Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 5: U-Z
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Marvelous for Words,’’ ‘‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’’), and after
Whiting died when Margaret was still a teenager, songwriter Johnny
Mercer became her mentor. Signed to Mercer’s Capitol label in the
early 1940s, she had 12 gold records before the rock ’n’ roll era,
including Mercer’s ‘‘My Ideal’’ and her signature song, ‘‘Moonlight
in Vermont.’’ One of the first singers to cross Nashville over into Tin
Pan Alley, she hit Number One with ‘‘Slippin’ Around,’’ a duet with
country star Jimmy Wakely.
A cabaret revival in the 1970s and 1980s gave Whiting a new
career as one of New York’s most beloved cabaret performers, on her
own and as part of a revue, 4 Girls 4, with Rosemary Clooney, Rose
Marie, and Helen O’Connell. She also starred in a tribute to Johnny
Mercer staged by her longtime companion, former gay porn star
Jack Wrangler.
—Tad Richards
F
URTHER READING:
Whiting, Margaret, and Will Holt. It Might As Well Be Spring: A
Musical Autobiography. New York, William Morrow, 1987.
The Who
Still regarded in the late 1990s as one of the greatest rock bands
of all time, the Who were bold innovators who changed the face of
popular music forever. Having planted the seeds of heavy metal, art
rock, punk, and electronica, the Who are almost without peer in their
range of influence upon subsequent music. The Who boasted a
dynamic singer and stage presence in Roger Daltrey, a powerful
virtuoso bassist in John Entwistle, and one of the world’s greatest
drummers in the frenetic Keith Moon. But the guiding genius of the
Who was guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, who wrote and
arranged each song, and recorded the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals
onto a demo before presenting it to the band to learn and perform.
Born in West London in 1945, Townshend attended Ealing Art
school, where he learned about Pop Art and the merging realms of
high and low culture. When he formed the Who, he found a suitable
audience for this background among a youth subculture called the
Mods, who wore Pop Art clothing and sought out stylish new music
and amphetamine-driven dance styles. The Who’s manager, Kit
Lambert, encouraged the band to adopt the Mod look and write
significant songs that would appeal to Mods. Their early hit, ‘‘Can’t
Explain’’ (1964) expressed adolescent frustration, followed by the
angst-ridden ‘‘My Generation’’ (1965), one of the great rock anthems
of the period.
The Who were most famous for outrageous stage performances.
Townshend specialized in ‘‘windmill’’ power chords, in which he
would swiftly swing his arm 360 degrees before striking a chord. The
Who often smashed their instruments at the end of a show, with
Townshend shoving his guitar through the amplifier and Moon
smashing through the drumskins and kicking over the entire drum set.
Despite their commercial success, the Who remained in debt until
1969 because of this expensive habit.
The Who released their first album, The Who Sing My Genera-
tion in 1965. Their next album, A Quick One (1967; renamed Happy
Jack in America) featured a miniature ‘‘rock opera’’ on side two, a
series of five songs narrating a tale of suburban infidelity. The Who
Sell Out (1968) satirized commercials, again revealing their interest
in Pop Art. Magic Bus (1968) was the best album of their early period
but offered no hint of the grandeur of their next project, a full-scale
rock opera. The double album Tommy (1969) told the story of a deaf,
dumb, and blind boy who, after a miracle cure, becomes a cult leader.
The album was influenced by Townshend’s involvement with his
guru, Meher Baba. If spirituality was an unexpected theme from the
author of teen frustration and masturbation, the music was an equally
bold advance, establishing Townshend as a versatile guitarist and
ambitious composer. Nevertheless, responses to Tommy were mixed,
partly due to the difficulty of following the story. Charges of
pretentiousness were frequent. The artistic audacity of Tommy left the
Who with a formidable dilemma—where do you go from here?
The Who followed up the rock opera with the raunchy, visceral
Live at Leeds (1970), but soon Townshend grew ambitious again,
formulating another opera, Lifehouse. Eventually the concept was
abandoned, and the better half of the songs written for the project
were released as Who’s Next (1971), which many regard as the
greatest rock album ever made. Among its highlights are ‘‘Behind
Blue Eyes,’’ ‘‘Teenage Wasteland,’’ and one of the greatest rock
songs of all time, ‘‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’’ a masterpiece of
overwhelming power, featuring incredible performances by each
band member. Who’s Next made innovative use of synthesizers and
sequencers, anticipating electronic music, and it established the Who
as a major creative power in rock. The following year, Townshend
released a solo album, Who Came First, devoted to Meher Baba.
Townshend then embarked upon yet another opera, based on the
raw passions of youth rather than philosophical ideas. Quadrophenia
(1973) told the story of the Mods and their rival subculture, the
Rockers. The story was simpler than Tommy but still rather confusing.
However, the Who had grown musically since their first opera.
Townshend was a more sophisticated arranger and made greater use
of piano (played by himself) and horns (played by Entwistle).
Quadrophenia was regarded as Townshend’s masterpiece, the defini-
tive expression of adolescent angst, combining the ambitions of
Tommy with the virtuosity and emotional power of Who’s Next. Both
Tommy and Quadrophenia were made into movies, the former an
awkward musical starring Daltrey, the latter a gritty drama which
helps to explain the album’s plotline, as well as the cultural milieu in
which the Who developed. For most Americans, the movie version of
Quadrophenia is a prerequisite for understanding the album.
The triumph of Quadrophenia left the Who in the same quandary
that Tommy had: where do you go from here? They avoided the
question with Odds & Sods (1974), a mixture of singles, B-sides, and
leftovers from the Lifehouse project. For a hodgepodge, it was a fine
album. The Who by Numbers (1975) was quieter, with thoughtful,
introspective lyrics. Who Are You (1978) found the Who delivering
up-tempo rock again. The lengthy title song was a worthy follow-up
to ‘‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’’ The entire album was reminiscent of
Who’s Next, packed with powerful songs, and again featuring innova-
tive use of synthesizers. Unfortunately, Keith Moon died shortly
afterwards from an overdose of anti-alcoholic medication.
Following this tragedy, Townshend withdrew to record the
fascinating Empty Glass (1981), his finest solo album. Moon was
replaced by Kenny Jones of the Small Faces, and the Who recorded
two albums, Face Dances (1981) and It’s Hard (1982), before
breaking up. Then came countless collections of rarities, outtakes, B-
sides, demo tapes, etc., testifying to the Who’s enduring popularity,
although respect for the group was compromised by the weakness of
WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
132
Members of the Who (l-r) John Entwistle, Roger Daltry, Pete Townshend, and Keith Moon
the post-Moon albums and by various anticlimactic reunions in the
1980s and 1990s. Townshend remained prolific as a solo artist but
tended to rely overmuch on concept albums. He published a book of
short stories, Horse’s Neck, in 1985.
—Douglas Cooke
F
URTHER READING:
Barnes, Richard. The Who: Maximum R & B. London, Eel Pie, 1982.
The Whole Earth Catalogue
First published in 1968 by Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth
Catalogue introduced Americans to green consumerism and quickly
became the unofficial handbook of the 1960s counter-culture. Winner
of the National Book Award and a national best-seller, TWEC
contained philosophical ideas based in science, holistic living, and
metaphysics as well as listings of products that functioned within
these confines. As many Americans sought to turn their backs on
America’s culture of consumption, TWEC offered an alternative
paradigm based in values extending across the counterculture.
TWEC combined the best qualities of the Farmer’s Almanac and
a Sears catalog, merging wisdom and consumption with environmen-
tal activism and expression. The first page declared that ‘‘the estab-
lishment’’ had failed and that TWEC aimed to supply tools to help an
individual ‘‘conduct his own education, find his own inspiration,
shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is
interested.’’ The text offered advice about organic gardening, mas-
sage, meditation, or do-it-yourself burial: ‘‘Human bodies are an
organic part of the whole earth and at death must return to the ongoing
stream of life.’’ Many Americans found the resources and rationale
within TWEC to live as rebels against the American establishment.
Interestingly, Brand did not urge readers to reject consumption
altogether. TWEC helped to create the consumptive niche known as
green consumerism, which seeks to resist products contributing to or
deriving from waste or abuse of resources, applications of intrusive
technologies, or use of non-natural raw materials. TWEC sought to
appeal to this niche by offering products such as recycled paper and
the rationale for its use. As the trend-setting publication of green
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consumption, TWEC is viewed by many Americans as having start-
ed the movement toward whole grains, healthy living, and the
environmentally friendly products that continue to make up a signifi-
cant portion of all consumer goods. Entire national chains have based
themselves around the sale of such goods.
Even though green culture has infiltrated society, Whole Earth
continues in the late 1990s as a network of experts who gather
information and tools in order to live a better life and, for some, to
construct ‘‘practical utopias.’’ The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog,
for instance, claims to integrate the best ideas of the past twenty-five
years with the best for the next, based on TWEC standards such as
environmental restoration, community-building, whole systems think-
ing, and medical self-care.
—Brian Black
F
URTHER READING:
Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. New York, Oxford
University Press, 1995.
The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. San Francisco, Harper, 1998.
Wide World of Sports
‘‘The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat’’ became one of
the most familiar slogans on television for the American Broadcast
Company (ABC) sports show that lived up to its title. Beginning as a
summer replacement in 1961, Wide World of Sports endured into the
1990s, making a household name of original host Jim McKay and
launching the domination of ABC in sports and the rise of future ABC
Sports and News president Roone Arledge.
Arledge came up with the concept of packaging various sports
under this umbrella title and sent Jim McKay to anchor live coverage
of two venerable track meets—the Drake Relays from Des Moines,
Iowa, and the Penn Relays from Philadelphia—for the inaugural
broadcast of the program, on April 29, 1961. Wide World of Sports
survived its initial 13 weeks and returned every year as a 90-minute
program on Saturday afternoons beginning in January, and often
expanding to Sundays as well. The opening narration became famous:
‘‘Spanning the world to give you the constant variety of sports. The
thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic
competition. This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports.’’
Early on, Wide World of Sports covered many sports that later
became separate live broadcast institutions—tennis’s Wimbledon,
golf’s British Open, soccer’s World Cup. But Wide World made its
name with ‘‘nontraditional’’ sports, such as auto racing, boxing,
swimming, diving, track and field, gymnastics, and figure skating.
The particularly daring and unusual sports drew the most fans:
surfing, bodybuilding, World’s Strongest Man competitions, lumber-
jack contests, cliff divers from Acapulco, the Calgary Stampede
rodeo, and most notably, stunt motorcyclist Evel Knievel. Knievel
dominated shows of the early 1970s jumping barrels, cars, and busses
and nearly making it across the Snake River Canyon on his motorcy-
cle (and by rocket), breaking numerous bones in the process.
The program provided ABC Sports with sports coverage experi-
ence that it utilized to cover the Olympics. Wide World truly traveled
the globe, covering events in Europe and Asia, even Cuba and China.
Many of the events were carried live via satellite. The program also
developed the style that made Americans sit still and watch unfamiliar
sports and foreign performers such as Russian gymnast Olga Korbut,
Brazilian soccer star Pele, or Russian weightlifter Vasily Alekseev.
The ‘‘up close and personal’’ features emphasizing the life stories of
the athletes grew out Wide World of Sports and revolutionized sports
coverage. After Wide World, sports coverage became storytelling
rather than simply showing games and scores. The success of the
Olympics propelled ABC out of its low ratings status into a respect-
able television network and Roone Arledge into a position as the head
of ABC Sports and ABC News.
During the 1970s, Wide World of Sports became a brand name,
and its most famous image was set: the ‘‘agony of defeat.’’ While the
‘‘thrill of victory’’ changed almost every year, ‘‘the agony of defeat’’
was forever symbolized by hapless Yugoslavian ski jumper, Vinko
Bogataj, whose spectacular wipeout was taped in 1970.
By the end of the 1980s, Wide World of Sports lost its promi-
nence, as cable network ESPN became a superior ratings grabber as
the ultimate sports show—24 hours a day of the type of sports
coverage that Wide World pioneered. ESPN’s rise was ironic, as it
was partly owned by ABC.
In the 1990s, McKay left the role of studio host to a succession of
other ABC Sports personalities including Al Michaels and Julie
Moran. On January 3, 1998, McKay declared that Wide World of
Sports was canceled; the hour-and-a-half of all sorts of sports was
replaced by a studio host introducing single event broadcasts such as
the Indy 500, horse racing’s Triple Crown, and the national and world
championships in figure skating.
—Michele Lellouche
F
URTHER READING:
The Best of ABC’s Wide World of Sports (three volumes). CBS/Fox
Video, 1990.
McKay, Jim. with Jim McPhee. The Real McKay: My Wide World of
Sports. New York, Dutton, 1998.
Sugar, Bert Randolph. Thrill of Victory: The Inside Story of ABC
Sports. New York, Hawthorn Books, 1978.
The Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch (1969) was the definitive film, and only true
epic, by one of Hollywood’s greatest directors, Sam Peckinpah; and
when it came to movie violence, it set the bar higher than it had ever
been set before. Earlier Westerns had good guys and bad guys as
clearly demarcated as the sides in World War II, but The Wild Bunch
came out during the Vietnam War, and it better reflected that war in
both its complexity and carnage. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde
(1967), which ended with its two protagonists being riddled by
bullets, was the first major Hollywood film to show graphic vio-
lence—to suggest that shooting someone had consequences, that it
was messy and painful—but nothing could have prepared 1960s
audiences for the hundreds of deaths, the wave after wave of unrelent-
ing carnage—shown in slow motion and freeze-frame sequences—
that climaxed The Wild Bunch. Seven years before the film premiered,
Peckinpah was deer hunting when he shot a buck and was struck by
the fact that the bullet going in was the size of a dime, yet the blood on
the snow was the size of a bowling ball. He concluded that was the
WILD BUNCH ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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way violence and death were, and that was what he wanted to put on
film. During filming, Peckinpah had the technicians lay thin slices of
raw steak across the bags of stage blood, so when they exploded it
looked like the bullets were ripping out of bodies mixed with blood
and chunks of flesh. ‘‘Listen,’’ Peckinpah said, ‘‘killing is no fun. I
was trying to show what the hell it’s like to get shot.’’ He believed
people would shun violence if he showed what violence was really like.
But violence in movies without flesh-and-blood characters (see
almost any slasher film) is meaningless. Fortunately, Peckinpah had
great characters, played by superb actors, in a strong story, acted out
before beautiful vistas gorgeously photographed. As the movie opens,
the audience sees a tiny band of soldiers riding into a small town, then
walking into the local railroad office, as scruffy, armed men flit back
and forth on the rooftops overhead. It looks as though the bad guys are
about to ambush the good guys, though the reverse is true. The
railroad office manager asks the lead soldier, Bishop Pike (William
Holden), ‘‘May I help you?’’ and Pike grabs the manager, pulls him
out of his chair, shoves him and another against the wall, and tells the
other soldiers, ‘‘If they move . . . kill ’em!’’ These aren’t really
soldiers at all, but the Wild Bunch in disguise, and the men on the roof
are bounty hunters, there to ambush the outlaws and collect the prices
A scene from the film The Wild Bunch, with (l to r) Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine.
on their heads. Leading the bounty hunters is former Wild Bunch
member Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan)—whose feud with Pike stems
from the time they were busted by Pinkerton agents, with Thornton
being shot and captured and Pike running away. Realizing they’re
about to be ambushed, the Wild Bunch times its departure to coincide
with the passing of a parade of temperance marchers, and the resulting
carnage is fairly intense.
The gang escapes to Mexico with the bounty hunters in hot
pursuit. In the town of Agua Verde they cross paths with Mapache, a
ruthless general at war with revolutionary Pancho Villa who has been
oppressing the local natives, even murdering the father and stealing
the fiancée of the Wild Bunch’s one Mexican member, Angel. The
gang agrees to rob a military supply train loaded with munitions for
Mapache in exchange for gold, and the robbery itself is a slickly done
caper, a Western Topkapi! Worried about helping Mapache get more
guns, Angel agrees to participate if, instead of gold, he can take one
case of guns for the revolutionaries. But Mapache finds out, and when
the gang returns to Agua Verde to trade the arms for the gold,
Mapache keeps Angel. At the end, the remaining outlaws decide to
rescue Angel, and their fight against the soldiers provides the
climactic bloodshed.
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More complex than it first appears, The Wild Bunch is ultimately
about redemption. Early in the film, Pike tells a gang member who
wants to kill another, ‘‘We’re gonna stick together, just like it used to
be. When you side with a man you stay with him, and if you can’t do
that you’re like some animal, you’re finished!—we’re finished!—all
of us!’’ Yet Pike betrays this code again and again. During the
original railroad office job, when Crazy Lee (Bo Hopkins) tells Pike
he’ll hold the hostages until Pike says different, Pike just leaves him
behind to die. This is brought home when Pike’s oldest friend, Sykes
(Edmund O’Brien), tells Pike that Crazy Lee is his grandson. When
another gang member is wounded and might slow them down, Pike
shoots him; even Sykes himself is expendable when he becomes
wounded. At first, Angel is abandoned to Mapache and his men, but
Pike has finally had enough, and, against impossible odds, he and the
rest of the Wild Bunch decide to redeem themselves. They go down in
a blaze of glory—and, joining the revolutionaries, the one remaining
gang member and the one remaining bounty hunter ride off to fight the
good fight.
—Bob Sullivan
F
URTHER READING:
Bliss, Michael. Justified Lives: Morality and Narrative in the Films of
Sam Peckinpah. Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinois University
Press, 1993.
Fine, Marshall. Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah.
New York, Donald I. Fine, 1991.
Seydor, Paul. Peckinpah: The Western Films: A Reconsideration.
Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Weddle, David. If They Move . . . Kill ’Em!: The Life and Times of
Sam Peckinpah. New York, Grove Press, 1994.
Wild Kingdom
The first television program to help Americans visualize distant
life and consider ways they might help, Wild Kingdom became a
crucial tool in the formation of America’s environmental conscious-
ness and particularly in the movement’s shift toward global concerns.
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom has served as Americans’ window
to the exotic species of the natural world since the 1960s. In the
tradition of National Geographic, host Marlon Perkins traveled
throughout the world sending back images of danger and intrigue.
Perkins’s pursuit of animals in their natural surroundings contributed
to the interest in ‘‘eco tourism’’ in which the very wealthy now travel
to various portions of the world not to shoot big game but only to view
it. Wild Kingdom continues production and has spawned an entire
genre of television, particularly for young viewers.
—Brian Black
The Wild One
The camera looks down a stretch of straight country highway,
then in bold, white letters appears the following: ‘‘This is a shocking
story. It could never take place in most American towns—but it did in
Marlon Brando in The Wild One.
this one. It is a public challenge not to let it happen again.’’ The words
fade away to be replaced by Marlon Brando’s voice speaking in a
southern drawl. ‘‘It begins for me on this road,’’ he says. ‘‘How the
whole mess happened I don’t know, but I know it couldn’t happen
again in a million years. Maybe I coulda stopped it early, but once the
trouble was on its way, I was just going with it.’’ A crowd of leather-
clad motorcyclists roar past the camera, and with the confident
declaration that what follows is an aberration, Stanley Kramer launched
The Wild One in 1954. The truth of the matter is somewhat more
complicated, for not only did the film incite a rash of copy-cat
behavior, but may have had an affect on the Hell’s Angels’ delecta-
tions a decade later.
The Wild One derives from a real riot, following a large
motorcycle rally in the Northern California town of Hollister. Ac-
cording to witnesses, six to eight thousand participants drag-raced up
and down the streets of Hollister; fist-fights, lewd behavior, and
vandalism were the norm, but the event was eventually dispatched by
29 policemen and it ended without a single loss of life. The coverage
in the July 1947 issue of Life magazine was sufficiently lurid and
alarmist, and it inspired Frank Rooney to turn the incident into a short
story, ‘‘The Cyclists’ Raid.’’ Rooney told the story from the point of
view of Joel Bleeker, a hotel manager (and significantly, a World War
II veteran) who witnesses his daughter’s death at the hands of the
cyclists. Bleeker views the motorcyclists as inhuman quasi-fascists,
but in its transition from story to film, sympathies were switched. The
hero became Johnny (Marlon Brando), leader of the Black Rebels
Motorcycle Club, who is sullen and incommunicative, but also
reserved and possessing a degree of chivalry lacking in his compatriots.
WILDER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
136
The rioting itself is transformed in typical Hollywood fashion
into a Manichean contest between Johnny and his dissipated rival,
Chino (Lee Marvin), who, to make matters perfectly clear, wears a
horizontal striped sweatshirt closely resembling prison garb. After
gratuitously interfering in a local motorcycle race, the bikers proceed
to the nearby town of Carbondale where they cause all manner of
havoc, prompted in part by the local saloon owner, who all but rubs
his hands in excitement at the prospect of a bar full of hard-drinking
motorcyclists. The tension between locals and bikers, already tense
after a notoriously bad driver hits one of the bikers, is further
exacerbated by the arrival of Chino and his cohorts. As the motorcy-
clists begin to run genuinely amuck, the town’s craven police officer
cowers in his office while his daughter, Kathy, is accosted by the
bikers, rescued by Johnny who drives off with her, and is thus absent
from the ensuing carnage. Nonetheless, as the leader he is blamed by
the townspeople, locked up, and when he escapes, knocked off his
motorcycle as he flees, accidentally killing an elderly man, and then is
unjustly accused of the killing.
Despite the rather thin story line—the New Yorker magazine
called it ‘‘a picture that tries to grasp an idea even though the reach
falls short’’—The Wild One was an instant hit with young audiences.
Theater owners throughout the country reported that teenage boys had
taken to dressing in leather jackets and boots like Marlon Brando and
accosting passersby. The pioneering members of the Hell’s Angels
(most of the group that later came to notoriety were children at the
time) identified deeply with Brando. ‘‘Whatta ya got?’’ was Brando’s
insouciant reply to the famous question, ‘‘Hey Johnny, what are you
rebelling against?’’ and it echoed in the real-life outlaws inchoate
dissatisfaction. ‘‘We went up to the Fox Theater on Market Street,’’ a
founding member told journalist Hunter S. Thompson. ‘‘There were
about fifty of us, with jugs of wine and our black leather jackets . . .
We sat up there in the balcony and smoked cigars and drank wine and
cheered like bastards. We could all see ourselves right there on the
screen. We were all Marlon Brando.’’
Much of the lasting allure of The Wild One stems from Brando’s
lionization by not only the Hell’s Angels, but by countless teenagers.
In ‘‘The Cyclists’ Raid,’’ Rooney had written: ‘‘They were all alike.
They were standardized figurines, seeking in each other a willful loss
of identity, dividing themselves equally among one another until
there was only a single mythical figure, unspeakably sterile and
furnishing the norm for hundreds of others.’’ In light of the Hell’s
Angels’ response to The Wild One as quoted above, and considering
the way Marlon Brando’s image was disseminated on posters, in
books, and turned into an archetype, it is no wonder many blamed The
Wild One for the Hell’s Angels’ excesses a decade later. Hollywood
gossip columnist Hedda Hopper blamed Kramer entirely for the
whole outlaw phenomenon, and Frank Rooney might well have
identified Marlon Brando as that ‘‘single mythical figure furnishing
the norm for hundreds of others.’’
It would be simplistic to blame the filmmaker and leading man
for a real life contagion, but the suspicion remains to this day. Perhaps
Hunter S. Thompson put it best when he wrote that the film ‘‘told a
story that was only beginning to happen and which was inevitably
influenced by the film. It gave the outlaws a lasting, romance-glazed
image of themselves, a coherent reflection that only a very few had
been able to find in a mirror, and it quickly became the bike-rider’s
answer to The Sun Also Rises.’’
—Michael Baers
F
URTHER READING:
Carey, Gary. Marlon Brando: The Only Contender. New York, St.
Martin’s Press, 1985.
Lewis, Jon. The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth
Culture. New York, Routledge, 1992.
Pettigrew, Terence. Raising Hell: The Rebel in the Movies. New
York, St. Martin’s Press, 1986.
Rooney, Frank. ‘‘The Cyclists’ Raid.’’ Stories Into Film. Edited by
William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauzer. New York, Harper &
Row, 1979.
Shaw, Sam. Brando in the Camera Eye. New York, Exeter Books, 1979.
Spoto, Donald. Stanley Kramer, Filmmaker. New York, G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1978.
Thomas, Tony. The Films of Marlon Brando. Secaucus, New Jersey,
Citadel Press, 1973.
Thompson, Hunter S. Hell’s Angels, A Strange and Terrible Saga.
New York, Ballantine Book, 1966.
Wilder, Billy (1906—)
Born Samuel Wilder in an Austrian village, this six-time Acade-
my Award winning director, screenwriter, and producer was dubbed
Billy after Buffalo Bill of the 1880s traveling western show. That
American nickname apparently foretold, in the wake of the Nazi rise
to power, his 1934 emigration to Hollywood where he joined fellow
European exiles, learned English, and cultivated a legendary career
that indelibly marked American movie history. With partner Charles
Brackett, he co-wrote acclaimed comedies like Ball of Fire (1941),
then scripted, directed, and produced a string of hugely popular films,
including the quintessential film noir Double Indemnity (1944), and
The Lost Weekend (1945). Their alliance culminated with the savage
portrayal of Hollywood in Sunset Boulevard (1950). With I.A.L.
Diamond, Wilder created Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Apartment
(1960). His self-produced works more flagrantly expressed his cyni-
cism and penchant for vulgarity with Ace in the Hole (1951),
betraying a jaded sensibility ahead of its times.
—Elizabeth Haas
F
URTHER READING:
Lally, Kevin. Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder. New York,
Henry Holt, 1996.
Sikov, Ed. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder.
New York, Hyperion, 1998.
Zolotow, Maurice. Billy Wilder in Hollywood. New York,
Putnam, 1977.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls (1867-1957)
One of the best-known children’s authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder
wrote the popular, autobiographical ‘‘Little House’’ novels about her
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137
late-nineteenth-century childhood on the American frontier. Pub-
lished in the 1930s and 1940s, these eight books were considered
classics of children’s literature by the 1950s and have appealed to
every succeeding generation of readers who thirsted for nostalgia.
The second of four daughters of Charles and Caroline Ingalls, a
post-Civil War American pioneering family, Wilder began writing in
childhood. Laura and her sisters penned poetry and compositions in
the many homes the Ingalls family built in the wilderness. Her writing
permitted her to have a voice, public and private, denied to many
nineteenth-century women and provided a way to release her frustra-
tions, disappointments, and enthusiasms during her life as pioneer,
teacher, wife, mother, farmer, businesswoman, and author. Wilder
continued her writing after she married her husband Almanzo in
1885. Keeping a travel diary of their 1894 trip to Mansfield, Missouri,
Wilder submitted it for publication to the De Smet News, where both
of her younger sisters worked as journalists. Distracted by farm duties
and volunteer work in her community, Wilder did not write seriously
until 1911 when she began preparing essays about farm life for the
Missouri Ruralist.
The fictional Laura was adventurous and inquisitive yet compli-
ant to the culture she lived in, obediently silencing herself and being
still to please her Pa. She was predictable, providing steadiness to her
readers. The real Laura craved such stability. Accustomed to econom-
ic and physical hardships, Wilder persevered despite her son’s death,
her husband’s disability from disease, conflicts with her strong-willed
daughter, crop failures and debt, and the misogyny and anti-
intellectualism of her patriarchal community. Ambitious and intelli-
gent, she ensured that the couple’s farm, Rocky Ridge, survived while
asserting her individuality. Known as Bessie to her family, she
became Laura Ingalls Wilder only in the last part of her life. This pen
name represented a professional woman whom few people actually
knew. The author Laura Ingalls Wilder answered fan mail, received
awards, and signed books, while Bessie Wilder was an ordinary
woman who performed her daily chores, read her Bible, attended club
meetings, supported the local library, visited with friends, and cared
for her ailing husband.
Wilder’s daughter, Rose, an accomplished writer, encouraged
her to write about her family’s adventures on the frontier. Wilder
completed her first attempt, Pioneer Girl, in 1930. In this novel, Laura
narrated her story from childhood to marriage, but no publisher was
interested. With Rose’s help, Wilder rewrote her manuscript to meet
literary expectations, dividing the novel into eight stories and present-
ing it in third person. Her publisher suggested that she make her
characters two years older than they really were to appeal to adoles-
cent readers. Although the books were presented as what Laura
remembered, the early stories about events during her infancy were
actually her parents’ memories. Originally titled When Grandma Was
a Little Girl, Wilder’s first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was
published in 1932 and was followed by Farmer Boy (1933), Little
House on the Prairie (1935), On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), By
the Shores of Silver Lake (1939), The Long Winter (1940), Little Town
on the Prairie (1941), and These Happy Golden Years (1943). (A
manuscript for a story of Wilder’s early years of marriage was found
after her death. Edited by Roger Lea MacBride, The First Four Years
was published in 1971.) Critics and readers immediately accepted her
books, and the volumes sold well despite the Depression. The values
of home, love, and personal courage formed an image of rural serenity
that fulfilled readers’ need for comfort and a connection to a past that
they believed was simpler and happier than contemporary times.
Scholars noted the books’ archetypes: Pa was the dreamer and
provider, while Ma was the civilizer and stabilizer. Laura was a blend
of her parents. The Ingalls were praised for being spiritual, hard
working, and resourceful, enduring tragedy while constantly moving
in their covered wagon and homesteading virgin land. Aspects of
nineteenth-century American culture were provided through the
songs Pa sang, the items they purchased in stores, and the books and
magazines the women read. Scholars have criticized the patriarchal,
domestic, and materialistic messages of Wilder’s books and de-
nounced the characters’ racism toward Native Americans and minori-
ties. The women were often isolated and confined to homes, while
men were active participants with the outside world. Laura faced
conflicts between her need for individual freedom and expression,
and self-sacrifice and obedience for the good of her family.
Wilder stressed that she wrote her stories to provide history
lessons for new generations of children who no longer could experi-
ence the frontier and disappearing prairie that metaphorically offered
hope, prosperity, and renewal. In so doing, she sparked a cultural
phenomenon. Fans have dressed as Little House characters, collected
memorabilia, and visited Laura Ingalls Wilder heritage sites. The
Laura Ingalls Wilder-Rose Wilder Lane Home and Museum in
Mansfield, Missouri, houses many items, such as Pa’s fiddle, which
are featured in the books. Bookstores sell adaptations of Wilder’s
stories, including series about Ma’s and Roses’s childhoods. The
commercialization of Laura Ingalls Wilder has meant that fans can
buy Little House dolls, T-shirts, cookbooks, videos, diaries, and
calendars. Wilder’s books never have been out of print, and edited
versions of her periodical writing and letters are also available.
Foreign readers have also identified with Wilder’s universal themes;
her books have been published in 40 languages, and Internet sites
connect Wilder fans around the globe.
The American Library Association initiated the Laura Ingalls
Wilder Medal for accomplishments in children’s literature in 1954. A
television series, Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983), unrealisti-
cally portrayed Wilder’s life but was popular during an era when the
Bicentennial and Alex Haley’s book Roots revived Americans’
interest in the past. A Broadway musical, Prairie, ran in 1982, and a
Little House movie was in production in 1998.
—Elizabeth D. Schafer
F
URTHER READING:
Anderson, William T. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography. New York,
HarperTrophy, 1995.
Miller, John E. Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman behind
the Legend. Columbia and London, University of Missouri
Press, 1998.
———. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town: Where History and
Literature Meet. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1994.
Romines, Ann. Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture, and
Laura Ingalls Wilder. Amherst, University of Massachusetts
Press, 1997.
Trosky, Susan M. and Donna Olendorf, editors. Contemporary Au-
thors. Vol. 137. Detroit, Gale Research, 1992.
WILDER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
138
Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)
Thornton Wilder, with an enthusiasm for experimentation and
keen observation of human experience, enlivened the American
literary scene in the middle years of the twentieth century. He
received numerous awards, including the first Presidential Medal of
Freedom, and two Pulitzer Prizes for drama—Our Town (1938) and
The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). In 1927 he received his first Pulitzer
Prize for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1923), which
established his reputation as a leading novelist. One of his most
popular plays—The Matchmaker (1956)—became the mega-musical
Hello, Dolly, an international box office success. Gertrude Stein
became a close friend and influence during his last 12 years of major
work. In 1997, one hundred years after his birth, cultural festi-
vals throughout America celebrated the enormous talent of a man
whose command of the classics was so great he was nicknamed,
‘‘The Library.’’
—Joan Gajadhar
F
URTHER READING:
Burns, Edward, and Ulla Dydo. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and
Thornton Wilder. Edited by William Rice. New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1996.
Cunliffe, Marcus, The Literature of the United States. New York,
Viking Penguin, 1986.
Will, George F. (1941—)
Political commentator, columnist, and amateur baseball histori-
an, George F. Will is known for the way he imparts a conservative
spin to his opinions about the intersection of American culture and
politics in the closing years of the twentieth century. Best known for
his syndicated column in the Washington Post and for his regular
contributions to Newsweek, Will is also a frequent panelist on
televised political commentary programs, such as ABC’s This Week
with David Brinkley. As R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. wrote in his review of
The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-
1994, ‘‘George F. Will has always been a sober, civilized man with
serious political principles buttressed by wise historical thoughts.’’
Born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1941, George F. Will was
educated at Trinity College (B.A. 1962), Magdalene College of
Oxford University (B.A. 1964), and Princeton University (M.A.,
Ph.D. 1967). Several collections of Will’s newspaper and magazine
columns have been published including: Suddenly: The American
Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986-1990; The Morning After: American
Successes and Excesses, 1981-1986; The Pursuit of Virtue and Other
Tory Notions; and The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering
Thoughts. One of Will’s biggest crusades has been against big
government, notably as a supporter for term limitations for U.S.
Senators and Representatives. Reflective of public frustration with
the American political system during the 1980s and 1990s, Will
consistently pushed for term limits believing, as Peter Knupfer notes
George F. Will
in the Journal of American History, these limits will ‘‘restore demo-
cratic institutions to deliberative processes and to leadership by
public-spirited amateurs’’ who are more interested in the public good
than in political careers. Will’s writings on term limits are found in
numerous columns and in one book, Restoration: Congress, Term
Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy.
Although he generally adopts a conservative position, he is by no
means a typical Republican looking to either weaken government or
weaken the Democratic Party. As a self-styled conservative, Will
reshaped the way people viewed the spectrum of American political
thought by insisting that conservatives move away from narrow self-
interest toward an interest in the public good. Will’s thought urges
conservatives to reconsider their assumptions and adopt ideas steeped
in the ‘‘tradition of U.S. socio-political thought: the relation of
individuals to the larger community, the ways of nurturing a dynamic
democracy and the proper role of government,’’ in the words of
Marilyn Thie in America. From this position, Will wrote many
columns on what he saw as wasteful government spending, govern-
ment inefficiency, and political gridlock. Will came to believe one of
the biggest problems for American culture was the public’s heavy
reliance on—and demands on—its government. If the government is
misfiring in itself, then its ability to serve the public is highly
problematic, Will believed.
Beyond his primary focus on politics and American culture, Will
also wrote on a range of subjects that included pornography, journal-
istic ethics, advertising, the environment, and especially the game of
baseball. Relating the myths of American life, such as the American
WILLIAMSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
139
dream and the great American pastime, to the realities of contempo-
rary American life remains one of Will’s contributions to cultural
discourse. Besides several columns for a variety of periodicals, his
book publications on the myths of American baseball include Bunts:
Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and Other Reflections on
Baseball (1998) and Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (1990).
—Randall McClure
F
URTHER READING:
Chappell, Larry W. George F. Will. New York, Twayne Publish-
ers, 1997.
Knupfer, Peter. ‘‘Review—Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and
the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy by George F. Will.’’
Journal of American History. June 1994, 325.
Thie, Marilyn. ‘‘Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home,
1986-1990 by George F. Will.’’ America. June 8, 1991, 628-630.
Tyrell, R. Emmett, Jr. ‘‘Alone Again, Naturally—The Leveling Wind
by George F. Will.’’ National Review. January 23, 1995, 64.
Will, George F. Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and
Other Reflections on Baseball. New York, Scribner, 1998.
———. The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News,
1990-1994. New York, Viking, 1994.
———. Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. New York, Macmil-
lan, 1990.
———. The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses,
1981-1986. New York, Free Press, 1986.
———. The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts.
New York, Harper & Row, 1978.
———. The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions. New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1982.
———. Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of
Deliberative Democracy. New York, Free Press, 1992.
———. Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does. New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1983.
———. Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986-
1990. New York, Free Press, 1990.
———. The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America’s Fabric,
1994-1997. New York, Scribner, 1997.
Williams, Andy (1930—)
One of the great middle-of-the-road singers of the mid-twentieth
century, Andy Williams is among the very few whose popularity
survived the onset of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s. Howard Andrew
Williams was born in the small town of Wall Lake, Iowa, the last of a
set of four brothers. The Williams Brothers formed a singing group
while Andy was still a child, and were regularly employed on radio
from 1938. The family relocated several times to facilitate the
Williams Brothers’ obtaining new radio contracts. At various times
they lived in Des Moines, Chicago, Cincinnati, and southern Califor-
nia. The two older brothers were drafted in the last days of World War
Two, and Andy Williams spent a comparatively calm period finishing
high school in Los Angeles.
In 1947 the foursome regrouped, joining with a new partner, Kay
Thompson. They played a wide variety of clubs over the next several
years, including a tour of Europe, before disbanding in 1953; the
brothers went their separate ways professionally. Andy Williams
landed a regular job on Steve Allen’s Tonight Show from 1954 to
1957, singing and taking part in Allen’s manic clowning, five nights a
week. The year 1957 saw Williams hosting a summer replacement
television program on NBC; he also had summer shows on ABC in
1958 and on CBS the following year. From 1962 to 1967, and again
from 1969 to 1971, Williams had his own highly successful series on
NBC. At various times his supporting cast included Dick Van Dyke,
Jonathan Winters, Ray Stevens, and the Osmond Brothers. His
program was noteworthy in that Williams was always willing to have
competing singers—major personalities such as Bobby Darin or
Robert Goulet—make guest appearances on his show.
Williams’ recording career, benefitting from his national expo-
sure on the Tonight Show, was a hit from the start. He recorded for the
Cadence label until 1962, when he switched to the larger Columbia
Records. His recording career had actually started much earlier,
however, in 1944, when he was picked to sing ‘‘Swingin’ on a Star’’
with Bing Crosby. Williams had several million-selling singles in the
1950s, including ‘‘The Village of St. Bernadette,’’ ‘‘Canadian Sun-
set,’’ and ‘‘The Hawaiian Wedding Song.’’ His version of ‘‘Butter-
fly’’ was the number-one record in America for three weeks in the
spring of 1957.
The song most closely identified with Williams, 1961’s ‘‘Moon
River,’’ was never a hit for him. However, it so perfectly suited his
smooth voice and mellow delivery that it became his signature song,
and served as his television theme from 1962 onwards. His populari-
zation of the Henry Mancini-written ‘‘Moon River’’ (from Breakfast
at Tiffany’s) was not lost on the composer; Andy Williams was
invited to sing the theme for the 1963 film Days of Wine and Roses,
another important Mancini work. Williams’ LP of the same name was
one of the six top-selling albums of 1963. Major hits were rare for
Williams after that year, his last being the theme from Love Story in
1971. His albums, television work, and live concerts all remained
quite successful.
Williams became a noted collector of art in the late 1950s. He
has built a well-regarded private collection of Impressionist and
modern paintings, located in his Manhattan home. In 1961 he married
a nineteen-year-old Folies-Bergère showgirl, Claudine Longet, whom
he met during her show’s stay in Las Vegas. Longet unsuccessfully
pursued careers in music and acting for years. The two separated in
1970, divorcing in 1975. The following year she fatally shot her long-
time lover, professional skier Spider Sabich, in their Colorado home.
Williams, who remained close to his ex-wife after the breakup of their
marriage, was publicly supportive of Longet throughout her trial and
the attendant media circus.
In addition to his highly rated variety program, which he ended
in 1971, Williams is known for hosting numerous seasonal television
specials. He is an avid golfer, and the host of the annual Andy
Williams Open golf tournament. In 1992 he opened his own theater in
Branson, Missouri, considered the second city of country music after
Nashville. Andy Williams’ Moon River Theatre there is one of the
WILLIAMS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
140
Andy Williams and Ann Sothern (foreground) dancing during a rehersal for the Andy Williams Show.
more popular attractions, providing live music shows for many of the
millions of tourists who visit Branson each year.
—David Lonergan
F
URTHER READING:
Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime
Time Network TV Shows. 5th Edition. New York, Ballantine, 1992.
Contemporary Musicians. Volume 2. Detroit, Gale Research, 1990.
Whitburn, Joel. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. 6th Edition. New
York, Billboard Books, 1996.
Williams, Bert (1874-1922)
Known during his lifetime as ‘‘the funniest man in America,’’
Egbert Austin ‘‘Bert’’ Williams enjoyed fame as the straight man and
ballad singer of the African American comedy team of Williams and
Walker. Williams met his partner, George Walker, in San Francisco
in 1893, when he began performing in order to finance his studies at
Stanford University. They worked their way to New York, where in
1896 they appeared in Victor Herbert’s Gold Bug. The two performed
in such musical comedy hits as The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey
(1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). When Walker
retired, Williams starred in Mr. Lode of Koal (1909) then performed
with Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies from 1910 to 1919. In 1920 Williams
joined Eddie Cantor in Broadway Brevities. Williams was admired
for impeccable comedic timing and pantomimes. He died in 1922
after opening in Under the Bamboo Tree.
—Susan Curtis
F
URTHER READING:
Charters, Ann. Nobody: The Story of Bert Williams. New York,
Macmillan, 1970.
Riis, Thomas L. Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New
York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989.