JUDITH OLIVIA DENCH, FROM THE OLD VIC COMPANY TO M

Today, The Grandma has watched some films interpreted by one of her favourite actresses, Judi Dench.

Dame Judith Olivia Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress.

 

She made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years, she performed in several of Shakespeare's plays, in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Although most of Dench's work during this period was in theatre, she also branched into film work and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer. She drew rave reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret. She has also received critical acclaim for her work on television starring in the hit BBC sitcom As Time Goes By from 1992–2005.

Over the next two decades, Dench established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She received critical acclaim for her work on television during this period, in the series A Fine Romance (1981–1984) and As Time Goes By (1992–2005), in both of which she held starring roles. Her film appearances were infrequent, and included supporting roles in major films, such as A Room with a View (1986), before she rose to international fame as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she continued to play in James Bond films until her final appearance in Skyfall (2012).

A seven-time Academy Award nominee, Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998); her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Mrs Brown (1997), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006) and Philomena (2013).

She has also received many other accolades for her acting in theatre, film, and television; her other competitive awards include six British Academy Film Awards, four BAFTA TV Awards, seven Olivier Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award. She has also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2001, and the Special Olivier Award in 2004. In June 2011, she received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI).

More information: The Guardian

Dench was born in Heworth, York. Her mother, Eleanora Olive, was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her father, Reginald Arthur Dench (1897–1964), a doctor, was born in Dorset, England, and later moved to Dublin, where he was brought up. He met Dench's mother while he was studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin.

Dench attended the Mount School, a Quaker independent secondary school in York, and became a Quaker.

Through her parents, Dench had regular contact with the theatre. Her father, a physician, was also the GP for the York theatre, and her mother was its wardrobe mistress. Actors often stayed in the Dench household. During these years, Judi Dench was involved on a non-professional basis in the first three productions of the modern revival of the York Mystery Plays in 1951, 1954 and 1957. In the third production she played the role of the Virgin Mary, performed on a fixed stage in the Museum Gardens.

Though she initially trained as a set designer, she became interested in drama school as her brother Jeff attended the Central School of Speech and Drama. She applied and was accepted by the School, then based at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where she was a classmate of Vanessa Redgrave, graduating and being awarded four acting prizes, including the Gold Medal as Outstanding Student.

In September 1957, she made her first professional stage appearance with the Old Vic Company, at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, as Ophelia in Hamlet. According to the reviewer for London Evening Standard, Dench had talent which will be shown to better advantage when she acquires some technique to go with it.

Dench then made her London debut in the same production at the Old Vic. She remained a member of the company for four seasons, 1957–1961, her roles including Katherine in Henry V in 1958 (which was also her New York City debut) and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 1960, both directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli.

She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in December 1961, playing Anya in The Cherry Orchard at the Aldwych Theatre in London and made her Stratford-upon-Avon debut in April 1962 as Isabella in Measure for Measure. She subsequently spent seasons in repertory both with the Playhouse in Nottingham from January 1963, (including a West African tour as Lady Macbeth for the British Council) and with the Playhouse Company in Oxford from April 1964.

In 1964, Dench appeared on television as Valentine Wannop in Theatre 625's adaptation of Parade's End, shown in three episodes. That same year, she made her film debut in The Third Secret, before featuring in a small role in the Sherlock Holmes thriller A Study in Terror (1965) with her Nottingham Playhouse colleague John Neville. She performed again on BBC's Theatre 365 in 1966, as Terry in the four-part series Talking to a Stranger, for which she won a BAFTA for Best Actress.

More information: The Guardian

After the long period between James Bond films Licence to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995), the producers brought in Dench to take over as the role of M, James Bond's boss. The character was reportedly modeled on Dame Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996; Dench became the first woman to portray M, succeeding Robert Brown. The seventeenth spy film in the series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 officer, GoldenEye marked the first Bond film made after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which provided the plot's back story

Dench, in her role as M, was the only cast member carried through from the Brosnan films to appear in Casino Royale (2006), Martin Campbell's reboot of the James Bond film series, starring Daniel Craig in his debut performance as the fictional MI6 agent. The thriller received largely positive critical response, with reviewers highlighting Craig's performance and the reinvention of the character of Bond.

Dench was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours. She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2005 Birthday Honours.

Dench is the Patron and President of the alumni foundation of Drama Studio London and a Vice-president of wildlife conservation NGO Fauna and Flora International. She has participated multiple times in the Explorers against Extinction wildlife conservation fundraiser Sketch For Survival, in which celebrity artists join prominent wildlife artists in sketching wildlife as best as they can in 26 minutes, and the results are auctioned off.

More information: Vogue

 I don't think anybody can be told how to act.
I think you can give advice.
But you have to find your own way through it.

Judi Dench

GERMANTOWN, GERMAN PEOPLE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Germantown, the area in Northwest Philadelphia, that was founded by immigrant families, in the first major immigration of German people to America, on a day like today in 1683.

Germantown, in Pennsylvania German Deitscheschteddel, is an area in Northwest Philadelphia. Founded by German, Quaker, and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent borough, it was absorbed into Philadelphia in 1854.

The area, which is about six miles northwest from the city centre, now consists of two neighbourhoods: Germantown and East Germantown.

Germantown has played a significant role in American history; it was the birthplace of the American antislavery movement, the site of a Revolutionary War battle, the temporary residence of George Washington, the location of the first bank of the United States, and the residence of many notable politicians, scholars, artists, and social activists.

Today, the area remains rich in historic sites and buildings from the colonial era, some of which are open to the public.

More information: Visit Philly

Although the arrival by ship of the later founders of Germantown in Philadelphia on October 6, 1683 was later to provide the date for German-American Day, a holiday in the United States, historical research has shown that nearly all the first thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families were in fact Dutch rather than Germans.

These families, which were mainly Dutch but also included some Swiss, had relocated to Krefeld (near the Dutch border) and Kriegsheim (in Rhineland-Palatinate) some years prior to their emigration to America to avoid persecution of their Mennonite beliefs in the Dutch Republic and Swiss Confederacy.

The town was named Germantown by the group's leader Franz Pastorius, a German preacher from Sommerhausen.

The town's population remained largely Dutch-speaking until 1709, after which a number of the Dutch families set out west and a series of major German emigrations reached Germantown and Pennsylvania as a whole. Their initial leader, Pastorius, later aligned himself with newer German arrivals and, as the only university-trained and legal and literary man among the early settlers, chronicled and stressed the town's German origins.

Adding to the assimilating of Dutch culture was the fact that the direct vicinity of the settlement was already inhabited by fifty-four German families who had accompanied Johan Printz to the Swedish settlement on the Delaware several years before 1683 and had resettled themselves.

Francis Daniel Pastorius was the first bailiff. Jacob Telner, Derick Isacks op den Graeff and his brother Abraham Isacks op den Graeff, Reynier Tyson, and Tennis Coender were burgesses, besides six committeemen.

 

They had authority to hold the general court of the corporation of Germantowne, to make laws for the government of the settlement, and to hold a court of record. This court went into operation in 1690, and continued its services for sixteen years.

In 1688, five years after its founding, Germantown became the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement in America. Pastorius, Gerret Hendericks, Derick Updegraeff and Abraham Opdengraef gathered at Thones Kunders's house and wrote a two-page condemnation of slavery and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church, the Society of Friends.

The petition was mainly based upon the Bible's Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Though the Quaker establishment took no immediate action, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was a clear and forceful argument against slavery and initiated the process of banning slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and Pennsylvania (1780).

In 1723, Germantown became the site of the first Church of the Brethren congregation in the New World.

When Philadelphia was occupied by the British during the American Revolutionary War, British units were housed in Germantown.

In the Battle of Germantown, on October 4, 1777, the Continental Army attacked the garrison. During the battle, a group of civilians fired on the British troops as they marched up the avenue, mortally wounding British officer James Agnew.

More information: Genealogy Trails

The Americans withdrew after firing on one another in the confusion of the battle, which resulted in the battle becoming a British victory. The American losses amounted to 673 men and the British losses consisted of 575 men, but along with the American victory at Saratoga on October 17 when John Burgoyne surrendered, the battle led to the official recognition of the Americans by France, which formed an alliance with the Americans afterward.

During his presidency, George Washington and his family lodged at the Deshler-Morris House in Germantown to escape the city and the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. The first bank of the United States was also located here during his administration.

Germantown proper, and the adjacent German Township, were incorporated into the City of Philadelphia in 1854 by the Act of Consolidation.

Italians began settling Germantown in 1880, and comprised an active and vibrant part of the community.

The significant changes that occurred in Philadelphia's demographics at the start of the 20th century caused major shifts in Germantown's ethnic makeup as well. 

When the first wave of the Great Migration brought more than 140,000 African Americans to the city from the South, long-established Philadelphians started to move to the outskirts.

During this time, many German, Scots-Irish, and Irish families moved to Germantown.

During the 1940s, a second mass migration of African Americans from the south to Philadelphia occurred. While the majority of middle-class African American newcomers first settled in North Philadelphia, the housing shortages in this area that followed the end of World War II caused later arrivals to move instead to the Northwest. 

This led to a wave of new housing construction. To meet the housing needs of the growing numbers of African American families moving into southern Germantown, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority allocated $10.6 million for the creation of public housing.

Between 1954 and 1956, Germantown experienced an influx of lower-income African Americans, resulting in a decline in property values and triggering a white flight of the majority of white residents to the suburbs.

The demographic shift caused a slow but steady decline in central Germantown's upscale shopping district, with the last department store, a J. C. Penney branch, closing in the early 1980s.

More information: Germantown History

The current demographics of Germantown reflects this shift. As of the 2010 US Census, Germantown proper is 77% black, 15% white, 3% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian, and East Germantown is 92% black, 3% white, 2% non-white Hispanic, and 2% Asian.

Eugene Stackhouse, a retired former president of the Germantown Historical Society, says that the demographic transition of Germantown into a predominantly black neighbourhood was the result of the now illegal practice of blockbusting. It was a great disgrace. Cheap houses would be sold to a black family, then the realtors would go around and tell the neighbours that the blacks are invading, said Stackhouse. The practice was used to trigger panic selling.

The first railroad in Philadelphia was the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, which linked Germantown to a station at 9th and Green Streets in Center City. It opened in 1832, and was initially powered by horses. The inventor Matthias W. Baldwin built his first commissioned steam locomotive for the new railroad. Nicknamed Old Ironsides, it eventually reached a peak speed of 28 mph.

More information: US History

 I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania,
where my parents raised German shepherds
-we had about 30 dogs at any given time.

Tory Burch

JUDITH OLIVIA DENCH, FROM THE OLD VIC COMPANY TO M

Today, The Grandma has finished her Communication Skills course with Els Tintorers in Gavà. She has been working very hard during the last months and she appreciates a free afternoon to watch a good movie, read a good book or listen to good music.

She has chosen some films of one of her favourite actresses, Judi Dench, who was born on a day like today in 1934.

Dame Judith Olivia Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress.

 

She made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years, she performed in several of Shakespeare's plays, in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Although most of Dench's work during this period was in theatre, she also branched into film work and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer. She drew rave reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret. She has also received critical acclaim for her work on television starring in the hit BBC sitcom As Time Goes By from 1992–2005.

Over the next two decades, Dench established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She received critical acclaim for her work on television during this period, in the series A Fine Romance (1981–1984) and As Time Goes By (1992–2005), in both of which she held starring roles. Her film appearances were infrequent, and included supporting roles in major films, such as A Room with a View (1986), before she rose to international fame as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she continued to play in James Bond films until her final appearance in Skyfall (2012).

A seven-time Academy Award nominee, Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998); her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Mrs Brown (1997), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006) and Philomena (2013).

She has also received many other accolades for her acting in theatre, film, and television; her other competitive awards include six British Academy Film Awards, four BAFTA TV Awards, seven Olivier Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award. She has also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2001, and the Special Olivier Award in 2004. In June 2011, she received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI).

More information: The Guardian

Dench was born in Heworth, York. Her mother, Eleanora Olive, was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her father, Reginald Arthur Dench (1897–1964), a doctor, was born in Dorset, England, and later moved to Dublin, where he was brought up. He met Dench's mother while he was studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin.

Dench attended the Mount School, a Quaker independent secondary school in York, and became a Quaker.

Through her parents, Dench had regular contact with the theatre. Her father, a physician, was also the GP for the York theatre, and her mother was its wardrobe mistress. Actors often stayed in the Dench household. During these years, Judi Dench was involved on a non-professional basis in the first three productions of the modern revival of the York Mystery Plays in 1951, 1954 and 1957. In the third production she played the role of the Virgin Mary, performed on a fixed stage in the Museum Gardens.

Though she initially trained as a set designer, she became interested in drama school as her brother Jeff attended the Central School of Speech and Drama. She applied and was accepted by the School, then based at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where she was a classmate of Vanessa Redgrave, graduating and being awarded four acting prizes, including the Gold Medal as Outstanding Student.

In September 1957, she made her first professional stage appearance with the Old Vic Company, at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, as Ophelia in Hamlet. According to the reviewer for London Evening Standard, Dench had talent which will be shown to better advantage when she acquires some technique to go with it.

Dench then made her London debut in the same production at the Old Vic. She remained a member of the company for four seasons, 1957–1961, her roles including Katherine in Henry V in 1958 (which was also her New York City debut) and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 1960, both directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli.

She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in December 1961, playing Anya in The Cherry Orchard at the Aldwych Theatre in London and made her Stratford-upon-Avon debut in April 1962 as Isabella in Measure for Measure. She subsequently spent seasons in repertory both with the Playhouse in Nottingham from January 1963, (including a West African tour as Lady Macbeth for the British Council) and with the Playhouse Company in Oxford from April 1964.

In 1964, Dench appeared on television as Valentine Wannop in Theatre 625's adaptation of Parade's End, shown in three episodes. That same year, she made her film debut in The Third Secret, before featuring in a small role in the Sherlock Holmes thriller A Study in Terror (1965) with her Nottingham Playhouse colleague John Neville. She performed again on BBC's Theatre 365 in 1966, as Terry in the four-part series Talking to a Stranger, for which she won a BAFTA for Best Actress.

More information: The Guardian

After the long period between James Bond films Licence to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995), the producers brought in Dench to take over as the role of M, James Bond's boss. The character was reportedly modeled on Dame Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996; Dench became the first woman to portray M, succeeding Robert Brown. The seventeenth spy film in the series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 officer, GoldenEye marked the first Bond film made after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which provided the plot's back story

Dench, in her role as M, was the only cast member carried through from the Brosnan films to appear in Casino Royale (2006), Martin Campbell's reboot of the James Bond film series, starring Daniel Craig in his debut performance as the fictional MI6 agent. The thriller received largely positive critical response, with reviewers highlighting Craig's performance and the reinvention of the character of Bond.

Dench was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours. She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2005 Birthday Honours.

Dench is the Patron and President of the alumni foundation of Drama Studio London and a Vice-president of wildlife conservation NGO Fauna and Flora International. She has participated multiple times in the Explorers against Extinction wildlife conservation fundraiser Sketch For Survival, in which celebrity artists join prominent wildlife artists in sketching wildlife as best as they can in 26 minutes, and the results are auctioned off.

More information: Vogue

 I don't think anybody can be told how to act.
I think you can give advice.
But you have to find your own way through it.

Judi Dench