IN: Richard Lester Meyers (born October 2, 1949), better known by his stage name Richard Hell, is an American singer, songwriter, bass guitarist and writer. Richard Hell was an innovator of punk music and fashion. He was one of the first to spike his hair and wear torn, cut and drawn-on shirts, often held together with safety pins. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, credited Hell as a source of inspiration for the Sex Pistols' look and attitude, as well as the safety-pin and graphics accessorized clothing that McLaren sold in his London shop, Sex.

Richard Lester Meyers grew up in Lexington, Kentucky in 1949. His father, a secular Jew, was an experimental psychologist, researching animal behavior. He died when Hell was 7 years old. Hell was then raised by his mother, who came from Methodists of Welsh and English ancestry. After her husband's death, she returned to school and became a professor.  Hell attended the Sanford School in Delaware for one year, where he became friends with Tom Miller, who later changed his name to Tom Verlaine. They ran away from school together and a short time later were arrested in Alabama for arson and vandalism.  Hell never finished high school, instead moving to New York City to make his way as a poet. In New York he met fellow young poet David Giannini, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico for several months, where Giannini and Meyers co-founded Genesis:Grasp. They used an AM VariTyper with changeable fonts to publish the magazine. They began publishing books and magazines, but decided to go their separate ways in 1971, after which Hell created and published Dot Books.  Before he was 21, his own poems were published in numerous periodicals, ranging from Rolling Stone to the New Directions Annuals. In 1971, along with Verlaine, Hell also published under the pseudonym Theresa Stern, a fictional poet whose photo was actually a combination of both his and Verlaine's faces in drag, superimposed over one another to create a new identity. A book of poems credited to "Stern", Wanna Go Out?, was released by Dot in 1973.

What was Hell's early life like?

OUT: Richard Lester Meyers grew up in Lexington, Kentucky in 1949.


IN: Henry Franklin Winkler was born on October 30, 1945 on the West Side of Manhattan, New York, the son of homemaker Ilse Anna Marie (nee Hadra; 1913-2002) and lumber company president Harry Irving Winkler (1903-1995). His parents were German Jews who emigrated from Berlin to the U.S. in 1939, on the eve of World War II. Winkler said that his parents came to the U.S. for a six-month business trip but knew they were never going back. His father smuggled the only assets the family had left (family jewels disguised as a box of chocolates) that he carried under his arm.

Winkler's audition for the Yale School of Drama was to be a Shakespeare monologue, which he promptly forgot, so he made up his own Shakespeare monologue. Out of a class of 25 actors, 11 finished. During summers, he and his classmates opened a summer stock theater called New Haven Free Theater, putting on various plays including Woyzeck, and an improv night. The company put on a production of The American Pig at the Joseph Papp Public Theater for the New York Shakespeare Festival in New York City. In June 1970, after graduating from Yale, Winkler was asked to be part of the Yale Repertory Theatre company, which included James Naughton and Jill Eikenberry.  During his time there, Cliff Robertson, who had seen him perform in East Hampton, offered him a part in his film The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. Winkler had to decline because he had no understudy for his current role, and thus was unable to leave. He stayed with the Yale Repertory Theatre for a year and a half.  In 1971, Winkler got a job at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. to work on the play, Moonchildren, but was fired by director, Alan Schneider.  In 1977, Winkler appeared in a TV special, "Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare," part of the CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People instructional series for children. With the assistance of Tom Aldredge as Shakespeare, Winkler, as himself, introduced an audience of children to Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, and Henry IV and explained to them how Shakespeare's plays were produced at the Globe Theatre in London in the 17th century. He also played Romeo in the scene from Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo slays Tybalt in a sword duel.

What plays did he do with the Yale Repertory Theatre?

OUT: During his time there, Cliff Robertson, who had seen him perform in East Hampton, offered him a part in his film The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.


IN: Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin (German: ['jo:han 'kRIsti.a:n 'fRi:

After obtaining his magister degree in 1793, his mother expected him to enter the ministry. However, Holderlin found no satisfaction in the prevailing Protestant theology, and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1794, he met Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel Hyperion. In 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena where he attended Johann Gottlieb Fichte's classes and met Novalis.  There is a seminal manuscript, dated 1797, now known as the Das alteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus ("The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism"). Although the document is in Hegel's handwriting, it is thought to have been written by either Hegel, Schelling, Holderlin, or an unknown fourth person.  As a tutor in Frankfurt am Main from 1796 to 1798 he fell in love with Susette Gontard, the wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Holderlin's life. After a while, their affair was discovered, and Holderlin was harshly dismissed. He then lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but his life was plagued by financed worries and had to accept a small allowance from his mother. His mandated separation from Susette Gontard also worsened Holderlin's doubts about himself and his value as a poet; he wished to transform German culture but did not have the influence he needed. From 1797 to 1800, he produced three versions--all unfinished--of a tragedy in the Greek manner, The Death of Empedocles, and composed odes in the vein of the Ancient Greeks Alcaeus and Asclepiades of Samos.

Did they have an affair?

OUT:
The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Holderlin's life.