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Tenley Albright
Olympic Gold Medal Figure Skater
Tenley Albright: It was about four o'clock in the morning. I had discovered that there were two rinks in Boston where, if they hadn't sold the ice for hockey for the next morning, if I called after ten o'clock at night, they'd let me use the ice and have it all to myself until the hockey game or hockey practice started. So I did that one morning. I carried my own phonograph and my skates, and it was snowing, and I unlocked the back door of the rink. But just before I did, actually, my feet slipped out from under me, flew up in the air. I fell down, all my things around me, burst out laughing and realized there wasn't a soul around. It was very, very quiet. But I had the ice all to myself that morning. I had been shown where to put the lights on. I could play the music as loud as I wanted, as many times as I wanted.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
It's a sad thing in America today, that kids don't get Latin anymore. I did four years of high school Latin. Now I can't remember very much of it and I certainly can't do Latin; but boy, I'll tell you, that helped me as a writer. And where it helps most of all is with verbs. Language turns on the verbs, and you learn that in Latin, and you learn the strength of verbs in Latin, and it was a great thing, in this little tiny high school -- 300 students -- in the rural Midwest farming community, we had a Latin teacher, full-time Latin teacher. That's all she did. And four years of Latin in high school is a great thing.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
I was taught as a graduate student, by my professor, that a good sentence is like a good play. You start off with where and when. Where are we at and what's the time? And then you have the action of the thing, and then you have your climax, and that verb is the action and that's what carries the whole story, and everything in the sentence has to balance on that verb. And if you've got the wrong verb, your sentence isn't going to work. If you've got the right verb, you can-- the adjectives don't really matter much anymore. The verb is the action, and that's what's so great about Latin.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
You learn what the gaps in your knowledge are by starting to tell the story. So the act of writing becomes the act of learning, and "Whoa! I can't tell this story unless I find out." I'm currently working on a book on the building of the transcontinental railroad, and I'm in a research stage now. I have been for about six months, and I'm dying to start writing about it, but I know I don't know enough yet. And once I start writing, I'm going to learn how much more I don't know, that I'm going to have to learn in order to make it understandable to my readers, so that the writing guides the research. I think a big mistake that a lot of young writers make who are doing nonfiction is you complete the research and then you sit down and write the book, and it's not like that. There's got to be a flow between, and the writing guiding the research, or at least for me. That's the only way I can do it.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
My stepfather was very smart, in that he knew he didn't have the ability to teach, and because it was such a very young voice, but such a sort of oddly powerful one, he knew that he had to put me in good hands if he could. And so, he took me to his teacher who was a very fine dramatic soprano, an English dramatic soprano. She'd done a lot of Handel. I can't even think of the right word at this point. But, she was a very gentle woman and I was with her for most of my early life. Only when I went to Broadway did I kind of not work with her, and of course I prepared with her to go to Broadway, but she didn't actually come with me. But, the foundation that she gave me and the technique -- the technical foundation -- was terrific.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
Julie Andrews: I sang in those days a lot of sort of opera and operetta. I felt that I knew, and I believe that I was right, that I really didn't have the voice for it. My own voice was very white, very, very thin, and I was able to do these incredible sort of gymnastics with it, tremendous sort of calisthenics, but in a coloratura way, and it was so high that dogs for miles around would howl when I took some of the high notes on. But, she gave me the groundwork of opera and she always said, "Go beyond your reach. If you're doing something light, practice something even more difficult. Practice it a tone up so that when the night comes and you have to sing it, it is so within your range." And for many, many years I did that.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
I have retained some very close friends from my home village, but actually I didn't have many peers, not young friends in those days. It was all mostly adults because of the touring, because of the vaudeville. But, the kind of education I was getting was that strange one of standing in the wings and watching phenomenal performers performing every week, every night, watching everything from comedians, to jugglers, to animal acts and different kinds of comedians and dancers, and it was extraordinary. I didn't think I was getting an education at the time. It's only in retrospect that I realize that that stood me in very good stead in my later years.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
It was a little bit like going to the dentist. You knew it was going to be very painful, but if you could stick it out, maybe with luck you'd come out feeling a heck of a lot better. And, that's what Moss [Hart] did for me. It was painful. And, he said, "We have no time for embarrassment. We have no time for anything but the blunt truth." And, he shaped, pushed, cajoled, wheedled, loved me, yelled at me, just helped me become Eliza Doolittle. And although by the following Monday, I'm sure I retreated 50 percent, I had gained 50 percent and it gave me the foundation from which to really start working on the role. And, I played My Fair Lady for three-and-a-half years. And, Alan Lerner once said that he felt that a long run in a very good role was more help to a performer than doing repertory with lots and lots of short roles. You might become very facile, but what I did was learn what did get a laugh, what didn't get a laugh, and why I didn't get it if I didn't get it. What the difference was in terms of it raining outside or snowing or an audience that was coughing their hearts out or one that was too hot in the seasons, when your leading man has a headache or when you have a voice that's hanging on by a thread. I think I learned in My Fair Lady everything that set me up in later years in good stead because I really learned how to preserve and take care of myself and I was learning on my feet every single performance.
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