Choice hanging out with us to biographiesedia and in political history. Between the four of us we have written at least 17 biographies, it might be more than that, i was losing count because Randy Roberts had written so many, more than half of our total number. We have a lot of experience in this genre, we have been drawn to it and have an affinity for it in some way or another. Panelists. Oduce the as i introduce each of you, if you could spend a minute or two telling the audience, what was it that drew you to biography . What is it that you love about the genre . First we have larry, professor and in the graduate acting program in the New York University of the arts with an affiliate in the graduate musical theater writing program. He particularly interested in the history of broadway and comedy, and has written the biography of Richard RobertsRichard Rogers and several other books. His most recent is a documentary film, Sammy Davis Jr. i gotta be me. What has drawn you to biography . I maybe a little different from the rest of the panel. My venue is entertainment. In entertainment, you are dealing with a public persona of performers, what they sang, danced, acted, and what happened behind the curtain is fascinating as you try to make sense out of what a performer did publicly with what were his or her motivations in the context of the time. Change. Nds and taste particularly in american entertainment to make them in or out of favor. I have already always been interested in that dialectic between on and off stage and hopefully when we talk more about Sammy Davis Jr, thats more persuasive. Thank you. Professor at the History Department at the university of missouri, columbia. Hes interested in religious history, particularly methodism. He was also on my committee when i took my comprehensive exams and when i wrote my dissertation. So im glad im asking you the questions this time. He has written biographies on jim and Tammy Faye Bakers evangelical empire. Can you tell us about it . Thank you emily, and thank you for putting this together. Do you still only a paper . No i imagine. Enke. I dont think of myself as a biographer and never thought of myself that way. In my mind i dont research or write any differently than when i do biographies versus anything else. I think the advantage that biographies have is that it lends itself to the good story to a good story well told. You can reach a broad audience with the story that has a lot of human drama. Thats not a bad thing. I think that is what drew me to writing what turns out to be biographies. Emily set i wrote a book a few guy who i think is endlessly fascinating, important, and nobody read it. And i sat back after doing that and i thought this is a lot of work. If im going to do this, im gonna write about topics i care about and i think are important. Ands when i did the Jim Tammy Faye baker biography. [indiscernible] oh so i need to start over . Thank you. And Randy Roberts is the professor at the History Department at purdue university, he is particularly interested in africanamerican in sports history. Hes written biographies of mike tyson, john wayne, charles lindbergh, joe lewis, jack dempsey, Ronald Reagan, joe namath, a team biography of the pittsburgh steelers. His most recent biographical works as blood brothers, the fatal friendship of malcolm x and muhammad ali, and a season in the sun, the rise of Mickey Mantle. Could you tell us about your interest in this genre . Me,his is perfect for political history and biography, popular culture. I have seen myself as working at the intersection between political history, political culture, and popular culture. Performers, like you. Actors, athletes. But ive never been interested in writing a book about an athlete who was just an athlete, or an actor who was just an actor, somehow they have to engage in a wider political culture, like john wayne or muhammad ali, they clearly became iconic, and you could tell their politics, if i talk to someone about john wayne, their attitudes on john wayne will usually tell me a great deal about their politics. Or their attitudes on muhammad ali will do the same thing. Thinking a quote, about how i could tie these things together, how can i tie politics, this is a political conference, with biography and popular culture. So i found a boxing quote i wanted to read to you. It was to turn tony to turn two ton tony, before he fought joe lewis, he fought in feldman on George Washingtons birthday. Hes trying to build up the fight, and he wants to Say Something about American History , something about american politics. With the crucial questions of his day. This is the quote. True, itbly this is came from a journalist, we will say. Hes trying to Say Something about george washington, and build up the fight at the same time. He said, its high time the south came to know and love washington as we know when love him north of the equator. Why cant we forget the civil war and its petty grudges . Washington may have freed the slaves, but he also invented the lightning rod. Let the north and south class the hand of friendship on old hickorys birthday and try to get there early. So anyone who could conflate road washington, abraham lincoln, andrew jackson, and Benjamin Franklin is truly the sage of orange, new jersey. And i have more on biography but maybe we can get to it as we go along. And i am emily raymond, a professor in the History Department at virginia commonwealth university. My area of focus, until now, has been hollywood in politics. Ive written biographies on blackon heston, and celebrities in the Civil Rights Movement called star for freedom starved for freedom. I did not think of myself is going into the biography genre. I wanted to write about charlton heston, this was my dissertation topic. When he was the president of the National Rifle association but i also knew he had been involved in democratic administrations and the Civil Rights Movement before he came to the gun because and supporting republican candidates. I was fascinated about his that set, and what about american political culture. I started with that. In my next book i had no intention of it being a biography. It was just going to generally be about celebrities in the Civil Rights Movement. But the more i looked at it, the more it became very clear that there were about six who were really leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement and they deserve to be recognized as the earliest, most consistent, most effective celebrity supporters. I decided to turn it into a group biography with this leading six at the forefront. Now my next book is going to be a dual biography. Ive come to really love the genre, because its a great way to look at these fascinating people in american political culture, and the dynamic tapering to making change, in particular. That is my spiel. Out,ss one thing to point is that biography has a lot more variety than people think. A lot of people think its a book about one person. But randys book, blood brothers, is about malcolm x and muhammad ali. The book on ptl is about jim and starved forand freedom is a group biography. It does not have to be about one person. What i wanted to ask you all, what other ways can there be thanvariety to biography might first meet the eye . Two quick things. Im also a documentarian. Half of my work has been nonfiction publications and have my work has been filled. Obviously on film if youre doing Sammy Davis Jr, you have a whole different canvas to work on. Use performances in juxtaposition to other performances as a way of creating tension. Ae other thing, i worked on companion book to another sixhour documentary series i did called make them laugh, the funny business of america. It was essentially American Comedy from chaplain to sarah silverman. The director and i realized that if you are going to do a film i did a companion book and wrote the documentary episodes. But if you were going to go ok, heres American Comedy, lets start in 1906 with charlie chapman, buster keaton, mae west, your first hour would entirely be silent, blackandwhite, and people would stop watching. Aboutorced us to think the taxonomy we wanted to create in terms of gaining biographical figures together. We realized in america there were six great comedic archetypes, situation comedies, geeks and nerds, wiseguys, political satire. Physical comedians. Each generation turned out their own version in a way that really reflected the demographics of america. One way to do that was an. Pisode with the wiseguys its groucho, but not the marx brothers, and red fox who took on that tradition and eddie murphy who took on that tradition. Rethinking way of categories and group biography that would give it more spark, rather than simply doing things chronologically. They were chronologically in a completely different rubric. Interesting way to bring variety to the genre. Any other thoughts . What was the question . Theres more variety to biography than i think we first think of. People think its about one person and you chronologically go through their life. Thats the formula. What other formulas have you tried . Biography ise dual an interesting approach. It is certainly the one that i used with muhammad ali and that i x, and the book wrote with johnny smith on blood brothers. The number of the books i have done, have been not a full biography but looking at a person at a particular time. A crucial time in their life. I have done the full biography, and if you do someone like john wayne, a persons life is not interesting all the time. Its a fact. Its not crucial at one time. Take one segment, what you think might be the most crucial, and dig deeper. Tell us a wider story then you could if you did the full beginning to end biography is a way to approach it. And thats what you did with Mickey Mantles biography. Host its the right its the rise of 56. Before 1956. He was a failure if he could have been a failure. A failure in terms of expectations, he came up to the yankees into spring training. He was hitting the ball over the moon when they were playing during the daytime,. Everyone said yogi berra and all of the players on the team said hes going to be the next to maggio. The next babe ruth, the next lou gehrigs. Everyone expected him to perform immediately like garrick, dimaggio, bruce. They were great, but mickey would show signs of brilliance, greatness, but he would get injured, he would not hit in the clutch. Bullying him, he was solitary, mad, uncommunicative. Then he has a breakout season where he wins the triple crown and becomes the Mickey Mantle of met of legend. And that is where you end the book. Extent, i think what ive done with biographies is. Ore group biography and that fully interesting people out when they are interesting. Times when jim and tammy are the most interesting people in the room but other times when they are not. Of biographytage is that it allows you to weave a hey narrative to weave a narrative thats interesting. But its not just to tell the story of someones life, its to make larger points. To draw out a story that transcends them, even if they are at the center of it for a large part of the time. One of the most common critiques i have heard about biographies is that its one from that standpoint it might feel like it does not have the same intellectual have intellectual have to heft, as opposed to voting patterns of a certain time. How do you respond to that critique . That is just one person . Its tough to make that a generic statement, because people become interesting and different times forward. People ck on certainly in the theater when we did the broadway documentary, there were people who were fascinating in their time and lost to history, like ethel waters, a great africanamerican performer, the most highly paid entertainer in new york city, and mae west who was arrested and sent to rikers for violating decency acts, and they faded away. Then the world changes in their stories are interesting again. I think a great biography has velcro. Forward and it will pick up a life in a way, and when we worked on the Sammy Davis Jr documentary, it was shocking to me, as somebody who knew him, he was a venn diagram. On one level he knew ethel bill waterson. Archie bunker, and eddie cantor. Wase intersection of lives tremendous. His life was revelatory of when he lived. Thats what we always look for. Sammy davis jr was one of the most challenging subjects i ever came across. He was contradictory, and someone i really had to wrestle with to try to figure out how to characterize. The way you do it in the film, by giving him these different categories, activist, entertainer. Singer, impressionist, hipster. We tried to categorize the chronology of his life in the guises that he took on, or felt that he had to take on, for us to haunt him in his life. I think entertainment is like sports. You are choosing what songs you are singing, what plays you will act in. Those have tremendous circumstances. You had the ball out of the ballpark or you dont. You are looking at these things going on simultaneously but as a performer you are looking at the choices they make. What are they choosing to portray. What are they choosing to be about. That is such a vacuum of the time in which they live. Davise footage of sammy when he was five years old, tap dancing. And three months before he died, tap dancing. Within that bracket you can accomplish a lot if you are clever. I would say the jim and Tammy Faye Baker book is not just about jim and tammy faye, right . No. Its about the entire organization and events. Weightyness of biography, i dont see how it would suffer in comparison to other nonfiction writing. If your sources are good, you can tell a rich story. Your political history is often the history of the aggregate. Biographys history of individuals. Excitement to biography, joy to it. If i could tell one story of a biographer i like, a guy by the name of Richard Holmes, has anyone heard of him . He was in english biographer of the romantic period. He did a thick book on shelley, a tube biography on coal rich he did a thick book on shelley. He wrote a book about robert Louis Stevenson, before he with kidnapped, dr. Jekyll, and treasure island, and those books. He read this book, and robert a donkeyvenson took through the appellation region of france. He was intrigued by the beyond graffiti by the biography of robert Louis Stevenson, who was moving to his midtolate 20s. He had not written anything strict calvinist parents, when are you going to get a job . When are you going to do something with your life . And maybe Richard Holmes felt the same way, is there a life in poetry . All of the angst a 19yearold would have. Robert Louis Stevenson was going through a love problem, relationship problem, maybe holmes was, i dont know. But he decided to reproduce the donkey. Ns but with a very stylish hat. He starts off sleeping under the bridgehe crosses over a to a place called langone you langonia. He can smell garlic in the crush fruit from the stalls, children are coming out and playing. People are taking walks. And he has this overwhelming that he isnition, going to meet robert Louis Stevenson. He is serious. This is the 1960s, what else brought that on i dont know. But he has this premonition, he starts pacing the streets and looking into the cafes, the saloons, the hotels, hes looking for him. Bridge,the river, the and then he sees another bridge. Crumbled,dge that is ivycovered, does not span the river anymore, washed out, that is the bridge that robert Louis Stevenson came in through. It acts as a metaphor for what we do as a biographer. Reach thoseg to subjects, trying to talk with the subjects, we are interrogating people who are no longer alive in many cases. We talked to friends if they are recently departed are still around, we read the sources. An allconsuming , butrsation with people sometimes im not sure it is a one my conversation. People will see other biographers, every biographer ive spoken to something went dental has happened. Up, theyments show seem to stumble across something. It shouldnt happen, but it does happen. There may be a twoway conversation. You are shaking your head sammy of the things about davis jr, in particular, about 89, he, when he died in owned more money to the irs than any individual in American History at that point, meaning all of his stuff was locked up. This was pbs, lawyers, heirs, whatever. Finally his adoptive son said he had two storage lockers in burbank, do you want to see them . So we got on the flight right now, we will be there in six hours, dont go anywhere. Packrat,gh, he was a no pun intended, kept everything. He had all of this stuff which was like el dorado for us. We were doing all of that, then we were playing interview las vegas for jerry lewis. Im sure you know this, but if you have gone through any scrapbook and you have yellowed leaves detritus on the ground. After two days in this storage locker, the floor was like a tickertape parade. There was so much of this on the floor and all of a sudden i was picking stuff up and there was this card. Serious seros, which was where he made his big break. It was the kind of thing you find on a table. These were his notes the night this isy davis jr the night that jerry lewis saw Sammy Davis Jr. The next day we took it and we were able to say to jerry 68is, have you seen this in years . And that allowed him to talk about it, i remember it like it was ye