The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 28

Central Edition Des Moines Sunday Register Page2B Sunday, December 14, 2008 Famous Iowans Innovative Flanagan a pioneer in theater I. 1 i A. Dateline Iowa From Register staff and news services I FORT DODGE Teen to be tried as adult in murder case A Fort Dodge teenager who already faces robbery charges will be tried as an adult on a first-degree murder charge. Bryce Gully is charged in the shooting death of Matthew Huffman. Gully, 15, is a sophomore at Fort Dodge Senior High School.

He was arrested Sept. 22 and charged with first-degree robbery after Huffman's death. Police said at the time that additional charges were pending. Gully could face life in prison. Huffman, 50, was shot and killed early Sept.

20. I WEBSTER CITY Judge acquits man of murder, cites insanity An Ellsworth man accused of killing his brother has been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity-Michael Lindseth still faces prison time after pleading guilty during a hearing Friday in Hamilton County of an attack on a jailer. The 25-year-old faces five years in prison, a suspended fine and restitution for an assault on Josh Kuisel, a Hamilton County jailer. Lindseth will serve no prison time related to the death of his brother, Douglas Lindseth, after being found not guilty by District Court Judge Timothy Finn. Finn said that Lindseth will be hospitalized after he serves his sentence until a court determines he is no longer a danger to society.

I SIOUX CITY S.D. man convicted of using illegal labor A South Dakota man is facing a 10-year'prison sentence after being found guilty of hiring illegal workers. A jury found 55-year-old Donald Stangeland of Flandreau, S.D., guilty last week in U.S. District Court in Sioux City of one count of transporting an illegal immigrant and two counts of harboring illegal immigrants. Prosecutors say Stangeland hired illegal immigrants to build grain bins in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota in 2007, knowing the workers were in the United States illegally.

Prosecutors say Stangeland never asked the workers to fill out required forms for employment identification and did not ask for valid identification or proof of work eligibility. Stangeland remains free on bond pending sentencing, which was not immediately scheduled. I CEDAR RAPIDS Diversity Focus wins One Iowa Award A Cedar Rapids organization will be given the One Iowa Award next week for its work promoting diversity and improving the lives of minorities in eastern Iowa. The award will be presented to Diversity Focus on Monday by Lt. Gov.

Patty Judge. Judge said the group has broken down barriers and created a better future for the state. The lieutenant governor created the award to recognize groups and individuals "who have worked for greater inclusion and acceptance of all Iowans." This is the third presentation of the award. SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER HALLIE FLANAGAN Theater director and producer, playwright, educator Because of Flanagan's efforts in the Depression, more than 30 million Americans were exposed to American drama and other live theatrical productions, many of which were new and experimental works. Flanagan sought to achieve high-quality, thought-provoking presentations that might result in social action.

In 1922, while teaching at Grinnell College, Flanagan won recognition as a budding playwright by winning a regional contest sponsored by the Des Moines Little Theater Society for her one-act play "The Curtain." Flanagan was played by actress Cherry Jones in the 1 999 Tim Robbins movie "Cradle Will Rock," titled after a controversial Federal Theater Project opera. You are quoting from this Marlowe. By TOM LONGDEN tlongdendmreg.com Hallie Flanagan, a 5-foot whirlwind, was passionate about theater. During the Depression, she played a vital role in the biggest theater venture America ever attempted. The Federal Theater Project had mixed success and was met with controversy, but Flanagan succeeded in bringing a variety of live performances to struggling Americans.

Hallie Ferguson Flanagan was born in Redfield, S.D., on Aug. 27, 1889, but grew up in Grinnell. Her father, Frederic Ferguson, a traveling salesman, moved his family from South Dakota to Omaha, Chicago and finally Iowa. He and his wife, Louisa Fischer Ferguson, farmed near Grinnell, then moved into town when Hallie was 10. She had a sister, Gladys, and a brother, Kenneth, both younger.

Entering Grinnell College in the fall of 1907, Flanagan was an involved student, joining the Dramatic Club. She graduated in 1911 and taught high school at Sigourney. She met her future husband, fellow Grinnell student John Murray Flanagan of Cedar Rapids, when he rented a room from the Ferguson family. The couple married on Dec. 25, 1912.

Sons Jack and Frederic were born in 1915 and 1917. Murray Flanagan, as he was known, died of tuberculosis in 1919. To support herself and her children, Flanagan taught freshman English and experimental theater at Grinnell College beginning in 1920, facing another untimely tragedy when son Jack died of meningitis in 1922. Her luck changed in 1923-24, when she was chosen to study playwrighting with the noted George Pierce Baker at his unique Workshop 47 at Harvard University. At the same time she earned her master of arts degree from Radcliffe College in 1924, and the next year was appointed by Vassar College to head its Experimental Theatre.

In 1926, Flanagan became the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and for 14 mind-expanding months in 1926-27, she studied modern European theater firsthand. She also relished studies in the Soviet Union, but her trip to Russia, and her fascination with Russian drama, came back to haunt her later, as did two subsequent trips there. During a rare, authentic Vassar production of Euripides' "Hippolytus" in the original Greek in 1931, Flanagan became romantically involved with Philip Haldane Davis, a professor of Greek at Vassar and a widower. The couple married April 28, 1934, and Flanagan acquired three stepchildren. Davis died in 1940.

In the fall of 1934, Flanagan's former Grinnell College classmate, Harry Hopkins, then a top appointee of President Franklin Roosevelt, asked Flanagan to head the Federal Theater Project, a program of the Works Progress Administration. It was the federal government's attempt to employ thousands of Depression-era workers and entertain thousands more with performances offered at DesMoinesRegister.com What you don't want to miss online today Is he a Communist?" Rep. Joe Starnes, questioning Flanagan in 1938 for the House Un-American Activities Committee "I was referring to I Christopher Marlowe. Put in the record that he was the greatest dramatist in the period of Shakespeare, immediately preceding Shakespeare." Hallie Flanagan's response 1 litem 1 Flanagan's influence wide-ranging HER WRITINGS: Flanagan chronicled her first trip to Europe in her 1928 book "Shifting Scenes of the Modern Theater." She wrote about the Federal Theater Project in "Arena" in mid-1940, and in summer 1943 saw the publication of "Dynamo," reporting her days at Vassar. In 1948 she wrote the play "Emc2: A Living Newspaper About the Atomic Age." Flanagan's own story is chronicled best by the 1988 biography "Hallie Flanagan: A Life in the American Theatre" by her stepdaughter, Joanne Bentley.

HER BUDDING STARS: The Federal Theater Project launched the careers of such notables as actors Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, John Houseman, Burt Lancaster, E.G. Marshall and Arlene Francis, composer Virgil Thompson, and directors Joseph Losey, Sidney Lumet, Elia Kazan and Jules Dassin. When Flanagan died, actor Cotten was among those who spoke at her memorial service. Find past articles about Famous Iowans and read Tom Longden's blog at DesMoinesRegister.comfamousiowans. Saturday's most popular stories Here are the 10 most popular stories from 5 a.m.

to 5 p.m. Saturday at DesMoinesRegister.com. 1. Keeler column: Chizik's get-together with Auburn? Weird 2. ISU football: Chizik leaves Ames to coach Auburn 3.

ISU football: Chizik 'serious' candidate for job at Auburn 4. Iowa men's basketball: Hawkeyes make rivals unravel 5. Keeler: Cyclone fans are searching for an explanation 6. Old-time Christmas photo of the day 1213 7. Woman jumps onto road in apparent suicide try 8.

Culver to cut $60 million more from state budget 9. UPDATE: Woman jumps off 1-235 bridge 1 0. Iowa State football: Chizik 'serious' candidate for Auburn Today's staff recommendations Guatemala: Hop at any cost Many Guatemalans were among those arrested in the May 2008 immigration raid in Postville. Learn why so many risked prison and financial ruin to come to Iowa illegally and why many more will come, despite all the risks. DesMoinesRegister.comGuatemala Breaking weather news Keep up to date on all the latest weather-related closings, delays and other information.

Go to DesMoinesRegister.com closings. Order photos Order a print from our new online photo store. Use the code DMRHOLIDAY by Dec. 15 to save 20 percent. Go to DesMoinesRegister.combuyphotos.

Washington powers-that- be of the opinion that FTC productions furthered socialism and communism. In 1938, Flanagan was subpoenaed to testify before the Martin Dies Committee of the House of Representatives the House Un-American Activities Committee and interrogated about the FTC's possible communist leanings. Flanagan was given short shrift during the proceedings. As a result, Congress i withdrew funding and killed the Federal Theater Project on June 30, 1939. In 1942, Flanagan joined Smith College in Massachusetts.

She spent the summer of 1945 visit ing and teaching at the University of Iowa Theater at the invitation of her friend and colleague E.C. Mabie, head of the theater department. That year Flanagan also was diag- nosed with Parkinson's disease. She retired from teaching in 1955. In 1963, Flanagan was hurt in a car crash and moved to the McClelland' Nursing Home at Beacon, N.Y., where she resided three years.

On July 23, 1969, she died at the Ingleside Nursing Home at Old Tappan, N.J. affordable prices. Flanagan was sworn into her new post on Aug. 27, 1935, her 46th birthday. Under her, the Federal Theater Project was ambitious and wide-ranging: classical dramas, pageants, ballets, radio programs, so-called "Negro units," marionette and puppet shows, musical theater, satire, children's theater, foreign language programs, vaudeville, variety shows and circus every conceivable venue.

A highlight and a favorite of Flanagan's was the Living Newspaper, a depiction and commentary on current issues. The most successful was "One Third of a Nation," spotlighting slums. There were unusual productions of Christopher Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" and Shakespeare's "Macbeth," the world premiere of T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" and the "Negro Swing Mikado," with strong supporter Eleanor Roosevelt attending the premiere.

At its peak, the FTC employed more than 12,000 people. Flanagan was in her element, thriving on her work. As time went by, Flanagan's efforts came under a cloud, with many How to Contact Us Kathy Bolttn, Asst. Managing Editor, (515) 284-8283 or kboltendmreg.com Contact a reporter: General e-mail: (515) 284-8065 metroiowadmreg.com.