How Old Is Carman Barnes? Carman Barnes Birthday
Carman Barnes was born on November 20, 1912 and is 111 years old now.
Birthday: November 20, 1912
How Old - Age: 111
Carman Barnes Death Fact Check
Carman is alive and kicking and is currently 111 years old.
Please ignore rumors and hoaxes.
If you have any unfortunate news that this page should be update with, please let us know using this form.
Carman Barnes - Biography
Carman Barnes was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on November 20, 1912. Her father was James Hunter Neal. Her mother, Lois Diantha Mills, was well known throughout the South as a lyric poet and writer of mountain folklore under the names Diantha Mills and later, Diantha Barnes. Carman Barnes took her name from her first step-father, Wellington Barnes, founder and treasurer of Chattanooga`s Dixie-Portland Cement Company, who died in 1927. Her second stepfather, George Pullen Jackson, (1874-1953), was a musicologist, folklorist and educator best known as an authority on Negro and white spirituals.Carman Barnes was educated at the Girls` Preparatory School in Chattanooga and the Ward-Belmont School for Girls in Nashville. She published her first novel, Schoolgirl, when she was sixteen; it became an international best seller. Working with Alfonso Washington Pezet, she dramatized the story and it opened for a short run at the Ritz Theatre on Broadway on her eighteenth birthday. Paramount Pictures bought the rights for $30,000, but it was never made into a film. Barnes would publish four more novels in the next four years. In 1930-31, Barnes` celebrity resulted in writing and acting contracts with Paramount-Publix Pictures Corporation and she went to Hollywood. In later years, she would tell interviewers that she was never given any writing work to do and that while she was photographed "700 times in the first week", she was never given the opportunity to act in a film. Throughout the late 1930s and the 1940s, Barnes explored a range of esoteric pursuits with varying degrees of seriousness. She made a number of attempts to establish "schools", or"`Groups", to share her learning and interests. The most successful of these ventures were a series of lectures by Claude Bragdon and P.D. Ouspensky, respectively. In 1940, Barnes met the architect, theatre designer and writer Claude F. Bragdon and went on to sponsor a series of 19 of his lectures on a variety of topics primarily related to art and mathematics. Later published as The Arch Lectures, these talks were organized and hosted by Barnes and attended by members of their respective circles and other invitees. In 1941 Barnes began to study with the Russian philosopher and mathematical physicist Petr Demianovich Ouspensky both privately and via a "Group". Correspondence and materials strictly related to the Bragdon and Ouspensky lectures, as well as Barnes` "Girls` Group" may be found in Box 9; both the Bragdon and Ouspensky correspondence files contain references to their lecture series as well. In 1945, Barnes married Hamilton Fish Armstrong, writer on international politics and editor of Foreign Affairs. Together they wrote A Passionate Victorian, a play about the English actress Fanny Kemble. It was never produced. Following more than ten years of publishers` rejections of various works, Barnes` novel Time Lay Asleep was published in 1946. Barnes and Armstrong separated after a few years and formally divorced in 1951. In that year, Barnes travelled to Europe, settling in Austria. She suffered the first of several breakdowns in the summer of 1952 and was treated with insulin shock therapy and psychotherapy, among other methods. Barnes would never return to the United States. She died in Salzburg, Austria on August 19, 1980.
