Personal Life
Monteux had six children, two of them adopted. From his first marriage there were a son, Jean Paul, and a daughter, Suzanne. Jean Paul became a jazz musician, performing with artists such as Josephine Baker and Mistinguett. His second marriage produced a daughter, Denise, later known as a sculptress, and a son, Claude, a flautist. After Monteux married Doris Hodgkins he legally adopted her two children, Donald, later a restaurateur, and Nancie, who after a career as a dancer became administrator of the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock. Monteux's brother, Henri, a successful actor, died in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.
Among Monteux's numerous honours, he was a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur and a Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau. In 1960 he was inducted into in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A political and social moderate, in the politics of his adopted homeland he supported the Democratic Party and was a strong opponent of racial discrimination. He ignored taboos on employing black artists; reportedly, during the days of segregation in the US, when told he could not be served in a restaurant "for colored folk" he insisted that he was coloured – pink.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Monteux
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt—for “woman.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“All that a pacifist can undertake—but it is a very great deal—is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.”
—Vera Brittain (1896–1970)