Who is Christina Hambley Brown? The entertainment and new world knows her as Tina Brown,(AKA) Lady Evans, is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of
The Diana Chronicles, a biography of
Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit
Vanity Fair. Having been editor-in-chief of
Tatler magazine at only 25 years of age, she rose to prominence in the American media industry as the editor of
Vanity Fair from 1984 to 1992 and of
The New Yorker from 1992 to 1998. In 2000 she was appointed CBE (
Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to overseas journalism,
[1] and in 2007 was inducted into the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame.
[2] As an editor, she has also been honored with four
George Polk Awards, five
Overseas Press Club awards, and ten
National Magazine Awards.
[3] In October 2008 she partnered
Barry Diller, chairman of
IAC/InterActiveCorp to found and edit
The Daily Beast. Two years later, in November 2010,
The Daily Beast announced that it will merge with the American weekly news magazine
Newsweek in a joint venture to form The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Brown will serve as Editor-in-Chief of both publications.
[4]
Personal life
Early life
Tina Brown was November 21, 1953 in
Maidenhead, and she and her elder brother, Christopher Hambley Brown (who became a movie producer) grew up in
Little Marlow, in
Buckinghamshire,
[5] a Thames village in the countryside west of
London. Her father, George Hambley Brown, was a prominent figure in the British
film industry. He produced the first
Agatha Christie films, starring
Margaret Rutherford as
Miss Marple. His other films included
The Chiltern Hundreds (1949);
Hotel Sahara (1951), starring
Yvonne De Carlo;
Guns at Batasi (1964), starring
Richard Attenborough and
Mia Farrow. In 1939, he had an early marriage to the actress
Maureen O'Hara; according to O'Hara, it was never consummated owing to her parents' intervention, and it was annulled. George later met and married Brown's mother, (1948), Bettina Iris Mary Kohr, who was an assistant to
Laurence Olivier. In her later years, Bettina wrote for an English-language magazine for expatriates in
Spain where she and her husband lived in retirement until moving to New York in the early eighties to be with their daughter and grandchildren.
School
In Brown's own words she was considered "an extremely subversive influence"
[6] as a child, resulting in her expulsion from three boarding schools. Offences included organising a demonstration to protest against the school's policy of allowing a change of underwear only three times a week, referring to her headmistress' bosoms as "unidentified flying objects" in a journal entry, and writing a play about her school being blown up and a public bathroom being erected in its place.
[6]
University
Brown entered
Oxford university at the age of 17.
[7] She studied at
St. Anne's College, and graduated with a BA in
English Literature. As an undergraduate, she wrote for
Isis, the university's literary magazine, to which she contributed interviews with the columnist
Auberon Waugh and the actor
Dudley Moore.
[8] Brown's sharp, witty prose garnered her publication in the
New Statesman while she was still an undergraduate at Oxford. Her friendship with Waugh served as a boost to her writing career, as he used his influence to get attention drawn to her ability. Later, she went on to date the writer
Martin Amis.
[9] While still at Oxford, she won the
Sunday Times National Student Drama Award for her one-act play
Under the Bamboo Tree. A subsequent play,
Happy Yellow, in 1977 was mounted at the London fringe Bush Theatre and later performed at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Relationship
In 1973, the literary agent
Pat Kavanagh introduced Brown's writings to
Harold Evans, editor of
The Sunday Times, and in 1974 she was given freelance assignments in the UK by
Ian Jack, the paper's features editor, and in the US by its color magazine edited by Godfrey Smith.
[10] When a relationship developed between Brown and Evans, she resigned to write for the rival
The Sunday Telegraph.
[11] Evans divorced his wife in 1978 and on August 20, 1981 Evans and Brown were married at
Grey Gardens, the East Hampton, New York home of then
The Washington Post executive editor
Ben Bradlee and
Sally Quinn.
[10] Brown lives in New York City with Sir Harold Evans and their two children, a son, George born in 1986 and a daughter, Isabel, born in 1990.
[12]
Career
Early work
After graduating, while doing freelance reporting, Brown was invited to write a weekly column by the literary humour magazine,
Punch. These articles and her freelance contributions to
The Sunday Times and
The Sunday Telegraph earned her the Catherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist under 25.
[5] Some of the writings from this era formed part of her first collection
Loose Talk, published by Michael Joseph.
In 1979 at the age of 25 Brown was invited to edit the tiny, almost extinct society magazine
Tatler by its new owner, the Australian real estate millionaire Gary Bogard and transformed it into a modern glossy magazine with covers by celebrated photographers like
Norman Parkinson,
Helmut Newton, and David Bailey, and fashion by Michael Roberts.
Tatler featured writers from Brown's eclectic circle including Julian Barnes, Dennis Potter,
Auberon Waugh, Georgina Howell and
Nicholas Coleridge (who today is the managing director of Conde Nast UK). Brown herself wrote in every issue, contributing irreverent surveys of the upper classes. She travelled through Scotland to portray the owners' stately homes. She also wrote short satirical profiles of eligible London bachelors under the pen-name Rosie Boot.
Tatler led the coverage of the rise of
Lady Di and became the go-to magazine for information about Diana's world. She joined NBC's
Tom Brokaw in running commentary for
The Today Show on the royal wedding.
Tatler increased its sale from 10,000 to 40,000
[8] and was named magazine of the year in the industry awards of 1978. In 1982 when S. I. ("Si") Newhouse Jr., owner of
Condé Nast Publications, bought
Tatler Brown resigned to become a full-time writer again.
[13] The break didn't last long and Tina was lured back to Conde Nast.
Vanity Fair
In 1983 Brown was brought to New York by Newhouse to advise on
Vanity Fair, a title that he had resurrected earlier that year. (
Vanity Fair had previously ceased publication in 1936) Edited first by Richard Locke and then by
Leo Lerman, it was dying
[14] with an unviable circulation of 200,000 and 12 pages of advertising. She stayed on as a contributing editor for a brief time, and then was named editor-in-chief on January 1, 1984. She recalls that upon taking over the magazine she found it to be "pretentious, humourless. It wasn't too clever, it was just dull."
[15]
The first contract writer she hired was not a writer but a movie producer whom she met at a dinner party hosted by the writer
Marie Brenner. The producer told her he was going to California for the trial of the strangler of his daughter. As solace, Brown suggested for him to keep a diary and his report (headlined
Justice) proved the launch of the long magazine career of
Dominick Dunne[16]
Early stories such as
Justice and livelier covers brightened the prospects of the magazine. In addition, Brown signed up among others
Marie Brenner,
Gail Sheehy, Jesse Kornbluth,
T.D. Allman, Lynn Herschberg, James Kaplan, Peter J. Boyer, John Richardson, James Atlas,
Alex Shoumatoff and Ben Brantley. The magazine became a mix of celebrity and serious foreign and domestic reporting. Brown persuaded the novelist
William Styron to write about his depression under the title
Darkness Visible, which subsequently became a best-selling nonfiction book. At the same time Brown formed fruitful relationships with photographers
Annie Leibovitz,
Harry Benson,
Herb Ritts, and
Helmut Newton.
[17] Annie Liebovitz's portrayal of
Jerry Hall,
Diane Keaton,
Whoopi Goldberg and others came to define
Vanity Fair. Its most famous cover was August 1991's of a naked and pregnant
Demi Moore.
Three stories put
Vanity Fair on the map:
Harry Benson's cover shoot of
Ronald and
Nancy Reagan dancing in the White House;
Helmut Newton's notorious portrait of accused murderer
Claus von Bulow in his leathers with his mistress Andrea Reynolds with reporting by
Dominick Dunne, and Brown's own cover story on Princess Diana in October 1985 entitled
The Mouse that Roared. It broke the news of the fracture in the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. These three stories from June to October 1985 saved the magazine after a year when rumors were rife that it was to be folded into
The New Yorker[18] just acquired by S.I. Newhouse.
Thereafter
Vanity Fair became a tremendous editorial and commercial success. Sales rose from 200,000 to 1.2 million. In 1988 she was named Magazine Editor of the Year by
Advertising Age magazine.
[19] Advertising topped 1,440 pages in 1991 and with circulation revenues, especially from profitable single copy sales at $20 million, selling some 55 percent of copies on the newsstand, well above the industry average sell through of 42 percent.
[20] Despite this success, occasional references later appeared to
Vanity Fair losing money. Professor
Jeffrey Pfeffer who suggested as much in his book
Power: Why Some People Have It - And Others Don’t was quickly rebutted by Bernard Leser, president of Conde Nast USA during Brown’s tenure. In a letter to the editor of the
Evening Standard, Leser stated Pfeffer’s claim was “absolutely false” and affirmed that they had indeed earned “a very healthy profit.”
[21] Leo Scullin, an independent magazine consultant, called it a "successful launch of a franchise."
[20] Under Brown's editorship Vanity Fair won four National Magazine Awards, including a 1989 award for General Excellence.
One of her editorial decisions was in October 1990, two months after the
first Gulf War had started, when she removed a picture of
Marla Maples (a blonde) from the cover and replaced it with a photograph of
Cher. The reason for her last minute decision, she told the
Washington Post, was that "In light of the gulf crisis, we thought a brunette was more appropriate."
The New Yorker
In 1992, Brown accepted the company's invitation to become editor of
The New Yorker, the fourth in its 73 year history and the first female to hold the position having been preceded by
Harold Ross,
William Shawn and
Robert Gottlieb. She has related in speeches that before taking over, she immersed herself in vintage
New Yorkers, reading the issues produced by founding editor
Harold Ross. "There was an irreverence, a lightness of touch as well as a literary voice that had been obscured in later years when the magazine became more celebrated and stuffy." She added: "Rekindling that DNA became my passion."
Anxieties that Brown might change the identity of
The New Yorker as a cultural institution prompted a number of resignations. Of them
George Trow, who had been with the magazine for almost three decades, accused Brown of "kissing the ass of celebrity"
[22] in his resignation letter. (To which Brown reportedly replied "I am distraught at your defection but since you never actually write anything I should say I am notionally distraught.") The departing
Jamaica Kincaid described Brown as "a bully" and "Stalin in high heels."
[22]
But Brown had the support of some
New Yorker stalwarts including
John Updike,
Roger Angell,
Brendan Gill,
Lillian Ross,
Calvin Tomkins,
Janet Malcolm,
Harold Brodkey and
Philip Hamburger and newer staffers like
Adam Gopnik and Nancy Franklin. During her editorship she let 79 go and engaged 50 new writers and editors including most of whom remain to this day:
David Remnick (whom she nominated as her successor),
Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Lane, Jane Mayer,
Jeffrey Toobin,
[23] Hendrik Hertzberg,
Simon Schama, Lawrence Wright, Connie Bruck,
John Lahr and editors Pamela McCarthy and Dorothy Wickenden. Brown introduced the concept of special double issues such as
New Yorker's first annual fiction issue and the Holiday Season cartoon issue. She also cooperated with Harvard Professor
Henry Louis Gates to devote a whole issue to Black in America.
[24]
Brown broke the magazine's long standing taboo against treating photography seriously when in 1992 she invited
Richard Avedon to be its first staff photographer.
[25] She also approved of controversial covers from a new crop of artists, including
Edward Sorel's October 1992 cover that had people buzzing about the meaning of a punk rock passenger sprawled in the backseat of an elegant horse-drawn carriage: was it Brown's self mocking riposte to fears she would downgrade the magazine?
[26] A year later a national controversy was provoked by her publication of
Art Spiegelman's Valentine's Day cover of a Jewish man and a black woman in an embracing kiss, a comment on the mounting racial tensions between blacks and the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York.
During Brown's tenure, the magazine was honored with 4 George Polk Awards, 5 Overseas Press Club Awards, and 10 National Magazine Awards, including a 1995 award for General Excellence, the first in the magazine's history. Newsstand sales rose 145 percent
[27] The
New Yorker's circulation increased to 807,935 for the second half of 1997 up from 658,916 during the corresponding period in 1992.
[28] Critics maintained it was hemorrhaging money. Newhouse remained supportive. At the start he said, viewing the magazine under Brown as a start-up (which routinely lose money), "It was practically a new magazine. She added topicality, photography, color. She did what we would have done if we invented the
New Yorker from scratch. To do all that was costly. We knew it would be."
[28] Under Brown its economic fortunes improved every year. In 1995 losses were about $17 million, in 1996 $14 million, by 1997 they'd been cut back to $11 million.
[28]
In 1998, Brown resigned from the
New Yorker following an invitation from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of
Miramax Films (then owned by the
Disney Company) to be the chairman in a new multi-media company they intended to start with a new magazine, a book company and a television show. The Hearst company came in as partners with Miramax.
Tina Brown next created
Talk magazine, a monthly glossy, and appointed Jonathan Burnham and Susan Mercandetti to manage Talk Books. The magazine was due to be launched during a party at the Brooklyn Navy yard in New York City but was banned by the mayor
Rudy Giuliani, who did not feel it was an appropriate use of the site.
[31] The star-studded event mixing political leaders, writers and Hollywood, was then moved to
Liberty Island, where on August 2, 1999 more than 800 guests - including
Madonna,
Salman Rushdie,
Demi Moore and
George Plimpton- arrived by barge for a picnic dinner at the feet of the
Statue of Liberty under thousands of Japanese lanterns and a Grucci fireworks display.
[32] An interview with
Hillary Clinton in its very first issue caused an immediate political sensation when she claimed that the abuse her husband suffered as a child led to his adult philandering.
[33] Despite having achieved a circulation of 670,000
[34] Talk magazine's publication was abruptly halted in January 2002 in the wake of the advertising recession following the
September 11, 2001 attacks and the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center.
[34] It was Brown's first very public failure but she had no regrets about embarking on the project. "My reputation rests on four magazines - three great successes, one that was a great experiment. I don't feel in any way let down. No big career doesn't have one flame out in it and there's nobody more boring than the undefeated."
[35]
Talk Miramax Books flourished as a boutique publishing house until it was detached from Miramax in 2005 and made part of Hyperion at Disney. Out of 42 books published during Brown's time, 11 have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List including
Leadership by
Rudy Giuliani,
Leap of Faith by
Queen Noor of Jordan and
Madam Secretary by
Madeline Albright.
Topic A
Brown went on to host a series of specials for
CNBC. The network followed up by signing her to host a weekly talk show of politics and culture titled
Topic [A] With Tina Brown, which debuted on May 4, 2003. The program welcomed guests ranging from political figures, such as the then
Prime Minister of the UK,
Tony Blair, and
Senator John McCain, to celebrities, such as
George Clooney and
Annette Bening. Topic A struggled to find an audience on Sunday nights airing after a day of infomercials.
[36] It averaged 75,000 viewers in 2005, about the same as
The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (79,000) and John McEnroe's
McEnroe (75,000.)
[36] On being offered a lucrative deal with tight deadlines to write a book about
Princess Diana, Brown resigned, airing her last Topic A interviews on May 29, 2005.
[36]
The Diana Chronicles
Brown's biography of
Princess Diana, was published just before the 10th anniversary of her death in June 2007.
The Diana Chronicles went straight to the top of the
New York Times bestseller list for hardback nonfiction, with two weeks in the number one position.
[37] It was received well: John Lanchester in
The New Yorker wrote
The Daily Beast
On October 6, 2008 Brown had teamed up with
Barry Diller to launch
The Daily Beast, an online news magazine that mixes original journalism with news aggregation. The website's name comes from the fictional newspaper in
Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel
Scoop.
The Daily Beast had an immediate impact with an early sensation when
Christopher Buckley, son of
William F. Buckley, Jr., chose
The Daily Beast rather than the magazine his father founded (
National Review), to announce he could not support the republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election: "Sorry, Dad, I'm voting for Obama."
[39] Early recognition of
The Daily Beast came in a series of awards: Online Journalism Award 2009 for Online Commentary/Blogging, Christopher Buckley;
[40] OMMA Awards 2009 Winner - Politics; Winner - News;
[41] MinOnline Top 21 Social Media Superstars 2009 for Tina Brown;
[42] MinOnline 2010 Best of the Web Awards: New Site (co-winner);
[43] Webby Award nominations for Best Practices and Best News 2009
[44]
In August 2010,
Time Magazine's review of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 named
The Daily Beast among the top five news and information sites.
[45] (
The Onion at 16,
The Guardian at 17,
The Daily Beast at 18,
National Geographic at 19, and
WikiLeaks at 20)
The Daily Beast's writers include Christopher Buckley, Peter Beinhart, Les Gelb, Mart McKinnon,
Meghan McCain,
John Avlon, Lucinda Franks, Bruce Reidel, Lloyd Grove,
Tunku Varadarajan and Resa Aslan.
In a joint venture with Perseus Book Group,
The Daily Beast formed a new imprint,
Beast Books, that focuses on publishing timely titles of no more than 50,000 words by
Daily Beast writers - first as
e-books, and then as paperbacks in as little as four months.
[47] The first
Beast Book was entitled
Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America by
John P. Avlon.
Partnering with
Diane von Furstenberg,
Vital Voices and the
UN Foundation in 2010,
The Daily Beast brought some of the world's most inspiring female leaders together at the Hudson Theatre in New York City for the first annual
Women in the World Summit. The mission of the three-day summit was to focus on the global challenges facing women, from equal rights and education, to human slavery, literacy and the power of the media and technology to affect change in women's lives. Attendees included Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton,
Meryl Streep,
Leymah Gbowee,
Sunitha Krishnan,
Madeleine Albright,
Edna Adan Ismail,
Queen Rania of Jordan,
Cherie Blair and
Valerie Jarrett.
[48]
On November 12, 2010
The Daily Beast and
Newsweek announced that they would merge their operations in a joint venture to be owned equally by
Sidney Harman and
IAC/InterActiveCorp. The new entity is to be called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company with Tina Brown as Editor-in-Chief and Stephen Colvin as CEO.
[4]
To see more of Who Is
click here
Who is Haley Joel Osment? The entertainment and acting world knows him as an American actor. After a series of roles in television and film during the 1990s, including a small part in Forrest Gump playing Tom Hanks' title character’s son, Osment rose to fame with his performance as Cole Sear in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller film The Sixth Sense that earned him a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He subsequently appeared in leading roles in several high-profile Hollywood films including Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Mimi Leder's Pay it Forward. He made his Broadway debut in 2008 in a revival of American Buffalo, co-starring with John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer.[1]
Osment was born April 10, 1988 in Los Angeles, California;[2] the son of Theresa Osment (née Seifert), a teacher, and Michael Eugene Osment,[3] a theater and film actor, both natives of Alabama. Osment was raised Roman Catholic.[4] He has one sister, four years younger, actress and singer-songwriter Emily Osment. Osment’s parents described his childhood as a “good old-fashioned Southern upbringing,” and his father said that when Osment was learning to speak, he deliberately avoided using baby talk when communicating with his son.[5]
Osment's acting career began at the age of four, when his mother took him to a new Ikea store; a talent scout was there looking for new actors, and Osment put his name down. He got called back for an audition, and was asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen; Osment described an IMAX theater screen, and won the part in a Pizza Hut TV commercial, advertising their "Big Foot" pizza.[5] The commercial launched his career; later that year he starred in the ABC TV sitcom Thunder Alley, his first role in series television.[8] His first feature film role was as Forrest Gump's son, also named Forrest Gump, in the 1994 film of the same name.[9] He also had a 
small part in another 1994 film, Mixed Nuts. Throughout the rest of 1990s, Osment played regular and/or recurring roles in various TV series; including The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the final season of Murphy Brown, where he replaced Dylan Christopher as Murphy's son, Avery. In addition, he made numerous guest appearances on shows including The Larry Sanders Show, Walker, Texas Ranger (as a child dying from AIDS),[10] Touched by an Angel, Chicago Hope, The Pretender, and an emotional episode of Ally Mcbeal; "Angels and Blimps", in which he played a child dying from leukemia. He starred in the 1996 film Bogus, alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gérard Depardieu, and appeared in the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake, with Yasmine Bleeth, as well as I'll Remember April (1999), with future The Sixth Sense co-star Trevor Morgan.
Osment has lent his voice to animated films such as The Country Bears, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and The Jungle Book 2. He returned to live action with the 2003 film, Secondhand Lions.
Osment follows a mostly meat-free diet, though he does eat chicken and fish.[20] Osment plays the guitar and piano.[21] As of 2007, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts,[22] from which he graduated in 2010.
