June 26, 1995 - Episode 332 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

      Born June 26, 1902, Antonia Brico, Dutch-born, American
symphonic orchestra conductor and talented pianist.   
      Brico studied Bach for 15 years with Albert Schweitzer, studied
conducting for six years with Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston
Symphony (1913), first American to graduate from the Master School
of Conducting at Berlin State Academy of Music, made her debut
February 1930, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, the first woman to
conduct a concert in Berlin, and that July conducted at the
Hollywood Bowl.  In 1933 conducted unemployed New York and
Westchester musicians at the Metropolitan Opera House as a
fundraiser and famed singer John Charles Thomas refused to appear
on the program because her fame would have upstaged him.
      In November 1934 organized an orchestra of 100 women
musicians who performed at New York's Town Hall sharing profits
since there was no money for salaries.  Although highly praised by
Sibelius amongst others, her conducting career only lasted a short
time because, as she explained, "I was a novelty at first and by 1937
the conducting jobs disappeared."  
      In actuality Arthur Judson, who had a monopoly on conductors
and managed the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia
Orchestra, was merely following the opinions of Mrs. Charles S.
Guggenheimer (B. 10-22-1882) whose purse strings were able to
enforce her opinion "(that) the greatest disgrace in the world (is)
for a woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic."  
      In 1942, Brico began directing and conducting the Denver
Businessmen's Orchestra in its five-concerts-a-year and continued for
more than 30 years without a contract. In 1948 she was named
permanent conductor and in 1969 the orchestra was renamed _The
Brico Symphony_ in her honor.  
      She had turned to the *teaching* of voice, piano, and
conducting to earn her living.  One of her pupils was folksinger
Judy Collins who with Jill Godmilow produced the award-winning film 
_Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman_, (1974) to highlight a career
stymied by gender prejudice. She received an honorary Ph.D. from
Mills College (1938) as well as more than eight other honorary
degrees.  
      As a result of the feminist activism, at 73 for a brief moment
she had what should have been hers for a lifetime as she conducted
at Avery Fisher Hall in Los Angles to an overflow audience who
listened with their ears and not their gender prejudices. 

06-26 Anniversaries ...........................................

      B. June 26, 1890, Jeanne Eagels, dramatic actress who played
Sadie Thompson in _Rain_ 1,500 times.

      B. June 26, 1892, Pearl S. Buck, daughter of American
missionaries who served in China, was one of the first writers to try
to explain the Far East to Western readers. She won the Nobel Prize
for literature in 1938 for her many novels of Chinese life, especially
among the peasantry.  She also wrote some historical novels with an
American setting under the pseudonym John Sedges. She adopted
nine children and established an agency for the adoption of
Amerasian children and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which works
for the welfare of Amerasian and other children worldwide. In all, she
published more than 100 books. Modern critics have attempted to
downgrade her novels in the usual fashion of erasing women from
history by saying they were propaganda. 

      B. June 26, 1911, Babe Didrikson Zaharias won two gold medals
at the 1932 Olympics in track and field and set the world record in
the javelin throw and in the 80-meter hurdles.  She was named the
world's greatest woman athlete for the first half of the 20th century
and named woman athlete for the years 1931, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1950,
and 1954. Babe won a total of 114 golf tournaments, 83 amateur golf
tournaments, 31 on the P.G.A. tour, with seventeen consecutive major
women's tournaments. 

Quotes du jour ................................................

      "Talent is inborn, the genes determine one's ability, but a
woman must be five times better than a male if she is to conduct
from prestigious podiums, the podiums of major symphony orchestra
in the United States remain the last stronghold of male domination in
America."
      -- Antonio Brico, 1979.

      .................................................

Don't let anyone tell you there weren't notable and effective women
throughout history.  They were always there, but historians failed to
note them in our histories so that each generation of women has had
to reinvent themselves. 

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