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January 21 Robert Duvall - Actor, Director, Producer, Writer
March 11 Lauren Bacall - Actor, Author
June 17 Gladys Knight - Singer, Actress
September 23 Stephen Sondheim - Composer, Lyricist
November 18 Jim Lehrer - Executive Editor, Anchor, Novelist
Speaker Biographies
Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall was born in 1931 in San Diego, California. At age ten, he moved with his family to Annapolis, Maryland where his father pursued a career in the Navy. Duvall earned his college degree in drama and spent two years in the U.S. Army before moving to New York in 1955 to enroll in the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse. Sanford Meisner, who trained many of our most important actors, recognized Duvall’s talent, and cast him in Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real and Horton Foote’s The Midnight Caller. In 1963, Horton Foote recommended Duvall for the pivotal role of mysterious Boo Radley in the now classic motion picture To Kill a Mockingbird. During these years of struggle, Duvall spent much of his time with two other fledgling actors, Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman.
In 1965, Duvall won an Obie for his performance in a revival of A View from the Bridge, and in 1966 he starred in the hit Broadway play Wait until Dark. Since that time, he has performed in hundreds of television, film and stage productions, including the 1983 portrayal of Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies, for which he won both a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1989 Duvall was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of Augustus “Gus” McCrae in the film Lonesome Dove, based on Larry McMurtry’s 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The additional nominations and awards Duvall has garnered for his acting abilities are almost too numerous to count.
Lauren Bacall
As a teenager, Ms. Bacall studied at the New York School of the Theatre and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was photographed for a modeling assignment with Harper’s Bazaar and the caption mentioned her acting ambitions. The inside double-page spread and the now famous Red Cross cover shot by photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe caught the attention of Slim Hawks, wife of director Howard Hawks, who brought Ms. Bacall to Hollywood for a screen test. He subsequently signed her for the lead in his 1944 film To Have and Have Not opposite Humphrey Bogart. The couple married in 1945. During Ms. Bacall’s career, she has starred in more than 35 motion pictures, and most recently completed The Walker opposite Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily Tomlin.
She first starred on Broadway in Goodbye Charlie and Cactus Flower, and in 1970, she made her triumphant musical comedy debut as Margo Channing in Applause! based on the film, All About Eve, for which she won her first Tony award. In 1981, she returned to Broadway to star in the musical Woman of the Year, again winning a Tony award followed by a national tour. In 1985, she starred in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Harold Pinter at London’s Haymarket Theatre. In 1999, she returned to Broadway for the revival of Noël Coward’s Waiting in the Wings.
She received the 1980 National Book Award for her autobiography, By Myself. Her second book, Now, also a best seller, followed in 1994. She was named one of the American Film Institute’s top 25 film legends of the century, and in 1997 received the Kennedy Center Honors in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to American culture. She received the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Academy Award on November 14, 2009.
Gladys Knight
At the age of seven, Gladys Knight won the contest finals on the popular television show Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. With her powerful singing voice, she and close family members formed a group called Gladys Knight and the Pips. In 1966 the group joined Motown Records and produced several hit singles including “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” in 1967 and “Neither One of Us Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye” in 1972.
In 1973, hoping for greater success, the group signed with Buddah Records and finally received the coveted Grammy Award for “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
After a successful 1988 tour, the Pips retired and Ms. Knight began her career as a solo artist. She and the Pips were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
For her 2004 “Heaven Help Us All” duet with Ray Charles and her album with the All Saints Choir, she won two Grammy Awards. Her most recent albums are “At Last” and “Before Me.”
Stephen Sondheim
September 16, 2010 Native New Yorker Stephen Sondheim who wrote the lyrics to “Send in the Clowns” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” is credited with bringing the Broadway musical into the modern age. It is virtually impossible to find a new musical of artistic ambition that has not been influenced by his breakthroughs in remaking the rules that once governed traditional Broadway musicals. Sondheim learned those rules as a teenager from a family friend, the legendary Oscar Hammerstein II, who mentored him.
In his twenties, Sondheim wrote the lyrics to West Side Story in 1957 and Gypsy in 1959. These two classic collaborations with playwright Arthur Laurents and director-choreographer Jerome Robbins are continuously revived on Broadway and throughout the world. Daring and unorthodox for their time, they are now universally seen as pinnacles of the post-war Broadway musical.
Sondheim’s first produced Broadway show in which he was both composer and lyricist was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962. Its original run was longer than West Side Story or Gypsy. In collaboration with directors and playwrights, he has created a remarkable succession of groundbreaking musicals including Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and more, including his latest show Bounce (2003) and a revised version called Road Show for the New York Shakespeare Festival in late 2008 which won an Obie award for music and lyrics.
Born in 1930, Sondheim is a graduate of Williams College where he studied musical composition. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, two Grammys, an Oscar, eight Tonys and a multitude of additional honors and awards throughout his illustrious career.
Jim Lehrer
Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1934, Jim Lehrer received an A.A. degree from Victoria College and a B.J. from the University of Missouri before joining the Marine Corps. His journalism career began in Dallas, first at the Dallas Morning News, then with KERA-TV. Ultimately he joined the National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT) as a correspondent with public television in Washington D.C. In 1973, Lehrer and Robert MacNeil teamed up to provide continuous live coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings, broadcast on PBS. Following that Emmy-winning collaboration, Lehrer served as solo anchor for PBS coverage of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry of Richard Nixon.
In 1983, Lehrer and MacNeil launched an ambitious undertaking, “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” The 1995-96 season marked the 20th anniversary of their journalistic odyssey, as well as MacNeil’s departure and Lehrer’s stewardship of the program in its current incarnation, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
The MacNeil/Lehrer Report has won more than 30 awards for journalistic excellence. Lehrer has received two Emmys, the 1999 National Humanities Medal, and is an inductee with MacNeil into the Television Hall of Fame. In the last six presidential elections, Lehrer has served as moderator for 11 of the nationally televised debates among the candidates. He is also the author of 19 novels, two memoirs and three plays. He and his wife of 39 years, Kate, have three daughters and six grandchildren.