Marya mannes biography sample
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Mannes, Marya (1904–1990)
American writer and social commentator . Name variations: Marya Mannes Blow; (pseudonym) Sec. Born Maria von Heimburg Mannes on November 14, 1904, in New York City; died on September 13, 1990, in San Francisco, California; daughter of David Mannes (a violinist and co-founder of the Mannes College of Music) and Clara Damrosch Mannes (1869–1948, a pianist and co-founder of the Mannes College of Music); married Jo Mielziner (a theatrical designer), in 1926 (divorced 1931); married Richard Blow (an artist), in 1937 (divorced 1943); married Christopher Clarkson, in 1948 (divorced 1966); children: (second marriage) David Jeremy Blow.
Selected writings: (novel)
Message from a Stranger (1948); (essays) More in Anger (1958); (poetry) Subverse (1959); (essays) The New York I Know (1961); But Will It Sell? (1964); (novel) They (1968); (autobiography) Out of My Time (1971); Last Rights (1974).
Marya Mannes achieved renown in the 1940s and 1950s
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Marya Mannes
In her book of memoirs, published in 1972, which inom just read, Maria [she assumed Marya] von Heimburg Mannes tells us that she was in Lisbon during WW2 for intelligence gathering purposes, on behalf of the Counter-Intelligence Dept. of the American OSS, which had approached her in the winter of 1943. Her code name was [or could be, because she gives no assurance about it] agent B548.
She arrived in the Tagus River, by clipper, on 3 June 1944. She would return in September of the same year. Her cover was that she was working for The New Yorker magazine.
During the flygning she met George Kennan, who was finishing his term as US Chargé d’Affaires in Portugal and briefed her extensively about the situation in this country, telling her «more than inom had learned from prior briefings». Another passenger – whose name she does not reveal – was «the director of an international business cartel based in Lisbon who was later to be of help in many ways, some of which we wou
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This is one of the most frustrating books I’ve read in a long time.
Marya Mannes was a woman who got around with a capital “A.” Her parents, David Mannes and Clara Damrosch Mannes, were among the most popular and respected classical musicians of the early 20th century, and through their New York apartment flowed a constant stream of talents such as Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, and Arthur Schnabel, as well as Clara’s brothers Frank and Walter. Her brother Leopold was a celebrated concert pianist, married one of George Gershwin’s sisters, and, along with fellow musician, Leopold Godowsky, Jr., invented the process behind Kodachrome color film.
When she was 19, she travelled alone to England, where she studied with sculptor Frank Dobson and socialized with various members of the Bloomsbury set before heading off to Paris and the Riviera, where she partied with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Murphys. Returning to the U. S., she wrote a play that was produce