CHARLES CHAPLIN, THE GREATEST ACTOR OF ALL TIME

Today, The Winsors & The Grandma have visited one of the greatest actors of all time, Charles Chaplin, who is spending some days in London.

 

Before this amazing visit, the family has finished its reading and The Grandma has explained some stories about Charlie Rivel, the best clown of all time, and Marcel Marceau, the best mime of all time. 

 

Download The Secret of Oldstone

 

Charlie Rivel and Marcel Marceau were as prosecuted as Charles Chaplin for political reasons. All three had to exile or escape from terrible situations helping lots of people on their searching of freedom.

More information: Charlie Rivel, The Clown With The Saddest Story

 

More information: Marcel Marceau, The Mime Artist & 'Bip The Clown'

 

Watch El Pallaso i el Führer (Catalan Version)

 

Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English actor who famed in the silent film era.

Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially -he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine.

When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian.

 

Chaplin started in the film industry at age 14 and since that moment his career was meteoric co-founding the distribution company United Artists in 1919 and playing successful films as The Kid, Modern Times, Limelight or The Great Dictator where he satirised Hitler and attacked fascism.

 

At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon developed the Tramp persona and attracted a large fan base. He directed his own films and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay, Mutual, and First National corporations.

 

By 1918, he was one of the world's best-known figures.

 

More information: Charles Chaplin Official Website

Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films. He was a perfectionist, and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterised by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramp's struggles against adversity. Many contain social and political themes, as well as autobiographical elements.
 

His popularity declined when he was accused of communist and the FBI opened an investigation.

 

He received an Honorary Academy Award for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century in 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in high regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator often ranked on lists of the greatest films. 

 

Chaplin was forced to leave the US and he settle in Switzerland where he died on 25 December. The king of the smile died on Christmas Day but his legacy is eternal.

More information: Vanity Fair

 

You, the people have the power 

-the power to create machines. 

The power to create happiness! 

You, the people, have the power 

to make this life free and beautiful, 

to make this life a wonderful adventure.

 

The Great Dictator (1940)

JOHN LENNON GIVES PEACE A CHANCE, ONE MORE TIME

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have met John Lennon and Yoko Ono, two of the most important artists of the last century, to celebrate Susana Winsor's birthday.

 

The have been talking about peace and war, and about hippie and punk movements with the figures of Cyndi Lauper and Gillian Anderson, and about the political situation in the USA and Europe during the Vietnam and Falkland Islands wars until nowadays.

 

Before the meeting, the family has revised again the Possessive Pronouns and they have studied the Comparative of Superiority. 

Happy birthday, sister! Enjoy your day!

 

More information: Possessive Adjectives

 

More information: Comparative of Superiority

 

 More information: Yaghan Language, The Last Breath Of A Culture

 

More information: The Camden 28, Opposition To The War In Vietnam

 

More information: Free Speech Movement Was Launched In UC Berkeley

More information: The Words On The Prophets On The Subway Walls

John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940–8 December 1980) was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded The Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With fellow member Paul McCartney, he formed a celebrated songwriting partnership.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into the Beatles in 1960. 

When the group disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced albums including John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and songs such as Give Peace a Chance, Working Class Hero, and Imagine. After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. Controversial through his political and peace activism, he moved to Manhattan in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.

At around 10:50 p.m. on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in the Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the archway of the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 p.m. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying There is no funeral for John, ending it with the words, John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields Memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20-years-to-life. In 2016, he was denied parole for a ninth time.

 

More information: John Lennon Official Website

  

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, 

is to try and express what we all feel. 

Not to tell people how to feel. 

Not as a preacher, not as a leader, 

but as a reflection of us all. 

John Lennon

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE GREATEST WRITER EVER

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have met William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, and probably, the most universal one. Together, they have been talking about English grammar with the State Verbs and Too/Enough. It has been a midwinter night's dream come true.

 

More information: State Verbs

 

More information: Too/ Enough

 

More information: 1609, W. Shakespeare's Sonnets are First Published

 

More information: 1611, William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' Premiere

 

 More information: The Merchant Of Venice & The Stationers' Register

 

More information: William Shakespeare's 'Othello' First Performing

More information: 'To Be Or Not To Be'. Hamlet, The Prince Of Denmark 

William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564–23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the Bard of Avon (or simply the Bard). 

His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. 

At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

More information: Shakespeare

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: not of an age, but for all time.

Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in perfect health. No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died.

Download William Shakespeare

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, 
and some have greatness thrust upon them.

William Shakespeare