She died last month at the age of 39. As a child, Grealy spent five years being treated for cancer, which left her face disfigured. She had over 30 reconstructive procedures and years of living with a distorted self-image. She wrote Autobiography of a Face in 1994, her memoir about coming to terms with looking less than perfect in a society that values female beauty. No cause of death was announced, but friends indicated she was despondent of late. Her last book was As Seen on TV, published in 2000.
Edna Gurewitsch is the wife of the late Dr David Gurewitsch who was Eleanor Roosevelt personal physician from 1945 to her death in 1962. Gurewitsch has written a new book about the close personal relationship that developed between her husband and the former first lady, Kindred Souls: Eleanor Roosevelt and David Gurewitsch, 1945-1962 (St. Martin press). Dr Gurewitsch was a handsome, compassionate man, 18 years younger than Mrs Roosevelt, and she feel in love with him. He didn share those feelings, but they maintained a friendship of devotion and respect.
Eric Burdon was the lead singer for the British band, The Animals - the 1960s group that gave us, "House of the Rising Sun," "Don Let Me Be Misunderstood" and "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." Burdon has written his new autobiography, Don Let Me Be Misunderstood (Thunder Mouth Press) He is currently touring with the New Animals.
He will give us his take on the best albums of the year, including new releases from Eminem, Missy Elliot and The Hives. He is a regular Fresh Air contributor and he also writes for Entertainment Weekly.
Film critic David Edelstein will talk about his picks for the best films of 2002. The list includes Gangs of New York, Far From Heaven, Lovely and Amazing, The Pianist and Igby Goes Down. David Edelstein is a Fresh Air contributor as well as the film critic for the online magazine Slate.
He began his career with Chicago's Second City improv group. He went on to win a Tony on Broadway, in Carl Reiner's play Enter Laughing, and to star in Glengarry Glen Ross, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Wait Until Dark, Catch-22 and The In-Laws. This interview first aired September 29, 1995.
Journalist James Bennet of the New York Times. He’s the paper’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He’s been in the Middle East covering how the crisis there is affecting both Israelis and Palestinians.
A talk about the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness Program, and other post-Sept. 11 security measures. The Total Information Awareness Program would allow federal agencies to share information about American citizens and aliens through the mining of databases from driver's licenses, bank statements, telephone records and more. Lawyer David Cole thinks such measures violate the American tradition of civil liberties.
Constitutional lawyer Douglas Kmiec supports the new security measures instituted since the September 11th attacks. He is Dean and St. Thomas More professor, at the Catholic University of America. He also was head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan administration. He can often be seen on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer. His most recent book is "Individual Rights and the American Constitution."
Lloyd Schwartz reviews some classic Hollywood musicals now out on DVD: The 1946 film The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland and Ray Bolger; the 1954 A Star is Born, starring Judy Garland and James Mason; the 1930 film The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich; Singing in the Rain; the 1947 film New Orleans (on Kino video), starring Louie Armstrong and Billie Holiday; the 1947 Edgar Ulmer's Carnegie Hall featuring Jascha Heifetz; The Big Broadcast of 1938, starring W.C. Fields and Bob Hope; 42nd Street, the Busby Berkeley film.
The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters have written together since the 1970s for several major newspapers and magazines. Their latest piece covers Native American-owned casinos and appears in this month's Time magazine. This September, they also published The Great American Tax Dodge: How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You.
Haynes is the writer and director of the new movie Far From Heaven, inspired by the 1950s Douglas Sirk movie All that Heaven Allows. Friedberg, as the movie's production designer, worked with Haynes to bring a 1950s look to the film. Haynes also directed the movies, Safe and Velvet Goldmine.
Lloyd Schwartz on poet Elizabeth Bishop and how he saved a poem of hers from obscurity. It's called "Breakfast Song." Lloyd is the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (University of Michigan Press). The poem will be published in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker.
She is a leading portrait photographer specializing in writers. Over the years her subjects have included Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, William Styron, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Sue Miller and Sarah Vowell, among others. She is currently working on a book of her author portraits to be released next year.
Ed Ward reviews When The Sun Goes Down: The Secret History of Rock & Roll a four volume set on RCA of mostly African-American music from the late 1920s to the mid-50s.
New York Times reporter and columnist Lisa Belkin writes the "Life's Work" column for the paper. Her recent article "The Grief Payout" in The New York Times Magazine (Dec. 8, 2002) is about the Victim Compensation Fund set up to benefit the families of victims from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and examines the controversies surrounding how the money is distributed. Lisa Belkin is also the author of the book Life's Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom.
He is a national icon in Brazil. Along with Gilberto Gil, Veloso created the provocative "Tropicalismo" movement which combined the richness of Brazil's musical past with 1960s rock 'n' roll, surrealism, and dada -– in reaction to the military junta in 1964. Veloso and Gil were jailed and exiled for their efforts. Veloso's memoir Tropical Truth a Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil (first published in 1997) is now translated and published in the United States (Knopf).
