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Spillane, Mickey

(Encyclopedia)Spillane, Mickey (Frank Morrison Spillane), 1918–2006, American mystery writer, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. After contributing stories to comic books and pulp magazines, Spillane wrote his first novel, I, the...

Wilder, Billy

(Encyclopedia)Wilder, Billy, 1906–2002, American film director, producer, and writer, b. Sucha, Galicia (now Poland) as Samuel Wilder. He wrote for films in Berlin, fled the Nazis, and arrived in Hollywood in 193...

Gotham

(Encyclopedia)Gotham gŏthˈəm [key], name for New York City first used by Washington Irving and others in the Salmagundi Papers, with satirical reference to Gotham, England, where the wise men acted as fools in o...

Stanford, Sir Charles Villiers

(Encyclopedia)Stanford, Sir Charles Villiers, 1852–1924, English composer and teacher, b. Dublin, studied in Cambridge, and Leipzig. In 1883 he became professor of music at the Royal College of Music, and in 1887...

Saint Valentine's Day

(Encyclopedia)Saint Valentine's Day, Western European Christian holiday, originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia. It was christianized in memory of the martyrdom of St. Valentine in a.d. 270, who, in medieval time...

Pulci, Luigi

(Encyclopedia)Pulci, Luigi lwēˈjē po͞olˈchē [key], 1432–84, Italian poet. Of an impoverished literary family, he became a protégé of Lorenzo de' Medici and a friend of Poliziano. The most noted work of hi...

caricature

(Encyclopedia)caricature, a satirical drawing, plastic representation, or description which, through exaggeration of natural features, makes its subject appear ridiculous. Although 16th-century Northern painters, s...

Fields, W. C.

(Encyclopedia)Fields, W. C. (William Claude Fields), 1880–1946, American comic actor, b. Philadelphia as Claude William Dukenfield. He began his career as a juggler, and much later appeared in the Ziegfeld Follie...

Lortzing, Gustav Albert

(Encyclopedia)Lortzing, Gustav Albert go͝osˈtäf älˈbĕrt lôrˈtsĭng [key], 1801–51, German opera composer. Lortzing's first opera was written in 1824. Among his best-known works are the comic operas Zar un...

Behan, Brendan

(Encyclopedia)Behan, Brendan bēˈhăn [key], 1923–64, Irish dramatist. A notoriously outspoken and uninhibited man, he joined the Irish Republican Army in 1937 and was twice imprisoned for political offenses. Hi...