Marilyn Monroe

Source: www.manythings.org/voa/people

I'm Shirley Griffith. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program,PEOPLE IN AMERICA.

Today we tell about movie star Marilyn Monroe. She died many years ago, yet still is one of the best known American women.

Her name at birth was Norma Jean Baker. Her life as a child was like a bad dream. She lived with a number of different people, and often was mistreated.

At age 16 Norma Jean married a sailor. But she soon ended that marriage. She changed her hair color from brown to shining gold. And she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

She wanted to be an actress. And she succeeded. She appeared in a number of Hollywood movies. Millions of people went to see them. By the time Norma Jean had reached the age of 26, her beautiful face and body earned her a place as one of America's leading movie stars.

But success and fame were not enough to make her happy. The troubles of her childhood days stayed with her. She drank too much alcohol. She took too many drugs.

At the age of thirty-six, she took her own life.

She has been dead since 1962. Still, her fame continues to grow.

People born long after she died are watching her movies on television. Objects that belonged to her bring huge prices at public sales. The Warner Brothers museum in Hollywood has the white dress she wore in one of her movies, "The Prince and the Showgirl. "

People continue to talk about what they feel is her strange death. Some people believe she was murdered. Two investigations showed that she died as the result of too many drugs.

Why is the public still so interested in a woman who died so many years ago? A number of reasons. Her exciting but tragic life. Her connections with well-known people. And her image as an especially desirable woman.

In the 1950s, many Americans believed sex was a very private subject. People often severely judged those who were sexually appealing.

Into this atmosphere burst Marilyn Monroe. As one critic said, her body was round in all the right places. She wore her clothes like skin. When she walked, she moved her lower body in a way that few other actresses had done. Her voice was soft and breathy. She soon became America's golden girl.

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The story of Marilyn Monroe begins on June first, 1936. Norma Jean was born that day in the West Coast city of Los Angeles, California. Her birthplace was not far from the Hollywood movie studios where she would someday be a star.

Her mother, Gladys Baker, suffered from mental problems. Often the mother had to be treated in a hospital for long periods of time. Her daughter was sent to live with a number of different people.

The actress later would describe her stays with these foster families as sometimes very unhappy. During the worst experiences, she would go to a movie theater. There the young Norma Jean escaped into the make-believe world of movies.

She would act all the movie parts after she went to a movie. She told this to a long time friend, actor Ted Jordan, who later wrote a book about her.

By the time she was 17, Marilyn was trying very hard to be a movie actress. She finally was able to get an actors' agent to help her. He got Twentieth Century Fox Company to give Marilyn parts in some movies it produced.

Marilyn continued to change the way she had looked as Norma Jean. She had an operation to improve the appearance of her nose. Her eyes were made to appear larger. She began using a great deal of bright red lipstick on her mouth.

Marilyn may have worked more to improve her appearance than to improve her performance in acting classes. Some people at Twentieth Century Fox said she did not like to work at all. She appeared in only one movie. And she had only one line to speak in that. The Fox movie company dismissed her.

Soon, however, her agent got her a job at Columbia Pictures. She appeared in a movie called "Ladies of the Chorus. " She sang two songs. Several critics praised her performance. But Columbia dismissed her.

Marilyn did not stop struggling. She next won a small part in a movie called "Love Happy." It was a comedy starring the famous Marx Brothers. Critics said it was not one of their better efforts. Marilyn, though, earned praise for simply taking a short walk in the movie.

The movie called for her to say, "Some men are following me. " Groucho Marx answered that he did not understand why. As he said that, he watched Marilyn walk her famous walk. His eyes opened very wide.

That short scene in the movie made many people in Hollywood talk about Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn got her first major chance when director John Huston invited her to act in a movie called "The Asphalt Jungle. "

Huston said her performance as a criminal's girlfriend was good. It gained Marilyn her dream of a long-term agreement with Twentieth Century Fox, the company that had dismissed her earlier. Now its officials gave her a part in "All About Eve." The movie, released in 1950, was about a movie star. She played a golden-haired woman who did not have much intelligence -- "a dumb blonde."

In 1952, Marilyn again appeared as a dumb blonde in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." This performance at last won her widespread fame.

Marilyn Monroe was now a lead actress, a star.

Huge successes now followed. Between 1953 and 1959 she appeared in lead parts in many popular movies: "How To Marry a Millionaire." "The Seven Year Itch." "Bus Stop." "Some Like it Hot."

Her part in "Some Like it Hot" showed that she was very good at making people laugh.

Marilyn's picture appeared on the front cover of many magazines and the front pages of many newspapers. She began to earn more money.

Life should have been good. But Marilyn was not happy. She was being asked to repeat her part as a dumb blonde in movie after movie.

She wanted to be accepted as a good actress. She went to the Actors' Studio school in New York City with many serious actors. She thought she could change the way people thought of her.

But she did not succeed. People thought of Marilyn Monroe as "that blonde bombshell." Few people thought of her as a serious actress.

She also failed in her attempts at marriage. She admitted that she got married the first time only to escape from being forced to live in a group home for children without parents. In 1954 she married again. Her husband was the famous New York Yankee baseball player, Joe Di Maggio. They were together for only a few months.

Later, she tried again. She married Arthur Miller, a famous writer of plays. That marriage ended unhappily in 1961, after five years.

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Marilyn returned to Hollywood. But things were different now. Friends said she was drinking too much alcohol. They said she was taking too many drugs.

She seemed to always be in trouble with the movie company. She had gained too much weight. Or, she had not learned what she was to say in the movie. Or she had arrived late for the filming.

By 1962, Marilyn's problems were threatening her work in the movies. She was to appear in the Twentieth Century Fox movie called "Something's Got to Give."

She lost weight for her part. She tried to arrive on time for the filming. She reportedly knew her part. However, she became sick several times and missed work. Fox company officials dismissed her.

On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died alone in her home. She was thirty-six years old. Reports said taking too many drugs killed her. But people who knew her said failed marriages, and the failure of her latest movie also led to her death.

Many people said Marilyn Monroe never escaped her past. She continued to suffer from the early, sad life of a little girl named Norma Jean.

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This Special English program was written by Jeri Watson and directed by Marilyn Christiano. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America. 

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931: America's Great Inventor

Source: www.manythings.org originally posted by www.voanews.com 

Welcome to the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today, Sarah Long and Bob Doughty tell about the inventor Thomas Alva Edison. He had a major effect on the lives of people around the world.  Thomas Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph and his work with motion pictures.

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Thomas Edison's major inventions were designed and built in the last years of the eighteen hundreds.  However, most of them had their greatest effect in the twentieth century.  His inventions made possible the progress of technology.

It is extremely difficult to find anyone living today who has not been affected in some way by Thomas Edison.  Most people on Earth have seen some kind of motion picture or heard some kind of sound recording.  And almost everyone has at least seen an electric light.

These are only three of the many devices Thomas Edison invented or helped to improve.  People living in this century have had easier and more enjoyable lives because of his inventions.

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February eleventh, eighteen forty-seven in the small town of Milan, Ohio.  He was the youngest of seven children.

Thomas Edison was self-taught.  He went to school for only three months.  His teacher thought he could not learn because he had a mental problem.  But young Tom Edison could learn.  He learned from books and he experimented.

At the age of ten, he built his own chemical laboratory.  He experimented with chemicals and electricity.  He built a telegraph machine and quickly learned to send and receive telegraph messages.  At the time, sending electric signals over wires was the fastest method of sending information long distances.  At the age of sixteen, he went to work as a telegraph operator.

He later worked in many different places.  He continued to experiment with electricity. When he was twenty-one, he sent the United States government the documents needed to request the legal protection for his first invention.  The government gave him his first patent on an electric device he called an Electrographic Vote Recorder.  It used electricity to count votes in an election.

In the summer months of eighteen sixty-nine, the Western Union Telegraph Company asked Thomas Edison to improve a device that was used to send financial information.  It was called a stock printer. Mr. Edison very quickly made great improvements in the device.  The company paid him forty thousand dollars for his effort.  That was a lot of money for the time.

This large amount of money permitted Mr. Edison to start his own company.  He announced that the company would improve existing telegraph devices and work on new inventions.

Mr. Edison told friends that his new company would invent a minor device every ten days and produce what he called a "big trick" about every six months.  He also proposed that his company would make inventions to order.  He said that if someone needed a device to do some kind of work, just ask and it would be invented.

Within a few weeks Thomas Edison and his employees were working on more than forty different projects.  They were either new inventions or would lead to improvements in other devices.  Very quickly he was asking the United States government for patents to protect more than one hundred devices or inventions each year.  He was an extremely busy man.  But then Thomas Edison was always very busy.

He almost never slept more than four or five hours a night.  He usually worked eighteen hours each day because he enjoyed what he was doing.  He believed no one really needed much sleep.  He once said that anyone could learn to go without sleep.

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Thomas Edison did not enjoy taking to reporters.  He thought it was a waste of time.  However, he did talk to a reporter in nineteen seventeen.  He was seventy years old at the time and still working on new devices and inventions.

The reporter asked Mr. Edison which of his many inventions he enjoyed the most.  He answered quickly, the phonograph.  He said the phonograph was really the most interesting.  He also said it took longer to develop a machine to reproduce sound than any other of his inventions.

Thomas Edison told the reporter that he had listened to many thousands of recordings.  He especially liked music by Brahms, Verdi and Beethoven.  He also liked popular music.

Many of the recordings that Thomas Edison listened to in nineteen seventeen can still be enjoyed today.  His invention makes it possible for people around the world to enjoy the same recorded sound.

The reporter also asked Thomas Edison what was the hardest invention to develop.  He answered quickly again -- the electric light.  He said that it was the most difficult and the most important.

Before the electric light was invented, light was provided in most homes and buildings by oil or natural gas.  Both caused many fires each year.  Neither one produced much light.

Mr. Edison had seen a huge and powerful electric light.  He believed that a smaller electric light would be extremely useful.He and his employees began work on the electric light.

An electric light passes electricity through material called a filament or wire.  The electricity makes the filament burn and produce light.  Thomas Edison and his employees worked for many months to find the right material to act as the filament.

Time after time a new filament would produce light for a few moments and then burn up.  At last Mr. Edison found that a carbon fiber produced light and lasted a long time without burning up.  The electric light worked.

At first, people thought the electric light was extremely interesting but had no value.  Homes and businesses did not have electricity.  There was no need for it.

Mr. Edison started a company that provided electricity for electric lights for a small price each month.  The small company grew slowly at first.  Then it expanded rapidly.  His company was the beginning of the electric power industry.

Thomas Edison also was responsible for the very beginnings of the movie industry.  While he did not invent the idea of the motion picture, he greatly improved the process.  He also invented the modern motion picture film.

When motion pictures first were shown in the late eighteen  hundreds, people came to see movies of almost anything -- a ship, people walking on the street, new automobiles.  But in time, these moving pictures were no longer interesting.

In nineteen-oh-three, an employee of Thomas Edison's motion picture company produced a movie with a story.  It was called "The Great Train Robbery."  It told a simple story of a group of western criminals who steal money from a train.  Later they are killed by a group of police in a gun fight.  The movie was extremely popular.  "The Great Train Robbery" started the huge motion picture industry.

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Thomas Alva Edison is remembered most for the electric light, his phonograph and his work with motion pictures.  However, he also invented several devices that greatly improved the telephone.  He improved several kinds of machines called generators that produced electricity.  He improved batteries that hold electricity.  He worked on many different kinds of electric motors including those for electric trains.

Mr. Edison also is remembered for making changes in the invention process.  He moved from the Nineteenth Century method of an individual doing the inventing to the Twentieth Century method using a team of researchers.

In nineteen thirteen, a popular magazine at the time called Thomas Edison the most useful man in America.  In nineteen twenty-eight, he received a special medal of honor from the Congress of the United States.

Thomas Edison died on January sixth, nineteen thirty-one.  In the months before his death he was still working very hard.  He had asked the government for legal protection for his last invention.  It was patent number one thousand ninety-three.

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This Special English program was written and produced by Paul Thompson.  The announcers were Sarah Long and Bob Doughty.

I'm Mary Tillotson.  Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.

Source: www.voanews.com www.manythings.org

There is also a Listen and Read Along Flash version of this.

I'm Nicole Nichols. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA.

Today we tell about one of the great labor activists, Cesar Chavez. He organized the first successful farm workers union in American history.

Cesar Chavez was born on a small farm near Yuma, Arizona in 1927. In the late 19th century, Cesario Chavez, Cesar's grandfather, had started the Chavez family farm after escaping slavery on a Mexican farm. Cesar Chavez spent his earliest years on this farm. When he was ten years old, however, the economic conditions of the Great Depression forced his parents to give up the family farm. He then became a migrant farm worker along with the rest of his family.

The Chavez family joined thousands of other farm workers who traveled around the state of California to harvest crops for farm owners. They traveled from place to place to harvest grapes, lettuce, beets and many other crops. They worked very hard and received little pay. These migrant workers had no permanent homes. They lived in dirty, crowded camps. They had no bathrooms, electricity or running water. Like the Chavez family, most of them came from Mexico.

Because his family traveled from place to place, Cesar Chavez attended more than thirty schools as a child. He learned to read and write from his grandmother.

Mama Tella also taught him about the Catholic religion. Religion later became an important tool for Mr. Chavez. He used religion to organize Mexican farm workers who were Catholic.

Cesar's mother, Juana, taught him much about the importance of leading a non-violent life. His mother was one of the greatest influences on his use of non-violent methods to organize farm workers. His other influences were the Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi and American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Junior.

Mr. Chavez said his real education began when he met the Catholic leader Father Donald McDonnell. Cesar Chavez learned about the economics of farm workers from the priest. He also learned about Gandhi's nonviolent political actions as well as those of other great nonviolent leaders throughout history.

In 1948, Mr. Chavez married Helena Fabela whom he met while working in the grape fields in central California. They settled in Sal Si Puedes. Later, while Mr. Chavez worked for little or no money to organize farm workers, his wife harvested crops. In order to support their eight children, she worked under the same bad conditions that Mr. Chavez was fighting against.

There were other important influences in his life. In 1952, Mr. Chavez met Fred Ross, an organizer with a workers' rights group called the Community Service Organization. Mr. Chavez called Mr. Ross the best organizer he ever met. Mr. Ross explained how poor people could build power. Mr. Chavez agreed to work for the Community Service Organization.

Mr. Chavez worked for the organization for about ten years. During that time, he helped more than 500,000 Latino citizens to vote. He also gained old-age retirement money for 50,000 Mexican immigrants. He served as the organization's national director.

However, in 1962, he left the organization. He wanted to do more to help farm workers receive higher pay and better working conditions. He left his well paid job to start organizing farm workers into a union.

Mr. Chavez's work affected many people. For example, the father of Mexican-American musician Zack de la Rocha spent time working as an art director for Mr. Chavez. Much of the political music of de la Rocha's group, Rage Against the Machine, was about workers' rights, like this song, "Bomb Track."

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It took Mr. Chavez and Delores Huerta, another former CSO organizer, three years of hard work to build the National Farm Workers Association. Mr. Chavez traveled from town to town to bring in new members. He held small meetings at workers' houses to build support.The California-based organization held its first strike in 1965.The National Farm Workers Association became nationally known when it supported a strike against grape growers.The group joined a strike organized by Filipino workers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

Mr. Chavez knew that those who acted non-violently against violent action would gain popular support. Mr. Chavez asked that the strikers remain non-violent even though the farm owners and their supporters sometimes used violence.

One month after the strike began, the group began to boycott grapes. They decided to direct their action against one company, the Schenley Corporation.The union followed grape trucks and demonstrated wherever the grapes were taken. Later, union members and Filipino workers began a 25 day march from Delano to Sacramento, California, to gain support for the boycott.

Schenley later signed a labor agreement with the National Farm Workers Association.It was the first such agreement between farm workers and growers in the United States.

The union then began demonstrating against the Di Giorgio Corporation. It was one of the largest grape growers in California. Di Giorgio held a vote and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was chosen to represent the farm workers. But an investigation proved that the company and the Teamsters had cheated in the election.

Another vote was held. Cesar Chavez agreed to combine his union with another and the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee was formed. The farm workers elected Mr. Chavez's union to represent them.Di Giorgio soon signed a labor agreement with the union.

Mr. Chavez often went for long periods without food to protest the conditions under which the farm workers were forced to do their jobs. Mr. Chavez went on his first hunger strike, or fast, in 1968. He did not eat for 25 days. He was called a hero for taking this kind of personal action to support the farm workers.

The union then took action against Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, the largest producer of table grapes in the United States. It organized a boycott against the company's products.The boycott extended to all California table grapes. By 1970, the company agreed to sign contracts. A number of other growers did as well. By this time the grape strike had lasted for five years. It was the longest strike and boycott in United States labor history. Cesar Chavez had built a nationwide coalition of support among unions, church groups, students, minorities and other Americans.

By 1973, the union had changed its name to the United Farm Workers of America. It called for another national boycott against grape growers as relations again became tense. By 1975, a reported 17 million Americans were refusing to buy non-union grapes.The union's hard work helped in getting the Agricultural Labor Relations Act passed in California, under Governor Jerry Brown. It was the first law in the nation that protected the rights of farm workers.

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By the 1980s, the UFW had helped tens of thousands of farm workers gain higher pay, medical care, retirement benefits and better working and living conditions.But relations between workers and growers in California worsened under a new state government. Boycotts were again organized against the grape industry.In 1988, at the age of sixty-one, Mr. Chavez began another hunger strike. That fast lasted for thirty-six days and almost killed him. The fast was to protest the poisoning of grape workers and their children by the dangerous chemicals growers used to kill insects.

In 1984 Cesar Chavez made this speech, predicting the future success of his efforts for Latinos.

CESAR CHAVEZ: "Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism."

Cesar Chavez died in 1993 at the age of sixty-six. More than 40,000 people attended his funeral.

A year later, President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

The United Farm Workers Union still fights for the rights of farm workers throughout the United States. Many schools, streets, parks, libraries and other public buildings have been named after Cesar Chavez. The great labor leader always believed in the words "Si se puede": It can be done.

This Special English Program was written and produced by Robert Brumfield. I'm Steve Ember. nd I'm Nicole Nichols. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America.