Background
Born in Chicago, Illinois, to professional ballroom dancers, Haakon Olaf Hagen and the former Marvel Lucile Wadsworth. When Haakon Hagen deserted his family, young Hagen was reared by his mother, grandmother, and aunts. As a 15-year-old, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where one of his aunts had taken a teaching job. His family returned to Chicago, but he spent a year in law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, after having attended Oregon State University in Corvallis and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, from which he had received a degree in International Relations. Subsequently employed by the U.S. State Department in West Germany (since Germany), he then served a two-year stint in the United States Navy. For a time he taught ballroom dancing, the specialty of his parents, for the Arthur Murray Company. Then, at the age of twenty-seven, he tried acting. He was spotted in a production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and given a guest-starring role on the classic 1950s police series Dragnet, starring Jack Webb.
Read more about this topic: Kevin Hagen
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)