mid-2008 that Newman had told him about being afflicted with the disease about 18 months earlier. The actor was a heavy cigarette smoker until he quit in 1986. Paul Newman died on the morning of September 26, 2008, surrounded by friends and family. He was 83 years old. At the time of his death, he had been married to his wife Joanne Woodward for 50 years. Newman has attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination." Paul Newman was cremated after a private funeral service near his home in Westport, Connecticut. Further interestBooks
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Profile Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).
Roger Vadim Plémiannikov, dit Roger Vadim, né le 26 janvier 1928 dans le 5e arrondissement de Paris et mort le 11 février 2000 dans le 13e arrondissement, est un réalisateur, scénariste, acteur, romancier et poète français.
Passionné de cinéma, de littérature, de musique, mais également célèbre « homme à femmes », il a aussi écrit et réalisé des films pour mettre en scène certaines de ses compagnes et en faire des stars du grand écran, notamment Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Catherine Deneuve et Jane Fonda. Biography
Vadim was born Roger Vadim Plemiannikov in Paris. His father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov, a White Russian military officer and pianist, had emigrated from imperial Russia and became a naturalized French citizen. He was a vice consul of France to Egypt, stationed in Alexandria, later posting to Mersin, Turkey as a consul. Vadim's mother, Marie-Antoinette was a French actress. Although Vadim lived as a diplomat's child in Northern Africa and the Middle East in his early youth, the death of his father when Vadim was nine years old caused the family to return to France.
Vadim studied journalism and writing at the University of Paris, without graduating.
At age 19, he became assistant to film director Marc Allégret, whom he met while working at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, and for whom he worked on several screenplays.
It was when he worked for Marc Allégret, that he discovered Brigitte Bardot and convinced the latter to audition her. Vadim and Bardot fell in love, and they waited until 1952 when Brigitte Bardot was 18 years old to get married in Paris.
In 1956, Vadim created And God Created Woman for his young wife, which was also his first film as a director. The film was doing ok in France, but achieved huge success in the United States and around the world, establishing Bardot as a world icon.
During the filming, however, Brigitte Bardot fell in love with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, and left Roger Vadim. The couple divorced in December 1957, just 5 years after their marriage. After Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim will repeat several times his patter of falling love with a woman and make her his protagonist in his film, although it seems the love lasts just a little big longer than the film. The first of such women was Annette Stroyberg(7 December 1936-12 December 2005), a Danish model. Roger Vadim married her in June 1958 and put her into his second most famous film Les liaisons dangereuses (1959) together with Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe (in his final film). The film did not succeed, and the couple divorced in 1961, shortly after the release of the film.
Then it was Catherine Deneuve whom Roger Vadim met in 1961 when she was filming the anthology film Tales of Paris (1962), and who starred in his films like And Satan Calls the Turns (1962) and Vice and Virtue (1963), but they left each other in 1963.
Then Jane Fonda. He met the American actress in 1964 and married her in 1967. He directed her in The Game Is Over (1966), based on a book by Émile Zola, then in a science fiction sex comedy, Barbarella (1968). Both films failed, as his marriage to Jane Fonda. They divorced in 1972.
In 1976, Roger Vadim directed Une femme fidèle, a Madame Bovary sort of period drama, played by Dutch model and actress Sylvia Kristel who has already become internationally famous for starring in erotic French film Emmanuelle released in 1974. But the film did not succeed either.
In 1988, Vadim attempted to recapture his former success with a new version of And God Created Woman (1988), with Rebecca de Mornay. Very different from the original – it only really used the same title – it failed critically and commercially.
After that, Roger Vadim turned his attention to TV, and it was in the world of TV, he found his last wife, French actress Marie-Christine Barrault and serenity. Like he did with all of his previous women, he became the director of Marie-Christine Barrault as well, both in theatre and TV, including Un coup de baguette magique (1997), which was last time Vadim worked as a director.
Roger Vadim was not just a woman's man, but also a renaissance man.
In addition to his theatre and film work, Roger Vadim also wrote several books, including the memoirs "Memoires du Diable", "Le Gout du Bonheur: Souvenirs 1940–1958" and an autobiography, D'une étoile à l'autre (From One Star to the Next) as well as a tell-all about his most famous exes, Bardot, Deneuve & Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World, published in 1986. "My attitude is that if this book makes me a little money it will be a tiny compensation for all the money I helped those actresses make", Vadim explained. He also wrote several plays and books of fiction, including L'Ange Affame.
Roger Vadim died of cancer at age 72 on 11 February 2000. Ex-wives Bardot, Fonda, Schneider and Stroyberg were all in attendance at his funeral. He is buried at St. Tropez Cemetery.
Biographie
Roger Vadim est le fils d'Igor Nicolaïevitch Plémiannikov (1904-1938), d'une famille de la noblesse russe, que la tradition familiale rattache à Gengis Khan. Engagé dans l'armée Wrangel à quatorze ans pour combattre les bolcheviques, Igor est fait prisonnier et condamné à mort ; parvenant à s'enfuir la veille de son exécution, Il arrive en France en octobre 1924 et est naturalisé français en 1928. Il est nommé vice-consul de France en Égypte, où Roger Vadim passe sa petite enfance dans un univers romanesque.
Lors de sa naissance, ses parents n'étaient pas mariés, son père étant alors toujours dans les liens d'un premier mariage avec une Russe. Fin 1938, il a 10 ans lorsque son père meurt, sa mère, lui et sa sœur Hélène s'installent en location dans une ferme des Gets, mais puis retourne s'installer à Paris.
En 1947, à 19 ans, il abandonne sa scolarité à l’Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) et préfère la vie d'artiste peintre ou d'acteur à Paris.
L'écrivain André Gide lui fait connaître le réalisateur Marc Allégret dont il devient l'assistant tout en étant journaliste et reporter-photographe à Paris Match jusqu'en 1956. En 1949, il remarque Brigitte Bardot, âgée alors de 15 ans, en couverture du magazine Elle, et demande à Marc Allégret de la faire auditionner pour un rôle. Le coup de foudre est immédiat et réciproque.
En 1950, le jeune couple d'amoureux (il a 22 ans, elle en a 16), se retrouve pour des vacances d'été à Cap Myrtes près de Saint-Tropez. Pour se conformer aux vœux de M. et Mme Bardot, ils doivent attendre les 18 ans de Brigitte Bardot pour pouvoir se marier. En 1952, la jeune actrice, Brigitte Bardot, fête ses 18 ans et, le 19 décembre 1952, les deux amoureux peuvent enfin se marier à la mairie puis le 21 à l'église.
Vadim s'ingénie à lancer sa jeune épouse, Bardot dans le monde du cinéma. Il obtient pour elle une participation dans Futures vedettes, réalisé par son mentor Marc Allégret.
En 1956, à 28 ans, il écrit et réalise son premier film, Et Dieu… créa la femme, pour sa femme qui a 22 ans et joue presque son propre rôle face à Jean-Louis Trintignant, complice régulier de Vadim et qui obtient grâce à ce film la reconnaissance publique. Juliette est une jeune femme ingénue totalement insouciante, au sommet de sa beauté. Elle fait exploser les cœurs et les mœurs de tous les hommes du village de pêcheurs de Saint-Tropez où elle vit. Elle ne pense qu'à s'amuser et aux plaisirs de la vie dans une communauté traditionnellement attachée aux bonnes mœurs et au travail. Le film obtient un succès relatif en France, mais triomphe aux États-Unis. Brigitte Bardot devient un mythe vivant, un modèle social et un sex-symbol international. Le film déchaîne autant de passions, et d'idolâtrie, que de scandale et de colère contre l'immoralité, et fait du petit village de pêcheurs de Saint-Tropez un endroit de légende par la seule présence de Bardot. Brigitte étant tombée amoureuse de son partenaire Jean-Louis Trintignant, le couple Bardot-Vadim divorce en décembre 1957. Vadim tournera quatre autres films avec Brigitte en 1958, 1961, 1962 et 1973, sans jamais retrouver l'éclat du premier malgré la recherche de sujets à scandales :par exemple dans Don Juan 73 où Bardot partage une scène d'amour avec Jane Birkin.
En 1959, il tourne l'adaptation du roman de Choderlos de Laclos écrite par Roger Vailland, Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960 avec Gérard Philipe, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Louis Trintignant, et Annette Stroyberg(1936-2005), rencontrée lors du tournage des Bijoutiers du clair de lune, qu'il épouse, le 17 juin 1958, et qui lui donnera une fille.
Espérant le même succès avec Annette Stroyberg dans Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960, qu'avec Bardot, il est déçu, la critique traditionnelle ne lui pardonne pas ce nouvel écart aux bonnes mœurs. Vadim et Annette divorcent en 1960 après avoir tourné ensemble Et mourir de plaisir.
En 1961, il a 33 ans et rencontre Catherine Deneuve qui en a 17, sur le tournage du film Les Parisiennes, de Marc Allégret, film dont il a écrit le sketch Sophie.
Ils tombent amoureux en une soirée, et se mettent en ménage; un fils, Christian Vadim, naît le 18 juin 1963. Vadim offre à Deneuve son premier grand rôle sur le thème du marquis de Sade et du nazisme dans Le Vice et la Vertu, en 1963, où elle est opposée à Annie Girardot. Le film, écrit par Roger Vailland, est boudé par le public et la critique.
En 1964, à 36 ans, il éprouve un nouveau coup de foudre pour l'actrice américaine Jane Fonda, âgée de 27 ans, sur le plateau de La Ronde d'après Arthur Schnitzler. Ils se marient le 18 mai 1967 à Saint-Ouen-Marchefroy et auront une fille, Vanessa.
Le metteur en scène fait tourner sa nouvelle épouse dans La Curée en compagnie de Michel Piccoli, d'après Émile Zola - le film est un échec - et dans Barbarella, science-fiction érotique d'après la bande dessinée de Jean-Claude Forest. Ce film est le dernier succès de Vadim au cinéma.
Jane quitte Vadim pour s'engager dans une association contre la Guerre du Viêt Nam en retournant vivre aux États-Unis. Ils divorcent en 1972.
En 1972, à 44 ans, alors qu'il vient de réaliser Si tu crois fillette avec Rock Hudson et Angie Dickinson, il rencontre Catherine Schneider, fille de Charles Schneider et de Lilian Constantini, héritière de l’empire sidérurgique Schneider, avec qui il a un fils Vania. Ils se marient en 1975, mais divorcent deux ans plus tard en 1977.
Après ce quatrième divorce, Vadim débute à la télévision avec Bonheur, Impair et Passe, nouvelle adaptation de Françoise Sagan au casting trois étoiles : Danielle Darrieux, Ludmila Mikaël et Philippe Léotard.
En 1980, à 52 ans, il rencontre Ann Biderman, une scénariste américaine, âgée de 29 ans, ils se fiancent en 1984, mais se séparent en 1986.
En 1988, il réalise un remake de son plus grand succès, And God Created Woman (1988), avec Rebecca De Mornay pour succéder à Brigitte Bardot.
En 1990, à 62 ans, il trouve enfin la sérénité auprès de la comédienne Marie-Christine Barrault, qu'il rencontre au Festival du film policier de Cognac, où ils sont tous les deux membres du jury. Après avoir vécu quelque temps ensemble, ils se marient le 21 décembre 1990.
Vadim met en scène Marie-Christine Barrault pour le théâtre (Même heure l'année prochaine, Enfin seuls !) et pour la télévision dans Amour fou, La Nouvelle tribu, Mon père avait raison et dans Un coup de baguette magique, sa dernière réalisation.
Toute sa vie, il restera fidèle aux Gets où il tourne certains extérieurs de ses films Les Liaisons dangereuses, L'Amour fou et Hellé et où il vécut avec Marie-Christine Barrault. En 1992, il y a acheté une ancienne ferme au Plan-Ferraz.
En 1993, Vadim passe à l'écriture de quatre romans, dont Le Goût du bonheur, où il met en scène, comme à son habitude, ses femmes,
Gravement malade depuis plusieurs mois, il meurt le 11 février 2000 à Paris à l'hôpital, à 72 ans, des suites d'un cancer du thymus.
Il est ensuite enterré en présence de ses cinq ex-compagnes au cimetière marin du village de Saint-Tropez, à quelques mètres du rivage, face au golfe de Saint-Tropez et de « la Madrague », propriété de Brigitte Bardot. Further interestArticlesBooksVideos
Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York "aristocracy" to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Among her other well known works are the The House of Mirth and the novella Ethan Frome.
Biography
Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones". She had two older brothers, both more than a decade older than her She was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church.
Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a very wealthy and socially prominent family having made their money in real estate. Fort Stevens in New York was named for Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Stevens, a Revolutionary War hero and General. Wharton was born during the Civil War; however, in describing her family life Wharton does not mention the war except that their travels to Europe after the war were due to the depreciation of American currency. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. During her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French, German, and Italian. At the age of nine, she suffered from typhoid fever, which nearly killed her, while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest. After the family returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York City and their summers in Newport, Rhode Island. While in Europe, she was educated by tutors and governesses. She rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time, which were intended to allow women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties. She considered these fashions superficial and oppressive. Edith wanted more education than she received, so she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, and Edith obeyed this command. She was allowed to read Louisa May Alcott but Wharton preferred Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Charles Kingsley's Water Babies.And she read the classics, philosophy, history, and poetry in her father's library including Daniel Defoe, John Milton, Thomas Carlyle, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Jean Racine, Thomas Moore, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, and Washington Irving. She later developed a passion for Walt Whitman.
Wharton wrote and told stories from an early age. When her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five she started what she called "making up." She invented stories for her family and walked with an open book, turning the pages as if reading while improvising a story. Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, and attempted to write her first novel at age eleven. Her mother's criticism quashed her ambition and she turned to poetry.
While she constantly sought her mother's approval and love, it was rare that she received either. From the start, the relationship with her mother was a troubled one. Before she was 15, she wrote Fast and Loose (1877), a 30,000 word novella. At age 15, her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, for which she was paid $50. Her family did not want her name to appear in print since writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman of her time. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson who supported women's education. In 1878 her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, Verses, to be privately published.
Wharton officially came out as a debutante to society in 1879. In 1880 she had five poems published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly, an important literary magazine. Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, and though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in Scribner's Magazine in October 1889.
Between 1880 and 1890 Wharton put her writing aside to participate in the social rituals of the New York upper classes. Wharton keenly observed the social changes happening around her which appeared later in her writing. Wharton began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens, the son of a wealthy businessman. Henry's father was Paran Stevens, a hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire but Wharton's family did not approve of Stevens. In the middle of Wharton's debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for Wharton's father's health. Wharton's father, George Frederic Jones, died in Cannes in 1882 of a stroke. Wharton and her mother returned to the United States and Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens, announcing their engagement in August 1882. The month the two were to marry, the engagement abruptly ended. Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, moved back to Paris in 1883 and lived there until her death in 1901.
On April 29, 1885, at age 23, Wharton married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior, at the Trinity Chapel Complex. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel.
After her marriage, she began to build upon three of her interests—American houses, writing, and Italy.
The Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport, Rhode Island. They then bought and moved to Land's End on the other side of Newport in 1893, from Robert Livingston Beeckman, a former U.S. Open Tennis Championship runner-up who became governor of Rhode Island. At the time, Wharton described the main house as "incurably ugly." Wharton agreed to pay $80,000 for the property, and spent thousands more to alter the home's facade, decorate the interior, and landscape the grounds, with the help of designer Ogden Codman. The Whartons purchased their New York home, 884 Park Avenue, in 1897.
It was not until Wharton was 29 in 1891 that her first short story was published. "Mrs. Manstey's View" had very little success, and it took her more than a year to publish another story, "The Fullness of Life" which did not see publication until 1916. After several more attempts of short stories, she lost confidence in herself and started "travel writing" in 1894. Wharton loved travel. She eventually crossed the Atlantic 60 times. In Europe, her primary destinations were Italy, France, and England. She also went to Morocco in North Africa. She wrote many books about her travels, including Italian Backgrounds and A Motor-Flight through France. Her husband Edward Wharton shared her love of travel and for many years they spent at least four months of each year abroad, mainly in Italy. In 1888, the Whartons and their friend James Van Alen took a cruise through the Aegean islands. Wharton was 26. The trip cost the Whartons $10,000 and lasted four months. She kept a travel journal during this trip that was thought to be lost but was later published as The Cruise of the Vanadis, now considered her earliest known travel writing. From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from acute depression, and the couple ceased their extensive travel. At that time his depression manifested as a more serious disorder, after which they lived almost exclusively at their estate The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius. This play was about an English man who was having an affair with his secretary. The play was rehearsed but was never produced. Another 1901 play, The Shadow of a Doubt, which also came close to being staged but fell through. In 1902, Wharton designed The Mount, her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which survives today as an example of her design principles. Edith Wharton wrote several of her novels there, including The House of Mirth (1905), the first of many chronicles of life in old New York. At The Mount, she entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, novelist Henry James, who described the estate as "a delicate French chateau mirrored in a Massachusetts pond". Although she spent many months traveling in Europe nearly every year with her friend Egerton Winthrop, The Mount was her primary residence until 1911. When living there and while traveling abroad, Wharton was usually driven to appointments by her longtime chauffeur and friend Charles Cook. In 1908 her husband's mental state was determined to be incurable. In the same year, she began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for The Times, in whom she found an intellectual partner. When her marriage deteriorated, she decided to move permanently to France, living first at 53 Rue de Varenne, Paris, in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II. She divorced Edward Wharton in 1913 after 28 years of marriage.
Wharton was preparing to vacation for the summer when World War I broke out. Though many fled Paris, she moved back to her Paris apartment on the Rue de Varenne and for four years was a tireless and ardent supporter of the French war effort.
One of the first causes she undertook in August 1914 was the opening of a workroom for unemployed French women; here they were fed and paid one franc a day. What began with 30 women soon doubled to 60, and their sewing business began to thrive. When the Germans invaded Belgium in the fall of 1914 and Paris was flooded with Belgian refugees, she helped to set up the American Hostels for Refugees, which managed to get them shelter, meals, and clothes, and eventually created an employment agency to help them find work. She collected more than $100,000 on their behalf. In early 1915 she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave shelter to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled when their homes were bombed by the Germans. Aided by her influential connections in the French government, she and her long-time friend Walter Berry (then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), were among the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines during World War I. She and Berry made five journeys between February and August 1915, which Wharton described in a series of articles that were first published in Scribner's Magazine and later as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort, which became an American bestseller. Travelling by car, Wharton and Berry drove through the war zone, viewing one decimated French village after another. She visited the trenches, and was within earshot of artillery fire. She wrote, "We woke to a noise of guns closer and more incessant ... and when we went out into the streets it seemed as if, overnight, a new army had sprung out of the ground". Throughout the war she worked tirelessly in charitable efforts for refugees, the injured, the unemployed, and the displaced, as well as the artists, organizing concerts to provide work for musicians, raising tens of thousands of dollars for the war effort, and opening tuberculosis hospitals. In 1915 Wharton edited The Book of the Homeless, which included essays, art, poetry, and musical scores by many major contemporary European and American artists, including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, William Dean Howells, Anna de Noailles, Jean Cocteau, and Walter Gay, among others. She handled all of the business arrangements, lined up contributors, and translated the French entries into English. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a two-page introduction in which he praised Wharton's effort and urged Americans to support the war. She was a "heroic worker on behalf of her adopted country". On April 18, 1916, the President of France appointed her Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the country's highest award, in recognition of her dedication to the war effort. She also kept up her own work during the war, continuing to write novels, short stories, and poems, as well as reporting for The New York Times and keeping up her enormous correspondence. Wharton urged Americans to support the war effort and encouraged America to enter the war. She wrote the popular romantic novel Summer in 1916, the war novella, The Marne, in 1918, and A Son at the Front in 1919, (though it was not published until 1923). When the war ended, she decided to leave Paris after four years of intense effort in favor of the peace and quiet of the countryside. Wharton settled ten miles north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, buying an 18th-century house on seven acres of land which she called Pavillon Colombe. She lived there in summer and autumn for the rest of her life. She spent winters and springs on the French Riviera at Sainte Claire du Vieux Chateau in Hyère as well as Provence, where she finished The Age of Innocence in 1920. She returned to the United States only once after the war to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923.
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award. She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930.
Wharton was friend and confidante to many gifted intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and André Gide were all her guests at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, Bernard Berenson, and Kenneth Clark were valued friends as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald, described by the editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals". She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English. In 1934 Wharton's autobiography A Backward Glance was published. In her memoir, Wharton describes her mother as indolent, spendthrift, censorious, disapproving, superficial, icy, dry and ironic.
On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at the French country home of Ogden Codman, where she was at work on a revised edition of The Decoration of Houses, when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed.
Edith Wharton later died of a stroke on August 11, 1937 at Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. She died at 5:30 p.m., but her death was not known in Paris. Wharton was buried in the American Protestant section of the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, "with all the honors owed a war hero and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor...a group of some one hundred friends sang a verse of the hymn 'O Paradise'..."
Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Edith Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her 15 novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir.
She was also a garden designer, an interior designer, and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first major published work, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored by Ogden Codman. Another of her "home and garden" books is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904. A key recurring theme in Wharton's writing is the relationship between the house as a physical space and its relationship to its inhabitant's characteristics and emotions. Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-19th-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. Versions of her mother, Lucretia Jones, often appeared in Wharton's fiction.
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