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A big sports figure from the 1940s was Stan Musial. Stan Musial was born on, November 21, 1920, and died on January 19, 2013. Stan Musial was number 6 and was an outfielder and an infielder. Stan Musial was known as Stan the man, Stasiu, and The Donora Greyhound.

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Stanley Frank Musial (; born Stanislaw Franciszek Musial; November 21, 1920 - January 19, 2013), nicknamed Stan the Man, was an American baseball outfielder and first baseman. He spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1941 to 1944 and from 1946 to 1963. Widely considered to be one of the greatest and most consistent hitters in baseball history, Musial was a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. He batted .331 over the course of his career and set National League (NL) records for career hits (3,630), runs batted in (1,951), games played (3,026), at bats (10,972), runs scored (1,949) and doubles (725). His 475 career home runs then ranked second in NL history behind Mel Ott's total of 511. A seven-time batting champion, he was named the National League's (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times and was a member of three World Series championship teams. He also shares the major league record for the most All-Star Games played (24) with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

Musial was born in Donora, Pennsylvania, where he frequently played baseball informally or in organized settings, and eventually played on the baseball team at Donora High School. Signed to a professional contract by the St. Louis Cardinals as a pitcher in 1938, Musial was converted into an outfielder and made his major league debut in 1941. Noted for his unique batting stance, he quickly established himself as a consistent and productive hitter. In his first full season, 1942, the Cardinals won the World Series. The following year, he led the NL in six different offensive categories and earned his first MVP award. He was also named to the NL All-Star squad for the first time; he appeared in every All-Star game in every subsequent season he played.

Musial won his second World Series championship in 1944, then missed the entire 1945 season while serving in the Navy. After completing his military service during the war, Musial returned to baseball in 1946 and resumed his consistent hitting. That year he earned his second MVP award and third World Series title. His third MVP award came in 1948, when he finished one home run short of winning baseball's Triple Crown. After struggling offensively in 1959, Musial used a personal trainer to help maintain his productivity until he decided to retire in 1963. At the time of his retirement, he held or shared 17 major league records, 29 National League records, and nine All-Star Game records.

In addition to overseeing personal businesses, including a restaurant, both before and after his playing career, Musial served as the Cardinals' general manager in 1967, winning the pennant and World Series, then resigning that position. Musial was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999. In February 2011, President Barack Obama presented Musial with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award that can be bestowed on a person by the United States government.

Musial was born in Donora, Pennsylvania, the fifth of the six children (four girls and two boys) of Lukasz Musial (originally Musiał; ) and Mary Lancos. His mother was of Carpatho-Rusyn descent, and his father was a Polish immigrant who always referred to his son by the Polish nickname Stasiu, pronounced "Stashu". Young Stan frequently played baseball with his brother Ed and other friends during his childhood, and considered Lefty Grove his favorite ballplayer. Musial also learned about baseball from his neighbor Joe Barbao, a former minor league pitcher. When he enrolled in school, his name was formally changed to Stanley Frank Musial.

At age 15, Musial joined the Donora Zincs, a semi-professional team managed by Barbao. In his Zincs debut, he pitched six innings and struck out 13 batters, all of them adults. He played one season on the newly revived Donora High School baseball team, where one of his teammates was Buddy Griffey, father of MLB player Ken Griffey Sr. and grandfather to Ken Griffey Jr.

Baseball statistician Bill James described the younger Griffey, in comparison to Musial, as "the second-best left-handed hitting, left-handed throwing outfielder ever born in Donora, Pennsylvania, on November 21." His exploits as a rising player in Pennsylvania earned him the nickname "The Donora Greyhound".

Musial also played basketball and was offered an athletic scholarship in that sport by the University of Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Cardinals had scouted Musial as a pitcher and, in 1937, offered him a professional contract after a workout with their Class D Penn State League affiliate. Musial's father initially resisted the idea of his son pursuing a baseball career, but he reluctantly gave consent after lobbying by his son and his wife. Musial also credited his school librarian Helen Kloz for pointing out that baseball was his dream and advising him to pursue it professionally. In what was then a common practice, the Cardinals did not file the contract with the baseball commissioner's office until June 1938. This preserved Musial's amateur eligibility, and he was still able to participate in high school sports, leading Donora High School's basketball team to a playoff appearance. He then reported to the Cardinals' Class D affiliate in West Virginia, the Williamson Red Birds.

Musial's rookie year with Williamson in 1938 was a period of adjustment both on and off the field. He began gaining more in-depth knowledge about baseball strategy while posting a 6-6 win-loss record and a 4.66 earned run average (ERA), to go along with a .258 batting average. Off the field, he experienced feelings of homesickness while learning to live comfortably and independently on his $65-per-month salary (equivalent to $970 in 2019). Musial finished his high school education before returning to Williamson in spring 1939. That season his numbers improved to a 9-2 record, a 4.30 ERA, and a .352 batting average.

Musial spent the 1940 season with the Cardinals' other Class D team, the Daytona Beach Islanders, where he developed a lifelong friendship with manager Dickie Kerr. His pitching skills improved under the guidance of Kerr, who also recognized his hitting talent, playing him in the outfield between pitching starts. On May 25, 1940, Musial married fellow Donora resident, Lillian "Lil" Labash, in Daytona Beach, and the couple's first child followed in August. During late August, Musial suffered a shoulder injury while playing in the outfield, and later made an early exit as the starting pitcher in a 12-5 playoff game loss. For a while Musial considered leaving baseball entirely, complaining that he could not afford to support himself and his wife on the $16 a week pay. Kerr talked him out of it, and even took the Musials into his own home to relieve the financial burden. To repay the debt, Musial bought Kerr a $20,000 (equivalent to $180,000 in 2019) home in Houston in 1958. In 113 games in 1940 he hit .311, while compiling an 18-5 pitching record that included 176 strikeouts and 145 walks.

Musial was assigned to the Class AA Columbus Red Birds to begin 1941, though manager, Burt Shotton, and Musial himself quickly realized that the previous year's injury had considerably weakened his arm. He was reassigned to the Class C Springfield Cardinals as a full-time outfielder, and he later credited manager Ollie Vanek for displaying confidence in his hitting ability. During 87 games with Springfield, Musial hit a league-leading .379 before being promoted to the Rochester Red Wings of the International League. He was noted for his unique batting stance, a crouch in which his back was seemingly square to the pitcher. This stance was later described by pitcher Ted Lyons as "a kid peeking around the corner to see if the cops were coming". According to a 1950 description by author Tom Meany, "The bent knees and the crouch give him the appearance of a coiled spring, although most pitchers think of him as a coiled rattlesnake." Musial continued to play well in Rochester-in one three-game stretch, he had 11 hits. He was called up to the Cardinals for the last two weeks of the 1941 season.

Musial made his major league debut during the second game of a doubleheader at Sportsman's Park on September 17, 1941. The Cardinals were in the midst of a pennant race with the Brooklyn Dodgers; in 12 games, Musial collected 20 hits for a .426 batting average. Despite Musial's late contributions, the Cardinals finished two and one-half games behind the 100-game-winning Dodgers.

Cardinals manager Billy Southworth used Musial as a left fielder to begin 1942, sometimes lifting him for a pinch-hitter against left-handed pitching. Musial was hitting .315 by late June, as the Cardinals resumed battling the Dodgers for first place in the National League (NL). The Cardinals took sole possession of first place on September 13, and when Musial caught a fly ball to end the first game of a doubleheader on September 27 they clinched the pennant with their 105th win. He finished the season with a .315 batting average and 72 runs batted in (RBI) in 140 games. Musial received national publicity when he was named by St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports editor J. Roy Stockton as his choice for Rookie of the Year in a Saturday Evening Post article.

The Cardinals played the American League champion New York Yankees in the 1942 World Series. Representing the winning run at home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 at Sportsman's Park, Musial grounded out with the bases loaded to end the game . Musial's first hit of the Series was an RBI single that provided the margin of victory in Game 2, allowing the Cardinals to tie the Series. Over the next three games at Yankee Stadium, Musial had three more hits as the Cardinals defeated the Yankees in the Series four games to one. Musial batted .222 for the Series, with two runs scored.

Musial's 1943 season started with a brief contract holdout in spring training. He made the National League All-Star team for the first time as a starting left fielder and got a double in the All-Star Game on July 13. He finished the season leading the major leagues in hitting with a .357 batting average and led the NL in hits (220), doubles (48), triples (20), total bases (347), on-base percentage (.425), and slugging percentage (.562). This performance earned him his first NL Most Valuable Player Award, ahead of teammate and catcher Walker Cooper (.318 batting average). After romping to another NL pennant by 18 games, the Cardinals again faced the Yankees in the 1943 World Series. Musial had a single in the Cardinals' Game 1 loss, and scored a run in a Game 2 win. The Cardinals did not win another game in the Series, but the loser's bonus share paid to each Cardinals player ($4,321.99, equivalent to $63,900 in 2019) still amounted to nearly two-thirds of Musial's regular season salary.

United States involvement in World War II began to impinge on Musial's baseball career in 1944, as he underwent a physical examination in prelude to possible service in the armed forces. He ultimately remained with the Cardinals for the entire season, posting a .347 batting average with 197 hits. The Cardinals claimed the NL pennant for the third consecutive season, and faced St. Louis's other major league team, the Browns, in the 1944 World Series. The Browns took a 2-1 lead, while Musial hit .250 with no RBI. He broke out in Game 4 with a two-run home run, single, double, and a walk as part of a 5-1 Cardinals win. The Cardinals went on to defeat the Browns in six games, and Musial posted a .304 batting average for the Series.

Musial enlisted in the United States Navy on January 23, 1945, during World War II. He was initially assigned to non-combat duty at the United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge. In June 1945, he was assigned to Special Services in Hawaii, and was assigned to a ferry launch unit to bring back damaged ship crews entering Pearl Harbor where he was able to play baseball every afternoon in the naval base's eight-team league. After being granted emergency leave to see his ailing father in January 1946, he was briefly assigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard before his honorable discharge from the Navy as a Seaman Second Class in March 1946.

In 2007, Musial received the Navy Memorial's Lone Sailor Award, which honors Navy veterans who have excelled in civilian life.

-Cardinals traveling secretary Leo Ward relates Dodger fans' nickname for Musial to sportswriter Bob Broeg

Rejoining the Cardinals under new manager Eddie Dyer, Musial posted a .388 batting average by the middle of May 1946. He also became close friends with new teammate Red Schoendienst, who had joined the Cardinals during Musial's absence in 1945. During the season, Musial (who was under contract to the Cardinals for $13,500 in 1946) was offered a five-year, $125,000 contract, plus a $50,000 bonus, to join the Mexican League. He declined the offer, and after manager Dyer spoke to club owner Sam Breadon, Musial was given a $5,000 raise later in 1946.

It was also during the 1946 season that Musial acquired his nickname of Stan the Man. During the June 23 game against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Bob Broeg heard Dodger fans chanting whenever Musial came to bat, but could not understand the words. Later that day over dinner, Broeg asked Cardinals traveling secretary Leo Ward if he had understood what the Dodger fans had been chanting. Ward said, "Every time Stan came up they chanted, 'Here comes the man!'" "'That man,' you mean", Broeg said. "No, the man", replied Ward. Broeg mentioned this story in his Post-Dispatch column, and Musial was thereafter known as Stan "The Man".

In June 1946, Dyer began to use Musial as a first baseman. The Cardinals finished the season tied with the Dodgers, prompting a three-game playoff for the pennant. Musial's Game 1 triple and Game 2 double contributed to the Cardinals' two-games-to-none series victory. Facing the Boston Red Sox, the Cardinals won the 1946 World Series four games to three, as Musial had six hits and four RBI. He batted .365 for the season and won his second NL MVP Award, receiving 22 out of a possible 24 first-place votes, finishing ahead of Brooklyn's Dixie Walker (.319 batting average).

Musial began the 1947 season by hitting .146 in April. On May 9, team doctor Dr. Robert Hyland confirmed a previous diagnosis of appendicitis, while discovering that Musial was concurrently suffering from tonsillitis. He received treatment, but did not have either his appendix or tonsils surgically removed until after the season ended. Despite his health woes, he finished the year with a batting average of .312.

Fully recovered from his ailments, Musial recorded his 1,000th career hit on April 25, 1948. After a May 7 St. Louis Globe-Democrat article criticized baseball players for appearing in cigarette advertisements, he made a personal decision to never again appear in such ads. By June 24, his batting average was .408, prompting Brooklyn pitcher Preacher Roe to comically announce his new method for retiring Musial: "Walk him on four pitches and pick him off first." Given a mid-season pay raise by new Cardinals owner Robert E. Hannegan for his outstanding performance, Musial hit a home run in the All-Star Game. On September 22, he registered five hits in a game for the fourth time in the season, tying a mark set by Ty Cobb in 1922.

-Sportswriter Bob Broeg, on Musial's 1948 season

Musial finished the 1948 season leading the major leagues in batting average (.376), hits (230), doubles (46), triples (18), total bases (429), and slugging percentage (.702). Winning the NL batting title by a 43-point margin, with an on-base percentage lead of 27 points and a 138-point slugging percentage margin-the latter being the largest gap since Rogers Hornsby's 1925 season-Musial became the first player to win three NL MVP awards. If a home run he hit during a rained out game had been counted in his season totals, he would have won the Triple Crown by leading the NL in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in.

Anticipating life after his baseball career, Musial began the first of several business partnerships with Julius "Biggie" Garagnani in January 1949, opening "Stan Musial & Biggie's" restaurant. He approached the 1949 season with the intent to try to hit more home runs, stating he had hit 39 the previous season "without trying". His new focus on hitting for power backfired, as pitchers began using the outside part of the plate to induce him to ground out to the first or second baseman. Musial soon stopped focusing on hitting home runs and resumed his consistent offensive production by the end of May. He received his sixth consecutive All-Star player selection and finished the season leading the NL in hits (207) while playing in every game. However, the Cardinals, with 96 wins, finished one game behind the Dodgers.

In the late 1940s, when baseball was slowly becoming integrated, Musial-along with his roommate Red Schoendienst-would be lauded by newcomers such as Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe for their tolerance. "They never...had the need to sit in the dugout and call a black guy a bunch of names", Newcombe said, "because he was trying to change the game and make it what it should have been in the first place, a game for all people."

Musial began the 1950s by posting a .350 batting average before participating in the 1950 All-Star Game, where in fan balloting he was the NL's number two choice. He had the longest hitting streak of his career during the 1950 season-a 30-game stretch that ended on July 27. With the Cardinals falling 14 games out of first place by September, manager Dyer used him at first base and all three outfield positions. New Cardinals manager Marty Marion led the team to a third-place finish in 1951, while Musial led the National League with a .355 batting average, 355 total bases, 124 runs and 12 triples. He finished second in NL MVP voting for the third year in a row and was named The Sporting News Major League Player of the Year.

National media attention inadvertently turned to Musial a month before the 1952 season began, after Ty Cobb wrote an article regarding modern baseball players that was published in Life magazine. Cobb singled out Musial and Phil Rizzuto as the only players "who can be mentioned in the same breath with the oldtime greats". Cobb went on to refer to Musial as "a better player than Joe DiMaggio was in his prime." In response, Musial displayed his characteristic modesty, saying, "Cobb is baseball's greatest. I don't want to contradict him, but I can't say that I was ever as good as Joe DiMaggio."

The only major league pitching appearance of Musial's career occurred as a publicity stunt during the last Cardinals home game of the 1952 season. Manager Eddie Stanky had a reluctant Musial pitch to Frank Baumholtz, the runner-up to Musial for the best batting average in the NL that season. With Baumholtz batting right-handed for the first time in his career, Musial's first pitch was hit so hard it ricocheted off the shin of third baseman Solly Hemus and into the left field corner. The play was ruled an error, and Musial was embarrassed enough by his complicity in the gimmick to avoid pitching again for the remainder of his career.

The Cardinals franchise was up for sale in early 1953, and Musial and Schoendienst advised their friend and fellow duck-hunter Gussie Busch to consider buying the team. Busch used the resources of the Anheuser-Busch company to purchase the Cardinals, keeping Musial in St. Louis by averting the possibility of a move by the team to another city. The 1953 season marked Musial's 10th NL All-Star selection, and the 12th consecutive time he finished a major league season with a batting average above .300.

Musial accomplished another historical feat on May 2, 1954, in a doubleheader in St. Louis against the New York Giants: he hit three home runs in the first contest, then added two more in the second to become the first major leaguer to hit five home runs in a doubleheader. In addition to his five home runs, he also hit a single in the first game, setting a new record of 21 total bases for a doubleheader. The only player besides Musial to hit five home runs in a doubleheader is Nate Colbert, who achieved the feat in 1972. Oddly enough, as a young child, Colbert was in attendance as Musial set his record.

Musial made his 12th NL All-Star appearance in 1955 as a reserve player, when Cincinnati's Ted Kluszewski outpolled him by 150,000 votes to get on the starting lineup at first base. Musial entered the game as a pinch hitter in the fourth inning, and played left field as the game entered extra innings. Leading off the bottom of the 12th, he hit a home run to give the NL a 6-5 victory.

The 1956 season marked another milestone for Musial, when he broke Mel Ott's NL record for extra-base hits on August 12. Earlier that season, Cardinals general manager "Trader Frank" Lane began negotiations to trade him for Philadelphia pitcher Robin Roberts. When Cardinals owner Gussie Busch learned of the possible move, he made it clear that Musial was not available for any trade. Instead, Lane dealt Musial's close friend Schoendienst to the New York Giants; an upset Musial made no immediate comment to the press.

On June 11, 1957, Musial tied the NL record for consecutive games played with his 822nd, a streak that began on the last day of the 1951 season. Despite ballot stuffing by Cincinnati Reds fans, he was selected and played in the All-Star Game held at Sportsman's Park. When he overextended his swing while batting during a game on August 23, Musial fractured a bone in his left shoulder socket and tore muscles over his collarbone. He was unable to play again until September 8, ending his consecutive games-played streak at 895. He finished 1957 as Sports Illustrated's " Sportsman of the Year".

-Harry Caray's radio play-by-play call of Musial's 3,000th major league hit

Musial signed one of the first $100,000 contracts in NL history on January 29, 1958. (According to Baseball Almanac, Hank Greenberg was the first with Pittsburgh in 1947.) He quickly demonstrated a return on the investment by sharing with Willie Mays the inaugural (and for the only time in Musial's career) NL Player of the Month in May (no such award was given in April until 1969) batting .374, with 4 HR, and 16 RBI. Also that month, as he was approaching the 3,000-hit milestone in his major league career, he expressed a desire to record the hit in St. Louis. He ultimately reached the mark with a pinch-hit, sixth inning RBI double at Chicago's Wrigley Field on May 13. The eighth major league player to reach 3,000 hits, and the first to reach the milestone with an extra-base hit, Musial was greeted at St. Louis Union Station that evening by roughly 1,000 fans. Finishing the season in sixth place, the Cardinals embarked on an exhibition tour of Japan, winning 14 of 16 games against top players from the Central and Pacific Japanese Leagues.

Taking a new approach to preparation for the 1959 season, Musial was given permission to report late to spring training so that he might conserve his energy for the duration of the year. Musial, at 6 feet (180 cm) tall, had maintained a weight of around 175 pounds (79 kg) throughout his career. He reported to spring training approximately 10 pounds (4.5 kg) overweight and in substandard physical condition. He began the season with one hit in 15 at-bats. Despite his early offensive struggles, he single-handedly spoiled potential no-hitters on April 16 and 19. A game-winning home run on May 7 made him the first major league player ever with 400 home runs and 3,000 hits. As he continued to hit at a relatively low pace, his playing time was limited by Cardinals manager Solly Hemus at various points during the season. Seeking more revenue for the players' pension fund, Major League Baseball held two All-Star games in a season for the first time through 1962. Musial made his 16th All-Star appearance (16th season) and pinch-hit in both contests, flying out in the July 7 game and drawing a walk in the August 3 game. He finished the season with 115 regular game appearances, a .255 batting average, 37 runs, and a slugging percentage of .428.

During the 1959 season, John F. Kennedy approached Musial about supporting Kennedy's campaign for President, citing their close ages. Musial campaigned for Kennedy later that year and became a supporter of the Democratic Party.

On June 30, 1959, Musial was the batter in one of the oddest plays in baseball history. In a game between the Cardinals and Chicago Cubs, he was at the plate with a count of 3-1. Bob Anderson's next pitch was errant, evading catcher Sammy Taylor and rolling all the way to the backstop. Umpire Vic Delmore called ball four, even as Anderson and Taylor contended that Musial had foul tipped the ball. Because the ball was still in play and Delmore was embroiled in an argument with the catcher and pitcher, Musial kept running in attempt to make second base. Seeing that Musial was trying for second, Alvin Dark ran to the backstop to retrieve the ball. The ball wound up in the hands of field announcer Pat Pieper, but Dark ended up getting it back anyway. Absentmindedly, however, Delmore pulled out a new ball and gave it to Taylor. Anderson finally noticed that Musial was trying for second, took the new ball, and threw it to second baseman Tony Taylor. Anderson's throw flew over Taylor's head into the outfield. Dark, at the same time that Anderson threw the new ball, threw the original ball to shortstop Ernie Banks. Musial did not see Dark's throw and only noticed Anderson's ball fly over the second baseman's head, so he tried to go to third base. On his way there, he was tagged by Banks, and after a delay he was ruled out.

Based on his 1959 performance, Musial accepted a pay cut in 1960 from his previous $100,000 salary to $80,000. He was eager to prove that his mediocre performance was the result of improper physical conditioning, and he enlisted the help of Walter Eberhardt, Saint Louis University's director of physical education. In June 1960, newspaper articles began speculating that Musial would soon retire, yet he finished the season with a .275 batting average. He addressed the speculation in September, confirming that he would play again in 1961. His .288 batting average that season reaffirmed his decision. In 1962, Musial posted a .330 batting average, good for third in the batting race, with 19 homers and 82 RBI. As a pinch-hitter, he had 14 base hits in 19 at-bats (.737). Along the way, he established new NL career marks for hits and RBI. That same year on July 8, the 41-year-old Musial became the oldest player ever to hit three home runs in one game.

The Cardinals began 1963 by winning 10 of their first 15 games, as Musial posted a .237 batting average. He set a new major league record for career extra-base hits on May 8 and improved his batting average to .277 by the end of the month. Making his 20th All-Star appearance and 24th All-Star Game appearance on July 9, 1963, he pinch-hit in the fifth inning. Asked by general manager Bing Devine on July 26 what his plans were, Musial said that he would retire at season's end. He waited until the Cardinals team picnic on August 12 to publicly announce his decision, hopeful he could retire on a winning note.

Musial became a grandfather for the first time in the early hours of September 10; later that day, he hit a home run in his first at-bat. After sweeping a doubleheader on September 15, the Cardinals had won 19 of their last 20 games, and were one game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers then swept the Cardinals in a three-game series in St. Louis and clinched the NL pennant on September 25. Musial's last game, on September 29, 1963, was preceded by an hour-long retirement ceremony. Speakers at the event included baseball commissioner Ford Frick, Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray, and Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, who announced that Musial's uniform number "6" would be retired by the team. During the game, Musial recorded a single in the fourth inning, then hit a single to right field that scored teammate Curt Flood in the sixth. Cardinals manager Johnny Keane brought in Gary Kolb as a pinch-runner for Musial, bringing his major league career to an end. Just as he had recorded two base hits in his major league debut, Musial finished his last game with two hits, as well. Musial finished with the all-time National League hits record and second to only Ty Cobb on the all-time Major League list. Musial's last career hit was out of reach of Cincinnati Reds second baseman Pete Rose, who would go on to break Cobb's record to become baseball's all-time hit king.

At the time of his retirement, Musial held or shared 17 major league records, 29 NL records, and nine All-Star Game records. Among those records, he ranked as the major league career leader in extra-base hits (1,377) and total bases (6,134). He also held NL career marks in categories such as hits (3,630), games played (3,026), doubles (725), and RBI (1,951). He finished his career with 475 home runs despite never having led the NL in the category. Jerry Lansche speculates Musial would likely have become the second player, after Babe Ruth, with 2,000 RBI, and would have exceeded 500 career home runs had he not served in the military. His lowest full season RBI output before the war was 72 (in 1942) and as he needed only 49 RBI to reach 2,000 for his full career, he certainly would have exceeded 2,000 RBI by playing without injury in 1945. His home run production is a different story and it is highly unlikely he would have reached 500. He did not hit more than 13 home runs in any season before he entered the navy and did not hit as many as 25 (the number he would have needed to become a 500 career homer club member) until 1948, 3 years after returning to baseball from World War II. His career hit total was evenly split between 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road. Steven R. Bullock speculates that it is possible that without military service Musial might have continued playing to attempt to exceed Ty Cobb's career hit record of 4,191. Even if Musial had hit safely 207 times (the average of his hits in the 2 years before and the 2 years after his service in the navy) in 1945, he still would have been 354 hits short of tying Ty. His hit total in his last season at age 42 was only 86; even if he could have had 103 hits a season (the average of his last 5 seasons) he would have had to play to age 47 to attain the hits record.

He was the first major league player to appear in more than 1,000 games at two different positions, registering 1,896 games in the outfield and 1,016 at first base. Since Musial's retirement in 1963, Tony Gwynn has been the only player to finish his career with a higher lifetime batting average. Hank Aaron has been the only player to surpass his record of 6,134 total bases.

In Musial's 3,026 major league appearances, he was never ejected from a game. Speaking about his quiet reputation within the sport's history, sportscaster Bob Costas said, "He didn't hit a homer in his last at-bat; he hit a single. He didn't hit in 56 straight games. He married his high school sweetheart and stayed married to her. ... All Musial represents is more than two decades of sustained excellence and complete decency as a human being."

Musial was named a vice president of the St. Louis Cardinals in September 1963, and he remained in that position until after the 1966 season. From February 1964 to January 1967, he also served as President Lyndon B. Johnson's physical fitness adviser, a part-time position created to promote better fitness among American citizens. Before the 1967 season began, the Cardinals named Musial the team's general manager, and he oversaw the club's World Series championship that year. He won the allegiance of Cardinals players by making fair offers from the outset of player-contract negotiations and creating an in-stadium babysitting service so players' wives could attend games.

His longtime business partner, Biggie Garagnani, died in June 1967, prompting Musial to devote more time to managing his restaurant and other business interests. He came to realize that the detail-oriented desk job was not his forte. He consequently decided to step down as general manager, before even completing a full year on the job.

Musial-like Phil Linz-was noted for his harmonica playing, which included his rendition of " Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Throughout the 1990s, he frequently played the harmonica at public gatherings, such as the annual Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony and various charity events. He appeared on the television show in 1985, and in 1994 recorded 18 songs that were sold in tandem with a harmonica-playing instruction booklet.

Even though Musial left Donora after high school, he retained close ties to the town throughout the rest of his life. He maintained membership in local social clubs, and regularly sent a local doctor boxes of autographed baseballs, with the town's mayor using some for United Way fundraising. Musial also gave free meals at the restaurant he owned in St. Louis to any customers who presented valid ID proving they were Donora residents.

Musial met Lillian Susan Labash, the daughter of a local grocer, in Donora when both were 15, and married her in St. Paul's Catholic Church in Daytona Beach, Florida on May 25, 1940. They had four children: son Richard, and daughters Gerry, Janet, and Jeanie. Lillian Musial died at 91, on May 3, 2012; their marriage had lasted for almost 72 years.

During his playing years, Musial believed in racial equality and supported Jackie Robinson's right to play. After learning about the harmful effect of smoking in the 1950s, he refused to endorse tobacco products.

-Quote inscribed on the base of Musial's statue, attributed to former commissioner Ford Frick

On August 4, 1968, a statue of Musial was erected outside of Busch Memorial Stadium on the northeast grounds of the St. Louis stadium. The statue was moved from its original location to the west side of the new Busch Stadium for its first season in 2006, where it became a popular meeting place for generations of Cardinals fans. Musial's statue is inscribed with a quote attributed to former baseball commissioner Ford Frick: "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight." In 1968, Musial received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Musial was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1969, when he was named on 93.2% of the ballots. On June 14, 1973 he was the first inductee into the National Polish-American Hall of Fame, housed at St. Mary's College in Orchard Lake, Michigan. In 1989, he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Five years later, a baseball field was named after him in his hometown of Donora. He was ranked tenth on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players published in 1998. He was also one of the 30 players selected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, added by a special committee after he finished 11th in fan voting among outfielders. In 2000, he was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol. In January 2014, the Cardinals announced Musial among 22 former players and personnel to be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum for the inaugural class of 2014.

Nearly two decades after Musial retired, baseball statistician Bill James and the sabermetrics movement began providing new ways of comparing players across baseball history. In 2001, James ranked Musial the tenth-greatest baseball player in history, and the second-best left fielder of all time. According to Baseball-Reference.com, he ranks fifth all-time among hitters on the Black Ink Test, and third all-time on the Gray Ink Test-measures designed to compare players of different eras. He ranks first on Baseball-Reference's Hall of Fame Monitor Test, and is tied for second in the Hall of Fame Career Standards Test. Despite his statistical accomplishments, he is sometimes referred to as the most underrated or overlooked athlete in modern American sports history. For instance, in his analysis of baseball's under- and overrated players in 2007, sportswriter Jayson Stark said, "I can't think of any all-time great in any sport who gets left out of more who's-the-greatest conversations than Stan Musial."

Musial threw out the first pitch in the fifth game of the 2006 World Series and delivered the ceremonial first pitch ball to President Barack Obama at the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. A "Stan the Man" day was held in his honor by the Cardinals on May 18, 2008. In 2010, another one of the Cardinals' greatest sluggers, Albert Pujols, whose nickname was "El Hombre", said he didn't want to be called "The Man", even in Spanish, because "There is one man that gets that respect, and that is Stan Musial." Also in 2010, the Cardinals launched a campaign to build support for awarding Musial the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifetime of achievement and service. The campaign realized its goal, and on February 15, 2011, Musial was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama who called him "an icon untarnished, a beloved pillar of the community, a gentleman you'd want your kids to emulate."

On October 18, 2012, Musial made his final appearance at Busch Stadium, riding in a golf cart around the warning track before Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. Musial stopped at both dugouts and greeted San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy and Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. The Cardinals would go on to win Game 4 by a score of 8-3, but lost the pennant to the eventual World Series champion Giants.

On January 19, 2013, Musial died at age 92 of natural causes at his home in Ladue, Missouri, on the same day as fellow MLB Hall of Fame inductee Earl Weaver. Musial was surrounded by his family as he died peacefully. Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt, Jr. released the following statement:

We have lost the most beloved member of the Cardinals family. Stan Musial was the greatest player in Cardinals history and one of the best players in the history of baseball. The entire Cardinals organization extends its sincere condolences to Stan's family, including his children Richard, Gerry, Janet and Jean, as well as his eleven grandchildren and twelve great grandchildren. We join fans everywhere in mourning the loss of our dear friend and reflect on how fortunate we all are to have known 'Stan the Man'.

Upon hearing the news of his death, fans gathered and began an impromptu memorial at his statue outside Busch Stadium; the Cardinals issued a release saying the memorial would be left in place for some time. In a laudatory obituary, The New York Times quoted famed New York manager Leo Durocher: "There is only one way to pitch to Musial-under the plate."

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon commented: "Stan Musial was a great American hero who-with the utmost humility-inspired us all to aim high and dream big. The world is emptier today without him, but far better to have known him. The legacy of 'baseball's perfect warrior' will endure and inspire generations to come."

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay tweeted: "Sad as we are, we are fortunate to have had Stan in STL for so long, and are also glad that Stan and Lil are together again." He ordered flags at half-staff in the city.

"Major League Baseball has lost one of its true legends in Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer in every sense and a man who led a great American life", Commissioner Bud Selig said. "He was the heart and soul of the historic St. Louis Cardinals franchise for generations, and he served his country during World War II. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Stan's life embodies baseball's unparalleled history and why this game is the national pastime."

Thousands of fans braved cold temperatures on January 24 for a public visitation at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, where Musial lay in state, dressed in his trademark cardinal-red blazer and with a harmonica in his lapel pocket, flanked by a Navy honor guard. A private funeral Mass was held on Saturday, January 26, 2013, at the New Cathedral in St. Louis, televised locally by KTVI and KPLR as well as Fox Sports Midwest on pay-television. New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who in his first episcopal post served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, was the principal celebrant, and Knoxville's Bishop Richard F. Stika, Musial's former parish priest, was the homilist. Bob Costas gave the principal eulogy, calling him "the genuine hero who as the years and decades passed, and disillusionment came from other directions, never once let us down", and quoting fellow Cooperstown honoree Mickey Mantle, who once said that Musial "was a better player than me because he was a better man than me".

As a reflection of his popularity, Musial has had infrastructure named after him. In May 2011, the Pennsylvania State Senate changed the name of the bridge that carries the C. Vance Deicas Memorial Highway (S.R. 1077) over the Monongahela River from Donora-Monessen Bridge to Stan Musial Bridge after Musial who was a native of the area. In October 2013, the St. Louis Fire Department started operating a fireboat named after Musial. In July 2013, the new Interstate 70 bridge over the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri at St. Louis received the official name of " Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge".

Stan Musial visited Poland four times to promote baseball in the country of his ancestors. He was the donator of Polish baseball organizations, including European Little League Center in Kutno, Poland. The biggest ballpark in Poland, also located in Kutno, was named Stan Musial Stadium during a ceremony on August 5, 2000.

1. ^ "Stan Musial: An American Life", Amazon.com, review of George Vecsey's "Stan Musial: An American Life" (ESPN: May 10, 2011). Retrieved May 18, 2011

2. Baseball Almanac. Miscellaneous All-Star Records, All-Star Game Record Book, "Most games played", Aaron, Mays, Musial, 24; retrieved July 21, 2013. ^ [1] Archived July 15, 2013, at the Wayback Machine

3. Meany, Tom, "Baseball's Greatest Hitters: Stan Musial", ^ Baseball Digest, June 1950, p. 64.

4. Sportsdata. Midsummer Classics: Celebrating MLB's All-Star Game. "There were two games a year from 1959 to 1962" ... "all players who were named to the AL or NL roster were credited with one appearance per season". Retrieved April 10, 2015 [2] Archived March 30, 2015, at the Wayback Machine

5. ^ Hummel, Rick (January 19, 2013). "Stan Musial's career through the years". St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

6. Bullock, Steven R. (2004). Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II. University of Nebraska Press. p. 128. ISBN 0-8032-1337-9.

7. Timmermann, Tom (January 25, 2013). "Musial put Donora on the map, but town is fading away". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on November 30, 2017.

8. ^ Giglio, James N. (2001). Musial: from Stash to Stan the Man. Internet Archive. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

9. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.

10. ^ Cardinals Press Release (January 18, 2014). "Cardinals establish Hall of Fame & detail induction process". www.stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com. Archived from the original on January 26, 2014.

11. ^ Office of the Press Secretary (November 17, 2010). "President Obama Names Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient". whitehouse.gov - via National Archives.

12. ^ "Gallery: Stan Musial's surprise appearance at Busch". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. January 19, 2013.

13. ^ Rau, Emily (January 19, 2013). "Crowds gather at Musial's statue, pay tribute to 'The Man'". KMOV.com News 4. Archived from the original on March 15, 2013.

14. ^ "Tributes pour out for 'Stan The Man'". MLB Advanced Media. June 19, 2012. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013.

15. ^ McDonnell, Wayne G., Jr (January 26, 2013). "A Final Heartfelt Tribute for 'Stan the Man'". Forbes. Archived from the original on January 28, 2013.

16. ^ "Senate Passes Bill Naming Local Bridge for 'Stan the Man' Musial". Office of Tim Solobay. May 24, 2011. Archived from the original on November 3, 2013.

17. ^ Brett Blume (May 24, 2012). "New Rescue Boats To Patrol St. Louis Riverfront". CBS News. Archived from the original on June 3, 2012. St. Louis fire officials say they'll be more prepared than ever to make timely rescues on the Mississippi River once two new boats arrive.

Broeg, Bob (1981). Redbirds: A Century of Cardinals' Baseball. St. Louis: River City Publishers, Limited. ISBN 0-933150-02-4. OCLC 7976735.

Eisenbath, Mike (1999). The Cardinals Encyclopedia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-703-0. OCLC 40193767.

James, Bill (2001). The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-80697-5. OCLC 47045131.

Lansche, Jerry (1994). Stan the Man Musial: Born to Be a Ballplayer. Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87833-846-2. OCLC 29549047.

Musial, Stan; Bob Broeg (1964). Stan Musial: "The Man's" Own Story. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. OCLC 6981293.

Reidenbaugh, Lowell (1993). Baseball's Hall of Fame: Cooperstown, Where the Legends Live Forever. Avenel, New Jersey: Crescent Books. ISBN 0-517-66986-2.

Schoor, Gene (1990). The History of the World Series. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-07995-4. OCLC 21303516.

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Stanley Frank Musial (; born Stanislaw Franciszek Musial; November 21, 1920 - January 19, 2013), nicknamed Stan the Man, was an American baseball outfielder and first baseman. He spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1941 to 1944 and from 1946 to 1963.

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A popular Radio show from the 1940s in the United Kingdom was called "Call The Police". The show Call The Police was a drama radio show in the United States. Call The Police was broadcasted on NBC, and on CBS. The Radio Show Call The Police was a radio show.

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Genre

Crime drama

Running time

30 minutes

Country of origin

United States

Language(s)

English

Syndicates
NBC
CBS

Starring

Joseph Julian
George Petrie

Announcer

Hugh James
Jay Sims

Written by

Peter Barry
Frank Lane
Lou Vittes

Directed by

John Cole

Produced by

John Cole

Original release

June 3, 1947 - October 25, 1949

Sponsored by

Lever Brothers ( Rinso and Lifebuoy)
S. C. Johnson & Son (Johnson Wax)

Call the Police is an old-time radio crime drama in the United States. It was broadcast on NBC June 3, 1947 - September 28, 1948, and on CBS June 5, 1949 - September 25, 1949.

Bill Grant, the main character of Call the Police was a Marine who had served in World War II and whose father had been a policeman who was killed in the line of duty. The younger Grant went to the FBI Academy and then returned to his hometown to find that criminals had taken control. He took on the challenge of cleaning up crime in the city.

Vincent Terrace, in Radio Programs, 1924-1984: A Catalog of More Than 1800 Shows, summarized the program's format as follows, "The stories are hard-hitting re-creations of gruesome crimes, the step-by-step actions of the criminals and the police efforts to apprehend the culprits."

Media critic John Crosby described Call the Police as "[o]ne bad penny which turns up every summer." He added, "The plots move just short of the speed of sound and are wildly complicated, though, I'm forced to admit, fairly ingenious."

A review in the June 12, 1948, issue of the trade publication said that summer's first episode "was written with punch and verve and brought [to] life by excellent characterizations ..."

Grant was portrayed by Joseph Julian (1947) and George Petrie (1948-1949). Libby Tyler, a criminal psychologist and Grant's girlfriend, was played by Joan Tompkins (1947) and Amzie Strickland (1948-1949). Sergeant Maggio, Grant's assistant, was played by Robert Dryden. Actors frequently heard in supporting roles included Ed Jerome, Mandel Kramer, George Matthews, Bill Smith, and Alice Reinheart. The announcers were Jay Sims (1947) and Hugh James (1948-1949).

John Cole produced and directed the program. Writers were Peter Barry, Frank Lane, and Lou Vittes. Ben Ludlow provided the music.

Call the Police was a summer replacement program for the three years it was broadcast, filling the time slot of each year. The 1947 and 1949 broadcasts were sponsored by Lever Brothers, advertising Rinso laundry soap and Lifebuoy soap. The 1948 broadcasts were sponsored by S. C. Johnson & Son, advertising Johnson Wax.

1. ^ Cox, Jim (2002). Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Mcfarland. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-7864-4324-6.

2. Terrace, Vincent (1999). ^ Radio Programs, 1924-1984: A Catalog of More Than 1800 Shows. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-4513-4. P. 58.

3. ^ Crosby, John (June 17, 1948). "New Crime Program on Network". Oakland Tribune. California, Oakland. p. 28 - via Newspapers.com.

4. ^ Chase, Sam (June 12, 1948). "Call the Police" (PDF). Billboard. p. 12.

5. ^ Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Revised ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3. Call the Police, crime drama Robert Dryden.

6. ^ "The Call the Police Radio Program". The Digital Deli Too.

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Call the Police (radio program) - Wikipedia

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Genre Crime drama Running time 30 minutes Country of origin United States Language(s) English Syndicates NBC CBS Starring Joseph Julian George Petrie Announcer Hugh JamesJay Sims Written by Peter BarryFrank LaneLou Vittes Directed by John Cole Produced by John Cole Original release June 3, 1947 - October 25, 1949 Sponsored by Lever Brothers ( Rinso and Lifebuoy) S.

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A really known and famous actor from the 1940s was the one and only Laurence Oliver. Laurence Oliver was born on May 22, 1907, in Dorking, United Kingdom, and died on July 11, 1989, in Steyning, United Kingdom. Laurence Oliver died due to kidney failure. Laurence Oliver was an actor in the movies Henry V and Hamlet.

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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, (; 22 May 1907 - 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles.

His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier's father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare's Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus. In the 1950s Olivier was an independent actor-manager, but his stage career was in the doldrums until he joined the avant garde English Stage Company in 1957 to play the title role in The Entertainer, a part he later played on film. From 1963 to 1973 he was the founding director of Britain's National Theatre, running a resident company that fostered many future stars. His own parts there included the title role in (1965) and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1970).

Among Olivier's films are Wuthering Heights (1939), (1940), and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor/director: (1944), (1948), and Richard III (1955). His later films included (1960), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), (1972), Marathon Man (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). His television appearances included an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence (1960), Long Day's Journey into Night (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976), Brideshead Revisited (1981) and (1983).

Olivier's honours included a knighthood (1947), a life peerage (1970) and the Order of Merit (1981). For his on-screen work he received four Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The National Theatre's largest auditorium is named in his honour, and he is commemorated in the Laurence Olivier Awards, given annually by the Society of London Theatre. He was married three times, to the actresses Jill Esmond from 1930 to 1940, Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960, and Joan Plowright from 1961 until his death.

Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest of the three children of the Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier (1869-1939) and his wife Agnes Louise, née Crookenden (1871-1920). Their elder children were Sybille (1901-1989) and Gerard Dacres "Dickie" (1904-1958). His great-great-grandfather was of French Huguenot descent, and Olivier came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Gerard Olivier had begun a career as a schoolmaster, but in his thirties he discovered a strong religious vocation and was ordained as a priest of the Church of England. He practised extremely high church, ritualist Anglicanism and liked to be addressed as "Father Olivier". This made him unacceptable to most Anglican congregations, and the only church posts he was offered were temporary, usually deputising for regular incumbents in their absence. This meant a nomadic existence, and for Laurence's first few years, he never lived in one place long enough to make friends.

In 1912, when Olivier was five, his father secured a permanent appointment as assistant rector at St Saviour's, Pimlico. He held the post for six years, and a stable family life was at last possible. Olivier was devoted to his mother, but not to his father, whom he found a cold and remote parent. Nevertheless, he learned a great deal of the art of performing from him. As a young man Gerard Olivier had considered a stage career and was a dramatic and effective preacher. Olivier wrote that his father knew "when to drop the voice, when to bellow about the perils of hellfire, when to slip in a gag, when suddenly to wax sentimental ... The quick changes of mood and manner absorbed me, and I have never forgotten them."

In 1916, after attending a series of preparatory schools, Olivier passed the singing examination for admission to the choir school of All Saints, Margaret Street, in central London. His elder brother was already a pupil, and Olivier gradually settled in, though he felt himself to be something of an outsider. The church's style of worship was (and remains) Anglo-Catholic, with emphasis on ritual, vestments and incense. The theatricality of the services appealed to Olivier, and the vicar encouraged the students to develop a taste for secular as well as religious drama. In a school production of Julius Caesar in 1917, the ten-year-old Olivier's performance as Brutus impressed an audience that included Lady Tree, the young Sybil Thorndike, and Ellen Terry, who wrote in her diary, "The small boy who played Brutus is already a great actor." He later won praise in other schoolboy productions, as Maria in Twelfth Night (1918) and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (1922).

From All Saints, Olivier went on to St Edward's School, Oxford, from 1920 to 1924. He made little mark until his final year, when he played Puck in the school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; his performance was a tour de force that won him popularity among his fellow pupils. In January 1924, his brother left England to work in India as a rubber planter. Olivier missed him greatly and asked his father how soon he could follow. He recalled in his memoirs that his father replied, "Don't be such a fool, you're not going to India, you're going on the stage."

In 1924 Gerard Olivier, a habitually frugal man, told his son that he must gain not only admission to the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, but also a scholarship with a bursary to cover his tuition fees and living expenses. Olivier's sister had been a student there and was a favourite of Elsie Fogerty, the founder and principal of the school. Olivier later speculated that it was on the strength of this that Fogerty agreed to award him the bursary.

One of Olivier's contemporaries at the school was Peggy Ashcroft, who observed he was "rather uncouth in that his sleeves were too short and his hair stood on end but he was intensely lively and great fun". By his own admission, he was not a very conscientious student, but Fogerty liked him and later said that he and Ashcroft stood out among her many pupils. On leaving the school after a year, Olivier gained work with small touring companies before being taken on in 1925 by Sybil Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson as a bit-part player, understudy and assistant stage manager for their London company. He modelled his performing style on that of Gerald du Maurier, of whom he said, "He seemed to mutter on stage but had such perfect technique. When I started I was so busy doing a du Maurier that no one ever heard a word I said. The Shakespearean actors one saw were terrible hams like Frank Benson." Olivier's concern with speaking naturally and avoiding what he called "singing" Shakespeare's verse was the cause of much frustration in his early career, as critics regularly decried his delivery.

In 1926, on Thorndike's recommendation, Olivier joined the Birmingham Repertory Company. His biographer Michael Billington describes the Birmingham company as "Olivier's university", where in his second year he was given the chance to play a wide range of important roles, including Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer, the title role in Uncle Vanya, and Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well. Billington adds that the engagement led to "a lifelong friendship with his fellow actor Ralph Richardson that was to have a decisive effect on the British theatre."

While playing the juvenile lead in Bird in Hand at the Royalty Theatre in June 1928, Olivier began a relationship with Jill Esmond, the daughter of the actors Henry V. Esmond and Eva Moore. Olivier later recounted that he thought "she would most certainly do excellent well for a wife ... I wasn't likely to do any better at my age and with my undistinguished track-record, so I promptly fell in love with her."

In 1928 Olivier created the role of Stanhope in R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End, in which he scored a great success at its single Sunday night premiere. He was offered the part in the West End production the following year, but turned it down in favour of the more glamorous role of Beau Geste in a stage adaptation of P. C. Wren's 1929 novel of the same name. Journey's End became a long-running success; Beau Geste failed. The Manchester Guardian commented, "Mr. Laurence Olivier did his best as Beau, but he deserves and will get better parts. Mr. Olivier is going to make a big name for himself". For the rest of 1929 Olivier appeared in seven plays, all of which were short-lived. Billington ascribes this failure rate to poor choices by Olivier rather than mere bad luck.

In 1930, with his impending marriage in mind, Olivier earned some extra money with small roles in two films. In April he travelled to Berlin to film the English-language version of The Temporary Widow, a crime comedy with Lilian Harvey, and in May he spent four nights working on another comedy, Too Many Crooks. During work on the latter film, for which he was paid £60, he met Laurence Evans, who became his personal manager. Olivier did not enjoy working in film, which he dismissed as "this anaemic little medium which could not stand great acting", but financially it was much more rewarding than his theatre work.

Olivier and Esmond married on 25 July 1930 at All Saints, Margaret Street, although within weeks both realised they had erred. Olivier later recorded that the marriage was "a pretty crass mistake. I insisted on getting married from a pathetic mixture of religious and animal promptings. ... She had admitted to me that she was in love elsewhere and could never love me as completely as I would wish". Olivier later recounted that following the wedding he did not keep a diary for ten years and never followed religious practices again, although he considered those facts to be "mere coincidence", unconnected to the nuptials.

In 1930 Noël Coward cast Olivier as Victor Prynne in his new play Private Lives, which opened at the new Phoenix Theatre in London in September. Coward and Gertrude Lawrence played the lead roles, Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne. Victor is a secondary character, along with Sybil Chase; the author called them "extra puppets, lightly wooden ninepins, only to be repeatedly knocked down and stood up again". To make them credible spouses for Amanda and Elyot, Coward was determined that two outstandingly attractive performers should play the parts. Olivier played Victor in the West End and then on Broadway; Adrianne Allen was Sybil in London, but could not go to New York, where the part was taken by Esmond. In addition to giving the 23-year-old Olivier his first successful West End role, Coward became something of a mentor. In the late 1960s Olivier told Sheridan Morley:

He gave me a sense of balance, of right and wrong. He would make me read; I never used to read anything at all. I remember he said, "Right, my boy, Wuthering Heights, Of Human Bondage and The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett. That'll do, those are three of the best. Read them". I did. ... Noël also did a priceless thing, he taught me not to giggle on the stage. Once already I'd been fired for doing it, and I was very nearly sacked from the Birmingham Rep. for the same reason. Noël cured me; by trying to make me laugh outrageously, he taught me how not to give in to it. My great triumph came in New York when one night I managed to break Noël up on the stage without giggling myself."

In 1931 RKO Pictures offered Olivier a two-film contract at $1,000 a week; he discussed the possibility with Coward, who, irked, told Olivier "You've no artistic integrity, that's your trouble; this is how you cheapen yourself." He accepted and moved to Hollywood, despite some misgivings. His first film was the drama Friends and Lovers, in a supporting role, before RKO loaned him to Fox Studios for his first film lead, a British journalist in a Russia under martial law in The Yellow Ticket, alongside Elissa Landi and Lionel Barrymore. The cultural historian Jeffrey Richards describes Olivier's look as an attempt by Fox Studios to produce a likeness of Ronald Colman, and Colman's moustache, voice and manner are "perfectly reproduced". Olivier returned to RKO to complete his contract with the 1932 drama Westward Passage, which was a commercial failure. Olivier's initial foray into American films had not provided the breakthrough he hoped for; disillusioned with Hollywood, he returned to London, where he appeared in two British films, Perfect Understanding with Gloria Swanson and No Funny Business-in which Esmond also appeared. He was tempted back to Hollywood in 1933 to appear opposite Greta Garbo in Queen Christina, but was replaced after two weeks of filming because of a lack of chemistry between the two.

Olivier's stage roles in 1934 included Bothwell in Gordon Daviot's Queen of Scots, which was only a moderate success for him and for the play, but led to an important engagement for the same management ( Bronson Albery) shortly afterwards. In the interim he had a great success playing a thinly disguised version of the American actor John Barrymore in George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's Theatre Royal. His success was vitiated by his breaking an ankle two months into the run, in one of the athletic, acrobatic stunts with which he liked to enliven his performances.

Herbert Farjeon on the rival Romeos

In 1935, under Albery's management, John Gielgud staged Romeo and Juliet at the New Theatre, co-starring with Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans and Olivier. Gielgud had seen Olivier in Queen of Scots, spotted his potential, and now gave him a major step up in his career. For the first weeks of the run Gielgud played Mercutio and Olivier played Romeo, after which they exchanged roles. The production broke all box-office records for the play, running for 189 performances. Olivier was enraged at the notices after the first night, which praised the virility of his performance but fiercely criticised his speaking of Shakespeare's verse, contrasting it with his co-star's mastery of the poetry. The friendship between the two men was prickly, on Olivier's side, for the rest of his life.

In May 1936 Olivier and Richardson jointly directed and starred in a new piece by J. B. Priestley, Bees on the Boatdeck. Both actors won excellent notices, but the play, an allegory of Britain's decay, did not attract the public and closed after four weeks. Later in the same year Olivier accepted an invitation to join the Old Vic company. The theatre, in an unfashionable location south of the Thames, had offered inexpensive tickets for opera and drama under its proprietor Lilian Baylis since 1912. Her drama company specialised in the plays of Shakespeare, and many leading actors had taken very large cuts in their pay to develop their Shakespearean techniques there. Gielgud had been in the company from 1929 to 1931, and Richardson from 1930 to 1932. Among the actors whom Olivier joined in late 1936 were Edith Evans, Ruth Gordon, Alec Guinness and Michael Redgrave. In January 1937 he took the title role in an uncut version of , in which once again his delivery of the verse was unfavourably compared with that of Gielgud, who had played the role on the same stage seven years previously to enormous acclaim. The Observer's Ivor Brown praised Olivier's "magnetism and muscularity" but missed "the kind of pathos so richly established by Mr Gielgud". The reviewer in The Times found the performance "full of vitality", but at times "too light ... the character slips from Mr Olivier's grasp".

After Hamlet, the company presented Twelfth Night in what the director, Tyrone Guthrie, summed up as "a baddish, immature production of mine, with Olivier outrageously amusing as Sir Toby and a very young Alec Guinness outrageous and more amusing as Sir Andrew". was the next play, presented in May to mark the Coronation of George VI. A pacifist, as he then was, Olivier was as reluctant to play the warrior king as Guthrie was to direct the piece, but the production was a success, and Baylis had to extend the run from four to eight weeks.

Following Olivier's success in Shakespearean stage productions, he made his first foray into Shakespeare on film in 1936, as Orlando in As You Like It, directed by Paul Czinner, "a charming if lightweight production", according to Michael Brooke of the British Film Institute's (BFI's) Screenonline. The following year Olivier appeared alongside Vivien Leigh in the historical drama Fire Over England. He had first met Leigh briefly at the Savoy Grill and then again when she visited him during the run of Romeo and Juliet, probably early in 1936, and the two had begun an affair sometime that year. Of the relationship, Olivier later said that "I couldn't help myself with Vivien. No man could. I hated myself for cheating on Jill, but then I had cheated before, but this was something different. This wasn't just out of lust. This was love that I really didn't ask for but was drawn into." While his relationship with Leigh continued he conducted an affair with the actress Ann Todd, and possibly had a brief affair with the actor Henry Ainley, according to the biographer Michael Munn.

In June 1937 the Old Vic company took up an invitation to perform Hamlet in the courtyard of the castle at Elsinore, where Shakespeare located the play. Olivier secured the casting of Leigh to replace Cherry Cottrell as Ophelia. Because of torrential rain the performance had to be moved from the castle courtyard to the ballroom of a local hotel, but the tradition of playing Hamlet at Elsinore was established, and Olivier was followed by, among others, Gielgud (1939), Redgrave (1950), Richard Burton (1954), Christopher Plummer (1964), Derek Jacobi (1979), Kenneth Branagh (1988) and Jude Law (2009). Back in London, the company staged , with Olivier in the title role. The stylised production by Michel Saint-Denis was not well liked, but Olivier had some good notices among the bad. On returning from Denmark, Olivier and Leigh told their respective spouses about the affair and that their marriages were over; Esmond moved out of the marital house and in with her mother. After Olivier and Leigh made a tour of Europe in mid-1937 they returned to separate film projects-A Yank at Oxford for her and The Divorce of Lady X for him-and moved into a property together in Iver, Buckinghamshire.

Olivier returned to the Old Vic for a second season in 1938. For he played Iago, with Richardson in the title role. Guthrie wanted to experiment with the theory that Iago's villainy is driven by a suppressed love for Othello. Olivier was willing to co-operate, but Richardson was not; audiences and most critics failed to spot the supposed motivation of Olivier's Iago, and Richardson's Othello seemed underpowered. After that comparative failure, the company had a success with Coriolanus starring Olivier in the title role. The notices were laudatory, mentioning him alongside great predecessors such as Edmund Kean, William Macready and Henry Irving. The actor Robert Speaight described it as "Olivier's first incontestably great performance". This was Olivier's last appearance on a London stage for six years.

In 1938 Olivier joined Richardson to film the spy thriller , released the following year. Frank Nugent, the critic for The New York Times, thought Olivier was "not quite so good" as Richardson, but was "quite acceptable". In late 1938, lured by a salary of $50,000, the actor travelled to Hollywood to take the part of Heathcliff in the 1939 film Wuthering Heights, alongside Merle Oberon and David Niven. In less than a month Leigh had joined him, explaining that her trip was "partially because Larry's there and partially because I intend to get the part of Scarlett O'Hara"-the role in Gone with the Wind in which she was eventually cast. Olivier did not enjoy making Wuthering Heights, and his approach to film acting, combined with a dislike for Oberon, led to tensions on set. The director, William Wyler, was a hard taskmaster, and Olivier learned to remove what Billington described as "the carapace of theatricality" to which he was prone, replacing it with "a palpable reality". The resulting film was a commercial and critical success that earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and created his screen reputation. Caroline Lejeune, writing for The Observer, considered that "Olivier's dark, moody face, abrupt style, and a certain fine arrogance towards the world in his playing are just right" in the role, while the reviewer for The Times wrote that Olivier "is a good embodiment of Heathcliff ... impressive enough on a more human plane, speaking his lines with real distinction, and always both romantic and alive."

After returning to London briefly in mid-1939, the couple returned to America, Leigh to film the final takes for Gone with the Wind, and Olivier to prepare for filming of Alfred Hitchcock's -although the couple had hoped to appear in it together. Instead, Joan Fontaine was selected for the role of Mrs de Winter, as the producer David O. Selznick thought that not only was she more suitable for the role, but that it was best to keep Olivier and Leigh apart until their divorces came through. Olivier followed Rebecca with Pride and Prejudice, in the role of Mr. Darcy. To his disappointment Elizabeth Bennet was played by Greer Garson rather than Leigh. He received good reviews for both films and showed a more confident screen presence than he had in his early work. In January 1940 Olivier and Esmond were granted their divorce. In February, following another request from Leigh, her husband also applied for their marriage to be terminated.

On stage, Olivier and Leigh starred in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. It was an extravagant production, but a commercial failure. In The New York Times Brooks Atkinson praised the scenery but not the acting: "Although Miss Leigh and Mr Olivier are handsome young people they hardly act their parts at all." The couple had invested almost all their savings in the project, and its failure was a grave financial blow. They were married in August 1940, at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara.

The war in Europe had been under way for a year and was going badly for Britain. After his wedding Olivier wanted to help the war effort. He telephoned Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information under Winston Churchill, hoping to get a position in Cooper's department. Cooper advised him to remain where he was and speak to the film director Alexander Korda, who was based in the US at Churchill's behest, with connections to British Intelligence. Korda-with Churchill's support and involvement-directed That Hamilton Woman, with Olivier as Horatio Nelson and Leigh in the title role. Korda saw that the relationship between the couple was strained. Olivier was tiring of Leigh's suffocating adulation, and she was drinking to excess. The film, in which the threat of Napoleon paralleled that of Hitler, was seen by critics as "bad history but good British propaganda", according to the BFI.

Olivier's life was under threat from the Nazis and pro-German sympathisers. The studio owners were concerned enough that Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille both provided support and security to ensure his safety. On the completion of filming, Olivier and Leigh returned to Britain. He had spent the previous year learning to fly and had completed nearly 250 hours by the time he left America. He intended to join the Royal Air Force but instead made another propaganda film, 49th Parallel, narrated short pieces for the Ministry of Information, and joined the Fleet Air Arm because Richardson was already in the service. Richardson had gained a reputation for crashing aircraft, which Olivier rapidly eclipsed. Olivier and Leigh settled in a cottage just outside RNAS Worthy Down, where he was stationed with a training squadron; Noël Coward visited the couple and thought Olivier looked unhappy. Olivier spent much of his time taking part in broadcasts and making speeches to build morale, and in 1942 he was invited to make another propaganda film, The Demi-Paradise, in which he played a Soviet engineer who helps improve British-Russian relationships.

In 1943, at the behest of the Ministry of Information, Olivier began working on . Originally he had no intention of taking the directorial duties, but ended up directing and producing, in addition to taking the title role. He was assisted by an Italian internee, Filippo Del Giudice, who had been released to produce propaganda for the Allied cause. The decision was made to film the battle scenes in neutral Ireland, where it was easier to find the 650 extras. John Betjeman, the press attaché at the British embassy in Dublin, played a key liaison role with the Irish government in making suitable arrangements. The film was released in November 1944. Brooke, writing for the BFI, considers that it "came too late in the Second World War to be a call to arms as such, but formed a powerful reminder of what Britain was defending." The music for the film was written by William Walton, "a score that ranks with the best in film music", according to the music critic Michael Kennedy. Walton also provided the music for Olivier's next two Shakespearean adaptations, (1948) and Richard III (1955). Henry V was warmly received by critics. The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian wrote that the film combined "new art hand-in-hand with old genius, and both superbly of one mind", in a film that worked "triumphantly". The critic for The Times considered that Olivier "plays Henry on a high, heroic note and never is there danger of a crack", in a film described as "a triumph of film craft". There were Oscar nominations for the film, including Best Picture and Best Actor, but it won none and Olivier was instead presented with a "Special Award". He was unimpressed, and later commented that "this was my first absolute fob-off, and I regarded it as such."

Throughout the war Tyrone Guthrie had striven to keep the Old Vic company going, even after German bombing in 1942 left the theatre a near-ruin. A small troupe toured the provinces, with Sybil Thorndike at its head. By 1944, with the tide of the war turning, Guthrie felt it time to re-establish the company in a London base and invited Richardson to head it. Richardson made it a condition of accepting that he should share the acting and management in a triumvirate. Initially he proposed Gielgud and Olivier as his colleagues, but the former declined, saying, "It would be a disaster, you would have to spend your whole time as referee between Larry and me." It was finally agreed that the third member would be the stage director John Burrell. The Old Vic governors approached the Royal Navy to secure the release of Richardson and Olivier; the Sea Lords consented, with, as Olivier put it, "a speediness and lack of reluctance which was positively hurtful."

The triumvirate secured the New Theatre for their first season and recruited a company. Thorndike was joined by, among others, Harcourt Williams, Joyce Redman and Margaret Leighton. It was agreed to open with a repertory of four plays: , Arms and the Man, Richard III and Uncle Vanya. Olivier's roles were the Button Moulder, Sergius, Richard and Astrov; Richardson played Peer, Bluntschli, Richmond and Vanya. The first three productions met with acclaim from reviewers and audiences; Uncle Vanya had a mixed reception, although The Times thought Olivier's Astrov "a most distinguished portrait" and Richardson's Vanya "the perfect compound of absurdity and pathos". In Richard III, according to Billington, Olivier's triumph was absolute: "so much so that it became his most frequently imitated performance and one whose supremacy went unchallenged until Antony Sher played the role forty years later". In 1945 the company toured Germany, where they were seen by many thousands of Allied servicemen; they also appeared at the Comédie-Française theatre in Paris, the first foreign company to be given that honour. The critic Harold Hobson wrote that Richardson and Olivier quickly "made the Old Vic the most famous theatre in the Anglo-Saxon world."

The second season, in 1945, featured two double bills. The first consisted of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Olivier played the warrior Hotspur in the first and the doddering Justice Shallow in the second. He received good notices, but by general consent the production belonged to Richardson as Falstaff. In the second double bill it was Olivier who dominated, in the title roles of Oedipus Rex and . In the two one-act plays his switch from searing tragedy and horror in the first half to farcical comedy in the second impressed most critics and audience members, though a minority felt that the transformation from Sophocles's bloodily blinded hero to Sheridan's vain and ludicrous Mr Puff "smacked of a quick-change turn in a music hall". After the London season the company played both the double bills and Uncle Vanya in a six-week run on Broadway.

The third, and final, London season under the triumvirate was in 1946-47. Olivier played King Lear, and Richardson took the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac. Olivier would have preferred the roles to be reversed, but Richardson did not wish to attempt Lear. Olivier's Lear received good but not outstanding reviews. In his scenes of decline and madness towards the end of the play some critics found him less moving than his finest predecessors in the role. The influential critic James Agate suggested that Olivier used his dazzling stage technique to disguise a lack of feeling, a charge that the actor strongly rejected, but which was often made throughout his later career. During the run of Cyrano, Richardson was knighted, to Olivier's undisguised envy. The younger man received the accolade six months later, by which time the days of the triumvirate were numbered. The high profile of the two star actors did not endear them to the new chairman of the Old Vic governors, Lord Esher. He had ambitions to be the first head of the National Theatre and had no intention of letting actors run it. He was encouraged by Guthrie, who, having instigated the appointment of Richardson and Olivier, had come to resent their knighthoods and international fame.

In January 1947 Olivier began working on his second film as a director, (1948), in which he also took the lead role. The original play was heavily cut to focus on the relationships, rather than the political intrigue. The film became a critical and commercial success in Britain and abroad, although Lejeune, in The Observer, considered it "less effective than [Olivier's] stage work. ... He speaks the lines nobly, and with the caress of one who loves them, but he nullifies his own thesis by never, for a moment, leaving the impression of a man who cannot make up his own mind; here, you feel rather, is an actor-producer-director who, in every circumstance, knows exactly what he wants, and gets it". Campbell Dixon, the critic for The Daily Telegraph thought the film "brilliant ... one of the masterpieces of the stage has been made into one of the greatest of films." Hamlet became the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Olivier won the Award for Best Actor.

In 1948 Olivier led the Old Vic company on a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand. He played Richard III, Sir Peter Teazle in Sheridan's The School for Scandal and Antrobus in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, appearing alongside Leigh in the latter two plays. While Olivier was on the Australian tour and Richardson was in Hollywood, Esher terminated the contracts of the three directors, who were said to have "resigned". Melvyn Bragg in a 1984 study of Olivier, and John Miller in the authorised biography of Richardson, both comment that Esher's action put back the establishment of a National Theatre for at least a decade. Looking back in 1971, Bernard Levin wrote that the Old Vic company of 1944 to 1948 "was probably the most illustrious that has ever been assembled in this country". The Times said that the triumvirate's years were the greatest in the Old Vic's history; as The Guardian put it, "the governors summarily sacked them in the interests of a more mediocre company spirit".

By the end of the Australian tour, both Leigh and Olivier were exhausted and ill, and he told a journalist, "You may not know it, but you are talking to a couple of walking corpses." Later he would comment that he "lost Vivien" in Australia, a reference to Leigh's affair with the Australian actor Peter Finch, whom the couple met during the tour. Shortly afterwards Finch moved to London, where Olivier auditioned him and put him under a long-term contract with Laurence Olivier Productions. Finch and Leigh's affair continued on and off for several years.

Although it was common knowledge that the Old Vic triumvirate had been dismissed, they refused to be drawn on the matter in public, and Olivier even arranged to play a final London season with the company in 1949, as Richard III, Sir Peter Teazle, and Chorus in his own production of Anouilh's with Leigh in the title role. After that, he was free to embark on a new career as an actor-manager. In partnership with Binkie Beaumont he staged the English premiere of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, with Leigh in the central role of Blanche DuBois. The play was condemned by most critics, but the production was a considerable commercial success, and led to Leigh's casting as Blanche in the 1951 film version. Gielgud, who was a devoted friend of Leigh's, doubted whether Olivier was wise to let her play the demanding role of the mentally unstable heroine: "[Blanche] was so very like her, in a way. It must have been a most dreadful strain to do it night after night. She would be shaking and white and quite distraught at the end of it."

The production company set up by Olivier took a lease on the St James's Theatre. In January 1950 he produced, directed and starred in Christopher Fry's verse play Venus Observed. The production was popular, despite poor reviews, but the expensive production did little to help the finances of Laurence Olivier Productions. After a series of box-office failures, the company balanced its books in 1951 with productions of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which the Oliviers played in London and then took to Broadway. Olivier was thought by some critics to be under par in both his roles, and some suspected him of playing deliberately below his usual strength so that Leigh might appear his equal. Olivier dismissed the suggestion, regarding it as an insult to his integrity as an actor. In the view of the critic and biographer W. A. Darlington, he was simply miscast both as Caesar and Antony, finding the former boring and the latter weak. Darlington comments, "Olivier, in his middle forties when he should have been displaying his powers at their very peak, seemed to have lost interest in his own acting". Over the next four years Olivier spent much of his time working as a producer, presenting plays rather than directing or acting in them. His presentations at the St James's included seasons by Ruggero Ruggeri's company giving two Pirandello plays in Italian, followed by a visit from the Comédie-Française playing works by Molière, Racine, Marivaux and Musset in French. Darlington considers a 1951 production of Othello starring Orson Welles as the pick of Olivier's productions at the theatre.

While Leigh made Streetcar in 1951, Olivier joined her in Hollywood to film , based on the controversial novel Sister Carrie; although the film was plagued by troubles, Olivier received warm reviews and a BAFTA nomination. Olivier began to notice a change in Leigh's behaviour, and he later recounted that "I would find Vivien sitting on the corner of the bed, wringing her hands and sobbing, in a state of grave distress; I would naturally try desperately to give her some comfort, but for some time she would be inconsolable." After a holiday with Coward in Jamaica, she seemed to have recovered, but Olivier later recorded, "I am sure that ... [the doctors] must have taken some pains to tell me what was wrong with my wife; that her disease was called manic depression and what that meant-a possibly permanent cyclical to-and-fro between the depths of depression and wild, uncontrollable mania. He also recounted the years of problems he had experienced because of Leigh's illness, writing, "throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness-an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble."

In January 1953 Leigh travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to film Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. Shortly after filming started she suffered a breakdown, and returned to Britain where, between periods of incoherence, she told Olivier that she was in love with Finch, and had been having an affair with him; she gradually recovered over a period of several months. As a result of the breakdown, many of the Oliviers' friends learned of her problems. Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad", and in his diary, Coward expressed the view that "things had been bad and getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts."

For the Coronation season of 1953, Olivier and Leigh starred in the West End in Terence Rattigan's Ruritanian comedy, The Sleeping Prince. It ran for eight months but was widely regarded as a minor contribution to the season, in which other productions included Gielgud in Venice Preserv'd, Coward in The Apple Cart and Ashcroft and Redgrave in Antony and Cleopatra.

Olivier directed his third Shakespeare film in September 1954, Richard III (1955), which he co-produced with Korda. The presence of four theatrical knights in the one film-Olivier was joined by Cedric Hardwicke, Gielgud and Richardson-led an American reviewer to dub it "An-All-Sir-Cast". The critic for The Manchester Guardian described the film as a "bold and successful achievement", but it was not a box-office success, which accounted for Olivier's subsequent failure to raise the funds for a planned film of Macbeth. He won a BAFTA award for the role and was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award, which Yul Brynner won.

In 1955 Olivier and Leigh were invited to play leading roles in three plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford. They began with Twelfth Night, directed by Gielgud, with Olivier as Malvolio and Leigh as Viola. Rehearsals were difficult, with Olivier determined to play his conception of the role despite the director's view that it was vulgar. Gielgud later commented:

Somehow the production did not work. Olivier was set on playing Malvolio in his own particular rather extravagant way. He was extremely moving at the end, but he played the earlier scenes like a Jewish hairdresser, with a lisp and an extraordinary accent, and he insisted on falling backwards off a bench in the garden scene, though I begged him not to do it.... But then Malvolio is a very difficult part.

The next production was Macbeth. Reviewers were lukewarm about the direction by Glen Byam Shaw and the designs by Roger Furse, but Olivier's performance in the title role attracted superlatives. To J. C. Trewin, Olivier's was "the finest Macbeth of our day"; to Darlington it was "the best Macbeth of our time". Leigh's Lady Macbeth received mixed but generally polite notices, although to the end of his life Olivier believed it to have been the best Lady Macbeth he ever saw.

In their third production of the 1955 Stratford season, Olivier played the title role in Titus Andronicus, with Leigh as Lavinia. Her notices in the part were damning, but the production by Peter Brook and Olivier's performance as Titus received the greatest ovation in Stratford history from the first-night audience, and the critics hailed the production as a landmark in post-war British theatre. Olivier and Brook revived the production for a continental tour in June 1957; its final performance, which closed the old Stoll Theatre in London, was the last time Leigh and Olivier acted together.

Leigh became pregnant in 1956 and withdrew from the production of Coward's comedy South Sea Bubble. The day after her final performance in the play she miscarried and entered a period of depression that lasted for months. The same year Olivier decided to direct and produce a film version of The Sleeping Prince, retitled The Prince and the Showgirl. Instead of appearing with Leigh, he cast Marilyn Monroe as the showgirl. Although the filming was challenging because of Monroe's behaviour, the film was appreciated by the critics.

During the production of The Prince and the Showgirl, Olivier, Monroe and her husband, the American playwright Arthur Miller, went to see the English Stage Company's production of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court. Olivier had seen the play earlier in the run and disliked it, but Miller was convinced that Osborne had talent, and Olivier reconsidered. He was ready for a change of direction; in 1981 he wrote:

I had reached a stage in my life that I was getting profoundly sick of-not just tired-sick. Consequently the public were, likely enough, beginning to agree with me. My rhythm of work had become a bit deadly: a classical or semi-classical film; a play or two at Stratford, or a nine-month run in the West End, etc etc. I was going mad, desperately searching for something suddenly fresh and thrillingly exciting. What I felt to be my image was boring me to death.

Osborne was already at work on a new play, The Entertainer, an allegory of Britain's post-colonial decline, centred on a seedy variety comedian, Archie Rice. Having read the first act-all that was completed by then-Olivier asked to be cast in the part. He had for years maintained that he might easily have been a third-rate comedian called "Larry Oliver", and would sometimes play the character at parties. Behind Archie's brazen façade there is a deep desolation, and Olivier caught both aspects, switching, in the words of the biographer Anthony Holden, "from a gleefully tacky comic routine to moments of the most wrenching pathos". Tony Richardson's production for the English Stage Company transferred from the Royal Court to the Palace Theatre in September 1957; after that it toured and returned to the Palace. The role of Archie's daughter Jean was taken by three actresses during the various runs. The second of them was Joan Plowright, with whom Olivier began a relationship that endured for the rest of his life. Olivier said that playing Archie "made me feel like a modern actor again". In finding an avant-garde play that suited him, he was, as Osborne remarked, far ahead of Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, who did not successfully follow his lead for more than a decade. Their first substantial successes in works by any of Osborne's generation were Alan Bennett's Forty Years On (Gielgud in 1968) and David Storey's (Richardson and Gielgud in 1970).

Olivier received another BAFTA nomination for his supporting role in 1959's The Devil's Disciple. The same year, after a gap of two decades, Olivier returned to the role of Coriolanus, in a Stratford production directed by the 28-year-old Peter Hall. Olivier's performance received strong praise from the critics for its fierce athleticism combined with an emotional vulnerability. In 1960 he made his second appearance for the Royal Court company in Ionesco's absurdist play Rhinoceros. The production was chiefly remarkable for the star's quarrels with the director, Orson Welles, who according to the biographer Francis Beckett suffered the "appalling treatment" that Olivier had inflicted on Gielgud at Stratford five years earlier. Olivier again ignored his director and undermined his authority. In 1960 and 1961 Olivier appeared in Anouilh's on Broadway, first in the title role, with Anthony Quinn as the king, and later exchanging roles with his co-star.

Two films featuring Olivier were released in 1960. The first-filmed in 1959-was , in which he portrayed the Roman general, Marcus Licinius Crassus. His second was The Entertainer, shot while he was appearing in Coriolanus; the film was well received by the critics, but not as warmly as the stage show had been. The reviewer for The Guardian thought the performances were good, and wrote that Olivier "on the screen as on the stage, achieves the tour de force of bringing Archie Rice ... to life". For his performance, Olivier was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also made an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence in 1960, winning an Emmy Award.

The Oliviers' marriage was disintegrating during the late 1950s. While directing Charlton Heston in the 1960 play The Tumbler, Olivier divulged that "Vivien is several thousand miles away, trembling on the edge of a cliff, even when she's sitting quietly in her own drawing room", at a time when she was threatening suicide. In May 1960 divorce proceedings started; Leigh reported the fact to the press and informed reporters of Olivier's relationship with Plowright. The decree nisi was issued in December 1960, which enabled him to marry Plowright in March 1961. A son, Richard, was born in December 1961; two daughters followed, Tamsin Agnes Margaret-born in January 1963-and actress Julie-Kate, born in July 1966.

In 1961 Olivier accepted the directorship of a new theatrical venture, the Chichester Festival. For the opening season in 1962 he directed two neglected 17th-century English plays, John Fletcher's 1638 comedy The Chances and John Ford's 1633 tragedy The Broken Heart, followed by Uncle Vanya. The company he recruited was forty strong and included Thorndike, Casson, Redgrave, Athene Seyler, John Neville and Plowright. The first two plays were politely received; the Chekhov production attracted rapturous notices. The Times commented, "It is doubtful if the Moscow Arts Theatre itself could improve on this production." The second Chichester season the following year consisted of a revival of Uncle Vanya and two new productions-Shaw's and John Arden's The Workhouse Donkey. In 1963 Olivier received another BAFTA nomination for his leading role as a schoolteacher accused of sexually molesting a student in the film Term of Trial.

At around the time the Chichester Festival opened, plans for the creation of the National Theatre were coming to fruition. The British government agreed to release funds for a new building on the South Bank of the Thames. Lord Chandos was appointed chairman of the National Theatre Board in 1962, and in August Olivier accepted its invitation to be the company's first director. As his assistants, he recruited the directors John Dexter and William Gaskill, with Kenneth Tynan as literary adviser or " dramaturge". Pending the construction of the new theatre, the company was based at the Old Vic. With the agreement of both organisations, Olivier remained in overall charge of the Chichester Festival during the first three seasons of the National; he used the festivals of 1964 and 1965 to give preliminary runs to plays he hoped to stage at the Old Vic.

The opening production of the National Theatre was Hamlet in October 1963, starring Peter O'Toole and directed by Olivier. O'Toole was a guest star, one of occasional exceptions to Olivier's policy of casting productions from a regular company. Among those who made a mark during Olivier's directorship were Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi and Anthony Hopkins. It was widely remarked that Olivier seemed reluctant to recruit his peers to perform with his company. Evans, Gielgud and Paul Scofield guested only briefly, and Ashcroft and Richardson never appeared at the National during Olivier's time. Robert Stephens, a member of the company, observed, "Olivier's one great fault was a paranoid jealousy of anyone who he thought was a rival".

In his decade in charge of the National, Olivier acted in thirteen plays and directed eight. Several of the roles he played were minor characters, including a crazed butler in Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear and a pompous solicitor in Maugham's Home and Beauty; the vulgar soldier Captain Brazen in Farquhar's 1706 comedy The Recruiting Officer was a larger role but not the leading one.

Apart from his Astrov in the Uncle Vanya, familiar from Chichester, his first leading role for the National was Othello, directed by Dexter in 1964. The production was a box-office success and was revived regularly over the next five seasons. His performance divided opinion. Most of the reviewers and theatrical colleagues praised it highly; Franco Zeffirelli called it "an anthology of everything that has been discovered about acting in the past three centuries." Dissenting voices included The Sunday Telegraph, which called it "the kind of bad acting of which only a great actor is capable ... near the frontiers of self-parody"; the director Jonathan Miller thought it "a condescending view of an Afro Caribbean person". The burden of playing this demanding part at the same time as managing the new company and planning for the move to the new theatre took its toll on Olivier. To add to his load, he felt obliged to take over as Solness in The Master Builder when the ailing Redgrave withdrew from the role in November 1964. For the first time Olivier began to suffer from stage fright, which plagued him for several years. The National Theatre production of Othello was released as a film in 1965, which earned four Academy Award nominations, including another for Best Actor for Olivier.

During the following year Olivier concentrated on management, directing one production (The Crucible), taking the comic role of the foppish Tattle in Congreve's Love for Love, and making one film, Bunny Lake is Missing, in which he and Coward were on the same bill for the first time since Private Lives. In 1966, his one play as director was Juno and the Paycock. The Times commented that the production "restores one's faith in the work as a masterpiece". In the same year Olivier portrayed the Mahdi, opposite Heston as General Gordon, in the film .

In 1967 Olivier was caught in the middle of a confrontation between Chandos and Tynan over the latter's proposal to stage Rolf Hochhuth's . As the play speculatively depicted Churchill as complicit in the assassination of the Polish prime minister Władysław Sikorski, Chandos regarded it as indefensible. At his urging the board unanimously vetoed the production. Tynan considered resigning over this interference with the management's artistic freedom, but Olivier himself stayed firmly in place, and Tynan also remained. At about this time Olivier began a long struggle against a succession of illnesses. He was treated for prostate cancer and, during rehearsals for his production of Chekhov's Three Sisters he was hospitalised with pneumonia. He recovered enough to take the heavy role of Edgar in Strindberg's The Dance of Death, the finest of all his performances other than in Shakespeare, in Gielgud's view.

Olivier had intended to step down from the directorship of the National Theatre at the end of his first five-year contract, having, he hoped, led the company into its new building. By 1968 because of bureaucratic delays construction work had not even begun, and he agreed to serve for a second five-year term. His next major role, and his last appearance in a Shakespeare play, was as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, his first appearance in the work. He had intended Guinness or Scofield to play Shylock, but stepped in when neither was available. The production by Jonathan Miller, and Olivier's performance, attracted a wide range of responses. Two different critics reviewed it for The Guardian: one wrote "this is not a role which stretches him, or for which he will be particularly remembered"; the other commented that the performance "ranks as one of his greatest achievements, involving his whole range".

In 1969 Olivier appeared in two war films, portraying military leaders. He played Field Marshal French in the First World War film Oh! What a Lovely War, for which he won another BAFTA award, followed by Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding in Battle of Britain. In June 1970 he became the first actor to be created a peer for services to the theatre. Although he initially declined the honour, Harold Wilson, the incumbent prime minister, wrote to him, then invited him and Plowright to dinner, and persuaded him to accept.

After this Olivier played three more stage roles: James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1971-72), Antonio in Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday and John Tagg in Trevor Griffiths's The Party (both 1973-74). Among the roles he hoped to play, but could not because of ill-health, was Nathan Detroit in the musical Guys and Dolls. In 1972 he took leave of absence from the National to star opposite Michael Caine in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's film of Anthony Shaffer's , which The Illustrated London News considered to be "Olivier at his twinkling, eye-rolling best"; both he and Caine were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, losing to Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

The last two stage plays Olivier directed were Jean Giradoux's Amphitryon (1971) and Priestley's (1974). By the time of Eden End, he was no longer director of the National Theatre; Peter Hall took over on 1 November 1973. The succession was tactlessly handled by the board, and Olivier felt that he had been eased out-although he had declared his intention to go-and that he had not been properly consulted about the choice of successor. The largest of the three theatres within the National's new building was named in his honour, but his only appearance on the stage of the Olivier Theatre was at its official opening by the Queen in October 1976, when he made a speech of welcome, which Hall privately described as the most successful part of the evening.

Olivier spent the last 15 years of his life securing his finances and dealing with deteriorating health, which included thrombosis and dermatomyositis, a degenerative muscle disorder. Professionally, and to provide financial security, he made a series of advertisements for Polaroid cameras in 1972, although he stipulated that they must never be shown in Britain; he also took a number of cameo film roles, which were in "often undistinguished films", according to Billington. Olivier's move from leading parts to supporting and cameo roles came about because his poor health meant he could not get the necessary long insurance for larger parts, with only short engagements in films available.

Olivier's dermatomyositis meant he spent the last three months of 1974 in hospital, and he spent early 1975 slowly recovering and regaining his strength. When strong enough, he was contacted by the director John Schlesinger, who offered him the role of a Nazi torturer in the 1976 film Marathon Man. Olivier shaved his pate and wore oversized glasses to enlarge the look of his eyes, in a role that the critic David Robinson, writing for The Times, thought was "strongly played", adding that Olivier was "always at his best in roles that call for him to be seedy or nasty or both". Olivier was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and won the Golden Globe of the same category.

In the mid-1970s Olivier became increasingly involved in television work, a medium of which he was initially dismissive. In 1973 he provided the narration for a 26-episode documentary, The World at War, which chronicled the events of the Second World War, and won a second Emmy Award for Long Day's Journey into Night (1973). In 1975 he won another Emmy for Love Among the Ruins. The following year he appeared in adaptations of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Harold Pinter's The Collection. Olivier portrayed the Pharisee Nicodemus in Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. In 1978 he appeared in the film The Boys from Brazil, playing the role of Ezra Lieberman, an ageing Nazi hunter; he received his eleventh Academy Award nomination. Although he did not win the Oscar, he was presented with an Honorary Award for his lifetime achievement.

Olivier continued working in film into the 1980s, with roles in The Jazz Singer (1980), (1981), (1984) and Wild Geese II (1985). He continued to work in television; in 1981 he appeared as Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, winning another Emmy, and the following year he received his tenth and last BAFTA nomination in the television adaptation of John Mortimer's stage play A Voyage Round My Father. In 1983 he played his last Shakespearean role as Lear in , for Granada Television, earning his fifth Emmy. He thought the role of Lear much less demanding than other tragic Shakespearean heroes: "No, Lear is easy. He's like all of us, really: he's just a stupid old fart." When the production was first shown on American television, the critic Steve Vineberg wrote:

Olivier seems to have thrown away technique this time-his is a breathtakingly pure Lear. In his final speech, over Cordelia's lifeless body, he brings us so close to Lear's sorrow that we can hardly bear to watch, because we have seen the last Shakespearean hero Laurence Olivier will ever play. But what a finale! In this most sublime of plays, our greatest actor has given an indelible performance. Perhaps it would be most appropriate to express simple gratitude.

The same year he also appeared in a cameo alongside Gielgud and Richardson in , with Burton in the title role; his final screen appearance was as an elderly, wheelchair-bound soldier in Derek Jarman's 1989 film War Requiem.

After being ill for the last 22 years of his life, Olivier died of kidney failure on 11 July 1989 aged 82 at his home near Steyning, West Sussex. His cremation was held three days later; his ashes were buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey during a memorial service in October that year.

Olivier was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 1947 Birthday Honours for services to the stage and to films. A life peerage followed in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to the theatre; he was subsequently created Baron Olivier, of Brighton in the County of Sussex. Olivier was later appointed to the Order of Merit in 1981. He also received honours from foreign governments. In 1949 he was made Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog by the Danish king Frederick IX; the French appointed him Officier, Legion of Honour, in 1953; the Italian government created him Grande Ufficiale, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, in 1953; and in 1971 he was granted the Order of Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath.

From academic and other institutions, Olivier received honorary doctorates from Tufts University in Massachusetts (1946), Oxford (1957) and Edinburgh (1964). He was also awarded the Danish Sonning Prize in 1966, the Gold Medallion of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 1968; and the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1976.

For his work in films, Olivier received four Academy Awards: an honorary award for Henry V (1947), a Best Actor award and one as producer for Hamlet (1948), and a second honorary award in 1979 to recognise his lifetime of contribution to the art of film. He was nominated for nine other acting Oscars and one each for production and direction. He also won two British Academy Film Awards out of ten nominations, five Emmy Awards out of nine nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards out of six nominations. He was nominated once for a Tony Award (for best actor, as Archie Rice) but did not win.

In February 1960, for his contribution to the film industry, Olivier was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with a star at 6319 Hollywood Boulevard; he is included in the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1977 Olivier was awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship.

In addition to the naming of the National Theatre's largest auditorium in Olivier's honour, he is commemorated in the Laurence Olivier Awards, bestowed annually since 1984 by the Society of West End Theatre. In 1991 Gielgud unveiled a memorial stone commemorating Olivier in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. In 2007, the centenary of Olivier's birth, a life-sized statue of him was unveiled on the South Bank, outside the National Theatre; the same year the BFI held a retrospective season of his film work.

Olivier's acting technique was minutely crafted, and he was known for changing his appearance considerably from role to role. By his own admission, he was addicted to extravagant make-up, and unlike Richardson and Gielgud, he excelled at different voices and accents. His own description of his technique was "working from the outside in"; he said, "I can never act as myself, I have to have a pillow up my jumper, a false nose or a moustache or wig... I cannot come on looking like me and be someone else." Rattigan described how at rehearsals Olivier "built his performance slowly and with immense application from a mass of tiny details". This attention to detail had its critics: Agate remarked, "When I look at a watch it is to see the time and not to admire the mechanism. I want an actor to tell me Lear's time of day and Olivier doesn't. He bids me watch the wheels go round."

Tynan remarked to Olivier, "you aren't really a contemplative or philosophical actor"; Olivier was known for the strenuous physicality of his performances in some roles. He told Tynan this was because he was influenced as a young man by Douglas Fairbanks, Ramon Navarro and John Barrymore in films, and Barrymore on stage as Hamlet: "tremendously athletic. I admired that greatly, all of us did. ... One thought of oneself, idiotically, skinny as I was, as a sort of Tarzan." According to Morley, Gielgud was widely considered "the best actor in the world from the neck up and Olivier from the neck down." Olivier described the contrast thus: "I've always thought that we were the reverses of the same coin... the top half John, all spirituality, all beauty, all abstract things; and myself as all earth, blood, humanity."

Together with Richardson and Gielgud, Olivier was internationally recognised as one of the "great trinity of theatrical knights" who dominated the British stage during the middle and later decades of the 20th century. In an obituary tribute in The Times, Bernard Levin wrote, "What we have lost with Laurence Olivier is glory. He reflected it in his greatest roles; indeed he walked clad in it-you could practically see it glowing around him like a nimbus.... no one will ever play the roles he played as he played them; no one will replace the splendour that he gave his native land with his genius." Billington commented:

[Olivier] elevated the art of acting in the twentieth century ... principally by the overwhelming force of his example. Like Garrick, Kean, and Irving before him, he lent glamour and excitement to acting so that, in any theatre in the world, an Olivier night raised the level of expectation and sent spectators out into the darkness a little more aware of themselves and having experienced a transcendent touch of ecstasy. That, in the end, was the true measure of his greatness.

After Olivier's death, Gielgud reflected, "He followed in the theatrical tradition of Kean and Irving. He respected tradition in the theatre, but he also took great delight in breaking tradition, which is what made him so unique. He was gifted, brilliant, and one of the great controversial figures of our time in theatre, which is a virtue and not a vice at all."

Olivier said in 1963 that he believed he was born to be an actor, but his colleague Peter Ustinov disagreed; he commented that although Olivier's great contemporaries were clearly predestined for the stage, "Larry could have been a notable ambassador, a considerable minister, a redoubtable cleric. At his worst, he would have acted the parts more ably than they are usually lived." The director David Ayliff agreed that acting did not come instinctively to Olivier as it did to his great rivals. He observed, "Ralph was a natural actor, he couldn't stop being a perfect actor; Olivier did it through sheer hard work and determination." The American actor William Redfield had a similar view:

Ironically enough, Laurence Olivier is less gifted than Marlon Brando. He is even less gifted than Richard Burton, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud. But he is still the definitive actor of the twentieth century. Why? Because he wanted to be. His achievements are due to dedication, scholarship, practice, determination and courage. He is the bravest actor of our time.

In comparing Olivier and the other leading actors of his generation, Ustinov wrote, "It is of course vain to talk of who is and who is not the greatest actor. There is simply no such thing as a greatest actor, or painter or composer". Nonetheless, some colleagues, particularly film actors such as Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, came to regard Olivier as the finest of his peers. Peter Hall, though acknowledging Olivier as the head of the theatrical profession, thought Richardson the greater actor. Olivier's claim to theatrical greatness lay not only in his acting, but as, in Hall's words, "the supreme man of the theatre of our time", pioneering Britain's National Theatre. As Bragg identified, "no one doubts that the National is perhaps his most enduring monument".

1. Gerard's father Henry Arnold Olivier (1826-1912) was a priest who had eight children, his other sons all achieving success in secular spheres: ^ Sydney became Governor of Jamaica and later Secretary of State for India, Herbert was a successful portrait painter, and Henry (1850-1935) had a military career, ending as a colonel.

2. In a biography of Olivier ^ Melvyn Bragg observes that all three of the great theatrical trinity of the century-Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud and Olivier-went through deeply religious phases when young.

3. Gielgud and Olivier himself later considered that not being in the nearly two-year run of ^ Journey's End helped Olivier's career. Gielgud wrote in the 1970s, "Olivier made his name in three plays that failed with the public-Beau Geste, The Circle of Chalk with Anna May Wong, and The Rats of Norway by Keith Winter. In all three plays he got superb notices personally, so that in a curious way it made his career to be in failures." Olivier said much the same to Bragg in the 1980s.

4. ^ Ivor Brown called Gielgud's performance "tremendous ... the best Hamlet of [my] experience." James Agate wrote, "I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that it is the high water-mark of English Shakespearean acting of our time."

5. Olivier never overtly acknowledged his affair with Ainley, although Ainley's letters to him are clear. Olivier's third wife, the actress ^ Joan Plowright, expressed surprise at hearing the possibility, but commented, "If he did, so what?" Later, there were also persistent rumours of an affair with the entertainer Danny Kaye, although Coleman considers them to be unsubstantiated; Plowright also dismisses the rumours.

6. The film also won Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, and was nominated for awards for Best Actress (^ Jean Simmons as Ophelia), Best Score and Olivier as Best Director.

7. The other two Jeans were ^ Dorothy Tutin at the Royal Court, and Geraldine McEwan for part of the run at the Palace. Plowright rejoined the cast when the production opened in New York in February 1958.

8. In 1955 Richardson, advised by Gielgud, had turned down the role of Estragon in ^ Peter Hall's premiere of the English-language version of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and later reproached himself for missing the chance to be in "the greatest play of my generation".

9. Because of this additional commitment, Olivier had to drop his plan to direct Coward's ^ Hay Fever. The author took over the production with a cast, headed by Edith Evans, that Coward said could successfully have played the Albanian telephone directory.

10. Olivier was also offered an honorary degree from ^ Yale University, but was unable to receive it.

11. For his appearances in screen versions of ^ The Moon and Sixpence (1960), Long Day's Journey into Night (1973), Love Among the Ruins, Brideshead Revisited (1982) and King Lear (1984)

12. As Best Actor for ^ Hamlet, Best Supporting Actor for Marathon Man and the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.

13. The American film director ^ William Wyler said that Olivier's performance in the film Carrie was "the truest and best portrayal on film of an American by an Englishman".

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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, (; 22 May 1907 - 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century.

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A really big movie from the 1940s was the movie "Noir" and the movie Noir was a film that reflected the way Hollywood felt as it faced its greatest challenges during the war. The movie "Noir" was in the colors of black, grey, and white. Raymond Chandler was an actor for the movie "Noir".

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Film noir (; French pronunciation: ​) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly such that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classical film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.

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The technology from 1940-1949 were the Radar, Jet Engine, Helicopters, and Electronic Computers. The radar was a type of innovation for wartime. Jet engines were a type of innovation for wartime on jets. Helicopters were a type of innovation for wartimes.

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The pace of scientific discovery in the 1940s was staggering. World War II (1939-45) boosted research in science and technology through government funding. It led to new technologies that transformed American life after 1945. The demands of war inspired the production of new substances and materials such as the antibiotic penicillin, the insecticide DDT, and synthetic rubber. New technologies such as radar, the jet engine, helicopters, and electronic computers all were wartime innovations. With the creation of the atomic bomb, American scientists influenced the political and cultural atmosphere of the rest of the century and beyond.

Most scientists in the early 1940s were engaged in research that served military needs. The U.S. government poured millions of dollars into research projects that would help win the war. There were major advances in transportation, communication, weapons, and intelligence-gathering technologies. But government funding also brought science and politics together in a new way. For the first time, the U.S. government funded scientific research that would help it achieve its political aims. Perhaps the most important and controversial of these projects was the research on the atomic bomb.

In 1939, Austrian physicist Lise Meitner and German chemist Otto Hahn, described atoms being split into smaller atoms and releasing huge amounts of energy. The process they described was nuclear fission, the reaction that takes place inside an atomic bomb. German Jewish physicist Albert Einstein settled in the United States in 1933, after escaping from Nazi Germany. Though he had always been opposed to violence and war, his experience with the Nazis convinced him that Western democracies would have to fight to keep their freedom. After news of the fission experiments in Europe reached American scientists, Einstein was persuaded to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the danger. He managed to convince Roosevelt that the United States should try to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did. As a result, in 1942 Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project to begin research into nuclear weapons. In 1945, the United States became the world's first nuclear power.

Einstein did not contribute directly to the Manhattan Project. But he was one of a number of European scientists who emigrated to the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, and many of these scientists did help develop the atomic bomb. Physicists and chemists such as Germany's Hans Bethe, Switzerland's Felix Bloch, and Italy's Enrico Fermi and Bruno Rossi-along with others from Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Austria-all worked on the Manhattan Project.

Many other important discoveries were made by immigrant American scientists in the 1940s. George Gamows developed the "big bang" theory of the start of the universe. Research on DNA was conducted by Erwin Chargoff and Severo Ochoa. Another significant advance was the development of rocketry. Werhner von Braun, in particular, did important work on rockets during the decade that led to the space program in years to come. Many of these scientists had won Nobel Prizes for their research while in Europe. Others became Nobel laureates (prize winners) after settling in the United States. This "brain drain" of scientists from Europe to America helped make the United States the world leader in scientific research after the war.

In peacetime, scientific researchers can afford the luxury of investigating questions or problems that have no obvious practical use. This is known as "pure" science. Discoveries made in pure scientific research often find practical uses years later. During World War II, American scientists were forced to find much closer links between their research and practical problems. For example, developments in theoretical physics helped create the atomic bomb. In chemistry, synthetic rubber was the practical outcome of years of pure research. Only biologists seemed free from wartime pressures. Researchers working in the field of genetics began laying the foundations for the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s. Such research had no obvious application to the war effort.

In the 1940s, American scientific research fed into practical technological advances as never before. A great deal of money was made available for research, accelerating the pace of discovery and development. Science and technology came to the fore in American colleges and universities. Before the war, the United States was already a powerful industrial nation. By the late 1940s, it led the world in scientific research as well. But the close link between political needs and scientific development changed the way scientists worked. During the war years, "pure" research lost out to applied research, or work that would provide quick solutions to practical problems. After 1945, American scientists had to rediscover the balance between "pure" and applied science.

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the 1940s science and technology: overviewthe pace of scientific discovery in the 1940s was staggering. world war ii (1939–45) boosted research in science and technology through government funding. it led to new technologies that transformed american life after 1945.

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The 1940s Science and Technology: Overview

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The 1940s Science and Technology: OverviewThe pace of scientific discovery in the 1940s was staggering. World War II (1939-45) boosted research in science and technology through government funding. It led to new technologies that transformed American life after 1945. Source for information on The 1940s Science and Technology: Overview: U*X*L American Decades dictionary.

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One music group/band that was pretty big during the 1940s was the Andre Sisters, and the names of the three members in this band were Contralto LaVerne Sophia, Soprano Maxene Anglyn, and Mezzo-Soprano Patricia Marie "Patty". Another really known music artist was the one and only Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, LA, and died on July 6, 1971, in Corona, New York, NY. Another well known music artist was the one and only Charles Trenet. Charles Trenet was born on May 18, 1913, in Narbonne, France, and died on February 19, 2001, in Creteil, France.

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Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971), nicknamed " Satchmo", " Satch", and " Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz.

Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at " cutting contests" and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist and recording artist. Hardin became Armstrong's second wife and they returned to Chicago to play together and then he began to form his own "Hot" jazz bands. After years of touring, he settled in Queens, and by the 1950s, he was a national musical icon, assisted in part, by his appearances on radio and in film and television, in addition to his concerts.

With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong's life, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over" to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences. He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.

Armstrong appeared in films such as High Society (1956) alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964. In 2017, he was posthumously inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Armstrong was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901. His parents were Mary Albert and William Armstrong. Mary Albert was from Boutte, Louisiana, and gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years later, they had a daughter, Beatrice "Mama Lucy" Armstrong, who was raised by Albert.

Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother. He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield, on the southern section of Rampart Street. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans.

At the age of 6, Armstrong lived with his mother and sister and worked for the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews, at their home. He would help their two sons, Morris and Alex, collect "rags and bones" and deliver coal. In 1969, while recovering from heart and kidney problems at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, Armstrong wrote "Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, LA., the year of 1907" a memoir describing his time working for the Karnofsky family. Armstrong writes about singing "Russian Lullaby" with the Karnofsky family when their baby son David was put to bed and credits the family with teaching him to sing "from the heart." Curiously, Armstrong quotes lyrics for it that appear to be the same as the "Russian Lullaby," copyrighted by Irving Berlin in 1927, about twenty years after Armstrong remembered singing it as a child. Gary Zucker, Armstrong's doctor at Beth Israel hospital in 1969, shared Berlin's song lyrics with him, and Armstrong quoted them in the memoir. This inaccuracy may simply be because he wrote the memoir over 60 years after the events described.

Regardless, the Karnoffskys treated Armstrong extremely well. Knowing he lived without a father, they fed and nurtured him. In his memoir Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks" who felt that they were better than Jews: "I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." He wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live-real life and determination." His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffskys' junk wagon. To distinguish them from other hawkers, he tried playing a tin horn to attract customers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward the purchase of a cornet from a pawn shop. Armstrong wore a Star of David until the end of his life in memory of this family who had raised him.

When Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with Armstrong, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony's honky tonk. (In his later years Armstrong credited King Oliver.) He said about his youth, "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine-I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans ... It has given me something to live for."

Borrowing his stepfather's gun without permission, he fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912. He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court, then was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif's Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent; meals were often little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones ran the home like a military camp and used corporal punishment.

Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who frequently appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong's first teacher and chose him as bandleader. With this band, the thirteen-year-old Armstrong attracted the attention of Kid Ory.

On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. He lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong's father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his mother and sister. His mother still lived in The Battlefield, leaving him open to old temptations, but he sought work as a musician. He found a job at a dance hall owned by Henry Ponce, who had connections to organized crime. He met the six-foot tall drummer Black Benny, who became his guide and bodyguard. Around the age of fifteen, he pimped for a prostitute named Nootsy, but that relationship failed after she stabbed Armstrong in the shoulder and his mother choked her nearly to death.

He briefly studied shipping management at the local community college, but was forced to quit after being unable to afford the fees. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. He heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala's, where King Oliver performed.

Riverboat education

Early in his career, Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, first on an excursion boat in September 1918. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River. Marable was proud of his musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as "going to the University", since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. In 1919, Armstrong's mentor, King Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.

Throughout his riverboat experience, Armstrong's musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music. He became one of the first jazz musicians to be featured on extended trumpet solos, injecting his own personality and style. He also started singing in his performances.

Chicago and recording for Gennett

In 1922, Armstrong moved to Chicago at the invitation of King Oliver, although Armstrong would return to New Orleans periodically for the rest of his life. Playing second cornet to Oliver in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in the black-only Lincoln Gardens in Chicago's black neighborhood, he could make enough money to quit his day jobs. Although race relations were poor, Chicago was booming. The city had jobs for blacks making good wages at factories with some left over for entertainment.

His first studio recordings were with Oliver for Gennett Records on April 5-6, 1923. They endured several hours on the train to remote Richmond, Indiana, and the band was paid little. The quality of the performances was affected by lack of rehearsal, crude recording equipment, bad acoustics, and a cramped studio. These early recordings were true acoustic, the band playing directly into a large funnel connected directly to the needle making the groove in the master recording. (Electrical recording was not invented until 1926 and Gennett installed it later.) Because Armstrong's playing was so loud, when he played next to Oliver, Oliver couldn't be heard on the recording. Armstrong had to stand fifteen feet away from Oliver, in a far corner of the room.

Lil Hardin, who Armstrong would marry in 1924, urged Armstrong to seek more prominent billing and develop his style apart from the influence of Oliver. At her suggestion, Armstrong began to play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skills; and he began to dress more in more stylish attire to offset his girth. Her influence eventually undermined Armstrong's relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional money that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong's mother, May Ann Albert, came to visit him in Chicago during the summer of 1923 after being told that Armstrong was "out of work, out of money, hungry, and sick"; Hardin located and decorated an apartment for her to live in while she stayed.

In the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra

Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. He switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence on Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.

Armstrong adapted to the tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and experimenting with the trombone. The other members were affected by Armstrong's emotional style. His act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra played in prominent venues for white patrons only, including the Roseland Ballroom, with arrangements by Don Redman. Duke Ellington's orchestra went to Roseland to catch Armstrong's performances.

During this time, Armstrong recorded with Clarence Williams (a friend from New Orleans), the Williams Blue Five, Sidney Bechet, and blues singers Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith.

The Hot Five

In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago largely at the insistence of Lil, who wanted to expand his career and his income. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as "the World's Greatest Trumpet Player". For a time he was a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He formed Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and recorded the hits " Potato Head Blues" and " Muggles". The word "muggles" was a slang term for marijuana, something he used often during his life.

The Hot Five included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Lil Armstrong on piano, and usually no drummer. Over a twelve-month period starting in November 1925, this quintet produced twenty-four records. Armstrong's band leading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual." Among the most notable of the Hot Five and Seven records were "Cornet Chop Suey", "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", "Hotter Than that" and "Potato Head Blues", all featuring highly creative solos by Armstrong. According to Thomas Brothers, recordings, such as "Struttin' with Some Barbeque", were so superb, "planned with density and variety, bluesyness, and showiness," that the arrangements were probably showcased at the Sunset Café. His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, most famously their 1928 " Weather Bird" duet and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to and solo in "West End Blues", remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Young trumpet players across the country bought these recordings and memorized his solos.

Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "Whip That Thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, Do That Clarinet, Boy!"

After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends and successful collaborators. It was at the Sunset Café that Armstrong accompanied singer Adelaide Hall. It was during Hall's tenure at the venue that she experimented, developed and expanded her use and art of scat singing with Armstrong's guidance and encouragement.

In the first half of 1927, Armstrong assembled his Hot Seven group, which added drummer Al "Baby" Dodds and tuba player, Pete Briggs, while preserving most of his original Hot Five lineup. John Thomas replaced Kid Ory on trombone. Later that year he organized a series of new Hot Five sessions which resulted in nine more records. In the last half of 1928, he started recording with a new group: Zutty Singleton (drums), Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), and Mancy Carr (banjo).

The Harlem Renaissance

Armstrong made a huge impact during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance within the Jazz world. His music touched many, including a well-known writer during that time named Langston Hughes. Hughes admired Armstrong and acknowledged him as one of the most recognized musicians during the era. Hughes created many books that upheld the central idea of jazz and gave recognition to Armstrong as one of the most important persons to be part of the Harlem Renaissance's newfound love of African-American culture. The sound of jazz, along with many other musicians such as Armstrong, helped shape Hughes as a writer. Just like the musicians, Hughes wrote his words with jazz.

Armstrong changed jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. Being known as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player" during this time, Armstrong continued his legacy and continued a focus on his own vocal career. The popularity he gained brought together many black and white audiences to watch him perform.

Emerging as a vocalist

Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra for the musical Hot Chocolates, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of " Ain't Misbehavin'". His version of the song became his biggest selling record to date.

Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the ' crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's interpretation of Carmichael's " Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's " Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh"..."Sure"..."Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong " scat singing".

As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gravelly coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.

Working during hard times

Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame and was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero's welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as Armstrong's Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him. But soon he was on the road again. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.

After returning to the United States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins's erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. He hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result, he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast.

Reviving his career with the All Stars

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing.

Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from other types of music, especially pop vocals, becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to finance a 16-piece touring band.

A widespread revival of interest in the 1940s in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. Armstrong was featured as a guest artist with Lionel Hampton's band at the famed second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on October 12, 1946. He also led a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden. During the concert, Armstrong and Teagarden performed a duet on Hoagy Carmichael's " Rockin' Chair" they then recorded for Okeh Records.

Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, and established a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.

This group was called Louis Armstrong and His All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid "Buddy" Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Mort Herbert, Joe Darensbourg, Eddie Shu, Joe Muranyi and percussionist Danny Barcelona.

On February 28, 1948, Suzy Delair sang the French song at the Hotel Negresco during the first Nice Jazz Festival. Louis Armstrong was present and loved the song. On June 26, 1950, he recorded the American version of the song (English lyrics by Jerry Seelen) in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra. When it was released, the disc was a worldwide success and the song was then performed by the greatest international singers.

He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine, on February 21, 1949. Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were featured at the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held on June 7, 1953, along with Shorty Rogers, Roy Brown, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, and Nat "King" Cole.

During the next 30 years, Armstrong played more than 300 performances a year. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films.

A jazz ambassador

By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural ambassador who commanded an international fanbase. However, a growing generation gap became apparent between him and the young jazz musicians who emerged in the postwar era such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins. The postwar generation regarded their music as abstract art and considered Armstrong's vaudevillian style, half-musician and half-stage entertainer, outmoded and Uncle Tomism, "... he seemed a link to minstrelsy that we were ashamed of." He called bebop "Chinese music". While touring Australia in 1954, he was asked if he could play bebop. "Bebop?" he husked. "I just play music. Guys who invent terms like that are walking the streets with their instruments under their arms."

After finishing his contract with Decca Records, he became a freelance artist and recorded for other labels. He continued an intense international touring schedule, but in 1959 he suffered a heart attack in Italy and had to rest.

In 1964, after over two years without setting foot in a studio, he recorded his biggest-selling record, " Hello, Dolly!", a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong's version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1 making him, at 62 years, 9 months and 5 days, the oldest person ever to accomplish that feat. In the process, he dislodged the Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.

Armstrong kept touring well into his 60s, even visiting part of the communist bloc in 1965. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under the sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch" and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors. By 1968, he was approaching 70 and his health began to give out. He suffered heart and kidney ailments that forced him to stop touring. He did not perform publicly at all in 1969 and spent most of the year recuperating at home. Meanwhile, his longtime manager Joe Glaser died. By the summer of 1970, his doctors pronounced him fit enough to resume live performances. He embarked on another world tour, but a heart attack forced him to take a break for two months.

Armstrong made his last recorded trumpet performances on his 1968 album Disney Songs the Satchmo Way.

Personal life

Pronunciation of name

The Louis Armstrong House Museum website states:

Judging from home recorded tapes now in our Museum Collections, Louis pronounced his own name as "Lewis". On his 1964 record "Hello, Dolly", he sings, "This is Lewis, Dolly" but in 1933 he made a record called "Laughin' Louie". Many broadcast announcers, fans, and acquaintances called him "Louie" and in a videotaped interview from 1983 Lucille Armstrong calls her late husband "Louie" as well. Musicians and close friends usually called him "Pops".

In a memoir written for Robert Goffin between 1943 and 1944, Armstrong states, "All white folks call me Louie," perhaps suggesting that he himself did not or, on the other hand, that no whites addressed him by one of his nicknames such as Pops. That said, Armstrong was registered as "Lewie" for the 1920 U.S. Census. On various live records he's called "Louie" on stage, such as on the 1952 "Can Anyone Explain?" from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song "Chloe", where the choir in the background sings "Louie ... Louie", with Armstrong responding "What was that? Somebody called my name?" "Lewie" is the French pronunciation of "Louis" and is commonly used in Louisiana.

Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute. He started the affair as a client. He returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. It was on this occasion he found out she had a common-law husband. Not long after this fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street. They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong's cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as the result of a head injury at an early age, and Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.

On February 4, 1924, he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver's pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. His second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His relationship with Alpha began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. His marriage to her lasted four years; they divorced in 1942. Louis then married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in New York, in October 1942; they remained married until his death in 1971.

Armstrong's marriages never produced any offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston's newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 ($5,058 in 2021 dollars) to mother and child.

Personality

Armstrong was noted for his colorful and charismatic personality. His autobiography vexed some biographers and historians, as he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.

Health problems

During a backstage meeting with trombonist Marshall Brown in 1959, Armstrong received the suggestion that he should go to a doctor and receive proper treatment for his lips instead of relying on home remedies, but he did not get around to arranging it until the final years of his life, by which point his health was failing and doctors considered surgery too risky.

The nicknames "Satchmo" and "Satch" are short for "Satchelmouth". The nickname has many possible origins. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies. He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed him "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, he was nicknamed "satchel mouth" which was shortened to "Satchmo".

Early on he was also known as "Dipper", short for "Dippermouth", a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.

The nickname "Pops" came from Armstrong's own tendency to forget people's names and simply call them "Pops" instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.

Armstrong always celebrated his heritage as an African American man from a poor New Orleans neighborhood, and tried to avoid what he called "putting on airs." Many younger black musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the American civil rights movement. When he did speak out, it made national news, including his criticism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless" because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying: "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell" and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. The FBI kept a file on Armstrong for his outspokenness about integration.

When asked about his religion, Armstrong answered that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the pope. He wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnoffsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him money to buy his first cornet. He was baptized a Catholic in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.

Personal habits

Armstrong was concerned with his health. He used laxatives to control his weight, a practice he advocated both to acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong's laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, he became an enthusiastic convert, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen and passing out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British Royal Family. (Armstrong also appeared in humorous, albeit risqué, cards that he had printed to send out to friends; the cards bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet-as viewed through a keyhole-with the slogan "Satch says, 'Leave it all behind ya!'") The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss. In a live recording of " Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour". His laxative use began as a child when his mother would collect dandelions and peppergrass around the railroad tracks to give to her children for their health.

The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake", "Cornet Chop Suey", though "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, " Red beans and ricely yours ..."

Social organizations

Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. However, Armstrong stated in his autobiography that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which although real is not a Masonic group. During the krewe's 1949 Mardi Gras parade, Armstrong presided as King of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, for which he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Horn playing and early jazz

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. Along with his "clarinet-like figurations and high notes in his cornet solos", he was also known for his "intense rhythmic 'swing', a complex conception involving ... accented upbeats, upbeat to downbeat slurring, and complementary relations among rhythmic patterns." The most lauded recordings on which Armstrong plays trumpet include the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, as well as those of the Red Onion Jazz Babies. Armstrong's improvisations, while unconventionally sophisticated for that era, were also subtle and highly melodic. The solo that Armstrong plays during the song " Potato Head Blues" has long been considered his best solo of that series.

Prior to Armstrong, most collective ensemble playing in jazz, along with its occasional solos, simply varied the melodies of the songs. Armstrong was virtually the first to create significant variations based on the chord harmonies of the songs instead of merely on the melodies. This opened a rich field for creation and improvisation, and significantly changed the music into a soloist's art form.

Often, Armstrong re-composed pop-tunes he played, simply with variations that made them more compelling to jazz listeners of the era. At the same time, however, his oeuvre includes many original melodies, creative leaps, and relaxed or driving rhythms. Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In his records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what had been essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

Armstrong was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.

Vocal popularity

Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet. Armstrong once told Cab Calloway that his scat style was derived "from the Jews rockin", an Orthodox Jewish style of chanting during prayer.

Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than fifty songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g. "Gully Low Blues", "Potato Head Blues" and "Swing That Music").

Colleagues and followers

During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald. His influence upon Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:

Crosby ... was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech ... His techniques-easing the weight of the breath on the vocal cords, passing into a head voice at a low register, using forward production to aid distinct enunciation, singing on consonants (a practice of black singers), and making discreet use of appoggiaturas, mordents, and slurs to emphasize the text-were emulated by nearly all later popular singers.

Armstrong recorded two albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, and Ella and Louis Again for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummers Buddy Rich (on the first album), and Louie Bellson (on the second). Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess.

His recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955) were both being considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961 the All Stars participated in two albums- The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington's most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. His participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed, and features "Summer Song", one of Armstrong's most popular vocal efforts.

In the week beginning May 9, 1964, his recording of the song " Hello, Dolly" went to number one. An album of the same title was quickly created around the song, and also shot to number one (knocking The Beatles off the top of the chart). The album sold very well for the rest of the year, quickly going "Gold" (500,000). His performance of "Hello Dolly" won for best male pop vocal performance at the 1964 Grammy Awards.

Hits and later career

Armstrong had nineteen "Top Ten" records including " Stardust", " What a Wonderful World", " When The Saints Go Marching In", " Dream a Little Dream of Me", " Ain't Misbehavin'", " You Rascal You", and " Stompin' at the Savoy". " We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advertisement. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.

In 1964, Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with " Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song "Bout Time" was later featured in the film .

In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with " What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole's hit " Ramblin' Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9".

Stylistic range

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. He incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted him to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of " St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Film, television, and radio

Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical High Society starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. He appears throughout the film, also sings the title song as well as performs a duet with Crosby, " Now You Has Jazz". In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film The Five Pennies he played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. With Danny Kaye he performed a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.

In 1937, Armstrong was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show. In 1969, he had a cameo role in Gene Kelly's film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader Louis. He sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of " Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances. He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (The Great Cronopio).

There is a pivotal scene in Stardust Memories (1980) in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's " Stardust" and experiences a nostalgic epiphany.

Against his doctor's advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May, and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, two days after celebrating his alleged 71st birthday, and a month before his actual 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang " Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Awards and honors

Grammy Awards

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong's West End Blues on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.

Inductions and honors

In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32-cent commemorative postage stamp.

Film honors

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. His irrepressible personality both as a performer and as a public figure was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. Additionally, jazz itself was transformed from a collectively improvised folk music to a soloist's serious art form largely through his influence. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith's 'big' sound and Armstrong's feeling in her singing. Even special musicians like Duke Ellington have praised Armstrong through strong testimonials. Duke Ellington, DownBeat magazine in 1971, said, "If anybody was a master, it was Louis Armstrong. He was and will continue to be the embodiment of jazz." In 1950, Bing Crosby, the most successful vocalist of the first half of the 20th century, said, "He is the beginning and the end of music in America."

In the summer of 2001, in commemoration of the centennial of Armstrong's birth, New Orleans's main airport was renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The entrance to the airport's former terminal building houses a statue depicting Armstrong playing his cornet.

In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925-1928) were preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Congo Square was a common gathering place for African-Americans in New Orleans for dancing and performing music. The park where Congo Square is located was later renamed Louis Armstrong Park. Dedicated in April 1980, the park includes a 12-foot (3.7 m) statue of Armstrong, trumpet in hand.

The house where Armstrong lived for almost 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street between 34th and 37th avenues in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the Queens College, City University of New York, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will. The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A new visitors center is planned.

According to literary critic Harold Bloom, "The two great American contributions to the world's art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, Armstrong and jazz ... If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn't. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong."

Discography

References

1. ^ "When Is Louis Armstrong's Birthday?". Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. The Official Site of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives.

2. Giddins (2001), pp. 22-23.

3. ^ Teachout, Terry (2009). Pops. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 30.

4. Bergreen (1997), pp. 27, 57-60.

5. ^

6. ^ Armstrong, Louis (2001). Brothers, Thomas (ed.). Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings (1st Oxford University Press paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-19-514046-0. I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for. It dawned on me, how drastically. Even "my race", the Negroes, the way that I saw it, they were having a little better break than the Jewish people, with jobs a plenty around. Of course, we can understand all the situations and handicaps that was going on, but to me we were better off than the Jewish people.

7. ^ William Howland Kenney (2005). Jazz on the River. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 64.

8. ^

9. ^ Stamatel, Janet P. (2003). Henderson, Ashyia N (ed.). "Hardin Armstrong, Lil 1898-1971". Contemporary Black Biography. 39: 98 - via Gale Virtual Reference Library.

10. Elliot Hurwitt et al., in Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, eds., ^ Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (London: Routledge, 2012), 533 and elsewhere.ISBN 9781135455361 books.google.com/books?id=0L0ULjto_OEC&pg=PT533

11. World Catalogue:^ Underneath A Harlem Moon by Iain Cameron Williams ISBN 0-8264-5893-9

12. ^ "Louis Armstrong: 'The Man and His Music,' Part 1". National Public Radio. August 1, 2007. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020.

13. ^ Andrews, Evan (August 22, 2018). "9 Things You May Not Know About Louis Armstrong". History (American TV network). Archived from the original on November 20, 2020.

14. ^ Collins, Willie (2013). Thomas Riggs (ed.). "Armstrong, Louis (1901-1971)". St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (Second ed.). St. James Press. 1: 133-135.

15. ^ Morgenstern, Dan (1994), "Louis Armstrong and the Development and Diffusion of Jazz", in Miller, Marc H. (ed.), Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy, Queens Museum of Art in association with University of Washington Press, p. 110

16. ^ Starkey, Brando Simeo (2015). In Defense of Uncle Tom: Why Blacks Must Police Racial Loyalty. Cambridge University Press. pp. 147-. ISBN 978-1-316-21408-4.

17. ^ Kelley, Robin D.G. (2012). Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Harvard University Press. pp. 72-. ISBN 978-0-674-06524-6.

18. ^ Nollen, Scott Allen (2004). Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career. McFarland. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-7864-1857-2.

19. ^ Armstrong, Louis; Brothers, Thomas (2001). Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words: Selected Writings. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-19-514046-0.

20. Bergreen (1997), 134-137.

21. ^ "Louis Armstrong: FAQ". Louis Armstrong House Museum. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013.

22. ^ Goddard, Jacqui (December 15, 2012). "Louis Armstrong's secret daughter revealed, 42 years after his death". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022.

23. 1634-1699: ^ McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700-1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800-present:

24. ^ Bergreen (1997), pp. 7-11.

25. "Louis Armstrong: An American Genius", ^ James L. Collier, 231 pp.

26. "Satchmo Rallies, Jokes" ^ The Ottawa Citizen, June 26, 1959, p. 1

27. ^ Margolick, David (September 23, 2007). "The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise". The New York Times.

28. Gabbard, Krin (2001). Louis and The Good Book (CD booklet). Louis Armstrong. New York City: Verve Records. p. 1.

29. ^ Jive Dictionary, by Cab Calloway: "Barbecue (n.) - the girl friend, a beauty." Retrieved February 10, 2009.

30. ^ Harker, Brian Cameron (1997). The early musical development of Louis Armstrong, 1901-1928 (PhD thesis). Columbia University. ProQuest 304443911.

31. Michael Cogswell, ^ Louis Armstrong: The Offstage Story of Satchmo (Collector's Press, Portland, Oregon, 2003) ISBN 1-888054-81-6 pp. 66-68.

32. ^ Bergreen, Laurence (1998). Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life (Reprint ed.). New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-7679-0156-7.

33. Louis Armstrong: "^ Grassa e bella" Louis Armstrong Discography Archived January 11, 2014, at the Wayback Machine

34. ^ Riccardi, Ricky (May 11, 2020). ""I'm Still Louis Armstrong - Colored": Louis Armstrong and the Civil Rights Era". Louis Armstrong House Museum. Louis Armstrong House. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021.

35. Morgenstern, Dan, and Sheldon Meyer (2004). ^ Living with Jazz. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-42072-X

36. Krebs, Albin. ^ "Louis Armstrong, Jazz Trumpeter and Singer, Dies", The New York Times, July 7, 1971. Accessed October 1, 2009. "Louis Armstrong, the celebrated jazz trumpeter and singer, died in his sleep yesterday morning at his home in the Corona section of Queens."

37. ^ Collier, James Lincoln (1985). Louis Armstrong. Pan. p. 333. ISBN 978-0-330-28607-7.

38. ^ "The Recording Academy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 12, 2009.

39. ^ "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Stars Nominees" (PDF).

40. ^ "Armstrong Park Dedicated". Daily World. Opelousas, Louisiana. UPI. April 16, 1980. p. 3. Archived from the original on October 30, 2018 - via Newspapers.com.

Works cited

Further reading

Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, ed. by Holly Hughes, Da Capo Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56924-287-9

Jones, Max and Chilton, John. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900-1971. Da Capo Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-306-80324-6

Williams, Iain Cameron Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0-8264-5893-9

External links

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Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971), nicknamed " Satchmo", " Satch", and " Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans.

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In the 1940s there was a popular music band called "The Andre Sisters" and the names of the three girls in this band are Contralto LaVerne Sophia, Soprano Maxene Anglyn, and Mezzo-Soprano Patricia Marie "Patty". Another pretty famous singer from the 1940s is the one and only Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, LA, and died on July 6, 1971, in Corona, New York, NY. Another big singer from the 1940s was Charles Trenet, Charles Trenet was born on May 18, 1913, in Nerbonne, France, and died on February 19, 2001, in Creteil, France.

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In the 40s when teenagers started to outgrow the toys that they once loved as kids, But there is a special more 'mature' group of toys aimed at older children and those were the BB guns. Kids in the 40s had a magic-like ball called the "Magic 8 Ball" like the rest f the members on the Fortune Telling Toy Team, the Magic 8 Ball gets its share of nasty accusations. Kinds in the 40s had a prank toy called the "Whoopee Cushion" that whenever somebody sits on it the Whoopee Cushion makes and fart-like noise but it will only do the noise if the Whoopee Cushion has air in it.

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World War II halts the production of metal toys for the first half of the decade, but the post-war years more than make up for it. Chutes and Ladders, Cootie and Candy Land delight the pre-adolescent set, Slinky makes kids crazy over a metal spring, Ertl die-cast toys bring the farm to the city, and the Magic 8 Ball answers all questions with its liquidy, mystical powers.

This entry was posted in Toys and tagged 1940 by Skooldays. Bookmark the permalink.

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World War II halts the production of metal toys for the first half of the decade, but the post-war years more than make up for it. Chutes and Ladders, Cootie and Candy Land delight the pre-adolescent set, Slinky makes kids crazy over a metal spring, Ertl die-cast toys bring the farm to the city, and the Magic 8 Ball answers all questions with its liquidy, mystical powers.

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News Event X-1 Breaks sound barrier on October 14, 1947

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News Event X-1 Breaks sound barrier on October 14, 1947

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The X-1 rocket plane broke the sound barrier while 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. During the flight, Yeager reached Mach 1.05, or 1.05 times the speed of light. The X-1 was going 770+ mph which is the approximate speed to break the sound barrier.

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(Image credit: United States Air Force Archive)

Chuck Yeager, the U.S. Air Force Pilot who became the first person to break the sound barrier, died Monday (Dec. 7) at the age of 97.

Yeager's wife, Victoria, shared the news on Twitter, writing: "It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America's greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever."
Related: Breaking the sound barrier: The greatest moments in flight

Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America's greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever. December 8, 2020

Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, while flying the Bell X-1 rocket plane 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. During the flight, Yeager reached Mach 1.05, or 1.05 times the speed of sound. The aircraft, which he dubbed Glamorous Glennis after his first wife Glennis Yeager, who died in 1990. The Bell X-1 now hangs on display in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.

(Image credit: U.S. Air Force)

Yeager would go on to fly even faster aircraft, including the Lockheed XF-104, which flew more than twice the speed of sound. His daring test flights were featured in Tom Wolfe's 1979 book "The Right Stuff" as well as the film adaptation and new Disney Plus series by the same name.

Yeager's flying career in the U.S. Air Force began during World War II in 1941, where he served as a private and later an aircraft mechanic. He began pilot training in 1942 and became a test pilot after the war. Yeager flew a variety of experimental aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base.

In 1960, Yeager served as director of the Space School at Edwards and later would serve as a wing commander in the Vietnam War, where he flew over 130 combat missions, according to a NASA biography. Yeager also served on the Presidential commission that investigated NASA's space shuttle Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts, in 1986.

Yeager retired from the Air Force in 1975 at the rank of brigadier general after 33 years of service. He received numerous awards and commendations throughout his career, including the Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star, according to the New York Times. Yeager also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 from President Ronald Reagan, the Times added.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her on Twitter @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
Editor's note: This is a developing story and will be updated as new details are available.

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Chuck Yeager, 1st pilot to break the sound barrier, is dead at 97

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(Image credit: United States Air Force Archive) Chuck Yeager, the U.S. Air Force Pilot who became the first person to break the sound barrier, died Monday (Dec. 7) at the age of 97. Yeager's wife, Victoria, shared the news on Twitter, writing: "It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET.

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Women in the 1940s wore an Hourglass Silhouette with masculine details: Padded shoulders, Nipped-In High waist tops, and A-line Skirts that came down to the knee. Men from WWII wore Trench Coats, Bomber Jackets, Knit Undershirts, Pea Coats, Chino Pants, and Aviator Glasses. Boys in the 1940s wore Trousers or Shorts with Long Socks and Blazers and young girls from the 1940s wore Short Dresses and babies during the 1940s wore Gowns, Vests, Bonnets and Booties.

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With the first half of the 1940s dominated by World War II, fashion stalled. Both men and women were often seen in their uniforms during the war and, if they were not, their clothing styles were dictated by rationing and Utility clothing. After the war, Christian Dior launched the New Look in Paris, returning women’s fashion to an overtly feminine silhouette, while men, women, and children’s clothing all began to lean towards the sporty, casual American Look.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt created numerous programs to provide relief to the unemployed and farmers. Franklin D. Roosevelt was also often referred to by his initials "FDR". Franklin D. Roosevelt also initiated the development of the world's first atomic bomb and worked with other allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. He previously served as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1932, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, and a member of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913.

Roosevelt attended Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School, going on to practice law in New York City. He won election to the New York State Senate in 1910 and then served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under president Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic Party's ticket in the 1920 United States presidential election, but Cox was defeated by Republican Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness that permanently paralyzed his legs. He returned to public office by winning the 1928 New York gubernatorial election. He served as governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, promoting programs to combat the Great Depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide.

During his first 100 days as president, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented federal legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal. He created numerous programs to provide relief to the unemployed and farmers while seeking economic recovery with the National Recovery Administration and other programs. He also instituted major regulatory reforms related to finance, communications, and labor, and presided over the end of Prohibition. In 1936, Roosevelt won a landslide reelection with the economy having improved rapidly from 1933, but the economy relapsed into a deep recession in 1937 and 1938. Later, Roosevelt unsuccessfully sought passage of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. The conservative coalition formed in 1937 to block the implementation of further New Deal programs and reforms. He ran successfully for reelection in 1940, becoming the only American president to serve for more than two terms.

With World War II looming after 1938 in addition to the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China as well as the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union while the United States remained officially neutral. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he obtained a declaration of war on Japan the next day, and a few days later, on Germany and Italy. He worked closely with other national leaders in leading the Allies against the Axis powers. Roosevelt supervised the mobilization of the American economy to support the war effort and implemented a Europe first strategy. He also initiated the development of the world's first atomic bomb and worked with the other Allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions. He won reelection in 1944 but with his physical health seriously and steadily declining during the war years, he died in 1945. Since his death, several of Roosevelt's actions have come under substantial criticism, such as his ordering of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Nonetheless, historical rankings consistently rank Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Early life and marriage

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, New York, to businessman James Roosevelt I and his second wife, Sara Ann Delano. His parents, who were sixth cousins, both came from wealthy, established New York families, the Roosevelts, the Aspinwalls and the Delanos, respectively. Roosevelt's paternal ancestor migrated to New Amsterdam in the 17th century, and the Roosevelts succeeded as merchants and landowners. The Delano family patriarch, Philip Delano, traveled to the New World on the in 1621, and the Delanos thrived as merchants and shipbuilders in Massachusetts. Franklin had a half-brother, James Roosevelt "Rosy" Roosevelt, from his father's previous marriage.

Their father graduated from Harvard Law School in 1851 but chose not to practice law after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather, James Roosevelt. Roosevelt's father, a prominent Bourbon Democrat, once took Franklin to meet President Grover Cleveland, who said to him: "My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be President of the United States." Franklin's mother, the dominant influence in his early years, once declared, "My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all." James, who was 54 when Franklin was born, was considered by some as a remote father, though biographer James MacGregor Burns indicates James interacted with his son more than was typical at the time.

Education and early career

As a child, Roosevelt learned to ride, shoot, and sail; he also learned to play polo, tennis, and golf. Frequent trips to Europe-beginning at age two and from age seven to fifteen-helped Roosevelt become conversant in German and French. Except for attending public school in Germany at age nine, Roosevelt was home-schooled by tutors until age 14. He then attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. He was not among the more popular Groton students, who were better athletes and had rebellious streaks. Its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Peabody remained a strong influence throughout Roosevelt's life, officiating at his wedding and visiting him as president.

Like most of his Groton classmates, Roosevelt went to Harvard College. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the Fly Club, and served as a school cheerleader. Roosevelt was relatively undistinguished as a student or athlete, but he became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper, a position that required ambition, energy, and the ability to manage others. He later said, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong."

Roosevelt's father died in 1900, causing great distress for him. The following year, Roosevelt's fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States. Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model and hero. He graduated from Harvard in three years in 1903 with an A.B. in history. He remained there for a fourth year, taking graduate courses and becoming an editor of the Harvard Crimson.

He entered Columbia Law School in 1904 but dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York Bar Examination. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, working in the firm's admiralty law division.

Marriage, family, and affairs

During his second year of college, he met and proposed to Boston heiress Alice Sohier, who turned him down. Franklin then began courting his child-acquaintance and fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903 Franklin proposed to Eleanor, and after resistance from his mother, they were married on March 17, 1905. Eleanor's father, Elliott, was deceased, and her uncle Theodore, then the president, gave away the bride. The young couple moved into Springwood, and Franklin and Sara Roosevelt also provided a townhouse for the couple in New York City, where Sara built a house alongside for herself. Eleanor never felt at home in the houses at Hyde Park or New York, but she loved the family's vacation home on Campobello Island, which Sara also gave the couple. Burns indicates young Roosevelt was self-assured and at ease in the upper class, while Eleanor was then shy and disliked social life, and initially stayed home to raise their children. As his father had, Franklin left the raising of the children to his wife, and Eleanor delegated it to caregivers. She later said she knew "absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby." Although Eleanor thought sex was "an ordeal to be endured", she and Franklin had six children. Anna, James, and Elliott were born in 1906, 1907, and 1910, respectively. The couple's second son, Franklin, died in infancy in 1909. Another son, also named Franklin, was born in 1914, and the youngest child, John, was born in 1916.

Roosevelt had several extra-marital affairs, including with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer, soon after she was hired in 1914, and discovered by Eleanor in 1918. Franklin contemplated divorcing Eleanor, but Sara objected, and Lucy would not marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and Roosevelt promised never to see Lucy again. Eleanor never forgave him, and their marriage became more of a political partnership. Eleanor soon established a separate home in Hyde Park at Val-Kill, and devoted herself to social and political causes independent of her husband. The emotional break in their marriage was so severe that when Roosevelt asked Eleanor in 1942-in light of his failing health-to come back home and live with him again, she refused. He was not always aware of when she visited the White House and for some time she could not easily reach him on the telephone without his secretary's help; Roosevelt, in turn, did not visit Eleanor's New York City apartment until late 1944.

Franklin broke his promise to Eleanor as he and Lucy maintained a formal correspondence, and began seeing each other again in 1941 or earlier. Roosevelt's son Elliott claimed that his father had a 20-year affair with his private secretary, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Another son, James, stated that "there is a real possibility that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, who resided in the White House during part of World War II. Aides began to refer to her at the time as "the president's girlfriend", and gossip linking the two romantically appeared in the newspapers.

Early political career (1910-1920)

New York state senator (1910-1913)

Roosevelt cared little for the practice of law and told friends he planned to enter politics. Despite his admiration for cousin Theodore, Franklin shared his father's bond with the Democratic Party, and in preparation for the 1910 elections, the party recruited Roosevelt to run for a seat in the New York State Assembly. Roosevelt was a compelling recruit for the party. He had the personality and energy for campaigning, and he had the money to pay for his own campaign. But Roosevelt's campaign for the state assembly ended after the Democratic incumbent, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, chose to seek re-election. Rather than putting his political hopes on hold, Roosevelt ran for a seat in the state senate. The senate district, located in Dutchess, Columbia, and Putnam, was strongly Republican. Roosevelt feared that opposition from Theodore could end his campaign, but Theodore encouraged his candidacy despite their party differences. Acting as his own campaign manager, Roosevelt traveled throughout the senate district via automobile at a time when few could afford a car. Due to his aggressive campaign, his name recognition in the Hudson Valley, and the Democratic landslide in the 1910 United States elections, Roosevelt won a surprising victory.

Despite short legislative sessions, Roosevelt treated his new position as a full-time career. Taking his seat on January 1, 1911, Roosevelt soon became the leader of a group of "Insurgents" in opposition to the Tammany Hall machine that dominated the state Democratic Party. In the 1911 U.S. Senate election, which was determined in a joint session of the New York state legislature, Roosevelt and nineteen other Democrats caused a prolonged deadlock by opposing a series of Tammany-backed candidates. Tammany threw its backing behind James A. O'Gorman, a highly regarded judge whom Roosevelt found acceptable, and O'Gorman won the election in late March. Roosevelt in the process became a popular figure among New York Democrats. News articles and cartoons depicted "the second coming of a Roosevelt", sending "cold shivers down the spine of Tammany".

Roosevelt opposed Tammany Hall by supporting New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson's successful bid for the 1912 Democratic nomination. The election became a three-way contest when Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican Party to launch a third party campaign against Wilson and sitting Republican President William Howard Taft. Franklin's decision to back Wilson over his cousin in the general election alienated some of his family, except Theodore. Roosevelt overcame a bout of typhoid fever, and with help from journalist Louis McHenry Howe, he was re-elected in the 1912 elections. After the election, he served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and his success with farm and labor bills was a precursor to his New Deal policies years later. He had then become more consistently progressive, in support of labor and social welfare programs.

Roosevelt's support of Wilson led to his appointment in March 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the second-ranking official in the Navy Department after Secretary Josephus Daniels who paid it little attention. Roosevelt had an affection for the Navy, was well-read on the subject, and was a most ardent supporter of a large, efficient force. With Wilson's support, Daniels and Roosevelt instituted a merit-based promotion system and made other reforms to extend civilian control over the autonomous departments of the Navy. Roosevelt oversaw the Navy's civilian employees and earned the respect of union leaders for his fairness in resolving disputes. No strikes occurred during his seven-plus years in the office, as he gained valuable experience in labor issues, wartime management, naval issues, and logistics.

In 1914, Roosevelt ran for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Elihu Root of New York. Though he had the backing of Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo and Governor Martin H. Glynn, he faced a formidable opponent in Tammany-Hall's James W. Gerard. He also was without Wilson's support, as the president needed Tammany's forces for his legislation and 1916 re-election. Roosevelt was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary by Gerard, who in turn lost the general election to Republican James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. He learned that federal patronage alone, without White House support, could not defeat a strong local organization. After the election, he and Tammany Hall boss, Charles Francis Murphy, sought accommodation and became allies.

Roosevelt refocused on the Navy Department, as World War I broke out in Europe in August 1914. Though he remained publicly supportive of Wilson, Roosevelt sympathized with the Preparedness Movement, whose leaders strongly favored the Allied Powers and called for a military build-up. The Wilson administration initiated an expansion of the Navy after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German submarine, and Roosevelt helped establish the United States Navy Reserve and the Council of National Defense. In April 1917, after Germany declared it would engage in unrestricted submarine warfare and attacked several U.S. ships, Congress approved Wilson's call for a declaration of war on Germany.

Roosevelt requested that he be allowed to serve as a naval officer, but Wilson insisted that he continue to serve as Assistant Secretary. For the next year, Roosevelt remained in Washington to coordinate the deployment of naval vessels and personnel, as the Navy expanded fourfold. In the summer of 1918, Roosevelt traveled to Europe to inspect naval installations and meet with French and British officials. In September, he returned to the United States on board the USS Leviathan. On the 11-day voyage, the pandemic influenza virus struck and killed many on board. Roosevelt became very ill with influenza and complicating pneumonia, but recovered by the time the ship landed in New York. After Germany signed an armistice in November 1918, Daniels and Roosevelt supervised the demobilization of the Navy. Against the advice of older officers such as Admiral William Benson-who claimed he could not "conceive of any use the fleet will ever have for aviation"-Roosevelt personally ordered the preservation of the Navy's Aviation Division. With the Wilson administration near an end, Roosevelt planned his next run for office. He approached Herbert Hoover about running for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination, with Roosevelt as his running mate.

Campaign for vice president (1920)

Roosevelt's plan for Hoover to run for the nomination fell through after Hoover publicly declared himself to be a Republican, but Roosevelt decided to seek the 1920 vice presidential nomination. After Governor James M. Cox of Ohio won the party's presidential nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, he chose Roosevelt as his running mate, and the convention nominated him by acclamation. Although his nomination surprised most people, he balanced the ticket as a moderate, a Wilsonian, and a prohibitionist with a famous name. Roosevelt, then 38, resigned as Assistant Secretary after the Democratic convention and campaigned across the nation for the party ticket.

During the campaign, Cox and Roosevelt defended the Wilson administration and the League of Nations, both of which were unpopular in 1920. Roosevelt personally supported U.S. membership in the League of Nations, but, unlike Wilson, he favored compromising with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other "Reservationists". The Cox-Roosevelt ticket was defeated by Republicans Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the presidential election by a wide margin, and the Republican ticket carried every state outside of the South. Roosevelt accepted the loss without issue and later reflected that the relationships and goodwill that he built in the 1920 campaign proved to be a major asset in his 1932 campaign. The 1920 election also saw the first public participation of Eleanor Roosevelt who, with the support of Louis Howe, established herself as a valuable political player.

Paralytic illness and political comeback (1921-1928)

After the election, Roosevelt returned to New York City, where he practiced law and served as a vice president of the Fidelity and Deposit Company. He also sought to build support for a political comeback in the 1922 elections, but his career was derailed by illness. While the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island in August 1921, he fell ill. His main symptoms were fever; symmetric, ascending paralysis; facial paralysis; bowel and bladder dysfunction; numbness and hyperesthesia; and a descending pattern of recovery. Roosevelt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down and was diagnosed with polio. Historians have noted a 2003 study strongly favoring a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome, but have continued to describe his paralysis according to the initial diagnosis.

Though his mother favored his retirement from public life, Roosevelt, his wife, and Roosevelt's close friend and adviser, Louis Howe, were all determined that he continue his political career. He convinced many people that he was improving, which he believed to be essential prior to run for public office again. He laboriously taught himself to walk short distances while wearing iron braces on his hips and legs by swiveling his torso, supporting himself with a cane. He was careful never to be seen using his wheelchair in public, and great care was taken to prevent any portrayal in the press that would highlight his disability. However, his disability was well known before and during his presidency and became a major part of his image. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons.

Beginning in 1925, Roosevelt spent most of his time in the Southern United States, at first on his houseboat, the Larooco. Intrigued by the potential benefits of hydrotherapy, he established a rehabilitation center at Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1926. To create the rehabilitation center, he assembled a staff of physical therapists and used most of his inheritance to purchase the Merriweather Inn. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines.

Roosevelt maintained contacts with the Democratic Party during the 1920s, and he remained active in New York politics while also establishing contacts in the South, particularly in Georgia. He issued an open letter endorsing Al Smith's successful campaign in New York's 1922 gubernatorial election, which both aided Smith and showed Roosevelt's continuing relevance as a political figure. Roosevelt and Smith came from different backgrounds and never fully trusted one another, but Roosevelt supported Smith's progressive policies, while Smith was happy to have the backing of the prominent and well-respected Roosevelt.

Roosevelt gave presidential nominating speeches for Smith at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic National Conventions; the speech at the 1924 convention marked a return to public life following his illness and convalescence. That year, the Democrats were badly divided between an urban wing, led by Smith, and a conservative, rural wing, led by William Gibbs McAdoo. On the 101st ballot, the nomination went to John W. Davis, a compromise candidate who suffered a landslide defeat in the 1924 presidential election. Like many others throughout the United States, Roosevelt did not abstain from alcohol during the Prohibition era, but publicly he sought to find a compromise on Prohibition acceptable to both wings of the party.

In 1925, Smith appointed Roosevelt to the Taconic State Park Commission, and his fellow commissioners chose him as chairman. In this role, he came into conflict with Robert Moses, a Smith protégé, who was the primary force behind the Long Island State Park Commission and the New York State Council of Parks. Roosevelt accused Moses of using the name recognition of prominent individuals including Roosevelt to win political support for state parks, but then diverting funds to the ones Moses favored on Long Island, while Moses worked to block the appointment of Howe to a salaried position as the Taconic commission's secretary. Roosevelt served on the commission until the end of 1928, and his contentious relationship with Moses continued as their careers progressed.

Peace was the catchword of the 1920s, and in 1923 Edward Bok established the $100,000 American Peace Award for the best plan to bring peace to the world. Roosevelt had leisure time and interest, and he drafted a plan for the contest. He never submitted it because his wife Eleanor Roosevelt was selected as a judge for the prize. His plan called for a new world organization that would replace the League of Nations. Although Roosevelt had been the vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket of 1920 that supported the League of Nations, by 1924 he was ready to scrap it. His draft of a "Society of Nations" accepted the reservations proposed by Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1919 Senate debate. The new Society would not become involved in the Western Hemisphere, where the Monroe doctrine held sway. It would not have any control over military forces. Although Roosevelt's plan was never made public, he thought about the problem a great deal and incorporated some of his 1924 ideas into the design for the United Nations in 1944-1945.

Governor of New York (1929-1932)

Smith, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1928 election, asked Roosevelt to run for governor of New York in the 1928 state election. Roosevelt initially resisted, as he was reluctant to leave Warm Springs and feared a Republican landslide in 1928. Party leaders eventually convinced him only he could defeat the Republican gubernatorial nominee, New York Attorney General Albert Ottinger. He won the party's gubernatorial nomination by acclamation and again turned to Howe to lead his campaign. Roosevelt was also joined on the campaign trail by associates Samuel Rosenman, Frances Perkins, and James Farley. While Smith lost the presidency in a landslide, and was defeated in his home state, Roosevelt was elected governor by a one-percent margin, and became a contender in the next presidential election.

Roosevelt proposed the construction of hydroelectric power plants and addressed the ongoing farm crisis of the 1920s. Relations between Roosevelt and Smith suffered after he chose not to retain key Smith appointees like Moses. He and his wife Eleanor established an understanding for the rest of his career; she would dutifully serve as the governor's wife but would also be free to pursue her own agenda and interests. He also began holding "fireside chats", in which he directly addressed his constituents via radio, often pressuring the New York State Legislature to advance his agenda.

In October 1929, the Wall Street Crash occurred, and with it came the Great Depression in the United States. Roosevelt saw the seriousness of the situation and established a state employment commission. He also became the first governor to publicly endorse the idea of unemployment insurance.

When Roosevelt began his run for a second term in May 1930, he reiterated his doctrine from the campaign two years before: "that progressive government by its very terms must be a living and growing thing, that the battle for it is never-ending and that if we let up for one single moment or one single year, not merely do we stand still but we fall back in the march of civilization." He ran on a platform that called for aid to farmers, full employment, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions. He was elected to a second term by a 14% margin.

Roosevelt proposed an economic relief package and the establishment of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to distribute those funds. Led first by Jesse I. Straus and then by Harry Hopkins, the agency assisted well over one-third of New York's population between 1932 and 1938. Roosevelt also began an investigation into corruption in New York City among the judiciary, the police force, and organized crime, prompting the creation of the Seabury Commission. The Seabury investigations exposed an extortion ring, led many public officials to be removed from office, and made the decline of Tammany Hall inevitable.

Roosevelt supported reforestation with the Hewitt Amendment in 1931, which gave birth to New York's State Forest system.

1932 presidential election

As the 1932 presidential election approached, Roosevelt turned his attention to national politics, established a campaign team led by Howe and Farley, and a " brain trust" of policy advisers, primarily composed of Columbia University and Harvard University professors. There were some who were not so sanguine about his chances, such as Walter Lippmann, the dean of political commentators, who observed of Roosevelt: "He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president."

However, Roosevelt's efforts as governor to address the effects of the depression in his own state established him as the front-runner for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. Roosevelt rallied the progressive supporters of the Wilson administration while also appealing to many conservatives, establishing himself as the leading candidate in the South and West. The chief opposition to Roosevelt's candidacy came from Northeastern conservatives, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas and Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee.

Roosevelt entered the convention with a delegate lead due to his success in the 1932 Democratic primaries, but most delegates entered the convention unbound to any particular candidate. On the first presidential ballot of the convention, Roosevelt received the votes of more than half but less than two-thirds of the delegates, with Smith finishing in a distant second place. Roosevelt then promised the vice-presidential nomination to Garner, who controlled the votes of Texas and California; Garner threw his support behind Roosevelt after the third ballot, and Roosevelt clinched the nomination on the fourth ballot. Roosevelt flew in from New York to Chicago after learning that he had won the nomination, becoming the first major-party presidential nominee to accept the nomination in person. His appearance was essential, to show himself as vigorous, despite the ravaging disease that disabled him physically.

In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt declared, "I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people... This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms." Roosevelt promised securities regulation, tariff reduction, farm relief, government-funded public works, and other government actions to address the Great Depression. Reflecting changing public opinion, the Democratic platform included a call for the repeal of Prohibition; Roosevelt himself had not taken a public stand on the issue prior to the convention but promised to uphold the party platform. Otherwise, Roosevelt's primary campaign strategy was one of caution, intent upon avoiding mistakes that would distract from Hoover's failings on the economy. His statements attacked the incumbent and included no other specific policies or programs.

After the convention, Roosevelt won endorsements from several progressive Republicans, including George W. Norris, Hiram Johnson, and Robert La Follette Jr. He also reconciled with the party's conservative wing, and even Al Smith was persuaded to support the Democratic ticket. Hoover's handling of the Bonus Army further damaged the incumbent's popularity, as newspapers across the country criticized the use of force to disperse assembled veterans.

Roosevelt won 57% of the popular vote and carried all but six states. Historians and political scientists consider the 1932-36 elections to be a political realignment. Roosevelt's victory was enabled by the creation of the New Deal coalition, small farmers, the Southern whites, Catholics, big city political machines, labor unions, northern African Americans (southern ones were still disfranchised), Jews, intellectuals, and political liberals. The creation of the New Deal coalition transformed American politics and started what political scientists call the "New Deal Party System" or the Fifth Party System. Between the Civil War and 1929, Democrats had rarely controlled both houses of Congress and had won just four of seventeen presidential elections; from 1932 to 1979, Democrats won eight of twelve presidential elections and generally controlled both houses of Congress.

Transition and assassination attempt

Roosevelt was elected in November 1932 but like his predecessors did not take office until the following March. After the election, President Hoover sought to convince Roosevelt to renounce much of his campaign platform and to endorse the Hoover administration's policies. Roosevelt refused Hoover's request to develop a joint program to stop the economic decline, claiming that it would tie his hands and that Hoover had the power to act.

During the transition, Roosevelt chose Howe as his chief of staff, and Farley as Postmaster General. Frances Perkins, as Secretary of Labor, became the first woman appointed to a cabinet position. William H. Woodin, a Republican industrialist close to Roosevelt, was the choice for Secretary of the Treasury, while Roosevelt chose Senator Cordell Hull of Tennessee as Secretary of State. Harold L. Ickes and Henry A. Wallace, two progressive Republicans, were selected for the roles of Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Agriculture, respectively.

In February 1933, Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Zangara, who expressed a "hate for all rulers." As he was attempting to shoot Roosevelt, Zangara was struck by a woman with her purse; he instead mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was sitting alongside Roosevelt.

Presidency (1933-1945)

As president, Roosevelt appointed powerful men to top positions but made all the major decisions, regardless of delays, inefficiency, or resentment. Analyzing the president's administrative style, Burns concludes:

The president stayed in charge of his administration...by drawing fully on his formal and informal powers as Chief Executive; by raising goals, creating momentum, inspiring a personal loyalty, getting the best out of people...by deliberately fostering among his aides a sense of competition and a clash of wills that led to disarray, heartbreak, and anger but also set off pulses of executive energy and sparks of creativity...by handing out one job to several men and several jobs to one man, thus strengthening his own position as a court of appeals, as a depository of information, and as a tool of co-ordination; by ignoring or bypassing collective decision-making agencies, such as the Cabinet...and always by persuading, flattering, juggling, improvising, reshuffling, harmonizing, conciliating, manipulating.

First and second terms (1933-1941)

When Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the U.S. was at the nadir of the worst depression in its history. A quarter of the workforce was unemployed, and farmers were in deep trouble as prices had fallen by 60%. Industrial production had fallen by more than half since 1929. Two million people were homeless. By the evening of March 4, 32 of the 48 states-as well as the District of Columbia-had closed their banks.

Historians categorized Roosevelt's program as "relief, recovery, and reform." Relief was urgently needed by tens of millions of unemployed. Recovery meant boosting the economy back to normal, and reform was required of the financial and banking systems. Through Roosevelt's series of fireside chats, he presented his proposals directly to the American public. Energized by his own victory over paralytic illness, he used persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit.

First New Deal (1933-1934)

On his second day in office, Roosevelt declared a four-day national "bank holiday", to end the run by depositors seeking to withdraw funds. He called for a special session of Congress on March 9, when Congress passed, almost sight unseen, the Emergency Banking Act. The act, first developed by the Hoover administration and Wall Street bankers, gave the president the power to determine the opening and closing of banks and authorized the Federal Reserve Banks to issue banknotes. The " first 100 Days" of the 73rd United States Congress saw an unprecedented amount of legislation and set a benchmark against which future presidents have been compared. When the banks reopened on Monday, March 15, stock prices rose by 15 percent and in the following weeks over $1 billion was returned to bank vaults, ending the bank panic. On March 22, Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which brought Prohibition to a close.

Roosevelt saw the establishment of a number of agencies and measures designed to provide relief for the unemployed and others. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, distributed relief to state governments. The Public Works Administration (PWA), under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, oversaw the construction of large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, and schools. The most popular of all New Deal agencies-and Roosevelt's favorite-was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which hired 250,000 unemployed men to work in rural projects. Roosevelt also expanded Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which financed railroads and industry. Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) broad regulatory powers and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners. Roosevelt also set up the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) to increase commodity prices, by paying farmers to leave land uncultivated and cut herds. In many instances, crops were plowed under and livestock killed, while many Americans died of hunger and were ill-clothed; critics labeled such policies "utterly idiotic." On the positive side, nothing did more to rescue the farm family from isolation than the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which brought electricity for the first time to millions of rural homes and with it such conveniences as radios and washing machines."

Reform of the economy was the goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. It sought to end cutthroat competition by forcing industries to establish rules such as minimum prices, agreements not to compete, and production restrictions. Industry leaders negotiated the rules with NIRA officials, who suspended antitrust laws in return for better wages. The Supreme Court in May 1935 declared NIRA unconstitutional by a unanimous decision, to Roosevelt's chagrin. He reformed financial regulations with the Glass-Steagall Act, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to underwrite savings deposits. The act also limited affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to regulate the trading of securities, while the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was established to regulate telecommunications.

Recovery was sought through federal spending, as the NIRA included $3.3 billion (equivalent to $74.6 billion in 2022) of spending through the Public Works Administration. Roosevelt worked with Senator Norris to create the largest government-owned industrial enterprise in American history-the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)-which built dams and power stations, controlled floods, and modernized agriculture and home conditions in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley. However, natives criticized the TVA for displacing thousands of people for these projects. The Soil Conservation Service trained farmers in the proper methods of cultivation, and with the TVA, Roosevelt became the father of soil conservation. Executive Order 6102 declared that all privately held gold of American citizens was to be sold to the U.S. Treasury and the price raised from $20 to $35 per ounce. The goal was to counter the deflation which was paralyzing the economy.

Roosevelt tried to keep his campaign promise by cutting the federal budget. This included a reduction in military spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934 and a 40% cut in spending on veterans benefits. 500,000 veterans and widows were removed from the pension rolls, and benefits were reduced for the remainder. Federal salaries were cut and spending on research and education was reduced. The veterans were well organized and strongly protested, so most benefits were restored or increased by 1934. Veterans groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars won their campaign to transform their benefits from payments due in 1945 to immediate cash when Congress overrode the President's veto and passed the Bonus Act in January 1936. It pumped sums equal to 2% of the GDP into the consumer economy and had a major stimulus effect.

Second New Deal (1935-1936)

Roosevelt expected that his party would lose seats in the 1934 Congressional elections, as the president's party had done in most previous midterm elections. Unexpectedly the Democrats picked up seats in both houses of Congress. Empowered by the public's vote of confidence, the first item on Roosevelt's agenda in the 74th Congress was the creation of a social insurance program. The Social Security Act established Social Security and promised economic security for the elderly, the poor, and the sick. Roosevelt insisted that it should be funded by payroll taxes rather than from the general fund, saying, "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program." Compared with the social security systems in western European countries, the Social Security Act of 1935 was rather conservative. But for the first time, the federal government took responsibility for the economic security of the aged, the temporarily unemployed, dependent children, and disabled people. Against Roosevelt's original intention for universal coverage, the act excluded farmers, domestic workers, and other groups, which made up about forty percent of the labor force.

Roosevelt consolidated the various relief organizations, though some, like the PWA, continued to exist. After winning Congressional authorization for further funding of relief efforts, he established the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, the WPA employed over three million people in its first year of operations. It undertook numerous massive construction projects in cooperation with local governments. It also set up the National Youth Administration and arts organizations.

The National Labor Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and suppress repeated labor disturbances. The act did not compel employers to reach an agreement with their employees, but it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions, especially in the mass-production sector. When the Flint sit-down strike threatened the production of General Motors, Roosevelt broke with the precedent set by many former presidents and refused to intervene; the strike ultimately led to the unionization of both General Motors and its rivals in the American automobile industry.

While the First New Deal of 1933 had broad support from most sectors, the Second New Deal challenged the business community. Conservative Democrats, led by Al Smith, fought back with the American Liberty League, savagely attacking Roosevelt and equating him with socialism. But Smith overplayed his hand, and his boisterous rhetoric let Roosevelt isolate his opponents and identify them with the wealthy vested interests that opposed the New Deal, strengthening Roosevelt for the 1936 landslide. By contrast, labor unions, energized by labor legislation, signed up millions of new members and became a major backer of Roosevelt's re-elections in 1936, 1940, and 1944.

Burns suggests that Roosevelt's policy decisions were guided more by pragmatism than ideology and that he "was like the general of a guerrilla army whose columns, fighting blindly in the mountains through dense ravines and thickets, suddenly converge, half by plan and half by coincidence, and debouch into the plain below." Roosevelt argued that such apparently haphazard methodology was necessary. "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation," he wrote. "It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Election of 1936

Eight million workers remained unemployed in 1936, and though economic conditions had improved since 1932, they remained sluggish. By 1936, Roosevelt had lost the backing he once held in the business community because of his support for the NLRB and the Social Security Act. The Republicans had few alternative candidates and nominated Kansas Governor Alf Landon, a little-known bland candidate whose chances were damaged by the public re-emergence of the still-unpopular Herbert Hoover. While Roosevelt campaigned on his New Deal programs and continued to attack Hoover, Landon sought to win voters who approved of the goals of the New Deal but disagreed with its implementation.

An attempt by Louisiana Senator Huey Long to organize a left-wing third party collapsed after Long's assassination in 1935. The remnants, helped by Father Charles Coughlin, supported William Lemke of the newly formed Union Party. Roosevelt won re-nomination with little opposition at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, while his allies overcame Southern resistance to permanently abolish the long-established rule that had required Democratic presidential candidates to win the votes of two-thirds of the delegates rather than a simple majority.

In the election against Landon and a third-party candidate, Roosevelt won 60.8% of the vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. The Democratic ticket won the highest proportion of the popular vote. Democrats also expanded their majorities in Congress, winning control of over three-quarters of the seats in each house. The election also saw the consolidation of the New Deal coalition; while the Democrats lost some of their traditional allies in big business, they were replaced by groups such as organized labor and African Americans, the latter of whom voted Democratic for the first time since the Civil War. Roosevelt lost high-income voters, especially businessmen and professionals, but made major gains among the poor and minorities. He won 86 percent of the Jewish vote, 81 percent of Catholics, 80 percent of union members, 76 percent of Southerners, 76 percent of blacks in northern cities, and 75 percent of people on relief. Roosevelt carried 102 of the country's 106 cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

Supreme Court fight and second term legislation

The Supreme Court became Roosevelt's primary domestic focus during his second term after the court overturned many of his programs, including NIRA. The more conservative members of the court upheld the principles of the Lochner era, which saw numerous economic regulations struck down on the basis of freedom of contract. Roosevelt proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have allowed him to appoint an additional Justice for each incumbent Justice over the age of 70; in 1937, there were six Supreme Court Justices over the age of 70. The size of the Court had been set at nine since the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1869, and Congress had altered the number of Justices six other times throughout U.S. history. Roosevelt's " court packing" plan ran into intense political opposition from his own party, led by Vice President Garner since it upset the separation of powers. A bipartisan coalition of liberals and conservatives of both parties opposed the bill, and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes broke with precedent by publicly advocating the defeat of the bill. Any chance of passing the bill ended with the death of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson in July 1937.

Starting with the 1937 case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the court began to take a more favorable view of economic regulations. Historians have described this as, "the switch in time that saved nine." That same year, Roosevelt appointed a Supreme Court Justice for the first time, and by 1941, seven of the nine Justices had been appointed by Roosevelt. After Parrish, the Court shifted its focus from judicial review of economic regulations to the protection of civil liberties. Four of Roosevelt's Supreme Court appointees, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, Hugo Black, and William O. Douglas, were particularly influential in reshaping the jurisprudence of the Court.

With Roosevelt's influence on the wane following the failure of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, conservative Democrats joined with Republicans to block the implementation of further New Deal programs. Roosevelt did manage to pass some legislation, including the Housing Act of 1937, a second Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, which was the last major piece of New Deal legislation. The FLSA outlawed child labor, established a federal minimum wage, and required overtime pay for certain employees who work in excess of forty-hours per week. He also won passage of the Reorganization Act of 1939 and subsequently created the Executive Office of the President, making it "the nerve center of the federal administrative system." When the economy began to deteriorate again in mid-1937, during the onset of the recession of 1937-1938, Roosevelt launched a rhetorical campaign against big business and monopoly power in the United States, alleging that the recession was the result of a capital strike and even ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look for a criminal conspiracy (of which they found none). He then asked Congress for $5 billion (equivalent to $101.78 billion in 2022) in relief and public works funding. This managed to eventually create as many as 3.3 million WPA jobs by 1938. Projects accomplished under the WPA ranged from new federal courthouses and post offices to facilities and infrastructure for national parks, bridges, and other infrastructure across the country, and architectural surveys and archaeological excavations-investments to construct facilities and preserve important resources. Beyond this, however, Roosevelt recommended to a special congressional session only a permanent national farm act, administrative reorganization, and regional planning measures, all of which were leftovers from a regular session. According to Burns, this attempt illustrated Roosevelt's inability to settle on a basic economic program.

Determined to overcome the opposition of conservative Democrats in Congress, Roosevelt became involved in the 1938 Democratic primaries, actively campaigning for challengers who were more supportive of New Deal reform. Roosevelt failed badly, managing to defeat only one of the ten targeted, a conservative Democrat from New York City. In the November 1938 elections, Democrats lost six Senate seats and 71 House seats, with losses concentrated among pro-New Deal Democrats. When Congress reconvened in 1939, Republicans under Senator Robert Taft formed a Conservative coalition with Southern Democrats, virtually ending Roosevelt's ability to enact his domestic proposals. Despite their opposition to Roosevelt's domestic policies, many of these conservative Congressmen would provide crucial support for Roosevelt's foreign policy before and during World War II.

Conservation and the environment

Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in the environment and conservation starting with his youthful interest in forestry on his family estate. Although he was never an outdoorsman or sportsman on Theodore Roosevelt's scale, his growth of the national systems was comparable. When Franklin was Governor of New York, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration was essentially a state-level predecessor of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps, with 10,000 or more men building fire trails, combating soil erosion and planting tree seedlings in marginal farmland in the state of New York. As President, Roosevelt was active in expanding, funding, and promoting the National Park and National Forest systems. Their popularity soared, from three million visitors a year at the start of the decade to 15.5 million in 1939. The Civilian Conservation Corps enrolled 3.4 million young men and built 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometres) of trails, planted two billion trees, and upgraded 125,000 miles (201,000 kilometres) of dirt roads. Every state had its own state parks, and Roosevelt made sure that WPA and CCC projects were set up to upgrade them as well as the national systems.

GNP and unemployment rates

Government spending increased from 8.0% of the gross national product (GNP) under Hoover in 1932 to 10.2% in 1936. The national debt as a percentage of the GNP had more than doubled under Hoover from 16% to 40% of the GNP in early 1933. It held steady at close to 40% as late as fall 1941, then grew rapidly during the war. The GNP was 34% higher in 1936 than in 1932 and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war. That is, the economy grew 58% from 1932 to 1940 in eight years of peacetime, and then grew 56% from 1940 to 1945 in five years of wartime. Unemployment fell dramatically during Roosevelt's first term. It increased in 1938 ("a depression within a depression") but continually declined after 1938. Total employment during Roosevelt's term expanded by 18.31 million jobs, with an average annual increase in jobs during his administration of 5.3%.

Foreign policy (1933-1941)

The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was a re-evaluation of U.S. policy toward Latin America. The United States frequently intervened in Latin America following the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, and the United States occupied several Latin American nations in the Banana Wars that occurred following the Spanish-American War of 1898. After Roosevelt took office, he withdrew U.S. forces from Haiti and reached new treaties with Cuba and Panama, ending their status as U.S. protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. Roosevelt also normalized relations with the Soviet Union, which the United States had refused to recognize since the 1920s. He hoped to renegotiate the Russian debt from World War I and open trade relations, but no progress was made on either issue and "both nations were soon disillusioned by the accord."

The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-1920 marked the dominance of isolationism in American foreign policy. Despite Roosevelt's Wilsonian background, he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull acted with great care not to provoke isolationist sentiment. The isolationist movement was bolstered in the early to mid-1930s by Senator Gerald Nye and others who succeeded in their effort to stop the "merchants of death" in the U.S. from selling arms abroad. This effort took the form of the Neutrality Acts; the president was refused a provision he requested giving him the discretion to allow the sale of arms to victims of aggression. He largely acquiesced to Congress's non-interventionist policies in the early-to-mid 1930s. In the interim, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini proceeded to overcome Ethiopia, and the Italians joined Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler in supporting General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. As that conflict drew to a close in early 1939, Roosevelt expressed regret in not aiding the Spanish Republicans. When Japan invaded China in 1937, isolationism limited Roosevelt's ability to aid China, despite atrocities like the Nanking Massacre and the USS Panay incident.

Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and soon turned its attention to its eastern neighbors. Roosevelt made it clear that, in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral. After completion of the Munich Agreement and the execution of Kristallnacht, American public opinion turned against Germany, and Roosevelt began preparing for a possible war with Germany. Relying on an interventionist political coalition of Southern Democrats and business-oriented Republicans, Roosevelt oversaw the expansion of U.S. airpower and war production capacity.

When World War II began in September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland and Britain and France's subsequent declaration of war upon Germany, Roosevelt sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. Isolationist leaders like Charles Lindbergh and Senator William Borah successfully mobilized opposition to Roosevelt's proposed repeal of the Neutrality Act, but Roosevelt won Congressional approval of the sale of arms on a cash-and-carry basis. He also began a regular secret correspondence with Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in September 1939-the first of 1,700 letters and telegrams between them. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 1940.

The Fall of France in June 1940 shocked the American public, and isolationist sentiment declined. In July 1940, Roosevelt appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy, respectively. Both parties gave support to his plans for a rapid build-up of the American military, but the isolationists warned that Roosevelt would get the nation into an unnecessary war with Germany. In July 1940, a group of Congressmen introduced a bill that would authorize the nation's first peacetime draft, and with the support of the Roosevelt administration, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 passed in September. The size of the army increased from 189,000 men at the end of 1939 to 1.4 million men in mid-1941. In September 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by reaching the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 WWI American destroyers to Britain.

Good Neighbor Policy

While working under President Wilson, Roosevelt had perpetuated ideas of American racial superiority by believing that the people of Latin American were uncapable of self-government. However, by 1928 he had switched his point of view, becoming an advocate for cooperation. This reflects how ideas of race and racial relations were changing at the time, and a country that was once deemed inferior to the U.S. was now seemingly on the same level.

The Great Depression meant that trade with foreign countries had suffered a massive blow, so the U.S. government were actively trying to find a way to compensate for it. In what can be considered to be one of the most significant changes of attitudes when it comes to inter-American relations, the United States decided it was now time for collaboration, resulting in a decreased role of the military in these countries.

In an effort to denounce past U.S. interventionism and subdue any subsequent fears of Latin Americans, Roosevelt announced on March 4, 1933, during his inaugural address, "In the field of World policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a World of neighbors." In order to create a friendly relationship between the United States and Central as well as South American countries, Roosevelt sought to abstain from asserting military force in the region. This position was affirmed by Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of State at a conference of American states in Montevideo in December 1933. Hull said: "No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." Roosevelt then confirmed the policy in December of the same year: "The definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention."

The fact that the policy was even put into place meant that the U.S. now recognised the maturity of Latin American countries and as a result were now more open to working together, especially when it comes to maintaining the peace. Racial ideas were now changing, and the Good Neighbor Policy certainly reflected it. By going from attempting to assert domination over what were considered to be inferior countries incapable of self-government to wanting to collaborate in a manner that appeared to put all parties as equals, the United States' preconceived notions of racial superiority towards other countries were slowly but surely disappearing.

The policy, in the end, was yet another way for the U.S. to assert its own superiority. Although it appeared to give the impression that it wanted to collaborate with other nations, ones that were previously though to be far inferior and in need of civilisation, it was simply another step towards bringing other countries under the U.S.'s wing, an attempt at establishing an ideological and economic empire.

Election of 1940

In the months prior to the July 1940 Democratic National Convention, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would run for an unprecedented third term. The president was silent, and even his closest advisors were in the dark. The two-term tradition, although not yet enshrined in the Constitution, had been established by George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in the 1796 presidential election. Roosevelt refused to give a definitive statement as to his willingness to be a candidate again, and he even indicated to some ambitious Democrats, such as James Farley, that he would not run for a third term and that they could seek the Democratic nomination. Farley and Vice President John Garner were not pleased with Roosevelt's decision to break from Washington's precedent. As Germany swept through Western Europe and menaced Britain in mid-1940, Roosevelt decided that only he had the necessary experience and skills to see the nation safely through the Nazi threat. He was aided by the party's political bosses, who feared that no Democrat except Roosevelt could defeat Wendell Willkie, the popular Republican nominee.

At the July 1940 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and Vice President Garner, who had turned against Roosevelt in his second term because of his liberal economic and social policies. To replace Garner on the ticket, Roosevelt turned to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace of Iowa, a former Republican who strongly supported the New Deal and was popular in farm states. The choice was strenuously opposed by many of the party's conservatives, who felt Wallace was too radical and "eccentric" in his private life to be an effective running mate. But Roosevelt insisted that without Wallace on the ticket he would decline re-nomination, and Wallace won the vice-presidential nomination, defeating Speaker of the House William B. Bankhead and other candidates.

A late August poll taken by Gallup found the race to be essentially tied, but Roosevelt's popularity surged in September following the announcement of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. Willkie supported much of the New Deal as well as rearmament and aid to Britain but warned that Roosevelt would drag the country into another European war. Responding to Willkie's attacks, Roosevelt promised to keep the country out of the war. Over its last month, the campaign degenerated into a series of outrageous accusations and mud-slinging, if not by the two candidates themselves then by their respective parties. Roosevelt won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote, 38 of the 48 states, and almost 85% of the electoral vote.

Third and fourth terms (1941-1945)

World War II dominated Roosevelt's attention, with far more time devoted to world affairs than ever before. Domestic politics and relations with Congress were largely shaped by his efforts to achieve total mobilization of the nation's economic, financial, and institutional resources for the war effort. Even relationships with Latin America and Canada were structured by wartime demands. Roosevelt maintained close personal control of all major diplomatic and military decisions, working closely with his generals and admirals, the war and Navy departments, the British, and even the Soviet Union. His key advisors on diplomacy were Harry Hopkins (who was based in the White House), Sumner Welles (based in the State Department), and Henry Morgenthau Jr. at Treasury. In military affairs, Roosevelt worked most closely with Secretary Henry L. Stimson at the War Department, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, and Admiral William D. Leahy.

Lead-up to the war

By late 1940, re-armament was in high gear, partly to expand and re-equip the Army and Navy and partly to become the " Arsenal of Democracy" for Britain and other countries. With his Four Freedoms speech in January 1941, Roosevelt laid out the case for an Allied battle for basic rights throughout the world. Assisted by Willkie, Roosevelt won Congressional approval of the Lend-Lease program, which directed massive military and economic aid to Britain, and China. In sharp contrast to the loans of World War I, there would be no repayment after the war. As Roosevelt took a firmer stance against Japan, Germany, and Italy, American isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee vehemently attacked Roosevelt as an irresponsible warmonger. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt agreed to extend Lend-Lease to the Soviets. Thus, Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war." By July 1941, Roosevelt authorized the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) to counter perceived propaganda efforts in Latin America by Germany and Italy.

In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill conducted a highly secret bilateral meeting in which they drafted the Atlantic Charter, conceptually outlining global wartime and postwar goals. This would be the first of several wartime conferences; Churchill and Roosevelt would meet ten more times in person. Though Churchill pressed for an American declaration of war against Germany, Roosevelt believed that Congress would reject any attempt to bring the United States into the war. In September, a German submarine fired on the U.S. destroyer Greer, and Roosevelt declared that the U.S. Navy would assume an escort role for Allied convoys in the Atlantic as far east as Great Britain and would fire upon German ships or submarines ( U-boats) of the Kriegsmarine if they entered the U.S. Navy zone. According to historian George Donelson Moss, Roosevelt "misled" Americans by reporting the Greer incident as if it would have been an unprovoked German attack on a peaceful American ship. This "shoot on sight" policy effectively declared naval war on Germany and was favored by Americans by a margin of 2-to-1.

Pearl Harbor and declarations of war

After the German invasion of Poland, the primary concern of both Roosevelt and his top military staff was on the war in Europe, but Japan also presented foreign policy challenges. Relations with Japan had continually deteriorated since its invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and they had further worsened with Roosevelt's support of China. With the war in Europe occupying the attention of the major colonial powers, Japanese leaders eyed vulnerable colonies such as the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and British Malaya. After Roosevelt announced a $100 million loan (equivalent to $2.1 billion in 2022) to China in reaction to Japan's occupation of northern French Indochina, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The pact bound each country to defend the others against attack, and Germany, Japan, and Italy became known as the Axis powers. Overcoming those who favored invading the Soviet Union, the Japanese Army high command successfully advocated for the conquest of Southeast Asia to ensure continued access to raw materials. In July 1941, after Japan occupied the remainder of French Indochina, Roosevelt cut off the sale of oil to Japan, depriving Japan of more than 95 percent of its oil supply. He also placed the Philippine military under American command and reinstated General Douglas MacArthur into active duty to command U.S. forces in the Philippines.

The Japanese were incensed by the embargo and Japanese leaders became determined to attack the United States unless it lifted the embargo. The Roosevelt administration was unwilling to reverse the policy, and Secretary of State Hull blocked a potential summit between Roosevelt and Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe. After diplomatic efforts to end the embargo failed, the Privy Council of Japan authorized a strike against the United States. The Japanese believed that the destruction of the United States Asiatic Fleet (stationed in the Philippines) and the United States Pacific Fleet (stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii) was vital to the conquest of Southeast Asia. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor with a surprise attack, knocking out the main American battleship fleet and killing 2,403 American servicemen and civilians. At the same time, separate Japanese task forces attacked Thailand, British Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other targets. Roosevelt called for war in his " Infamy Speech" to Congress, in which he said: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941-a date which will live in infamy-the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." In a nearly unanimous vote, Congress declared war on Japan. After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, antiwar sentiment in the United States largely evaporated overnight. On December 11, 1941, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the United States, which responded in kind.

A majority of scholars have rejected the conspiracy theories that Roosevelt, or any other high government officials, knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had kept their secrets closely guarded. Senior American officials were aware that war was imminent, but they did not expect an attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt had expected that the Japanese would attack either the Dutch East Indies or Thailand.

In late December 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Arcadia Conference, which established a joint strategy between the U.S. and Britain. Both agreed on a Europe first strategy that prioritized the defeat of Germany before Japan. The U.S. and Britain established the Combined Chiefs of Staff to coordinate military policy and the Combined Munitions Assignments Board to coordinate the allocation of supplies. An agreement was also reached to establish a centralized command in the Pacific theater called ABDA, named for the American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces in the theater. On January 1, 1942, the United States, Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and twenty-two other countries (the Allied Powers) issued the Declaration by United Nations, in which each nation pledged to defeat the Axis powers.

In 1942, Roosevelt formed a new body, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which made the final decisions on American military strategy. Admiral Ernest J. King as Chief of Naval Operations commanded the Navy and Marines, while General George C. Marshall led the Army and was in nominal control of the Air Force, which in practice was commanded by General Hap Arnold. The Joint Chiefs were chaired by Admiral William D. Leahy, the most senior officer in the military. Roosevelt avoided micromanaging the war and let his top military officers make most decisions. Roosevelt's civilian appointees handled the draft and procurement of men and equipment, but no civilians-not even the secretaries of War or Navy-had a voice in strategy. Roosevelt avoided the State Department and conducted high-level diplomacy through his aides, especially Harry Hopkins, whose influence was bolstered by his control of the Lend Lease funds.

Nuclear program

In August 1939, Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein sent the Einstein-Szilárd letter to Roosevelt, warning of the possibility of a German project to develop nuclear weapons. Szilard realized that the recently discovered process of nuclear fission could be used to create a nuclear chain reaction that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Roosevelt feared the consequences of allowing Germany to have sole possession of the technology and authorized preliminary research into nuclear weapons. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration secured the funds needed to continue research and selected General Leslie Groves to oversee the Manhattan Project, which was charged with developing the first nuclear weapons. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to jointly pursue the project, and Roosevelt helped ensure that American scientists cooperated with their British counterparts.

Wartime conferences

Roosevelt coined the term " Four Policemen" to refer to the "Big Four" Allied powers of World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The " Big Three" of Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, together with Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, cooperated informally on a plan in which American and British troops concentrated in the West; Soviet troops fought on the Eastern front; and Chinese, British and American troops fought in Asia and the Pacific. The United States also continued to send aid via the Lend-Lease program to the Soviet Union and other countries. The Allies formulated strategy in a series of high-profile conferences as well as by contact through diplomatic and military channels. Beginning in May 1942, the Soviets urged an Anglo-American invasion of German-occupied France in order to divert troops from the Eastern front. Concerned that their forces were not yet ready for an invasion of France, Churchill and Roosevelt decided to delay such an invasion until at least 1943 and instead focus on a landing in North Africa, known as Operation Torch.

In November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to discuss strategy and post-war plans at the Tehran Conference, where Roosevelt met Stalin for the first time. At the conference, Britain and the United States committed to opening a second front against Germany in 1944, while Stalin committed to entering the war against Japan at an unspecified date. Subsequent conferences at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks established the framework for the post-war international monetary system and the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization similar to the failed League of Nations. Taking up the Wilsonian mantle, Roosevelt pushed as his highest postwar priority the establishment of the United Nations. Roosevelt expected it would be controlled by Washington, Moscow, London and Beijing, and would resolve all major world problems.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for a second time at the February 1945 Yalta Conference in Crimea. With the end of the war in Europe approaching, Roosevelt's primary focus was on convincing Stalin to enter the war against Japan; the Joint Chiefs had estimated that an American invasion of Japan would cause as many as one million American casualties. In return for the Soviet Union's entrance into the war against Japan, the Soviet Union was promised control of Asian territories such as Sakhalin Island. The three leaders agreed to hold a conference in 1945 to establish the United Nations, and they also agreed on the structure of the United Nations Security Council, which would be charged with ensuring international peace and security. Roosevelt did not push for the immediate evacuation of Soviet soldiers from Poland, but he won the issuance of the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which promised free elections in countries that had been occupied by Germany. Germany itself would not be dismembered but would be jointly occupied by the United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Against Soviet pressure, Roosevelt and Churchill refused to consent to impose huge reparations and deindustrialization on Germany after the war. Roosevelt's role in the Yalta Conference has been controversial; critics charge that he naively trusted the Soviet Union to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, while supporters argue that there was little more that Roosevelt could have done for the Eastern European countries given the Soviet occupation and the need for cooperation with the Soviet Union during and after the war.

Course of the war

The Allies invaded French North Africa in November 1942, securing the surrender of Vichy French forces within days of landing. At the January 1943 Casablanca Conference, the Allies agreed to defeat Axis forces in North Africa and then launch an invasion of Sicily, with an attack on France to take place in 1944. At the conference, Roosevelt also announced that he would only accept the unconditional surrender of Germany, Japan, and Italy. In February 1943, the Soviet Union won a major victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, and in May 1943, the Allies secured the surrender of over 250,000 German and Italian soldiers in North Africa, ending the North African Campaign. The Allies launched an invasion of Sicily in July 1943, capturing the island by the end of the following month. In September 1943, the Allies secured an armistice from Italian Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio, but Germany quickly restored Mussolini to power. The Allied invasion of mainland Italy commenced in September 1943, but the Italian Campaign continued until 1945 as German and Italian troops resisted the Allied advance.

To command the invasion of France, Roosevelt chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had successfully commanded a multinational coalition in North Africa and Sicily. Eisenhower chose to launch Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. Supported by 12,000 aircraft and the largest naval force ever assembled, the Allies successfully established a beachhead in Normandy and then advanced further into France. Though reluctant to back an unelected government, Roosevelt recognized Charles de Gaulle's Provisional Government of the French Republic as the de facto government of France in July 1944. After most of France had been liberated from German occupation, Roosevelt granted formal recognition to de Gaulle's government in October 1944. Over the following months, the Allies liberated more territory from Nazi occupation and began the invasion of Germany. By April 1945, Nazi resistance was crumbling in the face of advances by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

In the opening weeks of the war, Japan conquered the Philippines and the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. The Japanese advance reached its maximum extent by June 1942, when the U.S. Navy scored a decisive victory at the Battle of Midway. American and Australian forces then began a slow and costly strategy called island hopping or leapfrogging through the Pacific Islands, with the objective of gaining bases from which strategic airpower could be brought to bear on Japan and from which Japan could ultimately be invaded. In contrast to Hitler, Roosevelt took no direct part in the tactical naval operations, though he approved strategic decisions. Roosevelt gave way in part to insistent demands from the public and Congress that more effort be devoted against Japan, but he always insisted on Germany first. The strength of the Japanese navy was decimated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and by April 1945 the Allies had re-captured much of their lost territory in the Pacific.

The home front was subject to dynamic social changes throughout the war, though domestic issues were no longer Roosevelt's most urgent policy concern. The military buildup spurred economic growth. Unemployment fell in half from 7.7 million in spring 1940 to 3.4 million in fall 1941 and fell in half again to 1.5 million in fall 1942, out of a labor force of 54 million. There was a growing labor shortage, accelerating the second wave of the Great Migration of African Americans, farmers and rural populations to manufacturing centers. African Americans from the South went to California and other West Coast states for new jobs in the defense industry. To pay for increased government spending, in 1941 Roosevelt proposed that Congress enact an income tax rate of 99.5% on all income over $100,000; when the proposal failed, he issued an executive order imposing an income tax of 100% on income over $25,000, which Congress rescinded. The Revenue Act of 1942 instituted top tax rates as high as 94% (after accounting for the excess profits tax), greatly increased the tax base, and instituted the first federal withholding tax. In 1944, Roosevelt requested that Congress enact legislation which would tax all "unreasonable" profits, both corporate and individual, and thereby support his declared need for over $10 billion in revenue for the war and other government measures. Congress overrode Roosevelt's veto to pass a smaller revenue bill raising $2 billion.

In 1942, with the United States now in the conflict, war production increased dramatically but fell short of the goals established by the president, due in part to manpower shortages. The effort was also hindered by numerous strikes, especially among union workers in the coal mining and railroad industries, which lasted well into 1944. Nonetheless, between 1941 and 1945, the United States produced 2.4 million trucks, 300,000 military aircraft, 88,400 tanks, and 40 billion rounds of ammunition. The production capacity of the United States dwarfed that of other countries; for example, in 1944, the United States produced more military aircraft than the combined production of Germany, Japan, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The White House became the ultimate site for labor mediation, conciliation or arbitration. One particular battle royale occurred between Vice President Wallace, who headed the Board of Economic Warfare, and Jesse H. Jones, in charge of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; both agencies assumed responsibility for the acquisition of rubber supplies and came to loggerheads over funding. Roosevelt resolved the dispute by dissolving both agencies. In 1943, Roosevelt established the Office of War Mobilization to oversee the home front; the agency was led by James F. Byrnes, who came to be known as the "assistant president" due to his influence.

Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union Address advocated that Americans should think of basic economic rights as a Second Bill of Rights. He stated that all Americans should have the right to "adequate medical care", "a good education", "a decent home", and a "useful and remunerative job". In the most ambitious domestic proposal of his third term, Roosevelt proposed the G.I. Bill, which would create a massive benefits program for returning soldiers. Benefits included post-secondary education, medical care, unemployment insurance, job counseling, and low-cost loans for homes and businesses. The G.I. Bill passed unanimously in both houses of Congress and was signed into law in June 1944. Of the fifteen million Americans who served in World War II, more than half benefitted from the educational opportunities provided for in the G.I. Bill.

Declining health

Roosevelt, a chain-smoker throughout his entire adult life, had been in declining physical health since at least 1940. In March 1944, shortly after his 62nd birthday, he underwent testing at Bethesda Hospital and was found to have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease causing angina pectoris, and congestive heart failure.

Hospital physicians and two outside specialists ordered Roosevelt to rest. His personal physician, Admiral Ross McIntire, created a daily schedule that banned business guests for lunch and incorporated two hours of rest each day. During the 1944 re-election campaign, McIntire denied several times that Roosevelt's health was poor; on October 12, for example, he announced that "The President's health is perfectly OK. There are absolutely no organic difficulties at all." Roosevelt realized that his declining health could eventually make it impossible for him to continue as president, and in 1945 he told a confidant that he might resign from the presidency following the end of the war.

Election of 1944

While some Democrats had opposed Roosevelt's nomination in 1940, the president faced little difficulty in securing his re-nomination at the 1944 Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt made it clear before the convention that he was seeking another term, and on the lone presidential ballot of the convention, Roosevelt won the vast majority of delegates, although a minority of Southern Democrats voted for Harry F. Byrd. Party leaders prevailed upon Roosevelt to drop Vice President Wallace from the ticket, believing him to be an electoral liability and a poor potential successor in case of Roosevelt's death. Roosevelt preferred Byrnes as Wallace's replacement but was convinced to support Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, who had earned renown for his investigation of war production inefficiency and was acceptable to the various factions of the party. On the second vice presidential ballot of the convention, Truman defeated Wallace to win the nomination.

The Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, who had a reputation as a liberal in his party. They accused the Roosevelt administration of domestic corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, but Dewey's most effective gambit was to raise discreetly the age issue. He assailed the President as a "tired old man" with "tired old men" in his cabinet, pointedly suggesting that the President's lack of vigor had produced a less than vigorous economic recovery. Roosevelt, as most observers could see from his weight loss and haggard appearance, was a tired man in 1944. But upon entering the campaign in earnest in late September 1944, Roosevelt displayed enough passion and fight to allay most concerns and to deflect Republican attacks. With the war still raging, he urged voters not to "change horses in mid-stream." Labor unions, which had grown rapidly in the war, fully supported Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Truman won the 1944 election by a comfortable margin, defeating Dewey and his running mate John W. Bricker with 53.4% of the popular vote and 432 out of the 531 electoral votes. The president campaigned in favor of a strong United Nations, so his victory symbolized support for the nation's future participation in the international community.

Final months and death

When Roosevelt returned to the United States from the Yalta Conference, many were shocked to see how old, thin and frail he looked. He spoke while seated in the well of the House, an unprecedented concession to his physical incapacity. During March 1945, he sent strongly worded messages to Stalin accusing him of breaking his Yalta commitments over Poland, Germany, prisoners of war and other issues. When Stalin accused the western Allies of plotting behind his back a separate peace with Hitler, Roosevelt replied: "I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment towards your informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my actions or those of my trusted subordinates." On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations.

In the afternoon of April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia, while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, Roosevelt said: "I have a terrific headache." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, diagnosed the medical emergency as a massive intracerebral hemorrhage. At 3:35 p.m. that day, Roosevelt died at the age of 63.

The following morning, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train for the trip back to Washington. Along the route, thousands flocked to the tracks to pay their respects. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported by train from Washington, D.C., to his place of birth at Hyde Park. On April 15 he was buried, per his wish, in the rose garden of his Springwood estate.

Roosevelt's declining physical health had been kept secret from the public. His death was met with shock and grief across the world. Germany surrendered during the 30-day mourning period, but Harry Truman (who had succeeded Roosevelt as president) ordered flags to remain at half-staff; he also dedicated Victory in Europe Day and its celebrations to Roosevelt's memory. World War II finally ended with the signed surrender of Japan in September.

Civil rights, repatriation, internment, and the Jews

Roosevelt was viewed as a hero by many African Americans, Catholics, and Jews, and he was highly successful in attracting large majorities of these voters into his New Deal coalition. From 1933 to 1939 Roosevelt continued the Mexican Repatriation policies of Hoover, which scholars today contend was a form of ethnic cleansing towards Mexican Americans. Over one million Mexican Americans were deported to Mexico in the 1930s even though over sixty percent of them were born in the United States. Mexican Americans were the only group explicitly excluded from New Deal benefits. The deprival of due process for Mexican Americans is cited as a precedent for Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. Roosevelt won strong support from Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans, but not Japanese Americans, as he presided over their internment during the war. African Americans and Native Americans fared well in two New Deal relief programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Indian Reorganization Act, respectively. Sitkoff reports that the WPA "provided an economic floor for the whole black community in the 1930s, rivaling both agriculture and domestic service as the chief source" of income.

Roosevelt stopped short of joining NAACP leaders in pushing for federal anti- lynching legislation, as he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass and that his support for it would alienate Southern congressmen. He did, however, appoint a " Black Cabinet" of African American advisers to advise on race relations and African American issues, and he publicly denounced lynching as "murder". First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt vocally supported efforts designed to aid the African American community, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped boost wages for nonwhite workers in the South. In 1941, Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to implement Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial and religious discrimination in employment among defense contractors. The FEPC was the first national program directed against employment discrimination, and it played a major role in opening up new employment opportunities to non-white workers. During World War II, the proportion of African American men employed in manufacturing positions rose significantly. In response to Roosevelt's policies, African Americans increasingly defected from the Republican Party during the 1930s and 1940s, becoming an important Democratic voting bloc in several Northern states.

Japanese-Americans

The attack on Pearl Harbor raised concerns in the public regarding the possibility of sabotage by Japanese Americans. This suspicion was fed by long-standing racism against Japanese immigrants, as well as the findings of the Roberts Commission, which concluded that the attack on Pearl Harbor had been assisted by Japanese spies. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which relocated 110,000 Japanese-American citizens and immigrants, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast. They were forced to liquidate their properties and businesses and interned in hastily built camps in interior, harsh locations. Distracted by other issues, Roosevelt had delegated the decision for internment to Secretary of War Stimson, who in turn relied on the judgment of Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the executive order in the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States. Many German and Italian citizens were also arrested or placed into internment camps.

There is controversy among historians about Roosevelt's attitude to Jews and the Holocaust. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. says Roosevelt "did what he could do" to help Jews; David Wyman says Roosevelt's record on Jewish refugees and their rescue is "very poor" and one of the worst failures of his presidency. In 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at Harvard University and helped institute a quota to limit the number of Jews admitted to Harvard. After Kristallnacht in 1938, Roosevelt had his ambassador to Germany recalled back to Washington. He did not loosen immigration quotas but did allow German Jews already in the US on visas to stay indefinitely. According to Rafael Medoff, the US president could have saved 190,000 Jewish lives by telling his State Department to fill immigration quotas to the legal limit, but his administration discouraged and disqualified Jewish refugees based on its prohibitive requirements that left less than 25% of the quotas filled.

Hitler chose to implement the " Final Solution"-the extermination of the European Jewish population-by January 1942, and American officials learned of the scale of the Nazi extermination campaign in the following months. Against the objections of the State Department, Roosevelt convinced the other Allied leaders to jointly issue the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations, which condemned the ongoing Holocaust and warned to try its perpetrators as war criminals. In 1943, Roosevelt told U.S. government officials that there should be limits on Jews in various professions to "eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany." The same year, Roosevelt was personally briefed by Polish Home Army intelligence agent Jan Karski who was an eyewitness of the Holocaust; pleading for action, Karski told him that 1.8 million Jews had already been exterminated. Karski recalled that in response, Roosevelt "did not ask one question about the Jews." In January 1944, Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board to aid Jews and other victims of Axis atrocities. Aside from these actions, Roosevelt believed that the best way to help the persecuted populations of Europe was to end the war as quickly as possible. Top military leaders and War Department leaders rejected any campaign to bomb the extermination camps or the rail lines leading to the camps, fearing it would be a diversion from the war effort. According to biographer Jean Edward Smith, there is no evidence that anyone ever proposed such a campaign to Roosevelt.

Historical reputation

Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of the United States, as well as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Historians and political scientists consistently rank Roosevelt, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln as the three greatest presidents, although the order varies. Reflecting on Roosevelt's presidency, "which brought the United States through the Great Depression and World War II to a prosperous future", biographer Jean Edward Smith said in 2007, "He lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift the nation from its knees."

His commitment to the working class and unemployed in need of relief in the nation's longest recession made him a favorite of the blue collar workers, labor unions, and ethnic minorities. The rapid expansion of government programs that occurred during Roosevelt's term redefined the role of the government in the United States, and Roosevelt's advocacy of government social programs was instrumental in redefining liberalism for coming generations. Roosevelt firmly established the United States' leadership role on the world stage, with his role in shaping and financing World War II. His isolationist critics faded away, and even the Republicans joined in his overall policies. He also created a new understanding of the presidency, permanently increasing the power of the president at the expense of Congress.

His Second Bill of Rights became, according to historian Joshua Zeitz, "the basis of the Democratic Party's aspirations for the better part of four decades." After his death, his widow, Eleanor, continued to be a forceful presence in U.S. and world politics, serving as delegate to the conference which established the United Nations and championing civil rights and liberalism generally. Some junior New Dealers played leading roles in the presidencies of Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy came from a Roosevelt-hating family. Historian William Leuchtenburg says that before 1960, "Kennedy showed a conspicuous lack of inclination to identify himself as a New Deal liberal." He adds, as president, "Kennedy never wholly embraced the Roosevelt tradition and at times he deliberately severed himself from it." By contrast, young Lyndon Johnson had been an enthusiastic New Dealer and a favorite of Roosevelt. Johnson modelled his presidency on Roosevelt's and relied heavily on New Deal lawyer Abe Fortas, as well as James H. Rowe, Anna M. Rosenberg, Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, and Benjamin V. Cohen.

During his presidency, and continuing to a lesser extent afterwards, there has been much criticism of Roosevelt, some of it intense. Critics have questioned not only his policies, positions, and the consolidation of power that occurred due to his responses to the crises of the Depression and World War II but also his breaking with tradition by running for a third term as president. Long after his death, new lines of attack criticized Roosevelt's policies regarding helping the Jews of Europe, incarcerating the Japanese on the West Coast, and opposing anti-lynching legislation.

Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park is now a National Historic Site and home to his Presidential library. Washington, D.C., hosts two memorials to the former president. The largest, the -acre (3-hectare) Roosevelt Memorial, is located next to the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin. A more modest memorial, a block of marble in front of the National Archives building suggested by Roosevelt himself, was erected in 1965. Roosevelt's leadership in the March of Dimes is one reason he is commemorated on the American dime. Roosevelt has also appeared on several U.S. Postage stamps. On April 29, 1945, seventeen days after Roosevelt's death, the carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt was launched and served from 1945 to 1977. London's Westminster Abbey also has a stone tablet memorial to President Roosevelt that was unveiled by Attlee and Churchill in 1948. Roosevelt Island was renamed after Roosevelt in September 1973.

1. ^ Leuchtenburg, William E. (October 4, 2016). "Franklin D. Roosevelt: Life Before the Presidency". Miller Center of Public Affairs.

2. ^ "Lucy Page Mercer Rutherfurd". Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. Archived from the original on March 4, 2010.

3. ^ Goldman AS, Schmalstieg EJ, Freeman DH, Goldman DA, Schmalstieg FC (2003). "What was the cause of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's paralytic illness?" (PDF). Journal of Medical Biography. 11 (4): 232-40. doi:10.1177/096777200301100412. PMID 14562158. S2CID 39957366. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 30, 2012.

4. ^ Hausman, Joshua K. (April 2016). "Fiscal Policy and Economic Recovery: The Case of the 1936 Veterans' Bonus" (PDF). American Economic Review. 106 (4): 1100-43. doi:10.1257/aer.20130957. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 31, 2014.

5. ^ Kalman, Laura (October 2005). "The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the New Deal". The American Historical Review. 110 (4): 1052-80. doi:10.1086/ahr.110.4.1052.

6. Leuchtenburg, E. (1996). ^ The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511131-1

7. ^ Blake, John (December 14, 2010). "How FDR unleashed his Supreme Court 'scorpions'". CNN.

8. ^ Maher, Neil M. (July 2002). "A New Deal Body Politic: Landscape, Labor, and the Civilian Conservation Corps" (PDF). Environmental History. 7 (3): 435-61. doi:10.2307/3985917. JSTOR 3985917. S2CID 144800756. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 2, 2016.

9. Margo, Robert A. (Spring 1993). "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 7 (2): 42-43. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.627.1613. doi:10.1257/jep.7.2.41. S2CID 26369842.

10. Friedman, Max Paul (January 24, 2018). "The Good Neighbor Policy". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.222. ISBN 978-0-19-936643-9.

11. ^ Nixon, Edgar B (ed.). Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. pp. 559-560. LCCN 68025617.

12. ^ Charles, Douglas M. (Spring 2000). "Informing FDR: FBI Political Surveillance and the Isolationist-Interventionist Foreign Policy". Diplomatic History. 24 (2): 211-32. doi:10.1111/0145-2096.00210.

13. ^ Media Sound & Culture in Latin America. Editors: Bronfman, Alejanda & Wood, Andrew Grant. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2012,ISBN 978-0-8229-6187-1 books.google.com pp. 41-54

14. Anthony, Edwin D. Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs. National Archives and Record Services - General Services Administration, Washington D.C., 1973, pp. 1-8 ^ LCCN 73-600146 Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs at the U.S. National Archive at www.archives.gov

15. ^ Bruenn, Howard G. (April 1970). "Clinical notes on the illness & death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt". Annals of Internal Medicine. 72 (4): 579-91. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-72-4-579. PMID 4908628.

16. ^ Jones, Jeffrey M.; Jones, Joni L. (September 2006). "Presidential Stroke: United States Presidents and Cerebrovascular Disease". CNS Spectrums. 11 (9): 674-78. doi:10.1017/S1092852900014760. PMID 16946692. S2CID 44889213.

17. ^ Johnson, Kevin (Fall 2005). "The Forgotten Repatriation of Persons of Mexican Ancestry and Lessons for the War on Terror". Vol. 26, no. 1. Davis, California: Pace Law Review.

18. ^ Collins, William J. (March 2001). "Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets". The American Economic Review. 91 (1): 272-86. doi:10.1257/aer.91.1.272. JSTOR 2677909.

19. ^ "World War II Enemy Alien Control Program Overview". National Archives. September 23, 2016.

20. ^ "Presidential Historians Survey 2017". C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership. C-SPAN.

21. ^ "Presidential Leadership - The Rankings". The Wall Street Journal. September 12, 2005. Archived from the original on November 2, 2005.

22. ^ Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. (Summer 1997). "Ranking the Presidents: From Washington to Clinton". Political Science Quarterly. 112 (2): 179-90. doi:10.2307/2657937. JSTOR 2657937.

23. ^ Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr (2007) [1963], "Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans", The Politics of Hope, Riverside Press, ISBN 978-0-691-13475-8

24. ^ Leuchtenburg, William E. (2001), In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to George W. Bush, Cornell University Press, pp. 128, 178, ISBN 978-0-8014-8737-8

Works cited

Breitman, Richard; Lichtman, Allan J (2013), FDR and the Jews, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-05026-6, OCLC 812248674,

Brinkley, Douglas (2016). Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-208923-6.

--- (1970). Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. hdl:2027/heb.00626. ISBN 978-0-15-678870-0.

Campbell, James E. (2006). "Party Systems and Realignments in the United States, 1868-2004". Social Science History. 30 (3): 359-86. doi:10.1215/01455532-2006-002. JSTOR 40267912.

Caro, Robert (1974). The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-48076-3. OCLC 834874.

online free to borrow

Dighe, Ranjit S. "Saving private capitalism: The US bank holiday of 1933." Essays in Economic & Business History 29 (2011) online

Freidel, Frank (1952-1973), Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 4 volumes, Little, Brown and Co., OCLC 459748221

Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt The Apprenticeship (vol 1 1952) to 1918, online

Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt The Ordeal (1954), covers 1919 to 1928, online

Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt The Triumph (1956) covers 1929-32, online

Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt Launching the New Deal (1973).

Gunther, John (1950). Roosevelt in Retrospect. Harper & Brothers.

Jordan, David M (2011). FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35683-3..

Lash, Joseph P (1971). Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-07459-8.

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Roosevelt, Franklin; Roosevelt, Elliott (1970). F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945. Vol. 1. Duell, Sloan, and Pearce.

Rowley, Hazel (2010). Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-15857-6.

Sternsher, Bernard (Summer 1975). "The Emergence of the New Deal Party System: A Problem in Historical Analysis of Voter Behavior". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 6 (1): 127-49. doi:10.2307/202828. JSTOR 202828.

Tobin, James (2013). The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency. Simon and Schuster. pp. 4-7. ISBN 978-1-4516-9867-1.

Ward, Geoffrey C.; Burns, Ken (2014). The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-385-35306-9.

External links

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.

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The first type of railroads were made out of wood and were called "Wagonways" and the Wagonways were built in the United States starting from the 1720s.

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This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series.

Wooden railroads, called wagonways, were built in the United States starting from the 1720s. A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia, in New France (now Canada) in 1720. Between 1762 and 1764, at the close of the French and Indian War (1756-1763), a gravity railroad ( mechanized tramway) ( Montresor's Tramway) is built by British military engineers up the steep riverside terrain near the Niagara River waterfall's escarpment at the Niagara Portage (which the local Senecas called "Crawl on All Fours.") in Lewiston, New York.

Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the North-east (1810-1850) to the settlement of the West (1850-1890). The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the nation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827 and the "Laying of the First Stone" ceremonies and beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the Appalachian Mountains eastern chain the following year of 1828, and flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial Panic of 1873 followed by a major economic depression bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth.

Although the antebellum South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the Civil War (1861-1865). The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860 before the war. In the heavily settled Midwestern Corn Belt, over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8 km) of a railway, facilitating the shipment of grain, hogs, and cattle to national and international markets. A large number of short lines were built, but thanks to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway bonds, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890. State and local governments often subsidized lines, but rarely owned them.

The system was largely built by 1910, but then trucks arrived to eat away the freight traffic, and automobiles (and later airplanes) to devour the passenger traffic. After 1940, the use of diesel electric locomotives made for much more efficient operations that needed fewer workers on the road and in repair shops.

A series of bankruptcies and consolidations left the rail system in the hands of a few large operations by the 1980s. Almost all long-distance passenger traffic was shifted to Amtrak in 1971, a government-owned operation. Commuter rail service is provided near a few major cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the District of Columbia. Computerization and improved equipment steadily reduced employment, which peaked at 2.1 million in 1920, falling to 1.2 million in 1950 and 215,000 in 2010. Route mileage peaked at 254,251 miles (409,177 km) in 1916 and fell to 139,679 miles (224,792 km) in 2011.

Freight railroads continue to play an important role in the United States' economy, especially for moving imports and exports using containers, and for shipments of coal and, since 2010, of oil. According to the British news magazine The Economist, "They are universally recognized in the industry as the best in the world." Productivity rose 172% between 1981 and 2000, while rates rose 55% (after accounting for inflation). Rail's share of the American freight market rose to 43%, the highest for any rich country.

A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia in 1720. Between 1762 and 1764, at the close of the French and Indian War, a gravity railroad ( mechanized tramway) ( Montresor's Tramway) is built by British military engineers up the steep riverside terrain near the Niagara River waterfall's escarpment at the Niagara Portage (which the local Senecas called "Crawl on All Fours.") in Lewiston, New York.

The animal powered Leiper Railroad followed in 1810 after the preceding successful experiment-designed and built by merchant Thomas Leiper, the railway connects Crum Creek to Ridley Creek, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was used until 1829, when it was temporarily replaced by the Leiper Canal, then is reopened to replace the canal in 1852. This became the Crum Creek Branch of the Baltimore and Philadelphia Railroad (part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) in 1887. This is the first railroad meant to be permanent, and the first to evolve into trackage of a common carrier after an intervening closure.

In 1826 Massachusetts incorporated Quincy's Granite Railway as a common freight carrier to primarily haul granite for the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument; operations began later that year, and which still had a section of it operating until the 1940s.

Other railroads authorized by states in 1826 and constructed in the following years included the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's gravity railroad; and the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, to carry freight and passengers around a bend in the Erie Canal. To link the port of Baltimore to the Ohio River, the state of Maryland in 1827 chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the first section of which opened in 1830. Similarly, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company was chartered in 1827 to connect Charleston to the Savannah River, and Pennsylvania built the Main Line of Public Works between Philadelphia and the Ohio River.

The Americans closely followed and copied British railroad technology. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier and started passenger train service in May 1830, initially using horses to pull train cars. The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company was the first to use steam locomotives regularly beginning with the Best Friend of Charleston, the first American-built locomotive intended for revenue service, in December 1830.

The B&O started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with Peter Cooper's . This was the first American-built locomotive to run in the U.S., although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the , but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s. The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so.

By 1850, 9,000 miles (14,000 km) of railroad lines had been built. The federal government operated a land grant system between 1855 and 1871, through which new railway companies in the uninhabited West were given millions of acres they could sell or pledge to bondholders. A total of 129 million acres (520,000 km ²) were granted to the railroads before the program ended, supplemented by a further 51 million acres (210,000 km ²) granted by the states, and by various government subsidies. This program enabled the opening of numerous western lines, especially the Union Pacific-Central Pacific with fast service from San Francisco to Omaha and east to Chicago. West of Chicago, many cities grew up as rail centers, with repair shops and a base of technically literate workers.

Railroads soon replaced many canals and turnpikes and by the 1870s had significantly displaced steamboats as well. The railroads were superior to these alternative modes of transportation, particularly water routes because they lowered costs in two ways. Canals and rivers were unavailable in the winter season due to freezing, but the railroads ran year-round despite poor weather. And railroads were safer: the likelihood of a train crash was less than the likelihood of a boat sinking. The railroads provided cost-effective transportation because they allowed shippers to have a smaller inventory of goods, which reduced storage costs during winter, and to avoid insurance costs from the risk of losing goods during transit.

Likewise, railroads changed the style of transportation. For the common person in the early 1800s, transportation was often traveled by horse or stagecoach. The network of trails along which coaches navigated were riddled with ditches, potholes, and stones. This made travel fairly uncomfortable. Adding to injury, coaches were cramped with little leg room. Travel by train offered a new style. Locomotives proved themselves a smooth, headache free ride with plenty of room to move around. Some passenger trains offered meals in the spacious dining car followed by a good night sleep in the private sleeping quarters. Railroad companies in the North and Midwest constructed networks that linked nearly every major city by 1860. In the heavily settled Corn Belt (from Ohio to Iowa), over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8.0 km) of a railway. A large number of short lines were built, but thanks to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway securities, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890. Most of these railroads made money and ones that didn't were soon bought up and incorporated in a larger system or "rationalized". Although the transcontinental railroads dominated the media, with the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 dramatically symbolizing the nation's unification after the divisiveness of the Civil War, most construction actually took place in the industrial Northeast and agricultural Midwest, and was designed to minimize shipping times and costs. The railroads in the South were repaired and expanded and then, after a lot of preparation, changed from a 5-foot gauge to standard gauge of 4 foot 8 ½ inches in two days in May 1886.

With its extensive river system, the United States supported a large array of horse-drawn or mule-drawn barges on canals and paddle wheel steamboats on rivers that competed with railroads after 1815 until the 1870s. The canals and steamboats lost out because of the dramatic increases in efficiency and speed of the railroads, which could go almost anywhere year round. The railroads were faster and went to many places a canal would be impractical or too expensive to build or a natural river never went. Railroads also had better scheduling since they often could go year round, more or less ignoring the weather. Canals and river traffic were cheaper if you lived on or near a canal or river that wasn't frozen over part of the year, but only a few did. Long distance transport of goods by wagon to a canal or river was slow and expensive. A railroad to a city made it an inland "port" that often prospered or turned a town into a city.

In the South, most railroads in 1860 were local affairs connecting cotton regions with the nearest waterway. Most transports was by boat, not rail, and after the Union blockaded the ports in 1861 and seized the key rivers in 1862, long-distance travel was difficult. The outbreak of war had a depressing effect on the economic fortunes of the railroad companies, for the hoarding of the cotton crop in an attempt to force European intervention left railroads bereft of their main source of income. Many had to lay off employees, and in particular, let go skilled technicians and engineers. For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate an overall policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort. With the legislation of impressment the same year, railroads and their rolling stock came under the de facto control of the Confederate military.

Conditions deteriorated rapidly in the Confederacy, as there was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and the heavy use of rolling stock wore them out. In 1864-65 the Confederate railroad network collapsed; little traffic moved in 1865.

The Southern states had blocked westward rail expansion before 1860, but after secession the Pacific Railway Acts were passed in 1862 and 1863, which respectively established the central Pacific route and the standard gauge to be used. With federal financing in the form of bonds and generous land grants and with the heroic help of the mainly Chinese and Irish laborers, Central Pacific Railroad working eastward and Union Pacific Railroad working westward combined to complete in 1869 the major breakthrough First Transcontinental Railroad, which linked by rail the eastern states with the Pacific coast and made possible moving from New York to San Francisco Bay in only six days. In addition, other transcontinentals were built in the South ( Southern Pacific, Santa Fe) and in the North along the Canada-US border ( Northern Pacific, Great Northern), accelerating the settlement of the West by offering inexpensive farms and ranches on credit, carrying pioneers and supplies westward, and cattle, wheat and minerals eastward. In 1860 before the transcontinentals, railroads carried less than half as much freight as inland waterways, whereas by 1890 railroads carried five times as much freight as waterways.

During the Reconstruction era, Northern money financed the rebuilding and dramatic expansion of railroads throughout the South; they were modernized in terms of track gauge, equipment and standards of service. The Southern network expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) in 1890. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic.

The Panic of 1873 was a major global economic depression which ended rapid rail expansion in the United States. Many lines went bankrupt or were barely able to pay the interest on their bonds, and workers were laid off on a mass scale, with those still employed subject to large cuts in wages. This worsening situation for railroad workers led to strikes against many railroads, culminating in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

The Great Strike began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the B&O Railroad. The strike, and related violence, spread to Cumberland, Maryland, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Chicago and the Midwest. The strike lasted for 45 days, and ended only with the intervention of local and state militias, and federal troops. Labor unrest continued into the 1880s, such as the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, which involved over 200,000 workers.

By 1880 the nation had 17,800 freight locomotives carrying 23,600 tons of freight, and 22,200 passenger locomotives. The U.S. railroad industry was the nation's largest employer outside of the agricultural sector. The effects of the American railways on rapid industrial growth were many, including the opening of hundreds of millions of acres of very good farm land ready for mechanization, lower costs for food and all goods, a huge national sales market, the creation of a culture of engineering excellence, and the creation of the modern system of management.

New York financier J.P. Morgan played an increasingly dominant role in consolidating the rail system in the late 19th century. He orchestrated reorganizations and consolidations in all parts of the United States. Morgan raised large sums in Europe, but instead of only handling the funds, he helped the railroads reorganize and achieve greater efficiencies. He fought against the speculators interested in speculative profits, and built a vision of an integrated transportation system. In 1885, he reorganized the New York, West Shore & Buffalo Railroad, leasing it to the New York Central. In 1886, he reorganized the Philadelphia & Reading, and in 1888 the Chesapeake & Ohio. He was heavily involved with railroad tycoon James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railway.

Industrialists such as Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould became wealthy through railroad ownerships, as large railroad companies such as the Grand Trunk Railway and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company spanned several states. In response to monopolistic practices and other excesses of some railroads and their owners, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act and created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1887. The ICC indirectly controlled the business activities of the railroads through the issuance of extensive regulations.

Morgan set up conferences in 1889 and 1890 that brought together railroad presidents in order to help the industry follow the new laws and write agreements for the maintenance of "public, reasonable, uniform and stable rates." The conferences were the first of their kind, and by creating a community of interest among competing lines paved the way for the great consolidations of the early 20th century. Congress responded by enacting antitrust legislation to prohibit monopolies of railroads (and other industries), beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.

The Panic of 1893 was the largest economic depression in U.S. history at that time. It was the result of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing, which set off a series of bank failures. One-quarter of U.S. railroads had failed by mid-1894, representing over 40,000 miles (64,000 km). The failed lines included the Northern Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Acquisitions of the bankrupt companies led to further consolidation of ownership. As of 1906, two-thirds of the rail mileage in the U.S. was controlled by seven entities, with the New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and Morgan having the largest portions.

James J. Hill joined forces with Morgan and others to gain control of the Northern Pacific. Hill formed the Northern Securities Company to consolidate the operations of the Northern Pacific with Hill's own Great Northern, but President Theodore Roosevelt, a trust-buster, strongly disapproved and took it to court. In 1904 the federal courts dissolved the Northern Security company ( see Northern Securities Co. v. United States) and the railroads had to go their separate, competitive ways. By that time Morgan and Hill had ensured the Northern Pacific was well-organized and able to survive easily on its own.

In 1901 the Union Pacific Railroad acquired all of the stock of the Southern Pacific. The federal government charged UP with violating the Sherman Act, and in 1913 the Supreme Court ordered UP to divest itself of all SP stock. This ruling was received with considerable alarm throughout the industry, as UP and SP were widely considered at that time not to be significant competitors. (Later in the 20th century, with different economic conditions and changes in the law, UP successfully acquired the SP. See Resurgence of freight railroads.)

Continuing concern over rate discrimination by railroads led Congress to enact additional laws, giving increased regulatory powers to the ICC. The 1906 Hepburn Act gave the ICC authority to set maximum rates and review the companies' financial records.

US railroads were at their peak length of trackage in 1916 with 254,037 miles of tracks.

The United States Railroad Administration (USRA) temporarily took over management of railroads during World War I to address inadequacy in critical facilities throughout the overall system, such as terminals, trackage, and rolling stock. President Woodrow Wilson issued an order for nationalization on December 26, 1917. Management by USRA led to standardization of equipment, reductions of duplicative passenger services, and better coordination of freight traffic. Federal control of the railroads ended in March 1920.

In the early 20th century, some members of Congress, the ICC, and some railroad executives developed concerns about inefficiencies in the American railroad system. Memories of the 1893 panic, the continuing proliferation of railroad companies, and duplicative facilities, fueled this concern. To an extent, the need to nationalize the system during the war was an example of this inefficiency. These concerns were the impetus for legislation to consider improvements to the system. The 1920 Esch-Cummins Act directed the ICC to prepare and adopt a plan for the consolidation of the railroad companies into a limited number of systems. In 1929 the ICC published its proposed Complete Plan of Consolidation, also known as the "Ripley Plan," after its author, William Z. Ripley of Harvard University. The agency held hearings on the plan, but none of the proposed consolidations was ever implemented. Many small railroads failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of those lines that survived, the stronger ones were not interested in supporting the weaker ones. In 1940 Congress formally abandoned the Ripley Plan.

During the post-World War II boom many railroads were driven out of business due to competition from airlines and Interstate highways. The rise of the automobile led to the end of passenger train service on most railroads. Trucking businesses had become major competitors by the 1930s with the advent of improved paved roads, and after the war they expanded their operations as the Interstate highway network grew, and acquired increased market share of freight business. Railroads continued to carry bulk freight such as coal, steel and other commodities. However, the ICC continued to regulate railroad rates and other aspects of railroad operations, which limited railroads' flexibility in responding to changing market forces.

In 1966, Congress created the Federal Railroad Administration, to issue and enforce rail safety regulations, administer railroad assistance programs, and conduct research and development in support of improved railroad safety and national rail transportation policy. The safety functions were transferred from the ICC. The FRA was established as part of the new federal Department of Transportation.

Two of the largest remaining railroads, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, merged in 1968 to form the Penn Central. At the insistence of the ICC the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was added to the merger in 1969; in 1970 the Penn Central declared bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history until then. Other bankrupt railroads included the Ann Arbor Railroad (1973), Erie Lackawanna Railway (1972), Lehigh Valley Railroad (1970), Reading Company (1971), Central Railroad of New Jersey (1967) and Lehigh and Hudson River Railway (1972).

In 1970 Congress created a government corporation, Amtrak, to take over operation of Penn Central passenger lines and selected inter-city passenger services from other private railroads, under the Rail Passenger Service Act. Amtrak began operations in 1971.

Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 (sometimes called the "3R Act") to salvage viable freight operations from the bankrupt Penn Central and other lines in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and midwestern regions, through the creation of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (ConRail), a government-owned corporation. Conrail began operations in 1976. The 3R Act also formed the United States Railway Association, another government corporation, taking over the powers of the ICC with respect to allowing the bankrupt railroads to abandon unprofitable lines.

Amtrak acquired most of the right-of-way and facilities of the Penn Central Northeast Corridor from Washington, D.C. to Boston, under the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act (the "4R Act") of 1976.

In addition to freight railroads, Conrail inherited commuter rail operations from several predecessor railroads in the northeast, and these operations continued to be unprofitable. State and local government transportation agencies took over the passenger operations and acquired the various rights-of-way from Conrail in 1983.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers, a non-profit advocacy group, was organized in the late 1960s to support the operation of passenger trains.

Beginning in the late 1970s Amtrak eliminated several of its lightly-traveled lines. Ridership stagnated at roughly 20 million passengers per year amid uncertain government aid from 1981 to about 2000. Ridership increased during the first decade of the 21st century after implementation of capital improvements in the Northeast Corridor and rises in automobile fuel costs.

Resurgence of freight railroads in the 1980s

In 1980 Congress enacted the Staggers Rail Act to revive freight traffic, by removing restrictive regulations and enabling railroads to be more competitive with the trucking industry. The Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981 authorized additional deregulation of northeast railroads. Among other things, these laws reduced the role of the ICC in regulating the railroads and allowed the carriers to discontinue unprofitable routes. More railroad companies merged and consolidated their lines in order to remain successful. These changes led to the current system of fewer, but profitable, Class I railroads covering larger regions of the United States.

Since the beginning of the current deregulatory era, the following Class I railroads have been involved in mergers:

In 1995, when most of the ICC's powers had been eliminated, Congress finally abolished the agency and transferred its remaining functions to a new agency, the Surface Transportation Board.

In the early 21st century, several of the railroads, along with the federal government and various port agencies, began to reinvest in freight rail infrastructure, such as intermodal terminals and bridge and tunnel improvements. These projects are designed to increase capacity and efficiency across the national rail network. Two examples are the Heartland Corridor and the National Gateway.

Both the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations had announced plans for new high-speed rail lines in their first terms. In the case of Clinton era, the only tangible outcome was the introduction of Amtrak's Acela Express, serving the Northeast Corridor, in 2000. Obama even mentioned his rail plans in his State of the Union address, the first time in decades a President had done so. While several small scale improvements to rail lines were financed by federal money, more ambitious plans in Florida, Ohio and other states failed when newly elected Republican governors stopped existing high-speed rail plans and returned federal funding.[citation needed ]

In 2015 construction began on the California High-Speed Rail line. The Phase I portion linking Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours was originally projected to be completed in 2029. However, with numerous delays and cost miscalculations, the California High-Speed Rail line is now projected to be completed in 2033. Originally projected to cost $40 billion, the latest projections have the California High-Speed Rail line costing as much as $98.1 billion.

The B&O established its Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore in 1829. This was the first railroad manufacturing facility in the U.S., and the company built locomotives, railroad cars, iron bridges and other equipment there. Following the B&O example, U.S. railroad companies soon became self-sufficient, as thousands of domestic machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers improved the equipment.

In general, U.S. railroad companies imported technology from Britain in the 1830s, particularly strap iron rails, as there were no rail manufacturing facilities in the United States at that time. Heavy iron "T" rails were first manufactured in the U.S. in the mid-1840s at Mount Savage, Maryland and Danville, Pennsylvania. This improved rail design permitted higher train speeds and more reliable operation. Discovery of high-quality iron ores in the mid-19th century, particularly in the Great Lakes region, led to the fabrication of better-quality rails.

Through the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, not only local projects, but long-distance links, were completed, so that by 1860 the eastern half of the continent, especially the Northeast, was linked by a network of connecting railroads. However, although England had early adopted a standard gauge of (1,435 mm), once Americans started building locomotives, they experimented with different gauges, resulting in the standard gauge, or a close approximation, being adopted in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., but a (1,524 mm) gauge in the South, and a (1,676 mm) gauge in Canada. In addition, the Erie Railway was built to (1,829 mm) broad gauge, and in the 1870s a widespread movement looked at the cheaper (914 mm) narrow gauge.

The Pacific Railway Act of 1863 established the standard gauge for the first transcontinental railroad. Except for the narrow gauge, gauges were standardized across North America after the end of the Civil War in 1865.

In the early years American railroads imported many steam locomotives from England. While the B&O and the PRR built many of their own steam locomotives, other railroads purchased from independent American manufacturers. Prominent among the early steam manufacturers were Norris, Baldwin and Rogers, followed by Lima and Alco later in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Diesel locomotives were first developed in Europe after World War I, and U.S. railroads began to use them widely in the 1930s and 1940s. Most U.S. roads discontinued use of steam locomotives by the 1950s. A diesel engine was expensive to build, but was less complex and easier to maintain than a steam locomotive, and required only one person to operate. This meant reduced costs and greater reliability for the railroads. Several companies developed fast streamliner trains, such as the Super Chief and the California Zephyr during the 1930s and 1940s. Their locomotives used either diesel or similar internal combustion engine designs. See Dieselisation in North America.

Though electric railways expanded in Europe, they never reached the same popularity in North America. They were built primarily in the north-west and the north-east beginning in the late 19th century. While some railroads used electric locomotives for both freight and passenger trains, by the end of the 20th century most freight trains were pulled only by diesel locomotives. The Northeast Corridor, the most heavily traveled passenger line in the US, is one of few long lines currently operating with electrification. See Railroad electrification in the United States.

Early forms of American railroad signaling and communication were virtually non-existent. Before telegraphs, the American railroads initially managed their train operations using timetables. However, there were no means of communication between drivers and dispatchers, and occasionally, two trains were sent on a collision course, or "cornfield meets." With the advent of the telegraph in the 1840s, a more sophisticated system was developed that allowed the dissemination of alterations to the timetable, known as train orders. These orders overrode the timetable, allowing the cancellation, rescheduling and addition of trains. The earliest recorded use of train orders was by the Erie Railroad in 1851.

The development of the electrical track circuit in the 1870s led to the use of systems off block signals, which improved the railroads' speed, safety and efficiency. Mechanical interlockings, which prevent conflicting movements at rail junctions and crossings, were also introduced in the U.S. in the 1870s, after their initial development in Britain.

In response to the strikes of the 1870s and 1880s, Congress passed the Arbitration Act of 1888, which authorized the creation of arbitration panels with the power to investigate the causes of labor disputes and to issue non-binding arbitration awards. The Act was a complete failure: only one panel was ever convened under the Act, and that one, in the case of the 1894 Pullman Strike, issued its report only after the strike had been crushed by a federal court injunction backed by federal troops.

Congress attempted to correct these shortcomings in the Erdman Act, passed in 1898. This law likewise provided for voluntary arbitration, but made any award issued by the panel binding and enforceable in federal court. It also outlawed discrimination against employees for union activities, prohibited "yellow dog" contracts (employee agrees not to join a union while employed), and required both sides to maintain the status quo during any arbitration proceedings and for three months after an award was issued. The arbitration procedures were rarely used. A successor statute, the Newlands Act, was passed in 1913 and proved more effective, but was largely superseded when the federal government nationalized the railroads in 1917.

As railroads expanded after the Civil War, so too did the rate of accidents among railroad personnel, especially brakemen. Many accidents were associated with the coupling and uncoupling of railroad cars, and the operation of manually operated brakes ( hand brakes). The rise in accidents led to calls for safety legislation, as early as the 1870s. In the 1880s, the number of on-the-job fatalities of railroad workers was second only to those of coal miners. Through that decade, several state legislatures enacted safety laws. However, the specific requirements varied among the states, making implementation difficult for interstate rail carriers, and Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act in 1893 to provide a uniform standard. The law required railroads to install air brakes and automatic couplers on all trains, and led to a sharp drop in accidents.

The Esch-Cummins Act of 1920 terminated the nationalization program and created a Railway Labor Board (RLB) to regulate wages and issue non-binding proposals to settle disputes. In 1921 the RLB ordered a twelve percent reduction in employees' wages, which led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, involving rail shop workers nationwide, followed by a court injunction to end the strike. Congress passed the Railway Labor Act of 1926 to rectify the shortcomings of the RLB procedures.

Congress added railroad worker safety laws throughout the 20th century. Significant among this legislation is the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970, which gave the FRA broad responsibilities over all aspects of rail safety, and expanded the agency's authority to cover all railroads, both interstate and intrastate.

According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:

the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created-capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself.

The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.

First they provided a highly efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national market. The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture and finance. Supplemented with the Telegraph that added rapid communications, the United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common language, and financial system and a common legal system. The railroads at first supplemented, then largely replaced the previous transportation modes of turnpikes and canals, rivers and intracoastal ocean traffic. For highly efficient Northern railroads played a major role in winning the Civil War, while the overburdened Southern lines collapsed in the face of an insurmountable challenge. In the late 19th century pipelines were built for the oil trade, and in the 20th century trucking and aviation emerged.

Railroads financing provided the basis of the private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories or canals. The famous Erie canal, 300 miles long in upstate New York, cost $7 million of state money, which was about what private investors spent on one short railroad in Western Massachusetts. A new steamboat on the Hudson, Mississippi, Missouri, or Ohio rivers cost about the same as one mile of track.

In 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.8 billion; 1897 it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total national debt of $1.2 billion). Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain. The federal government provided no cash to any other railroads. However it did provide unoccupied free land to some of the Western railroads, so they could sell it to farmers and have customers along the route. Some cash came from states, or from local governments that use money as a leverage to prevent being bypassed by the main line. The larger sound came from the southern states during the Reconstruction era, as they try to rebuild their destroyed rail system. Some states such as Maine and Texas also made land grants to local railroads; the state total was 49 million acres. The emerging American financial system was based on railroad bonds. Boston was the first center, but New York by 1860 was the dominant financial market. The British invested heavily in railroads around the world, but nowhere more so than the United States; The total came to about $3 billion by 1914. In 1914-1917, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.

The third dimension was in designing complex managerial systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships that could be dreamed of by the local factory owner who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours. Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1840s, the Erie in the 1850s and the Pennsylvania in the 1860s.

After a serious accident, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts put in place a system of responsibility for district managers and dispatchers to keep track of all train movements. Discipline was essential-everyone had to follow the rules exactly to prevent accidents. Decision-making powers had to be distributed to ensure safety and to juggle the complexity of numerous trains running in both directions on a single track, keeping to schedules that could easily be disrupted by weather mechanical breakdowns, washouts or hitting a wandering cow. As the lines grew longer with more and more business originating at dozens of different stations, the Baltimore and Ohio set up more complex system that separated finances from daily operations. The Erie Railroad, faced with growing competition, had to make lower bids for freight movement, and had to know on a daily basis how much each train was costing them. Statistics was the weapon of choice. By the 1860s, the Pennsylvania Railroad-the largest in the world-was making further advances in using bureaucracy under John Edgar Thomson, president 1852-1874. He divided the system into several geographical divisions, which each reported daily to a general superintendent in Philadelphia. All the American railroads copied each other in the new managerial advances, and by the 1870s emerging big businesses in the industrial field likewise copied the railroad model.

The fourth dimension was in management of the workforce, both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. Railroading became a career in which young men entered at about age 18 to 20, and spent their entire lives usually with the same line. Young men could start working on the tracks, become a fireman, and work his way up to the engineer. The mechanical world of the roundhouses have their own career tracks. A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer, be promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24, brakeman at 25, freight conductor at 27, and passenger conductor at age 57. Women were not hired.

White-collar careers paths likewise were delineated. Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters. At each level, they had more and more knowledge experience and human capital. They were very hard to replace, and were virtually guaranteed permanent jobs and provided with insurance and medical care. Hiring, firing and wage rates were set not by the foreman, but by central administrators, in order to minimize favoritism and personality conflicts. Everything was by the book, and increasingly complex set of rules told everyone exactly what they should do it every circumstance, and exactly what their rank and pay would be. Young men who were first hired in the 1840s and 1850s retired from the same railroad 40 or 50 years later. To discourage them from leaving for another company, they were promised pensions when they retired. Indeed, the railroads invented the American pension system.

Boosters in every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through, knowing their urban dreams depended upon it. The mechanical size, scope and efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression; people would dress in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in. David Nye argues that:

The startling introduction of railroads into this agricultural society provoked a discussion that soon arrived at the enthusiastic consensus that railways were sublime and that they would help to unify, dignify, expand and enrich the nation. They became part of the public celebrations of Republicanism. The rhetoric, the form, and the central figures of civic ceremonies changed to accommodate the intrusion of this technology....[Between 1828 and 1869] Americans integrated the railroad into the national economy and enfolded it within the sublime.

Travel became much easier, cheaper and more common. Shoppers from small towns could make day trips to big city stores. Hotels, resorts and tourist attractions were built to accommodate the demand. The realization that anyone could buy a ticket for a thousand-mile trip was empowering. Historians Gary Cross and Rick Szostak argue:

with the freedom to travel came a greater sense of national identity and a reduction in regional cultural diversity. Farm children could more easily acquaint themselves with the big city, and easterners could readily visit the West. It is hard to imagine the United States of continental proportions without the railroad.

The engineers became model citizens, bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work effort to all phases of the economy as well as local and national government. By 1910, major cities were building magnificent palatial railroad stations, such as the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and the Union Station in Washington DC.

As early as the 1830s, novelists and poets began fretting that the railroads would destroy the rustic attractions of the American landscape. By the 1840s concerns were rising about terrible accidents when speeding trains crashed into helpless wooden carriages. By the 1870s, railroads were vilified by Western farmers who absorbed the Granger movement theme that monopolistic carriers controlled too much pricing power, and that the state legislatures had to impose maximum prices. Local merchants and shippers supported the demand and got some "Granger Laws" passed. Anti-railroad complaints were loudly repeated in late 19th century political rhetoric. The idea of establishing a strong rate fixing federal body was achieved during the Progressive Era, primarily by a coalition of shipping interests. Railroad historians mark the Hepburn Act of 1906 that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates as a damaging blow to the long-term profitability and growth of railroads. After 1910 the lines faced an emerging trucking industry to compete with for freight, and automobiles and buses to compete for passenger service.

Railways also disrupted the natural tendencies of the environment through an increased capacity for transportation. Railroads throughout the United States allowed quicker, more efficient transport of goods and people that were previously unavailable. Agriculture, animals, soldiers, goods, and natural resources were now able to move large distances in much shorter amounts of time. As a result, things that were not harvested before like certain tracts of arable land or animal populations were now being used.

The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was the first railway to be built from Chicago. It never reached Galena, Illinois, but it reached Clinton, Iowa, and Freeport, Illinois. This railroad marked the beginning of Chicago's economic dominance in the Midwest though transportation of goods such as agriculture and bison hides. Railroads affected the American environment by opening up unexplored, immense tracts of the American wilderness for settlement commercialization.

The idea behind a railroad to Chicago was to steal Midwestern agricultural business from St. Louis, Missouri and Madison, Wisconsin. The area around Chicago was ideal for a railroad because it was flat and grassy. Citizens of Chicago believed they could use their environment for commercial gain by actually buying goods grown from the land as well as increasing the value the value of adjacent land neighboring the railroad. The Galena and Chicago Union railroad underwent construction in March 1848 to have the railroad run through Chicago, a booming Midwest town. In order to fund this, local Illinoisans pledged together to build a railway because of the potential economic prosperity. William Cronon writes, "By the following April [1849], over twelve hundred people had pledged to buy stock hypothetically valued at about $350,000, though they had paid only about $20,000 in actual cash." Farmers were enamored with the idea of a railroad because transporting crops and goods became much easier and more effective than traveling on dirt roads that could easily become muddy or impassable, so they pledged a lot of their money towards the venture. The process of local funding was stock installments.

By 1852, the Galena and Chicago Union railroad supplied Chicago over half of its wheat. This statistic changed the way people thought about the environment and its railways because railways through the countryside provided Chicagoans with increased wealth; railways became a symbol of mastery over land by being able to transport anything across terrain. This mastery coupled with an aligning of railroads with prosperity and wealth changed the way Chicagoans saw railways. It was a beacon of hope and deliverer of goods.

Through this massacre, however, the landscape did affect man in an economic way through the creation of jobs. Many men acquired jobs hunting and skinning bison on the plains as well as maintaining railroads and boxcars that carried these valuable bison hides. At the end of the line, men were required to sell the bison when they had finally reached their destination. Through manipulating the environment, the American people were able to subjugate nature to their will to make a profit.

In 1967 Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer, released a song called, "Canadian Railway Trilogy" which documents the way he sees nature and how nature has changed because of increasing railways going through North America. He describes the pristine wilderness "long before the white man and long before the wheel" and before pioneers started to build mines, mills, and factories in the verdant land. Because of the optimism for wealth and adventure, Lightfoot claims, "The railroad men grew restless for to hear the hammers ring." He also describes the cost this industry had on nature by penning the line, "Open her heart let the life blood flow." He describes nature's heart as being bled by the workers' dreams, which could not be stopped, "Into the muskeg and into the rain." Because man wants to be in control of nature and conquer it, he wants to be able to say,

"On the mountain tops we stand

All the world at our command

We have opened up the soil

With our teardrops and our toil"

Through hard work technology, pioneers and businessmen adapted the environment for their own commercial needs and quest for power.

There is no question about the importance of railroads in American history. Churella finds that back in the 1950s business and economic historians, led by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Robert Fogel, made railroads the centerpiece of advanced historiography. That era has passed as graduate programs have faded away, courses on railroad history do not make the curriculum, and the historiography has shifted away from professional historian to the "railfans"-very well informed amateur writers fascinated by the memorabilia, technology and locomotives of the steam era. Looking at the voluminous output of railfan authors, Klein says:

The vast bulk of this work is devoted to minute descriptions of power, rolling stock, obscure short lines, and technical subjects.... But few address the larger questions of railroad history or place their topic in broader contexts.

The result is a multiplicity of histories of specific railroads, large and small. Typically they deal with standard topics: the builders and their organizational, legislative and financial dealings; colorful construction crews laying down wood ties and steel rail; the development of locomotives and passenger cars; boosters who sought a stop in their little town else it would die; the 1880-1920 golden age of the passenger long-distance travel and local excursions; the steady erosion of passenger service during the automobile age; the freight agent and the small-town depot. They end with the more recent saga of retrenchment, merger, and abandonment. Klein, Churella, Roth, and Franham all find that the popular writers show little interest in the development of managerial and organizational complexity of the sort that Chandler studied, or the economic impact that concerned Fogel's cohort. From outside the field of railroad history, academic labor historians now deal with the culture of the workers, strikes, the careers for blue collar and white collar men, and racial discrimination. Academic political historians deal with the Granger, Populist and Progressive attacks, and in federal or state regulation.

Source: United States Census Bureau, Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census 1890, pg. 4.

Bryant, Keith L., ed. Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900-1980 (1988); part of Encyclopedia of American business history and biography; 500+ pages each with coverage of entrepreneurs, corporations, and technologies, Plus specialized bibliographies

Frey, Robert L., ed. Railroads in the Nineteenth Century (1988); part of Encyclopedia of American business history and biography; 500+ Pages each with coverage of entrepreneurs, corporations, and technologies, Plus specialized bibliographies

Hayes, Derek. Historical atlas of the North American railroad (2010); 400 historical maps

Nock, O.S., ed. Encyclopedia of Railways (London, 1977), worldwide coverage, heavily illustrated

Riley, C. J. The Encyclopedia of Trains & Locomotives (2002)

Stover, John. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (2001)

Callen, Zachary. Railroads and American Political Development: Infrastructure, Federalism, and State Building (UP of Kansas, 2016) xii, 257 pp.

Chandler, Alfred D., ed. The Railroads: The Nation's First Big Business - Sources and Readings. (1981).

Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. (1977).

Churella, Albert J. (2013), "The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1", The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 9780812243482, JSTOR j.ctt3fhn2k

Ducker, James H. (1982). Men of the steel rails: Workers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869-1900.

Gallamore, Robert E.; Meyer, John R. (2014). American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674725645.

Grant, H. Roger. Railroads and the American People (2012) excerpt and text search

Jenks, Leland H. (1944). "Railroads as an Economic Force in American Development," The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (May, 1944), 1-20. JSTOR 2113700.

Kirkland, Edward Chase (1948). Men, Cities and Transportation, A Study of New England History 1820-1900. (2 vol.) Harvard University Press.

Klein, Maury (2000). The Life & Legend of E. H. Harriman (2000) University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2517-4. Online edition.

Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (2009) excerpt and text search

Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (1990) excerpt and text search

Martin, Albro. Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992) excerpt and text search; wide-ranging overview

Miner, Craig. A Most Magnificent Machine: America Adopts the Railroad, 1825-1862 (University Press of Kansas; 2010) 325 pages; Documents the enthusiasm that accompanied the advent of the railroad system

Nice, David C. Amtrak: The History and Politics of a National Railroad (1998) online edition

Riegel, Robert Edgar. The Story of the Western Railroads 1926 online edition

Saunders, Richard. Main lines: Rebirth of the North American railroads, 1970-2002 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).

Stover, John. History of the Illinois Central Railroad (1975)

Stover, John. Iron Road to the West: American Railroads in the 1850s (1978)

Ward, James Arthur. J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvania (1980) 265 pages

Ward, James A. "Power and Accountability on the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1846-1878." Business History Review 1975 49(1): 37-59. in JSTOR

White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011) excerpt and text search

Wolmar, Christian. The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America (2012), survey to 2012; emphasis on 19th century; 448pp excerpt and text search

Bailey, Joe R. "Union Lifeline in Tennessee: A Military History of the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad," Tennessee Historical Quarterly (2008) 67#2 pp. 106-123 in JSTOR

Black III, Robert C. "Railroads in the Confederacy." Civil War History (1961) 7#3 pp: 231-238. online

Black, III, Robert C. The Railroads of the Confederacy (1952) excerpt and text search

Clark, John Elwood. Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat (LSU Press, 2001)

Cotterill, R. S. "The Louisville and Nashville Railroad 1861-1865," American Historical Review (1924) 29#4 pp. 700-715 in JSTOR

Fite, Emerson David. Social and industrial conditions in the North during the Civil War (1910) online edition, old but still quite useful

Gabel, Christopher R. (1977) Railroad Generalship: Foundations of Civil War Strategy. US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS. Combat Studies Institute.

Gabel, Christopher Richard (2002). Rails to Oblivion: The Decline of Confederate Railroads in the Civil War (PDF). Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 29, 2014.

Gordon, Ralph C. "Hospital Trains of the Army of the Cumberland." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51.3 (1992): 147+

Lash, Jeffrey N. "Joseph E. Johnston and the Virginia Railways, 1861-62." Civil War History 35.1 (1989): 5-27. online

Lash, Jeffrey N. Destroyer of the Iron Horse: General Joseph E. Johnston and Confederate Rail Transport. 1861-65 (1991).

Leignadier, Victoria A. "Railroads in the Civil War: A Strategic Perspective' (Army War College 2001) online.

Lord, Francis Alfred. Lincoln's railroad man: Herman Haupt (1969).

McGuire, Peter S. "The Railroads of Georgia, 1860-1880." The Georgia Historical Quarterly (1932): 179-213. in JSTOR

Pickenpaugh, Roger. Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863 (1998)

Ramsdell, Charles W. "The Confederate Government and the Railroads" The American Historical Review (1917) 22#4 in JSTOR

Riegel, R.E. "Federal Operation of Southern Railroads during the Civil War." Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1922) 9#2 in JSTOR

Sutton, Robert M. The Illinois Central Railroad in peace and war, 1858-1868 (1948).

Turner, George E. Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War (1953), an often-cited survey

Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1999) online

Clarke, Thomas Curtis (1889). The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons). 456 pp. online

Davis, John Patterson (1894). Union Pacific Railway: A Study in Railway Politics, History, and Economics. (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Company). 247 pp. online

Dozier, Howard Douglas (1920). A History of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. (New York: Houghton Mifflin). 197 pp.

Flint, Henry M. (1868) Railroads of the United States: Their History and Statistics. (Philadelphia. PA: John E. Potter Co.) 452 pp.

Johnson, Emory Richard (1908). American Railway Transportation. 2nd rev. ed. (New York: D. Appleton & Co.) 434 pp.

Moody, John. The Railroad Builders: A Chronicle of the Welding of the States (1919) online edition; popular history

Raper, Charles Lee. and Arthur Twining Hadley. Railway Transportation: A History of Its Economics and of Its Relation to the State, (1912) 331 pages; complete online at Google

Churella, Albert J. "Company, State, and Region: Three Approaches to Railroad History," Enterprise & Society (2006) 7#3, pp. 581-591

Klein, Maury. "The Unfinished Business: of American Railroad History," in Klein, Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life (1994) pp 166-86

Railroads in U.S. History (1830-2010) (2010), set of 4 DVDs, directed by Ron Meyer; #1, "Railroads come to America (1830-1840);" #2, "The First Great Railroad Boom (1841- 1860)"; #3, "A New Era in American Railroading (1861-1870)," #4, "The Second Great Railroad Boom (1871-2010)" further information

1. Bureau of the Census, ^ Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (1976) table Q398; Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011; pp. 1064, 1068.

2. ^ Brown, Robert R. (October 1949). "Canada's Earliest Railway Lines". Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. 78 (78): 49-63. JSTOR 43517553.

3. Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1826). ^ "An Act to Incorporate the Granite Railway Company," Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Chap. CLXXXIII. Approved March 4, 1826.

4. ^ Sniderman, Debbie (2012). "Peter Cooper". New York, NY: American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

5. ^ Grant, H. Roger (2010). Twilight Rails: The Final Era of Railroad Building in the Midwest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 1-20. ISBN 0-8166-7366-7. OCLC 676696378.

6. See: Robert C. Black, ^ The Railroads of the Confederacy. (1988); George Edgar Turner, Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War (1953).

7. ^ Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," pp. 809-810.

8. United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, Pittsburgh, PA (2002). ^ "The Great Strike of 1877." UE News, June 2002.

9. Esch-Cummins Act, Pub.L. 66-152, 41 Stat. 456. Approved 1920-02-28.

10. ^ Interstate Commerce Commission. Washington, D.C. (1929). "In the Matter of Consolidation of the Railways of the United States into a Limited Number of Systems." 159 ICC 522.

11. Kolsrud, Gretchen S., et al (1975). ^ "Review of Recent Railroad Merger History." Appendix B of A Review of National Railroad Issues. Washington: U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. NTIS Document No. PB-250622.

12. Pinkston, Elizabeth (2003). "A Brief History of Amtrak." The Past and Future of U.S. Passenger Rail Service. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congressional Budget Office)

13. ^ "2012 Business Plan". Sacramento, CA: California High-Speed Rail Authority. April 2012.

14. "Cost Of California High-Speed Rail Project Keeps Going Up". Associated Press. March 9, 2018 - via CBS Sacramento.

15. Schaetzl, Randall J. ^ "Early Iron Mining." Geography of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region. Course at Michigan State University. Accessed 2012-07-10.

16. ^ Bianculli, Anthony J. (2003). Trains and Technology: Track and structures. Volume 3 of Trains and Technology: The American Railroad in the Nineteenth Century. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-87413-802-3.

17. ^ Cleveland, Frederick A.; Powell, Fred Wilbur (1909). Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States. Longmans, Green, and Co. OCLC 497309.

18. ^ McDonald, Charles (1993). The Federal Railroad Safety Program (PDF). Washington, DC: U.S. Federal Railroad Administration. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-07-31.

19. ^ An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Compelling Common Carriers Engaged in Interstate Commerce to Equip Their Cars with Automatic Couplers and Continuous Brakes and Their Locomotives with Driving-wheel Brakes, and for Other Purposes. Act of Mar. 2, 1893, 27 Stat. 531, recodified, as amended, 49 U.S.C. § 20302.

20. ^ Chandler and Salsbury, "The railroads: Innovators in modern business administration." pp 130-34

21. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "The Railroads: Pioneers in Modern Corporate Management". ^ Business History Review 1965 39(1): 16-40. JSTOR 3112463.

22. Churella, "Company, State, and Region: Three Approaches to Railroad History," pp. 581-591

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History of rail transportation in the United States

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This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series. Wooden railroads, called wagonways, were built in the United States starting from the 1720s. A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia, in New France (now Canada) in 1720.