Jessica Phyllis Lange is an American actress. Known for her performances on stage and screen she has received numerous accolades and is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. Lange has received two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, five Golden Globe Awards and one Screen Actors Guild Award, alongside a nomination for a British Academy Film Award.
Willa Sibert Cather was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.
Anne Celeste Heche was an American actress, known for her roles across a variety of genres in film, television, and theater. She was the recipient of Daytime Emmy, National Board of Review, and GLAAD Media Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and a Primetime Emmy.
My Ántonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, which is considered one of her best works.
Amy Marie Madigan is an American actress. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1985 film Twice in a Lifetime. Her other film credits include Love Child (1982), Places in the Heart (1984), Field of Dreams (1989), Uncle Buck (1989), The Dark Half (1993), Pollock (2000), and Gone Baby Gone (2007).
Mary Megan Winningham, known professionally as Mare Winningham, is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards and has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards.
Louise Pound was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same year, she was the first woman inducted into the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame.
O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather, written while she was living in New York. It was her second published novel. The title is a reference to a poem by Walt Whitman entitled "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" from Leaves of Grass (1855).
The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series is an award given by the Screen Actors Guild to honor the finest acting achievements in Miniseries or Television Movie.
Tammy Blanchard is an American actress. She rose to prominence for her role as teenage Judy Garland in the critically acclaimed television film Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her other notable film roles were in The Good Shepherd (2006), Sybil (2007), Into the Woods (2014) and The Invitation (2015).
Lou, the Prophet is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in The Hesperian in 1892.
Grey Gardens is a 2009 American biographical drama television film about the lives of Edith Bouvier "Little Edie" Beale, played by Drew Barrymore, and her mother Edith Ewing "Big Edie" Bouvier, played by Jessica Lange. Co-stars include Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jacqueline Kennedy, Little Edie's cousin, and Ken Howard as Phelan Beale, Little Edie's father. The film, directed by Michael Sucsy and co-written by Sucsy and Patricia Rozema, flashes back and forth between various events and dates ranging from Little Edie as a young débutante in 1936 moving with her mother to their Grey Gardens estate through the filming and premiere of the actual 1975 documentary Grey Gardens.
O Pioneers! is an American opera in two acts by composer Barbara Harbach, set to a libretto by Jonathan Yordy. It is based on the 1913 novel by Willa Cather. Harbach became enamored with Willa Cather's works when commissioned by the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony based on Cather's 1922 novel One of Ours. When given the opportunity to compose an opera, she chose O Pioneers! because she has "always been drawn to stories about strong women." Harbach adds that Cather's story "has all the elements that an opera needs: long-term loving relationships, sibling rivalry and murder."
The Willa Cather Foundation is an American not-for-profit organization, headquartered in Red Cloud, Nebraska, dedicated to preserving the archives and settings associated with Willa Cather (1873–1947), a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and promoting the appreciation of her work. Established in 1955, the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that promotes Willa Cather’s legacy through education, preservation, and the arts. Programs and services include regular guided historic site tours, conservation of the 612 acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, and organization of year-round cultural programs and exhibits at the restored Red Cloud Opera House.
David Hamilton Stouck is a Canadian literary critic and biographer, formerly Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.
The Triple Crown of Acting is a term used in the American entertainment industry to describe actors who have won a competitive Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award in the acting categories, the highest awards recognized in American film, television, and theater, respectively. The term is related to other competitive areas, such as the Triple Crown of horse racing.
"The Best Years" is a short story by Willa Cather, first published after her death in the collection The Old Beauty and Others in 1948. It is her final work, and was intended as a gift to her brother, Roscoe Cather, who died as it was being written. Set in Nebraska and the northeastern United States, the story takes place over twenty years, tracing the response of Lesley Ferguesson's family to her death in a snowstorm.
St. Julian Falconieri Catholic Church is the first Roman Catholic church in Red Cloud, Nebraska, built in 1883. Abandoned by parishioners in 1903, the church was turned into a residence in 1906 after the completion of a new catholic church. Its conversion to a home altered much of the original structure, which was restored by the Willa Cather Foundation after its donation to them in 1967. The church has historical significance due to its connection to the famous author, Willa Cather, especially because it was where Annie Sadilek Pavelka was married and her illegitimate child, baptized. Both the Willa Cather Foundation and the state of Nebraska have owned the church and, in fact, was operated cooperatively from 1994 to 2018. However, as part of the Willa Cather State Historic Sites, St. Juliana was returned to the foundation in 2019. Today, the church is available for tours and, as part of the Willa Cather Thematic Group, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981.
