Barry Williams Biography

Quick Facts

Name

Barry Williams

Occupation 

Television Actor

Birth Date 

September 30, 1954

Place of Birth 

Santa Monica, California

Full Name

Barry Williams

 

Originally

Barry William Blenkhorn

Barry Williams is an American actor best known for playing eldest son Greg Brady on the popular 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch.

Synopsis

Actor Barry Williams was born Barry William Blenkhorn on September 30, 1954, in Santa Monica, California. As a young child, he appeared on television shows such as Dragnet, Mission: Impossible and The Mod Squad. In 1969, at age 14, he was cast as Greg Brady, the eldest of six children, on the popular sitcom The Brady Bunch. More recently, in 2013, Williams headlined 70s Music Celebration! at RFD-TV The Theatre in Branson, Missouri.

Early Life

Barry Williams was born Barry William Blenkhorn on September 30, 1954, in Santa Monica, California. The youngest of three sons born to Frank and Doris Blenkhorn, he began acting as a young child, appearing on television shows such as Dragnet, Mission: Impossible and The Mod Squad. Growing up in Pacific Palisades on the West Coast, Williams loved the water and was an avid swimmer, surfer and certified diver. His father owned a chain of credit bureaus and his mother was a housewife.
Williams was cast in his first role at the age of 11, appearing in the film Why Johnny Can't Read. Soon after, he changed his name to Barry Williams.

'The Brady Bunch'

In 1969, at the age of 14, Barry Williams landed the role for which he is best known: as Greg Brady, the eldest of six children in the blended suburban family of the fictional Carol and Mike Brady, on The Brady Bunch. Quickly becoming a teen heartthrob, Williams enjoyed his four years of fame on the show, sometimes getting the chance to sing and dance and play his favorite character and alter-ego, rocker "Johnny Bravo."
The young cast members of The Brady Bunch recorded four record albums, went on concert tours and had their own cartoon show. In later years, the cast got back together for nearly a dozen TV reunions and shows.
In 1989, Williams won the Young Artist Foundation Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award. Three years later, he wrote Growing Up Brady ... I Was a Teenage Greg (1992), an autobiography that stayed on The New York Times' best-seller list for more than three months.
In 2001, Williams served as an executive producer after turning his book into a made-for-TV movie, which aired on NBC.

Life After 'The Brady Bunch'

After The Brady Bunch ended its four-year run in 1974, Williams was offered guest-starring and supporting roles on Three's Company, General Hospital and That '70s Show, and appeared in a number of Brady Bunch specials and reunions. He also spent years in musical theater, touring with Grease, West Side Story and The Sound of Music, and starred on Broadway in Pippin' and Romance/Romance.
Williams married Diane Martin in 1990, and they divorced two years later. He married Elia Mary Matt in 1999, and they had a son, Brendon Eric. The couple divorced in 2005.
He and his companion, Elizabeth Kennedy, welcomed daughter Samantha Rose in April 2012.

• Gerald Ford Biography  

Blogging, Spinning, Singing

Williams had a stint as a DJ on Sirius Satellite Radio, spinning '70s music. In 2011, he moved to Branson, Missouri, where he was showcased in a music revival production of '70s disco, folk and classic rock music.
Williams blogs at www.thegregbradyproject.com.

 

 

 

 

Got a news tip, Job, article or press release for us?

E-mail: naijatellit@gmail.com.

Follow us on twitter  and  facebook.

 

Langston Hughes Biography

 Quick Facts

Name

Langston Hughes

Occupation 

Poet, Playwright

Birth Date 

February 1, 1902

Death Date 

May 22, 1967

Education 

Lincoln University, Columbia University

Place of Birth 

Joplin, Missouri

Place of Death 

New York, New York

Full Name

James Mercer Langston Hughes

 

 

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Synopsis

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died on May 22, 1967.

Early Life

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. While Hughes’s mother moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and that one of his teachers first introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, both whom Hughes would later cite as primary influences. Hughes was also a regular contributor to his school's literary magazine, and frequently submitted to other poetry magazines, although they would ultimately reject him.

Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised. In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. But Hughes dropped out of Columbia in 1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to develop and publish his poetry.

Growing Success

In November 1924, Hughes returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes’s poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience. In 1925, Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. While studying at Lincoln, Hughes poetry came to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published by Knopf in 1926.

The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage. Hughes was also among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his work. He published a second volume of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew, in 1927.

After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. The book was commercially successful enough to convince Hughes that he could make a living as a writer. During the 1930s, Hughes would frequently travel the United States on lecture tours, and also abroad to the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. He continued to write and publish poetry and prose during this time, and in 1934 he published his first collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks. In 1937 he served as a war correspondent for several American newspapers during the Spanish Civil War.

A Continuing Life of Letters

In 1940, Hughes's autobiography up to age 28, The Big Sea, was published. Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a column to the Chicago Defender, for which he created a comic character named Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman that Hughes used to further explore urban, working-class black themes, and to address racial issues. The columns were highly successful, and "Simple" would later be the focus of several of Hughes's books and plays.

In the late 1940s, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a Broadway musical titled Street Scene, which featured music by Kurt Weill. The success of the musical would earn Hughes enough money that he was finally able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught creative writing at Atlanta University and was a guest lecturer at a university in Chicago for several months.

Over the next two decades, Hughes would continue his prolific output. In 1949 he wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work, The Poetry of the Negro. During the 1950s and 1960s, he published countless other works, including several books in his "Simple" series, English translations of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral, another anthology of his own poetry, and the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander.

Death and Legacy

On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes's ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

•  Benjamin Franklin Biography

Hughes's Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.

Got a news tip, Job, article or press release for us?

E-mail: naijatellit@gmail.com.

Follow us on twitter  and  facebook.