John Lennon

John Ono Lennon, born John Winston Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a founder member of the Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Together with Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnership of the 20th century.

Jack Nicholson

John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer, and writer. He is known for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, tied with Katherine Hepburn, and behind only Meryl Streep. In 1994 he became the youngest actor ever to be awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award.

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (born 28 September 1934) is an animal rights activist and a former actress, singer and fashion model from France. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1950s and '60s. Starting in 1969, Bardot's features became the official face of Marianne (who had previously been anonymous) to represent the liberty of France.

Jean Marais

Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais (11 December 1913 – 8 November 1998), was a French actor and director.

here in Jean Cocteau´s "Orphée"

Klaus Kinski

Klaus Kinski (born Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski; 18 October 1926 – 23 November 1991) was a German actor. He appeared in more than 130 films, and is perhaps best remembered as a leading role actor in the films of Werner Herzog,  including: Aquirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987).

Sean Connery

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes.

Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.

Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American film and television actor and film producer.

William Seward Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II; also known by his pen name William Lee; (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century.

George Harrison

George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of the Beatles.

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor.

Marilyn Monroe

Norma Jeane Mortensen (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), professionally recognized as Marilyn Monroe, was an American actress, model and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.

with Arthur Miller, New York, 1957

promotional tour for "Some Like it Hot", Chicago, 1959

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980) was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street jargon. He was also a prominent stage and screen actor. Though his work was largely ignored by the official Soviet cultural establishment, he achieved remarkable fame during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's popular musicians and actors who wish to emulate his iconic status.

Vysotsky with Marina Vlady

Giulietta Masina

Giulietta Masina (22 February 1921 – 23 March 1994) was an Italian film and stage actress. She starred in La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, in 1956 and 1957, respectively. Masina won the Best Actress award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival for the later film.

She was the wife and muse of the Italian film director Federico Fellini, in whom she found an artistic equal and collaborator. Owing to her intense performances of naïve characters dealing with cruel circumstances, Masina is often called the "female Chaplin".

Fellini and Masina - Venice, 1955

in Fellini´s "La Strada" (1954)

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet (often associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance), as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist (frequently described as the "poet laureate of  Deep Ecology"). Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His work, in his various roles, reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. For many years, Snyder served as a faculty member at the Universityof California, Davis, and he also served for a time on the California Arts Council.

 

Zbigniew Cybulski

Zbigniew Cybulski (November 3, 1927 - January 8, 1967) was a Polish actor, one of the best-known and most popular personalities of the post-World War II history of Poland.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), was an aristocrat French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards  and also won the U.S. National Book Award. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.

 

Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata (14 June 1899 – 16 April 1972) was a Japanese short writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read.

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin (born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories. A great deal of her work, including Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously.

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize,  the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.

Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix...
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

... ngelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the 
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls ...

 Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert La Vigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco, 1956

Venice, 1957

Chase, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs in Morningside Heights, NY, 1945

with MichaelMcClure and Bruce Conner chanting

with Gary Snyder, New York, May 18, 1988

Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhaíl Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Михаи́л Афана́сьевич Булга́ков) May 15, 1891 – March 10, 1940, was a  Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. My favourite writer and the Master of my favourite book. 
"— Это водка? — слабо спросила Маргарита.
Кот подпрыгнул на стуле от обиды.
— Помилуйте, королева, — прохрипел он, — разве я позволил бы себе налить даме водки? Это чистый спирт!"

Everything in Woland's bedroom was as it had been before the ball. Woland was sitting in his nightshirt on the bed, only this time Hella was not rubbing his knee, and a meal was laid on the table in place of the chessboard. Koroviev and Azazello had removed their tailcoats and were sitting at table, alongside them the cat, who still refused to be parted from his bow-tie even though it was by now reduced to a grubby shred. Tottering, Margarita walked up to the table and leaned on it. Woland beckoned her, as before, to sit beside him on the bed. ' Well, was it very exhausting? ' enquired Woland. ' Oh no, messire,' replied Margarita in a scarcely audible voice. ' Noblesse oblige,' remarked the cat, pouring out a glassful of clear liquid for Margarita.

'Is that vodka? ' Margarita asked weakly. The cat jumped up from its chair in indignation. ' Excuse me, your majesty,' he squeaked, ' do you think I would give vodka to a lady? That is pure spirit!' Margarita smiled and tried to push away the glass. ' Drink it up,' said Woland and Margarita at once picked up the glass.

'Sit down, Hella,' ordered Woland, and explained to Margarita : ' The night of the full moon is a night of celebration, and I dine in the company of my close friends and my servants. Well, how do you feel? How did you find that exhausting ball? '

'Shattering! ' quavered Koroviev. ' They were all charmed, they all fell in love with her, they were all crushed! Such tact, such savoir-faire, such fascination, such charm! '

Woland silently raised his glass and clinked it with Margarita's. She drank obediently, expecting the spirit to knock her out. It had no ill effect, however. The reviving warmth flowed through her body, she felt a mild shock in the back of her neck, her strength returned as if she had just woken from a long refreshing sleep and she felt ravenously hungry. Remembering that she had not eaten since the morning of the day before, her hunger increased and she began wolfing down caviar.

Behemoth cut himself a slice of pineapple, salted and peppered it, ate it and chased it down with a second glass of spirit with a flourish that earned a round of applause.

After Margarita's second glassful the light in the candelabra burned brighter and the coals in the fireplace glowed hotter, yet she did not feel the least drunk. As her white teeth bit into the meat Margarita savoured the delicious juice that poured from it and watched Behemoth smearing an oyster with mustard.

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was a dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her American citizenship in 1937 to become French. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess".

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23, 1889 – March 5, 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.

Vaclav Nijinsky

Vaclav Nijinsky ( March 12, 1890 - April 8, 1950) was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the 20th century. Here in "Sheherazade", Paris, 1910.

Christian IX of Denmark

Christian IX (8 April 1818 – 29 January 1906) was King of Denmark from 16 November 1863 to 29 January 1906. Known as the father-in-law of Europe as his 6 children married into the Royal houses of Europe. Here, playing cards with his daughters Queen Alexandra (married to Edward VII of the United Kingdom), Empress Maria Fiodorovna (married to Tsar Alexander III of Russia) and Dutches Thyra (married to Ernst August, the Crown Prince of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland) Amalienborg, 1902