Beatles George Harrison's Handwritten Lyrics Bring $300,000

George Harrison's lyrics to While My Guitar Gently Weeps Enlarge Image

George Harrison's handwritten lyrics to the Beatles song While My Guitar Gently Weeps have fetched $300,000 (£152,552) in a US memorabilia auction.

The lyrics comprise the earliest known version of the song and contain lines not included in the recorded version featured on the White Album in 1968.

The working draft features Harrison's handwritten corrections.

Other items in the sale in Scottsdale, Arizona, included a picture of a bird drawn by John Lennon when he was 11.

The picture sold for more than $30,000 (£15,256).

Omitted lines

The Beatles first recorded While My Guitar Gently Weeps on July 25 1968, using the lyrics on the auctioned sheet of paper.

The lines omitted from the final version read:

I look from the wings at the play you are staging
While my guitar gently weeps
As I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging
Still my guitar gently weeps

The reverse of the page features the lyrics to Hey Jude in the hand of Beatles road manager Mal Evans.

Cooper Auctions founder Louise Cooper described the auction as "a once in 20 or 30 years experience".

Dreamgirls, Babel Grabbed Golden Globes

Babel, a sprawling film about human connections in the global village, won the Golden Globe for best motion picture, drama in Los Angeles Jan. 15 reports Eric Harrison in the Houston Chronicle

Dreamgirls and Helen Mirren also were big winners at the event held by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson won supporting acting awards for their work in Dreamgirls, which also won for best motion picture, musical or comedy.

Mirren won awards both for best actress in a drama and in a television mini-series or movie.

In accepting the award for The Queen, in which she played England's Queen Elizabeth reacting to the death of Princess Diana, Mirren said, "I just tried to make her as truthful to herself as possible."

Mirren also won for best actress in a television miniseries or movie for HBO's Elizabeth I. She also was nominated in the same category for her lead role in Prime Suspect: The Final Act for PBS.

Forest Whitaker won the best acting award for a film drama for The Last King of Scotland, a drama about the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. He and Mirren have won the lion's share of critic's awards and are considered favorites to win Oscars.

Hudson took the first award of the evening for playing Effie, a singer who gets pushed from the limelight because of her looks.

The American Idol contestant dedicated her award to Florence Ballard, the real-life singer with the Supremes on whom her character was based and whom Hudson said "never got a fair chance ... You will never be forgotten."

Growing weepy as she accepted the award, Hudson said, "Am I turning into Effie up here?" She said the award was meaningful because it made her feel "like a part of this community and it makes me feel like an actress. You do not understand how good that feels to say."

Other winners included Martin Scorsese, who won best director for his high-energy crime drama, The Departed.

"I wanted to make a picture in the old Warner Bros. tradition of gangster pictures," Scorsese said.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen won a best actor in a musical or comedy for his Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The award for best foreign language film — a particularly strong category this year — went to Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's World War II drama told from the Japanese perspective.

"Not many people thought this was anything when it was on paper," Eastwood said in accepting the award. In an unusual move, Eastwood released two movies about the battle of Iwo Jima last year.

The other one, Flags of Our Fathers earned a mixed critical reception but the much-better received Letters From Iwo Jima revived the possibility of Eastwood winning a best-picture Oscar. He received Golden Globe nominations for directing both films.

In the new Golden Globes category of best animated film, the winner was Cars, a comedy with talking automobiles, from Disney-Pixar.

In TV, Ugly Betty won the award for best television musical or comedy and its star, America Ferrera, won for best actress in a television musical or comedy.

Kyra Sedgwick won best actress in a television drama for TNT's The Closer while the award for best actor went to Hugh Laurie, the star of House on FOX.

Alec Baldwin won the award for best actor in a television musical or comedy for NBC's 30 Rock.

Tom Hanks presented the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement to Warren Beatty, who won Golden Globe recognition as most promising newcomer 45 years ago.

Beatty, who hasn't directed a movie in nine years and hasn't acted in one since 2001, drew laughs for noting that Eastwood made two movies simultaneously last year, two years after winning the Oscar for best picture (for Million Dollar Baby) and then asking: "How do you think that makes me feel?"

"Of course I'm going to make another movie," Beatty added.

Considering the awards are determined by a mere 90 people — the Hollywood correspondents of foreign publications — the Golden Globes has achieved an extraordinarily high profile.

Its popular televised awards ceremony attracts top stars, partly because it is an effective marketing tool and partly because the freewheeling banquet is a fun party.

By contrast, the Motion Picture Association of America, which gives out the Oscars, is comprised of 5,800 voting members.

Oscar nominations will be announced Jan. 23. Awards will be presented Feb. 25.

So here's the list:

Film

Drama: Babel

Actor, drama: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Actress, drama: Helen Mirren, The Queen

Musical or comedy: Dreamgirls

Actor, musical or comedy: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

Actress, musical or comedy: Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada

Supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

Supporting actor: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

Movie screenplay: Peter Morgan, The Queen

Original score: Alexandre Desplat, The Painted Veil

Original song: Prince, The Song of the Heart from Happy Feet

Animated film: Cars

Foreign language: Letters From Iwo Jima (Japan, United States)

Cecil B. DeMille Award: Warren Beatty

Television

Drama: Grey's Anatomy, ABC

Supporting actress, musical or comedy: America Ferrera, Ugly Betty

Actress, drama: Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer

Actor, drama: Hugh Laurie, House

Series, musical or comedy: Ugly Betty, ABC

Actor, musical or comedy: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Miniseries or movie: Elizabeth I, HBO

Actress, miniseries or movie: Helen Mirren, Elizabeth I

Actor, miniseries or movie: Bill Nighy, Gideon's Daughter

Supporting actress, series, miniseries or movie: Emily Blunt, Gideon's Daughter

Supporting actor, series, miniseries or movie: Jeremy Irons, Elizabeth I

Is the lost Da Vinci hidden behind the wall?

According to Ariel David, writing for the Associated Press, a real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace.

Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for more than four centuries.

"We took this decision to verify conclusively if the cavity exists and if there are traces of the fresco," Rutelli said during a visit in Florence.

The search for the Renaissance masterpiece began about 30 years ago, when the art researcher Maurizio Seracini noticed a cryptic message painted on one of the frescoes decorating the "Hall of the 500."

"Cerca, trova" — "seek and you shall find" — said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley," one of the military scenes painted by the 16th-century artist Giorgio Vasari.

Between 2002 and 2003, radar and X-ray scans allowed Seracini and his team to find a cavity behind the fresco that is the right size to cocoon Leonardo's work, which was long thought to have been destroyed when Vasari renovated the hall in the mid-16th century.

Shortly after the initial discovery, Seracini's decades-long quest came to a standstill when authorities refused to renew his survey permit.

"We are not talking about a search like any other," Seracini told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We are searching for Leonardo's greatest masterpiece, considered as such also by his contemporaries."

Leonardo began working on the Battle of Anghiari in 1505, when he was 53. He worked alongside fellow artist and rival Michelangelo, who had been commissioned to decorate the opposite wall of the council hall, which was to have scenes of the Florentine republic's military triumphs.

The pairing of two great artists created ripples of excitement in art-loving Florence, but both men soon left for other cities.

Michelangelo never went beyond the preparatory work for his Battle of Cascina, but Leonardo did eventually paint his battle's centerpiece — a violent clash of horses and men called the Fight for the Flag, which is known today through Leonardo's preparatory studies and copies made by other artists.

Some chroniclers of the time said Da Vinci had experimented with unstable paints that had rapidly degraded, leaving the painting irreparably damaged.

But Seracini said documents show that at least the centerpiece was admired and copied for decades, until Vasari began his work at Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari himself, who wrote biographies of several artists including Leonardo, would have been loath to destroy Leonardo's work. He is known to have salvaged other art by leaving works cocooned between walls when he made renovations, the researcher said.

Seracini, whose research on another Leonardo painting is quoted in Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, is an engineer who has spent the last three decades conducting scientific investigations on art treasures.

Florence city officials said no date has been set for the new investigation because details still needed approval.

While the new research will be supervised by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, one of Italy's top restoration institutes, Seracini will be on the team, said Alessandra Garzanti, a city spokeswoman.

"He brought this forward until now, it would be stupid to leave him out," she said.

Once the work starts, researchers would need a year and a half to give a definitive answer on whether Leonardo's masterpiece is there, Seracini said.

The work would include documentary research to determine which chemicals Leonardo used to paint the fresco, and subsequent scans to see if those pigments are present behind the wall, he said.

Seracini declined to reveal how the scans would work, saying the method was still experimental. However, he said the analysis would not involve probes or other instruments that would damage the overlying Vasari fresco.

Hey, Norman Rockwell did it and was found out recently. But his reason was for divorce. So common!

JWilbooks

Purpose Prize Nominations Close on January 31, 2007

The time for making nominations for the Purpose Prize is drawing to a close. The deadline date is January 31, 2007. The Purpose Prize is a relatively new award which focuses on the innovative achievements of people 60 years old or older. There are five awards of $100,000 and ten awards of $10,000 to people who meet the age criteria who are taking on society’s biggest challenges.


To be eligible for The Purpose Prize, the nominee must be at least 60 years old by the deadline of January 31, 2007, a U.S. resident which can include residents of U.S. territories, and currently working in a leadership capacity in a public, private, nonprofit, or for-profit organization or institution to address a major social problem.

Elected officials are not eligible for the Prize. While individuals working
in faith-based service organizations that have a broader social mission are eligible, the
project cannot be strictly religious or sectarian--in that it is confined exclusively to
individuals within a denomination or for the sole purpose of expanding the religious
mission of the denomination or faith.

Due to resource limitations of The Purpose Prize program staff, they are unable to conduct
in-person interviews of individuals whose work is primarily outside the United States. Only
candidates whose work can be observed within the continental U.S., Alaska, or Hawaii will
be considered.


Applicants will be evaluated on the following criteria:

"* Is the person an outstanding social innovator who is working creatively and in a
transformative capacity to spearhead significant change?
* How important is the issue the person is addressing? How much of an impact has his
or her work had on the issue? Is the work already effecting, or does it have the potential
to effect, systemic change? To go to scale? Is it likely to be sustainable?
* Has the person initiated important innovations (in a new or ongoing organization) in
the past several years, demonstrating creativity and leadership throughout and promising
more to come?
* What does the person plan to do in the next five years and how would recognition,
technical support, and the financial benefits of the award help to advance this work?
* Will the person be a compelling role model and articulate spokesperson whose own
personal story serves to inspire others not only to think differently about the second
half of life, but also to take on leadership roles and perform significant service in this
phase? Is the person a highly ethical individual? "

The website for the Purpose Prize, with guidelines and submission form, is here:
http://www.leadwithexperience.org/prize/about/aboutcivicventures.cfm

Do you know someone who could qualify for this prize?

JWilbooks