Turning a Deaf Ear

Bernard Bragg, a founder of the National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut in 1967 who opened the door for deaf performers, died October 29, 2018, age 90. Born deaf to deaf parents, Bragg embarked on his own performing career in the late 1950s after personally studying with world famous mime Marcel Marceau. He entertained at clubs in the San Francisco area, including the storied hungry i, where he introduced a style of his own which he called sign mime, mixing elements of American Sign Language with tools of traditional mime.

In the mid-1960s, Braggg teamed with Edna Simon Levine, a psychologist who worked with the deaf, and David Hays, a set and lighting designer, to form the National Theatre of the Deaf, which gave its first public performance at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in 1967. Bragg stayed with the company for 10 years, which included performances on Broadway and winning a special Tony Award in 1977, before becoming a visiting professor at his alma mater, Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C., a private college for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing.

A 1979 article in The Washington Post called Bragg "the man who invented theater as a professional career for the deaf." One who followed that career path was actress Marlee Matlin, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her feature film debut in 1986's "Children of a Lesser God."

Marlee Matlin poses with mentor Bernard Bragg in this 2015 photo.

"I have known Mr. Bragg since I was 8 years old, when I took a class which he was teaching at Chicago's Center for Deafness," Marlee Matline wrote in an email. "Always curious and always with questions, particularly because he was the first deaf person I had met who was an actor, I remember asking him, 'Can I be an actor like you?' To which he responded with a warm smile, 'Yes, you can!' That stuck with me."

Coincidentally, just four days after Bernard Bragg's passing, on November 2, Kitty O'Neil, a former Hollywood stuntwoman and race driver known for remarkable accomplishments despite being deaf, died in Eureka, South Dakota, at the age of 72. The cause was pneumonia.

O'Neil's mother was a Native American Cherokee, her father an Irish oil wildcatter who died in an airplane crash when Kitty was a child. She lost her hearing at five months when she was struck by measles, mumps, and smallpox all at once, destroying nerves. She was home-schooled by her mother, who taught her to read lips instead of using sign language. Touching her mother's throat to feel the vibrations of speech led her to finding her own voice. Her mother eventually taught other deaf children, founding The Listening Eyes School for the Deaf in Wichita Falls, Texas.

After joining a swim team at age 12, Kitty developed an interest in diving. In 1962, the family moved to Anaheim, California, so she could train with Olympic gold medalist diver Sammy Lee, who later trained Greg Louganis. She was on her way to qualify for the 1964 Olympics when she broke her wrist in a dive, followed by a bout with spinal meningitis.

Once she regained use of her legs, she pursued hang gliding, sky diving, scuba diving, and high speed water skiing, setting the women's record at 104.85 miles per hour. It seemed a natural progression to automobile racing and cross country motorcycle racing. In an accident during the latter, a fellow racer, stuntman Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, rushed to her aid and accompanied her to the hospital, where she had two severed fingers reattached.

O'Neil would marry Hambleton, who introduced her to Stunts Unlimited, an organization of top stuntmen. In 1976, Kitty was accepted as the first female member of Stunts Unlimited. That same year, she set the land speed record for female drivers piloting a three-wheeled, hydrogen peroxide-powered rocket car called the "SMI Motivator," which reached an average speed of 512.710 miles per hour in the Alvord Desert of southeastern Oregon. The record still stands.

Kitty wanted to be the first driver to break the sound barrier (about 740 mph), but her quest was thwarted by a sponsoring toy company who wanted stuntman and future "Smokey and the Bandit" director Hal Needham to break the record because it had a contract to market a Hal Needham action figure. The company was quoted as saying, "It would be unbecoming for a woman to break this record." O'Neil once said, "I'm a liberated woman, but I'm not trying to compete against men. I'm just trying to do my own thing."

Ky Michaelson, a close friend of Kitty's who built rocket-powered vehicles, noted, "She seemed never to have fear. I'd never say to her, 'Kitty, are you scared?' Not Kitty. But I've been in a car with her many times, and she scared the heck out of me."

O'Neil's stunt work was featured in a number of motion pictures, including "Airport 1975" and "Airport '77," "Foul Play," "Smokey and the Bandit II." and "The Blues Brothers."

Mattel introduced a doll with Kitty O'Neil's likeness.

In 1979, for a two-hour episode of the CBS series "Wonder Woman," starring Lynda Carter, O'Neil established a high fall record by plunging 127 feet from atop the Valley Hilton in Sherman Oaks, California, into an air bag on the swimming pool deck (pictured below).

She was the subject of a 1979 made-for-television movie, "Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story," starring Stockard Channing (best known as Rizzo in "Grease" and First Lady Abbey Bartlet on "The West Wing"). Then-husband Duffy Hambleton was the film's executive producer. One critic praised the "strong personal drama" for not becoming a "freak show with lots of wrecked cars."

Kitty O'Neil (right) meets her television alter ego,
Stockard Channing.

On a visit to the Holy Trinity School for the Deaf in Chicago while shooting "The Blues Brothers," she told the students, "Deaf people can do anything. Never give up. When I was 18, I was told I couldn't get a job because I was deaf. But I said some day I'm going to be famous in sports, to show them I can do anything."

Following the deaths of two friends while performing stunts, Kitty O'Neil retired in 1986. She held 22 speed records on land and water. In 1993, she moved from her home in Elk River in central Minnesota to the small town of Eureka, South Dakota, where she found peace in a house overlooking Lake Eureka.


Out of Hearing

In surveys of which of the five senses one would least want to lose, sight is obviously a big keeper, while hearing usually comes in second, over smell, taste, and touch. Blindness has been, of course, a popular topic for filmmakers, from "Wait Until Dark" to "Scent of a Woman," which isn't to say filmmakers have turned a deaf ear to loss of hearing.

Film historians and critics regard 1939 as the greatest year in Hollywood history. Among the 10 movies nominated for an Oscar as Outstanding Production (Best Picture) were "Gone with the Wind,"
"The Wizard of Oz," "Stagecoach," "Wuthering Heights," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and "Of Mice and Men." Other top releases of the year included Basil Rathbone's first case as Sherlock Holmes in "The Hound of the Baskervilles," Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston as brothers in the French Foreign Legion in "Beau Geste," Henry Fonda as "Young Mr. Lincoln," and Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, the deformed, crookbacked bell ringer in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

Unrequited in his love for fiery gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen
O'Hara), Quasimodo (Charles Laughton) seeks solace from the
sculpted gargoyles atop the Notre-Dame Cathedral:
"Why was I not made of stone like thee?"

Besides his physical deformity in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," based on the 940-page novel by Victor Hugo (author of the even more voluminous Les Miserables), Quasimodo is totally deaf from years of ringing the large bells of the cathedral.

Jane Wyman won a Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Belinda MacDonald, a deaf and mute girl living on a farm with her widowed father and aunt on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (substituted by Monterey Peninsula in California), in "Johnny Belinda." The 1948 film, which was nominated for 11 other Oscars, poignantly and honestly depicts Belinda's struggle with gossip, lies, rumors, and scandal after she becomes pregnant from a rape (a subject which had been prohibited by the Motion Picture Production Code).

A new doctor on the island, played by Lew Ayres, sympathizes with
Belinda (Jane Wyman) and teaches her sign language, inevitably
falling in love with her.

Helen Keller, a future prolific author, lecturer, and women's and political activist, was 19 months old when she suffered from an unknown illness which doctors described as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain." It might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her deaf and blind. The Kellers were eventually referred to Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first practical telephone who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell, in turn, referred the family to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in South Boston, where former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, became her instructor, governess, and eventually, companion.

Helen Keller reads a braille version of the works of Shakespeare.

Based on Helen Keller's 1903 autobiography, The Story of My Life, playwright William Gibson wrote the teleplay for "The Miracle Worker" for a live airing on TV's anthology series "Playhouse 90." He adapted his script for a 1959 Broadway staging, featuring Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller, who repeated their roles when Gibson wrote the screenplay for the 1962 film "The Miracle Worker."

Anne Bancroft won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading
Role, and 16-year-old Patty Duke was awarded the Oscar for Best
Actress in a Supporting Role.

In 1968's "Psych-Out," produced by "American Bandstand" host Dick Clark, Susan Strasberg portrayed a deaf runaway who buses to San Francisco's hippie-haven Haight-Ashbury district in search of her spaced-out brother, a flower child called The Seeker, appropriately played by Bruce Dern. She falls for Jack Nicholson in a faux ponytail as a rock musician known for one-night stands, watches her brother happily consumed in a conflagration, and trips out on STP while dodging traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Jack Nicholson and Susan Strasberg dig the psychedelia.

Set in a nameless small town in the Deep South, 1968's "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" depicts the sad friendship between a lonely deaf-mute silver engraver (Alan Arkin) and the unhappy teenaged daughter of a household where Arkin's character rents a room. Sondra Locke, Clint Eastwood's future, fleeting muse, made her feature film debut as the troubled girl. The movie was also the first screen appearance by Stacy Keach.

Sondra Locke received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting
Actress, Alan Arkin was nominated as Best Actor.

The 1973 spaghetti western "Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears" was generously loosely based on the life of Erastus "Deaf" Smith (1787-1837), who was a frontiersman involved in the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836. He had served as courier for Lt. Col. William B. Travis, commander of the Texas Republic at the Alamo, and later related the tragic fate of the mission garrison to Gen. Sam Houston.

Deaf Smith died at the age of 50.

The 1973 Italian western, also known as "Los Amigos," cast Anthony Quinn as Erastus "Deaf" Smith and spaghetti western regular Franco Nero as the fictitious Johnny Ears. The two are dispatched by Republic of Texas President Sam Houston to stop a treacherous general plotting against the annexation of Texas by the United States.

Deaf Smith (Anthony Quinn) learned how to shoot the Gatling gun
by reading the lips of the instructor.

Amy Irving, who made her motion picture debut as sympathetic high schooler Sue Snell in Brian De Palma's "Carrie," starred as a deaf teacher of deaf children who dreams of becoming a professional dancer in 1979's "Voices." The romantic tearjerker costarred Michael Ontkean (best known as Officer Willie Gillis in the early 1970s cop series "The Rookies," as minor league hockey star Ned Braden in "Slap Shot," and as Sheriff Harry S. Truman on David Lynch's "Twin Peaks") as a truck driver with ambitions to be a singer.

One might well ask how a deaf girl can dance to music she can't
hear. "Voices" posits that she can feel the vibrations of the music
through the floorboards.

Linda Bove, who was born deaf to deaf parents and is fondly recalled as Linda the Librarian for 31 years (1971-2002) on "Sesame Street," unsuccessfully auditioned for Amy Irving's role in "Voices."

"Sesame Street's" Bob McGrath and Linda Bove sign "love."

Off the "Street," Linda Bove occasionally landed an acting assignment, such as her role as a hearing impaired receptionist for the electric company who appears unfazed by Fonzie's otherwise devastating charm, despite his efforts to impress her by learning sign language, on a 1980 episode of "Happy Days" (pictured below). Bove had a supporting role in the 1986 film "Children of a Lesser God."

In 1987, Cher starred as a Washington, D.C., public defender representing a homeless, deaf-mute Vietnam veteran (Liam Neeson, before he became an inexhaustible action movie hero) falsely accused of murder in "Suspect." Dennis Quaid is a juror who dubiously helps the lawyer investigate the killing in this update of an Agatha Christie-like mystery. The crackerjack supporting cast featured John Mahoney (best known as the patriarch Martin Crane on "Frasier") and Joe Mantegna.

Cher shows Liam Neeson her briefs in "Suspect."

"See No Evil, Hear No Evil" (1989) was the third pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor following "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy." The comedy of errors found Wilder as a deaf man and Pryor as a blind man who team up to foil a gang of homicidal thieves involved in industrial espionage.

Roger Ebert whittled "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" down to
"two really nice guys and some cardboard computer crooks."

Probably the most famous deaf person in history is Ludwig van Beethoven, who showed signs of hearing loss at an early age. Around age 26, he started hearing buzzing sounds and other unfounded noise. Two years later, deafness began, and by 1801, he had lost 60 percent of his hearing. At age 46, in 1816, he was completely deaf. He died in 1827, age 56.

Beethoven premiered his magnificent Symphony No. 9 in Vienna on May 7, 1824, making his first onstage appearance in 12 years. His efforts to conduct an orchestra he couldn't a hear a note from were often wildly out of sync with the music, as the musicians and singers were actually conducted by composer Michael Umlauf. When the audience clapped at symphony's end, Beethoven was still going through the motions of conducting. Contralto soloist Caroline Unger gently turned him around to face the applause and cheering. There were five standing ovations, with handkerchiefs, hats, and raised hands in the air. Beethoven, oblivious to the sound of the applause, could at least see the ovations.

London-born Gary Oldman (who won a Best Actor Oscar for his chameleon-like portrayal of Winton Churchill in 2017's "Darkest Hour") played Beethoven in 1994's "Immortal Beloved." Ostensibly about the search by Beethoven's secretary for the identity of the mysterious "Immortal Beloved" to whom Beethoven addressed three letters found in his papers after his death (à la "Citizen Kane"), but, as Roger Ebert pointed out, "Beethoven's deafness is a subject throughout much of the film, including a precarious scene where the (Isabella) Rossellini character leads him from the stage after he grows confused during a public performance, and another in which he touches the wood of a pianoforte to hear the music through his fingers. He tried desperately to conceal his deafness, fearing it would destroy his livelihood..."

Prague's historic Estates Theatre filled in for Vienna's prestigious
Kärtnertortheater in "Immortal Beloved."

New Jersey-born Ed Harris (once dubbed "the thinking woman's sex symbol") took on the role of the ailing, deaf, mentally wracked composer in 2006's "Copying Beethoven," a fictional look at the final few years of his tempestuous life, from finishing the Ninth Symphony in 1824 to his death in 1827, with the addition of the fanciful character of a young female copyist and aspiring composer, Anna Holtz, who serves as Ludwig's protégé and confidante, leading to a platonic romance. She even gives him guidance from the orchestra pit as he premieres Symphony No. 9. Beethoven did work with two copyists, but they were both men. Anna Holtz might also be partially based on a violinist and secretary of Beethoven's named Karl Holz.

Anna Holtz (seen here with Ed Harris) was played by German
actress Diane Kruger, who portrayed German movie star Bridget
von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds"
and Helen in "Troy," both pictures starring Brad Pitt.

Earlier portrayals of Beethoven included Erich von Stroheim, the famed Austrian auteur director familiar to American audiences for his role as faded silent film star Norma Desmond's faithful butler Max in "Sunset Boulevard," in the 1955 French historical epic "Napoleon" (pictured below), "Bonanza" patriarch Lorne Greene in a 1955 episode of Walter Cronkite's educational series "You Are There" titled "The Torment of Beethoven," Austrian-German actor Karlheinz Böhm (best known in the U.S, for his performance as Jacob Grimm in the delightful children's fantasy "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm") in "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" 1962 presentation of "The Magnificent Rebel," and accomplished pianist and Broadway musical performer Clifford David in 1989's "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."

Pretty sure Erich von Stroheim had the same dour expression when
he played Max the stone-faced butler in "Sunset Boulevard."

In the 2003 BBC television production of "Eroica," Beethoven was played by Ian Hart (pictured below), who had portrayed John Lennon in 1994's "Backbeat."

Deaf End

Besides acting alongside deaf actress Linda Bove on an episode of "Happy Days," Henry Winkler is credited with "discovering" 12-year-old Marlee Matlin after seeing her perform at the International Center on Deafness and the Arts children's theater. The two became pen pals, which eventually grew into a close friendship.

Longtime friends Marlee Matlin and Henry Winkler show off their
recent literary achievements, memoirs I'll Scream Later and I've
Never Met an Idiot on the River.

Deaf since she was 18 months old, Matlin suggested in her autobiography that her hearing loss may have been caused by a genetically malformed cochlea in the inner ear.

Matlin is the only deaf performer to win an Academy Award. Since making her screen debut in 1986 in "Children of a Lesser God," she became one of the most prolific deaf actors working in film and television. Not surprisingly, a number of her theatrical features and made-for-television movies have titles related to hearing or its loss, including "Bridge to Silence," "Hear No Evil," "Dead Silence," and "Sweet Nothing in My Ear."

Matlin has enjoyed recurring roles on a number of television series, among them "Reasonable Doubts," "Picket Fences," "The West Wing," "The L Word," "Switched at Birth," and "Family Guy," as the voice of Stella, Peter Griffin's deaf coworker at Pawtucket Brewery.

On "The L Word," Marlee Matlin (left) played a
gay sculptor who has a relationship with the
dean of an arts school (Jennifer Beals).

In 1988, Marlee Matlin guest-starred on "Sesame Street," performing a variation on "Just the Way You Are" with Billy Joel (pictured below). The next year, Joel had her appear in his music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire."