2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 24: Lorraine Hansberry, African American Playwright Who Wrote "A Raisin in the Sun"

 Appendix 24 

Lorraine Hansberry

African American Playwright 

Who Wrote 

"A Raisin in the Sun"

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". 

She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun,  highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.  The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois.  Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn  and Roosevelt University.  She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's.  In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway.  It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience. 

The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame.  She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie.  Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".

Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.

The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’

Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.

Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.

She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.

She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.

In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson.  At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.

One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell.  She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.

She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.

Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."

In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.

On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.  Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.

It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.

A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.

Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.  The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.

Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.

In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.

In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.

In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin. 

Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.

On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.

While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.

Hansberry was an atheist.

Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."

Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."

In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.

Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."

Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

 

Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun,  opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress).  It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.

Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".  The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.

Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.

In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone,  who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).

In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.

 

In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 23: Jessie Isabelle Price, The Duck Doctor

 Jessie Isabelle Price (b. January 1, 1930, Montrose, Pennsylvania – November 12, 2015, Madison, Wisconsin) was a veterinary microbiologist. She isolated and reproduced the cause of the most common life-threatening disease in duck farming in the 1950s and developed vaccines for this and other avian diseases.  A graduate of Cornell University, where she earned a PhD (1959), she worked first at the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory and later at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Wildlife Health Center.  She served as chair of the Predoctoral Minority Fellowship Ad Hoc Review Committee of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and as president of Graduate Women in Science.

Jessie Price was born in Montrose, Pennsylvania.  Her mother, Teresa Price, raised her daughter on her own in difficult financial circumstances.  Price was the only African-American in her class, at a school where there were only two other Black students. After graduating from Montrose High School, she was accepted into Cornell University, moving with her mother to Ithaca to take advanced high classes in mathematics and English for a year. Tuition fees were waived because of her New York residency and grades. She wanted to be a physician, but could not because of the cost. Price received a Bachelor of Science in the College of Agriculture in 1953.

Her mentor, Dorsey Bruner, recommended post-graduate studies, but finances prohibited it. Price worked for three years as a laboratory technician in the Poultry Disease Research Farm in the Veterinary College at Cornell to save for further study. She obtained research assistant support for 1956 to 1959, receiving a Masters in 1958, and a doctorate in 1959, supervised by Bruner. Her Master's thesis was "Morphological and Cultural Studies of Pleuropneumonia-like Organisms and Their Variants Isolated from Chickens".

For her doctoral dissertation, Price isolated and reproduced the bacterium, Pasteurella anatipestifer, in white pekin ("Long Island") ducklings infected with a disease that was a major killer among duck farmers at that time. Her dissertation was published by Cornell University in 1959.

After her PhD, Price joined the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, where she worked from 1959 to 1977, teaching at Long Island University, where she became an adjunct professor. She worked on developing a vaccine, undertaking trials of mixed flocks of vaccinated and unvaccinated ducklings, working every day, and conducting daily autopsies. In 1964, Ebony magazine featured Price and her work in an extensive photo-essay describing and showing her work on vaccine development, in the Duck Research Laboratory and on the farm.  Price described the heavy workload, made more onerous by the four-mile distance between the laboratory and farm where the flocks of ducklings were managed.

Long Island "New Duck Disease" is an infectious disease affecting primarily ducklings, with a high mortality rate. In 1956, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that it was "the most important disease problem of the duck industry", with losses of up to 75% of populations. For her doctoral work, Price isolated and reproduced Pasteurella anatipestifer, an essential step for vaccine development.

While at the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, she began working on vaccine development for Pasteurella anatipestifer for white pekin ducks, which she would continue in avian cholera and tuberculosis (TB) for various species through her career.  Some of the vaccines were commercially developed. She worked with national and international colleagues, publishing on Pasteurella anatipestifer in pheasants, medication for bacterial infections in ducklings, Pasteurella multocida in Nebraska wetlands and in snow geese. 

In 1966, Price was awarded a National Science Foundation travel grant to present her findings at the International Congress for Microbiology in Moscow. By 1974, she had developed an injectable vaccine and was moving on to studying oral vaccination.  She moved to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin in 1977, and the study of environmental contaminants and diseases in wildlife, especially water fowl.

Her professional activities included serving as chair of the Predoctoral Minority Fellowship Ad Hoc Review Committee of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), as well as its Summer Research Fellowship and Travel Award Program. Price was also a member of the ASM's Committee on the Status of Minority Microbiologists and its Committee on the Status of Women Microbiologists. She was also  active in Graduate Women in Science (also called Sigma Delta Epsilon), serving as national president from 1974 to 1975, after being national second vice-president (1972-1973), as well as on the national board of directors (1976-1980).

Price was a dog-lover and breeder, with a prize-winning Corgi in the 1960s. Her other favorite pastimes were photography, music, and travel.

Price died of Lewy body dementia on November 12, 2015, in Madison, Wisconsin, and was buried in Quoque Cemetery on Long Island. 

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 22: Willie Thrower, The First African American National Football League Quarterback

APPENDIX 22

WILLIE THROWER

THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE

QUARTERBACK

 Willie Lee Thrower (b. March 22, 1930, New Kensington, Pennsylvania – d. February 20, 2002, New Kensington, Pennsylvania) was an American football quarterback. Born near Pittsburgh in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Thrower was known as "Mitts" for his large hands and arm strength compared to his 5'11" frame.  He was known to be able to toss a football 70 yards.  Thrower was part of the 1952 Michigan State Spartans who won the national championship.  He became the first African American to appear at the quarterback position in the National Football League (NFL), playing for the Chicago Bears in 1953.

 

Thrower played halfback in the single-wing formation for New Kensington High (present-name: Valley High School) as a freshman just after the end of World War II in 1945. Single wing halfbacks received a direct center snap, and then had run, handoff, or pass options. The team lost 2 games. However, head coach Don Fletcher moved Thrower to quarterback. From his sophomore to senior years, New Kensington won 24 straight games, including the 1946 and 1947 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) Class AA championships. As quarterback, Thrower would only lose one game in his career. As a dual-threat quarterback, Thrower was also an All-WPIAL and all-state first team honors, and he was named captain for an All-American scholastic selection covering the nation east of the Mississippi River. His final high school record was 35-3-1.

Despite his accomplishments, Thrower still experienced racism. In 1947, the Miami, Florida Peanut Bowl, featuring top high school teams around the country, rescinded the invitation it had extended to New Kensington High School to play in the annual prep classic game when organizers saw a photograph of its star. In addition, many colleges opted not to extend Thrower a scholarship when they discovered his ethnicity.

After graduating, Thrower chose to play collegiate football for the Michigan State Spartans alongside some of his high school teammates William Horrell, Joseph Klein, Renaldo Kozikowski, Vincent Pisano, and the Tamburo brothers, Harry and Richard. He would remain in East Lansing from 1949–1952, competing for playing time at quarterback with All-Americans Al Dorow and Tom Yewcic.  Under head coach Clarence "Biggie" Munn, Thrower became the first black quarterback to play in the Big Ten Conference in 1950 in his first year of varsity eligibility (NCAA rules dictated no freshman on varsity preventing Thrower, who was a freshman in 1949, to play) although during the first two years of his varsity career, he only attempted 14 passes.

During the 1952 championship season, Thrower was an integral part of the title run, completing 59 percent of his passes (29-of-43) for 400 yards and five touchdowns. In a crucial game with Notre Dame, Thrower stepped in for an injured Tom Yewcic and threw a touchdown in a 21-3 win. In his final game in a Spartan uniform, Thrower completed seven of his 11 attempts for 71 yards and a touchdown, and added a rushing touchdown in a dominating 62-13 win over Marquette that sealed the nation's No. 1 ranking, and championship, for Michigan State.

Although Thrower was not drafted in 1953,  he was offered a one year, $8,500 contract with the Chicago Bears. He became the backup quarterback and roommate to future Pro Football Hall of Famer George Blanda.

As a professional, Thrower did not play until October 18, 1953 against the San Francisco 49ers.  Bears coach George Halas was unhappy with Blanda's play and pulled him, sending in Thrower. He moved the team to the 15-yard line of the 49ers, but was denied a chance to score a touchdown when Halas put Blanda back into the game. The Bears eventually lost the game 35-28. Thrower completed 3 out of 8 passes for 27 yards, and had one interception. He would only play one more game for the Bears, who released Thrower after the 1953 season.

In 1979, Thrower was elected to the Westmoreland County Sports Hall of Fame. In 1981, he was inducted into AK Valley Hall of Fame. In 2003, an official state marker was dedicated to him in his high school. In 2011, he was inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame. Although, Thrower was the first African-American quarterback in the NFL, Fritz Pollard was the first African American to play on a championship team (1920), as well as the first African American quarterback (1923) and coach (1919).

Thrower died of a heart attack in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on February 20, 2002, at the age of 71.

In 2006, a statue of Thrower was erected near Valley High School in New Kensington to honor his accomplishments. The statue was unveiled during a Valley High School football game in September attended by Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney as well as Thrower's family. Willie Thrower was also mentioned by former NFL quarterback Warren Moon in his Pro Football Hall of Fame acceptance speech. Moon thanked Thrower, among others, for giving him inspiration during a time when few African-Americans played the quarterback position in the NFL.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 21: Odetta, "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement"

 Appendix 21

 Odetta

"The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement"

Odetta Holmes (b. December 31, 1930, Birmingham, Alabama – December 2, 2008, New York City, New York), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and civil rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement".  Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals.  An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, Odetta influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin.  In 2011, Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs.

Odetta was born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Her father, Reuben Holmes, died when Odetta was young, and in 1937 she and her mother, Flora Sanders, moved to Los Angeles. When Flora remarried a man called Zadock Felious, Odetta took her stepfather's last name.  In 1940 Odetta's teacher noticed her vocal talents, “A teacher told my mother that I had a voice, that maybe I should study,” she recalled. “But I myself didn’t have anything to measure it by.” She began operatic training at the age of thirteen. After attending Belmont High School, she studied music at Los Angeles City College supporting herself as a domestic worker. Flora had hoped to see her daughter follow in the footsteps of Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl like herself would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera.  

In 1944, Odetta made her professional debut in musical theater as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester.  In 1949, she joined the national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow. 

While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta fell in with an enthusiastic group of young folk balladeers in San Francisco, and after 1950 she concentrated on folk singing.

Odetta made her name playing at the Blue Angel nightclub in New York City, and the hungry i in San Francisco. At Tin Angel also in San Francisco in 1953 and 1954, Odetta recorded the album Odetta and Larry with Larry Mohr for Fantasy Records. A solo career followed with Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956) and At the Gate of Horn (1957). Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of the best-selling folk albums of 1963.

In 1959, Odetta appeared on Tonight with Belafonte, a nationally televised special. She sang "Water Boy" and a duet with Belafonte, "There's a Hole in My Bucket".  

In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr., called her "The Queen of American Folk Music".  Also in 1961, the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta reached number 32 on the UK Singles Chart with the song "There's a Hole in the Bucket". Odetta is also remembered for her performance at the March on Washington, the 1963 civil rights demonstration, at which she sang "O Freedom".  She described her role in the civil rights movement as "one of the privates in a very big army".

Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone. She released music of a more "jazz" style on albums like Odetta and the Blues (1962) and Odetta (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert.

Odetta acted in several films during this period, including Cinerama Holiday (1955); a cinematic production of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961); and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). In 1961, she appeared in an episode of the television series Have Gun, Will Travel, playing the wife of a man sentenced to hang ("The Hanging of Aaron Gibbs").

Odetta was married twice, first to Dan Gordon and then, after their divorce, to Gary Shead. Her second marriage also ended in divorce. The blues singer-guitarist Louisiana Red was a former companion of hers.

In May 1975, Odetta appeared on public television's Say Brother program, performing "Give Me Your Hand" in the studio. She spoke about her spirituality, the music tradition from which she drew, and her involvement in civil rights struggles.

In 1976, Odetta performed in the United States Bicentennial opera Be Glad Then, America by John La Montaine, as the Muse for America; with Donald Gramm, Richard Lewis and the Penn State University Choir and the Pittsburgh Symphony.  The production was directed by Sarah Caldwell who was the director of the Opera Company of Boston at the time.

In 1982, Odetta was an artist-in-residence at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. 

Odetta released two albums in the 20-year period from 1977 to 1997: Movin' It On, in 1987 and a new version of Christmas Spirituals, produced by Rachel Faro, in 1988.

Beginning in 1998, Odetta returned to recording and touring. The new CD To Ella (recorded live and dedicated to her friend Ella Fitzgerald upon hearing of her death before walking on stage), was released in 1998 on Silverwolf Records, followed by three releases on M.C. Records in partnership with pianist/arranger/producer Seth Farber and record producer Mark Carpentieri. These included Blues Everywhere I Go, a 2000 Grammy-nominated blues/jazz band tribute album to the great lady blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s; Looking for a Home, a 2002 W. C. Handy Award-nominated band tribute to Lead Belly; and the 2007 Grammy-nominated Gonna Let It Shine, a live album of gospel and spiritual songs supported by Seth Farber and The Holmes Brothers. These recordings and active touring led to guest appearance on fourteen new albums by other artists between 1999 and 2006 and the re-release of 45 old Odetta albums and compilation appearances.

On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts. In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award" along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman. In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award".

In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the Late Show with David Letterman, appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11.  They performed "This Little Light of Mine". 

The 2005 documentary film No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, highlighted her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary. The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, as well as her "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No More Auction Block for Me".

In 2006, Odetta opened shows for jazz vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, and in 2006 she toured the United States, Canada, and Europe accompanied by her pianist, which included being presented by the United States Embassy in Latvia as the keynote speaker at a human rights conference, and also in a concert in Riga's historic 1,000-year-old Maza Guild Hall. In December 2006, the Winnipeg Folk Festival honored Odetta with their "Lifetime Achievement Award". In February 2007, the International Folk Alliance awarded Odetta as "Traditional Folk Artist of the Year".

On March 24, 2007, a tribute concert to Odetta was presented at the Rachel Schlesinger Theatre by the World Folk Music Association with live performances  and video tributes by Pete Seeger, Madeleine Peyroux, Harry Belafonte, Janis Ian, Sweet Honey and the Rock, Josh White, Jr. Peter, Paul and Mary, Oscar Brand, Tom Rush, Jesse Winchester, Eric Andersen, Wavy Gravy, David Amram, Roger McGuinn, Robert Sims, Carolyn Hester, Donal Leace, Marie Knight, Side by Side and Laura McGhee.  

In 2007, Odetta's album Gonna Let It Shine was nominated for a Grammy, and she completed a major Fall Concert Tour in the "Songs of Spirit" show, which included artists from all over the world. She toured around North America in late 2006 and early 2007 to support this CD.

On January 21, 2008, Odetta was the keynote speaker at San Diego's Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration, followed by concert performances in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and Mill Valley, in addition to being the sole guest for the evening on PBS-TV's The Tavis Smiley Show.

Odetta was honored on May 8, 2008, at a historic tribute night, hosted by Wavy Gravy, held at Banjo Jim's in the East Village. Included in the billing that night were David Amram, Vincent Cross, Guy Davis, Timothy Hill, Jack Landron, Christine Lavin, Madeleine Peyroux and Chaney Sims.

In summer 2008, at the age of 77, she launched a North American tour, where she sang from a wheelchair.  Her set in later years included "This Little Light of Mine (I'm Gonna Let It Shine)", Lead Belly's "The Bourgeois Blues:, "(Something Inside) So Strong", "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "House of the Rising Sun". 

Odetta made an appearance on June 30, 2008, at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, in New York City for a concert in tribute to Liam Clancy. Her last big concert, before thousands of people, was in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on October 4, 2008, for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  Her last performance was at Hugh's Room in Toronto on October 25, 2008.

In November 2008, Odetta's health began to decline and she began receiving treatment at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, but she died of heart disease on December 2, 2008, in New York City, at the age of 77.

At a memorial service for her in February 2009 at Riverside Church in New York City, participants included Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Geoffrey Holder, Steve Earle, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Peter Yarrow, Maria Muldaur, Tom Chapin, Josh White Jr. Emory Joseph, Rattlesnake Annie, the Brooklyn Technical High School Chamber Chorus, and videotaped tributes from Tavis Smiley and Joan Baez.

In 2023, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Odetta at number 171 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 20: Clint Eastwood, Movie Star and Influential Jazz Aficionado

Appendix 20

Clint Eastwood

Movie Star 

and

Influential Jazz Aficionado

Clinton Eastwood Jr. (b. May 31, 1930, San Francisco, California), an American actor and film director who, after achieving success in the Western television series Rawhide, rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as anti-hero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.  Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.  

Eastwood's greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its action-comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980).  Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang 'Em High (1968) and Pale Rider (1985), the action-war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the war film Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action film In the Line of Fire (1993), and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995). More recent works include Gran Torino (2008), The Mule (2018), and Cry Macho (2021). Since 1967, Eastwood's company Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films. 

An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film Unforgiven (1992) and for his sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004). In addition to directing many of his own star vehicles, Eastwood has also directed films in which he did not appear, such as the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations. He also directed the biographical films Changeling (2008), Invictus (2009), American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016), and Richard Jewell (2019).

Eastwood's accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three Cesar Awards, and an AFI (American Film Institute) Life Achievement Award.  In 2000, Eastwood received the Italian Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements. Bestowed two of France's highest civilian honors, he received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour in 2007.

Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, California, to Ruth (nee Runner; 1909–2006) and Clinton Eastwood (1906–1970). During her son's fame, Ruth was known by the surname of her second husband, John Belden Wood (1913–2004), whom she married after the death of Clinton Sr.  Eastwood was nicknamed "Samson" by hospital nurses because he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces (5.2 kg) at birth. He has a younger sister, Jeanne Bernhardt (b. 1934). He is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry and is descended from Mayflower passenger William Bradford, and through this line is the 12th generation born in North America. 

Eastwood's family relocated three times during the 1930s as his father changed occupations. Contrary to what Eastwood has indicated in media interviews, they did not move between 1940 and 1949. Instead, the family settled in Piedmont, California, where they lived in an affluent area of the town, had a swimming pool, belonged to a country club, and each parent drove their own car.  Eastwood's father was a manufacturing executive at Georgia-Pacific for most of his working life. As Clint and Jeanne grew older, Ruth took a clerical job at IBM. 

Eastwood attended Piedmont Middle School, where he was held back due to poor academic scores, and records indicated he also had to attend summer school. From January 1945 until at least January 1946, he attended Piedmont High School, but was asked to leave for writing an obscene suggestion to a school official on the athletic field scoreboard and burning an effigy on the school lawn, on top of other school infractions. He transferred to Oakland Technical High School and was scheduled to graduate mid-year in January 1949, although it is not clear if he did. 

Eastwood held a number of jobs, including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy. Eastwood tried to enroll at Seattle University in 1951, but instead was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War. However, Eastwood did not go to Korea.  He spent his time in service as a lifeguard at Fort Ord, near Monterey in northern California for his entire stint in the military.  Eastwood was discharged in February 1953.

Following his discharge from the army in 1953, Eastwood moved to Hollywood. A screen test with Universal in 1954 netted him a 40-week contract, but, after one renewal and a series of bit parts in such movies as Tarantula (1955) and Revenge of the Creature (1955), his option was dropped. He appeared in several television series before he got his big break in 1959 by being cast as Rowdy Yates in the popular television western series Rawhide (1959–65).

Eastwood achieved international stardom during this same period when he played The Man with No Name—a laconic, fearless gunfighter whose stoicism masks his brutality—in three Italian westerns (popularly known as "spaghetti westerns") directed by Sergio Leone: Per un pugno di dollari (1964; A Fistful of Dollars), Per qualche dollari in più (1965; For a Few Dollars More), and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). In 1967, the three films played in the United States and were immediate commercial successes, establishing Eastwood as a box-office star.

For Eastwood’s first American western, Hang ’Em High (1968) — Ted Post’s expert imitation of the Leone formula, enlivened by a superior group of character actors — Eastwood formed his own production company, Malpaso. He also worked with Don Siegel on the popular police story Coogan's Bluff (1968).  It was Siegel who taught Eastwood most of what he needed to know about directing, a debt Eastwood often acknowledged. He also worked with Siegel on the western Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), the psychological Civil War drama The Beguiled (1971), and the prison-break film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Their best-known collaboration was Dirty Harry (1971), in which Eastwood first portrayed the ruthlessly effective neo-noir police inspector Harry Callahan. The film proved to be one of Eastwood’s most successful films, spawning four sequels and establishing the no-nonsense character Dirty Harry—known for such catchphrases as “Go ahead, make my day”—as a cinema icon.

In the 1970s, Eastwood turned to directing in such films as the thriller Play Misty for Me (1971), the westerns High Plains Drifter (1972) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and the espionage thriller The Eiger Sanction (1975), all films in which he also played leading roles. Eastwood took over the western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) from Philip Kaufman, who cowrote the story of a Missouri farmer driven to violence after his family has been slaughtered by renegade Union soldiers. Stylishly photographed by Bruce Surtees, with a fine performance by Chief Dan George as a Cherokee elder, this work humanized Eastwood’s mythic avenger archetype for the first time.

Eastwood went on to make The Gauntlet (1977), a kinetic but formulaic action film in which he played a police detective trying to transport a witness (Sondra Locke) to an Arizona courthouse where she can testify. The gentle good humor pervading Bronco Billy (1980) was far removed from the mayhem of his westerns and cop movies; Eastwood was deft as the proprietor of a two-bit Wild West show who gives shelter to, then falls in love with, a runaway heiress (Locke). Firefox (1982) was a high-tech Cold War story that had Eastwood as a pilot stealing a supersonic jet from the Soviets. The whimsical and sentimental Honkytonk Man (1982), set during the Great Depression, featured Eastwood as a country singer dying of tuberculosis whose dream is to make it to the Grand Ole Opry before he passes on.

Having wandered rather far afield from his star action persona, Eastwood directed the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), with Locke portraying a rape victim on a vengeful murder spree. He then returned to his screen roots with the neo-mythic Pale Rider (1985), a quasi-religious western. It showcased Eastwood’s iconic presence and Surtees’s gorgeous photography and was one of the few hit westerns of the 1980s.

Heartbreak Ridge (1986) was a drama about an old-school marine sergeant (Eastwood) on the verge of retirement whose tough approach whips a group of raw recruits into shape for the invasion of Grenada.  

Off-screen, Eastwood made national headlines in 1986 when he was elected Mayor of Carmel, California.  He served for two years.

A lifelong devotee of jazz and an accomplished pianist, Eastwood also directed the well-regarded Bird (1988), a film biography of saxophonist Charlie Parker (played by Forest Whitaker), and produced the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988). 

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Eastwood was an aficionado of jazz particularly bebop, blues, country and western and classical music. He dabbled in music early on by developing as a boogie-woogie pianist and had originally intended to pursue a career in music by studying for a music theory degree after graduating from high school. In late 1959, Eastwood produced the album Cowboy Favorites, released on the Cameo label, which included some classics such as Bob Wills' "San Antonio Rose" and Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In". Despite his attempts to plug the album by going on a tour, it never reached the Billboard Hot 100.  In 1963, Cameo producer Kal Mann told Eastwood that "he would never make it big as a singer". Nevertheless, during the off season of filming Rawhide, Eastwood and Paul Brinegar – sometimes joined by Sheb Wooley – toured rodeos, state fairs, and festivals. In 1962, their act, entitled Amusement Business Cavalcade of Fairs, earned them as much as $15,000 a performance. 

Although he never made it as a major performing artist, Eastwood passed on his musical proclivities to his son, Kyle, who became a professional jazz bassist and composer. 

An audiophile, Eastwood owned an extensive collection of LPs which he played on a Rockport turntable. His favorite musicians include saxophonists Charlie Parker and Lester Young, pianists Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Fats Waller, and Delta bluesman Robert Johnson.

Eastwood developed his own Warner Brothers Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers. This deal was unchanged when Warner Music Group was sold by Time Warner to private investors. Malpaso Records, which released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward, also released the album of a 1996 jazz concert he hosted, titled Eastwood after Hours – Live at Carnegie Hall. 

Eastwood composed the film scores of Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Grace Is Gone, Changeling, Hereafter, J. Edgar, and the original piano compositions for In the Line of Fire. He wrote and performed the song heard over the credits of Gran Torino and also co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, a song recorded in 1999 by Diana Krall

The music in Grace Is Gone received two Golden Globe nominations by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the 65th Golden Globe Awards.  Eastwood was nominated for Best Original Score, while the song "Grace is Gone" with music by Eastwood and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager was nominated for Best Original Song. It won the Satellite Award for Best Song at the 12th Satellite Awards. Changeling was nominated for Best Score at the 14th Critics' Choice Awards, Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, and Best Music at the 35th Saturn Awards. On September 22, 2007, Eastwood was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival, on which he served as an active board member. Upon receiving the award, Eastwood gave a speech claiming, "It's one of the great honors I'll cherish in this lifetime."

The scoring stage at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California, was renamed the Eastwood Scoring Stage in the 1990s.

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One of the greatest contributions to music made by Clint Eastwood was his discovery of the great Roberta Flack and by his utilizing her classic song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in his first (his 1971) directorial effort, the movie Play Misty for Me.

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was originally a 1957 folk song written by British political singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became MacColl's wife. At the time, the couple were lovers, although MacColl was still married to his second wife, Jean Newlove. Seeger sang the song when the duo performed in folk clubs around Britain. During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972, winning Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.  Billboard ranked it as the number one Hot 100 single of the year for 1972.

There are two differing accounts of the origin of the song. MacColl said that he wrote the song for Seeger after she asked him to pen a song for a play she was in. He wrote the song and taught it to Seeger over the telephone. Seeger said that MacColl, with whom she had begun an affair in 1957, used to send her tapes to listen to while they were apart and that "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was on one of them.

The earliest recording of the song was in 1960 by Bonnie Dobson, released in 1961 on her debut album She's Like a Swallow and Other Folk Songs. The song entered the pop mainstream the following year when it was released by the Kingston Trio on their 1962 hit album New Frontier and in subsequent years by other pop folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary; the Brothers Four; Joe and Eddie; the Chad Mitchell Trio, and by Gordon Lightfoot on his debut album Lightfoot! (1966).

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was popularized by Roberta Flack in 1969 in a version that became a breakout hit for the singer.  Flack knew the song from the Joe & Eddie version which appeared on that folk duo's 1963 album Coast to Coast (as "The First Time"). Flack's friend singer Donal Leace brought the track to Flack's attention. Having taught the song to the young girls in the glee club at Banneker High School (Washington, D.C.), Flack would regularly perform "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in her set-list at the Pennsylvania Avenue club Mr. Henry's where Flack was hired as resident singer in 1968. In February 1969, Flack would record the song for her debut album First Take. Flack's rendition was much slower-paced than Seeger's original, Flack's take running more than twice the two-and-a-half-minute length of Seeger's. 

Flack's slow and sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial film debut: Play Misty for Me to score a love scene featuring Eastwood and actress Donna Mills. Flack would recall how Eastwood, who had heard her version of "The First Time..." on his car radio while driving down the Los Angeles Freeway, phoned out of the blue to Flack's Alexandria (Virginia) home and said "'I'd like to use your song in this movie...about a disc jockey [with] a lot of music in it. I'd use it in the only part of the movie where there's absolute love." Flack agreed to the use of the song.  She and Eastwood discussed compensation.  Eastwood agreed to pay $2000 and asked Flack if there was anything else.  Flack said that she wanted to do it over again because it was too slow.  Eastwood disagreed.  He used the slow version and the song made history.

Flack's version of "The First Time..." exploded in popularity following the November 1971 release of Play Misty for Me. This persuaded Atlantic Records to issue the track as a single - trimmed by a minute - in February 1972: the track became a smash hit single in the United States, reaching No. 1 for six weeks on both the Billboard Hot 100 and easy listening charts in the spring of 1972, with a No. 4 R&B chart peak.   The song also reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart, and Flack's "The First Time..." was No. 1 for three weeks on the singles chart in Canada's RPM magazine.

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was played as the wake-up music on flight day 9 to the astronauts aboard Apollo 17 on their last day in Lunar orbit (Friday, December 15, 1972) before returning to Earth, thus ending the last human explorations of the Moon. The use of the song was most likely a reference to the "face" of the Moon below the spacecraft.

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White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) was Eastwood’s most audacious project of this period of his career, an adaptation of Peter Viertel’s roman a clef about his on-location collaboration with director John Huston on The African Queen (1951). Bravely tackling the part of Huston, Eastwood embodied the great director’s rugged physical presence.

Because Eastwood’s style of acting was minimally expressive, his films initially drew little praise from critics. Yet his strong resonant screen presence earned him success at the box office. His standard role was that of a tough loner whose violent tendencies conformed to his own understated moral principles. However, Eastwood’s willingness to demythologize such stock characters as Western heroes and cops eventually brought him critical acclaim, as did his lean, crisp directorial style. He became known as a director equally adept at presenting deep character studies and fluid action sequences.

 After the unsuccessful police drama The Rookie (1990), Eastwood's revisionist Western Unforgiven (1992) featured a towering performance by Eastwood as an erstwhile “regulator” who lays down his plowshare to execute a thug who has disfigured a prostitute. Both the picture and Eastwood (for best director) won Academy Awards. The film was critically lauded for Eastwood’s unsentimental look at frontier violence.

In the quiet drama A Perfect World (1993), an escaped convict (Kevin Costner) takes a boy (T.J. Lowther) hostage, and an unlikely bond formed between them. Eastwood played a Texas Ranger tracking them down. He made a rare appearance in another director’s film when he played a United States Secret Service agent trying to thwart a presidential assassination in Wolfgang Petersen’s popular action thriller In the Line of Fire (1993).

The Bridges of Madison County (1995) was Eastwood’s effective mounting of the enormously popular novel by Robert James Waller. Eastwood was excellent as a photographer traveling through Iowa for a magazine piece on its historic covered bridges, and Meryl Streep played a farmer’s wife who, against her better judgment, enters into an affair with him.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) was also based on a book that became a publishing phenomenon, the nonfiction best seller by John Berendt about a murder that rocks the community of Savannah, Georgia, which is populated almost entirely by eccentrics. In the thriller Absolute Power (1997) Eastwood played a thief who, in the midst of a robbery, witnesses the Secret Service murder a woman whom the President of the United States (Gene Hackman) has just attacked sexually. In True Crime (1999) Eastwood starred as a veteran reporter whose investigative skills revive when he learns that a prisoner (Isaiah Washington) scheduled for execution that night is probably innocent.

Space Cowboys (2000) had Eastwood as the head of a team of elderly test pilots (Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner, and Donald Sutherland) who have been summoned out of retirement to rescue the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when an obsolete Russian satellite requires disarming. Blood Work (2002) was a thriller about a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) profiler who is convinced that only he can locate a murderer.

Mystic River (2003) set a new standard for Eastwood as a director. Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins starred as childhood friends who have grown up to live widely disparate lives while still bound to the working-class neighborhood they were born into. Eastwood received another best director Oscar nomination, and the film was also a best picture nominee.

Million Dollar Baby (2004) was another success for Eastwood. A crusty fight trainer (Eastwood) is haunted by his failed relationship with his daughter and a female aspiring boxer (Hilary Swank) who wants to train under him. But tragedy strikes in the midst of her big match, and the rest of the movie is concerned with what makes life worth living. Probably the biggest dark-horse success of Eastwood’s career, Million Dollar Baby won Oscars for best picture, best actress (Swank), and best supporting actor (Morgan Freeman). It also brought Eastwood his second Oscar for best director. The film broke the $100 million mark at the American box office. Eastwood next directed the World War II films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), both of which focus on the Battle of Iwo Jima. The latter, told from the Japanese perspective, was nominated for several Oscars, including best director and best film.

Changeling (2008) was a period piece set in Los Angeles in 1928. It was based on a grim true story of a missing boy whose mother, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), is horrified when, several months later, the police “return” him to her in the person of an entirely different child. Eastwood won a special award for Changeling at that year’s Cannes film festival. In Gran Torino (2008), Eastwood played Walt Kowalski, an irascible retired autoworker living in a blue-collar suburb of Detroit who is forced to shake off a lifetime of suspicion toward minorities so as to don the role of protector to a family of Hmong immigrants. The film was a major box-office hit.

Shot in Capetown, South Africa, Invictus (2009) took as its subject South African President Nelson Mandela (Freeman) and his plan to unite his racially divided country by using the 1995 Rugby World Cup, in which South Africa’s almost all-white Springboks team, typically reviled by the majority black populace, faced heavily favored New Zealand in the finals. Their inspirational victory was presented in thrilling fashion by Eastwood, but the film’s real strength was its painstaking attention to the political and cultural issues negotiated by the players and Mandela.

Hereafter (2010) was an oddity in the Eastwood canon — a measured, quiet drama about three characters whose widely divergent life experiences have left them convinced of the reality of an afterlife. The anguish experienced by each is etched expertly by Eastwood, but the story is told at a languid pace. J. Edgar (2011) was a weighty biopic of J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio), the longtime head of the FBI. Armie Hammer had the film’s other key role as Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s right-hand man and the love of Hoover’s life. Thus, J. Edgar was as much a romance as an account of a power-hungry bureaucrat who became one of the most feared—and loathed—figures in American life. Eastwood then helmed a film adaptation (2014) of the Tony Award-winning (2006) musical Jersey Boys, about the rise of the American singing group The Four Seasons.

Eastwood’s adaptation of a Navy SEAL sniper’s memoir, American Sniper (2014), was lauded for the finesse with which it depicted both the violence of the Iraq War and the difficulty of a soldier’s adjustment to civilian existence. The film received an Academy Award nomination for best picture. Eastwood continued to draw inspiration from true-life events with Sully, about airline pilot Chesley ("Sully") Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks), who landed a malfunctioning commercial jet on the Hudson River. The docudrama recounts both the emergency landing and the ensuing investigation into Sullenberger’s handling of the event.

In his next film, The 15:17 to Paris (2018), Eastwood chronicled the 2015 terrorist attack on an Amsterdam-to-Paris train, and he cast the three Americans who thwarted the strike to play themselves. He also directed and starred in The Mule (2018), a drama based on The New York Times article about a horticulturist and World War II veteran who became a courier for a drug cartel.  Eastwood again looked to true events for his next directorial effort, Richard Jewell (2019), a biopic that centers on the Atlanta Olympic Games bombing of 1996 and the security guard who was wrongly suspected of the attack. In 2021, Eastwood directed and starred in Cry Macho, a story of redemption centering on a former rodeo star who agrees to drive a man’s young son home from Mexico.

Besides his Academy Awards, Eastwood received the Irving G. Thalberg Award for lifetime achievement in 1995 and the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1996. In 2007, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour and he was elevated to commander two years later.