Speed Lamkin | |
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Born | Hillyer Speed Lamkin November 2, 1927 Monroe, Louisiana, U.S. |
Died | May 3, 2011 83) Monroe, Louisiana, U.S. | (aged
Resting place | Old City Cemetery, Monroe, Louisiana, U.S. |
Occupation |
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Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Parents | Ebb Tyler Lamkin Eugenia Layton Speed |
Hillyer Speed Lamkin (born Monroe, Louisiana, November 2, 1927 [1] – Monroe, Louisiana, May 3, 2011 [2] ) was an American novelist and playwright. He is best known for his first novel Tiger in the Garden (1950) and was called "the poor man's Truman Capote" by the composer Ned Rorem. [3] He was a recipient of a 1950 O. Henry Award for his short story Comes a Day.
Lamkin was the son of Ebb Tyler Lamkin (1893–1958) and his wife, the former Eugenia Layton Speed (born 1901). He was named for his maternal grandfather, Hillyer Rolston Speed, an insurance executive. Lamkin graduated frin Harvard University in 1948, which he had entered at the age of 16. He had one sibling, Marguerite, who became a voice coach for Southern-themed films such as Baby Doll , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , The Long, Hot Summer , and Raintree County . [4]
Described as "short, porcine, [and] effeminate" by biographer Fred Kaplan [5] and a "niggery, flirty, shrewd, frivolous, perceptive young person" by Christopher Isherwood, [6] Lamkin was often compared to Truman Capote because of his Gothic prose and literary precocity. Tennessee Williams, however, observed, "He doesn't write as well but is more agreeable". Similarly jaundiced was Dodie Smith, an English novelist and playwright, who described Lamkin as "a nice bright child but with an ounce of talent only, and not a reliable critic".
He became a sensation at age 22 with the publication of his 1950 novel, Tiger in the Garden. The New York Times called the Southern tale "a diffuse examination of the retirement of aristocrats before the vitality of 'new' crude opportunists" but criticized its "overall sense of a low-powered, highly polished Hollywood product". [7]
Lamkin and his friend Gus Field wrote a dramatic adaptation of Isherwood's story Sally Bowles but it was rejected in favor of an adaptation by John van Druten. He also contributed fiction to Mademoiselle and wrote a 90-minute television script about the life of Washington, D.C. hostess and ambassador Perle Mesta in 1956; its intended star was Rosalind Russell though the role was eventually played by Shirley Booth. In 1950 he was hired to write an English-language version of La Otra , a Mexican film starring Dolores del Río; it was reportedly being written as a vehicle for Joan Crawford. [8]
He also wrote for television and Broadway, notably Comes a Day, a 1958 play that starred Judith Anderson, Brandon deWilde, Michael J. Pollard, Eileen Ryan, and George C. Scott. Produced by Cheryl Crawford and Alan J. Pakula, the play was not a success, being described by The New York Times as "a puzzling drama" that was "uneven [and] baffling" and which bore "a surface resemblance to art in the Tennessee Williams manner." [9] The Harvard Crimson , in its review, called the play's dialogue "spotted with clichés" and observed that the plot echoed other dramatic works of the day. [10]
After Comes a Day closed, Lamkin returned permanently to Monroe, Louisiana.
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".
Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions.
Ned Miller Rorem was an American composer of contemporary classical music and a writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was considered the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Frequently described as a neoromantic composer, he showed limited interest in the emerging modernist aesthetic of his lifetime. As a writer, he kept—and later published—numerous diaries in which he spoke candidly of his exchanges and relationships with many cultural figures of America and France.
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Miss Julie is an opera by Ned Rorem to an English libretto by Kenward Elmslie, based on the play, Miss Julie (1888), by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It explores the subject of the intersection of social class and illicit sexual relations in late 19th-century Sweden.
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Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." The plot was based on factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons. The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's friend during his sojourn.
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. In it, a contemporary writer recalls his early days in New York City, when he makes the acquaintance of his remarkable neighbor, Holly Golightly, who is one of Capote's best-known creations. In 1961 it was adapted into a major motion picture of the same name.
Donald Windham was an American novelist and memoirist. He is perhaps best known for his close friendships with Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Windham moved with his then-boyfriend Fred Melton, an artist, to New York City in 1939. In 1942 Windham collaborated with Williams on the play, You Touched Me!, which is based on a D. H. Lawrence short story with the same title. Windham received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960.
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Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press, and commentators have described the novella as "one of Isherwood's most accomplished pieces of writing." The work was republished in the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and in the 1945 anthology The Berlin Stories.
Neville High School is a high school in Monroe, Louisiana, United States. It is administered by the Monroe City Schools Board. It is located 1/2 mile from the Ouachita River. Its mascot is the Tiger.
Andrew Glaze was an American poet, playwright and novelist. Much of Glaze's poetry reflects his coming of age in the American South, and his eventual return there. He also lived and wrote in New York City for 31 years. In New York City he became part of a circle of poets that included Oscar Williams, Norman Rosten, John Ciardi and William Packard.
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"The Hostess with the Mostes'" was an American television play broadcast live on March 21, 1957, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It was the 25th episode of the first season. Shirley Booth played the part of socialite Perle Mesta.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones Sr., known as Prez Jones, was an American educator and administrator. He served as the second president of Grambling State University, a historically black university in Grambling, Louisiana, from 1936 until 1977. He also coached the Grambling State Tigers baseball team, and was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame.