Background
He was born on December 5, 1899 in Pana, Illinois, United States, the son of William Sheean and Susan Mac-Dermot, Irish immigrants driven to America by poverty and famine in their homeland.
(He lived in an age of flamboyant characters, yet he was h...)
He lived in an age of flamboyant characters, yet he was himself flamboyant enough to make more newspaper copy than any man of his time, with the single exception of our flamboyant President, Theodore Roosevelt. He operated in a rarefied medium-grand opera, yet the general public, who did not know a mezzo from a mezzanine, followed his ups and downs as eagerly as if he were a movie star. And that was because everything he did and was had style, distinction, drama. Here are some of the things he did that captured the imagination of millions: He invented a cigar-making machine-and used the proceeds to start an opera company. He built theaters in Harlem when only a few hundred people lived there-and made the rest of New York come miles to see his shows. He was involved in forty lawsuits simultaneously. His love letters-made public through one of these lawsuits-were followed on the front pages of newspapers. He hissed one of his stars from a box-and vas sued for it by his partners. He vowed to ruin those partners, and did¬ruining, himself at the same time. He brought to America the most glamorous of stars-Mary Garden, Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini-and created riots in the streets with one of them. He attempted to ruin the Metropolitan Opera Company with his competition-and almost succeeded. On the point of failure in this opera war, he was bought out by the Metropolitan for over S 1,000,000-and used the money to start over again in London. He fought with his stars as much as with his rivals-and they loved him for it. And every bit of it made news. This is the story of that man, that poverty-stricken German immigrant who, in Prince Albert coat and striped trousers, with goatee, cigar, and unique silk hat, dominated a portion of our cultural life for years. Vincent Sheean's account records a chapter of operatic history; even more, it presents a warm, entertaining, absorbing portrait of a man alternately comic and tragic (and often both) who was always a great showman.
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(Orpheus at Eighty By Sheean, Vincent ( Author ) Hardcover...)
Orpheus at Eighty By Sheean, Vincent ( Author ) Hardcover 1975
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(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
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correspondent journalist military novelist
He was born on December 5, 1899 in Pana, Illinois, United States, the son of William Sheean and Susan Mac-Dermot, Irish immigrants driven to America by poverty and famine in their homeland.
After attending local schools, Sheean went to the University of Chicago from 1916 to 1920, where he became a lifelong friend of John Gunther, a reporter and novelist. He left the university in his senior year without taking a degree, after his mother's illness and death.
He took a job as a reporter at the Chicago Daily News, but he was fired after a brief stint. Sheean immediately went to New York City, where he became a reporter for the New York Daily News and joined the Greenwich Village radical set. He was often seen in cafes with Edna St. Vincent Millay; after her death in 1950, he wrote a memoir about her entitled The Indigo Bunting (1951).
In 1922 he joined the expatriates gathering in Paris and soon became a favorite drinking companion of Ernest Hemingway. From 1922 to 1925 he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. In 1925 he crossed French and Spanish lines in Morocco to interview the rebel leader Abd el-Krim. This experience led him to write his first book, An American Among the Riffi (1926).
Thereafter he devoted most of his career to writing books, including novels, short stories, biographies, and memoirs. But even though he never again worked regularly for a newspaper, he often sent dispatches to the North American Newspaper Alliance and the New York Herald Tribune syndicate, and continued to think of himself as a newspaperman.
At the height of his writing years, between the rise of fascism in the 1920's and the Korean War in the 1950's, he wrote on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935; the Nazi conquests of Czechoslovakia, the Low Countries, and France at the beginning of World War II; intensive bombings in London in 1940 and 1941; the San Francisco conference in 1945 that led to the founding of the United Nations.
In World War II he served in the intelligence division of the U. S. Army Air Corps and did duty in North Africa and Italy. He was honorably discharged in 1944 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He expressed his views on the war and his passionate plea for peace in This House Against This House (1946).
In 1946 Sheean covered the trial in Lawrenceburg, of twenty-five blacks accused of attempted murder during a racial disturbance. In November 1947 he went to India to interview Gandhi about life's meaning, purpose, and significance. Just three days after his first interview with Gandhi, Sheean witnessed his assassination. This experience led him to write a book about Gandhi, Lead, Kindly Light (1949), and to maintain an interest in Indian politics that also led him to write Nehru: The Years of Power (1960).
His love to music led him to write Oscar Hammerstein I (1956) and Orpheus at Eighty (1958), a biography of Verdi. His last book was a historical novel, Beware of Caesar.
In his last years, he was working on an autobiography to complete the story of his life as told in two other memoirs written in the 1930's. Sheean had undergone treatment for lung cancer in New York in the fall of 1974 and returned to the northern Italian lake country around Lake Maggiore, where he had lived for years, in 1975.
He died at his home in Arolo, Italy.
(He lived in an age of flamboyant characters, yet he was h...)
("A biography of Nobel Prize winner Madame Curie that stir...)
(Orpheus at Eighty By Sheean, Vincent ( Author ) Hardcover...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
(Thomas Jefferson, Father of Democracy)
Sheean's political views were consistently those of the socialist left, but toward the end of his life he evolved to a belief in the inevitability of gradual change. He always took sides on issues. During the Arab-Jewish riots in Jerusalem in 1929, he sided with the Arabs; indeed, throughout his career he contributed to anti-Zionist causes. During the Spanish Civil War he took the Republican side and was one of the last foreign correspondents to leave Madrid even though he knew they faced imminent defeat.
He saw the journalist's role as not only telling the story but also explaining what it meant, and making it part of the experience of the readers, what he called "a sort of semiautobiographical political journalism. "
Quotes from others about the person
When his autobiography was reissued in 1969, Harrison E. Salisbury commented: "Certainly those of us who first read it in the thirties have never forgotten the world of revolutionary events, the fresh, bright words of the young American who lived through them all, and his quicksilver gift for capturing the drama of his day. Each new generation of newspapermen goes back to Vincent Sheean and learns all over again what it is like to be a part of the personal history of his day. "
Sheean married Diana Forbes-Robertson, the youngest daughter of the British actor Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson and niece of Maxine Elliott, in 1935. They were divorced in 1946, but then remarried in 1949. The couple had two daughters.