Brian Hooker (poet)

Biography

William Brian Hooker (November 2, 1880, New York City – December 28, 1946, New London, Connecticut) was an American poet, educator, lyricist, and librettist. He was born to Elizabeth Work and William Augustus Hooker who was a mining engineer for the New York firm of Hooker and Lawrence. His family was well known in Hartford, Connecticut having descended from Thomas Hooker, a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader who founded the Colony of Connecticut.^[1]

He attended Yale College in the class of 1902, where he was a writer,^[2] editor and business manager for campus humor magazine The Yale Record.^[3] He was an editor of the Yale Record collection Yale Fun (1901).^[4]

Works

His poetry was published in The Century Magazine, The Forum, Hampton's Magazine, Harper's Magazine, McClure's Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, The Smart Set, and The Yale Review. ^[5]

Cyrano de Bergerac, large-schnozzed poet and duelist known for his "panache"

He is most famous for co-writing the libretto and lyrics for Rudolf Friml's 1925 operetta The Vagabond King, and is especially noted for his 1923 English translation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, especially prepared for actor Walter Hampden. The translation, written in blank verse rather than the Alexandrines of the original play, was highly acclaimed as being one of the finest translations of a play in verse into English, and for many years, until Anthony Burgess published his own translation, was virtually the only English rendition of the play used. An unusual aspect of Hooker's translation is that it never uses the word panache at all, perhaps because Hooker realized that its double meaning in the play's final scene is untranslatable into English (the word means plume in French in addition to its usual definition, which is, roughly, bravery or daring).

José Ferrer, the first hispanic actor to win an Academy Award (for his role as Cyrano)

José Ferrer played Cyrano in a highly acclaimed 1946 Broadway version of the play which used this translation, winning a Tony award for his efforts. At the same time, Ralph Richardson was also appearing as Cyrano in a London production of the play, again using this translation. Ferrer then won an Oscar as Best Actor for the 1950 film adaptation, which used the same translation, and would go on to voice a highly truncated cartoon version of the play for an episode of The ABC Afterschool Special in 1974. Ferrer would don the nose and costume as Cyrano for a last time in a TV commercial in the mid-1970s.

References

1. ↑ The Descendants of Rev. Thomas Hooker 1586-1908 (http://www.archive.org/details/descendantsofrev00hook)
2. ↑ Bronson, Francis W., Thomas Caldecott Chubb, and Cyril Hume, eds. (1922) The Yale Record Book of Verse: 1872-1922. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 13-14, 54-57.
3. ↑ "William Brian Hooker". Obituary Record of Graduates Of Yale University: Deceased During the Year 1946-1947. New Haven: Yale University. January 1, 1948. p. 63.
4. ↑ Hastings, Wells, Brian Hooker, and Henry Ely, eds. (1901) Yale Fun. New Haven: Yale Record. p. 1.
5. ↑ Poems, Yale University Press 1915, p. iv.

• Green, Stanley (1976), Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre, Dodd, Mead, p. 195. ISBN 0-396-07221-6
• Yardley, Jonathan (2005) 'Cyrano,' Gaining in the Translation, Washington Post, February 2, 2005, p. C01. Accessed July 10, 2011.

External links

• Selected poetry, fiction and essays by Brian Hooker, from the archives of Harper's Magazine.
• Books by Brian Hooker at Google Books.