Comedian (Abbot and Costello). Their work, first in Vaudeville and later in film and on radio and television, expressed the value of silliness.
Lawyer and U.S. secretary of state (1949-1953). He expressed values of devotion to country and extreme personal rectitude. Some thought him the embodiment of the so-called White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP).
Oil well fire-fighter. He became a symbol of physical derring-do.
Autobiographer. She wrote about her love of wild Africa, animals, and especially lions.
Cartoonist. He expressed the humorous possibilities of the macabre.
Statesman. He courageously opposed Hitler, later restored German democracy and also sought to build Europe-wide institutions.
Philosopher. His work epitomized the search for moral truth, through verbal logic. He also defended classical learning and "great books."
Philosopher, sociologist, and music critic. A member of the so-called Frankfurt School, he became an inspiration to the American and European "new left" of the 1960's. Among the values he expressed were: anti-fascism, reinterpreting and rescuing Marxism from Stalinism, a rejection of modern materialism and technologism, and the indispensability of revolution and the revolutionary attitude.
Author of books, and important film scripts (The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter). He collaborated with Walker Evans in capturing the gritty poverty of the pre-World War II American South in Let us Now Praise Famous Men.
Poet. Her apartment in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) represented a beacon of culture in the midst of the harshest and most barbaric conditions, and she courageously criticized Stalin.
U.S. politician, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He helped President Lyndon Johnson pass civil rights and "Great Society" (social services and welfare) legislation that was widely regarded as the culmination of what President Roosevelt had started in the 1930's with the "New Deal."
Archaeologist, leading excavator of biblical sites. He loved history, the Holy Land, and the Bible.
Electrical engineer and inventor. He was one of several developers of television, first black and white and then color, an invention which along with film has had a dramatic influence on the transmission of values.
President. He attempted to run Chile on socialist (some said Communist lines) and was killed during a military coup.
Intellectual, fervent anti-Nazi, and later leading Marxist theoretician. He was convicted of the murder of his wife in 1980 and committed to an insane asylum.
Novelist and committed Communist. His novels depicted the poverty and hopelessness of much of the rural population of his native Brazil.
Political leader. A member of the "Untouchable" caste, he became their leader and exponent. He also played an important role in drafting the Indian Constitution and became a convert to Buddhism before his death.
Soldier and dictator. His regime (1971-1979) came to epitomize cruelty, torture, and barbarism, and he eventually fled to a life of luxury in Saudi Arabia. He jocularly told a U.S. television broadcast reporter that "in politics there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies."
Structural engineer. His work in designing the George Washington Bridge in New York, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York, each one longer and more stupendous than the last, came to symbolize the glamour of American engineering.
Novelist. His work depicted the conditions of the very poor in India.