Roberts Blossom

Pictured: Creepy character actor, and seated next to him, Roberts Blossom.
Roberts Blossom (March 25, 1924 - July 8, 2011) was that scary old man in Home Alone who was actually a nice old man.

He was a performer of stage and screen, you know his face, though since he retired from acting he has devoted himself entirely to his deep love of writing poetry.

Born in New Haven in the early 20s, his family soon relocated to Shaker Heights, and he attended Hawken School.

He went away to college, and served in WWII, returning to Cleveland to create a career in theater, as both an actor and a director at Karamu House and Candlelight Theatre.


Oh, and this is the trailer for Deranged, the only film in which Roberts Blossom played the main character. DO NOT WATCH THIS TRAILER.

His uncle, Dudley S. Blossom (March 10, 1879 - Oct. 7, 1938), was an important corporate and philantropic figure in Cleveland in the early 20th century.

Dudley Blossom was engaged with the Standard Tool Company, Central National Bank and Blossom Lock Company (among several others) and after serving with the Red Cross during World War I, was appointed city of Cleveland welfare director, and having a strong hand in developing City Hospital and Blossom Hill Home.

Dudley Blossom was also Chairman of the Great Lakes Exposition, and President of the Cleveland Orchestra during the late 1930s. Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls is named for him.


This weekend, conductor David Afkham makes his Cleveland Orchestra debut leading Beethoven's brilliant Third Piano Concerto and -- DUDE! Did you forget to pack the bong?
Roberts Blossom made his Off-Broadway debut in 1955 in the Shaw's Village Wooing, and the performance won him the first of three Obie Awards.


Blossom.
Sources:
Wikipedia
cleveland.com
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
The New York Times

Cleveland Orchestra

Severance Hall, built with a $1.5M donation from John L Severance in 1929, was completed in 1931 and has served as the home of the Cleveland Orchestra ever since.

In 1936 the orchestra was led by Polish conductor Artur Rodziński, pictured. He raised the prominence of the already noteworthy orchestra even higher, and granted American debuts to several innovative and modern works such as Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk among 14 other staged operas, and increased the number of orchestra radio broadcasts.

1936 also marked the performance of the Cleveland Women's Orchestra, the oldest orchestra of its kind in the world.

The President of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1936 was Dudley S. Blossom, whose name was given to the Blossom Music Center, which opened in 1966.