The 1960s: The Arts: People in the News

THE 1960s: THE ARTS: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

Contralto Marian Anderson gave her farewell concert at Carnegie Hall on 18 April 1965, bringing her thirty-year career to a close.

Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong began a goodwill tour of Africa, partially sponsored by the U.S. State Department, on 13 October 1960 to enthusiastic acclaim.

The New York City Ballet, under the artistic direction of George Balanchine, made an acclaimed tour of Russia. It was his first visit to his homeland in forty years.

On 15 March 1964 British actor Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor after a highly publicized romance and after the two divorced their respective spouses. It was his second marriage and her fifth.

In November 1966 writer Truman Capote hosted an extravagant Black and White Ball in New York—a masquerade for which attire was limited to those two colors. Its guest list of 540 included prominent figures in the arts, the sciences, politics, and high society.

Noted musician Ray Charles was arrested in 1965 for possession of heroin, to which he had been addicted since age sixteen. After one year in rehabilitation, he returned to performances and recording in full force.

A new dance craze shared by both teens and adults was started in 1960 by rock 'n' roll performer Chubby Checker's recording of "The Twist." The popularity of the song and the dance set off a series of "no-touch" dances. In May 1962 former president Dwight D. Eisenhower notes that the dance represents "some kind of change" from more formal dances.

MacBird by young playwright Barbara Garson was a succes de scandale with its treatment of a politician who, encouraged by his wife Lady MacBird, has President John Ken O'Dunc assassinated. The book, published by Garson and her husband's Grassy Knoll Press, was published in 1966 and sold 105,000 copies before the play itself opened in New York on 22 February 1967 to a successful run.

In 1962 heiress Rebekah Harkness became the primary supporter of the Joffrey Ballet, headed by Robert Joffrey. Two years later she took over the company, renaming it the Harkness Ballet, forcing Joffrey to make a new start. His City Center Joffrey Ballet, with the help of a Ford Foundation grant, premiered in 1965.

After a twelve-year "retirement" from public performance, pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to the stage at Carnegie Hall on 9 May 1965. He "retired" again from 1969 to 1974.

Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" at the funeral for Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968.

In 1966 Beatle John Lennon claimed that the group was "more popular than Jesus." He later apologized for the remark. Though some disc jockeys in the South re-fused to play their albums, their 1966 American tour was a success.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell declined an invitation to the thirteen-hour 14 June White House Festival of the Arts in a 2 June 1965 letter to President Johnson, citing "dismay and distrust" of U.S. foreign policy.

In 1961 the divorce of playwright Arthur Miller and actress Marilyn Monroe, who had married in 1956, was announced.

In 1968 eighty-year-old poet Marianne Moore, an avid baseball fan, threw the first pitch on opening day at Yankee Stadium.

Russian-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn were the stars of an extremely successful tour of Britain's Royal Ballet in America in 1965. The young Nureyev was a particular draw, becoming one of the biggest stars in ballet in decades.

Pablo Picasso, easily the most famous living artist by the middle of the twentieth century, celebrated his eightieth birthday on 25 October 1961. Several museums staged exhibits in his honor, and in 1962 nine New York galleries showed the entire spectrum of his lengthy and prolific career in its various phases and periods. This was followed by a summer-long exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1960 rock 'n' roll star Elvis Presley was released from the army after two years of service.

On 31 January 1963 sixteen-year-old pianist Andre Watts filled in at the last minute for Glenn Gould with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. His performance of Franz Liszt's E-flat Concerto was a major success, launching a promising career.