#13151
Wilhelm Furtwängler
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.
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Johann Pachelbel
1653 - 1706 (53 years)
Johann Pachelbel was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.
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John Hughes
1677 - 1720 (43 years)
John Hughes was an English poet, essayist and translator. Various of his works remained in print for a century after his death, but if he is remembered at all today it is for the use others made of his work. Texts of his were set by the foremost composers of the day and his translation of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise was a major source for Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard.
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Lynn Fontanne
1887 - 1983 (96 years)
Lynn Fontanne was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in 1922 and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and West End productions over the next four decades. They became known as "The Lunts", and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Christopher Morley
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
Christopher Darlington Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures. Biography Morley was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father, Frank Morley, was a mathematics professor at Haverford College; his mother, Lilian Janet Bird, was a violinist who provided Christopher with much of his later love for literature and poetry.
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Niccolò Piccinni
1728 - 1800 (72 years)
Niccolò Piccinni was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of the Classical period.
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Maurice Duruflé
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Maurice Gustave Duruflé was a French composer, organist, musicologist, and teacher. Life and career Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School from 1912 to 1918, where he studied piano and organ with Jules Haelling, a pupil of Alexandre Guilmant. The choral plainsong tradition at Rouen became a strong and lasting influence. At age 17, upon moving to Paris, he took private organ lessons with Charles Tournemire, whom he assisted at Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris until 1927. In 1920 Duruflé entered the Conservatoire de Paris, eventually g...
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Akaki Shanidze
1887 - 1987 (100 years)
Akaki Shanidze was a Georgian linguist and philologist. He was one of the founders of the Tbilisi State University and Academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences ; Doctor of Philological Sciences , Professor . He became a doctor in Tbilisi State University. His most important Georgian works were in linguistic sciences.
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Alla Nazimova
1879 - 1945 (66 years)
Alla Nazimova was a Russian-American actress, director, producer and screenwriter. On Broadway, she was noted for her work in the classic plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Turgenev. She later moved on to film, where she served many production roles, both writing and directing films under pseudonyms. Her film Salome is regarded as a cultural landmark.
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Henry Stuart Jones
1867 - 1939 (72 years)
Sir Henry Stuart Jones, FBA was a British academic. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford; he obtained a First in Classical Moderations in 1888 and a First in Literae Humaniores in 1890. He was appointed to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1897.
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Jacques Thibaud
1880 - 1953 (73 years)
Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist. Biography Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux . He had to rebuild his technique after being injured in World War I. In 1943 he and Marguerite Long established the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition for violinists and pianists, which takes place each year in Paris. From 2011, it has included singers and is now known as the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition, in hon...
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Leon Kellner
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
Leon Kellner was an English lexicographer, grammarian, and Shakespearian scholar. He was also a political activist and a promoter of Zionism. Early life and education Leon was born in Tarnów, Austrian Empire, the son of Jewish grocers Rafael and Lea Kellner. He began to learn the Hebrew alphabet at the age of three, and by five he entered a cheder to study the Torah and the Mishnah.
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Sigmund Romberg
1887 - 1951 (64 years)
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer. He is best known for his musicalss and operettas, particularly The Student Prince , The Desert Song and The New Moon . Early in his career, Romberg was employed by the Shubert brothers to write music for their musicals and revues, including several vehicles for Al Jolson. For the Shuberts, he also adapted several European operettas for American audiences, including the successful Maytime and Blossom Time . His three hit operettas of the mid-1920s, named above, are in the style of Viennese operetta, but his other works from that time mostly employ the style of American musicals of their eras.
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Fernando Sor
1778 - 1839 (61 years)
Fernando Sor was a Spanish classical guitarist and composer of the early Romantic era. Best known for writing solo classical guitar music, he also composed an opera , three symphonies, guitar duos, piano music, songs, a Mass, and at least two successful ballets: Cinderella, which received over one hundred performances, and Hercule et Omphale.
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Muzio Clementi
1752 - 1832 (80 years)
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England.
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Christian Griepenkerl
1839 - 1916 (77 years)
Christian Griepenkerl was a German painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Biography Griepenkerl was born to one of Oldenburg's leading families. As a young man, he heeded the advice of his fellow countryman, the landscapist Ernst Willers, and went to Vienna in late 1855 in order to enroll at the private art school for the monumental paintings founded four years earlier by Carl Rahl. Rahl allowed several of his students to participate in drafting and carrying out his paintings and thereby shaped their individual artistic development. Griepenkerl's first painting – Œdipus, L...
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Louis Jordan
1908 - 1975 (67 years)
Louis Thomas Jordan was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987.
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Jimmy Van Heusen
1913 - 1990 (77 years)
James Van Heusen was an American composer. He wrote songs for films, television and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Life and career Born in Syracuse, New York, Van Heusen began writing music while at high school. He renamed himself at age 16, after the shirt makers Phillips-Van Heusen, to use as his on-air name during local shows. His close friends called him "Chet". Jimmy was raised Methodist.
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Jascha Heifetz
1901 - 1987 (86 years)
Jascha Heifetz was a Russian-American violinist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time. Born in Vilnius, he moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso from childhood. Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees." He had a long and successful performing career; then, after an injury to his right arm, he switched his focus to teaching.
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Charlie Ross
1885 - 1950 (65 years)
Charles Griffith Ross was White House Press Secretary between 1945 and 1950 for President Harry S. Truman. Early life Ross graduated with Truman and Truman's eventual wife Bess Truman in Independence, Missouri from Independence High School , Class of 1901. He was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1905. In 1908, he became the first professor of the newly formed Missouri School of Journalism.
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Roscoe Arbuckle
1887 - 1933 (46 years)
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin, Monty Banks and Bob Hope, and brought vaudeville star Buster Keaton into the movie business. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $1,000,000 a year .
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Amir Khusrau
1253 - 1325 (72 years)
Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau , better known as Amīr Khusrau, was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural history of South Asia. He was a mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, India. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. A vocabulary in verse, the Ḳhāliq Bārī, containing Arabic, Persian and Hindavi terms is often attributed to him. Khusrau is sometimes referred to as the "voice of India" or "Parrot of India" , and has been called the "fathe...
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Martin Ritt
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Martin Ritt was an American director and actor who worked in both film and theater, noted for his socially conscious films. Some of the films he directed include The Long, Hot Summer , The Black Orchid , Paris Blues , Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man , Hud , The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , Hombre , The Great White Hope , Sounder , The Front , Norma Rae , Cross Creek , Murphy's Romance , Nuts , and Stanley & Iris .
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Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld was a notable English lexicographer and philologist. Early life Wyld was born in 1870 and attended Charterhouse School from 1883 to 1885; he was then privately educated in Lausanne from 1885 to 1888. He studied at the University of Bonn, the University of Heidelberg and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
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Thomas Tallis
1505 - 1585 (80 years)
Thomas Tallis was an English composer of High Renaissance music. His compositions are primarily vocal, and he occupies a primary place in anthologies of English choral music. Tallis is considered one of England's greatest composers, and is honoured for his original voice in English musicianship.
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Fritz Kreisler
1875 - 1962 (87 years)
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born American violinist and composer. One of the most noted violin masters of his day, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own. Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his style is nonetheless reminiscent of the gemütlich lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.
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Jacques de Baroncelli
1881 - 1951 (70 years)
Jacques de Baroncelli was a French film director best known for his silent films from 1915 to the late 1930s. He came from a Florentine family who had settled in Provence in the 15th century, occupying a building in the centre of Avignon then called the Baroncelli Palace . His father's side of the family were of Tuscan origin and part of the Ghibelline tradition, and they were hereditary Marquises of Javon. Though somewhat aristocratic, the family spoke Provençal, which was rather controversial at a time when it was considered to be a language of the common people. His older brother was Folco...
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William A. Wellman
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and military pilot. He was known for his work in crime, adventure, and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well-regarded satirical comedies. His 1927 film, Wings, was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.
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Johannes Agricola
1494 - 1566 (72 years)
Johann or Johannes Agricola was a German Protestant Reformer during the Protestant Reformation. He was a follower and friend of Martin Luther, who became his antagonist in the matter of the binding obligation of the law on Christians.
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Charles Dullin
1885 - 1949 (64 years)
Charles Dullin was a French actor, theater manager and director. Career Dullin began his career as an actor in melodrama:185 In 1908, he started his first troupe with Saturnin Fabre, the Théâtre de Foire, where they staged works by Alexandre Arnoux.:185
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Vladimir Horowitz
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz was a Russian-born American classical pianist. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all time, he was known for his virtuoso technique, timbre, and the public excitement engendered by his playing.
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Rodolphe Kreutzer
1766 - 1831 (65 years)
Rodolphe Kreutzer was a French violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer of forty French operas, including La mort d'Abel . He is probably best known as the dedicatee of Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9, Op. 47 , known as the Kreutzer Sonata, though he never played the work. Kreutzer made the acquaintance of Beethoven in 1798, when at Vienna in the service of the French ambassador, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte . Beethoven originally dedicated the sonata to George Bridgetower, the violinist at its first performance, but after a quarrel he revised the dedication in favour of Kreutzer.
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Tommy Dorsey
1905 - 1956 (51 years)
Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombone playing. His theme song was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You". His technical skill on the trombone gave him renown among other musicians. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s. He is best remembered for standards such as "Opus One", "Song of India", "...
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Alfredo Casella
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor. Life and career Casella was born in Turin, the son of Maria and Carlo Casella. His family included many musicians: his grandfather, a friend of Paganini, was first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and eventually became soloist in the Royal Chapel in Turin. Alfredo's father, Carlo, was also a professional cellist, as were Carlo's brothers Cesare and Gioacchino; his mother was a pianist, who gave the boy his first music lessons.
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Anthony Quayle
1913 - 1989 (76 years)
Sir John Anthony Quayle was a British actor, theatre director and novelist. He was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Thomas Wolsey in the film Anne of the Thousand Days . He also played important roles in such major studio productions as The Guns of Navarone , Lawrence of Arabia , The Fall of the Roman Empire , Operation Crossbow , QB VII and The Eagle Has Landed . Quayle was knighted in the 1985 New Years Honours List.
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Pablo de Sarasate
1844 - 1908 (64 years)
Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués , commonly known as Pablo de Sarasate, was a Spanish violin virtuoso, composer and conductor of the Romantic period. His best known works include Zigeunerweisen , the Spanish Dances, and the Carmen Fantasy.
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Ferdinand Hiller
1811 - 1885 (74 years)
Ferdinand Hiller was a German composer, conductor, pianist, writer and music director. Biography Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his father Justus was a merchant in English textiles – a business eventually continued by Ferdinand's brother Joseph. Hiller's talent was discovered early and he was taught piano by the leading Frankfurt musician Alois Schmitt, violin by Jörg Hofmann, and harmony and counterpoint by Georg Jacob Vollweiler; at 10 he performed a Mozart concerto in public; and two years later, he produced his first composition.
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Totò
1898 - 1967 (69 years)
Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi De Curtis di Bisanzio , best known by his stage name Totò , or simply as Antonio de Curtis, and nicknamed il principe della risata , was an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter, dramatist, poet, singer and lyricist. He was commonly referred to as one of the most popular Italian performers of all time. He is best known for his funny and sometimes cynical character as a comedian in theatre and then in many successful films shot from the 1940s to the 1960s, but he also worked with many iconic Italian film directors in drama...
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Marin Marais
1656 - 1728 (72 years)
Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for six months. In 1676 he was hired as a musician to the royal court of Versailles and was moderately successful there, being appointed in 1679 as ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole, a title he kept until 1725.
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George M. Cohan
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a co...
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James Aronson
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
James Aronson was an American journalist. He founded the National Guardian. He was a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Career Aronson, known as "Jim" to his friends, worked at several publications prior to founding the National Guardian. He worked on the staffs of the Boston Evening Transcript, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post and The New York Times from 1946 to 1948.
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Julius Watkins
1921 - 1977 (56 years)
Julius Watkins was an American jazz musician who played French horn. Described by AllMusic as "virtually the father of the jazz French horn", Watkins won the Down Beat critics poll in 1960 and 1961 for Miscellaneous Instrument.
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Jean Vigo
1905 - 1934 (29 years)
Jean Vigo was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Biography Vigo was born to Emily Clero and the militant anarchist Miguel Almereyda. Much of Vigo's early life was spent on the run with his parents. His father was imprisoned and probably murdered in Fresnes Prison on 13 August 1917, although the death was officially a suicide. Some speculated that Almereyda's death was hushed up on orders of the Radical politicians Louis Malvy and Joseph Caillaux, who were later punished for wartime treason.
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Ernest Bloch
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing musical scores, Bloch had an academic career that culminated in his recognition as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley in 1952.
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Sarah Siddons
1755 - 1831 (76 years)
Sarah Siddons was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. Contemporaneous critic William Hazlitt dubbed Siddons as "tragedy personified". She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton, and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own.
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Donny Hathaway
1945 - 1979 (34 years)
Donny Edward Hathaway was an American soul singer, keyboardist, songwriter, backing vocalist, and arranger who Rolling Stone described as a "soul legend". His most popular songs include "The Ghetto", "This Christmas", "Someday We'll All Be Free", and "Little Ghetto Boy". Hathaway is also renowned for his renditions of "A Song for You", "For All We Know", and "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know", along with "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", two of many collaborations with Roberta Flack. He has been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame and won one Grammy Award from four nominations.
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Hisui Sugiura
1876 - 1965 (89 years)
was a Japanese graphic designer who was a pioneer of modern Japanese graphic design. Early life He was born in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture in 1876. He graduated from the Japanese-style painting department of Tokyo School of Art, which is the present Tokyo University of the Arts, in 1901.
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Gertrude Buck
1871 - 1922 (51 years)
Gertrude Buck was one of a group of powerful female rhetoricians of her time. She strived to inspire young women to take on leadership roles within the democracy using the written word. She wrote many books, plays, articles, and poems relating to her cause. Buck dedicated her life to "challenging the patriarchal paradigm with her reformist views of pedagogy and rhetoric".
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Tod Browning
1880 - 1962 (82 years)
Tod Browning was an American film director, film actor, screenwriter, vaudeville performer, and carnival sideshow and circus entertainer. He directed a number of films of various genres between 1915 and 1939, but was primarily known for horror films, and was often cited in the trade press as the Edgar Allan Poe of cinema.
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Guillaume de Machaut
1300 - 1377 (77 years)
Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the from the subsequent movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer.
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