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FORTUNE examines business leaders and artists who have gone beyond the limitations of dyslexia. FORTUNE Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Johnson in New York City and spent the first years of her life in a public housing project in Manhattan. She made her performing debut at age eight with the Helena Rubinstein Children's Theatre at the Hudson Guild. After dropping out of high school, she found work as a summer camp counselor, and in the choruses of the Broadway shows Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and Pippin. In 1974, after a failed marriage, she moved to California with her young daughter and, the following year, helped found the San Diego Repertory Theatre and joined the improvisational theater group Spontaneous Combustion. It was at this time that she adopted her distinctive stage name and began to develop the character monologues that were to make her famous. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, she joined another improvisational group, the Blake Street Hawkeyes, acquired a following for her work as a stand-up comedian, and toured the U.S. and Europe with her one-woman production, The Spook Show. In 1983 the legendary director Mike Nichols saw her perform and, the following year, presented her on Broadway in a one-woman show of her own creation. The show was an enormous success, and brought her to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast her in the leading role in his film of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Making her film debut in this coveted role instantly established her as one of Hollywood's leading actresses. Her performance in Ghost won her an Academy Award. She followed this with memorable performances in the box-office smash Sister Act and the critically acclaimed Robert Altman film, The Player. Her other film credits include Made In America; Corinna, Corinna; Star Trek: Generations and Boys on the Side. In addition to her acting roles, Whoopi Goldberg has hosted her own television talk show and has earned rave reviews for hosting the annual Academy Awards telecast. back to top .
Oliver Reed, 1938-1999British "bad boy" actor and self-proclaimed "Mr. England" Oliver Reed, who appeared in 108 films and television movies over his 41-year career, died May 2nd, 1999 in the Malta capital of Valetta while completing the film "The Gladiator". Reed, whose roles ranged from B-Horror films to Dickens classics, was 61 years old. Born in Wimbledon, London, England on February 13th, 1938, Robert Oliver Reed was the nephew of British film director Sir Carol Reed and the grandson of legendary actor and agent Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed's childhood was one he openly acknowledged as isolatory, raised between divorced parents who ignored one another, as well as Reed himself, who was sent as soon as feasible to boarding schools. Reed suffered from dyslexia that went undiagnosed until his late adulthood and performed poorly as a student, which found him frequently punished both at home and at school. Reed did excel at sports, and toward the end of his school days became a competitive long distance runner. It was ultimately his physical strength and size that got the young actor noticed and landed him his first job at 17- as a bouncer at a burlesque club. Reed shrugged off assistance from his theatrical family members and used his contacts as a bouncer to charm his way into bit parts and walk-on roles in London films. In 1958 Reed made his first credited film appearance in the movie "London Calling", which helped the young hopeful secure regular work as a supporting actor in Hammer Studios films. Hammer was famous for its B-films and horror tales and launched careers for cult horror icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In 1961 Hammer did the same for 23-year-old Oliver Reed when he played the starring role in " Curse of the Werewolf ". Reed came dangerously close to being typecast as a man-beast both on and off screen, his string of Hammer horror films casting him as sociopaths and fiends as in "These Are The Damned" to literal monsters. Off screen, Reed's behavior could rival that of his outrageous film alter egos. He arrived in Galway Airport, Ireland, passed out and drunk on a baggage carousel. In Madrid, while shooting one of 5 films he appeared in during 1973, Reed stripped naked in a hotel restaurant and dove into an aquarium. On that occasion Reed was asked to leave the premises not for his skinny-dipping communion with the hotel goldfish but for taking part in a brawl. The ex-bouncer turned film star was famous for his fisticuffs, a 1963 altercation leaving him with 36 stitches closing an interesting assortment of facial lacerations. Co-stars remarkably rarely complained about the excesses and adventures that went along with Reed, and he was never short of work, maintaining an amazing ability to be a consummate and considerate professional when the cameras rolled. Reeds films included some of the most acclaimed in each of 4 decades, and showed the actor to possess an unexpected versatility. Reed could play sensitive swashbuckler "Athos" (a role he reprised 3 times in " The 3 Musketeers and its sequels) or a comedic wild-west brigand in "Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday". Reed could boast credit for the first full-frontal male nudity in a feature film for his revealing role in the critically acclaimed " Women in Love " and wreak laughter as the alternately storming and simpering "God Vulcan" in Terry Gilliam's 1989 hit " The Adventures of Baron Munchausen ". Reed was as convincing as a God of the Forge twisted around the finger of Uma Thurman's "Venus" as he was a fiendish and despicable "Bill Sikes" in " Oliver !" Oliver Reed had been well into filming his role as ex-fighter turned trainer "Proximo" in the Ridley Scott adventure " The Gladiator " on the Isle of Malta when he met his end, an end which moved his "Women In Love" co-star Glenda Jackson to comment to the press that she was "very sorry he was gone, but I think he probably went the way he would have wished". Reed had been relaxing at a Valetta pub between filming and suffered a fatal heart attack after reputedly consuming 3 bottles of rum and defeating 5 (much younger) Royal Navy sailors at arm wrestling. Oliver Reed was 61 years old. He is survived by his 3rd wife, Josephine Burge Reed, a son, Mark, and a daughter, Sarah, both from earlier marriages. back to top Don't believe everything the Night Court star says; he thrives on illusion and mystery. (TV GUIDE--Al Martinez p.10-13, Feb 9, 1985) The youngish man with the slightly mussed hair is sitting at the judge's bench on the set of Night Court, smiling. He smiles easily, evoking the image of a little boy all dressed up in his daddy's black judicial robe, having a very good time. A few moments earlier he was throwing M&M's in the air and catching them in his mouth. Wow, what fun! Now, as a particularly difficult scene is about to be shot for the third time, he claps and says good naturedly, "Come on, gang, we have the technology, we can make this funny!" And in a movement that is barely discernible, prop lottery tickets appear suddenly in his hand and almost just as suddenly disappear. The boyish man smiles again, full of Sunday surprises and ice cream innocence. His name is Harry Anderson. He plays Judge Harold T. Stone on Night Court, a second season NBC comedy that revolves around life after dark in a Manhattan courtroom. Judge Stone is an amateur magician who often wears a sweat shirt, jeans and sneakers under his judicial robe. In reality, Anderson isn't too different from Stone. He is a practicing magician and former street hustler who has elevated the art of the shell game to the level of television performing in what he considers the ultimate scam: making people think he is acting when all he's doing is being himself. And even though he has given up selling snake oil for the sake of TV stardom, he can still con the socks right off your feet. Some of the people who put Night Court together aren't sure how much of the 32-year-old actor is real and how much is illusion. Story editors Stu Kreisman and Chris Cluess are among those who wonder whether even Anderson's street background is what he says it is. "I don't think anyone really knows except maybe his wife and his dog," Cluess says. "They'll tell the kid later," Kreisman adds. They'll have to. The kid is Eva Fay, age 4, and she has seen daddy take so many things out of her ear while performing magic around the house that when she loses a shoe, the first place she checks is her ear. Anderson's expertise at put on and illusion makes it difficult to separate substance from shadow. He used to like to say he was raised by lizards and then kidnapped by a band of gypsy comedians who held him captive in an Atlantic City hotel room. If what he says is true, he's been on the streets off and on since he was about 16 and has worked the shell game from New Orleans, where he was arrested once, to San Francisco, where he gave up hustling when an irate customer punched him in the jaw. He was born in Newport, R.I., and his parents were divorced early in his youth. He spent his growing-up years living with both of them separately as well as with other relatives. Anderson's father brought him to L.A.'s San Fernando Valley when he was a teenager. His mother, who had lost custody of her son, followed to be near him. When his father died, Anderson moved in with her until his graduation from North Hollywood High. Lunch time. Anderson is eating a grilled-cheese sandwich in the cafeteria of a leased Hollywood studio just five blocks from his home. He usually walks or bicycles to work. Having lunch with him are three other members of the cast: John Larroquette, who plays assistant DA Dan Fielding; Selma Diamond, who plays crusty, cigarette-smoking court matron Selma Hacker; and the newest cast member, Ellen Foley, who plays public defender Billie Young. They all love Anderson. Larroquette because he has a "nice National Lampoon attitude"; Foley because he was helping her pass her driver's license test that week, and Diamond because "he's just one of us." She adds: "I give Harry a hug every morning, and I damned well don't go around hugging just anybody" As he eats, Anderson talks about the eerie coincidences of personality and character that bind him to the fictional Judge Stone. They are both named Harry, they are both con artists in their way and they both do card tricks to relax. "All that was already in the script before I even entered the picture," Anderson says. "People think they wrote the script especially for me. They didn't. But after I read it, I knew I was that man." The coincidences are confirmed by executive producer Reinhold Weege. "Harry walked into the first reading, introduced himself as a magician as well as an actor and announced, 'I am Harry Stone'," Weege recalls. "Then he proceeded to be the character." Anderson loved the part from the beginning. In addition to feeling he was born for the role, the show represented a chance to get off the road and spend more time with his wife, Leslie, and their daughter. A "day job," he calls it. Weege wasn't so certain. He knew, because of Anderson's appearances as Harry the Hustler on Cheers, that the actor was being sought by the other two networks. But Weege felt Anderson was too young and possibly too inexperienced for the part of Judge Stone. "But then" said the onetime producer of Barney Miller, "my gut told me to go ahead with him anyhow, and I did." In "The Sweeps," a book about NBC, the authors say Anderson was failing on the road and desperate for the television job. The actor scoffs. "Fifty thousand a year isn't exactly failing," he says. "That's what I was making when Night Court came along. Was I desperate for the role? Sure I wanted the job. But I was more desperate not to fail than I was desperate to succeed. I just don't like failing." Anderson adds another coincidence hefeels tied him from the start to Judge Harry Stone. First he points out that in the pilot, Judge Stone has the word "fun" tattooed on his shoulder. Then he unbuttons his own shirt and exposes his left shoulder. The word "fun" is tattooed there. "It's been there for 10 years," Anderson insists. "Talk about being meant for the role!" He zooms on to another subject like a magician blurring his trick with speed, and only after being halted and returned to the tattoo business does Anderson admit reluctantly that the word "fun" was put there only after he saw it in the script. Richard Moll, the head-shaved giant who plays bailiff Bull Shannon, arches his eyebrows. "I didn't know that," he says. "I thought the story was true!" This much is reasonably certain. Anderson learned magic on the street and combined it with a wicked sense of humor to create an act he took to campuses, clubs and county fairs throughout the West when his street career ended. It was while he was performing in one of the clubs—Hollywood's Magic Castle— that he was spotted by an agent This led to a job in Las Vegas, which led to appearances on Saturday Night Live, which led to Cheers. Night Court was next. "I have one character," Anderson is saying later in the living room of his home. "He happens to be a judge right now, but he's the same guy I've always been playing. Any magician plays a role. I'm a performer, not an actor. "I walk around before the show, have a cigarette, drink some coffee, chew some gum, clear my throat, make sure my fly is up, get on camera and let it happen." He lives with Leslie and Eva Fay in an old white stucco house on a hillside overlooking Hollywood. The lawn is overgrown and the house needs painting, but its charm is obvious. Inside, the living room is crowded with a pool table, an old Wurlitzer jukebox, a barber chair and an ancient nickel slot machine. Anderson, wearing jeans and T shirt, is showing a guest around the house while discussing hislatest effort to stay healthy. "We just kicked beef and sugar," he says. "Beef was tough, but we're better off without it." Having said that, he lights a cigarette. Irony or put on? Asked, he simply grins, shrugs and replies that it is best not to allow the mystique of the magician to be pierced by straight answers. Illusion is his stock in trade. There is little question that he is first a magician and second a television star. What he's doing, he explains, is building a vast audience now for the time he returns to the stage "with a smile and a deck of cards." Ideally, Anderson says, he would like the security of a hit show and the "utter joy" of live audiences during the off season. "I don't see a lifetime career as a television star," he adds, "but I do see a lifetime career as a magician." Last Halloween, he performed before a large audience in an ocean front resort town. "I was the happiest guy in town. I ate a live guinea pig and drove a bed of spikes through Leslie. It made me realize how much I missed the road." He thinks about that for a moment, then adds: "When Court ends, I don't see myself going into another TV series. How much con can the world take?" Anderson jokes that he even managed to con North Hollywood High into making him class valedictorian in 1970. He did it, he says, by learning only what he knew the teachers wanted and not a word more and by buying synopses of books for book reports. Colleagues don't believe that. They say he memorizes a script in one reading and is never unprepared. Anderson shrugs. "I'm not saying I'm dumb," he says. "Just quick." Back on the set, Anderson gives Ellen Foley a quick hug (it's only her second appearance on the show and she's nervous), jokes with Larroquette and mimics producer Jeff Melman, who is directing the episode, by parodying the walk of an extra who is parodying the walk of the Elephant Man. Anderson's wife of seven years (it is his second marriage, her first), a practicing mentalist, enjoys her husband's impish sense of humor. It was that way from the beginning, Leslie remembers: "On our first date, he said to me, 'Let me take you away from this place and I will take you to another place very much like this place'." She laughed and went with him. Six months later they were married. When there seems nothing else to do on the set, Anderson drags out a concertina and begins to play. He used to travel with a woolly monkey, he explains, and taught himself to play the concertina, the flute and the harmonica as part of his street act. As he plays, John Larroquette whistles along with him. They're good friends as well as lighthearted pranksters. Anderson is known for his practical jokes and Larroquette was the victim of one of them. Anderson had convinced him at a stage show they were attending together that a pretty actress wanted to meet Larroquette in her dressing room. When Larroquette visited her after the show, the startled actress knew nothing about it. Larroquette backed out with sheepish apologies. "Harry's a magician," a fellow illusionist says with a shrug. "He likes to fool people." He is known for opening his home to members of the cast and crew either for lunch, special occasions or casual get-togethers. Most define the gesture as an element of Anderson's friendly, open nature; though at least one sees it as his desperate effort to be accepted, a result of a childhood filled with upheaval. Anderson says he doesn't know. He views those desultory growing up years as neither sad nor happy. They simply brought him to where he is now, believing that home and family are the most important things in his world. "Just write,"' he says between takes, "that next to John Ritter, I am the luckiest man in the world." He pauses, then adds: "No, /'m the luckiest, he's just the richest." Then he is back on Judge Stone's bench, looking happy and boyish and causing pieces of paper he holds in his hands to appear and disappear. . EX-CARDSHARP HARRY ANDERSON CUTS HIMSELF A DANDY DEAL AS NIGHT COURT'S ECCENTRIC JUDGE [People Magazine p.53-57, April 29, 1985, Cutler Durkee) ForHarry Anderson, opportunity knocked-or more precisely threw a good right hook-late one afternoon in San Francisco. Anderson, then 21, was running a street hustle-the old shell game-when a sore loser became justifiably suspicious of the game's integrity. The loser expressed his dissatisfaction, breaking Anderson's jaw. "I spent six or seven weeks with my mouth wired shut and really thought about what I was doing," says Harry. "I don't like to sweat while I work, much less get beat up. There had to be an easier way to make a living." There was. Anderson reworked his shell-game hustle into a comedy expose, a fast-patter, sleight-of-hand marvel that delighted audiences without, in the end, actually revealing anything about how the scams worked. Then he would pass the hat. "I didn't make as much money, but the longevity was better," says Anderson, whose new act took him from street corners to college campuses and small clubs, then to Saturday Night Live (eight times), Late Night with David Letterman and NBC's Cheers, as the bar's house hustler. That led to a starring role as a wiseacre judge in his own NBC sitcom, Night Court, which has just been renewed for its third season. "I don't think doing television can be called going straight," says Anderson, 34. "I mean, how much can anyone really work to earn that much money? There's a certain element of swindle involved, but it's one of those wonderful swindles where you don't have to run away." Still, one senses unease. Anderson is a man in love with flimflam. His natural arena is the carnival midway, and to him a dollar honestly earned is somehow, inevitably, tinged with disappointment. Onstage he dresses like a '40s cardsharp; at home in the Los Feliz section of L.A. he lovingly restores slot machines, magic props-including a 10-toot guillotine-and oldarcade games. "Nowadays most carnival games are very difficult to win, but they're straight," says Anderson. "It was better when they looked easy to win, but there was no way. Things like Roll-a-Ball and Cover-the-Spot are becoming a vanishing tradition." Ask about his childhood influences, and Anderson mentions Bill the Three- Eyed Geek ("Actually he wasn't so much a Three-Eyed Geek as a Cleft Palate Geek") and a host of oddball acquaintances who taught him to eat glass, drive a spike up his nose and other tricks that leave audiences both bemused and slightly green. You have to be tactful when you push a skewer through your arm, he observes, or "people don't want to watch." Much in Anderson's childhood was unusual, to say the least. His father was a salesman who was rarely around. A few years ago, "I got a call to go to New Jersey to pick up his body," says Harry. "I hadn't seen him in 15 years." To reports that his mother was a hooker, Anderson, one of three children, responds, "She was a hustler, yeah; she did a lot of things. We moved around a lot, and she had a lot of men friends." Yet he vehemently rejects the notion that his home life was a tragedy. "I respect my mother; she was very concerned with taking care of us. She did what needed to be done to try to keep us together. People find my criminal days amusing, but they find her background shocking. I don't draw any line." By 16 he had lived in a dozen cities, including New York, St. Louis and Phoenix, and had finally set up housekeeping on his own in Los Angeles. He attended North Hollywood High while earning money with various street hustles. After graduation he opened a small magic shop in Ashland, Oreg. When that folded, he traveled with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for three years and there-met his wife, Leslie, 32, an actress and magician. "She invented the ultimate pea," says Anderson, referring to the object that shell-gamers shuttle around,. "It's foam covered with latex." Leslie sells her peas to magicians. Success for the former hat-passer also means he no longer has to "pay for everything with quarters." It has allowed him to get a credit rating, buy a house -and, he jokes, "owe more money than I can ever repay." His extravagances include a white Mustang convertible and several computers, one of which Anderson, who is dyslexic, has been using to teach himself to read at a normal pace. "Just me and my Apple 11 and friendly, friendly software," says Harry, who notes that for years he wouldn't admit that he had a problem. "Now I've reached the point that I can give my daughter, Eva, a run for her money." Eva, 4, also keeps Dad busy: Last year she had to be taken to the hospital after she stuck one of his loaded dice up her nose. Recalls Anderson, "The doctors kept taking bets on which side would be up." When it comes to numbers, Anderson himself is rooting for a five -- the number of years he figures NightCourt will have to last before he can bank enough money to retire very, very young. "Five years and I'm gone," says Anderson, gleefully imagining a life of plaid pants, croquet and, okay, maybe a movie or two, like the remake of Nightmare Alley, the 1947 Tyrone Power geek-feature that he wants to produce. If he ever does amass such a stash, odds are the former hustler will invest it with caution. As he invariably tells his audiences at the end of his act, "Never eat at a place called 'Mom's,' and never play cards with a guy called 'Pop.' And remember, always, that a fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place." EVERYBODY'S A COMEDIAN [People Magazine p.36, June 22, 1987 ] Harry Anderson, the 36 year old ever-youthful Night Court jester, has been in the parenting business for six years. He lives with his wife, Leslie, and two children in Los Angeles, California. Having a child is the first thing I ever did in my life that no one questioned the value of. It;s something that you don't have to wonder whether it was worthwhile or important because, well, the importance is pretty obvious. My girl is Eva Fay Anderson and she is 6. My son Dashiell, is 17 months. He's named after Dashiell Hammett, and Eva Fay is named after Anna Eva Fay, who is the most famous mentalist ever. My wife is a mentalist. She did a mind-reading act for years. So we have one child named after a witch and one named after a rummy old mystery writer. Becoming a father mostly just happens. I think it might be biochemical or glandular, but something just happens, and you kick into a certain gear. You automatically love the child. I don't think you have to make major adjustments. I still drive spikes through my nose in my act. If anything, having a child makes you want to live longer to see as much of this development as possible. But that's something most people want to do anyway. I think for the first couple of weeks the baby believes it's a breast. I don't think the baby realizes it's something. At that time you look at the child, you dream about it. The baby is non-ego, so non-self-centered when it's born. You never see people like that again. They change and they don't change back. For Leslie and me, when we decided to have children, one of the steps in that decision was deciding that divorce was no longer an option. We no longer had the option of leaving. I come from a family that split up, and I just did not see a point in having children if that was the way they were going to live. I wanted them to be raised with love. A lot of people say they don't want children because it would be such a change in their life. I'm not certain that it is. Of course I get to sit back and say this because I have a wife that doesn't work, who gets to give the children the majority of the quality time they need. I'm free to pursue my professional life as I have always done. I know there are a lot of people in situations other than that. I'm curious how Dashiell's going to turn out. He has a real robust personality and is real down to earth, whereas the girl is more ethereal. His sister is quite an intellectual for a 6-year old. She reads, and she plays music, and this little guy tends to be more of a rock-and-roll drummer. He's interested in bang and crash. There are things I hope he doesn't end up as, obviously. A Republican or anything worse. But I want him to enjoy his life. With our first child I had the reaction that a first child has when a second child comes because I was used to being the kid in the family. I was the funniest one around, and then the kid becomes the funniest. If you look around, my life is toys and devices and tricks and stuff. A lot of people think I'm going to grow out of it, eventually. But I think Eva is--and Dashiell will be--pleased that they've got a dad who's got good taste in toys. back to top
B orn in 1847, Thomas Edison was a brilliant scientist and inventor. He was thrown out of school when he was 12 because he was thought to be dumb. He was noted to be terrible at mathematics, unable to focus, and had difficulty with words and speech. It was very clear, however, that Thomas Edison was an extremely intelligent student despite his poor performance in school. In the late 1860s and early 1870s electrical science was still in its infancy and Thomas Edison was keeping abreast of the latest developments. He was an avid reader of the latest research of the day and frequently contributed articles about new ideas in telegraph design to technical journals. Over the course of his career Edison patented 1,093 inventions. Edison believed in hard work, sometimes working twenty hours a day. He has been quoted as saying, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Hard work and perseverance helped Thomas Edison focus his keen insight and creative abilities on the development of ingenious tools that have laid the foundation for our modern society. back to top
Richard Branson
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