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Although by his own account Benchley was not quite a writer and not quite an actor, he managed to become one of the best-known humorists and comedians of his time. As a Harvard undergraduate, Benchley gave his first comic performance, impersonating a befuddled after-dinner speaker. The act made him a campus celebrity -- and remained in Benchley's repertoire for the rest of his life. (Landing the position of editor of the Harvard Lampoon was the other highlight of his college career.) As a post-graduate journalist, between frequent firings and other disruptions, Benchley made his mark as a theater critic and as writer of whimsical musings on the vagaries of modern life. He served briefly as managing editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, where his lieutenants were Dorothy Parker and Robert E. Sherwood, but he quit to protest Parker's firing. (Benchley, Parker and Sherwood were among the regulars at the so-called Algonquin Round Table, a social circle of New York wits that also included Harpo Marx and George S. Kaufman). Benchley was among the first contributors to The New Yorker, where his work influenced other writers -- such as E.B. White and James Thurber- Ellen Glasgow was born on 22 April 1874 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. She was a writer, known for In This Our Life (1942), In This Our Life and Studio One (1948). She died on 21 November 1945 in Richmond, Virginia, USA.
- A great name of the Portuguese theatre, Adelina Abranches was paid a national homage at the Teatro São Luiz as of 1928, and in the presence of General Carmona, the President of the Republic himself. And yet there had been nothing to suggest that Margarida Adelina, born into very poor Lisbon family in 1866, would become such an admired star of the stage. The fact is that, like at the end of a Dickens novel, fate, through a quirk of which it holds the secret, proved favorable to her despite a very problematic beginning in life. Indeed misery had struck after her father had left the family home, forcing his wife, little Adelina and her eight brothers and sisters to work in order to bring back home what little money they could. But the silver lining was that to get a few reis, five-year-old Adelina, still unable to read and write, was propelled on to a stage. Of course she was only an extra in 'Os Meninos Grandes' but she enjoyed the experience and soon expressed the wish to renew it, which she would actually go on doing for... seventy-odd years! She was still only eleven when she created a sensation with her interpretation of a transvestite prince in 'Leonor de Bragança'. After this, she never stopped working, until her death in 1945 at age 79, in Portugal and in Brazil, in classic, popular or avant-garde works. She even founded her own company in the 1910s. As for her contribution to the silver screen it unfortunately remains negligible, the great lady of the Portuguese boards having appeared only in secondary roles and in no more than three pictures, 'Maria do Mar (1930)', 'Lisboa (1930)' and 'A Rosa do Adro (1938)'. But theatre was her vocation, not cinema.