| Garrison Keillor | |
|---|---|
 Keillor in 2009 | |
| Birth name | Gary Edward Keillor |
| Born | (1942-08-07)August 7, 1942 (age 82) Anoka, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Medium | Radio, print, film |
| Alma mater | University of Minnesota |
| Years active | 1969–present |
| Genres | Observational comedy, storytelling |
| Subject(s) | American culture (especiallythe Midwest),American politics |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | www |
Gary Edward "Garrison"Keillor (/ˈkiːlər/; born August 7, 1942) is an American author, singer,humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created theMinnesota Public Radio (MPR) showA Prairie Home Companion (calledGarrison Keillor's Radio Show in some international syndication), which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota townLake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, includingLake Wobegon DaysandLeaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations includeGuy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared inA Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast programThe Writer's Almanac, which pairs poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.
In November 2017, Minnesota Public Radio cut all business ties with Keillor after an allegation of inappropriate behavior with a freelance writer forA Prairie Home Companion. Internal and external investigations by MPR concluded Keillor had engaged in dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over a period of years, including unwanted sexual touching.[1] On April 13, 2018, MPR and Keillor announced a settlement that allows archives ofA Prairie Home Companion andThe Writer's Almanac to be publicly available again, and soon thereafter, Keillor began publishing new episodes ofThe Writer's Almanac on his website.[2] He also continues to tour a stage version ofA Prairie Home Companion; these shows are not broadcast by NPR orAmerican Public Media.[3]
Keillor was born inAnoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor. His father was a carpenter and postal worker[4][5] ofEnglish ancestry; Keillor's paternal grandfather was fromKingston, Ontario.[6][7] His maternal grandparents wereScottish emigrants fromGlasgow.[8][9] He was the third of six children, with three brothers and two sisters.[10]
Keillor's family belonged to thePlymouth Brethren, anEvangelical Christian movement that he has since left. In 2006, he toldChristianity Today that he was attending the St. John the EvangelistEpiscopal church inSaint Paul, Minnesota, after previously attending aLutheran church in New York.[11][12]
Keillor graduated fromAnoka High School in 1960 and from theUniversity of Minnesota with abachelor's degree in English in 1966.[13] During college, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today asRadio K.
In his 2004 bookHomegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America, Keillor mentions some of his noteworthy ancestors, includingJohn Crandall,[14] who was an associate ofRoger Williams, who foundedRhode Island and the first AmericanBaptist church; andPrudence Crandall, who founded the first African-American women's school in America.[15]
Garrison Keillor started his professional radio career in November 1969 with Minnesota Educational Radio (MER), laterMinnesota Public Radio (MPR), which today distributes programs under theAmerican Public Media (APM) brand. He hosted a weekday drive-time broadcast calledA Prairie Home Entertainment, on KSJR FM atSt. John's University inCollegeville. The show's eclectic music was a major divergence from the station's usualclassical fare. During this time he submitted fiction toThe New Yorker magazine, where his first story for that publication, "Local Family Keeps Son Happy," appeared in September 1970.[16]
Keillor resigned fromThe Morning Program in February 1971 in protest of what he considered interference with his musical programming; as part of his protest, he played nothing but theBeach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" during one broadcast. When he returned to the station in October, the show was dubbedA Prairie Home Companion.[16]
Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night radio program to his 1973 assignment to write about theGrand Ole Opry forThe New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited studio space. In August 1973, MPR announced plans to broadcast a Saturday night version ofA Prairie Home Companion with live musicians.[16][17]
A Prairie Home Companion (PHC) debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974; it featured guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots forPHC fictitious sponsors such as Powdermilk Biscuits, the Ketchup Advisory Board, and the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM);[18] it presented parodic serial melodramas, such asThe Adventures ofGuy Noir, Private Eye andThe Lives of the Cowboys. Keillor voiced Noir, the cowboy Lefty, and other recurring characters, and provided lead or backup vocals for some of the show's musical numbers. The show aired from theFitzgerald Theater inSt. Paul.
After the show's intermission, Keillor read clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by members of the theater audience in exchange for an honorarium. Also in the second half of the show, Keillor delivered a monologue calledThe News from Lake Wobegon, a fictitious town based in part on Keillor's hometown ofAnoka, Minnesota, and onFreeport and other small towns inStearns County, Minnesota, where he lived in the early 1970s.[19]Lake Wobegon is a quintessentially Minnesota small town characterized by the narrator as a place "... where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."
The originalPHC ran until 1987, when Keillor ended it to focus on other projects. In 1989, he launched a new live radio program from New York City,The American Radio Company of the Air, which had essentially the same format asPHC. In 1992, he moved ARC back to St. Paul, and a year later changed the name back toA Prairie Home Companion; it remained a fixture of Saturday night radio broadcasting for decades.[20]
On a typical broadcast ofA Prairie Home Companion, Keillor's name was not mentioned unless a guest addressed him by name, although some sketches featured Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler. In the closing credits, which Keillor read, he gave himself no billing or credit except "written bySarah Bellum," a joking reference to his own brain.
Keillor regularly took the radio company on the road to broadcast from popular venues around the United States; the touring production typically featured local celebrities and skits incorporating local color. In April 2000, he took the program to Edinburgh, Scotland, producing two performances in the city's Queen's Hall, which were broadcast by BBC Radio. He toured Scotland with the program to celebrate its 25th anniversary. (In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, the program is known asGarrison Keillor's Radio Show.) Keillor produced broadcast performances similar toPHC but without the "Prairie Home Companion" brand, as in his 2008 appearance at the Oregon Bach Festival.[21] He was also the host ofThe Writer's Almanac, from 1993 to 2017, which, likePHC, was produced and distributed by American Public Media.
In a March 2011 interview, Keillor announced that he would be retiring fromA Prairie Home Companion in 2013;[22] but in a December 2011 interview with theSioux City Journal, Keillor said: "The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?"[23] During an interview on July 20, 2015, Keillor announced his intent to retire from the show after the 2015–2016 season, saying, "I have a lot of other things that I want to do. I mean, nobody retires anymore. Writers never retire. But this is my last season. This tour this summer is the farewell tour."[24]
Keillor's final episode of the show was recorded live for an audience of 18,000 fans at theHollywood Bowl in California on July 1, 2016,[25] and broadcast the next day, ending 42 seasons of the show.[26] After the performance, PresidentBarack Obama phoned Keillor to congratulate him.[27] The show continued on October 15, 2016, withChris Thile as its host.
On November 29, 2017, theStar Tribune reported thatMinnesota Public Radio was terminating all business relationships with Keillor as a result of "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him." In January 2018, MPR CEO Jon McTaggart elaborated that they had received allegations of "dozens" of sexually inappropriate incidents from the individual, including requests for sexual contact.[28] Keillor denied any wrongdoing and said his firing stems from an incident when he touched a woman's bare back while trying to console her. He said he had apologized to her soon after, that they had already made up, and that he was surprised to hear the allegations when her lawyer called.
In its statement of termination, MPR announced that Keillor would keep his executive credit for the show, but that since he owns the trademark for the phrase "prairie home companion", they would cease rebroadcasting episodes ofA Prairie Home Companion featuring Keillor and remove the trademarked phrase fromthe radio show hosted by Chris Thile. MPR also eliminated its business connections to PrairieHome.org and stopped distributing Keillor's daily programThe Writer's Almanac.[29]The Washington Post also canceled Keillor's weekly column when they learned he had continued writing columns, including a controversial piece criticizingAl Franken's resignation because of sexual misconduct allegations, without revealing that he was under investigation at MPR.[30][31]
Several fans wrote MPR to protest Keillor's firing, but only 153 members canceled their memberships because of it. In January 2018, Keillor announced he was in mediation with MPR over the firing.[32] On January 23, 2018, MPR News reported further on the investigation after interviewing almost 60 people who had worked with Keillor. The story described other alleged sexual misconduct by Keillor, and a $16,000 severance check for a woman who was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement to prevent her from talking about her time at MPR (she refused and never deposited the check).[28]
Keillor received a letter from the MPR CEO, Jon McTaggart, dated April 5, 2018, confirming that both sides wanted archives ofA Prairie Home Companion andThe Writer's Almanac to be publicly available again. In April 2018, MPR and Keillor announced a settlement under which MPR would restore the online archives.[33]
Also due to the allegations of inappropriate behavior, Keillor's segment in thePBS seriesFinding Your Roots episode that aired on December 19, 2017, was replaced by an older segment featuringMaya Rudolph.[34]
At age 13, Keillor adopted the pen name "Garrison" to distinguish his personal life from his professional writing.[35] He commonly uses "Garrison" in public and in other media.
Keillor has been called "[o]ne of the most perceptive and witty commentators about Midwestern life" byRandall Balmer inEncyclopedia of Evangelicalism.[36] He has written numerous magazine and newspaper articles and more than a dozen books for adults as well as children. In addition to writing forThe New Yorker, he has written forThe Atlantic Monthly andNational Geographic.[37] He has also written forSalon.com and authored anadvice column there under the name "Mr. Blue." Following a heart operation, he resigned on September 4, 2001, his last column being titled "Every dog has his day":[38]
In 2004, Keillor published a collection of political essays,Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America, and in June 2005 he began a column calledThe Old Scout,[39] which ran at Salon.com and insyndicated newspapers. The column went on hiatus in April 2010 so that he could "finish a screenplay and start writing a novel."
On November 1, 2006, Keillor opened anindependent bookstore, "Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop." in theBlair Arcade Building at the southwest corner of Selby and N. Western Avenues in the Cathedral Hill area in theSummit-University neighborhood ofSaint Paul, Minnesota.[40]
In April 2012, the store moved to a new location on Snelling Avenue across fromMacalester College in theMacalester-Groveland neighborhood.[41] In April 2019, Keillor sold his interest in the bookstore.[42] The store was renamed Next Chapter and is in the same location.[43]
Probably owing in part to his distinctiveNorth-Central accent, Keillor is often used as avoice-over actor. Some notable appearances include:
In 2006, Keillor wrote and portrayed himself in themusicalcomedy filmA Prairie Home Companion, directed byRobert Altman. It is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running publicradio show of thesame name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. It features anensemble cast includingWoody Harrelson,Tommy Lee Jones,Kevin Kline,Lindsay Lohan,Virginia Madsen,John C. Reilly,Maya Rudolph,Meryl Streep, andLily Tomlin.
InSlate, Sam Anderson called Keillor "very clearly a genius. His range and stamina alone are incredible—after 30 years, he rarely repeats himself—and he has the genuine wisdom of aCosby orMark Twain." But Keillor's "willful simplicity," Anderson wrote, "is annoying because, after a while, it starts to feel prescriptive. Being a responsible adult doesn't necessarily mean speaking slowly about tomatoes." Anderson also noted that in 1985, whenTime magazine called Keillor the funniest man in America,Bill Cosby said, "That's true if you're apilgrim."[46]
Keillor's style, particularly his speaking voice, has often beenparodied.
Keillor is a member of theDemocratic-Farmer-Labor Party.[52] He is 6 ft 3 in (191 cm) tall.[53] He considers himself aloner and prefers not to make eye contact with people. Though not formally diagnosed, he also considers himself to be on the high-functioning end of theautism spectrum.[54] He spoke about his experiences as an autistic person in his keynote address at the 19th Annual Minnesota Autism Conference in 2014.[55][56]
Keillor has been married three times.[57] He was married to Mary Guntzel from 1965 to 1976; they had one son. From 1985 to 1990 he was married to Ulla Skaerved, a formerexchange student from Denmark at Keillor's high school whom he re-encountered at a class reunion.[58][59] In 1995, Keillor married classical string player Jenny Lind Nilsson (born 1957), who is also from Keillor's home town ofAnoka, Minnesota.[59] They have one daughter.[60]
Between his first and second marriages, Keillor was romantically involved with Margaret Moos, who worked as a producer ofA Prairie Home Companion.[61]
On September 7, 2009, Keillor was briefly hospitalized after suffering a minorstroke. He returned to work a few days later.[62]
In 2006, after a visit to aUnited Methodist church inHighland Park, Texas, Keillor created a local controversy with his remarks about the event,[63] including the rhetorical suggestion of a connection between event participants and supporters of torture and a statement creating an impression of political intimidation: "I walked in, was met by two burly security men ... and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics." In response, the lecture series coordinator said the two "burly security men" were a local policeman and the church's own security supervisor, both present because the agreement with Keillor's publisher specified that the venue provide security. In addition, the coordinator said that Keillor arrived at the church, declined an introduction, and took the stage without an opportunity to mingle with the audience, so he did not know when these warnings might have been dispensed. The publicist concurred, saying that Keillor did not have contact with any church members or people in the audience before he spoke.[64]
Supposedly, before Keillor's remarks, participants at the event had considered the visit cordial and warm. Asked to respond, Keillor stuck to his story, describing the people who advised him not to discuss politics and saying he had no security guards at other stops on the tour.[65]
In 2007, Keillor wrote a column that in part criticized "stereotypical" gay parents, who he said were "sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers."[66] In response to the strong reactions of many readers, Keillor said:
I live in a small world – the world of entertainment, musicians, writers – in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes ... And in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other a lot. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial ... and so gay people feel besieged to some degree and rightly so ... My column spoke as we would speak in my small world, and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I.[67]
In 2008, Keillor created a controversy in St. Paul when he filed a lawsuit against his neighbor's plan to build an addition on her home, citing his need for "light and air" and a view of "open space and beyond". Keillor's home is significantly larger than others in his neighborhood and it would still be significantly larger than his neighbor's with its planned addition.[68] Keillor came to an undisclosed settlement with his neighbor shortly after the story became public.[69]
In 2009, one of Keillor's "Old Scout" columns contained a reference to "lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys" and a complaint about "Silent Night" as rewritten byUnitarians, upsetting some readers.[70] A Unitarian minister named Cynthia Landrum responded, "Listening to him talk about us over the years, it's becoming more and more evident that he isn't laughing with us—he's laughing at us",[71] while Jeff Jacoby ofThe Boston Globe called Keillor "cranky and intolerant".[72]
 |
| Title | Volume/Part | Date | Page(s) | Subject(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Christmas Story | December 25, 1989 | 40–42 | A boy, Jim, neglected by his plutocrat parents, runs away on Christmas Eve with his ill dog. | |
| Studio B | July 29, 1991 | 27–32 | Strange things happen at radio station WLT's Studio B | |
| Al Denny | March 11, 1991 | 30–32 | Fictional mini-autobiography of author of self-help books | |
| Zeus the Lutheran | October 29, 1990 | 32–37 | The goddess Hera's lawyer meets Zeus in a café to try to ... | |
| How the Savings and Loans Were Saved | October 16, 1989 | 42 | Huns take over Chicago S & L offices... | |
| Meeting Famous People | April 18, 1988 | 34–36 | The trial of a famous singer who assaulted a fan | |
| Your Book Saved My Life | December 28, 1987 | 40–41 | A misunderstood author's books have been difficult for his readers... | |
| End of an Era | October 28, 1985 | 31–32 | Fiction about his friends' reactions to the death of an aging hippie. | |
| What Did We Do Wrong? | September 16, 1985 | 32–35 | Fiction about Annie Szemanski, the first woman to play major league baseball. | |
| The People V. Jim | July 8, 1985 | 21 | An author of so-called list articles is questioned by a lawyer | |
| Who We Were and What We Meant by It | April 16, 1984 | 44–45 | Fiction about the so-called Momentist movement |
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Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata