Born October 11: Jerome Robbins, Eleanor Roosevelt
Since his death at 79 in 1998, Jerome Robbins has inspired five biographies, the most recent of which is NBCC finalist Amanda Vaill's Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins [Kindle]. She received a Guggenheim to research it and PW gave it a strong, starred review, saying, "Robbins (1918–1998) was the choreographic genius behind the 1957 Broadway hit West Side Story and other musical classics, in addition to such great ballets as Fancy Free and Dances at a Gathering. Vaill was given unprecedented access to Robbins's personal papers after his death, and the result is a critically sophisticated biography that's as compulsively readable as a novel. As she traverses Robbins's growth as an artist, his ambivalence about his Jewish heritage, his bisexuality and his relationships with other artists from Balanchine, to Bernstein to Baryshnikov, she writes with both passion and compassion. More than Deborah Jowitt in her recent bio, Vaill delves into Robbins's personal life, quoting frequently from his diary and letters. But the result isn't salacious; rather, it allows a more vibrant and vital rendering of the man. Known for being very harsh on dancers, Robbins was called everything from "genius and difficult to tyrant and sadist," says Vaill, "yet the work... was marked by an ineffable sweetness and tenderness." In her balanced, sensitive portrait of an American theatrical genius, Vaill captures these contradictions elegantly. The book is essential reading for lovers of theater and dance."
In addition to being one of the most energetic humanitarians of the 20th century, requiring mind-warping amounts of travel -- 40,000 miles in three months, for example -- Eleanor Roosevelt was also an inexhaustible writer. Her syndicated column My Day appeared six times a week for twenty-seven years, missing only four days when her husband died. Always insightful, she was usually decades ahead of her time and frequently funny. Read her column from October 1947 about Hollywood and HUAC by clicking here. Detractors obfuscate ad nauseum but there is no question that she and Lorena Hickok, her closest friend for thirty years, were lovers. Their most intimate letters were destroyed, many by Hickok herself, after Eleanor’s death in 1962.
Brainyquote.com lists seventy-four of her most memorable sayings. Three are:
"Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little."
"Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we're in hot water!"
"I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall."
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