Sunday 31 May 2020

1298) Lisa Minghetti Lustgarten

Lisa Minghetti Lustgarten (1913 - 1961). Austrian violinist. She studied at the Akademie fur Musik in Vienna, under Jacques Thibaud and Carl Flesch, and appeared in almost every important musical centre in Europe. She was married to Anton Maaskoff and to violinist Alfred Lustgarten, who worked for many Hollywood films.



Portrait by Philip de Làszlò

Friday 29 May 2020

1297) Rocco Scotellaro

Rocco Scotellaro (1923 – 1953). Italian writer, poet and politician.
He was born in the rural village of Tricarico, in Basilicata. While studying in Neaples and Bari, he started an intense union activism and joined the Partito Socialista Italiano. In 1946 he was elected mayor of Tricarico. In the same year he met for the first time the economist Manlio Rossi-Doria and Carlo Levi, whom he regarder as his mentor.
In 1950 Manlio Rossi-Doria asked him to carry out an inquiry into the culture and life conditions of people in the south of Italy, which was going to be published by Einaudi. Unfortunately, three years later he died of a heart attack and the inquiry was interrupted.
Most of his works are rooted in the rural society, which he was proud to belong to, and were published posthumously. He wrote mainly poetry, but also a novel, a play and several short stories.
Film director Luchino Visconti paid tribute to Scotellaro by naming after him the main character of his film Rocco e i suoi fratelli


- "... il piccolo ragazzo dai capelli rossi, dal viso imberbe di bambino, è il primo sindaco di Tricarico, per volontà dei contadini." [... the small red-haired boy, with a childish beardless face, is the first mayor of Tricarico at the citizens' request.]   http://www.avantionline.it/scrive-luciano-masolinilappassi…/

- "La nota dei capelli rossi del sindaco-poeta è un elemento costante dei ritratti che Levi dedica all’amico..." [The mayor/poet's red hair is a constant of the portraits that Levi dedicate to his friend...]   http://www.giudittalegge.it/2019/03/12/letture-in-rosso/

- "... ecco Scotellaro con i suoi capelli rossi, circondato dai contadini..." [... here's Scotellaro with his red hair, surrounded by peasants...]   https://www.mosaico-cem.it/…/odessa-citta-ebraica-poi-la-lu…









Portrait by Carlo Levi

Portrait by Carlo Levi

Thursday 28 May 2020

1296) Carlo Levi

Carlo Levi (1902 – 1975). Italian painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist and doctor.
He is best known for his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945, a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book became the basis of a movie of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi. Lucania, also called Basilicata, was historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south. Levi's lucid, non-ideological and sympathetic description of the daily hardships experienced by the local peasants helped to propel the "Problem of the South" into national discourse after the end of World War II.
Levi was born in Turin, Piedmont, to wealthy Jewish physician Ercole Levi and Annetta Treves, the sister of Claudio Treves, an important socialist leader in Italy. 


- "Si veste in modo eccentrico, completi di velluto, basco sui folti capelli rossi, il sigaro sempre acceso fra le dita. [He dresses in an eccentric way, with velvet suits, the beanie on his thick red hair, a cigar always lit between his fingers.]  http://www.sandrapetrignani.it/?p=4442

- "Un episodio in particolare mise in pericolo la sua vita, quando a Firenze, per strada, vicino al Ponte Vecchio, fu riconosciuto per i suoi capelli rossi ed il carnato, da un soldato tedesco che lo riconobbe come ebreo, ma non si sa perché lo lasciò stare e anzi gli dette come saluto una pacca sulla spalla. [An incident especially put his life in danger, when in Florence, on a street near Ponte Vecchio, a German soldier recognised him as a Jew because of his red hair and complexion, but, who knows why, he left him alone and even greeted him with a pat on his back.]  https://arteventinews.it/…/rivelazioni-inedite-di-un-giorn…/



1295) Lidia Olivetti

Lidia Olivetti (1932 - 2018). Second child of Italian industrialist Adriano Olivetti.
She first married writer, poet and journalist Giorgio Soavi, with whom had two children: Albertina and Michele (a film director).
She then married Sicilian artist Bruno Caruso.
She led a very secluded life in a beautiful villa on the Appia Antica, Rome.

- "Lidia was born in 1932, a fair-skinned, red-haired baby like her brother."  https://books.google.de/books…

Lidia and Bruno Caruso


1294) Roberto Olivetti

Roberto Olivetti (1928 - 1985). Italian manager.
Elder child of Adriano Olivetti, he was one of the main architect of the transformation of the Olivetti from an engineering to an electronic firm. He was also co-founder and president of the Società Generale Semiconduttori (SGS).

- "Lidia was born in 1932, a fair-skinned, red-haired baby like her brother."  https://books.google.de/books…




1293) Adriano Olivetti

Adriano Olivetti (1901 - 1960). Italian engineer, politician and industrialist whose entrepreneurial activity thrived on the idea that profit should be reinvested for the benefits of the whole society. He was son of the founder of Olivetti, Camillo Olivetti. Adriano Olivetti was known worldwide during his lifetime as the Italian manufacturer of Olivetti typewriters, calculators, and computers.
Olivetti was an entrepreneur and innovator who transformed shop-like operations into a modern factory. In and out of the factory, he both practiced and preached the utopian system of "the community movement," but he never managed to build a mass following. In his company, apart from managers and technicians, he enrolled a large number of artists like writers and architects, following his deep interest in design and urban and building planning that were closely linked with his personal utopian vision.
Father of Roberto and Lidia

- "Ha gli occhi azzurri, i capelli rossi, è notevolmente intelligente... [He is blue-eyed, red-haired, very intelligent...]https://books.google.de/books…

- "Adriano Olivetti è un uomo piuttosto basso, tarchiato, dai capelli arruffati un tempo rossi e ora grigi; [Adriano Olivetti is a rather short and stocky man, with messy hair once red and now gray.]  https://books.google.de/books…

- "Adriano aveva allora la barba, una barba incolta e ricciuta, di un colore fulvo; aveva lunghi capelli biondo-fulvi, che s’arricciolavano sulla nuca, ed era grasso e pallido. [Adriano had then an unkempt and curly beard, of an auburn colour; he had long and blond-auburn hair, which curled on his nape, and he was fat and pale.]  http://museocasertaolivetti.altervista.org/adriano-olivet…/…



1292) Giuseppe Levi

Giuseppe Levi (1872 – 1965). Italian anatomist and histologist, professor of human anatomy (since 1916) at the universities of Sassari, Palermo and Turin. He was born on in Trieste to Jewish parents and was married to Lidia Tanzi. They had five children: Gino, Mario, Alberto, Paola (who became the wife of Adriano Olivetti), and writer Natalia Ginzburg (wife of Leone Ginzburg and mother of Carlo Ginzburg), who described her father's personality in the successful Italian book Lessico famigliare (1963).
Levi was a pioneer of in vitro studies of cultured cells. While in Turin, he tutored three students who later won the Nobel prize: Salvador Luria, Renato Dulbecco and Rita Levi-Montalcini.
He was admitted as a national member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1926. In 1931 he subscribed to the oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime imposed to University professors.


- "This bulky, red-haired, flamboyant Professor of Anatomy was both feared and respected."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "His thick red hair and bushy eyebrows earned him the nickname Levipom, a combination of his name and a syllable from the Italian word for tomato, pomodoro."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "Levi was still as vigorous and red-haired as ever in spite of being in his 80s."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "... her father Giuseppe Levi [...], as stated in Lessico, had curly red hair."  https://books.google.it/books…



1291) Michael Postan

Sir Michael Moissey Postan (1899 – 1981). British historian. He was also known as Munia Postan.
He was born to a Jewish family in Bendery, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, and studied at the St Vladimir University in Kiev, leaving Russia in 1919 after the October Revolution and settling in the UK. He held positions at University College London and at the London School of Economics, before being appointed Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, from 1937. He was known as an economic historian of medieval Europe.
He married first the historian Eileen Power. After she died, he married Lady Cynthia Rosalie Keppel, daughter of the 9th Earl of Albemarle, with whom he had two sons.


- "He was a ginger-haired British medievalist..."  https://books.google.de/books…

- "Looking somewhat like a red-haired Neanderthal survivor and speaking through a heavy Russian accent..."  https://www.ehs.org.uk/…/51af7692-4e54-4d15-8359-333b0a1fc6…

- "A small, red-headed man with a charismatic presence..."  https://books.google.de/books…



1290) Houari Boumédiène

Houari Boumédiène, also transcribed Boumediene, Boumedienne (1932 – 1978). Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of Algeria from 19 June 1965 until 12 December 1976 and thereafter as the second President of Algeria until his death on 27 December 1978.
His real name was Mohammed Ben Brahim Boukharouba and, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, his family is Arabic speaking of Berber origins.
He was educated at the Islamic Institute in Constantine. He joined the National Liberation Front (FLN) in the Algerian War of Independence in 1955, adopting Houari Boumédiène as his nom-de-guerre (from Sidi Boumediène, the name of the patron saint of the city of Tlemcen in western Algeria, where he served as an officer during the war, and Sidi El Houari, the patron saint of nearby Oran). 

- "His borrowed first name, Houari, mean 'the red-haired one' in the Algerian Arabic dialect.https://books.google.de/books…

- "Boumediene had none of the charisma which his predecessor possessed, but gradually, as success marked his regime, this gaunt, red-haired ascetic developed into a self-confident head of state and gained popularity."  https://biography.yourdictionary.com/houari-boumediene

- "A gaunt, intense, chain‐smoking revsolutionary with wavy reddish‐brown hair and intent green eyes, the President made little attempt to clear up his back ground."  https://www.nytimes.com/…/houari-boumediene-president-of-al…

- "One of seven children born to an impoverished wheat-farmer, Houari Boumédienne had a “curiously gaunt, high-cheekboned face, reddish hair, harshly intense green eyes and wispy moustache [which made him look] more like a starving Irish poet than a guerrilla veteran'', Horne writes."  https://gulfnews.com/…/houari-boumedienne-guardian-of-freed…
 
- "In person Boumédienne was lean, ascetic and gaunt, with high cheekbones, intense green eyes and red hair."  https://books.google.de/books…



Tuesday 26 May 2020

1289) Susanna Cole

Susanna Cole (née Hutchinson; 1633 – 1713). Lone survivor of an American Indian attack in which many of her siblings were killed, as well as her famed mother Anne Hutchinson. She was taken captive following the attack and held for several years before her release.
Susanna Hutchinson was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England and was less than a year old when her family sailed from England to New England in 1634. She was less than five when her family settled on Aquidneck Island (later Rhode Island) in the Narragansett Bay following her mother's banishment from Massachusetts during the Antinomian Controversy. Her father died when she was about eight years old, and she, her mother, and six of her siblings left Rhode Island to live in New Netherland. They settled in an area that became the far northeastern section of The Bronx in New York City, near the Westchester County line. The family found themselves caught in the middle of Kieft's War between the local Siwanoy Indians and the colony of New Netherland, and they were all massacred in August 1643, except for Susanna. She was taken captive by the Indians, and was traded back to the English three years later.
When Susanna was released from her Indian captivity, she was taken to Boston where her oldest brother and an older sister lived, was re-introduced into English society, and married John Cole at the age of 18, the son of Boston innkeeper Samuel Cole. They lived in Boston for a few years, but moved by 1663 to the Narragansett country of Rhode Island (later North Kingstown) to look after the lands of her oldest brother Edward Hutchinson. Here the couple remained and raised a large family.


- "According to one story, Susanna's red hair spared her from the slaughter..."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Cole

- "Many of those who have researched and told her story believe she was saved by her red hair, for, rather than killing her, the Siwanoy took Susanna captive and renamed her Autumn Leaf."  https://books.google.de/books…

- "Young Susanna Hutchinson was captured by the chief of the Siwanoy and named Fall Leaf because of her red hair, which the Siwanoy had never seen before."  https://books.google.de/books…

- "... the daughter survived because her red hair so marveled the Indians they kept her."  https://books.google.it/books…


Susanna Cole as a child with her mother, Anne Hutchinson, in a bronze memorial at the Massachusetts State House

Saturday 23 May 2020

1288) Ugo Veniero D'Annunzio

Ugo Veniero D'Annunzio (1887 – 1945). Italian-born American engineer and businessman.
He was the third child of Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio and Roman aristocrat Maria Hardouin di Gallese.
He graduated in mechanical engineering and, after WWI, was hired by automotive firm Isotta-Fraschini.
He moved to the US as representative of the firm and later became senior manager and vice-president of American Aeronautical Corporation of Enea Bossi. In 1930 he took US citizenship.

- "Fisicamente, quest'uomo prestante, rosso di capelli e dalla mascella squadrata, gli assomilgiava abbastanza poco..." [Physically, this good-looking man, with red hair and a square jaw, didn't look like him very much.]  https://books.google.it/books…



1287) Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo (1896 – 1940). Italy's Marshal of the Air Force (Maresciallo dell'Aria), Governor-General of Libya, Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI), and the "heir apparent" to Benito Mussolini.
After serving in World War I, Balbo became the leading Fascist organizer in his hometown of Ferrara. He was one of the four principal architects (Quadrumviri del Fascismo) of the March on Rome that brought Mussolini and the Fascists to power in 1922. In 1926, he began the task of building the Italian Royal Air Force and took a leading role in popularizing aviation in Italy, and promoting Italian aviation to the world. In 1933, perhaps to relieve tensions surrounding him in Italy, he was given the government of Italian Libya, where he resided for the remainder of his life. Balbo, hostile to anti-semitism, was the only leading Fascist to oppose Mussolini's alliance with Nazi Germany.
Early in World War II, he was accidentally killed by friendly fire when his plane was shot down over Tobruk by Italian anti-aircraft guns who misidentified his plane.


- "He also worried that his younger Fascist lieutenant, the red-haired “Iron Beard” Italo Balbo, would likely move on his own."  https://nationalinterest.org/…/plotting-and-planning-how-mu…

- "Balbo, un giovane tenente dai capelli rossi scarmigliati e barba alla d'Artagnan..." [Balbo, a young lieutenant with dishevelled red hair and a beard à la d'Artagnan.]  https://books.google.it/books…

- "At 11 p.m., the 26-year-old red-bearded Italo Balbo, wearing his good-luck charm..."  http://www.avalanchepress.com/Fascist4.php

N.B.: Wikipedia Italia, quoting the book by Silvio Bertoldi Camicia nera - Fatti e misfatti di un ventennio italiano (1994), writes Balbo had black hair. Historian Giordano Bruno Guerri, in his book Italo Balbo (1984), writes Balbo's hair was lighter than in photos, so much that he was usually described as "fair".




Wednesday 13 May 2020

1286) Charles P. Kennedy

Charles Peter Kennedy (1959 – 2015). British Liberal Democrat politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1999 to 2006, and a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2015.
Kennedy was elected to the House of Commons in 1983, and after the Alliance parties merged, became President of the Liberal Democrats and, following the resignation of Paddy Ashdown, Leader of the Liberal Democrats. He led the party through two general elections, increasing its number of seats in the House of Commons to their highest level since 1923, and led his party's opposition to the Iraq War. A charismatic and affable speaker in public, he appeared extensively on television during his leadership.

- "But Kennedy, red-haired and round-faced, a cheery and approachable figure, with a soft Highlands accent..."  https://www.theguardian.com/politi…/…/jun/02/charles-kennedy

- "I knew Charlie for more than 30 years and prefer to remember him when I first met him, a red-haired student with gusto, obvious potential – and impudence."  https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/…/tom-brown-charles-kennedy-p…

- "I hadn’t been there long when I bumped into a cheerful, chatty, red-haired Scot whom I recalled had been elected to Parliament for the Social Democratic Party in 1983."  http://cioj.org/thejournal/charles-kennedy/

- "Then there's Charles Kennedy. He has ginger hair."  https://books.google.it/books…




Tuesday 12 May 2020

1285) Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Francis Kennedy (1925 – 1968). American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968.
He was appointed United States Attorney General after his brother John's successful election and served as the closest advisor to the President from 1961 to 1963.
He authored his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a book titled Thirteen Days. After his brother's assassination, he remained in office in the Johnson Administration for several months. He left to run for the United States Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating.
In 1968, Kennedy became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency by appealing to poor, African American, Hispanic, Catholic and young voters. His main challenger in the race was Senator Eugene McCarthy. Shortly after winning the California primary around midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy was mortally wounded when shot with a pistol by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, allegedly in retaliation for his support of Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. Kennedy died the following morning.

Son of Joe Kennedy. His paternal grandfather was P. J. Kennedy. Brother of Patricia Kennedy Lawford.

- "He wore his thick, auburn hair longer than many men of the time..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "What I remember most was how vivid he was: his long, tousled red hair, his bright white (and toothy) smile..."  https://wfpl.org/forty-five-years-after-his-death-robert-f…/

- "I was close enough to notice his reddish chestnut colored hair."  https://translate.google.it/translate…

- "There stood this thin man with reddish hair."  https://dailygazette.com/…/memories-of-rfk-the-capital-regi…

- "... challenging the red-haired Kennedy to call for the release of Huey Newton..."  https://books.google.it/books…



Thursday 7 May 2020

1284) L. Brent Bozell Jr.

Leo Brent Bozell Jr. (1926 – 1997). American conservative activist and Roman Catholic writer.
His wife was Patricia Lee Buckley, sister of William F. Buckley, Bozell's best friend at Yale.
The two of them wrote the book McCarthy and His Enemies (1954), a defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In 1958, Bozell ran for the Maryland House of Delegates but lost. He later worked as a speechwriter for Senator Barry Goldwater, for whom he ghostwrote the 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative.

- "A young, energetic red-haired Yalie from Omaha", as he is described in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus..."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Brent_Bozell_Jr.

- "... a lanky, red-haired Omaha native..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "Growing into a lanky boy with strong features and striking red hair..."  https://books.google.it/books…



Sunday 3 May 2020

1283) John II of France

John II (1319 – 1364), called John the Good (French: Jean le Bon). King of France from 1350 until his death.
He was the son of Philip VI of France and Joan of Burgundy.
During the Battle of Poitiers of 1356 he was captured, and while he was a prisoner in London, his son Charles became regent and faced several rebellions, which he overcame. To liberate his father, he concluded the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), by which France lost many territories and paid an enormous ransom. In an exchange of hostages, which included his second son Louis, Duke of Anjou, John was released from captivity to raise funds for his ransom. Upon his return to France, he created the franc to stabilize the currency and tried to get rid of the free companies by sending them to a crusade, but Pope Innocent VI died shortly before their meeting in Avignon. When John was informed that Louis had escaped from captivity, he voluntarily returned to England, where he died in 1364. He was succeeded by his son Charles V.