2021 The Side Bar - Edition III

CONTENTS

THESIDEBAR

2021: AN ODYSSEY Letter from the Editor — p. 2

NEXT STOP – THE Q TRAIN GALLERY Art All Around Us — p. 3

DON’T GO TAKIN’ MY ART Barton Spotlight — p. 5

PAYING WITH A SMILE Unique Clients — p. 7

BEST BUDDIES Community Heroes — p. 9

THE WOMEN WHO LED THE WAY Broadway to Broadway — p. 11

THE MOVIES BEFORE HOLLYWOOD Shot for Shot — p. 13

Barton is committed to providing our clients with the highest quality legal services delivered in an effective and efficient manner. We believe that a better product, value and client experience are achieved by providing our clients with highly skilled senior attorneys who work directly on their matters and who take the time to understand clients’ organizations, objectives and long-term goals. We know that clients prioritize managing their resources and creating efficiencies, and they want lawyers who are able to do the same. We invite you to experience the difference and Discover Better Law with Barton (bartonesq.com).

You may have heard the old adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” However, unless you’re part of the small percentage of the population that enjoys subjugating themselves to 26.2 miles of pure distress, a marathon still seems pretty daunting.

Navigating through almost a year and a half of COVID-19 and fluctuating lockdown restrictions has often felt like a marathon in its own right, one that has been full of hurdles and steep inclines. It has been a journey that has tested our endurance, our resiliency, and our grit. Yet, we have persevered, and many have thrived. We realized we could work from home (or live at work!), leverage technology, and find innovative solutions to carry us forward.

With the Tokyo Olympics slated to occur in July and August, it’s not so difficult to find parallels to our own lives in the feats of these incredible athletes. The Olympics have always been a showcase in perseverance, a display of overcoming what sometimes seem like impossible odds to achieve success.

We may not be setting any new world records, but we’ve all given gold medal performances during what has been a challenging 18-month span.

In keeping with this forging-ahead mentality, we at Barton plan to continue sharing stories about the people and things that matter to us. In this edition of The Side Bar, we explore the Second Avenue subway line and its role as both public transportation and public art installation.

We talk with rabbi and Barton counsel Mat Hoffman about his long legal career in what he refers to as the ‘Wild West’ business of art dealing.

We sit down with business owner Reza Solomon, whose financial tech company is fighting credit card fraud by using facial recognition technology.

We highlight an organization that’s helping connect people with and without intellectual disabilities, creating friendships that go beyond diagnoses.

We profile a collection of outstanding women from Nashville and New York whose contributions to their fields have secured their places in the history of sports, science, politics, pop culture, and the arts.

We dive into the early history of motion pictures, when New York was L.A. before L.A. was L.A. And finally, in keeping with our trend of incorporating a splash of mixology into The Side Bar, I’d like to leave you with a cocktail recipe that’ll make you feel like a gold medalist.

Cheers to the future, my friends. We’re on the home stretch.

The Olympic

1 ounce brandy

1 ounce orange juice

Roger E. Barton Managing Partner

1 ounce orange curaçao

1 dash orange bitters

Combine ingredients and shake with ice until cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Next Stop – The Q Train Gallery

A Trip Down NYC’s Second Avenue Subway Line

The first phase of the long-awaited Second Avenue subway line opened on January 1, 2017, almost a full century after its original inception and approval by the NYC Board of Transportation in the 1920s (and you thought you were behind on your projects). Primarily serviced by the Q Train, this route runs from 96th Street in Manhattan down through Brooklyn, culminating at Coney Island. But this particular train line is much more than just a convenient way for Upper East Siders to take a beach daycation—it also happens to house the largest permanent public art installation in the state of New York.

As part of the MTA’s Arts & Design Project, four artists were commissioned to create unique works of art to be housed at the line’s first four stations: 96th Street, 86th Street, 72nd Street, and 63rd Street. While the pieces differ in style and composition, they all reflect the experiences and lives of those who have called New York ‘home’ at one time or another. So stand clear of the closing doors please as we take a ride down the Second Avenue line….

96 ST & 2 AVE

“BLUEPRINT FOR A LANDSCAPE” BY SARAH SZE

Made from 4,300 porcelain tiles spanning 14,000 square feet, Sarah Sze’s creation mimics the visual style of an architectural blueprint. The subject matter is an amalgam of schematics, scaffolding, and whirlwinds of paper, birds, and leaves. As it stretches down the corridor and up the escalators, the piece swirls with movement, while also creating a feeling of breathholding suspension. Kind of like you’re walking through a frozen moment in time on a busy, windy New York day.

86 ST & 2 AVE “SUBWAY PORTRAITS” BY CHUCK CLOSE

Made of ceramic tile, glass, and ceramic mosaic, Chuck Close’s 12 photorealistic portraits are composed in striking detail, capturing the indelible likenesses of the artists they pay homage to. The collection contains two self-portraits of Close, as well as portraits of Lou Reed (musician), Cecily Brown (artist), Zhang Huan (artist), Pozsi Kolor (artist), Cindy Sherman (artist), Sienna Shields (artist), Kara Walker (artist), Philip Glass (composer), Alex Katz (artist), and Close’s niece as an infant.

72 ST & 2 AVE “PERFECT STRANGERS” BY

VIK MUNIZ

Made from glass mosaic and laminated glass, Vik Muniz’s 36 life-sized mosaic portraits scattered throughout the 72nd Street station present a colorful array of characters. Based on actual photos taken and recreated by the artist, these depictions reflect the richness and diversity of New York’s population in a cross-section of ages, races, cultures, socioeconomic classes, occupations, and interests. While each mosaic individual is wonderfully unique, they all share a commonality in the mundane, familiar experience of waiting for the train.

63 ST & LEXINGTON AVE “ELEVATED” BY JEAN SHIN

Made of ceramic tile, glass mosaic, and laminated glass, Jean Shin’s work delves into New York’s transit history. The images in the piece are composite recreations of archival photos from the New York Transit Museum and New York Historical Society. The piece depicts subway riders from the 1920s-1940s, along with images of New York’s historic Second and Third Avenue Elevated train lines that were dismantled in 1942 and 1955, respectively. The images serve as a callback to the past amidst the technological advancement of the present.

Don’t Go Takin’ My Art

Mathew Hoffman –Litigator, Rabbi, & Storyteller of the Art Underworld

Mathew Hoffman (spelled with one “t”) has been a litigator for over four decades. While he has won multimillion-dollar cases concerning breach of contract, discrimination claims, real estate, and even helped the NBA move the Jazz from New Orleans to Utah, Mat has also cultivated a specialty as a fine art litigator. As Mat himself will tell you, the fine art world is not quite as distinguished as its name might suggest and is often riddled with intrigue and unsavory characters. Mat has worked on several highprofile art cases that have been covered in the New York Times, Bloomberg, and various art trade journals. Additionally, Mat is an ordained rabbi who provides free marriage counseling services along with his wife who holds a PhD in psychology (you can check out the Hoffmans’ website at myjewishmarriage.com).

We sat down with Mat to discuss his many years navigating the dark recesses of the fine art underworld and how his rabbinical studies have, surprisingly, helped him along the way.

What’s it like working in the fine art industry?

There are industries that operate on handshakes, without written documentation. The diamond business is like that. So is the art industry. But you always hear that people in the diamond industry are honest whereas the general rule in the art industry

is that a huge number of people are dishonest. So you have people operating without written agreements, and many times they’re operating dishonestly. It’s unreal to see.

I once had a client who went to an art gallery and dropped off a painting for sale. Now this is the art world, right? So the only thing he got was a receipt for this painting worth several hundred thousand dollars. My client called up the gallery a few months later to see if they’d been able to sell his painting, and the gallery basically said, “What painting?” We had to sue, and the gallery tried to say that the painting belonged to somebody else. We defeated that outrageous defense.

One of the judges in another case I worked on was quoted saying, “I have never seen an industry more ripe with fraud and misconduct than the art business. To say there’s such a thing as artistic ethics is an oxymoron. Most of the cases I’ve had involving art dealers involve fraud outright. Just plain old fraud. This is not a nice business.”

The bottom line is that you’re oftentimes dealing with people that are flat-out dishonest. They will sell the same piece of art several times to different people, with the theory that somehow it will all work out.

So it’s common for art dealers to try and sell works that don’t belong to them?

More common than you’d think. You have to understand that these

fraudulent art dealers are so smooth that you have to keep reminding yourself that they’re criminals or you’ll buy a piece of art from them right then and there. They just sound so honest and credible.

A particular case I worked on involved an art dealer who sold tens of millions of dollars in paintings, but never alerted the paintings’ original owners about the sales. He just pocketed the cash for himself. And these were well-known paintings too, works by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Vincent van Gogh, and the like.

Being in the art world is like being in the Wild West. You have no idea who’s going to be shootin’ at you next. You’ve always got to be looking over your shoulder.

So what happens when the original owners of the artwork realize they’ve been duped?

That’s when the art world gets particularly litigious. Here’s your basic problem: Imagine you went to a prestigious art dealer and gave him your art to sell. He sold it as if it were

his and got the money, but he didn’t give the money to you . Now the buyer of the painting and you are fighting over who owns the artwork. Naturally, you’re going to say, “That’s my damn artwork! Give it back!”

In most cases, the law is going to favor the buyer. This is a doctrine that goes back at least 1,600 years and can be found in the Jewish Talmud. It’s called takkanat ha-shuk or “The Ordinance of the Marketplace,” and it protects innocent buyers in good faith.

There are a number of cases in the art world that deal with the question of just how “innocent” the buyer is and how many “red flags” (i.e., warnings that the deal was fraudulent) were present at the time of purchase. For example, if a random guy on the street has an honest-to-goodness Picasso painting in the back of his truck and offers to sell it to you for a thousand bucks… that’s clearly a stolen Picasso. If you buy the painting, you’re not going to be able to keep it when the real owner comes looking for it.

The real problems arise when, instead of a sketchy guy on the street, the seller is one of the most respected and reputable art dealers in the entire world.

arguments that somebody may have used in the 15th century that your adversary is never going to think of. In Jewish law, there is also a willingness to argue for one’s position very insistently. If you do lose at the end of the day, then you accept your defeat gracefully. But until that moment, the idea that you’re willing to continue to argue has always resonated with me. My nickname used to be “Mad Dog” Hoffman. There actually used to be a sign in my office that said “Mad Dog” in Hebrew because I was known for biting down and never giving up. You’ve got to continue to creatively argue for your position until it’s clear that you absolutely can’t win. So even if you lose, you’ve at least exhausted every possibility.

But I’ve also been doing this for 43 years and know that you can’t win a case and also bankrupt your client. Winning can involve ego gratification, but if you’re going to win at the expense of the client, it’s not worth it. Winning matters, but winning the right way matters more—and that means honestly and cost-effectively. And I’m proud to say that my record reflects that I’ve been able to do that.

What does it take to be a successful lawyer in this type of industry?

You mentioned the Talmud, and I understand that you’re an ordained rabbi. Do you find that your roles as rabbi and lawyer ever overlap?

My role as a rabbi intersects my role as an attorney because Jewish law trains you to be incredibly sensitive to distinctions. I oftentimes say that my easiest day in yeshiva was harder than my hardest day at Columbia Law School. Not only does Jewish law really sharpen the mind, it also has sort of seen everything because it’s been around for so many centuries. With virtually every case you come up against, there is something you can apply from Jewish law. You can even come up with creative

It requires a great deal of business and financial sophistication to be able to deal with these cases. You have to be able to think on your feet and have the skill to look at numbers and figure out what’s wrong. It’s funny, my father was actually brilliant when it came to math. He could look at any math problem and just solve it. I think I must have gotten some of what he had because I’ve always had a natural ability for seeing flaws in financial presentations. That helps me not just in the art world, but also in corporate matters that I litigate every day.

Perhaps more importantly, being a lawyer in this business requires you to truly care about your clients. I’ve been very fortunate in that my clients have overwhelmingly been honest, decent folks that have been a pleasure to work with. As a lawyer, you tend to see people at their lowest points, when they’ve been wrongly accused or cheated in some way. At these times, they don’t need just an attorney—they also need a friend, a counselor, a sage, a warrior, and a shoulder to lean on. It’s my job to be all of those things for them. My clients keep coming back, so I guess they feel they’ve found a home. ♦

Two of the paintings involved in the fraud committed by now-imprisoned art dealer Timothy Sammons.

Paying With a Smile

If you own a credit card, you’ve most likely at some point or another gotten that dreaded call and heard that gutsinking sentence: “There has been suspicious activity on your account.” What follows is typically hours of heckling the credit card company, jumping through hoops, belaboring the fact that no, you did not buy 37 kayaks at a sporting goods store in Arkansas. And no, you did not purchase a full-body shiatsu massager either. And why on earth would you have needed a gold-plated air fryer?

While credit card security has certainly become much more sophisticated over the years, credit card fraud has evolved even more quickly. It’s no longer just emails from Nigerian princes you have to watch out for—it’s the lessdetectable threats that come in the form of malicious software programs, phishing scams, and even largescale data breaches of companies that hold your private financial information.

A 2018 study on credit and debit card fraud estimated that, on average, 1% of every card transaction is lost due to fraud or fraud-related costs. To put this in perspective, out of the $7 trillion in consumer expenses charged to cards in 2018, $70 billion was lost to fraud. The cost of this financial hemorrhaging eventually makes its way back to the consumer in the form of higher APRs and fees.

Reza Solomon is the guy asking the right question: Can’t we make a better, more secure credit card?

Solomon, who holds a master’s degree in Controls and System Dynamics from Villanova and a PhD in Mathematics and Economics from Virginia Tech, worked with the Office of Naval Research designing autopilots for unmanned aerial vehicles before holding positions at major financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, Protiviti, and JPMorgan Chase. His time in the financial sector is what inspired him to create his product which would serve as the namesake of his company—PlutoCard.

“I started working at different banks and learned about the different deficiencies that consumer credit is facing,” says Solomon. “The result of that was basically me trying to find a solution that fixes these problems, and

PlutoCard was born that way a couple of years ago.”

PlutoCard is a credit card…but it’s not just any credit card. Although it may look similar to what you have in your wallet, it’s unique in that it introduces two innovations in the world of credit card transactions.

The first is the facial recognition technology it uses to authorize transactions, eliminating the need for signatures, security codes, or PINs. Instead of having a permanent number or security code, PlutoCard credit cards function by way of a smartphone application. The app contains a dynamic credit card number, which changes at regular intervals and syncs with the card’s smart chip, making it virtually impossible for snooping thieves to go on a shopping spree at your expense.

When a customer uses PlutoCard to make a purchase, a notification is sent to their phone asking them to confirm the details of the transaction. If confirmed, the app’s artificial intelligence engine will take approximately 3,000 measurements of the person’s face to verify their identity and authorize the purchase. Interestingly enough, more than 2,000 of these measurements are made of the upper hemisphere of the face since eyes are humans’ most discernible facial feature (apart from also being the windows to the soul, apparently). This allows the facial recognition technology to remain accurate even when the user is wearing a mask.

The entire process takes mere seconds and creates a secure, closed-loop authorization system that makes the cardholder an integral part of the transaction, while proactively preventing fraud at the point of purchase. Moreover,

the process is designed to be extremely user-friendly and to operate with existing payment platforms and technology. Besides cutting down on hassle for the consumer, PlutoCard also saves the 1% per transaction currently being lost to fraud, which functions as extra revenue that can fund elevated rewards for the credit card holder.

PlutoCard could easily have stopped there and been a great product. But during his tenure in the banking industry, Solomon had witnessed first-hand the large disparity in credit inclusiveness for certain underserved demographics. He realized that there was a need to make credit-based financial products available to those who were qualified, but whom traditional credit bureaus were effectively shutting out.

For most people, eligibility for things like credit cards, personal loans, and mortgages are based on FICO credit scores. However, this can be a narrow scale by which to measure creditworthiness for many people. One out of every ten Americans is currently considered “credit invisible,” meaning that credit bureaus don’t have enough information with which to generate credit scores for them. There are another 70 million people in the U.S. who are “credit underserved” because the limitations of the FICO scoring system make it difficult for them to obtain credit-based products at a reasonable rate. In an analysis performed in partnership with an aggregator of personal loan applications, PlutoCard also found that 70% of the analyzed credit applications were either declined or priced at a rate higher than the consumer could pay.

This is largely due to the fact that FICO scores look at only a few financial indicators when calculating a credit score. With PlutoCard, Solomon’s goal was to develop a way to look at consumer financial data through a more meaningful, contextualized lens. As a result, PlutoCard’s unique underwriting engine utilizes AI-generated behavioral models to determine creditworthiness. This system uses a more comprehensive set of data and delves deeper into patterns of financial behavior to look beyond just the numbers and to assess how consumers are actually managing their money. For example, unlike a traditional FICO score, the PlutoCard method takes into account a consumer’s income, the rate at which their income is expensed, and the financial demands of certain life events such as getting married, having kids, or taking a trip.

“We underwrite based on alternative factors and data. We don’t pull FICO scores,” explains Solomon. “Based on that, our AI-based engine looks at the behavioral aspects of somebody’s financial life over the last two years instead of just looking at the current snapshot of a FICO credit score. We have a much more accurate and much more inclusive credit rating mechanism that caters to everyone, not just the people who have a good credit history for the last 20 to 30 years.”

The purpose of this much more nuanced approach to underwriting is not to extend credit to just anyone, but to those who are truly creditworthy and currently underserved due to the limitations of the traditional credit scoring system. And while PlutoCard only plans to issue credit cards for now, the company hopes to use its novel credit scoring method to eventually offer a range of financial products and services, such as personal loans, debit cards, mortgages, checking accounts, and deposits.

PlutoCard’s innovativeness has not gone unnoticed. The company was recently recognized by Analytics Insight Magazine as one of “The 10 Most Disruptive Face & Image Recognition Solution Providers In 2021” for its creative use of facial recognition technology to help prevent fraud and funnel rewards back to users. But beyond this, PlutoCard is also innovative in its mission to provide inclusive access to quality financial products that can improve consumers’ lives. Perhaps not the simplest of tasks, but one that PlutoCard is well on its way to achieving. “The more technology advances, the more we have to evolve,” says Solomon. “What we’re really trying to do at PlutoCard is be ahead of the curve.” ♦

You can learn more about PlutoCard and how it works at myplutocard.com.

Best Buddies

Inclusion and Friendship, Hand in Hand

You’re probably familiar with what is commonly referred to as “the buddy system.” You may have used it during an elementary school field trip to the zoo. Or as a new employee learning the ropes at a new job. You’ve almost certainly used it if you’ve ever participated in military training, scuba diving, or rock climbing. This widely employed “system” is a familiar and simple concept: two people, typically peers, are paired up with each other with the goal of mutually supporting and looking out for each other. A good buddy always has your back. So, what does a best buddy do?

Best Buddies International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to establish a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for oneto-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The umbrella of IDD encompasses a wide variety of diagnoses, including (but not limited to) Down syndrome, autism, Fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome, and cerebral palsy. However, it is often the case that individuals with IDD are reduced to labels and judged on the basis of their diagnoses. This can close doors in the realms of social inclusion, employment, and economic independence.

Anthony Kennedy Shriver recognized that those with IDD are often excluded and isolated from the world around them, more so than their neurotypical peers. Inspired by his aunt Rosemary Kennedy who had intellectual and physical disabilities, as well as the work of his mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver (who founded the Special Olympics), Anthony conceived of a novel idea: a program that would foster friendships between those with and those without IDD. “My initial vision was simply to provide people with intellectual and developmental disabilities the opportunity to experience friendship and to truly feel

seen, valued, and included,” says Shriver.

Officially founded by Shriver in 1989, the Best Buddies organization would soon grow to impact lives worldwide. Today, the organization maintains nearly 3,000 chapters around the world and touches the lives of nearly 1 million people. The organization’s four primary pillars are listed in its mission statement, the first of which is one-to-one friendships that match a participant with IDD and a volunteer peer without IDD based on their shared interests. The goal is that the two will build an organic, meaningful friendship while also just having an all-around good time. These buddy pairs do all of the regular friend stuff the rest of us do—bowling, the movies, ice cream, baseball games, the nail salon, and even Zoom hangouts when COVID-19 prevented in-person meetings.

It can sometimes be easy to view inclusion efforts like these as a “charity” extended to those with IDD, when in reality, all parties benefit when inclusion is prioritized. “A lot of our peer buddies (people without IDD) often get so excited about being with their buddies,” says Jessica Wylie, Senior Director, State Operations at Best Buddies International. “The friendships are just as meaningful, if not more so, for the people without IDD.”

The same is true in the context of integrated employment, which is the second pillar of Best Buddies’ mission statement. The organization helms a program that helps candidates with IDD to explore and secure viable job opportunities. By partnering with local employers, Best Buddies works to place individuals in jobs suited to their interests and talents. This can help people with IDD to not only build self-esteem and develop soft skills, but also to take the next step in achieving financial independence. The benefit to employers is also mutual. People with IDD represent a largely untapped pool of talent (an estimated

The Best Buddies logo was designed and donated by the late pop artist Keith Haring.

81% of adults with IDD do not have a paying job in their communities) and can add substantial value to the workforce. Wylie notes that, “Oftentimes companies tell us that they didn’t hire the person because they were part of Best Buddies or because they were an individual with IDD— they hired the person because, in the end, they were the right fit for the job.”

for a better future for all people with disabilities.

Best Buddies’ fourth and newest pillar is inclusive living. The organization currently operates its inaugural living residence in Washington, D.C. and hopes to open more in the future. The residence offers young adults with and without IDD the opportunity to live in an integrated community and enjoy weekly group activities. Many of the residents are either in the work force or are pursuing higher education opportunities.

Many of the initial barriers to inclusion come in the form of stigmas and false beliefs about those with disabilities. Lack of education and awareness in the general public is often one of the biggest obstacles that Best Buddies faces. This is why their third pillar of leadership development is so crucial. Best Buddies’ leadership development program focuses on self-advocacy and visibility by offering individuals with IDD training in writing and public speaking. Equipped with the necessary communication tools, these members can become ambassadors within their communities, educating others about disabilities and the importance of inclusion efforts. There is something inherently empowering about telling your own story and likewise about hearing a message first-hand from someone who has lived it. By working to better articulate their own experiences, members of the leadership program are not only helping to dismantle harmful stereotypes, but are also advocating

Barton’s connection to this extraordinary organization comes by way of Nashville partner-in-charge Marc Dedman, who serves on the Advisory Board for Best Buddies –Tennessee. “For one to be able to effect positive change in this world with such wonderful people who also seek, and want, to share in the creation of positive change is so enriching,” says Dedman. “Whether one is a high school student working directly with a buddy, an executive who changes a corporate culture in hiring opportunities, or a benefactor whose contribution breaks down barriers, our society becomes better. I know that my life is made better by Best Buddies.”

Many of those involved with Best Buddies echo similar sentiments. Anthony Shriver, who serves as the current chairman and CEO of the

organization, says, “I truly do believe that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are a gift to the world. They are so full of genuine love, compassion, and goodwill, and they have the power to share their light and their gifts with everyone they meet. I often find that the lives of people without IDD are transformed for the better when they get involved with our organization. They experience first-hand the blessings and the profound joy that genuine friendships with people who may have different abilities possess.”

Best Buddies plans to continue its growth and its outreach to those who haven’t heard of them yet. They want to continue offering those with IDD the space and resources to form meaningful friendships, secure successful jobs, live independently, improve self-advocacy, and feel valued by society. Along with this, the organization continues to encourage more people without IDD to engage in the programs they offer, to become allies, supporters, and friends of those with differing abilities. Best Buddies’ message is clear: regardless of age, background, or ability, they have a place for you. Wheelchairs, feeding tubes, sensory headphones, and extra chromosomes welcome. ♦

All images are courtesy of Best Buddies. Special thanks to Anthony K. Shriver, Jessica Wylie, and Nicole Maddox. You can learn more about Best Buddies and find your local chapter at bestbuddies.org.

The Women Who Led the Way

Celebrating the Women Trailblazers of New York and Tennessee

It would probably take an entire lifetime to research and write about the lives of the many talented, accomplished, and all-around iconic women hailing from the great states of New York and Tennessee. In this article, we’re going to highlight just a few of these women who’ve pushed boundaries and left legacies of innovation and extraordinary achievement in their wakes. Although from different backgrounds and industries, they all share one thing in common: excellence in their fields, whether it be on the basketball court or the Supreme Court (and everywhere in between).

THE ENTERTAINMENT ICON – Dolly Parton (1946-present)

Dolly Parton was born in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to a family living in a single-room cabin. Musically gifted as a child, Parton moved to Nashville after graduating high school and found success as a singer-songwriter in the country music business. As her career took off, she also began acting in both film and television. To date, Parton has composed upwards of 3,000 songs and can play 20 instruments, creating music that blends the genres of country-western, bluegrass, pop, and gospel. She has become one of the most decorated female recording artists of all time with 25 songs reaching No. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, 44 Top Ten country albums, and a slew of awards across the music industry. Her success as a businesswoman and humanitarian is also quite noteworthy. Along with owning a record label and production company, Parton’s Dollywood Company operates the successful Dollywood theme park and resort in East Tennessee. Parton has also made extensive philanthropic contributions to causes such as childhood literacy, wildlife preservation, cancer treatment, wildfire disaster relief, and COVID-19 research.

THE DISSENTER – Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg—aka the Notorious R.B.G.—was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After completing undergrad at Cornell University and graduating from Columbia Law School at the top of her class, she entered a male-dominated legal industry. Ginsburg soon became a staunch advocate for gender equality, co-founding the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union and serving as its general counsel from 1973-1980. During this time, her work helped illegalize certain gender-based inequities and sex discrimination under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Ginsburg was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993, becoming just the second woman to serve in this capacity. Throughout her tenure, Ginsburg authored majority opinions for landmark cases such as United States v. Virginia , which struck down a male-only college admissions policy, and Olmstead v. L.C., which upheld housing rights for people with intellectual disabilities. However, Ginsburg was perhaps best known for her influential dissenting opinions on several high-profile cases involving issues such as gender-based pay discrimination, voting rights, reproductive rights, and healthcare.

THE POET – Nikki Giovanni (1943-present)

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Nikki Giovanni was a voracious reader as a child. While growing up primarily in Cincinnati, she frequently made visits back to her native state and went on to attend Fisk University in Nashville. As her writing talents matured, Giovanni became increasingly interested in writing about black experiences and identity. Her first poetry collection, entitled Black Feeling, Black Talk , debuted in 1968 to much acclaim and success. This kickstarted a career that would position Giovanni as a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 70s. Today, Giovanni is one of the best-known poets in the U.S. and has released dozens of poetry collections, children’s books, essay compilations, and poetry recordings. Her work strikes a balance between poignancy and accessibility, contemplating themes such as family, love, and loneliness while also tackling issues related to gender, politics, and race. Giovanni is currently a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech and continues to write and tour the country as an activist and speaker.

THE FIRST LADY – Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Eleanor Roosevelt was born in Manhattan to a highly respected New York socialite family. Intelligent and independent, Roosevelt led an active public life dedicated to several humanitarian causes, such as the establishment of a minimum wage and the abolition of child labor. After marrying Franklin D. Roosevelt, she went on to serve as First Lady of the United States from 1933-1945, subsequently redefining a role that heretofore had largely consisted of domestic duties. As First Lady, Roosevelt advocated for civil rights for African Americans, Asian Americans, and women. She lobbied for asylum for political refugees and was committed to the social reforms of the New Deal. Roosevelt also heavily utilized media to promote her ideas, holding press conferences, publishing columns and articles, and hosting a weekly radio show. After FDR’s death in 1945, Roosevelt later became the first U.S. Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

THE BASKETBALL LEGEND – Pat Summitt (1952-2016)

Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, Pat Summitt was a talented basketball player in a world with few opportunities for female athletes, when Title IX had yet to be passed and women’s basketball was not yet an NCAA sport. In 1974, at the age of 22, Summitt became the head coach of the University of Tennessee’s Lady Volunteers basketball team. Over the next 40 years, Summitt would turn the UT women’s basketball program into a powerhouse, leading the Lady Vols to 8 NCAA Championship titles and 18 Final Four appearances. At the time of her death, Summitt was the winningest coach in both men’s and women’s Division I college basketball with an astonishing 1,098 victories. She was awarded NCAA Coach of the Year seven times, was named the Naismith Coach of the Century, and coached several U.S. Olympic teams. Known for her tenacious coaching style, leadership, and work ethic, Summitt also worked tirelessly for the advancement of women in sports. She successfully lobbied for better facilities, more media exposure, scholarships for female athletes, and the creation of the women’s NCAA basketball tournament.

THE QUEEN OF JAZZ – Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)

Although born in Virginia, Ella Fitzgerald grew up primarily in New York’s Yonkers and Harlem neighborhoods. As a teenager, Fitzgerald got her first big break singing at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in 1934. She began to perform regularly at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and later with the “Jazz at the Philharmonic” tour series. These performances, coupled with multiple radio hits and best-selling records, shot Fitzgerald to international stardom. She was lauded for her exceptional diction, vocal range, and intonation, along with her innovative use of bebop and scat singing. Her music career spanned six decades and featured collaborations with other jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra. By the end of her life, Fitzgerald had sold over 40 million albums and had won 14 Grammys, cementing her legacy as one of the most talented jazz artists of all time. Along with her prolific music career, Fitzgerald was also a civil rights activist who routinely demanded equal treatment for performers and audience members of color at the venues where she sang.

THE SPACE TRAVELER – Margaret Rhea Seddon (1947-present)

Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Margaret Rhea Seddon was one of the first women to go to space. After obtaining her medical degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and completing her general surgery residency, Seddon was selected in 1978 to be part of the very first class of female astronauts at NASA alongside five other women. During her 19 years at NASA, Seddon flew on three space shuttle flights, logging a total of 30 days spent in orbit. During her missions, she helped conduct various lab tests tracking the effects of space flight and microgravity on both human and animal physiology. Her skills as a surgeon often came in handy on the space shuttle—she once had to use a bone saw and miscellaneous ship supplies to fashion makeshift tools when a satellite malfunctioned mid-orbit. Seddon currently resides in Nashville and is an award-winning author and national speaker.

The Movies Before Hollywood

New York and the Birth of the Film Industry

When most people think of the movies, they instantly think of Hollywood—aka Tinseltown, The City of Angels, La La Land (err, I mean Moonlight ?). While it’s true that Hollywood is certainly the film and entertainment capital of the world today, this wasn’t always the case. From the late 1880s to the early 1920s, the film industry put down its very first roots on the East Coast in New York and the surrounding areas.

While photography had been around since the 1820s, the concept of moving photography didn’t come to fruition until 1878. The story goes that English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was hired by California industrial magnate and racehorse enthusiast Leland Stanford to help settle a bet. Stanford wanted to find out whether there was ever a point during a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground. To settle the question, Muybridge set up multiple cameras along a racetrack and rigged them to take consecutive photos of a running horse. When the series of snapshots was shown in quick succession, it gave the illusion of movement—a similar effect that a cartoon flipbook would have. With the creation of the first moving image, Muybridge had not only discovered that horses do in fact completely leave the ground when galloping, but had also inadvertently launched the start of the film industry.

Enter Thomas Edison. The lightbulb guy. In 1888, Muybridge visited Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Muybridge’s technological breakthrough inspired Edison to pursue further projects related to moving images. Between 1889 and 1892, Edison and his employee William Dickson developed a novel device called the Kinetoscope, a large cabinet with a peephole where viewers could watch short films. The invention made its official public debut at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1893, becoming a sensation almost overnight. The success of the Kinetoscope led to the creation of Kinetoscope parlors, where the general public could pay a quarter to watch short videos on a running

loop. The first of these parlors opened in 1894 and was located at 27th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

Many of the short films viewed through the Kinetoscope were filmed in the studio behind Edison’s lab, where members of the New York theater scene, celebrities, dancers, stunt performers, and even lab technicians acted in short scenes that were captured by a Kinetograph camera. These early mini films were predominately conceptual, relying on imagery over plot and narrative. However, the new fad had soon run its course as its novelty began to wane in the eyes of the public. Moreover, Kinetoscopes presented a practical problem for parlor owners: only one customer could use any single machine at a time. Inventors soon began looking for ways to project their moving images so that multiple viewers could watch a film simultaneously.

Two Kinetoscope parlor owners, Grey and Otway Latham, were some of the first to make movie projection a reality. With the help of a few of Edison’s disgruntled employees, the Lathams introduced a device called the Panopticon in 1895. This invention was used to project the first American film shown to a paying audience: a boxing match reenactment shot atop Madison Square Garden. This short film was

The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge (1878)

A man views short films through a Kinetoscope

also one of the first ever to be shot in New York.

Projected motion pictures soon became all the rage. Around this same time in France, the Lumière brothers had also managed to create their own projection device, which they dubbed the Cinématographe and showcased in their own theater in New York. Not one to be behind the times, Edison also purchased the rights to another projector model called the Vitascope, which he debuted at the famous Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in 1896.

The advent of projected motion pictures not only changed how films were watched, but also where they were watched. Projected films were originally shown at vaudeville theater shows as a filler between acts. However, in 1905, Pittsburgh opened the country’s very first nickelodeon. Named for the price of admission (a nickel) and the Greek word odeon (a building used for performances), nickelodeons were typically small storefront theaters that showed short films playing continuously throughout the day. More significantly, these were also the first venues dedicated specifically to the screening of films and would become the forerunner to the modern movie theater. By 1908, New York had the most nickelodeons of any city in the world, with an estimated 300,000400,000 people attending them daily.

The popularity of nickelodeons increased the demand for longer and more complex films. This translated into the need for more production and filming sites. Studios began popping up in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx—Vitagraph Studios, Biograph Studios, Fox Film Studios, Edison Studios, and Kaufman Astoria Studios (which is still active today and sits next to the Museum of the Moving

Image). For films shot on-location, filmmakers often took to the streets of New York or the various landscapes of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

However, by the early 1910s, the exodus to the West Coast had begun as actors, filmmakers, and studio moguls alike packed their bags for California. The West Coast’s scenic landscapes, year-round sunlight, and open, inexpensive land proved ideal for filming on-location or building outdoor sets and sound stages. Another reason for the cross-country shift was an industry-wide effort to escape Edison’s notoriously litigious trust, the Motion Picture Patents Company. Having aggregated a large number of patents pertaining to film technology, the Company routinely and relentlessly sued competitors for patent infringement, effectively creating a monopoly on the East Coast’s motion picture industry. The migration to California put some much-needed distance between filmmakers and the trust’s ruthless oversight.

By the 1930s, the majority of the film business had moved to Hollywood. Included in this group was a handful of ambitious first and secondgeneration European immigrants from New York that would make their individual ways out West to

strike it big in the fledgling industry. These men would go on to build entertainment empires that would bear names such as Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures. But while California certainly remains the seat of the film industry today, New York will always be where the movies started, will always be where the history of filmmaking began. Every time you queue up a new release on Netflix or buy midnight tickets to the latest summer blockbuster, remember that it all had to start somewhere. It’s safe to say that the motion picture industry wouldn’t be what it is today without those first ambitious inventors, those first makeshift studios, those first neighborhood nickelodeons, and—most of all— those first curious New Yorkers that wandered in to see the movies one day and never stopped going. ♦

The first nickelodeon theater (1905)

Poster for Cocoanuts (1929), a Marx Brothers film shot at Kaufman Astoria Studios (formerly Paramount Studios) in Queens

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

Dolly Parton