Twentieth Century
In the early twentieth century, the district became an active summer arts community. Home to writers and artists, it was noted for popular outdoor theatrical performances sponsored by the successful stage actor, Aldrich Bowker (1875–1947), one of its summer residents. Bowker succeeded Henry Travers in the role of Grandpa in George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You on Broadway, and played it for over 500 consecutive performances in New York and Chicago. When Kaufman won the Pulitzer Prize for the play in 1937, Bowker was the presenter. He went on to play character roles in 25 motion pictures between 1939 and 1942, including The Major and the Minor and Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Aldrich Bowker's brother, Frank Bowker, also a district resident, was the author of Ashby Four Corners, a play about life in a small New England town whose setting is Russell Hill. Clara Burbank (1862–1927), a successful still life artist, was a neighbor in the district, as was Amy L. Burbank (1875–1948), a popular New England landscape painter.
Read more about this topic: Cambridge Grant Historic District
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious ‘retreat’ of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)