An oral history interview with Milton Caniff / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Donald Spoto, New York City, 1985 October 15 : recording and transcript.

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An oral history interview with Milton Caniff / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Donald Spoto, New York City, 1985 October 15 : recording and transcript.

In a wide-ranging interview, Caniff talks about Lotte Lenya's life from the early 1940's until her death in 1981. He covers all four of her husbands (Weill, George Davis, Russell Detwiler, Richard Siemanowski), as well as her friendships with Mab Anderson, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Vivian Leigh. The interview also covers his impressions of Lenya's character and personality. He recalls the Americanization of Weill and Lenya. He also speaks of the genesis of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and his role in it.

1 transcript (27 p.) ; 28 cm.2 sound cassettes (ca. 135 min.) : analog, 1 5/16 ips., stereo.

Related Entities

There are 11 Entities related to this resource.

Leigh, Vivien, 1913-1967

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6vr3rt5 (person)

English actress. From the description of Autograph letter signed : London, to Denys [Blakelock], [n.d.]. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270871310 Actress Vivien Leigh was born in Darjeeling, India, and returned to England with her parents after World War I. While attending a convent school, her mother took her to see a play, where she determined to become an actress. She had little experience before creating a sensation in the role of Scarlett O'Hara in the movie Gone With t...

Hammarskjöld, Dag, 1905-1961

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62r42gn (person)

Dag Hammarskjöld served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in September 1961. From the description of Hammarskjöld, Dag, 1905-1961 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). naId: 10580969 Dag Hammarskjöld was born on 29 July 1905, in Jönköping, Sweden, and died 18 Sept. 1961, near Ndola, in Northern Rhodesia. He was a Swedish economist and statesman who served as second secretary-general of the ...

Lenya, Lotte

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68g8mvt (person)

Born in Austria, Lenya became an actress in Zürich, then moved to Berlin where she met and married Kurt Weill. They emigrated to the U.S. in 1935, where Lenya lived until her death a few months after this interview was recorded. From the description of An oral history interview with Lotte Lenya / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Alan Rich, New City, N.Y., 1981 : recording and transcript. (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison). WorldCat record id: 12258368...

Spoto, Donald, 1941-....

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68917cm (person)

Spoto was born June 28, 1941 in New Rochelle, NY; BA, Iona College, 1963; MA (1966) and Ph. D. (1970), Fordham Univ.; taught at New School for Social Research, NYC, 1975-86; began teaching at Univ. of So. California in 1987; visiting lecturer, British Film Institute, National Film Theatre, London, 1980-86; published biographical studies of filmmakers Stanley Kramer, Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, playwright Tennessee Williams, and actors Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Lotte Lenya, Laurenc...

Siemanowski, Richard.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68p6qf0 (person)

Weill, Kurt

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rr1x51 (person)

As a result of the success of his Broadway musical Lady in the dark in 1941, German-born composer Kurt Weill and his wife, the singing actress Lotte Lenya, were able to buy "Brook House," in Rockland County, New York, moving there during their sixth year in the United States. From Brook House, and a couple of addresses in Los Angeles during his trips there, Weill kept in touch, until a month before his death, with his parents, who had emigrated to Israel in 1935. From the description...

Anderson, Mabel

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6280b3p (person)

Caniff, Milton Arthur, 1907-1988

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6fx77kb (person)

American cartoonist, best known for the long-running comic strips Terry and the pirates and Steve Canyon. Lived for many years in New City, NY as a neighbor of Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Maxwell Anderson, Alan Jay Lerner, and others. Also an original board member of the Kurt Weill for Music thanks to his long association with Lenya. Caniff died in 1988. From the description of An oral history interview with Milton Caniff / conducted for the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music by Donald Spo...

Kurt Weill foundation for music

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6bw27xn (corporateBody)

Brook House was the home of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. From the description of Photograph collection, [ca. 1900]-1986. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 155506828 Farneth was director and archivist at the foundation. From the description of Correspondence to Isolde (Klarmann) Radzinowicz, 1988. (University of Pennsylvania Library). WorldCat record id: 155863739 ...

Davis, George, 1906-1957

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65m677w (person)

George Davis began his career as a writer, publishing his only novel, The opening of a door, in 1931 while living in Paris. He returned to the U.S. shortly thereafter and began working as a fiction editor for various magazines, notably Harper's Bazaar and Mademoiselle, and exerted substantial influence on American taste and popular literary culture, "discovering" such writers as Truman Capote and Carson McCullers. During the 1940's, he and Gypsy Rose Lee established an artists' commune of sorts ...

Detwiler, Russell.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65q4xr5 (person)

Russell Detwiler (1925-1969) grew up in Pennsylvania. After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, he pursued an education at Temple University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among other schools. He became a painter and had several one-man shows and other exhibitions throughout the late 1950's and 1960's. In 1962 he married Lotte Lenya. His friends and clients included Vera Stravinsky, Jennie Tourel, Dr. David Protetch, Marianne Josephson, and Emanuel Marks. From th...