Olivia Harrison
Olivia Trinidad Harrison (née Arias; born May 18, 1948)[2] is an American author and film producer, and the widow of English musician George Harrison of the Beatles. She first worked in the music industry in Los Angeles, for A&M Records, where she met Harrison and then helped run his Dark Horse record label. In 1990, she launched the Romanian Angel Appeal to raise funds for the thousands of orphans left abandoned in Romania after the fall of Communism there.
Olivia Harrison
Film producer, author, curator, philanthropist
1972–present
Since her husband's death in 2001, Olivia has continued George’s international aid efforts through projects in partnership with UNICEF, and is the curator of film, book and music releases related to his legacy. She represents his voice on the Beatles' Apple Corps board and is similarly a director of his charity organisation, the Material World Foundation (MWF). Under the auspices of MWF, she has sponsored the preservation of film history in collaboration with American director Martin Scorsese. These restoration projects include short films by Charlie Chaplin and works from 1940s Mexican cinema.
She and her husband shared an interest in Eastern mysticism and spiritual practice, and her presence in his life, starting in the mid-1970s, began a period of more optimistic content in Harrison's music. At their Friar Park home in December 1999, when she overpowered a knife-wielding intruder who had repeatedly stabbed George, she was recognized as having saved her husband's life. Among Harrison's film projects, her production of Concert for George won the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video in 2005, and her co-production of Scorsese's 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World won an Emmy Award in the category "Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special". She authored books to accompany both these films, and in 2017 compiled a revised edition of George's 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine. Her son with George, Dhani Harrison, is also a musician.
Life[edit]
Childhood and music industry career[edit]
Arias was born in Los Angeles.[1] Her grandparents migrated to California,[3] having grown up in Guanajuato in central Mexico.[1] Her father, Zeke, was a dry cleaner, and her mother, Mary Louise, worked as a seamstress. Arias's siblings include Peter and Louise.[4] Spending her early childhood in Los Angeles, she grew up with a Mexican, Spanish-speaking entourage.[5] In a 2016 interview, she recalled that Mexican music and films were a regular part of her upbringing, with Zeke having been a singer and guitarist, and that Jorge Negrete, Trío Calaveras and Trío Los Panchos were among the artists she enjoyed.[1] Later in her youth her family moved west to Hawthorne where she attended Hawthorne High School in the 1960s.[4]
Philanthropy[edit]
As of 2002, Harrison's 1990 Romanian Angel initiative was still active.[86] In May 1990, before the release of the fundraising single and album, ten trucks filled with food, medical supplies and clothing, together with 32 aid workers, were dispatched to Romania.[87] According to Harrison, all the funds raised by the appeal went directly to the cause, as the administrative costs were paid for by her and the other RAA founders.[34] In September 2000, she and George met with local representatives to monitor the progress of the RAA-funded programs for orphanage sanitation and professional staff.[86]
Harrison has continued to develop George's philanthropic initiatives.[45] She is a director of the Material World Foundation (MWF),[88] which he established in 1973[89] to "sponsor diverse forms of artistic expression and to encourage the exploration of alternative life views and philosophies",[90] and of the Harrison Family Foundation.[91] The Harrison Family Scholarship was launched by the MWF in 2002. It awards scholarships at Brown University in the United States, with preference given to non-American students, especially those from India and Mexico.[92]
In late 2005, coinciding with the reissue of the album and film from the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, she established The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF with an initial focus on programs in Bangladesh.[93] As of July 2015, the fund had also assisted children affected by civil conflict, natural disasters or poverty in Brazil, India, Angola, Romania, the Horn of Africa, Burma and Nepal.[94] Harrison contributed to actress Salma Hayek's UNICEF fundraising campaign in response to the September 2017 Mexican earthquakes. Through the auspices of The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, she then pledged to double the next $200,000 donation made to the campaign.[95]
One of the fund's initiatives has been to introduce floating schools, which allow children in remote areas of Bangladesh that are affected by seasonal flooding to continue attending school.[96] In her work as a UNICEF sponsor, she visited Bangladesh in February 2011[97] to oversee the fund's ongoing efforts there,[98] and in 2015 promoted the UNICEF Kid Power program.[99]