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Arts Legacy
When I came to Columbia a few years ago, I asked for the names of Columbia and Barnard graduates who had gone on to make notable contributions in the arts. The same six people always came up. There have to be more, I thought, and so the Initiative slowly started to pull together a list. Several students made it a part-time project; we're particularly grateful to Madeleine Elish, Julia Kelly and David Harrington.
Our criteria for a university connection were generous. You didn't have to graduate, for instance, which kept Federico Garcia Lorca on board. You didn't have to go to Columbia or Barnard Colleges, which yielded Paul Robeson (Law '23) and Georgia O'Keefe (TC '14-'15). We're very sure this list is incomplete, and we anticipate some embarrassing omissions. We also must have a few facts and dates listed incorrectly. Apologies to all! but after eighteen months, we thought it was time to post it and solicit corrections and additions. They go to cuarts@columbia.edu.
In the coming months, we'll make the list sortable and searchable. For now, we've decided to go with an alphabetical listing. Wiki-style, it can grow infinitely. Again, we welcome your suggestions. Happy reading. You'll be amazed all over again at this university's remarkable history.
Gregory Mosher
Director, Arts Initiative |
| Adams, Alice (1930- ) |
| Visual Art: Sculptor |
| School of Painting and Sculpture '53 |
| Alice Adams has mentored many young artists as a lecturer and instructor at Manhattanville College, the School of Visual Arts and the Pratt Institute. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and is a part of permanent collections of the American Craft Museum and The Hague Municipal Museum. Among her commissions are works for the Toledo Botanical Garden the Denver International Airport, Thomas Jefferson University, and The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Adams' honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
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| Adams, Edie (1929- ) |
| Film, Theatre, Television: Actress |
| Columbia School of Drama '50 |
| Adams launched her television, stage and screen career in the early 1950s, appearing regularly on "The Ernie Kovacs Show" and programs hosted by Ed Sullivan, Desi Arnez and Dinah Shore. Adams won a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actress for her performance as Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner (1956). She continued to perform into the 1980s, appearing in Anything Goes (1974), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1983) and The Merry Widow (1986). Adams' film work includes The Apartment (1960). In 1990, Adams published her memoir, Sing a Pretty Song: The "Offbeat" Life of Edie Adams. |
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| Adler, Mortimer J. (1902-2001) |
| Literature: Writer, Philosopher |
| CC '21 (officially 1983), GSAS PhD '28 |
| Adler believed in the Classics as the foundation for a well-educated public's intellectual and moral standing. He advocated the Western canon though his Great Books program and his work as Chairman of the Board of Editors of The Encyclopedia Britannica. His own works make what he termed "great ideas" accessible to the general reader, among them: How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education (1940), Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (1978) and The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought (1992). Adler completed his undergraduate coursework in 1923, but refused to take the required swim test and did not receive his degree until Columbia College waived the requirement in 1983. His academic career included posts at Columbia University, the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He founded the Institute for Philosophical Research as well as the Center for the Study of Great Ideas. In 1990, he was awarded the Charles Frankel Prize by the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
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| Alarcón, Daniel (1977- ) |
| Literature: Author |
| CC'99 |
| Alarcón is a Peruvian writer whose work has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Salon.com, and others. His collection of stories, War By Candlelight, was published in 2006 to admiring reviews and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. Now a writer in residence at Mills College, he recently published his first novel, Lost City Radio. Alarcón has received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Fellowship, and he was recently named one of the “21 Young American Novelists” under 35 by Granta magazine. |
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| Algrant, Dan (1959- ) |
| Film: Director, Screenwriter |
| SoA '98, SPA '88 |
| Algrant co-wrote and directed Naked in New York (1993), starring Eric Stoltz and Mary-Louise Parker. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and earned a Critics Award nomination and an Audience Award the 1993 Festival du Cinema Américain. Algrant's short films Cathedral, Some Film Chopping Wood, Anything for Jazz, The First Dance Ever and Swimming, have screened at film festivals across the United States; Swimming won a Chicago Film Festival Silver Plaque. His latest feature film is People I Know (2002). Algrant directed three seasons of HBO's television series "Sex and the City." |
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| Alston, Charles Henry (1907-1977) |
| Visual Art: Painter, Sculptor, Illustrator |
| CC '29, TC '31 |
| While still a student, Alston began his professional career illustrating album covers and publications for Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. Influenced by artists such as Diego Rivera and Michelangelo, Alston painted a number of murals in Harlem, among them Magic and Medicine at the Harlem Hospital. The geometric influence of African art shows in Alston's portraits of black leaders, such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967). Alston's work is part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Alston became the first African-American instructor at the Arts Students' League (1950-1971) and the Museum of Modern Art (1956). He became a full professor at the City University of New York in 1973. |
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| Anders, Glen (1889-1981) |
| Theatre: Actor |
| CC '19-'21 |
| Anders made his start in Vaudeville, working his way to a New York stage debut in the play Just Around the Corner in 1919-the same year that he began three years of study at Columbia College. He performed on Broadway for over thirty years, appearing in three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Hell Bent for Heaven (1924) by Hatcher Hughes, They Knew What They Wanted (1924) by Sidney Howard, and Strange Interlude (1928) by Eugene O'Neill. |
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| Anderson, Laurie (1947- ) |
| Visual Art, Music: Performance Artist, Composer |
| BC '69, SoA '72 |
| Anderson studied Art History at Barnard and earned an MFA in sculpture at the School of the Arts. Although she has enjoyed some popular music success, she is best known for her films and performances, such as the six-hour United States I-IV, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983, and her 1986 film Home of the Brave. In 1994, Anderson staged a multimedia tour adapted from a retrospective of her work, Stories from the Nerve Bible. A stint as NASA's first performance artist in residence resulted in the performance, The End of the Moon (2004). In 2005, she received an honorary doctorate from the SoA, where she has taught master classes. |
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| Antin, Mary (1881-1949) |
| Literature: Writer |
| TC '02, BC '04 |
| Mary Antin emigrated from Russia to Boston with her family at the age of 13; five years later, she was a published American author. With the aid of Jewish philanthropist Lina Hecht, Antin used letters written to her uncle over her nine thousand mile journey to write From Plotzk to Boston in 1899. Antin also wrote a number of essays and stories. In 1912, she published The Promised Land, an autobiographical account an immigrant's conflict between rigid tradition and expanded opportunity. During her later years, Antin lectured and advocated for unrestricted immigration policy. |
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| Armstrong, Charlotte (1905-1969) |
| Literature: Fiction Writer |
| BC '25 |
| Armstrong is best known for her crime novels The Unsuspected (1946), Mischief (1950) and A Dram of Poison (1956), though she published nearly thirty titles in over thirty years as a fiction writer. She received the Mystery Writers of America Award for best novel in 1956 and for best short story in 1958. She also authored two Broadway plays, wrote for television's Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and adapted several of her works for film, such as The Unsuspected (1947) and Mischief (re-titled Don't Bother to Knock, 1952). |
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| Ashbery, John (1927- ) |
| Literature: Poet, Critic, Editor |
| GSAS '51 |
| Ashbery has written over twenty books of poetry since 1956, when W.H. Auden selected Some Trees for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won the literary "triple crown"—the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Ashbery was the first English-language poet to win the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poésie (Brussels). He has received prizes and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. A former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, he currently teaches at Bard College. |
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| Atterbury, Grosvenor (1869-1956) |
| Architecture: Architect, Urban Planner, Writer |
| Architecture 1884 |
| After designing homes for wealthy industrialists, Atterbury became known for adhering to the high same standards in his efforts for workers housing. Atterbury collaborated with Frederick Law Omstead, Jr. on the model community of Forest Hills Gardens, NY. The community's pre-cast concrete panels allowed for the economical construction of multiple units and townhouses. Atterbury's other industrialized housing designs include a community of single-family homes in Worcester, MA (1915-1916) and housing for 40,000 in the new railroad town of Erwin, TN. |
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| Auster, Paul (1947- ) |
| Literature: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Writer |
| CC '69 and GSAS '70 |
| Auster began his career as a poet, essayist and translator of French literature. He is best known for his philosophical fiction, including a series of experimental detective novels known as the New York Trilogy (The City of Glass, 1985; Ghosts, 1986; The Locked Room, 1987). In addition to novels, Auster has published essays, interviews, and a memoir, and poetry, including Collected Poems (2004). Among his honors are a PEN Translation Center grant (1977), NEA fellowship for poetry (1979) and creative writing (1985), a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination (1991), and France's Prix Medicis for foreign literature (1993). |
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| Avedon, Richard (1923-2004) |
| Visual Art: Photographer |
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| As a photographer for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and the first staff photographer for The New Yorker, Avedon's captured otherwise distant personalities such as Jean Genet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol and Lena Horne. Avedon's work has been featured at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1994, the Whitney Museum exhibited a retrospective of five decades of Avedon's work A . He has also published portraiture Nothing Personal (1974), a collaboration with James Baldwin. His many honors include the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Photography Prize (1991) and the International Center of Photography Master of Photography Award (1993). |
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| Ax, Emanuel (1948- ) |
| Music: Pianist |
| CC '66-70 |
| In 1974, Emanuel Ax garnered first prize at the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. Five years later, Ax followed by winning the Avery Fisher Prize. Ax has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, and he has won seven Grammy Awards. Ax is noted for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schoenberg, and Haydn, as well as his work with cellist Yo Yo Ma. Ax has given world premieres for contemporary artists such as John Adams, Christopher Rouse and Bright Sheng. |
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| Balderston, John L. (1899-1954) |
| Film, Theatre, Literature: Screenwriter, playwright, novelist |
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| John L. Balderston helped to usher in Universal Studio's "golden age" of horror films in the 1930s, including Frankenstein (1931, Dracula (1931), and The Mummy (1932). Balderston adapted his own stage plays and books to film, including as Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and Best Screenplay Academy Award nominees Gaslight (1944) and Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). Balderston also worked on the screenplay for Gone with the Wind and wrote plays such as Berkeley Square (1926). |
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| Barrett, Mary Ellin (1927- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| BC '49 |
| Barrett is an accomplished novelist who has also written a well-known biography of her reclusive father, Irving Berlin. Her first novel, Castle Ugly (1966), is a portrait of American aristocrats before the Second World War. Her other titles include An Accident of Love (1973) and American Beauty (1980). Barrett worked as a researcher with Time Magazine and as a literary editor at Glamour Magazine. |
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| Bartók, Béla (1881-1945) |
| Music: Composer, ethnomusicologist |
| Researcher, Music Dept. '40-'44 |
| Bartók composed dozens of musical works throughout his life, and his
passion for researching and collecting Hungarian and Rumanian folk
music made him one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology. He
saw a complexity in folk music that went beyond the traditional
major/minor movements, tonalities, and rhythms of Western classical
music. World War II forced him to leave Europe for America, where he
wrote his major musicological work, Rumanian Folk Music, and worked as
a research assistant at Columbia's Music Department. At Columbia,
Bartók prepared three volumes of music and analysis that remain in the
department's library today. Among Bartók's major works are the opera
Duke Bluebeard's Castle, the ballet The Wooden Prince, the choral work
Cantata Profana, and Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. |
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| Baruch, André (1908-1991) |
| Radio and Television: Broadcasting |
| CC ? |
| Baruch was one of the original staff announcers for the CBS Radio Network. He was behind such 1930s radio series such as The Shadow, The Kate Smith Hour and Your Hit Parade. During World War II, Baruch founded the Armed Forces Radio Network. In 1945, he and his wife, singer Bea Wain, founded a popular radio show, Mr. and Mrs. Music. Baruch also announced play-by-play coverage of Brooklyn Dodgers baseball. He was a founding member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and in 1979, he was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame. |
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| Behrman, Samuel N. (1893-1973) |
| Literature, Theatre, Film: Writer, Playwright, Screenwriter |
| GSAS '18 |
| Behrman, who got his start reviewing books for The New Yorker, is remembered for melding humor and social criticism with commercial drama. He earned a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1943. In 1944, he won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play for his adaptation of Jacobowsky and the Colonel. Other plays include End of Summer (1936) and But for Whom Charlie (1964). Behrman collaborated on the screenplays for such movies as My Lips Betray (1933) and The Pirate (1948). |
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| Berg, Gertrude (1899-1966) |
| Radio, Television, Theatre: Writer, Actress, Produce |
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| Berg became one of the first women to author a network television series. For sixteen years, Berg wrote, produced, and performed in the radio serial Meet the Goldbergs, about an upwardly mobile Jewish family. The successful show evolved into a Broadway play, Molly (1948), and a half-hour television sitcom (1949), and Berg won an Emmy in 1950 for her portrayal matriarch Molly Goldberg. On stage, Berg performed in The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), The Matchmaker (1957) and The Majority of One (1959), for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress. |
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| Berman, Shari Springer (1964- ) and Pulcini, Robert (1964-) |
| Film: Screenwriter and Director |
| SoA- Film '95 and SoA- Film '94 |
| This husband-and-wife filmmaking team's debut documentary, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's, was named one of the ten best films of 1998 by USA Today and won a number of international film awards. American Splendor, which documents the story of Cleveland file clerk, music critic, and autobiographical comic-book author, Harvey Pekar, took the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival's Fipresci Award from the International Film Critics' Association. American Splendor was also named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Critics Association, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. |
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| Bernays Kaplan, Anne (1930- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| BC '52 |
| Kaplan's first novel, The New York Ride (1965), follows a female protagonist through college and beyond, offering an unusual perspective on what one reviewer labeled the "post-Gatsby revels" of the 1960s. Kaplan published a number of other fiction works, including The First to Know (1975), Growing Up Rich (1986) and Professor Romeo (1989). Kaplan also wrote a well-known textbook, What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. |
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| Berryman, John (1914-1972) |
| Literature: Poet |
| CC '36 |
| The New York Times described Berryman's voice as "jaunty, jazzy, colloquial ... full of awkward turns and bent syntax." The poet was already published in The Nation (1935) when he graduated from Columbia. After meeting Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Dylan Thomas during his studies in Cambridge, England, Berryman wrote and taught for twenty-five years at the University of Minnesota. He won the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award in 1948 The Dispossessed (1948) and an American Academy of Poets award (1950), and Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Berryman also won the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1950), the Levinson Prize (1950), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1952). 77 Dream Songs (1964) won the Pulitzer Prize. His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968), won the National Book Award (1969) and the Bollingen Prize. |
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| Berssenbrugge, Mei-mei (1947- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| SoA '74 |
| After publishing two books of poetry, Beijing-born Berssenbrugge earned her MFA in the Writing Division of the School of the Arts. Among her honors are a National Endowment of the Arts grant in 1976; two American Book Awards for Random Possession (1979) and The Heat Bird (1982); and the 1999 Western States Book Award for Four-Year-Old-Girl. Berssenbrugge has collaborated with artists Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith, and has written for the theatre with Frank Chin, Blondell Cummings, Tan Dun, Shi Zhen Chen and Alvin Lucier. The NEA supported the publication of Nest in 2002. Poetics Journal describes Berssenbrugge's work as a delicate experience where "meaning arrives through sensation, the surprised juxtaposition of moment upon moment." |
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| Bigelow, Kathryn (1953- ) |
| Film: Screenwriter, Director |
| SoA '79 |
| Bigelow studied under Milos Forman at Columbia's School of the Arts. One of the few women writer/directors to tackle the action/thrillers, Bigelow blends the genre's conventions with dark romanticism and serious themes. Among her films are The Loveless (1983), Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990) and Point Break (1991). She has directed the TV miniseries Wild Palms and episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her most recent films include Strange Days (1995) and The Weight of Water (2000). |
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| Biggers, Sissy |
| Television: Personality, Media Spokesperson |
| BC '79 |
| Biggers began her television career supervising scripts for ABC and HBO. As Director of Late Night and Specials Programming for NBC, she worked on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman. In 1994, she moved from production to anchoring a daily talk show, Live from Queens. In 1996, she hosted the Food Network's Ready, Set, Cook! Biggers co-hosts The Victory Garden on PBS |
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| Bobbie, Walter (1945 - ) |
| Theater: Director, Actor, Dancer, Choreographer |
| Masters Scholar (Through Catholic University) |
| Walter Bobbie has worked both onstage and backstage on numerous Broadway hits. He is the former director of New York City Center's
Encores! series. His directing credits include: Chicago (1996); Twentieth Century (2004), with Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche; the Rogers
and Hammerstein revue A Grand Night for Singing (1993), which received a Tony Award nomination; and the musical version of Nick
Hornby's novel High Fidelity (2006). Bobbie also directed the Broadway production of Footloose and co-wrote the book. As an actor,
he played Roger in the original Broadway production of Grease (1971), and he starred as Nicely Nicely Johnson in the revival of Guys and
Dolls (1992). |
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| Booke, Sorrell (1930-1994) |
| Television, Film, Theater: Actor |
| CC '49 |
| Booke was a television, stage and film actor best known for his role as Boss Hogg on TV's "The Dukes of Hazzard." His Off-Broadway debut in The White Devil (1955) landed Booke a role on the TV show "Omnibus" and a Broadway debut in the 1956 production of The Sleeping Prince. His feature films include What's Up, Doc? (1972), Freaky Friday (1976), and The Other Side of Midnight (1977). Booke acted in dozens of television series, earning an Emmy nomination for his appearance on "Dr. Kildare." |
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| Boone, Pat (1934- ) |
| Music: Singer |
| CC '58 |
| Musician Pat Boone first topped the pop charts with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). By age 23, Boone had cut twelve hit singles and sold over 13 million copies. Known as "the good Elvis," his G-rated lyrics and clean-cut persona made rock music palatable; a 1957 Newsweek article heralded him as "the new Bing [Crosby]." Boone has hosted his own television series and a regular radio show, appeared in over 15 movies (including 1959's Journey to the Center of the Earth), and authored two advice books for young adults. |
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| Boring,William A. (1859-1937) |
| Architecture: Architect |
| Architecture 1886 (one year only) |
| Boring studied architecture while executing commissions such as the Los Angeles Times building and the Santa Monica Hotel. Boring and Edward L. Tilton submitted the winning design for the United States Immigration Station at Ellis Island, and subsequently founded a firm together. Among their commissions were apartment buildings at 520, 521 and 540 Park Avenue in Manhattan. In 1916, Boring joined the faculty of the Columbia School of Architecture, where he eventually became Director and Dean. Among Boring's honors are the Gold Medal for Architecture at the Paris Exposition of 1900, the Gold Medal at the Buffalo Exposition of 1901, and the Medal of Honor for Individual Service from the American Institute of Architects in 1927. |
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| Brace, Donald Clifford (1881-1955) |
| Literature: Editor and Publisher |
| CC 1904 |
| Brace spent his first fifteen years out of college with publishers Henry Holt before establishing Harcourt & Brace in 1919 with Columbia classmate Alfred Harcourt. The firm grew thanks to bestsellers by John Maynard Keynes, Sinclair Lewis and Carl Sandburg. As company president, Brace published E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. Brace's financial expertise lead to his work on fair trade contracts during the New Deal era. In 1950, Brace was awarded the Columbia University Medal of Excellence. |
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| Brandon Victor Dixon (1981 - ) |
| Theater: Actor |
| CC '03 |
| Before becoming a Broadway star, Brandon Victor Dixon graced the Columbia stage as a cast member of the 107th Annual Varsity Show. In October of 2002, the fall of his Senior year, Brandon received his big professional break when he was chosen to play the part of Simba in the national tour of The Lion King. He was then cast as the lead role in a new Broadway show, The Color Purple, for which he was nominated for a Tony in 2006. |
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| Brandt, Helene (1936- ) |
| Visual Art: Sculptor |
| SoA '75 |
| Brandt is known for creating sculptures that viewers can enter and experience. Her public commissions include pieces at Sacred Heart University, the Staten Island Children's Museum, Long Island University, the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial and the Ward's Island Sculpture Garden. Brandt received an NEA Artist in Residence Grant and a 1985 Guggenheim Fellowship. She recently collaborated with Vito Acconci on the mosaic mural at the Yankee Stadium Subway Station, for which she was awarded a New York City Masterwork Award. Brandt has taught and mentored at Bennington College, the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute and New York University. |
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| Brashares, Ann (1967- ) |
| Literature: Fiction writer and editor |
| BC '89 |
| Brashares's debut novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001) traces the adventures of four best friends who share one pair of jeans during their first summer apart. Sisterhood became a New York Times bestseller, won the Book Sense Book of the Year Award in 2002 and was adapted to film in 2005. Brashare added two more books to the series, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (2003) and Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (2005); a fourth book in the series is planned, as are novels for adults. |
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| Broones, Martin (1892-1971) |
| Music: Composer |
| CC '? |
| Broones' music supported some of the first motion picture soundtracks. He composed the scores of So This is College (1929), and The Mysterious Island (1929), and contributed songs to numerous other movies. Popular songs include "I Can't Get Over a Girl Like You," "Bring Back Those Minstrel Days," and "One Last Love Song." Broones was the head of MGM's Music Department. He married actress Charlotte Greenwood and served as her manager and chief press agent. |
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| Brown, Rosellen (1939- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| BC '60 |
| Brown's fiction, essays and poetry have won her the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award in Literature, two grants from the NEA, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Brown has published a collection of short stories, three volumes of poetry, and five novels—The Autobiography of My Mother (1976), Tender Mercies (1978), Civil Wars (1984), and Before and After (1992), and Half a Heart. She is on the faculty of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. |
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| Buchman, Sidney (1902-1975) |
| Theatre, Film: Playwright and Screenwriter |
| CC '23 |
| Buchman wrote Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), which won the Academy Award for best screenplay, and Academy Award nominees Talk of the Town (1942) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). In 1949, Jolson Sings Again was nominated for both the Academy Award and Writers Guild award for best screenplay. Buchman's screenplay for Saturday's Hero (1951) was also nominated for an award by the Writers Guild. Following his investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Buchman produced very little work. He was the President of the Screen Writers Guild (1941-1942), and received the organization's Laurel Award in 1965. |
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| Burns, Ric (1955 - ) |
| Film: Director, Writer and Producer |
| CC '78, GSAS English PhD '83 |
| Ric Burns is a writer, director, and producer of many acclaimed documentary films. He filmography includes Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, American Experience: New York, and he is currently writing and directing We Shall Remain: Tecumseh, a television series scheduled to debut in 2009. He has been awarded three primetime Emmys for his work on these films, and he has also received various other awards for his esteemed documentary works. Ric is the brother of famed director Ken Burns. |
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| Burroway, Janet (1936- ) |
| Theatre, Literature: Playwright and Novelist |
| BC '58 |
| Burroway's play, Garden Party, was produced at Barnard the same year that Burroway graduated. Although she is best known for her novels, Burroway's plays include The Beauty Operators, Medea with Child and Sweepstakes. She won the Academy of Arts and Letters Playwrighting Prize in 2001 and a Pushcart Prize in 2002. Her novels include The Buzzards, which garnered a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1970, and Raw Silk, the runner-up for the National Book Award in 1977. Burroway received a creative writing scholarship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Florida Fine Arts creative writing grant and a number of awards for excellence in teaching. She is professor emerita of English literature and writing at Florida State University. |
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| Cable, Mary (1920- ) |
| Literature: Fiction Writer |
| BC '41 |
| Cable has published numerous stories, articles and novels throughout a career at The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar and the American Heritage Publishing Company. Her best-known works are the historical novel Avery's Knot (1981)—about the murder a girl pregnant with a minister's child in 1832—and The Blizzard of '88. Other works include Black Odyssey: The Case of the Slave Ship Amistad (1971) and Lost New Orleans, which won the 1980 Louisiana Library Association Award. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
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| Cagney, James (1899-1986) |
| Theatre, Film: Actor |
| CC '18 |
| After his father's death, James Cagney supported his family by performing in musical comedies; his talent quickly led to starring roles in film. The Public Enemy (1931) earned Cagney a reputation as the quintessential gangster, though Cagney's favorite role, for which he won an Oscar, was song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Cagney earned a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Angels with Dirty Faces and was the first actor to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1974. |
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| Casey, Edward Pearce (1864-1940) |
| Architecture: Architect |
| CC? 1886, 1888 (Civil Engineering and Philosophy) |
| Casey designed a number of notable buildings in the Washington DC, including the National Library building (1896), the Congressional Library (1892-1897), the Memorial Continental Hall, the Connecticut Avenue Viaduct and the Memorial Bridge spanning the Potomac River. A veteran of the Civil War, Casey designed the New York state monuments at Antietam and Gettysburg. Casey's General Grant monument on the mall in Washington is one of the largest groups of statuary in the world; at its unveiling in 1902, The New York Times recognized the work as "the most ambitious piece of architectural statuary ever attempted in this country." Casey served as Vice President of the Beaux Arts Society, Treasurer of the Architectural League, and as a member of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. |
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| Casey, Rosemary (1906?-1976) |
| Theatre: Playwright |
| BC '26, GSAS '29 |
| Casey was a pioneering female playwright. Several of her plays appeared on Broadway in 1940s and early 1950s. The Velvet Glove (1949) was produced on television as "The Play of the Week," starring Helen Hayes, and earned Casey the Roman Catholic Missionary Organization's Christopher Award. Queen Mary attended the London opening of Mary Goes to Sea. Other works include Glass Houses, Love Is Not Important, All the News, Once and Actor, and The Saint's Husband. Casey was named a trustee of Barnard in 1951. |
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| Caulfield, Joan (1922-1991) |
| Theatre, Film: Actress |
| BC '40 |
| Caulfield started out as a cover girl and fashion model. Her fourteen-month run in Broadway's Kiss and Tell (1943) landed her a contract with Paramount Pictures and launched her Hollywood career. While her films made the most of her beauty, Caufield was driven to be more than "just a decoration" on screen. Her films include Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) with Bing Crosby, Blue Skies (1946) opposite Bob Hope, and Dear Ruth (1947) with William Holden. During the 1950s she co-starred in the CBS sitcom "My Favorite Husband" and NBC's "Sally." |
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| Cerf, Bennett Alfred (1898-1971) |
| Literature: Publisher, Author |
| CC and JS '19 |
| After joining the publishing firm of Boni and Liveright, Cerf purchased the Modern Library subsidiary. With partner, Donald S. Klopfer, Cerf expanded and revitalized the series, adding masterpieces from Tolstoy and Hugo and establishing an affordable canon of literature. In 1929, Cerf and Klopfer incorporated under the name Random House and began publication of a "random" variety of work. The firm's reputation grew with the addition of the works of O'Neill, Faulkner, Proust, Joyce and Gertrude Stein in the 1930s. What began with a $215,000 investment in 1925 was worth $40 million when the partners sold Random House in 1966. |
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| Chapman, John Arthur (1900-1972) |
| Literature, Theatre: Journalist, Author, Drama Critic |
| CC 1919? (did not graduate) |
| Chapman studied briefly at Columbia before joining the fledgling New York Daily News in 1920. The paper dubbed him a "jack-of-all-newspaper trades and a master of all of them." Chapman worked as a photographer in Paris, covered Broadway, and succeeded Ed Sullivan as the Hollywood correspondent for the Daily News. Throughout twenty-five years as drama critic, Chapman was widely known as "Mr. Theater," "Old Frost Face," and "Mr. Curmudgeon." His column, "Mainly About Broadway," was one of the city's most widely read features. Chapman served as the president of the New York Drama Critics Circle from 1949 to 195 and edited Best Plays and the Yearbook of Drama in America from 1947 to 1953. |
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| Cholodenko, Lisa (1964- ) |
| Film, Television: Screenwriter, Director, Actress |
| SoA '98 |
| Cholodenko's study under Milos Forman yielded two well-received short films, Souvenir (1994) and Dinner Party (1997). Her debut feature film, High Art—an examination of sexuality and ambition—won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Cholodenko directed episodes of NBC's series Homicide: Life on the Street and HBO's Six Feet Under while developing Laurel Canyon (2002), which starred Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2004, Cholodenko directed Aidan Quinn, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon Cavedwellers. |
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| Chotzinoff, Samuel (1889-1964) |
| Music: Pianist, Music Critic |
| CC 1908-1911 |
| Russian immigrant Samuel Chotzinoff left college to accompany violinist Efrem Zimbalist and sopranos Alma Gluck and Frieda Hempel. Chotzinoff was a music critic for the New York World and the New York Post, though he was better known for his work in television and radio. As a Music Consultant and General Music Director at NBC Radio, Chotzinoff helped create the NBC Symphony Orchestra and fostered Italian maestro Arturo Toscanini's return to America. Chotzinoff organized the NBC Television Opera Theater and commissioned the first television opera, Gian-Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, which premiered on Christmas Eve in 1951. He published two memoirs and Toscanini: An Intimate Portrait (1956) and A Little Night Music (1964). |
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| Cincotti, Peter (1983- ) |
| Music: Composer, Singer, Pianist |
| CC 2005 |
| At age three, Peter Cincotti was playing piano; by age nine, he was composing; and by age twelve, he was playing professionally throughout New York. At eighteen, Cincotti became the youngest performer to headline at the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room. Cincotti caught the attention of his idol, Harry Connick, Jr., and in 1997 was invited to New Orleans to study with Ellis Marsalis. Cincotti toured with Connick in 1999, winning a prize at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 2000. His self-titled debut in 2003 made him the youngest musician to ever top Billboard's traditional jazz chart. Cincotti played Frank Sinatra in Broadway's Our Sinatra (2001) and he acted in the Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea. |
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| Clurman, Harold (1901-1980) |
| Theatre: Director, Critic, Author |
| CC' 1919-1921 |
| In 1931, Harold Clurman founded the Group Theater, intending to counter the current of commercial theater. The Group Theater brought together actors Lee Strasburg and Stella Adler and playwrights Clifford Odets and Irwin Shaw, and Clurman used the Theater to introduce the methods of Russian director Constantin Stanislavsky to the American stage. Clurman went on to direct the works of Arthur Miller, Jean Anouilh, Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams on Broadway. He published criticism in The New Republic and The Nation, and in 1972 his On Directing became a widely read text among students and theater practitioners. He was a professor of playwriting at Hunter College for nearly ten years, and lectured at UCLA and UC Berkeley. |
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| Cobb, Vicki (1938- ) |
| Literature: Children's Nonfiction Writer |
| BC '58 and GSAS '60 |
| Cobb has published over sixty educational books for young audiences, seeking to entertain and captivate the uninitiated science reader. Cobb served as host and principal writer of the television series The Science Game, which won the Cable Television Award for best educational series in 1973. Four of her titles won the Children's Book Council-NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children award. The Library of Congress named three of her books as Children's Book selections; More Science You Can Eat (1979), How to Really Fool Yourself: Illusions for All Your Senses (1981), and The Monsters Who Died (1983). In 1984, The Secret Life of School Supplies: A Science Experiment Book won Cobb the Washington Irving Children's Book Choice Award. |
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| Condon, Bill (1955- ) |
| Film: Screenwriter, Director |
| CC' 76 |
| Condon's first screenwriting effort was Strange Behavior (1981), a collaboration with Michael Laughlin, which developed a cult following and led to the unofficial sequel Strange Invaders (1983). His directorial debut was 1987's Sister, Sister. In 1998, he adapted and directed Gods and Monsters, starring Ian McKellan and Lynn Redgrave, which won Condon the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Condon's adapted screenplay for Chicago was nominated for an Academy Award and film won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Condon also wrote and directed Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson, about the pioneering sexuality researcher. |
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| Coonrod, Karin (1953 - ) |
| Theatre: Stage Director |
| SoA - Directing '88 |
| Karin Coonrod is the founding director of Off-Broadway's Arden Party and has directed over 20 of its productions, including Love's Labour's Lost, Waiting for Godot, Antigone, The Threepenny Opera, and Victor of Children Take Over, for which she received Encore's Outstanding Director Award. As Artist in Residence at the Public Theatre from 1995-1996, Coonrod directed Henry VI, Parts I & II for the Public's New York Shakespeare Festival. She has also directed at the American Repetory Theatre. |
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| Corigliano, John (1938- ) |
| Music: Composer |
| CC '59 |
| In 1964, Corigliano's chamber music piece Sonata for Violin and Piano took a prize at Italy's Spoleto Festival. Under the mentorship of Leonard Bernstein, Corigliano worked on the Young People's Concerts series and composed Etude Fantasy and Clarinet Concerto. Corigliano's score for the science fiction film Altered States (1981) won an Academy Award nomination and his work on The Red Violin (1999) earned him the Oscar for Best Original Film Score. Symphony No. 1 won him a Grammy Award for Best New Composition and the Grawemeyer Award. Corigliano's first opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, won him Composer of the Year at the International Classical Music Awards. Symphony No. 2, a piece for a string orchestra commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, won him the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2001. |
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| Corliss, Richard Nelson (1944- ) |
| Film: Critic |
| SoA '74 |
| Corliss became editor of Film Comment in 1970, a position he held for nearly 20 years. He spent three years as film critic for the New Times (1975-1978) and then five years as the associate editor of Time Magazine (1980-1985), where he remains a senior writer. Corliss served on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival from 1971 until 1978. Corliss has edited books on American screenwriting and written a biography of Greta Garbo (1974) and a monograph of the novel and film Lolita (1994), among other works. |
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| Corthron, Kia (1961- ) |
| Theatre: Playwright |
| SoA - Theater Arts '92 |
| Shortly after completing her MFA, Corthron received her first commission from Chicago's Goodman Theater for the play, Seeking the Genesis. Fourteen of Corthron's twenty-two plays were commissioned by companies such as Playwrights Horizons (Life by Asphyxiation, 1995), The Public Theater (Suckling Chimera, 1998) and the Royal Court Theatre in London (Breath, Boom, 2000). Corthron's plays explore social and political issues, such as police brutality, the death penalty and environmental policy. She has received support from the Kennedy Center, the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights and the Van Lier Fellowship. |
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| Croce, Arlene (1934- ) |
| Dance: Critic |
| BC '55 |
| Croce has long been regarded one of the most articulate authorities on dance in America. As founding editor of the Ballet Review, Croce established herself at a time when the field was exploding with change. In 1973, Croce began her 25-year career at The New Yorker, where she chronicled George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Her works of criticism include Afterimages (1977), Going to the Dance (1983) and Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker (2000). Croce has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. She continues to write as a freelance critic. |
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| Crown, Alfred W. (1910-1984) |
| Film, Theatre: Producer |
| CC '? |
| Crown made his name producing for Broadway and Hollywood. He co-produced The Deputy, which enjoyed three hundred and sixteen performances over ten months at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 1964. Crown also produced three works on film: Hamlet (1964) starring Richard Burton, Last Summer (1969), and Taking Off (1971). |
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| Crudo, Richard (1957 - ) |
| Film: Cinematographer |
| SoA - Film '91 |
| Many of Crudo's credits as cameraman, camera op, steadicam assistant and panaglide assistant predate his studies in the Film Division of the School of the Arts. Crudo has worked on the crews of films such as Raising Arizona (1987), Field of Dreams (1989), Ghostbusters II (1989) and Joshua Tree (1993). He has worked as a cinematographer on more than twenty films, including American Buffalo (1996), Music from Another Room (1998), Grind (2003) and Brooklyn Rules (2005). His work as cinematographer and director of photography includes American Pie (1999) and Out Cold (2001). |
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| D'Agostino, Albert (1892-1970) |
| Film: Art Director |
| CC |
| D'Agostino created sets for some of the film industry's top directors from the 1930s through the 1950s. From 1939-1958, D'Agostino worked as the supervising art director for RKO, collaborating on the entire output of the studio on over 65 films. He is best remembered for his success underpinning character psychology in his designs for horror and mystery films such as Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Isle of the Dead (1945). His 19th-century Edinburgh in The Body Snatcher (1945) and his French village in Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) are considered his most convincing period designs. |
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| D'Erasmo, Stacey (1961- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| BC '83 |
| Stacey D'Erasmo's debut novel, Tea (2000), is a coming-of-age and coming out story that captures its protagonist at three stages of life in three distinct moments of American popular culture. She won the Gordon Ray Prize in Victorian Literature at NYU, where she completed graduate studies in English and American literature, as well as a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in nonfiction literature. Her second novel, A Seahorse Year, hit the shelves in 2004. |
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| Danticat, Edwidge (1969- ) |
| Literature: Fiction and Nonfiction Writer |
| BC '90 |
| Danticat was inspired by her family's storytelling to write about her immigration from Haiti to Brooklyn at the age of twelve. Danticat's MFA thesis at Brown University, a coming-of-age story titled, Breath, Eyes, Memory, became her first published novel. Breath was selected for Oprah's Book Club, which helped it become a paperback bestseller. Krik? Krak?, a National Book Award finalist in 1995, and Farming of Bones (1998) established Danticat as "the voice" of Haitian Americans, though Danticat maintains that she is one of many Haitian American voices. She has been praised for her unflinching examination of Haitian culture, careful blending of history and fiction, and delicate treatment of monumental themes. Danticat has also written a novel for young people, edited a collection of short stories, and worked with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. |
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| Daum, Meghan (1970- ) |
| Literature: Nonfiction Writer |
| SoA - Writing '96 |
| Daum contributes a weekly column to the Los Angeles Times. She has published articles and essays in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's Bazaar, The Village Voice and Vogue. Her honest cultural observations have illustrated her gifts as a storyteller, reporter and satirist. She has published two collections of essays: Let the Trinkets Do the Talking: Essays, Abstractions, and Absurdities (2001) and My Misspent Youth: Essays (2001). Her novel, The Quality of Life Report, was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2003. |
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| Davis, Lydia (1947- ) |
| Literature: Writer, Translator |
| BC '70 |
| Lydia Davis simultaneous enjoys two careers-one as a fiction writer and another as translator of French writers and philosophers. Her short story collection, Break It Down, won the 1988 Whiting Writers Award and the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Fiction. Davis has published a novel, The End of the Story (1995), along with several short story collections: The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976), Sketches for a Life of Wassilly (1981), and Story, and Other Stories (1984). Davis has translated novels, biographies and other scholarly works by French authors such as Marcel Proust, Maurice Blanchot and the Marquis de Sade. She has garnered the French-American Foundation Translation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2003 MacArthur "Genius" grant. |
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| de Lima, Sigrid (1922-1999) |
| Literature: Fiction Writer |
| BC '42 |
| De Lima's debut novel, Captain's Beach (1950), a survival story set in New York rooming houses, was the first out of the Hiram Haydn's workshop at the New School for Social Research. De Lima won the Prix de Rome for her next work, The Swift Cloud (1952), and published Carnival by the Sea in 1954. Though her last two works, Praise a Fine Day (1959) and Oriane (1968), were also successful with critics, de Lima did not publish again after Oriane's release. |
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| de Mille, William C. (1878-1955) |
| Theatre, Film: Playwright, Screenwriter |
| CC 1900 |
| A son of playwright Henry C. de Mille and brother of Cecil B. de Mille, William C. de Mille became a playwright and screenwriter during the first years of the motion picture. Between 1902 and 1914, he authored more than two dozen comedies, farces and serious plays in New York. De Mille followed his brother to Hollywood in 1914 and began directing such movies as Anton, the Terrible and Miss Lulu Bett. He wrote seven screenplays and directed more than fifty silent and talking films, including an adaptation of The Warrens of Virginia. De Mille also oversaw the founding of the Drama Department at the University of Southern California, where he taught from 1941 to 1953. His memoir, Hollywood Saga, was published in 1939. |
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| de Palma, Brian (1940- ) |
| Film: Director |
| CC '62 |
| Brian de Palma has written and directed over thirty films, mainly in the thriller genre. His voyeuristic style has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock's, and his violent flair has been both criticized as manipulative and admired as virtuosic. His career was boosted in 1972, with his direction of the horror film Sisters, followed by other horror successes Obsession (1976), Carrie (1976), The Fury (1978), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). Later thrillers include Raising Cain starring John Lithgow (1992), Snake Eyes starring Nicholas Cage (1998) and Femme Fatale starring Antonio Banderas (2002). |
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| Dean, Cecilia (? - ) |
| Fashion: Art Curator, Editor |
| BC '90 |
| As a young adult, Cecilia Dean modeled fashion for such famous photographers as Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, Steven Klein and Peter Lindbergh. The year she graduated from Barnard, Dean launched Visionaire with photographer Stephen Gan and makeup artist James Kaliardos, a limited-edition fashion and art quarterly based in SoHo. The publication is among the most elite in the industry; its issues showcase work built around themes like "Power" and "Paris," with content designed by curators rather than editors. Dean and her team launched mass-market fashion magazine V in 1999 and VMAN in 2003. |
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| Delaney, Elizabeth ("Bessie") (1891-1995), Sarah Louise "Sadie" (1889-1999) |
| Literature: Autobiographers |
| DDS '23, TC '20, '25 |
| Sisters Bessie and Sadie Delaney collaborated with New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth on Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years (1993). The Delaneys lived through the Jim Crow era in North Carolina, moved to New York in the 1910s and watched the century unfold through the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement into the modern era. The book became a bestseller as a portrait of African-American life and pioneering professional women. Bessie was the only black woman in her class at the Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery and the second black female dentist to be licensed in the state of New York. Sadie earned her masters degree at Teachers College and became the first black woman to teach domestic science in New York City Public Schools. |
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| Delano, William Adams (1874-1960) |
| Architecture: Architect |
| Architecture 1895?-1896 (withdrew) |
| Along with partner Chester Holmes Aldrich, Delano designed elaborate residences for some of New York's wealthiest families, as well as the Yale Divinity School and a master plan for West Point (1948). After helping to renovate the White House under Calvin Coolidge, Delano became a consultant to every president through the 1950s; he designed the second-story porch at the behest of Harry Truman. Delano worked on the Federal Triangle in Washington DC and designed the US Chancellery on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Later, he designed the 14 original buildings of the North Beach Airport (now La Guardia) in Queens. Among his honors are the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1953) and the National Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal (1940) |
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| Denby, David (1943- ) |
| Film, Literature: Critic, Author |
| CC '65 |
| David Denby has served as longtime film critic for The New Yorker magazine and has edited a number of volumes of criticism, including Awake in the Dark: An Anthology of American Film Criticism (1977). Following a self-announced mid-life crisis, Denby returned to Columbia to retake the core curriculum. Denby's reeducation resulted in Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (1996), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in 1997. |
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| Dennehy, Brian (1938- ) |
| Film, Theatre, Television: Actor, Writer, Director and Producer |
| CC '65 |
| Dennehy majored in history at Columbia College, where he also captained the football team. He finished his studies after a stint in the Marines. Since his film debut in Semi-Tough (1977), Dennehy has acted in more than forty film roles-from sheriff in First Blood to lawyer in Presumed Innocent to alien in Cocoon. Known for his range and everyman quality, Dennehy has also made stage appearances in productions such as Brecht's Galileo, Eugene O'Neill's Touch of a Poet and The Iceman Cometh, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by Peter Brook, and his 1999 Drama Desk Award- and Tony-winning triumph in the fiftieth-anniversary Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. |
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| Deutsch, Babette (1895-1982) |
| Literature: Writer, Poet |
| BC '17 |
| Deutsch's compact and restrained poetry is collected in two volumes: Collected Poems: 1919-1962 and The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch. Other collections include Banners (1919), Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1954), and Coming of Age: New and Selected Poems (1959). She also authored a number of fiction worksamong them the novels A Brittle Heaven (1926) and The Mask of Silenus (1933). Deutsch collaborated with husband Avrahm Yarmolinsky on translations of such works as Alexander Blok's The Twelve (1920) and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1943). Deutsch took the Nation Poetry Prize in 1926 and the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation Prize in 1941. She was awarded a Doctor of Letters from Columbia University in 1946, where she lectured in poetry from 1944-1971, as well as the William Rose Benet Memorial Award in 1957, and the Distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard in 1977, where a scholarship fund was established in her honor in 1979. |
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| Deutsch, Helen (1906-1992) |
| Film: Screenwriter |
| BC '27 |
| Deutsch's first screenwriting success was her adaptation of the Enid Bagnold novel, National Velvet, which earned five Academy Awards nominations, won two Oscars, and was named one of the year's ten best films by The New York Times. Her movie musical Lili (1953) won the Oscar, the Golden Globe and Writers Guild of America screen award for best musical. Deutsch also wrote the biopic of singer and actress Lillian Roth, I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956), which was honored with the Books and Authors Association Award. Deutsch was a founder and secretary of the New York Drama Critics Circle, and she took the Tony for Best Book of a musical for Carnival!, adapted from Lili, in 1962. Another major success was her 1964 film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which garnered six Oscar nominations. |
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| Diamond, I. A. L. (1920-1988) |
| Film: Screenwriter, Producer |
| CC '41 |
| After a decade of freelance writing, Diamond impressed director Billy Wilder with his comedy writing in 1955. The two collaborated Love in the Afternoon (1957) and the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Diamond and Wilder won an Oscar as well as awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Writers Guild of America for The Apartment (1960), starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. Other films from the pair include One, Two, Three (1961), The Fortune Cookie (Academy Award nomination, 1966), and Buddy, Buddy (1981). |
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| Dietz, Howard (1896-1983) |
| Film, Theatre: Lyricist, Publicity Director |
| CC '17 |
| Dietz's affinity for the Columbia University mascot translated into the roaring lion emblem of MGM studios when film producer Samuel Goldwyn hired Dietz's advertising firm. Dietz later joined the board of directors of Loew's, MGM's parent company; he became Vice President of Loew's in 1942. Dietz is perhaps best known, however, as a lyricist for vaudeville and the stage. Along with Arthur Schwartz, Dietz wrote the librettos to a number of acclaimed musical revues. The pair also wrote the song, "That's Entertainment," originally a number in their movie musical The Band Wagon (1953). In 1950, Dietz translated the lyrics of Johann Strauss's operetta, Die Fledermaus, for the Metropolitan Opera. Dietz served on the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) from 1959-1966. In 1983, he was honored with the first ASCAP Richard Rogers Award for lifetime achievement. |
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| DiGiulio,Edmund M. (1927-2004) |
| Film: Engineer |
| School of Mines, '50 |
| At Mitchell Camera Corporation and his own company, Cinema Products, DiGiulio invented technology that would transform the film industry. Mitchell's reflex viewing system allowed for the separation of the camera and the sound recorder on set. Mitchell also invented the System-35 Mark II, three-camera filming and the Steadicam, which allowed for greater freedom of movement. Mitchell won Oscars for technological innovation in 1969, 1978, 1993 and 1999, and in 2001, he was honored with the Gordon E. Sawyer Lifetime Achievement Academy Award. DiGiulio collaborated for many years with Stanley Kubrick on such films as Barry Lyndon (1975), for which he invented high-speed lenses to film scenes in candlelight, and A Clockwork Orange (1971). |
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| Doctorow, E.L. (1931 - ) |
| GSAS '53, non-degree |
| Literature: Writer |
| Edgar Laurence Doctorow's first literary success was The Book of Daniel (1971), which is set against the tumultuous backdrop of Columbia University in 1968. The novel's protagonist, Daniel, is a graduate student who spends much of his time at Butler Library researching his parents, who are loosely based on executed communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Since then, Doctorow's novels have been acclaimed for their blending of history and social commentary with epic plots. A number of his books have been both critical and commercial achievements, including Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005), the award-winning fictional account of General Sherman's Civil War campaign through the South |
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| Douglas, Helen Gahagan (1900-1980) |
| Theatre, Film: Actress |
| BC '24 |
| Douglas attended Barnard because of its proximity to Broadway; she left school for her Broadway debut as the lead in Dreams for Sale (1922). By 1925, she had performed Young Woodley over 260 times and been named one of the twelve most beautiful women in America. Douglas made her film debut in the classic horror film She (1935). Moved by what she witnessed touring Germany in the lead-up to World War II, she entered the politics as a champion of progressive causes, from organized labor to environmental protection. She represented California in the US Congress from 1944 to 1952. |
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| du Plessix Gray, Francine (1930- ) |
| Literature: Writer |
| BC '52 |
| Francine du Plessix Gray is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the author of numerous essays, nonfiction books, and novels, including Simone Weil (2001), At Home with the Marquis de Sade (1999), Rage and Fire (1994), and Lovers and Tyrants (1967). She recently published a portrait of her mother and father, Them: A Memoir of Parents (2005). Du Plessix Gray has been awarded France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
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| Dun, Tan (1957- ) |
| Music: Composer, Conductor |
| SoA, '93 |
| Dun began his career with the Peking Opera and in 1978 won one of 30 coveted spots in the newly reopened Central Conservatory in Beijing. Dun is most popular for his nineteenth-century-influenced score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won Dun an Academy Award and a Grammy. Dun's compositions include the operas Marco Polo (1996) and Peony Pavilioni (1998); Symphony 1997, a choral work commemorating the return of Hong Kong to China; and original music for A World Symphony for the Millennium, broadcast by the BBC. Dun's style combines avant-garde, indigenous, Eastern and Western influences. He was named one of The New York Times Musicians of the Year in 1997; he has earned the Glenn Gould Prize in Music and Communication, an Emmy Award, and a Grawemeyer Award. |
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| Duncan, Todd (1903-1998) |
| Music, Theatre: Singer, Actor, Teacher |
| TC '30 |
| Baritone Todd Duncan began a 25-year stage career in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana with the all-black Aeolian Opera in 1934. His debut led to an audition with George Gershwin, who hired Duncan for Porgy in Porgy and Bess. In 1945, Duncan became the first black man to perform opera with a white cast, singing Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Duncan sang 2,000 recitals in 56 countries, and mentored hundreds of students through his nineties. |
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| Dunnock, Mildred (1901?-1991) |
| Theatre, Film: Actress, Director |
| TC '33 |
| Dunnock's most notable role was Linda Loman in the original cast of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Broadway in 1966. A schoolteacher, Dunnock taught by day and performed by night for years, appearing in plays such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Tartuffe. Dunnock films and television shows include John Steinbeck's Viva Zapata starring Marlon Brando (1952), Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), Butterfield 8 starring Elizabeth Taylor (1960), and Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman (1962). She earned Academy Award nominations for Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951) and Aunt Rose Comfort in Baby Doll (1956). Dunnock directed two stage productions and continued to act well into her eighties. |
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| DuPlessis, Rachel Blau (1941- ) |
| Literature: Poet, Essayist, Critic |
| BC '63, GSAS '64, PhD '70 |
| DuPlessis has published a numerous articles and volumes of feminist literary criticism, most notably "For the Etruscans" from The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice (1990). DuPlessis describes her creative work since 1986, titled Drafts and published in volumes, as "interdependent, related, canto-like poems." Her essays and poetry share concerns such as subjectivity and gender, female figures in poetry, and cultural memory. DuPlessis's awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1986, 1988), a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1990), and the Fund of Poetry's award for "service to American poetry" (1993). She is an English professor at Temple University. |
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| Ebb, Fred (1933 - 2004) |
| Music: Lyricist |
| GSAS '57 (?) |
| Ebb was best known for the witty lyrics he set to John Kander's music throughout 40 years of collaboration. Their first big success, Cabaret (directed by Harold Prince), won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Score in 1966. The duo's other Tony-winning musicals include 70, Girls, 70 (1971), Chicago (1975, choreographed by Bob Fosse), Woman of the Year (1981), and The Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993). Songs such as "Maybe This Time," "All That Jazz," and "Nowadays" have showcased the talent of Broadway stars such as Liza Minnelli and Barbara Streisand. Kander and Ebb wrote "New York, New York" for Martin Scorsese's 1977 film of the same name, and Frank Sinatra's 1979 rendition of the song helped turn it into a classic. |
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| Edman, Irwin (1896-1954) |
| Literature: Writer, Philosopher, Teacher |
| CC '17, PhD '19 |
| Edman's philosophy dissertation, Human Traits and Their Social Significance, immediately became required reading for the core course "Contemporary Civilizations." Edman became a full professor at Columbia in 1935. Among his publications are Poems (1925), the novel Richard Kane Looks at Life (1925), and an introduction to the philosophy of art, The World, the Arts, and the Artist. Edman's collection of stories, A Philosopher's Holiday, details his belief that philosophical attitudes emerge from everyday experiences. |
| |
| Eikenberry, Jill (1947- ) |
| Theatre: Actress |
| BC '69 |
| Eikenberry's stage performances include roles in Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women with Meryl Streep in 1979, Tennessee Williams' Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976), and Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky, for which she won an Obie Award. Along with numerous film appearances, Eikenberry has played activist counselor Ann Kelsey on television's L.A. Law, a role for which she won a Golden Globe. She is an outspoken advocate for breast cancer research, having survived the disease in the 1980s. |
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| Einfeld, Charles (1901-1974) |
| Film: Producer, Publicist |
|
| Charles Einfeld's publicity projects include A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), starring James Cagney and Mickey Rooney, and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Einfeld eventually rose to become head of advertising and publicity for Warner Brothers Studios. Einfeld also worked as a producer for Arch of Triumph (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman. |
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| Ephron, Delia (1944- ) |
| Film, Literature: Screenwriter, Fiction Writer |
| BC '66 |
| Ephron is the funny half of the Ephron Sisters, who have collaborated on box-office successes such as Michael (1998), You've Got Mail (1998) and Hanging Up (2000). She collaborated with fellow Barnard alumna Ann Brasheras to adapt The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants to film (2005). Ephron has also published a number of humorous books for young readers, including How to Eat Like a Child, and Other Lessons in Not Being a Grownup (1978) and Teenage Romance; Or, How to Die of Embarrassment (1981). She has also recently turned to fiction. Her novels are Hanging Up (1995) and Big City Eyes (2000). |
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| Epstein, Jason (1928- ) |
| Literature: Writer, Publisher |
| CC '49, GSAS '50 |
| Epstein is credited with spurring the "paperback revolution" with his affordable Anchor Books imprint. In 1958, Epstein moved to Random House where he has served in as editorial director for forty years, working with Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Philip Roth. He also had a hand in the founding of The New York Review of Books in 1962 and the Library of America in 1982. Epstein has won the Association of American Publishers' Curtis Benjamin Award and the first National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters. |
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| Erskine, John (1951 - ) |
| Music: Writer, Teacher, Musician |
| CC '01, PhD '03, LL.D. '29 |
| As a teacher at Columbia, Erskine's protégés included Mark Van Doren, Mortimer Adler and Clifton Fadiman. He authored the surprise overnight success, The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1925), which explored the problems of the "lost generation" of Jazz Age youth. Erskine published thirty books, often modernizing classic characters such as Sir Galahad or Adam and Eve. He also harbored a love of music, playing in small ensembles, and served as president of the Juilliard School of Music from 1928-1937. Among his many honors is the Butler Medal (1918). |
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| Eugene Drucker (1951 - ) |
| Music: Violinist |
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