Famous People of Wisconsin

Pete Barnes is a National Board certified teacher who teaches fifth grade social studies, science, and math in New Albany, Ohio. He has written articles for youth audiences in the American history magazine Cobblestone, for educators in the magazine Instructor, and for fellow teachers in the magazine Teaching K-8. Pete has a bachelor's degree from The College of William and Mary and a Masters degree in education from The Ohio State University. This is his second book in the Badger Biographies series. • Richard I. Bong Books

In 1948 she received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress playing a lovelorn aunt in I Remember Mama (1948). Over the next four decades, she worked steadily in both film and television, often playing maids, secretaries, waitresses or gossips. She was a favorite in western films (including Shane, 1953) and had a recurring role as "Henrietta Porter" in the western television series Trackdown (1957 – 1959). Other television appearances included Wagon Train, The Rifleman, I Love Lucy, Tightrope, Meet McGraw (as a maid), The Virginian, Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Get Smart, Gomer Pyle, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show. • Ellen Corby Books • Ellen Corby Films

Dafoe met director Elizabeth LeCompte at the Performance Group. LeCompte and Dafoe were part of the restructuring of The Performance Group and became professional collaborators and founding members of The Wooster Group, and began a relationship. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982. The pair eventually split in 2004. Dafoe married Italian director and actress Giada Colagrande on March 25, 2005.

Dafoe's brother, Donald, is a transplant surgeon and researcher. • All William Defoe Books • William Defoe Movies

Widely known for her work as Detective Lacey in the television series Cagney and Lacey. She won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical in Gypsy in 1989. Daly has been identified as a feminist role model, particularly based on her television roles in Cagney and Lacey and Judging Amy. Her role as Lacey showed a woman detective at a time where the idea was still novel; the show was also novel in presenting Lacey primarily in a work environment, rather than always showing the character at home. She has also been outspoken about maintaining a natural appearance as she ages, and for the run of Judging Amy, Daly's hair was shown in its naturally gray state • Tyne Daly Books • Tyne Daly Movies

Derleth, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1938, considered his most serious work to be his ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth was a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing. The son of William Julius Derleth and his wife Rose Louise Volk, he grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. Forty rejected stories and three years later, according to anthologist Jim Stephens, he sold his first story, "Bat's Belfrey", to Weird Tales magazine. Derleth wrote throughout his four years at the University of Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. in 1930. • August Derleth Books

n 1912, Gale moved back to Portage, which she would call home for the rest of her life, although making trips to New York. In 1920, she published the novel Miss Lulu Bett , which depicts life in the Midwestern United States. She adapted it as a play, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921. In the same year, Gale took an active role in the creation of the Wisconsin Equal Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination against women. In 1928 at the age of fifty-four she married William L. Breese, also of Portage. • Zona Gale Books •

After starting his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Heiden earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University in 1984 and earned his M.D., also from Stanford, in 1991. He completed orthopedic residency training at Cal-Davis in 1996, and after a year at a sports medicine clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, returned to California to practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Sacramento. At that time, he also served as team physician for the NBA's Sacramento Kings and the Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA. In 2002 and 2006, he was team physician for the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team. He opened a sports medicine-based practice at The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital (TOSH) in Murray, Utah and has recently expanded Heiden Orthopaedics with an additional office in Park City, Utah. • Eric Heiden Books

Harry Houdini grew up with four brothers and one sister. He is famous for escaping safes, handcuffs and walking on tightropes. He was introduced to magic at the age of seven. On his journey Harrry Houdini became one of the most famous magicians in the world. Houdini performed for more than one million people in his lifetime.

In 1893, while performing with his brother "Dash" at Coney Island as "The Houdini Brothers", Harry met fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner, whom he married. Bess replaced Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis". For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant. • Harry Houdini Books

He graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and then obtained his degree from North Carolina School of the Arts.

Hulce has been nominated for four Golden Globes, two Helen Hayes Awards and has won an Emmy Award for his performance in The Heidi Chronicles, as well as his aforementioned Tony award for producing the musical Spring Awakening. • Thomas Hulce Books •

He was born in Milwaukee to a Polish American family and lived in Abrams, Wisconsin, during his youth. King learned to play fiddle from his father, who was a professional polka musician. In the 1930s, he toured and made cowboy movies with Gene Autry. King joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1937.

In 1946, while the bandleader of the Golden West Cowboys, King, together with the band's vocalist, Redd Stewart, composed "The Tennessee Waltz," inspired by "The Kentucky Waltz" by bluegrass musician Bill Monroe. King and Stewart first recorded "The Tennessee Waltz" in 1948, and it went on to become a country music standard.

King's other songs included "Slow Poke" and "You Belong to Me." His songs introduced waltzes, polkas, and cowboy songs to country music. • Pee Wee King Books •

This reference work analyzes all of the major speeches of one of the most significant politicians of the first part of the 20th century. La Follette's oratory made him a driving force in American politics. As governor of Wisconsin, U.S. senator, and political reformer, he gave many key speeches, the texts of which are provided in this book. Burgchardt shows how Senator La Follette used melodramatic scenarios to enlist citizens in his reform crusade against the "gravest danger" that he foresaw in the United States. The reference also provides a chronology of his major speeches and a bibliography of primary and secondary works. • Robert Marion La Follette, Sr. Books

"Don't be misled by this flamboyant exterior. Underneath I remain the sameAa simple boy from Milwaukee." Thus spake Liberace in one of his more modest moments. Even as a child, Liberace was well liked and, well, bigger than life; when he came to a high school party dressed as Greta Garbo, he received no flak from classmates. Born Walter Liberace in 1919, the pianist and entertainer began playing clubs in the 1930s, and by the early '40s began cultivating the extravagant performance style (e.g., a Strauss waltz version of "Home on the Range") and the unrestrained costumes for which he became famous. He soon became a cultural icon who attracted adoration from middle-brow, usually female audiences as well as overt antagonism, often fueled by homophobia. In this absorbing and insightful biography, Pyron (Recasting: Gone with the Wind in American Culture) charts more than the life of the performer; he uses that life to reflect on how artifice, camp, gender, homosexuality, gay sensibility and homophobia shape American popular culture. • Wladziu Valentino Liberace Books • Liberace Movies & TV • Liberace Discography

The careers of Lunt and Fontanne span 60 years of theater from vaudeville, through the Depression and the Theatre Guild, and beyond, through Peter Brook's dazzling production of The Visit in the late 1950s. The Lunts were the premier husband-wife acting team on the English-speaking stage from their marriage in 1922 through their retirement in 1972. This well-researched and scholarly study makes extensive use of the Lunts' papers and presents a thorough picture of their personalities, development, and impact. Brown is especially good on the uniqueness of their style. The story extends well beyond the central characters to engage the reader in the history of theater ideas and practices during this period. Highly recommended. Thomas E. Luddy, English Dept., Salem State Coll., Mass. • Alfred Lunt Books • Alfred Lunt Movies