Contribution of Bette Davis as an Actor and Her Role as a Female in her Time Period Essay Example for Free

Contribution of Bette Davis as an Actor and Her Role as a Female in her Time Period Essay Larger than life she was – with a career spanning six decades, including Broadway, film and the small screen; having made more than a hundred films and receiving ten Best Actress nominations and being the first woman to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award– and equally larger in death, was Bette Davis. Fearless, ambitious and daring, her strong-mindedness won her a few friends and many enemies in her lifetime, but continues to draw audiences to her appeal and aspiring actresses everywhere look up to her as a role-model. In this report, I will focus on Bette Davis’s contribution as an actor and her role as a female icon of her time. Contribution of Bette Davis as an Actor and Her Role as a Female in her Time Period One of the most talented and the biggest stars of the thirties was Bette Davis. Her strong personality off-screen often found its way into the characters she played. She made her wide range of roles realistic, from a sixty-year old queen in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex to a young beauty in Jezebal. Olivia de Havilland called Bette Davis â€Å"a basically benevolent volcano. † Jack Warner described her as â€Å"an explosive little girl with a sharp left. † Bette ruffled a few feathers in her career, but looking back, any trouble she caused was usually for the betterment of her films rather than from her merely playing the prima donna. Off-screen, her life was filled with as much drama as any role she played, having weathered a broken home, four failed marriages, literary revenge brought forth by her daughter and frail health in her later years (Bubbeo, 2001, p. 43 – 51). In this report, I will highlight the important contributions as well as this screen diva’s achievements in a male-dominated industry, and how her success paved the way for many other women, who emulated her example to carve a niche for themselves in the traditionally male-dominant world. Bette Davis once joked that her epitaph should read, â€Å"Here lies Ruth Elizabeth Davis – She did it the hard way† (Ware, 1993, p. 180). An actress first and a star second – and in no way a conventional beauty- she invented a jagged, sincere, many-sided style of film acting that continues to reverberate through the generations. At her best, Bette Davis put complicated, conflicted women on the screen at a time when most screen characters were still melodramatic simplifications. A small (five foot three) blue-eyed blonde, she was unfazed by the cant of her era that considered screen acting inferior to acting on the stage. An actress first and a star second – and in no way a conventional beauty- she invented a jagged, sincere, many-sided style of film acting that continues to reverberate through the generations. Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts, she was the elder of two daughters of Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent lawyer from a Yankee family of long standing, and Ruth Favor, a homemaker of French Huguenot descent. The couple, incompatible almost from the start, divorced when Bette was ten. As a result, she and her younger sister, Barbara, were educated in a patchwork of public and private schools in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts- wherever Ruth Davis could find work as a professional photographer. Popular and active as child, Betty changed the spelling of her name in imitation of Balzac’s La Cousine Bette and finally graduated from Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in 1926. Broadway By 1927, a nineteen-year-old Bette Davis was attending the John Murray Anderson-Robert Milton School of Theatre and Dance in New York. Bette was temperamentally restless and eager to earn a living. She left school before her first year was over, rushing headlong into professional engagements on and off Broadway on tour, and with numerous stock companies, among them George Cukor’s repertory theatre in Rochester, New York. Bette Davis in Hollywood After opening on Broadway in Solid South (1930), she received her first offer from a Hollywood film studio. With a few exceptions – most notably Cabin in the Cotton (1932) – Davis’s first years in Hollywood produced nothing extraordinary. Then, in 1934, after a long campaign, she convinced Warners to loan her to RKO, an American film production and distribution company, to play the sociopathic cockney Mildred Rogers in their adaption of Of Human Bondage, and got her first star-making notices. The next year she won an Oscar for Best Actress for Dangerous (1935), in which she played an alcoholic actress patterned on the Broadway legend Jeanne Eagels. Contribution to the Media Industry In 1936, Warners had to sue to prevent her from violating her contract and making a film in England for the Italian producer Ludovico Toeplitz. When she returned to Warners, however, she was treated generously, starring next in Jezebel (1938), a finely wrought study of the anger and ambivalence of a southern belle. The performance brought her a second Oscar, as best actress of 1938. The next year she played the role that she sometimes referred to as her favorite, Judith Traherne, the mortally ill heroine of Dark Victory (1939). After Dark Victory, Bette Davis starred in an unbroken string of sixteen box-office successes, playing everything from genteel novelists to murderous housewives to self-hateful spinsters to a sexagenarian Queen Elizabeth I. her most memorable films from this remarkably productive period included The Old Maid (1939), The Little Foxes (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), Watch on the Rhine (1943), and The Corn is Green (1945). In 1932, she married her high school sweetheart, Harmon Nelson, a freelance musician. But the marriage was as rocky as her parent’s and in 1938 ended in a divorce. She married again in 1940, to New England hotelier Arthur Farnsworth; he died in 1943 from a skull fracture. The war years were Bette Davis’s prime, and not only on screen. In 1941 she became the first woman president of the Academy of Motion picture of Arts and Sciences, quitting when she realized she was little more than a figurehead. In 1942, with John Garfield, she co-founded the Hollywood Canteen. Totally committed to her role as the organizations president, she danced, ate, and clowned almost nightly with the servicemen passing through Los Angeles. After the war, her career began to sink, with terrible films such as Beyond the Forest (1949). Released from her Warners contract, she freelanced. At 42, she believed her career was over, until her performance in All about Eve (1950), where she played an explosive theatrical prima donna who was terrified of aging. For her performance as Margo Channing, New York Film Critics named her the year’s best actress. In 1962, no longer a box-office name, she took a role in an offbeat, low-budget psychological thriller, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , poignantly playing a homicidally demented middle aged former child star. The film was a megahit, brining Davis her tenth, and, final, Oscar nomination. In the new era of made for TV films and miniseries, worthwhile roles came to her, including a part as a pathetic recluse in Strangers (1979), which won her a best actress Emmy. In 1977, the American Film Institute bestowed on her its Life Achievement Award; she was the first woman to receive it. Almost more prominent than she had been in her zenith, she now found herself hailed by a new generation of film critics who were seeing her classic films for the first time, and new stars praised her warmly as an influence and a role model. In 1983, she suffered breast cancer and a stroke. Despite permanent damage to her speech and gait, she continued making films. In 1985, Davis was shattered when her daughter B. D. Hyman, published a contemptuous family memoir, My Mother’s Keeper. She feebly tried to respond in her own book, This ‘n That (1987). Then looking dismayingly frail, she played a scrappy octogenarian in The Whales of August (1987), a sensitive study of old age. She died of cancer in Paris in 1989, having gone to Europe to accept an award at a Spanish film festival. Eighty-one at the time of her death, she left behind on film a brilliant constellation of contrasting and vibrant figures, the legacy of sixty years of hard work and dedication to what she liked to call total realism on the screen. Bette Davis- the Independent Female Bette Davis, outspoken, direct, and totally concentrated on her career, was a shrewd businessperson who expected good scripts and demanded the best in production support and working conditions. She was one of the few actresses able to take on unsympathetic roles, such as Mildred in Of Human Bondage (1934) and Julie Marsden in Jezebel (1938) (Ware, 1993, p. 180). Being a fighter, Bette was no stranger to bad times, and she knew how to keep going even when everything seemed to be against her. In 1962, when work became scarce, Bette took out an advertisement in Variety and other trade papers: MOTHER OF THREE – 10, 11 15 – DIVORCEE. AMERICAN. THIRTY YEARS EXPERIENCE AS AN ACTRESS IN MOTION PICTURES. MOBILE STILL AND MORE AFFABLE THAN RUMOR WOULD HAVE IT. WANTS STEADY EMPLOYMENT IN HOLLYWOOD (HAS HAD BROADWAY. ) Bette Davis, c/o Martin Baum, G. A. C. REFERENCES UPON REQUEST This was Davis at her best, and demonstrated her no-nonsense approach to her career and life in general. She knew that only she could improve her situation; no one else would do it for her (Moseley, 1989, p. 148). She was an over-achiever and the advertisement is who she was : bold, fearless and focused – some would say obsessed about her career. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and got her way more often than not in the ruthless world of Hollywood politics. She was a success story, due to her single-minded purpose of succeeding. The highly competitive Davis explained, â€Å"I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked. † She was demanding, temperamental, and self-indulgent. By the early 1940s, she had become the First Land of the Screen (Parish, 2007, p. 49). Bette Davis married four times, but claimed her matrimonial choices had been ill-considered because her mates were unable to stand up to her or, as an alternative, congenially sank into the background as Mr. Davis. Ironically, while she failed on the matrimonial front, she found great success as a woman in a man’s world. She is thought to be the first- and finest- presentation of an independent woman on celluloid (Brabazon, 2002, p. 85). ? Conclusion Contemporary feminism needs a Bette Davis, a firebrand woman who is tough, resolute, and passionate. She worked hard, thought deeply and spoke out while post-war masculinity congealed around her (Brabazon, 2002, p. 85). Almost to the day she died, Bette never stopped working. Work was her life and her passion and she embraced it like no other actress before or since. In 1972 Bette said, â€Å"I’ll never make the mistake of saying I’m retired. You do that and you’re finished. You just have to make sure you play older and older parts. Hell, I could do a million of those character roles. But I’m stubborn about playing the lead. I’d like to go out with my name above the title. † She kept her word. Works Cited Brabazon, T. (2002). Ladies who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women. Sydney: UNSW Press. Bubbeo, D. (2001). The Women of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Leading Ladies : with Filmographies for each. Jefferson, N. C. : McFarland. Moseley, R. (1989). Bette Davis: An Intimate Memoir. New York: D. I. Fine. Parish, J. R. (2007). The Hollywood Book of Extravagance: The Totally Infamous, Mostly Disastrous, and Always Compelling Excesses of Americas Film and TV idols. Hoboken, N. J. : John Wiley. Ware, S. , Braukman, S. L. (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press. Ware, S. (1993). Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism. New York: W. W. Norton.

Integration between the Christian Creation Story and the Scientific Big

Integration between the Christian Creation Story and the Scientific Big Bang Theory In our modern age of scientific revolution there seems to be a growing tension between the scientific and religious understanding of this world. This tension is not surprising as the two worldviews exist on different realms in many ways. The Christian faith, grounded in the revelation of God through Christ for humanity’s salvation, clashes with science on many levels especially concerning human nature, as well Divine authority, as compared to the scientific rational and mechanistic understanding of matter. However in this age of scientific revolution there has been a more concerted effort to develop ways to integrate the scientific and Christian worldviews. This is necessitated by the fact that a wholesome picture is generated by an integration of the meaning and purpose given by Christianity and the scientific mechanistic description of processes. The Christian Creation story and the scientific Big Bang theory are two key spheres of integration due to their centrality to an u nderstanding of something as fundamental as existence of all things. The Christian story is primarily concerned about the purpose of existence as science deals with the mechanisms leading to existence. The Christian faith is built on belief in an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God, embodied in the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christianity stands out from a lot of other religions due to God’s personal nature to humanity through the incarnation of Christ. Faith in Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection offers salvation to the faithful. The Bible is very central to Christian faith as it is viewed to be God’s word and revelation to mankin... ...inue since both provide very plausible views of this world that do not necessarily have to contradict each other. Concerning the Big Bang and Creation, the purpose of the two stories should shed more light in providing a better effort of integration. The Big Bang theory primarily provides a description of the mechanism employed in creation whilst the Creation story gives meaning and purpose by attributing God as the cause behind all creative acts. A holistic picture is created by a worldview that gives precedence to both the actual processes, to the cause and to the meaning behind it all. Bibliography: 1) Barbour, Ian; Religion and Science; Harper Collins Publishers; San Francisco; 1997. 2) Sidney Liebes, Elisabet Sahtouris, Brian Swimme; A Walk Through Time; John Wiley & Sons Inc; Toronto; 1998. 3) Armstrong, Karen; A History of God; Ballantine Books; 1993.

The Monetarist Theory: Milton Friedman

Economic theories explore the relationships linking changes in the money supply to changes in economic activity and prices. With a mixture of theoretical ideas, philosophical beliefs, and policy prescriptions, these theories can help elaborate on both historic and current financial situations. For instance, the general understanding of the monetarist theory, founded by economist Milton Friedman, focuses on macroeconomic activities that examine the impact of changes in the money supply and central banking.This economic school of thought theoretically challenges Keynesian economics (OnlineTexts) to contend that variations in the money supply are the most significant determinants of the rate of economic growth, the behavior of the business cycle, the national output in the short run, and the price level over longer periods of time (Investopedia). Through the developments from other theories, more laissez-faire government approaches, and the use of the quantity theory of money, monetaris m has dramatically impacted and helped explain changes in monetary policy and the banking system for nearly one hundred years.To fully grasp this economic theory, the history behind it and what influenced its existence must be understood. Following the Great Depression, Keynesian economics mainly dominated the United States as well as countries globally. This economic theory focused on total spending in the economy and its effects on output and inflation (Blinder). Keynesians traditionally saw fiscal policy as the key tool for economic management, believed monetary policy should simply be used as a backup, and believed that the government’s role was to maintain the economy at full employment (Biz/Ed).This theory also emphasized interest rates as a target of monetary policy, raising rates to slow down the economy and reducing rates to speed things up (Allen 283). Although these views were the main focus for some time, many economists saw that the theory was leaving most of our economic problems unexplained. As Keynesian economics seemed unable to explain or cure the seemingly contradictory problems of rising unemployment and inflation (Allen 284) economits like Milton Friedman began making different, more accurate observations.Monetarism’s rise to intellectual prominence began with writings on basic monetary theory by Friedman and other economists during the 1950s (McCallum). These proposals were influential because of their devotion to fundamental neoclassical principles, particularly Friedman’s presidential address to the American Economic Association in 1967, published in 1968 as â€Å"The Role of Monetary Policy. † In this paper Friedman developed the natural-rate hypothesis and used it as a pillar in the argument for less government intervention and a constant-growth-rate rule for monetary policy (McCallum).From this point the monetarist theory drew its roots from two almost entirely opposing ideas, the hard money policies that dominated monetary thinking in the late 19th century, and the theories of Keynesian economics (Wikipedia). While Keynes had focused on total spending and the value stability of currency which resulted with problems based on an insufficient money supply, Friedman centered on price stability acting as the equilibrium between supply and demand for money (Wikipedia).Friedman and other monetarists began challenging Keynesian ideas and strongly started to suggest that â€Å"money does not matter† (Wikipedia). Monetarist’s goals involved seeking to explain present problems while also striving to interpret historical ones. Since monetarists strongly believe that the money supply is the primary determinant of nominal GDP in the short run and of the price level in the long run, they stress that the control of the money supply should not be left to the discretion of central bankers and that the focus should shift to a more laissez-faire approach for the banking system (OnlineText s).Monetarists do not believe that the government should intervene in economic and monetary decisions by trying to manage the level of aggregate demand or total spending (Biz/Ed). Friedman explains that if we are experiencing government deficits and must make a monetary decision, then the deficits should be financed by increasing the money supply instead of affecting aggregate demand, and vice versa for budget surpluses.Monetarists argue that interventionist policy regarding managing total spending will be destabilizing in the long run and should therefore be avoided. By trusting free markets rather than large governments, monetarists quickly and simultaneously agreed that government intervention will destabilize the economy more than it will help, since intervention typically interferes in the workings of free markets and can lead to bloated bureaucracies, unnecessary social programs, and large deficits (OnlineTexts).Markets will benefit by working on their own since market forces will cause inflation, unemployment and production to adjust themselves automatically and efficiently around a fixed amount of money (Milton Friedman and Monetarism). A key problem with discretionary demand management policies is the time lags, which monetarists believe make fiscal policy too difficult to use to manage the economy effectively (Biz/Ed). The best thing therefore, is to take a long-run view of price stability and use monetary policy to achieve this.Monetarists always say that where fiscal policy could be beneficial, monetary policy would do the job better. Government attempts to influence GDP and other economic measures through fiscal policy are at best ineffectual, mainly because expansionary fiscal policy only causes inflation (Monetarist Theory of Inflation). The monetarist theory believes that the Fed should not have discretion but rather be bound to fixed rules in conducting monetary policy.For example, monetarists prefer the money growth rule which states that the Fed should be required to target the growth rate of money so that it equals the growth rate of real GDP, leaving the price level unchanged (OnlineTexts). The relationship between inflation and money growth is virtually a one-to-one relationship, so if the economy is expected to grow at a certain percent in a given year, the Fed should allow the money supply to increase by the same percent. By following this rule there will be a tight control of money and credit allowing the economy to maintain price stability (Riley).Monetarist’s stress incorrect central bank policy is often the root of large fluctuations in inflation and price stability, showing that the key to success is to ensure that monetary policy is credible so that people’s expectations of inflation are controlled (Riley). Friedman states within his academic paper, â€Å"The Role of Monetary Policy† that â€Å"monetary authorities should guide themselves by magnitudes that they can control, not by ones that they cannot† (Friedman 14), which is why the quantity theory of money and other monetarist concepts are of huge importance and assistance.The quantity theory of money is a basic theoretical explanation for the link between money and the general price level. This theory helps describe how by controlling the growth of the money supply and leaving interest rates unchanged; the Fed can better control inflation and foster stable economic growth (Riley). This identity relates total aggregate demand to the total value of output, and holds that changes in nominal prices reflect changes in the money supply and the velocity of money (Monetarism). Monetarists assume that the velocity of money within the economy, or rather the average number of times a dollar is used to purchase final good or service is assumed constant or changes at a predictable rate (Wikipedia). The value of real output (GDP), or the total volume of production of goods and services, is not influenced by monetary variables (Riley) allowing monetarists to also treat GDP as a constant. Looking at the quantity of money theory equation, M*V = P*Y, where M is the rate of growth in the money supply, V is the velocity of money, P is the overall price level, and Y is the total output or GDP, one can determine that with V and Y as constants, changes in the rate of money supply will equal changes in the price level (Riley).By using this equation and theory, economists can determine and solve problems within the economy and we have seen this throughout history. The monetarist theory can effectively explain the deflationary waves of the late 19th Century, the Great Depression, and the stagflation period beginning in the early 1970’s (Wikipedia). Monetarists argue that there was no inflationary boom in the 1920’s, while Keynesians argue that there was significant asset inflation and unsustainable growth.Monetarists’ claim that the contraction of the M1 money supply during 1931-1933 i s to blame for the Great Depression and if the Fed had provided sufficient liquidity to make up for the insufficient money supply, then that financial crisis would have be avoided (Pettinger). In comparison, the increase in inflation rates throughout the 1970’s led many to consider monetarist policies to steady the money growth (Hafer 18). Even though the sudden rise in inflation in the 1970’s was related directly to oil price shocks, there was also a similar increase in the average rate of money growth.To combat this, the Fed began adopting a monetarist platform and monetary targets were effectively used in official policy analysis (Hafer 18). Later in the 1980’s President Reagan imposed strict monetarist policies of restricted money stock growth in an effort to stop the dramatic rise of inflation. At this time, the prime interest rate was at twenty percent and unemployment reached double digits. The monetarist policies Reagan proposed brought down inflation an d unemployment rates, suggesting that monetarist policies were succeeding (Allen 284).Most recently in the early 1990’s, John Taylor, an economics professor at Stanford, showed that U. S. monetary policy could be accurately described by relating movements in the federal funds rate to deviations in inflation from a target rate and deviations in real output growth from potential growth (Hafer 19). This Taylor rule dominates much of the research on monetary policy during the past decade, both as a model of Fed behavior and as a model to guide policy decisions (Hafer 19).While some disagreement remains, certain things are clear. Since 1990, the classical form of monetarism has been questioned because of events that have been interpreted as inexplicable in monetarist terms, primarily the unhinging of the money supply growth from inflation in the 1990’s and the failure of monetary policy to stimulate the economy in the early 2000’s (Wikipedia). Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, explains why the monetarist theory unfortunately had no success in combating early financial problems.He argued that the 1990’s economic decline had little to do with the monetarist view of the money supply and rather was â€Å"explained by a virtuous cycle of productivity and investment on one hand, and a certain degree of â€Å"irrational exuberance† in the investment sector† (Wikipedia). Along with Greenspan, economist Robert Solow of MIT suggested that the 2001-2003 failure of the expected economic recovery also was not attributed by monetary policy, but by the decreasing productivity growth in crucial sectors of the economy (Investopedia).Despite both the successes and failures of the monetarist theory, in 2005 most academic specialists in monetary economics described their orientation as new Keynesians (McCallum). However, even with that focus, most of the changes to Keynesian thinking that monetarists proposed are accepted today as part of standard macroeconomic and monetary analysis and most economists accept the proposition that monetary policy is more powerful and useful than fiscal policy for stabilizing the economy (McCallum).In addition, current thinking clearly favors policy rules in contrast to discretion of central banks and stresses the importance of maintaining inflation at low rates. With new Keynesian views prominent in today’s society, it can be determine that it is only in the emphasis on monetary aggregates that monetarism is not being widely practiced today. Economic theories, including monetarism, are constantly changing to provide outlets for research in all areas of economics based on theoretical reasoning and analysis of economic problems.Despite the drastic differences between the late 19th century and today’s economy, the same economic problems remain the same. We cannot put so much doubt and negativity onto monetarist views as we can be assured that new economic theories will continuously emerge as changes in the economy bring fresh insights and cause existing ideas to become obsolete.Throughout these changes, the same motivating force is present regarding the need to understand the economy in order to achieve society's goals. These economic theories are highly significant in finding the right monetary policy to bring about economic growth and financial stability in a country. The monetarist theory, as well as others more prominent today, will continue to be debated and tested in order to find answers to some of the most troubling economic questions throughout our history.

The United States And The Federal Government - 1057 Words

Multigenerational covers over seventy years from birth till present employing over one hundred and fifty eight million in the year 2011 were in the workforce based on the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics a federal agencies reporting to the Office of Personal Management, known as the federal government. The federal government is a perfect snapshot of how four different generations collaborate and work together, supporting and running our federal government. I think about 911 quite often; my company lost eleven victims was in the office at the World Trade Center. Back then, if the Department of Homeland Security collaborated such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border†¦show more content†¦A good majority of the federal employees are great savers, and planned nicely over their thirty year career and are prepared for retirement financially, not all, however, a good portion. Internally at my place of employment, there are fourteen states and within the fourteen states there are a team of twenty four account representatives ranging from 20 something to my guess 60 something. We too are enriched with diversity regards to ethnic, religious, education levels, and family units. In addition to our characteristics we have the common personality trait of strong personalities, hardworking, dedicated, and most important we are emotionally dedicated to our clients. The cohesiveness took several years for us to get our â€Å"Groove On† and have learned not everything works overall quite efficiently. Taking time to have a better understanding with each era, such as their values, upbringing, and lives lessons, could provide management and colleagues a more cohesive workplace and retaining valuable employees. Typically in the sales arena and corporate America, there is a shelf life for many reasons which are not addressed at least on paper. Beginning with salaries and health care benefit costs the Boomer population cost companies more money, the impacting the profit and bottom dollar. For profit verses not-for-profit varies greatly and hope for profit corporations would find the value in keeping