1.
Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
2.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
3.
Bob Hope
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Bob Hope KBE, KC*SG, KSS was an American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, athlete, centenarian and author. With a career spanning nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in over 70 feature films and short films, in addition to hosting the Academy Awards 19 times, he appeared in many stage productions and television roles and was the author of 14 books. The song Thanks for the Memory is widely regarded as Hopes signature tune, born in Eltham, Kent, Hope arrived in America with his family at the age of four and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He began his career in business in the early 1920s, initially on stage. He was praised for his timing, specializing in one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes. He also appeared in numerous specials for NBC television, starting in 1950, Hope participated in the sports of golf and boxing and owned a small stake in his hometown baseball team, the Cleveland Indians. He died at age 100 at his home in Toluca Lake, Hope was born in Eltham, Kent the fifth of seven sons. They married in April 1891 and lived at 12 Greenwood Street in Barry, before moving to Whitehall, Bristol, and then St George, Bristol. In 1908, the family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia and passed through Ellis Island on March 30,1908, before moving to Cleveland, from age 12, Hope earned pocket money by busking, singing, dancing, and performing comedy. He entered many dancing and amateur talent contests and won a prize in 1915 for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin, for a time, he attended the Boys Industrial School in Lancaster, Ohio. As an adult, he donated sizable sums of money to the institution, Hope had a brief career as a boxer in 1919, fighting under the name Packy East. He had three wins and one loss and participated in a few staged charity bouts later in life, Hope worked as a butchers assistant and a lineman in his teens and early twenties. Hope also had a stint at Chandler Motor Car Company. Deciding on a business career, he and his girlfriend signed up for dancing lessons. Encouraged after they performed in an engagement at a club, Hope formed a partnership with Lloyd Durbin. Silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw them perform in 1925 and found work with a touring troupe called Hurleys Jolly Follies. Within a year, Hope had formed an act called the Dancemedians with George Byrne, Hope and Byrne had an act as a pair of Siamese twins as well and danced and sang while wearing blackface before friends advised Hope that he was funnier as himself. In 1929, Hope informally changed his first name to Bob, in one version of the story, he named himself after racecar driver Bob Burman
4.
How Green Was My Valley (film)
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How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The movie, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel of the name, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. The movie features Walter Pidgeon, Maureen OHara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp and it was nominated for ten Academy Awards, famously beating Citizen Kane for Best Picture along with winning Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Supporting Actor. The movie tells of the Morgans, a hard-working Welsh mining family living in the heart of the South Wales Valleys during the 19th century, the story chronicles life in the South Wales coalfields, the loss of that way of life and its effects on the family. The fictional village in the movie is based on Gilfach Goch, Llewellyn spent many summers there visiting his grandfather, in 1990, the movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The Academy Film Archive preserved How Green Was My Valley during 1998, the movie begins with a monologue by an older Huw Morgan, I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And Im going from my valley, and this time, I shall never return. The valley and its villages are now blackened by the mines that fill the area. A young Huw, the youngest child of Gwilym Morgan, walks home with his father to meet his mother, Beth. His older brothers, Ianto, Ivor, Davy, Gwilym Jr. and Owen all work in the mines with their father. Huws childhood is idyllic, the town, not yet overrun with mining spoil, is beautiful, Huw is smitten on meeting Bronwyn, a girl engaged to be married to his oldest brother, Ivor. At the boisterous wedding party Angharad meets the new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd, trouble begins when the mine owner decreases wages, and the miners strike in protest. Gwilyms attempt to mediate by not endorsing a strike estranges him from the miners as well as his older sons. Beth interrupts a late night meeting of the strikers, threatening to kill anyone who harms her husband, while returning home, crossing the fields in a snowstorm in the dark, Beth falls into the river. Huw dives in to save her with the help of the townspeople and he recovers with the help of Mr. Gruffydd, which further endears him to Angharad. The strike is settled, and Gwilym and his sons reconcile. Angharad is courted by the owners son, Iestyn Evans. Mr Gruffydd loves her too, to the delight of the gossipy townswomen
5.
Sergeant York (film)
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Sergeant York is a 1941 biographical film about the life of Alvin York, one of the most-decorated American soldiers of World War I. It was directed by Howard Hawks and was the film of the year. The film was based on the diary of Sergeant Alvin York, as edited by Tom Skeyhill, and adapted by Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston, Howard Koch, and Sam Cowan. York refused, several times, to authorize a film version of his life story, Cooper went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal. The film also won for Best Film Editing and was nominated in nine categories, including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor. The American Film Institute ranked the film 57th in the its 100 most inspirational American movies and it also rated Alvin York 35th in its list of the top 50 heroes in American cinema. In 2008, Sergeant York was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Alvin York, a poor young Tennessee hillbilly, is a marksman, but a neer-do-well prone to drinking and fighting. He then meets winsome Gracie Williams, and works night and day at strenuous odd jobs to accumulate the payment for a certain bottomland farm so shell marry him. Alvin is given an option on the bottomland by its owner as part of an agreement that Alvin can raise the purchase price in sixty days. Alvin drinks heavily and swears revenge, late that night, Alvin is struck by lightning during a rainstorm while en route to attack the man who had cheated him. He survives the lightning strike, but his mule is knocked down, finding himself outside the church house where a revival meeting is being held, he enters and undergoes a religious awakening and vows never to get angry at anyone ever again. He makes amends with the men who cheated him out of the land and he reluctantly reports to Camp Gordon for basic training. His superiors discover that he is a marksman and decide to promote him to corporal. York still wants nothing to do with the Army and killing, Major Buxton, his sympathetic commanding officer, tries to change Yorks mind, citing sacrifices made by others all throughout the history of the United States. He gives York a leave to go home and think it over and he promises York a recommendation for his exemption as a conscientious objector if York remains unconvinced. While York is fasting and pondering, the wind blows his Bible open to the verse Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesars, and unto God the things that are Gods. York reports back for duty and tells his superiors that he can serve his country, despite not having everything figured out to his satisfaction, York is still ridiculed by some superiors for his beliefs, until he demonstrates his skill in firing his rifle to the surprise of all
6.
13th Academy Awards
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The 13th Academy Awards honored American film achievements in 1940. This was the first year that sealed envelopes were used to keep secret the names of the winners which led to the phrase, May I have the envelope. The accounting firm of Price Waterhouse was hired to count the ballots, for the first time, the award for Best Screenplay was split into two separate categories, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Independent producer David O. Selznick, who had produced the previous years big winner Gone with the Wind, also produced the Best Picture winner in 1940, Rebecca –, Selznick was the first to produce two consecutive winners of the Best Picture Oscar. The films studio – United Artists – was the last of the film studios to win the Best Picture Oscar. Rebecca was the first American-made film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock had two films nominated for Best Picture, the other being Foreign Correspondent. Two other directors also had two films in the running this year, Sam Wood and John Ford, pinocchio was the first animated film to take home competitive Oscars, for both Best Score and Best Song, starting a long tradition of animated films winning in these categories. The Thief of Bagdad received the most Oscars of the evening, winners are listed first and highlighted in boldface. Bob Hope Colonel Nathan Levinson For the first time, names of all winners remained secret until the moment they received their awards, franklin D. Roosevelt gave a six-minute direct radio address to the attendees from the White House. It is the first time an American president participated in the event
7.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
8.
Citizen Kane
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Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welless first feature film, nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. It topped the American Film Institutes 100 Years,100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. Citizen Kane is particularly praised for its cinematography, music, and narrative structure, upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Kanes career in the world is born of idealistic social service. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is told through the research of a reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnates dying word. After the Broadway successes of Welless Mercury Theatre and the controversial 1938 radio broadcast The War of the Worlds on The Mercury Theatre on the Air and he signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Unusually for a director, he was given the freedom to develop his own story, to use his own cast and crew. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane, principal photography took place in 1940 and the film received its American release in 1941. While a critical success, Citizen Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box office, the film faded from view after its release but was subsequently returned to the publics attention when it was praised by such French critics as André Bazin and given an American revival in 1956. The film was released on Blu-ray on September 13,2011, in a mansion in Xanadu, a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles Foster Kane is on his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters a word, Rosebud, and dies, a newsreel obituary tells the life story of Kane, an enormously wealthy newspaper publisher. Kanes death becomes sensational news around the world, and the newsreels producer tasks reporter Jerry Thompson with discovering the meaning of Rosebud, Thompson sets out to interview Kanes friends and associates. He approaches Kanes second wife, Susan Alexander Kane, now an alcoholic who runs her own nightclub, Thompson goes to the private archive of the late banker Walter Parks Thatcher. Through Thatchers written memoirs, Thompson learns that Kanes childhood began in poverty in Colorado, in 1871, after a gold mine was discovered on her property, Kanes mother Mary Kane sends Charles away to live with Thatcher so that he would be properly educated. While Thatcher and Charles parents discuss arrangements inside, the young Kane plays happily with a sled in the snow outside his parents boarding-house and protests being sent to live with Thatcher. Years later, after gaining control over his trust fund at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business. He takes control of the New York Inquirer and starts publishing scandalous articles that attack Thatchers business interests, after the stock market crash in 1929, Kane is forced to sell controlling interest of his newspaper empire to Thatcher
9.
John Ford
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John Ford was an American film director. His four Academy Awards for Best Director remain a record, one of the films for which he won the award, How Green Was My Valley, also won Best Picture. In a career spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films and he is widely regarded as one of the most important. Fords work was held in regard by his colleagues, with Orson Welles. Ford made frequent use of shooting and long shots, in which his characters were framed against a vast, harsh. Ford was born John Martin Jack Feeney in Cape Elizabeth, Maine to John Augustine Feeney and Barbara Abbey Curran and his father, John Augustine, was born in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland in 1854. Barbara Curran had been born in the Aran Islands, in the town of Kilronan on the island of Inishmore, John A. Feeneys grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of a local gentry family, the Morrises of Spiddal. John Augustine and Barbara Curran arrived in Boston and Portland respectively in May and they married in 1875 and became American citizens five years later on September 11,1880. John Augustine lived in the Munjoy Hill neighborhood of Portland, Maine with his family, and would try farming, fishing, working for the gas company, running a saloon, and being an alderman. Feeney attended Portland High School, Portland, Maine, where he was a successful fullback and he earned the nickname Bull because of the way he would lower his helmet and charge the line. A Portland pub is named Bull Feeneys in his honor and he later moved to California and in 1914 began working in film production as well as acting for his older brother Francis, adopting Jack Ford as a professional name. In addition to credited roles, he appeared uncredited as a Klansman in D. W. Griffiths 1915 The Birth of a Nation and he married Mary McBride Smith on July 3,1920, and they had two children. His daughter Barbara was married to singer and actor Ken Curtis from 1952 to 1964, what difficulty was caused by the two marrying is unclear as the level of John Fords commitment to the Catholic faith is disputed. A strain would have been Fords many extramarital relationships, John Ford began his career in film after moving to California in July 1914. He followed in the footsteps of his older brother Francis Ford, twelve years his senior. John Ford started out in his brothers films as an assistant, handyman, stuntman and occasional actor, frequently doubling for his brother, Francis gave his younger brother his first acting role in The Mysterious Rose. Despite an often combative relationship, within three years Jack had progressed to become Francis chief assistant and often worked as his cameraman, by the time Jack Ford was given his first break as a director, Francis profile was declining and he ceased working as a director soon after. One notable feature of John Fords films is that he used a company of actors
10.
Academy Award for Best Director
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The Academy Award for Best Director is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of a director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS, winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 89 films that have been awarded Best Picture,63 have also been awarded Best Director, since its inception, the award has been given to 69 directors or directing teams. John Ford has received the most awards in this category with four, william Wyler was nominated on twelve occasions, more than any other individual. As of the 2017 ceremony, Damien Chazelle is the most recent winner in category for his work on La La Land. Chazelle also became the youngest director in history to receive this award, two directing teams have shared the award, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The Coen brothers are the siblings to have won the award. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full calendar year from January 1 to December 31. org The Academy Awards Database Oscar. com
11.
The Grapes of Wrath (film)
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The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbecks 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck. The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family, the motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search of work and opportunities for the family members. The film is considered as one of the greatest American films of all time. The film opens with Tom Joad, released from prison and hitchhiking his way back to his parents farm in Oklahoma. Tom finds an itinerant ex-preacher named Jim Casy sitting under a tree by the side of the road, Casy was the preacher who baptized Tom, but now Casy has lost the spirit and his faith. Casy goes with Tom to the Joad property only to find it deserted, there, they meet Muley Graves who is hiding out. In a flashback, he describes how farmers all over the area were forced from their farms by the holders of the land. A local boy, hired for the purpose, is shown knocking down Muleys house with a Caterpillar tractor, the large Joad family of twelve leaves at daybreak, along with Casy, who decides to accompany them. They pack everything into a dilapidated 1926 Hudson Super Six sedan adapted to serve as a truck in order to make the journey to the promised land of California. The trip along Highway 66 is arduous, and it takes a toll on the Joad family. The elderly Grandpa dies along the way and they park in a camp and meet a man, a migrant returning from California, who laughs at Pas optimism about conditions in California. He speaks bitterly about his experiences in the West, the family arrives at the first transient migrant campground for workers and finds the camp is crowded with other starving, jobless and desperate travelers. Their truck slowly makes its way through the road between the shanty houses and around the camps hungry-faced inhabitants. Tom says, Sure dont look none too prosperous, after some trouble with a so-called agitator, the Joads leave the camp in a hurry. The Joads make their way to another migrant camp, the Keene Ranch, after doing some work in the fields, they discover the high food prices in the company store for meat and other products. The store is the one in the area, by a long shot. Later they find a group of migrant workers are striking, and he goes to a secret meeting in the dark woods
12.
Joan Fontaine
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Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland known by the stage name Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress, best known for her starring roles in classic Hollywood films. Fontaine appeared in over 45 feature films in a career spanned five decades. Born in Tokyo to British parents, Fontaine moved with her mother and sister, actress Olivia de Havilland and she was an anaemic child and her childhood was subsequently marred by poor health, which did, however, improve by her teen years. After living and attending school in Japan for a short while, she began her career in 1935. After some minor roles, she received her first starring role in The Man Who Found Himself, however, she failed to make a significant impression, a third Oscar nomination came with the film The Constant Nymph. She appeared mostly in films through the 1940s- including the film Letter from an Unknown Woman. By the next decade, her career began to decline and she moved into stage and she appeared in fewer films into the 1960s, her final feature film being The Witches. Fontaine was active in radio, television, and the stage for most of her middle to later life and she released an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, she continued to act until her last performance in 1994. Fontaine lived in Carmel Highlands, California, where she owned a home and she died there of natural causes at the age of 96 in 2013. Having won an Academy Award for her role in Suspicion, Fontaine is the actor to have won an Academy Award for acting in a Hitchcock film. Furthermore, her sister and she remain the only siblings to have won major acting Academy Awards, married four times, she had one child by birth and one child by adoption, from whom she was later estranged. Her relationship with her sister was long known to be acrimonious, Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan, to English parents. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland, was educated at the University of Cambridge and served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney. Her mother, Lilian Augusta de Havilland Fontaine, was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and her mother returned to work with the stage name Lillian Fontaine after her daughters achieved prominence in the 1940s. Joans paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, an aircraft known for the De Havilland Mosquito. Her paternal grandfather, the Reverend Charles Richard de Havilland, was from a family from Guernsey, the family settled in Saratoga, California, and Fontaines health improved dramatically. She was educated at nearby Los Gatos High School, and was soon taking diction lessons alongside her elder sister, when she was 16 years old, de Havilland returned to Japan to live with her father. There she attended the Tokyo School for Foreign Children, graduating in 1935, Fontaine made her stage debut in the West Coast production of Call It a Day and was soon signed to an RKO contract
13.
Alfred Hitchcock
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as The Master of Suspense. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres and he had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Englands best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939, and became a US citizen in 1955 and he also fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style. Hitchcocks stylistic trademarks include the use of movement that mimics a persons gaze. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy and his work often features fugitives on the run alongside icy blonde female characters. Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, Hitchcock later received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours. Hitchcock directed more than fifty films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else, Hitchcocks first thriller, The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog, helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone and he was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock. He was named after his fathers brother, Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, London. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry and he often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to him for behaving badly. This incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment, sources vary on Hitchcocks performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, however, McGilligan writes that Hitchcock certainly excelled academically. When Hitchcock was 15, his father died, in that same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a company called Henleys. Hitchcock joined a regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917
14.
Suspicion (1941 film)
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Suspicion is a romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also stars Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, Suspicion is based on Francis Iless novel Before the Fact. For her role as Lina, Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941 and this is the only Oscar-winning performance in a Hitchcock film. In the film, a shy spinster runs off with a playboy, who turns out to be penniless, a gambler. She comes to suspect that he is also a murderer, in 1938, handsome, irresponsible playboy Johnnie Aysgarth meets dowdy Lina McLaidlaw on a train and charms her into eloping despite the strong disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw. She talks him into getting a job, and he goes to work for his cousin, Beaky, Johnnies good-natured but naive friend, tries to reassure Lina that her husband is a lot of fun and a highly entertaining liar. She repeatedly catches Johnnie in ever more significant lies, discovering that he was fired weeks before for embezzling from his cousin Melbeck, Lina writes a letter to Johnnie that she is leaving him, but then tears it up. After this, Johnnie enters the room and shows her a telegram announcing her fathers death, Johnnie is severely disappointed to discover that Lina has inherited no money, only her fathers portrait. He convinces Beaky to finance a hugely speculative land development scheme, Lina is afraid this is a confidence trick or worse, and tries to talk Beaky out of it, but he trusts his friend completely. Johnnie overhears and angrily warns his wife to stay out of his affairs, when Beaky leaves for Paris, Johnnie accompanies him partway. Later, news reaches Lina that Beaky died in Paris, Johnnie lies to her and an investigating police inspector, saying that he stayed in London. This and other details lead Lina to suspect he was responsible for Beakys death, Lina then begins to fear that her husband is plotting to kill her for her life insurance. He has been questioning her friend Isobel Sedbusk, a writer of mystery novels, Johnnie brings Lina a glass of milk before bed, but she is too afraid to drink it. Needing to get away for a while, she says she will stay with her mother for a few days, Johnnie insists on driving her there. He speeds recklessly in a powerful convertible on a dangerous road beside a cliff, Johnnie reaches over, his intent unclear to the terrified woman. When she shrinks from him, he stops the car, in the subsequent confrontation, it emerges that Johnnie was actually intending to commit suicide after taking Lina to her mothers. Now, however, he has decided that suicide is the way out. He was in Liverpool at the time of Beakys death, trying to borrow on Linas life insurance policy to repay Melbeck and her suspicions allayed, Lina tells him that they will face the future together
15.
Olivia de Havilland
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Olivia Mary de Havilland is a retired American actress whose career spanned from 1935 to 1990. She appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. Born in Tokyo to British parents, de Havilland and her younger sister Joan moved to California in 1919 and they were brought up by their mother Lilian, a former stage actress who taught them dramatic art, music, and elocution. De Havilland made her debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland. Olivia de Havilland made her debut in Reinhardts A Midsummer Nights Dream in 1935. She began her career playing demure ingénues opposite popular leading men, including Errol Flynn and they became one of Hollywoods most popular romantic on-screen pairings. She achieved her initial popularity in romantic films, such as The Great Garrick. Her natural beauty and refined acting style made her particularly effective in historical dramas, such as Anthony Adverse. In her later career, she was most successful in films, such as Light in the Piazza. In addition to her career, de Havilland continued her work in the theatre. For her contributions to the picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After romantic relationships with Howard Hughes, James Stewart, and John Huston, de Havilland married author Marcus Goodrich, with whom she had a son, Benjamin. Following her divorce from Goodrich in 1953, she moved to Paris and married Pierre Galante, in 1962, she published Every Frenchman Has One, an account of her life in France. De Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the siblings to have won Academy Awards in a lead acting category. A lifelong rivalry between the two resulted in an estrangement that lasted over three decades. She has lived in Paris since 1956, and celebrated her 100th birthday on July 1,2016, De Havilland was born on July 1,1916, in Tokyo, Japan, to English parents. Her father, Walter de Havilland, served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney and her mother, Lilian Fontaine, was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and became a stage actress. Lilian also sang with the Master of the Kings Music, Sir Walter Parratt, Olivias paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, an aircraft designer and founder of the de Havilland aircraft company
16.
Hold Back the Dawn
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Hold Back the Dawn is a 1941 romantic film in which a Romanian gigolo marries an American woman in Mexico in order to gain entry to the United States, but winds up falling in love with her. It stars Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Victor Francen, Walter Abel, Curt Bois, the movie was adapted by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder from the book by Ketti Frings. It was directed by Mitchell Leisen, Georges Iscovescu recounts his story to a Hollywood film director at Paramount. He is a Romanian-born gigolo who arrived in a Mexican border town seeking entry to the US and he endures a waiting period to obtain a quota number of up to eight years with other hopeful immigrants in the Esperanza Hotel. After six months he is broke and unhappy and he runs into his former professional dance partner Anita Dixon who explains she obtained US residency by marrying an American, who she then quickly divorced. Georges therefore seeks an American wife, soon targeting visiting school teacher Miss Emmy Brown, Emmy unexpectedly returns a few days later, but immigration inspector Hammock appears, hunting for con artists such as Georges. In order to evade Hammock, Georges drives Emmy to a small village, Georges becomes increasingly bothered by his conscience as he sees how happy and unsuspecting Emmy is. Iscovescu develops genuine affection for Emmy, however this jeopardizes the plans of Anita, long in love with Georges, for them to work together in the US. Anita informs Emmy of the entire scheme, Emmy does not turn him in when questioned by Hammock, but nevertheless leaves Georges. Returning to the US she is injured in a car accident. A distraught Georges learns of this and jeopardizes his imminent US visa by illegally entering the country to go to Emmy, on hearing his voice she begins to emerge from her coma. Georges sees police arriving so leaves for Paramount to sell his story to director Dwight Saxon to get the money to care for Emmy, some weeks later Hammock returns to the Border town. Anita has a new sugar daddy, Hammock tells Georges that he didnt report Georges for illegal entry and his visa has been approved. In addition Emmy has recovered and is at the border to meet him, Georges sees Emmy happily waving to him from across the border and goes to meet her. It was presented on Broadway Playhouse January 14,1953, with Joseph Cotten starring
17.
Churchill's Island
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Churchills Island is a 1941 propaganda film chronicling the defence of Great Britain during the Second World War. The film was directed by Stuart Legg and produced by the National Film Board of Canada for the Director of Information, Churchills Island describes the military and civilian elements that were involved in the Battle of Britain. The Royal Air Force in a battle with the Luftwaffe, was able to wrest control of the skies. Originally produced for the NFBs Canada Carries On series of short films. Typical of the NFBs series, Churchills Island relied heavily on newsreel footage, the British sequences were from the British Ministry of Information. The deep baritone voice of stage actor Lorne Greene was featured in the narration, Churchills Island was produced in 35 mm for the theatrical market. Each film in the series was shown over a period as part of the shorts or newsreel segments in approximately 800 theatres across Canada. The NFB had an arrangement with Famous Players theatres to ensure that Canadians from coast to coast could see them, with further distribution by Columbia Pictures. After the six-month theatrical tour ended, individual films were available on 16 mm to schools, libraries, churches and factories. They were also available to film libraries operated by university. A total of 199 films were produced before the series was canceled in 1959, Churchills Island received the very first Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject, awarded at the 14th Academy Awards ceremony in 1942. It also represents the first Oscar for the NFB, which had created just two years earlier in 1939. The Academy Film Archive preserved Churchills Island in 2005, list of Allied propaganda films of World War II Churchills Island at the Internet Movie Database Churchills Island at AllMovie Watch Churchills Island at NFB Web site Canadian Film Encyclopedia
18.
The Little Foxes (film)
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The Little Foxes is an American drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Lillian Hellman is based on her 1939 play of the same name, Hellmans ex-husband Arthur Kober, Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell contributed additional scenes and dialogue. Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th-century society where a father considered only sons as legal heirs and they approach their sister with their need for an additional $75,000 to invest in the project. Oscar initially proposes a marriage between his son Leo and Reginas daughter Alexandra – first cousins – as a means of getting Horaces money, when Regina asks Horace outright for the money, he refuses. She tells him his refusal is not important since he will die soon, Alexandra overhears the conversation and is distraught. She then comforts her father after Regina leaves the room, Ben and Oscar, aware of Horaces refusal, pressure Leo into stealing Horaces railroad bonds from his personal security box at the bank to complete the sum needed to construct the mill. After returning home from a trip to his security box at the bank. Regina, realizing her two brothers stole the bonds through Leo, who works at the bank, schemes to acquire a share of the mill by blackmailing her brothers about their theft. Immediately, Horace states he is changing his will to leave Alexandra everything except the railroad bonds which, he will claim and this story will thwart any attempt by Regina to blackmail her brothers over their theft and will deny her any claim to an ownership stake in the mill. Unfortunately, Oscar overhears part of the conversation and, after Alexandra is out of earshot, Regina argues with Horace about her contempt for him, and, when he suffers a heart attack, she makes no effort to get him his medicine from upstairs. Horace climbs the stairs to get his medicine but collapses on the way up, the final scenes of the film involve a dying Horace surrounded by family, a doctor and servants who await the chance he may survive. Eventually, Horace dies, leaving no one to contradict Regina if she accuses her brothers of theft and she thus blackmails her brothers, demanding that she be given 75% ownership of the mill business, and they are left with no choice but to accept her demands. Alexandra hears this conversation, and, upon the brothers leaving, Regina denies any wrongdoing, but Alexandra is skeptical. Alexandra runs away with newspaperman David, Regina is left wealthy, but completely alone. The same passage also inspired the title of an unrelated film, producer Samuel Goldwyn agreed, since none of Bankheads films had been box office hits. However, Davis was reluctant, On The Little Foxes I begged the producer, Samuel Goldwyn, Warner refused to lend Davis to Goldwyn, who then offered the role to Miriam Hopkins. When Wyler refused to work with her, Goldwyn resumed negotiations with Warner, Wyler encouraged Davis to see Bankhead in the original play, which she did despite major misgivings. In her autobiography, A Lonely Life, Davis gave a different version about having to see Bankhead in the play, a great admirer of hers, I wanted in no way to be influenced by her work
19.
Peyton Place (film)
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Peyton Place is a 1957 American drama film in color by De Luxe and CinemaScope from 20th Century Fox, produced by Jerry Wald, directed by Mark Robson, that stars Lana Turner and Hope Lange. In co-starring and supporting roles are Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Diane Varsi, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn, the film is based on the bestselling 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious. In April 1941, in the seemingly idyllic New England town of Peyton Place, lucass downtrodden wife, Nellie goes to work as the housekeeper for Constance Connie MacKenzie, a rather prim-acting local dress shop owner. The daughters of the two families, Allison MacKenzie and Selena Cross are best friends and are about to graduate high school, the board is composed of Dr. Dr. Swain and Seth become friends with the newcomer. Arriving at the school, Rossi wins over Ms. Thornton by telling her that he wants to work with her and she is pleased with the newcomer and they get on well. Later on, Allison becomes a witness to Lucas beating and abusing Selena, instead, Rodney goes with Allison, though Allison is in love with another classmate, the shy Norman Page who has an overprotective, widowed mother, Evelyn Page. When they get to the dance, Rodney splits off to make out with Betty in his car and she hits him with her purse and storms away from the car. Outside, after dancing with her, he kisses Connie, Selena is escorted home by her boyfriend Ted Carter, and is later raped that night by her drunken step-father, Lucas. Selena becomes pregnant, and when she goes to Dr. Swain for an abortion he refuses, Swain confronts Lucas, and he is forced by Swain to promise to leave town after signing a confession, all of which Nellie accidentally witnesses. Lucas chases Selena out of revenge when she returns home, and although she escapes, she trips, falls, after treating her, Swain enters the operation as an appendectomy, though in fact she has had a miscarriage, blackmailing his nurse into cooperating. Nellie then becomes morosely despondent in response to what has happened, at a Labor Day picnic that same year, Rodney and Betty reunite and go skinny dipping while Allison and Norman go swimming, in proper suits, nearby. Marion sees the couple and falsely making an assumption, tells Connie it was Allison and Norman. Connie explodes at Allison for causing rumors and they fight, and Connie tells her that Allisons father was actually married to another woman when she became pregnant with her. Allison runs upstairs and finds that Nellie Cross has committed suicide by hanging herself in a closet and this puts Allison into a state of shock, and she is confined to a bed for a time. Sometime after, Rodney and Betty elope, infuriating Rodneys father Leslie, Allison tells her mother that when she is well enough she is going to leave Peyton Place for New York City, even if she is forced to do the same things her mother did. After saying a goodbye to Selena, Allison makes good on her promise to leave town. World War II erupts during December 1941, and the men of Peyton Place go off to war. However, when Rodney is killed in action the next autumn, his father offers to take care of his widow, Betty
20.
The Turning Point (1977 film)
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The Turning Point is a 1977 American drama film centered on the world of ballet in New York City, written by Arthur Laurents and directed by Herbert Ross. The film stars Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft, along with Leslie Browne, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The script is a version of the real-life Brown family. DeeDee left the company after becoming pregnant by Wayne, another dancer in the company. They marry and later move to Oklahoma City to run a dance studio, Emma stays with the company and eventually becomes a prima ballerina and well-known figure in the ballet community. While the company is on tour and performs a show in Oklahoma City, DeeDee and the go to see the show. The reunion stirs up old memories and things begin to ravel, at the party, DeeDees aspiring dancer/daughter, Emilia, who is also Emmas goddaughter, is invited to take class with the company the following day. After taking class with the company, Emilia is asked to join the company, DeeDee and Wayne decide that DeeDee should go to New York with Emilia, who is rather shy and doesnt make friends as easily as her younger sister. Meanwhile, their son, Ethan gets a scholarship to the summer program while Wayne. Once in New York, they rent several rooms in Carnegie Hall with Madame Dakharova, Emilia soon starts a relationship with a Russian playboy in the company, Yuri. DeeDee runs into the conductor of the company and has an affair with him. Meanwhile, Emma argues with Arnold, the choreographer, about giving her a role in his new ballet. Its also revealed Emma has been seeing a man, Carter. During rehearsal, Emilia has an argument with Arnold and storms out, going to a bar and she then shows up for the performance that night still intoxicated and Emma takes care of her, which angers DeeDee. Emilia suffers when she sees Yuri getting involved with another dancer, Emma and DeeDee eventually enter into major conflict. DeeDee resents that Emma dotes on Emilia, when she has criticized DeeDee for choosing family life over her career while Emma chose not to have children. DeeDee accuses Emma of being glad she got pregnant so Emma could play the lead in Anna Karenina, eventually, misunderstandings are settled, with Emma and DeeDee working things out after a physical altercation. Emilia is announced as the star of the season, and she and Yuri make up and agree to a professional partnership
21.
The Color Purple (film)
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The Color Purple is a 1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Menno Meyjes, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker. It was Spielbergs eighth film as a director, and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which he had become famous, the film was also the first feature-length film directed by Spielberg for which John Williams did not compose the music. The film starred Danny Glover, Desreta Jackson, Margaret Avery, Oprah Winfrey, Adolph Caesar, Rae Dawn Chong, Celie is transformed as she finds her self-worth through the help of two strong female companions. Set in rural Georgia during the first 40 years of the century, the film centers on the life of a fictional character named Celie. Celie and the characters tell a story of overcoming racism and misogyny in the rural south during this time period. Celie maintains her resolve throughout the story, by the end of the film, the characters have undergone remarkable changes and relationships have begun to heal. The Color Purple was shown at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival as a non-competing title, Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 88% based on reviews from 26 critics, with an average score of 6. 9/10. The sites consensus states, A sentimental tale that reveals great emotional truths in American history, roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film four stars, calling it the years best film. He also praised Whoopi Goldberg, calling her one of the most amazing debut performances in movie history. The affirmation at the end of the film is so joyous that this is one of the few movies in a time that inspires tears of happiness. Siskel wrote that The Color Purple was a plea for respect for black women, although acknowledging that the film was a period drama, he praised its. Incredibly strong stand against the way black men treat black women, cruel is too kind a word to describe their behavior. The principal black men in The Color Purple use their women — both wives and daughters — as sexual chattel, if the book is set in the harsh, impoverished atmosphere of rural Georgia, the movie unfolds in a cozy, comfortable, flower-filled wonderland. Some parts of it are rapturous and stirring, others improbable. From another director, this might be confusing, but Mr. Spielbergs showmanship is still with him. Although the combination of his sensibilities and Miss Walkers amounts to a mismatch, Mr. Spielbergs Color Purple manages to have momentum, warmth. Variety found the film over-sentimental, writing, there are some scenes and great performances in The Color Purple. Steven Spielbergs turn at serious film-making is marred in more than one place by overblown production that threatens to drown in its own emotions
22.
CBS Radio
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CBS Radio is a radio broadcasting company owned by CBS Corporation. It is among the United States largest radio groups, operating 116 radio stations in 26 media markets. In 1999, Infinity became a division of Viacom, in 2005, Viacom spun CBS and Infinity Broadcasting back into a company. In 2016, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves stated that the company was exploring selling or spinning off CBS Radio. While the company announced its intent to perform a public offering. CBS Radio is one of the oldest units within CBS Corporation, however, the actual CBS Radio Network was launched in 1927, when CBS itself was known as United Independent Broadcasters. Columbia Records later joined in and that company was renamed the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, in September 1927, Columbia Records sold the company to William S. Paley and in 1928, Paley streamlined the corporate name to Columbia Broadcasting System. It became a traded company twice, in 1986. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which acquired CBS, Inc. in 1995, Westinghouse acquired American Radio Systems in 1997. In 1999, CBS Corporation was merged into Viacom, in August 2006, CBS Radio announced the sale of its 15 radio stations in Cincinnati, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, Austin, Texas, and Rochester, New York to Entercom Communications. This group deal was granted FCC approval in mid-November 2007 after it faced regulatory review and numerous challenges for over a year, several other stations, most in smaller markets, have also been sold to companies like Border Media Partners and Peak Media Corporation. On April 30,2008, CBS Radio and AOL entered a partnership and these stations were folded into the AOL Radio mobile app. On July 31,2008, CBS Radio announced that it would sell 50 more radio stations in 12 mid-size markets, on December 15,2008, CBS Radio and Clear Channel Communications reached an agreement to swap seven stations. The deal closed on April 1,2009, on December 20,2008, CBS Radio announced that it would sell the entire Denver cluster to Wilks Broadcasting for $19.5 Million, including KIMN, KWOF, and KXKL. On August 10,2009, CBS Radio announced that it would sell the entire Portland cluster to Alpha Broadcasting for $40 Million, the stations included in the sale are KCMD, KINK, KUFO, and KUPL. On February 4,2010, all CBS Radio stations, as well as AOL Radio, music Radio have restricted all non U. S. listeners from streaming online content. CBS Radio redirects to sister property Last. fm,2011 saw the biggest AC format removal of the company dropping AC for hot adult contemporary on Washington, D. C. s WIAD in March, followed by New York Citys WWFS on October 12. On August 1, WCFS-FM Chicago removed its AC format for all-news to simulcast WBBM, by November 2011, WLTE in Minneapolis/St
23.
Gary Cooper
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Gary Cooper was an American film actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style and screen performances. His career spanned thirty-five years, from 1925 to 1960, and he was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres. Coopers ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his appearing natural, the screen persona he sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero. Cooper began his career as an extra and stunt rider. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his silent films, Cooper became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms. In the postwar years, he portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in such as The Fountainhead. In his final films, Cooper played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion and he married New York debutante Veronica Balfe in 1933, and the couple had one daughter. Their marriage was interrupted by a three-year separation precipitated by Coopers love affair with Patricia Neal, Cooper received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for his achievements in 1961. He was one of the top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, the American Film Institute ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the twenty five greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Frank James Cooper was born on May 7,1901, at 730 Eleventh Avenue in Helena, Montana to English immigrants Alice and his father emigrated from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother emigrated from Gillingham, Kent and married Charles in Montana, in 1906, Charles purchased the 600-acre Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch about fifty miles north of Helena near the town of Craig on the Missouri River. Frank and his older brother Arthur spent their summers there and learned to ride horses, hunt, in April 1908, the Hauser Dam failed and flooded the Missouri River valley along portions of the Cooper property, but Cooper and his family were able to evacuate in time. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena, at Dunstable, Cooper studied Latin and French, and took several courses in English history. While he managed to adapt to the discipline of an English school and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the class structure. After completing confirmation classes, Cooper was baptized into the Anglican Church on December 3,1911, Coopers mother accompanied her sons back to the United States in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena
24.
Darryl F. Zanuck
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Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American film producer and studio executive, he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. He played a part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors. He earned three Academy Awards as producer for Best Picture during his tenure, but was responsible for many more, Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Frank Zanuck, who owned and operated a hotel in Wahoo. Zanuck was of part Swiss descent and was raised a Protestant, at age six, Zanuck and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where the better climate could improve her poor health. At age eight, he found his first movie job as an extra, in 1918, despite being sixteen, he deceived a recruiter, joined the United States Army, and served in France with the Nebraska National Guard. Upon returning to the US, he worked in many jobs while seeking work as a writer. He found work producing movie plots, and sold his first story in 1922 to William Russell and he moved into management in 1929, and became head of production in 1931. In 1933, Zanuck left Warners over a dispute with studio head Jack L. Warner. A few days later, he partnered with Joseph Schenck to form 20th Century Pictures, Inc. with financial help from Josephs brother Nicholas Schenck, mayer, President and Studio head of Loews, Inc and its subsidiary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, along with William Goetz and Raymond Griffith. 20th Century released its material through United Artists, after a dispute with United Artists over stock ownership, Schenck and Zanuck negotiated and bought out the bankrupt Fox studios in 1935 to form Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Zanuck was Vice President of Production of this new studio and took an approach, closely involving himself in scripts. When the U. S. who was chauffeured by limousine to Long Island each morning from a luxury Manhattan hotel. Appalled by such privileged cosseting, Zanuck stormed down to Washington, D. C. and into the War Department, demanding a riskier assignment from Chief of Staff and he even persuaded Lord Mountbatten to allow him along on a secret coastal raid across the Channel to occupied France. The daring nighttime attack on a German radar site was a success, navy even before the U. S. entered the war, and he was horrified to discover himself drafted into Zanucks Africa unit. Cant I ever get away from you, I bet if I die and go to heaven, youll be waiting for me under a sign reading Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. Unlike Col. Warner, most colonels from the studio system—Col, Frank Capra, Col. Anatole Litvak, Col. Hal Roach—were actually doing their cinematic jobs, often, like Zanuck, under enemy fire. Nonetheless, when Col. Zanuck was named in this investigation in 1944, whatever the reason, despite having published his own first-person account of his wartime adventures he resigned. Zanuck returned to Twentieth Century-Fox in 1944 and he avoided the studio and instead read books at home, surrounded by his growing family, and caught up on all the films he had missed while overseas in his private screening room
25.
20th Century Fox
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
26.
Blossoms in the Dust
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It stars Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Felix Bressart, Marsha Hunt and Fay Holden. The movie was adapted by Hugo Butler, Anita Loos and Dorothy Yost from the story by Ralph Wheelwright and it was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and produced by Irving Asher. The story is a fictionalized telling of the story of Edna Gladney. Edna Kahly and her sister, Charlotte, are to be married. But, when Charlottes mother-in-law-to-be discovers that Charlotte was a foundling, she declares the wedding must not occur, meanwhile, Edna falls for a brash cashier, Sam Gladney, at the bank, and eventually marries him and moves with him to his home state of Texas. Sam Gladney has a mill in Sherman, Texas, and at first the couple has an idyllic life. Several years later, their son dies, and Sams effort to ease the pain she still endures by trying to get her to adopt a foundling fails, but the little girls story touches Ednas heart, and she starts a day care center for the children of working women. Sams business fails, and they must auction off all their possessions, the local women take over the day care center, and Sam and Edna move to Fort Worth, Texas, where he has a job in a mill. Edna starts a home for orphans and illegitimate children, and works hard to find them appropriate homes, matching parents to child by interests and inclinations. When a young comes to try to donate a large sum of money, Edna worms the young womans story out of her. After insisting the girls fiancé wont care that she is illegitimate, after succeeding in her quest, Edna faces one more trial—the little crippled boy she has raised from an infant and nursed back to health finds a new home at last. And the dramatic continuity seems less spontaneous than contrived, the career of Mrs. Gladney is drawn out over a tedious stretch of time. But it is a story and one which commands great respect. As pure inspirational drama with a pleasant flavor of romance, Blossoms in the Dust should reach a great many hearts, variety called the film a worthy production on which much care has been showered by Mervyn LeRoy and others, but it is questionable as to draft. Though meritorious as to value, cast and background, plus being in color. The review also called the film a trifle over-done on occasion, Film Daily wrote, Mervyn LeRoy is at his directorial best here, and makes the most of the fine screenplay fashioned by Anita Loos. Greer Garsons performance is rousing, and that of Walter Pidgeon, as her husband, as inspiring as will be found in any 40-41 picture. John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote, The subject matter receives very conventional treatment of the order, with an occasional tear, and, of course
27.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California and it is one of the worlds oldest film studios. In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3,2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MGM, is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios, the studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and a film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up production, as well as keeping production going at UA. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production, the studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt, MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the major creditor. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, and Australias Seven Network in 1996, the debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGMs ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem and he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loews Theatres chain. With Loews lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality, however, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17,1924, Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production. MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years, in 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loews passed to Nicholas Schenck, in 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew familys holdings with Schencks assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds
28.
Orson Welles
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George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring, although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety. His first film was Citizen Kane, which he co-wrote, produced, directed, Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He has been praised as the ultimate auteur, Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai and Chimes at Midnight, are underappreciated. Known for his voice, Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor. George Orson Welles was born May 6,1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles and he was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head. Despite his familys affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood and his parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital May 10,1924, the Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrices funeral. After his mothers death Welles ceased pursuing music and it was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony in Wyoming, New York, established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward. There he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, Welles briefly attended public school before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, when the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again. During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom, in some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know, said Roger Hill, who became Welless teacher and lifelong friend. Welles briefly attended school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade. At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions there, Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences, wrote critic Richard France
29.
RKO Pictures
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RKO Pictures Inc. also known as RKO Radio Pictures and in its later years RKO Teleradio Pictures, was an American film production and distribution company. It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywoods Golden Age, RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the companys sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. By the mid-1940s, the studio was under the control of investor Floyd Odlum, RKO has long been celebrated for its series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio, cary Grant was a mainstay for years. The work of producer Val Lewtons low-budget horror unit and RKOs many ventures into the now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history, King Kong and Citizen Kane, RKO Pictures is also a member of Motion Picture Association of America. Maverick industrialist Howard Hughes took over RKO in 1948, after years of turmoil and decline under his control, Hughes sold the troubled studio to General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was dissolved two years later. In 1981, broadcaster RKO General, the heir, revived it as a production subsidiary. In October 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer and its success prompted Hollywood to convert from silent to sound film production en masse. The Radio Corporation of America controlled an advanced optical sound-on-film system, RCA Photophone, the industrys two largest major studios, Paramount and Loews/MGM, with two other studios Universal and First National, were poised to contract with ERPI for sound conversion as well. Next on the agenda was securing a string of exhibition venues like those the leading Hollywood production companies owned, Kennedy began investigating the possibility of such a purchase. Around that time, the large Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit of theaters, built around the medium of live vaudeville, was attempting a transition to the movie business. In mid-1927, the operations of Pathé Exchange and Cecil B. De Milles Producers Distributing Corporation had united under KAOs control, early in 1928, KAO general manager John J. Murdock, who had assumed the presidency of Pathé, turned to Kennedy as an adviser in consolidating the studio with De Milles company, PDC. This was the relationship Sarnoff and Kennedy sought, on October 23,1928, RCA announced the creation of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum holding company, with Sarnoff as chairman of the board. Kennedy, who withdrew from his positions in the merged companies, kept Pathé separate from RKO. RCA owned the governing stock interest in RKO,22 percent, in the early 1930s, the companys production and distribution arm, presided over by former FBO vice-president Joseph I
30.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
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Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a romantic comedy-fantasy film in which a boxer, mistakenly taken to Heaven before his time, is given a second chance back on Earth. It stars Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains and Evelyn Keyes, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was adapted by Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller from the play Heaven Can Wait, written by Harry Segall and directed by Alexander Hall. Here Comes Mr. Jordan was followed by Down to Earth, Warren Beatty remade it in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait. On 11th May 1941, Boxer and amateur pilot Joe Pendleton, affectionately known as the Flying Pug, flies his aircraft to his next fight in New York City. His soul is rescued by 7013, an angel who assumed that Joe could not have survived. Joes manager, Max Pop Corkle, has his body cremated, in the afterlife, the records show his death was a mistake, he was supposed to live for 50 more years. The angels superior, Mr. Jordan, confirms this, but since there is no more body, Mr. Jordan explains that a body is just something that is worn, like an overcoat, inside, Joe will still be himself. Joe insists that it be someone in good shape, because he wants to continue his boxing career. Joe keeps saying the body they find has to be in the pink, after Joe turns down several candidates, Mr. As Farnsworth, Joe repays all the investors, including Miss Logans father and he sends for Corkle and convinces him that he is Joe. Joe has just enough time to tell Miss Logan, with whom hes fallen in love, then he is shot by his secretary. The body is hidden, and Joe returns to a ghostly existence, accompanied by Mr. Jordan, Joe finds that his replacement in the prizefight with the champ is a clean-cut, honest fighter named Murdoch, whom Joe knows and respects. Finding that he has forgotten his lucky saxophone, Joe runs back to the Farnsworth mansion to find that everyone believes Farnsworth has disappeared, Corkle has hired a private investigator to find him. Corkle explains about Joe, Mr. Jordan and the body-switching, Joe manages to mentally nudge Corkle into turning on the radio to the fight and hears that Murdoch has collapsed without even being touched. Mr. Jordan reveals that the boxer was shot by gamblers because he refused to throw the fight, Joe takes over Murdochs body and wins the title. Back at the mansion, Corkle hears one of the radio announcers mention a saxophone hanging by the ringside, Corkle races down to the dressing room. There, Joe passes along information from Mr. Jordan that Farnsworths body is in a refrigerator in the basement of the mansion, Corkle tells the detective, who promptly has Mrs. Farnsworth and the secretary arrested. As Murdoch, Joe fires his old, crooked manager and hires Corkle, Mr. Jordan reveals to Joe that this is his destiny, he can be Murdoch and live his life
31.
Columbia Pictures
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The studio was founded in 1918 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Jacks best friend Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924, and went public two years later and its name is derived from Columbia, a national personification of the United States, which is used as the studios logo. In its early years, it was a player in Hollywood. With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbias major contract stars were Jean Arthur, in the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studios premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio, in 1982, the studio was purchased by The Coca-Cola Company, and launched TriStar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia, which was sold to Tri-Star, after a brief period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989. It is one of the film studios in the world. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywoods Golden Age, Brandt was president of CBC Film Sales, handling sales, marketing and distribution from New York along with Jack Cohn, while Harry Cohn ran production in Hollywood. The studios early productions were short subjects, Screen Snapshots, the Hall Room Boys. The start-up CBC leased space in a Poverty Row studio on Hollywoods famously low-rent Gower Street, among Hollywoods elite, the studios small-time reputation led some to joke that CBC stood for Corned Beef and Cabbage. Brandt eventually tired of dealing with the Cohn brothers, and sold his stake to Harry Cohn. In an effort to improve its image, the Cohn brothers renamed the company Columbia Pictures Corporation on January 10,1924, Cohn remained head of production as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. He would run Columbia for the next 34 years, the second-longest tenure of any studio chief, even in an industry rife with nepotism, Columbia was particularly notorious for having a number of Harry and Jacks relatives in high positions. Humorist Robert Benchley called it the Pine Tree Studio, because it has so many Cohns, Columbias product line consisted mostly of moderately budgeted features and short subjects including comedies, sports films, various serials, and cartoons. Columbia gradually moved into the production of higher-budget fare, eventually joining the tier of Hollywood studios along with United Artists. Like United Artists and Universal, Columbia was an integrated company. It controlled production and distribution, it did not own any theaters, helping Columbias climb was the arrival of an ambitious director, Frank Capra
32.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film studio based in Hollywood, California, that has been a subsidiary of the American media conglomerate Viacom since 1994. In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor contracted 22 actors and actresses and these fortunate few would become the first movie stars. Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company and Pathé, followed by the Nordisk Film company. It is the last major film studio headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company, hungarian-born founder, Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time. By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success and its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, the Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies, Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor, until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation, in 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one, with only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its Paramount Pictures soon dominated the business. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, the driving force behind Paramounts rise was Zukor. In 1926, Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg and they purchased the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility at 5451 Marathon Street for US$1 million. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took the name Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, three years later, because of the importance of the Publix Theatres, it became Paramount Publix Corporation. In 1928, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps, animated cartoons produced by Max, the Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957, Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as talkies, and in 1929, released their first musical, Innocents of Paris
33.
Samuel Goldwyn
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Samuel Goldwyn, also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a Jewish Polish American film producer. He was most well known for being the founding contributor and executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood and his awards include the 1973 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1947, Goldwyn was born Szmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire, to a Hasidic, Polish Jewish family. His parents were Aaron Dawid Gelbfisz, a peddler, and his wife, at an early age, he left Warsaw on foot and penniless. He made his way to Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he remained with relatives for a few years using the name Samuel Goldfish and he was 16 when his father died. In 1898, he emigrated to the United States, but fearing refusal of entry, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada and he found work in upstate Gloversville, New York, in the bustling garment business. Soon his innate marketing skills made him a successful salesman at the Elite Glove Company. After four years, as vice-president of sales, he moved back to New York City, in 1913, Goldfish along with his brother-in-law Jesse L. Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, and Arthur Friend formed a partnership, The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, film rights for the stage play, The Squaw Man were purchased for $4,000 and Dustin Farnum was hired for the leading role. Shooting for the first feature made in Hollywood began on December 29,1913. In 1914, Paramount was an exchange and exhibition corporation headed by W. W. Hodkinson. Looking for more movies to distribute, Paramount signed a contract with the Lasky Company on June 1,1914 to supply 36 films per year, one of Paramounts other suppliers was Adolph Zukors Famous Players Company. The two companies merged on June 28,1916 forming The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, Zukor had been quietly buying Paramount stock, and two weeks prior to the merger, became president of Paramount Pictures Corporation and had Hodkinson replaced with Hiram Abrams, a Zukor associate. With the merger, Zukor became president of both Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky, with Goldfish being named chairman of the board of Famous Players-Lasky, and Jesse Lasky first vice-president. After a series of conflicts with Zukor, Goldfish resigned as chairman of the board, Goldfish was out as an active member of management, although he still owned stock and was a member of the board of directors. Famous Players-Lasky would later part of Paramount Pictures Corporation. In 1916, Goldfish partnered with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, seeing an opportunity, he then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn, which he used for the rest of his life. Goldwyn Pictures proved successful but it is their Leo the Lion trademark for which the organization is most famous, on April 10,1924, Goldwyn Pictures was acquired by Marcus Loew and merged into his Metro Pictures Corporation
34.
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)
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Gladys George, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet co-star, with Greenstreet appearing in his film debut. The story follows a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette, the film premiered on October 3,1941, in New York City, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. The Maltese Falcon was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1989, the Maltese Falcon is a part of Roger Eberts Great Movies series and was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain as the first major film noir. In San Francisco in 1941, private investigators Sam Spade and Miles Archer meet prospective client Ruth Wonderly and she claims to be looking for her missing sister, who is involved with a man named Floyd Thursby, whom she is to meet. After receiving a retainer, Archer agrees to follow her that night. That night, Spade is awakened by a call from the police. He meets his friend, Police Detective Tom Polhaus, at the murder scene and he tries calling Wonderly at her hotel, but she has checked out. Back at his apartment, he is grilled by Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy, Dundy suggests that Spade had the opportunity and motive to kill Thursby, who likely killed Archer, immediately after he learned of Archers death. Archers widow Iva believes that Spade shot his partner so he could have her, later that morning, Spade meets Wonderly, now calling herself Brigid OShaughnessy. She explains that Thursby was her partner and probably killed Archer, Spade is not convinced, but agrees to investigate the murders. At his office, Spade meets Joel Cairo, who first offers him $5,000 to find a figure of a bird. Spade knocks Cairo out and goes through his belongings, when Cairo awakens, he hires Spade. Later that evening, Spade tells OShaughnessy about Cairo, when Cairo shows up, it becomes clear that Spades acquaintances know each other. Cairo becomes agitated when OShaughnessy reveals that the Fat Man is in San Francisco, in the morning, Spade goes to Cairos hotel, where he spots Wilmer, a young man who had been following him earlier. He gives Wilmer a message for his boss, Kasper Gutman, Spade meets Gutman, who begins to talk about the Falcon, but becomes evasive, causing Spade to storm out. Later, Wilmer takes Spade at gunpoint to see Gutman, Spade overpowers Wilmer, but meets with Gutman anyway. Gutman relates the history of the Maltese Falcon and he offers Spade $25,000 for the bird and a quarter of the proceeds from its sale. Then Spade passes out because his drink had been spiked, when Spade awakens, he searches the suite and finds a newspaper with the arrival time of the freighter La Paloma circled
35.
Hal B. Wallis
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Harold Brent Hal Wallis was an American film producer. He is best remembered for producing Casablanca and True Grit, along many other major films for Warner Bros. featuring such film stars as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis. Later on, for a period, he was connected with Paramount Pictures and oversaw films featuring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley. Aaron Blum Wolowicz was born October 19,1898 in Chicago, Illinois and his family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros. in 1923. Within a few years, Wallis became involved in the end of the business. In a career spanned more than 50 years, he was involved with the production of more than 400 feature-length movies. Among the more significant movies he produced were Casablanca, Dark Victory, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York and he left Warner Bros. in 1944, after a clash with Jack L. Warner over Warners acceptance of the Best Picture Oscar for Casablanca, to work as an independent producer, the first screenwriters he hired for his new enterprise were Ayn Rand and Lillian Hellman. Among his financial hits were the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies and he produced True Grit, for which John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor of 1969, and its sequel. After moving to Universal Pictures, he produced Mary, Queen of Scots and he received 16 Academy Award producer nominations for Best Picture, winning for Casablanca in 1943. For his consistently high quality of motion picture production, he was honored with the Academy Awards Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He was also nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, twice winning awards for Best Picture, in 1975, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures, in 1980, he published his autobiography, Starmaker, cowritten with Charles Higham. In the 1930s Mr. Wallis used his investment dollars to develop real estate in Sherman Oaks. He named one of the streets after himself using his nickname Hal, halbrent Avenue, Sherman Oaks, CA is the street and most of the original homes are still standing today. Its very close to Ventura and Sepulveda Boulevards near the infamous Sherman Oaks Galleria used extensively in the 1982 movie romp Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Wallis was married twice, to actress Louise Fazenda from 1927 until her death in 1962 and he had one son with Fazenda, Brent Harris. Wallis died in 1986 of complications of diabetes in Rancho Mirage, California, news of his passing was not released until after his private memorial service was completed
36.
Warner Bros.
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Entertainment Inc. – colloquially known as Warner Bros. or Warner Bros. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios, Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. The companys name originated from the four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, the owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, in 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, in 1918 they opened the first Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, on April 4,1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. The first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwoods 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, however, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins, the movie was so successful that Jack signed the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week. Rin Tin Tin became the top star. Jack nicknamed him The Mortgage Lifter and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanucks career, Zanuck eventually became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jacks right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director, lubitschs film The Marriage Circle was the studios most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners remained a lesser studio, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel. The film was so successful that Harry signed Barrymore to a contract, like The Marriage Circle. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywoods most successful independent studio, as the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan
37.
One Foot in Heaven
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One Foot in Heaven is a 1941 American biographical film starring Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart and Elisabeth Fraser. The film was adapted by Casey Robinson from the autobiography by Hartzell Spence and it was directed by Irving Rapper. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, in Stratford, Ontario in 1904, William Spence, a medical student on the verge of becoming a doctor, receives The Call while passing a Methodist church one Sunday. His bride-to-be, Hope Morris, accepts his decision to enter the ministry with a whole heart despite the disappointment of her prominent and affluent parents. Hope yearns for a decent parsonage and a sense of permanence for their children, but uncomplainingly provides them a good life, for his part, Will understands his own nature and laughs at his own foibles, bending where he can in good conscience. He often enters situations in anger or to instruct but leaves humbled and renewed in spirit, while Will sincerely lives by and teaches by example the tenets of the Methodist Discipline, he also learns from his congregations to be flexible and change with the times. When their third child, a boy, is born, Hope and Will cannot agree on a name, Hope wants to name the baby William Spence, Jr. but Will does not like the idea of his son going without a middle name as he did. He wants the boy to have and be called in the good old Canadian custom by the name of Frazer. Will seems to give in to Hope but the following Sunday baptizes him William Frazer Spence, oldest son Hartzell has a hard time coping with the idea that a ministers son should be an example to the other boys. Will explains that a pastors family walks a tightrope, balancing with one foot on earth and one foot already in Heaven. After learning that Hartzell has been sneaking into the movies, a pastime seemingly forbidden by the Discipline and they see a western but rather than finding it sinful, Will is impressed by its moral. The following Sunday he preaches a sermon advising his congregation that people may have something to teach their elders. In the 1920s the family is assigned to a church in Denver, Colorado, in a time of economic prosperity for the country, the Spences cope with possibly their most dilapidated parsonage yet. Will has come to appreciate his wifes serenity with life and resolves to provide her a decent parsonage by building a new church and his plans at first are thwarted by power struggles among several snobbish members of the church. He loses one wealthy patron, Mrs. Thurston, her family, soon after, Hartzell is expelled from school because of a gossip campaign falsely accusing him of making a young girl pregnant and forcing her family to move to San Francisco. He seeks out the family and learns that there is no truth to any part of the rumor. Raymond Massey was Hartzell Spences choice to play his father, while his mother preferred Fredric March, the studios decision to cast March was made independently of the familys wishes. The Reverend Norman Vincent Peale was hired as advisor on the film
38.
Jesse L. Lasky
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Jesse Louis Lasky was an American pioneer motion picture producer. He was a key founder of Paramount Pictures with Adolph Zukor, born in San Francisco, California, he worked at a variety of jobs but began his entertainment career as a vaudeville performer that led to the motion picture business. In 1911 Lasky was the producer of two Broadway musicals, Hello, Paris and A La Broadway, presumably this is how Cecil B. DeMille knew him before they ventured into motion pictures in 1913. Laskys sister, Blanche, married Samuel Goldwyn and in 1913 Lasky, deMille and Oscar Apfel to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. With limited funds, they rented a barn near Los Angeles where they made Hollywoods first feature film, known today as the Lasky-DeMille Barn, it is home to the Hollywood Heritage Museum. In 1916, their company merged with Adolph Zukors Famous Players Film Company to create the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, in 1920, Famous Players-Lasky built a large studio facility in Astoria, New York, now known as the Kaufman Astoria Studios. In 1927, Lasky was one of the people who founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. Financial problems arose within the industry as a result of the Great Depression, Lasky then partnered with Mary Pickford to produce films but within a few years she dissolved their business relationship. Lasky then found work as a producer at one of the big studios until 1945 when he formed his own production company and he made his last film in 1951 and in 1957 published his autobiography, I Blow My Own Horn. Jesse L. Lasky died at age 77 from an attack in Beverly Hills. He is interred in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, adjacent to Paramount Studios, for his contribution to the motion picture industry, Lasky has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6433 Hollywood Boulevard. Lasky Drive in Beverly Hills was named in his honor, works by or about Jesse L. Lasky at Internet Archive Jesse L. Lasky at the Internet Movie Database Jesse L. Lasky at Find a Grave
39.
William Wyler
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William Wyler, born as Willy Wyler was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Wyler received his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, starring Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor, Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a bona fide perfectionist, whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance, became the stuff of legend. Through his talent for staging, editing, and camera movement and he helped propel a number of actors to stardom, finding and directing Audrey Hepburn in her Hollywood debut film, Roman Holiday, and directing Barbra Streisand in her debut film, Funny Girl. He directed Olivia de Havilland to her second Oscar in The Heiress and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Olivier credited Wyler with teaching him how to act for the screen. And Bette Davis, who received three Oscar nominations under his direction and won her second Oscar in Jezebel, said Wyler made her a far, far better actress than she had ever been. Other popular Wyler films include, Hells Heroes, Dodsworth, The Westerner, The Letter, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, The Childrens Hour, Wyler was born to a Jewish family in Mulhouse, Alsace. His Swiss father, Leopold, started as a traveling salesman which he turned into a thriving haberdashery business in Mulhouse. His mother, Melanie, was German, and a cousin of Carl Laemmle, during Wylers childhood, he attended a number of schools and developed a reputation as something of a hellraiser, being expelled more than once for misbehavior. His mother often took him and his older brother Robert to concerts, opera, sometimes at home his family and their friends would stage amateur theatricals for personal enjoyment. Wyler was supposed to take over the family business in Mulhouse. After World War I, he spent a year working in Paris at 100.000 Chemises selling shirts. He was so poor that he spent his time wandering around the Pigalle district. After realizing that Willy was not interested in the business, his mother, Melanie, contacted her distant cousin, Carl Laemmle who owned Universal Studios. Laemmle was in the habit of coming to Europe each year, in 1921, Wyler, while traveling as a Swiss citizen, met Laemmle who hired him to work at Universal Studios in New York. As Wyler said, America seemed as far away as the moon, booked onto a ship to New York with Laemmle upon his return voyage, he met a young Czech man, Paul Kohner, aboard the same ship. Their enjoyment of the first class trip was short-lived, however, after working in New York for several years, and even serving in the New York Army National Guard for a year, Wyler moved to Hollywood to become a director. Around 1923, Wyler arrived in Los Angeles and began work on the Universal Studios lot in the gang, cleaning the stages. His break came when he was hired as an assistant editor
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Howard Hawks
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Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him the greatest American director who is not a household name, Hawks was a versatile director whose career included comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and westerns. His most popular films include Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, The Thing from Another World, and Rio Bravo. His frequent portrayals of strong, tough-talking female characters came to define a type—the Hawksian woman and his work has influenced some of the most popular and respected directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino. Howard Winchester Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana, the child of Frank W. Hawks, a wealthy paper manufacturer, and his wife, Helen. Hawkss family on his fathers side were American pioneers and his ancestor John Hawks had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1630. The family eventually settled in Goshen and by the 1890s was one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest, Hawkss maternal grandfather, C. W. Howard, had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1862 at age 17. Within 15 years he had made his fortune in the paper mill. Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895, Howard Hawks was the eldest of five children and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks, William Bellinger Hawks, Grace Louise Hawks and Helen Bernice Hawks. In 1898, the moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where Frank Hawks began working for his father-in-laws Howard Paper Company. Between 1906 and 1909, the Hawks family began to more time in Pasadena. Gradually they began to only their summers in Wisconsin before permanently moving to Pasadena in 1910. The family settled in a house down the street from Throop Polytechnic Institute, Hawks was an average student at school and did not excel in sports, but by 1910 had discovered coaster racing, an early form of soapbox racing. In 1911, Hawkss youngest sibling Helen died suddenly of food poisoning, from 1910 to 1912, Hawks attended Pasadena High School. But in 1912, the Hawks family moved to nearby Glendora, California, while in New England, Hawks often attended the theaters in nearby Boston. In 1914, Hawks returned to Glendora and graduated from Pasadena High School that year and that same year, Hawks was accepted to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. In 1916, Hawkss grandfather, C. W. Howard, bought him a Mercer race car and it was at this time that Hawks first met Victor Fleming, allegedly when the two men raced on a dirt track and caused an accident. Fleming had been an auto mechanic and early aviator when his old friend Marshall Neilan recommended him to film director Allan Dwan as a good mechanic
41.
Academy Award for Best Actor
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The Academy Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actor who has delivered a performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Emil Jannings receiving the award for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actors were nominated as the best in their categories, at that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. The following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actor is nominated for a performance in a single film. Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was officially limited to five nominations per year, since its inception, the award has been given to 79 actors. Daniel Day-Lewis has received the most awards in this category with three Oscars, spencer Tracy and Laurence Olivier were nominated on nine occasions, more than any other actor. As of the 2017 ceremony, Casey Affleck is the most recent winner in category for his role as Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933
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Alvin York
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Alvin Cullum York, also known as Sergeant York, was one of the most decorated United States Army soldiers of World War I. He received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest, taking 35 machine guns, killing at least 25 enemy soldiers, York was born in rural Tennessee, his parents farmed, and his father worked as a blacksmith. The eleven York children had minimal schooling because they helped provide for the family, which included hunting, fishing, after the death of Yorks father, he assisted in caring for his younger siblings, and found work as a logger and on construction crews. Despite being a regular churchgoer, York also drank heavily, and was prone to fistfights, after a 1914 conversion experience, he vowed to improve, and became even more devoted to the Church of Christ in Christian Union. York was drafted during World War I, he claimed conscientious objector status on the grounds that his denomination forbade violence. Persuaded that his religion was not incompatible with military service, York joined the 82nd Division as an infantry private, in October 1918, as a newly promoted corporal, York was one of a group of 17 soldiers assigned to infiltrate German lines and silence a machine gun position. After the American patrol had captured a group of enemy soldiers, German small arms fire killed six Americans. York was the highest ranking of those able to fight. While his men guarded the prisoners, York attacked the gun position. By the time six Germans charged him with bayonets he was out of ammunition, so he drew his pistol. The German officer responsible for the gun position had emptied his pistol while firing at York. This officer then offered to surrender, and York accepted, York and his men marched back to their units command post with more than 130 prisoners. York was immediately promoted to sergeant, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, York became a national hero and international celebrity, he went on to receive decorations from several foreign countries, including France, Italy, and Montenegro. Businessmen in Tennessee organized the purchase of a farm for York, his new wife and he later formed a charitable foundation to improve educational opportunities for children in rural Tennessee. In his later years, York was confined to bed by health problems and he died in Nashville, Tennessee in 1964, and was buried at Wolf River Cemetery in his hometown of Pall Mall. Alvin Cullum York was born in a log cabin near Pall Mall. He was the child born to William Uriah York and Mary Elizabeth York. William Uriah York was born in Jamestown, Tennessee, to Uriah York and Eliza Jane Livingston, Mary Elizabeth York was born in Pall Mall to William Brooks and Nancy Pile, and was the great-granddaughter of Conrad Coonrod Pile, an English settler who settled Pall Mall
