Background
Peters, Margot McCullough was born on May 13, 1933 in Wausau, Wisconsin, United States. Daughter of Edgar John and Elsie (Merkel) McC.
(From the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Mrs...)
From the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and the Barrymores (“Margot Peters is surely now . . . our foremost historian of stage make-believe”—Leon Edel), a new biography of the most famous English-speaking acting team of the twentieth century. Individually, they were recognized as extraordinary actors, each one a star celebrated, imitated, sought after. Together, they were legend. The Lunts. A name to conjure with. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked together so imaginatively, so seamlessly onstage that they seemed to fuse into one person. Offstage, they brawled so famously and raucously over every detail of every performance that they inspired the musical Kiss Me, Kate. At home on Broadway, in London’s West End, touring the United States and Great Britain, and even playing “the foxhole circuit” of World War II, the Lunts stunned, moved, and mystified audiences for more than four decades. They were considered to be a rarefied taste, but when they toured Texas in the 1930s, the audience threw cowboy hats onto the stage. Their private life was equally fascinating, as unusual as the one they led in public. Friends like the critic Alexander Woollcott (whom Edna Ferber once described as “the little New Jersey Nero who thinks his pinafore is a toga”), Noël Coward, Laurette Taylor, and Sidney Greenstreet received lifelong loyalty and hospitality. Ten Chimneys, their country home in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, “is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics,” Carol Channing once said. “The Lunts are where we all spring from.” In this new biography, Margot Peters catches the magic of Lunt and Fontanne—their period, their work, their intimacy and its contradictions—with candor, delicacy, intelligence, and wit. She writes about their personal and creative choices as deftly as she captures their world, from their meeting (backstage, naturally)—when Fontanne was a young actress in the first flush of stardom and Lunt a lanky midwesterner who came in the stage door, bowed to her elaborately, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs—and the early days when an unknown and very hungry Noël Coward lived in a swank hotel in a room the size of a closet and cadged meals at their table to the telegram the famous couple once sent to a movie mogul, turning down a studio contract worth a fortune (“We can be bought, my dear Mr. Laemmle, but we can’t be bored”). We follow the Lunts through triumphs in plays such as The Guardsman, The Taming of the Shrew, and Design for Living; through friendships and feuds; through the intricate way they worked with such playwrights and directors as S. N. Behrman, Robert Sherwood, Giraudoux, Dürrenmatt, Peter Brook, and with each other. Margot Peters captures the gallantry of two remarkably gifted people who lived for their art and for each other. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were once described as an “amazing duet of intelligence and gaiety.” Margot Peters re-creates the fun and the fireworks.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375411178/?tag=2022091-20
(This epic family biography begins in the 1860s with Louis...)
This epic family biography begins in the 1860s with Louisa Drew, the greatest comedienne of her time, mother of the brilliant Georgiana Drew Barrymore and mother-in-law of the vaudeville star and matinee idol Maurice Barrymore. But it is the children of Georgie and Maurice who are the heart of the book: Ethel, Lionel, and John, the most extraordinary members of an extraordinary family. We see Ethel's sensational social and stage debuts in London and on Broadway; her struggle with alcohol, debt, and damaged reputation; and her spectacular comeback in The Corn is Green. We see John's vault to fame in Shakespearean stage roles and his triumphant move to the screen before succumbing to the ''Barrymore curse'' of addiction to alcohol. And we see the steadier Lionel pursuing his talents in painting and composing before finally capitulating to the family tradition. We see both the price and the privileges of their extraordinary fame; and finally, with the death of Ethel, the decline of America's first family of acting.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394553217/?tag=2022091-20
Peters, Margot McCullough was born on May 13, 1933 in Wausau, Wisconsin, United States. Daughter of Edgar John and Elsie (Merkel) McC.
Bachelor of Science, University of Wisconsin, 1959; Master of Arts, University of Wisconsin, 1965; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, 1969.
Peters taught at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin and held the Kathe Tappe Vemon Chair in Biography at Dartmouth College. In 1963 she became a faculty member in English literature at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, where she rose to full professor She also taught women"s studies, and since retiring in 1991 is now professor emerita.
Her first book, Charlotte Bronte: Style in the Novel, was based on her Doctor of Philosophy dissertation.
(This epic family biography begins in the 1860s with Louis...)
(This epic family biography begins in the 1860s with Louis...)
(Note : the photo listed with this item is not correct and...)
(This 461-page hardcover was published by Doubleday in 198...)
(From the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Mrs...)
(Charlotte Brontë's tumultuous and passionate life.)
(Important biography of this great author.)
Member Annual Of Shaw Studies, The Independent Shavian. Member Bronte Society, New York Shaw Society, International Shaw Society (board directors).
Married Peter Ridgway Jordan. Children from previous marriage: Marc Peters, Claire Peters.