1.
Richard Long (actor)
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Richard Long was an American actor best known for his leading roles in three ABC television series, including The Big Valley, Nanny and the Professor, and Bourbon Street Beat. He was also a regular on ABCs 77 Sunset Strip from 1960 to 1962. Long was the fifth of six born in Chicago, Illinois, to Sherman D. Long, a commercial artist who operated his own studio. The family settled in Evanston, where Long attended grammar school and he attended Waller High School in Chicago and Evanston Township High School. The family relocated again in 1944, to Hollywood, California, Long said that as a teenager he had no intention of becoming an actor. I took senior drama class because it was a snap course, at Hollywood High School, Long caught the eye of a talent scout from Universal-International by accident. Casting director Jack Murton gave a ride to a couple of students, the boys told Murton about the excellent male lead actor, Richard Long. In 1946, Long was cast in his first film, Tomorrow Is Forever as Drew, the role had been unfilled for months, and producers selected Long who most closely matched the credentials required. Early in his career, Long appeared in films as a juvenile lead, including the first four of the nine Ma. He was cast as Tom Kettle, the eldest son of the characters played by Percy Kilbride and his second film was the Orson Welles film The Stranger as Noah Longstreet, the brother of Loretta Youngs character. He also played Jeff Taylor in The Life of Riley and played Frank James in the 1950 movie Kansas Raiders, in 1956, Long played a leading role in the western Fury at Gunsight Pass. He moved into leading man status in horror movies such as Cult of the Cobra, in 1963, Long was cast in the MGM romantic musical Follow the Boys, along with co-stars Connie Francis, Paula Prentiss, and Roger Perry. Long achieved considerable success on television, including the Warner Brothers detective series set in New Orleans, Bourbon Street Beat, with Andrew Duggan, Van Williams and he appeared on episodes of Hey, Jeannie. The Twilight Zone,77 Sunset Strip, and The Tenderfoot for Walt Disneys Wonderful World of Color and his character appeared only with Jack Kelly, never with other cast members James Garner and Roger Moore. Raymond faces court martial for desertion at a western fort prior to a deadly Indian attack, fledgling lawyer Sugarfoot defends Raymond, who refuses to explain the incident in question, which also involves Isabel Starkey, the wife of the fort commander, Colonel Starkey. Philip Ober is cast as General Humphrey, who is determined to find the truth of the matter. In 1963, Long guest starred in the episode Hear No Evil of ABCs Going My Way and that same year, he was cast as Eddie Breech in the episode Blood Bargain of CBSs The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The series was set in the 1870s, Long also directed several episodes of The Big Valley
2.
Max Steiner
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Maximilian Raoul Max Steiner was an Austrian-born American music composer for theatre and films. He was a prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, either composing, arranging, or conducting. He worked in England, then Broadway, and in 1929 he moved to Hollywood, Steiner was referred to as the father of film music. Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros. and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards and he was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score to Life with Father. A lot of his scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings. Steiner was born on May 10,1888, in Austria-Hungary and he was the only child in a wealthy business and theatrical family of Jewish heritage. His father was Gabor Steiner, Viennese impresario, carnival exposition manager, Steiners mother was a dancer in stage productions put on by his grandfather. His godfather was the composer Richard Strauss, Max Steiner often credited his family for inspiring his early musical abilities. His parents sent Steiner to the Vienna University of Technology, and he studied various instruments including piano, organ, violin, double bass, and trumpet. He also had courses in harmony, counterpoint, and composition, for his early achievements he was awarded a gold medal by the academy. Steiner first entered the world of music when he was fifteen. He wrote and conducted the operetta, The Beautiful Greek Girl, the opera ran for a year and led to opportunities to conduct other shows in various cities around the world, including Moscow and Hamburg. He was invited to London to conduct Lehars The Merry Widow and he stayed in London for 8 years conducting musicals at Dalys Theares, the Adelphi, the Hippodrome, the London Pavilion and the Blackpool Winter Gardens. In England, Steiner wrote and conducted theater productions and symphonies, but in 1914, World War I started and he was interned as an enemy alien. Fortunately, he was befriended by the Duke of Westminster, who was a fan of his work and he arrived in New York City in December,1914, with only $32 to his name. Steiner soon acquired employment and worked in New York for fifteen years as a director, arranger, orchestrator. These productions include operettas and musicals written by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Steiners credits include, George Whites Scandals, Peaches, Lady, Be Good. In 1927, Steiner orchestrated and conducted Harry Tierneys Rio Rita, tierney himself later requested that RKO Pictures in Hollywood hire Steiner to work in their music production departments
3.
William Conrad
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William Conrad was an American actor, producer, and director whose career spanned five decades in radio, film, and television. A radio writer and actor, he moved to Hollywood after his World War II service and he created the role of Marshal Matt Dillon for the popular radio series Gunsmoke and narrated the television adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Fugitive. Finding fewer onscreen roles in the 1950s, he changed from actor to producer-director with television work, narration, and a series of Warner Bros. films in the 1960s. Conrad found stardom as a detective in the TV series Cannon and Nero Wolfe, and as district attorney Jason Lochinvar J. L. Fatman McCabe in the legal drama Jake and the Fatman. William Conrad was born John William Cann, Jr. on September 27,1920, in Louisville and his parents, John William Cann and Ida Mae Upchurch Cann, owned a movie theatre, and Conrad grew up watching movies. The family moved to Southern California when Conrad was in high school and he majored in drama and literature at Fullerton College, in Orange County, California, and began his career as an announcer, writer, and director for Los Angeles radio station KMPC. Conrad served as a pilot in World War II. On the day he was commissioned in 1943 at Luke Field and he left the United States Army Air Corps with the rank of captain and as a producer-director of the Armed Forces Radio Service. William Conrad estimated that he played more than 7,500 roles during his radio career, at KMPC, the 22-year-old Conrad produced and acted in The Hermits Cave, the Los Angeles incarnation of a popular syndicated horror anthology series created at WJR Detroit. Conrad was the voice of Escape, a radio series. He played Warchek, a policeman, in Johnny Modero, Pier 23, a detective series starring Jack Webb. He played newspaper editor Walter Burns opposite Dick Powells reporter Hildy Johnson in the ABC radio drama The Front Page, most prominently, Conrads deep, resonant voice was heard in the role of Marshal Matt Dillon on CBS Radios gritty Western series Gunsmoke. Conrad voiced Dillon for the shows run, and he wrote the June 1953 episode Sundown. When Gunsmoke was adapted for television in 1955, executives at CBS did not cast Conrad or his radio costars despite a campaign to get them to change their minds and his other credits include Suspense, Lux Radio Theater, and Fibber McGee and Molly. In The Wax Works, a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad performed every part, because of his CBS Radio contract, he sometimes appeared on shows on other networks under the pseudonym Julius Krelboyne. In January 1956, Conrad was the announcer on the debut broadcast of The CBS Radio Workshop, Conrad directed and narrated the 1957 episode Epitaphs, an adaptation of Edgar Lee Masterss poetry volume Spoon River Anthology. And 1489 Words remains a favorite of many, a powerful Conrad performance proving that one picture is not necessarily worth a thousand words, a lovely way to end a day, a decade, or an era. As an actor in films, Conrad was often cast as a threatening figure
4.
American Broadcasting Company
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The network is headquartered on Columbus Avenue and West 66th Street in Manhattan, New York City. There are additional offices and production facilities elsewhere in New York City, as well as in Los Angeles and Burbank. Since 2007, when ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC originally launched on October 12,1943, as a radio network, separated from and serving as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS, in the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop, in 1996, most of Capital Cities/ABCs assets were purchased by The Walt Disney Company. The television network has eight owned-and-operated and over 232 affiliated television stations throughout the United States, most Canadians have access to at least one U. S. ABC News provides news and features content for radio stations owned by Citadel Broadcasting. In the 1930s, radio in the United States was dominated by three companies, the Columbia Broadcasting System, the Mutual Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company. The last was owned by electronics manufacturer Radio Corporation of America, in 1938, the FCC began a series of investigations into the practices of radio networks and published its report on the broadcasting of network radio programs in 1940. The report recommended that RCA give up control of either NBC Red or NBC Blue, at that time, the NBC Red Network was the principal radio network in the United States and, according to the FCC, RCA was using NBC Blue to eliminate any hint of competition. Once Mutuals appeals against the FCC were rejected, RCA decided to sell NBC Blue in 1941, the newly separated NBC Red and NBC Blue divided their respective corporate assets. Investment firm Dillon, Read & Co. offered $7.5 million to purchase the network, Edward John Noble, the owner of Life Savers candy, drugstore chain Rexall and New York City radio station WMCA, purchased the network for $8 million. Due to FCC ownership rules, the transaction, which was to include the purchase of three RCA stations by Noble, would require him to resell his station with the FCCs approval, the Commission authorized the transaction on October 12,1943. Soon afterward, the Blue Network was purchased by the new company Noble founded, Noble subsequently acquired the rights to the American Broadcasting Company name from George B. Meanwhile, in August 1944, the West Coast division of the Blue Network, both stations were then managed by Don Searle, the vice-president of the Blue Networks West Coast division. The ABC Radio Network created its audience slowly, the network also became known for such suspenseful dramas as Sherlock Holmes, Gang Busters and Counterspy, as well as several mid-afternoon youth-oriented programs. S. From Nazi Germany after its conquest, to pre-record its programming, while its radio network was undergoing reconstruction, ABC found it difficult to avoid falling behind on the new medium of television. To ensure a space, in 1947, ABC submitted five applications for television station licenses, the ABC television network made its debut on April 19,1948, with WFIL-TV in Philadelphia becoming its first primary affiliate
5.
Surfside 6
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Surfside 6 is an ABC television series which aired from 1960 to 1962. The show centered on a Miami Beach detective agency set on a houseboat and featured Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield II, Van Williams as Kenny Madison, diane McBain co-starred as socialite Daphne Dutton, whose yacht was berthed next to their houseboat. Surfside 6 was one of four detective TV series produced by Warner Bros. around that time, the others being 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and the aforementioned Bourbon Street Beat. Plots, scripts, characters, and almost everything else crossed over from one series to another, Surfside 6 had a memorable theme song, written by Jerry Livingston and Mack David. The theme has often parodied in popular culture. The lyrics varied from week to week, but Surfside 6, in its first season, Surfside 6 was paired opposite the CBS sitcoms Bringing Up Buddy and The Danny Thomas Show and NBCs Western Tales of Wells Fargo starring Dale Robertson. M. Flynn Surfside 6 at Thrilling Detective website Surfside 6 at Classic TV Hits website Surfside 6 at the Internet Movie Database Surfside 6 at TV. com
6.
Espionage
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Espionage is the obtaining of information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage can be committed by an individual or a spy ring, in the service of a government or a company, the practice is inherently clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is a subset of intelligence gathering, which includes espionage as well as information gathering from public sources, Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term is associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies primarily for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage, one of the most effective ways to gather data and information about the enemy is by infiltrating the enemys ranks. This is the job of the spy, Spies can bring back all sorts of information concerning the size and strength of enemy forces. They can also find dissidents within the forces and influence them to defect. In times of crisis, spies can also be used to steal technology, counterintelligence operatives can feed false information to enemy spies, protecting important domestic secrets, and preventing attempts at subversion. Nearly every country has strict laws concerning espionage, and the penalty for being caught is often severe. However, the benefits that can be gained through espionage are generally great enough that most governments, events involving espionage are well documented throughout history. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible, which is based primarily on the Hebrew Bible, speaks about Joshua and Caleb, the ancient writings of Chinese and Indian military strategists such as Sun-Tzu and Chanakya contain information on deception and subversion. Chanakyas student Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire in India, made use of assassinations, spies and secret agents, the ancient Egyptians had a thoroughly developed system for the acquisition of intelligence, and the Hebrews used spies as well, as in the story of Rahab. Spies were also prevalent in the Greek and Roman empires, during the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols relied heavily on espionage in their conquests in Asia and Europe. Feudal Japan often used ninjas to gather intelligence, aztecs used Pochtecas, people in charge of commerce, as spies and diplomats, and had diplomatic immunity. Many modern espionage methods were established by Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan England, in 1585, Mary, Queen of Scots was placed in the custody of Sir Amias Paulet, who was instructed to open and read all of Marys clandestine correspondence. In a successful attempt to expose her, Walsingham arranged a single exception, Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsinghams agents. He succeeded in intercepting letters that indicated a conspiracy to displace Elizabeth I with Mary, in foreign intelligence, Walsinghams extensive network of intelligencers, who passed on general news as well as secrets, spanned Europe and the Mediterranean. While foreign intelligence was a part of the principal secretarys activities, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition
7.
Franchot Tone
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Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone, known as Franchot Tone, was an American stage, film, and television actor. He was the star of many films and television series throughout his career, such as Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He is perhaps best known for his role as Midshipman Roger Byam in Mutiny on the Bounty, starring alongside Clark Gable and his maternal great-grandfather was congressman Richard Franchot. Tone was a distant relative of Wolfe Tone, his great grandfather John Tone was a first cousin of Peter Tone. Tone was of French Canadian, Irish, and English ancestry, through his ancestor, the nobleman Gilbert BasqueHomme, he was of French Basque descent. Tone was educated at The Hill School, where he was dismissed “for being an influence for disorder throughout the fall term. ”He then entered Cornell University. He also joined Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and he gave up the family business to pursue an acting career in the theatre. After graduating, he moved to Greenwich Village, New York, the following year, he joined the Theatre Guild and played Curly in their production of Green Grow the Lilacs. Strasberg had been a castmate of Tones in Green Grow the Lilacs and these were intense and productive years for him, among the productions of the Group he acted in were 1931 and Success Story. The same year, however, Tone was the first of the Group to turn his back on the theatre, in his memoir on the Group Theatre, The Fervent Years, Harold Clurman recalls Tone as the most confrontational and egocentric of the group in the beginning. Nevertheless, he always considered cinema far inferior to the theatre and he often sent financial support to the Group Theatre, which often needed it. He eventually returned to stage work after the 1940s. Tone summered at Pine Brook Country Club, located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, Tones screen debut was in the 1932 movie The Wiser Sex. In 1935, he starred in Mutiny on the Bounty, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Tone worked steadily through the 1940s, but he often played second leads or love interests in films that focused on a major female star. He played the lead in the 1940 Western comedy Trail of the Vigilantes featuring Warren William, Broderick Crawford. Tones tour de force role as a manic depressive sociopath included performing many of his own stunts on the Paris landmark, in the 1950s, facing subtle blacklisting in Hollywood, he found parts in New York City-based live television, including the original production of Twelve Angry Men. He also returned to Broadway, notably appearing in A Moon for the Misbegotten with Wendy Hiller in 1957, also that year he co-produced, co-directed, and starred in an adaptation of Chekhovs Uncle Vanya, which was filmed concurrently with an off-Broadway revival. He also co-starred in the Ben Casey medical series from 1965 to 1966 as Caseys supervisor, on film, he received acclaim as the charismatic, dying president in Otto Premingers 1962 film version of Advise & Consent
8.
Lawyer
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A lawyer is a person who practices law, as an advocate, barrister, attorney, counselor or solicitor or chartered legal executive. The role of the lawyer varies greatly across legal jurisdictions, in practice, legal jurisdictions exercise their right to determine who is recognized as being a lawyer. As a result, the meaning of the lawyer may vary from place to place. In Australia, the lawyer is used to refer to both barristers and solicitors. In Canada, the word lawyer refers to individuals who have been called to the bar or. Common law lawyers in Canada are formally and properly called barristers and solicitors, however, in Quebec, civil law advocates often call themselves attorney and sometimes barrister and solicitor in English. The Legal Services Act 2007 defines the activities that may only be performed by a person who is entitled to do so pursuant to the Act. Lawyer is not a protected title, in India, the term lawyer is often colloquially used, but the official term is advocate as prescribed under the Advocates Act,1961. In Scotland, the word refers to a more specific group of legally trained people. It specifically includes advocates and solicitors, in a generic sense, it may also include judges and law-trained support staff. In the United States, the term refers to attorneys who may practice law. It is never used to refer to patent agents or paralegals, in fact, there are regulatory restrictions on non-lawyers like paralegals practicing law. Other nations tend to have terms for the analogous concept. In most countries, particularly civil law countries, there has been a tradition of giving many legal tasks to a variety of civil law notaries, clerks, and scriveners. Several countries that originally had two or more legal professions have since fused or united their professions into a type of lawyer. Most countries in this category are common law countries, though France, in countries with fused professions, a lawyer is usually permitted to carry out all or nearly all the responsibilities listed below. Arguing a clients case before a judge or jury in a court of law is the province of the barrister in England. However, the boundary between barristers and solicitors has evolved, in England today, the barrister monopoly covers only appellate courts, and barristers must compete directly with solicitors in many trial courts
9.
La Cienega Boulevard
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It was named for Rancho Las Cienegas, an area of marshland south of Rancho La Brea. From south of Fairview and from north of Rodeo Road, La Cienega Boulevard is a surface street. A portion of La Cienega in and adjacent to Beverly Hills is known as Restaurant Row for its number of upscale restaurants. It continues south passing Interstate 10, and the Metro Expo Line and it is unusual among Southern California roadways to be built to freeway standards. South of Interstate 10, La Cienega was built to standards in the late 1940s as part of the proposed Laurel Canyon Freeway. The SR170 freeway was never completed south of U. S, as such, emergency call boxes like those found along the areas freeways were installed along that stretch in the early 1970s. The area of La Cienega Boulevard, from Beverly Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard and its shops and galleries house many antiques, furniture, rugs, accessories and art. Art dealer Felix Landau operated his trend-setting gallery there in the 1960s, La Cienega in Beverly Hills, north of Wilshire Boulevard, is known as Restaurant Row because it features many upscale restaurants. La Cienega Boulevard is named after Rancho Las Cienegas Mexican land grant roughly in the now called West Los Angeles. The difference in spelling between the Spanish word ciénaga and the name of the thoroughfare originated with the name of the rancho, Metro Local lines 105 and 217, and Metro Rapid line 705 run on La Cienega Boulevard. As of April 28,2012, the Metro Expo Line serves a station at Jefferson Boulevard. The entire route is in Los Angeles County, setting the World on Fire, Kenny Chesney and Pink,2016 Southern California Unsigned Freeways – La Cienega Boulevard La Cienega Design Quarter
10.
Dean Martin
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Dean Martin was an Italian-American singer, actor, comedian, and film producer. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the century, Martin was nicknamed the King of Cool for his seemingly effortless charisma. He and Jerry Lewis were partners in the popular comedy team Martin. He was a member of the Rat Pack and a star in concert stages, nightclubs, recordings, motion pictures and he was the host of the television variety program The Dean Martin Show and The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Martin was born on June 7,1917, in Steubenville, Ohio, to an Italian father, Gaetano Alfonso Crocetti, and an Italian-American mother, Angela Crocetti. His father, who was a barber, was originally from Montesilvano, in Abruzzo, Martin had an older brother named William Alfonso Crocetti. Martins first language was an Abruzzese dialect of Italian, and he did not speak English until he started school at the age of five and he attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville where he was bullied for his broken English. He later took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager, Martin then dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought he was smarter than his teachers. He bootlegged liquor, served as a croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill. At 15 he was a boxer who billed himself as Kid Crochet and his prizefighting earned him a broken nose, a scarred lip, many broken knuckles, and a bruised body. Of his 12 bouts, he said, I won all but 11, for a time, he roomed with Sonny King, who, like Martin, was starting in show business and had little money. It is said that Martin and King held bare-knuckle matches in their apartment, fighting until one was knocked out, Martin knocked out King in the first round of an amateur boxing match. Martin gave up boxing to work as a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop, at the same time he sang with local bands, calling himself Dino Martini. He got his break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra and he sang in a crooning style influenced by Harry Mills, among others. In the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins, in October 1941 Martin married Elizabeth Betty Anne McDonald. They had four children before the marriage ended in 1949, Martin worked for various bands throughout the early 1940s, mostly on looks and personality until he developed his own singing style. Martin flopped at the Riobamba, a nightclub in New York, when he followed Frank Sinatra in 1943, Martin was drafted into the United States Army in 1944 during World War II, serving a year in Akron, Ohio. He was reclassified as 4-F and discharged, possibly because of a double hernia, by 1946, Martin was doing well, but he was little more than an East Coast nightclub singer with a common style, similar to that of Bing Crosby
11.
Rock and roll
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While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s. For the purpose of differentiation, this deals with the first definition. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars, a double bass or string bass or an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. Beyond simply a style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and on television, influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes. In addition, rock and roll may have contributed to the civil rights movement because both African-American and white American teens enjoyed the music and it went on to spawn various genres, often without the initially characteristic backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply rock music or rock. The term rock and roll now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopædia Britannica, on the hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s. In 1934, the song Rock and Roll by the Boswell Sisters appeared in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, in 1942, Billboard magazine columnist Maurie Orodenker started to use the term rock-and-roll to describe upbeat recordings such as Rock Me by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. By 1943, the Rock and Roll Inn in South Merchantville, in 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the phrase to describe it. The origins of rock and roll have been debated by commentators. The migration of former slaves and their descendants to major urban centers such as St. The immediate roots of rock and roll lay in the rhythm and blues, then called race music, particularly significant influences were jazz, blues, gospel, country, and folk. The 1940s saw the use of blaring horns, shouted lyrics. In the same period, particularly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, similarly, country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of rock and roll. Rock and roll arrived at a time of technological change, soon after the development of the electric guitar, amplifier and microphone. It was the realization that relatively affluent white teenagers were listening to music that led to the development of what was to be defined as rock. Because the development of rock and roll was a process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously the first rock. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
12.
Warner Bros. Records
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Warner Bros. Records was established on March 19,1958, as the recorded-music division of the American film studio Warner Bros. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a series of corporate mergers. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a minor player in the music industry to become one of the top recording labels in the world. In 2003, these assets were divested by their then owner Time Warner. This independent company traded as the Warner Music Group before being bought by Access Industries in 2011, WMG is the smallest of the three major international music conglomerates and the worlds last publicly traded major music company. Cameron Strang serves as CEO of the company, artists currently signed to Warner Bros. At the end of the silent movie period, Warner Bros, pictures decided to expand into publishing and recording so that it could access low-cost music content for its films. This new group controlled valuable copyrights on standards by George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, the label signed rising radio and recording stars Bing Crosby, Mills Brothers, and Boswell Sisters. In December 1931, Warner Bros. offloaded Brunswick to the American Record Corporation for a fraction of its former value, in a lease arrangement which did not include Brunswicks pressing plants. Warner Bros. sold Brunswick a second time, this time along with the old Brunswick pressing plants Warner owned, to Decca Records in exchange for a financial interest in Decca. The studio stayed out of the business for more than 25 years. Warner Bros. reëntered the record business in 1958 with the establishment of its own recording division, by this time, the established Hollywood studios were reeling from multiple challenges to their former dominance - the most notable being the introduction of television in the late 1940s. Legal changes also had a impact on their business—lawsuits brought by major stars had effectively overthrown the old studio contract system by the late 1940s. Pictures sold off much of its library in 1948 and, beginning in 1949. Semenenko in particular had a professional interest in the entertainment business. With the record business booming - sales had topped US$500 million by 1958 - Semnenko argued that it was foolish for Warner Bros, another impetus for the labels creation was the brief music career of Warner Bros. actor Tab Hunter. In 1958, the studio signed Hunter as its first artist to its newly formed record division, to establish the label, the company hired former Columbia Records president James B
