The 1980s: The Arts: People in the News

THE 1980s: THE ARTS: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

On 12 May 1987 actor-director Woody Allen testified before a Senate subcommittee to protest the computerized colorization of classic black-and-white movies.

On 23 May 1983 bandleader Count Basie and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins were both awarded the Jazz Master Awards by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1989 movie actress Kim Basinger bought the near-bankrupt town of Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million.

On 25-28 August 1988 the Vienna Philharmonic and Boston Symphony were among the participants in a celebration of Leonard Bernstein's seventieth birthday and the forty-fifth anniversary of his conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic.

On 23 January 1986 Chuck Berry, James Brown, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis were among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On 7 February more than fifteen hundred friends and fans of composer Eubie Blake honored him on his one hundredth birthday at a gala in New York City. Blake, hospitalized with pneumonia, was unable to attend and died on 12 February.

In 1988 Sonny Bono was elected mayor of Palm Springs, California.

Yul Brynner gave his final Broadway performance in The King and I on 30 June 1985; he died several months later.

On 22 November 1988 writer Art Buchwald and producer Alain Bernheim filed a $5 million lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, claiming that the movie Coming to America was based on a screen treatment they sold to the studio in 1983.

On 26 March 1981 Carol Burnett won $1.6 million in a libel suit against the National Enquirer after it printed a story claiming that Burnett, a teetotaler, was drunk in a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

On 19 June 1989, after an eleven-year absence from performing, pianist Van Cliburn made a successful comeback with concerts in Dallas and Philadelphia.

In November 1980 Aaron Copland conducted his Appalachian Spring during a fourteen-hour celebration of his eightieth birthday.

On 23 January 1981 Francis Ford Coppola presented a restored version of director Abel Gance's four-hour, seventeen-reel silent movie epic Napoleon at Radio City Music Hall, with Gance, age ninety-one, in attendance.

In 1981 Rodney Dangerfield won a Grammy for his comedy album No Respect.

In 1989 artist Willem de Kooning and architect I. M. Pei were the American winners of the new $100,000 Japanese Imperial Prize for lifetime achievement in the arts.

On 8 November 1983 Brian De Palma succeeded in convincing the Motion Picture Association of America to change its X rating of his movie Scarf ace to an R.

Poet James Dickey and novelist William Styron were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters on 4 December 1987.

In April 1986 actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel, California.

On 14 June 1989 Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a police officer and for driving without a valid license and with an open liquor container in her car. On 29 June she was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 72 hours in jail and 120 hours of community service; she was also fined $3,000 and ordered by the court to reveal her true age.

Freelance violinist Helen Hagnes was found murdered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York during a performance by the Berlin Ballet on 24 July 1980; she had disappeared from the orchestra during intermission.

On 12 December 1980 American oil magnate Armand Hammer bought a Leonardo da Vinci notebook of sketches and writings for $5.28 million.

On 24 February 1985 George Harrison and Yoko Ono filed an $8.6 million lawsuit against Paul McCartney, claiming that he had received a disproportionate share of royalties from Beatles recordings.

On 20 April 1986 pianist Vladimir Horowitz, a naturalized U.S. citizen, returned to his native Russia for the first time in sixty-one years to give two televised concerts in Moscow.

In 1984, while filming a Pepsi commercial for which he earned $1.5 million, Michael Jackson was injured when his hair caught fire.

In 1983 Bolshoi Ballet dancers Leonid and Valentina Kozlova joined the New York City Ballet as soloists.

On 29 May 1987 director John Lan dis and four associates were found innocent on manslaughter charges stemming from an accident in which actor Vic Morrow and two children were killed by the blades of a crashing helicopter on the set of Landis's segment of Twilight Zone—The Movie in 1982.

Sherry Lansing, a thirty-five-year-old former model, was named president of 20th Century-Fox on 1 January 1980, becoming the first woman to head production at a major movie studio.

In 1985 James Levine was named artistic director of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

On 12 May 1989 actor Rob Lowe was sued for using his "celebrity status" to lure a sixteen-year-old girl into appearing with him in a sexually explicit videotape.

On 2 August 1983 Norman Mailer signed a $4 million contract with Random House for the hardcover and paperback rights to his next four books.

Ballet star Natalia Makarova suffered a broken shoulder and lacerated scalp on 18 December 1982 when she was struck by a falling piece of scenery during a performance of On Your Toes at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

In 1984 country singer Barbara Mandrell survived a near-fatal car accident.

In 1984 conductor Zubin Mehta renewed his contract with the New York Philharmonic, giving him the longest tenure of any musical director in the history of that organization. He announced his retirement on 2 November 1988.

In 1983 movie actor Paul Newman started marketing his own brand of spaghetti sauce.

Unpublished manuscripts by the late American composers Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers were discovered in a Warner Bros, warehouse on 19 November 1982.

Leontyne Price gave her farewell performance with the Metropolitan Opera on 3 January 1985, in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida.

On 10 June 1980 actor-comedian Richard Pryor was badly burned while freebasing cocaine.

On 15 March 1981 President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan attended a benefit performance of the Joffrey Ballet that featured their son Ronald Reagan Jr. dancing with the Joffrey II dancers.

On 11 April 1982, after pro-Israeli protests and anti-Palestinian threats, the Boston Pops Orchestra canceled performances that were to be narrated by Vanessa Redgrave, an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause.

On 5 November 1989 Jerome Robbins resigned as codirector of the New York City Ballet.

Julian Schnabel's 1979 painting Notre Dame was auctioned for $93,000 at Sotheby's in New York City on 20 May 1983.

On 5 June 1984 Peter Sellars was named artistic director and chief executive officer for plays produced jointly by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the American National Theater in Washington, D.C.

In 1989 Beverly Sills retired as director of the New York City Opera.

On 19 September 1981, at a Central Park concert in New York attended by four hundred thousand fans, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed together for the first time in more than a decade.

On 26 October 1982 singer Kate Smith received the Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan for inspiring the nation over the years with her rendition of Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America."

Elizabeth Taylor made her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes on 7 May 1981. The following September she was legally separated from Sen. John Warner, her seventh husband. They were divorced on 5 November 1982,

In 1988 choreographer Twyla Tharp retired from dancing, disbanded her dance troupe, and joined the American Ballet Theater as artistic associate.

On 14 November 1981, to honor Virgil Thomson on his eighty-fifth birthday, his opera Four Saints in Three Acts was revived at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the first full-length production in more than a decade.

Scott Thorson filed a $113 million "palimony" suit against pianist Liberace on 14 October 1982.

On 24 January 1988 The New York Review of Books published a statement signed by Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and forty-six other African American writers and critics protesting Toni Morrison's failure to win a National Book Award for her novel Beloved.

In 1981 Andy Warhol designed a series of advertisements for fashion designer Halston.

In 1989 Christie's auction house in New York sold ninety-four works from the collection of movie director Billy Wilder.

Stevie Wonder was awarded a special citation by the UN General Assembly Special Committee Against Apartheid on 13 May 1985.

On 5 August 1986 Andrew Wyeth sold 240 paintings and drawings to the owner of a publishing firm, who lent them to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, for display. This previously unknown series of nudes and other portraits of a single woman, dubbed the "Helga" paintings by the media, caused a stir in the art world.