1.
Luise Rainer
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Luise Rainer was a German and American film actress. She was the first actor to win more than one Academy Award, and at the time of her death, Rainer began acting in Germany at age 16, being trained by Austrias leading stage director, Max Reinhardt. Within a few years, she had become a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardts Vienna theater ensemble, Critics raved about her acting quality. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scouts, a number of filmmakers envisioned she might become another Greta Garbo, MGMs leading female star at the time. Her first American film role was in Escapade in 1935 and she was later dubbed the Viennese teardrop, for her dramatic telephone scene in the film. The subdued character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous, vivacious character that she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. However, she stated nothing worse could have happened to her than winning two consecutive Oscars, as audience expectations from then on would be too high to fulfill. After a string of unimportant movie parts, MGM and Rainer became disappointed, leading her to end her brief three-year film career, some film historians consider her the most extreme case of an Oscar victim in Hollywood mythology. The daughter of Heinrich and Emilie Rainer, known familiarly as Heinz and Emmy, Rainer was born on 12 January 1910, in Düsseldorf, Germany and raised in Hamburg and later in Vienna, some references list her birthplace as Vienna. Describing her childhood, she stated, I was born into a world of destruction, the Vienna of my childhood was one of starvation, poverty and revolution. Her father was a businessman who settled in Europe after spending most of his childhood in Texas, Rainers family was upper-class and Jewish. Rainer had two brothers and was a baby, born two months early. She describes her father as being possessive and tempestuous, but whose affections, Luise seemed to him as eternally absent-minded and very different. She remembers his tyrannical possessiveness, and was saddened to see her mother, a beautiful pianist, although generally shy at home, she was immensely athletic in school, becoming a champion runner and a fearless mountain climber. Rainer said she became an actress to help expend her physical and it was her fathers wish, however, that she attend a good finishing school and marry the right man. Rainers rebellious nature made her appear to be more of a tomboy and she also feared she might develop what she saw as her mothers inferiority complex. I wanted to run away and marry him but I never had an opportunity, I am sure, though, that the experience first disclosed to me the entertainment world. For years I longed to be able to walk on a tight wire, at age 16, Rainer chose to follow her dream to become an actress, under the pretext of visiting her mother, she traveled to Düsseldorf for a prearranged audition at the Dumont Theater
2.
A Kiss for Cinderella (film)
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A Kiss for Cinderella is a silent fantasy taken from the stage play by James M. Barrie. The film stars Betty Bronson and Tom Moore and was made at Paramounts Astoria Studios in Astoria, the film is based on the 1916 play which starred stage actress Maude Adams in the Bronson role. Herbert Brenon directed as he had directed the 1924 film version of Barries Peter Pan which also starred Bronson, Tom Moore had previously costarred in The Cinderella Man for Goldwyn in 1917 alongside Mae Marsh. Surviving print of film is preserved at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, George Eastman House and UCLA Film. Betty Bronson - Cinderella Esther Ralston - Fairy Godmother Dorothy Cumming - Queen Tom Moore - Policeman Flora Finch - Customer Ivan Simpson - Mr. Cutaway Edna Hagen - Gretchen Dorothy Walters - Mrs
3.
J. M. Barrie
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Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland but moved to London, although he continued to write successfully, Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, and is credited with popularising the name Wendy. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents, Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June 1913, and a member of the Order of Merit in the 1922 New Year Honours. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Angus to a conservative Calvinist family. His father David Barrie was a successful weaver. His mother Margaret Ogilvy had assumed her mothers household responsibilities at the age of eight. Barrie was the child of ten, all of whom were schooled in at least the three Rs in preparation for possible professional careers. His siblings were, Alexander, Mary Ann, Jane, Elizabeth, Agnes, David Ogilvy, Sarah, Isabella and he was a small child and drew attention to himself with storytelling. He only grew to 5 ft 3 1⁄2 in, when he was 6 years old, Barries next-older brother David died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill Davids place in his mothers attentions, even wearing Davids clothes, one time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, Is that you. I thought it was the boy she was speaking to, wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy and I said in a little lonely voice, No, its no him. Barries mother found comfort in the fact that her son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up. Eventually, Barrie and his mother entertained each other stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe, works by fellow Scotsman Walter Scott. At the age of 8, Barrie was sent to the Glasgow Academy in the care of his eldest siblings Alexander and Mary Ann, when he was 10, he returned home and continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At 14, he left home for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of Alexander and he became a voracious reader, and was fond of Penny Dreadfuls and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. At Dumfries, he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house and they formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy following a scathing moral denunciation from a clergyman on the schools governing board. Barrie knew that he wished to follow a career as an author, however, his family attempted to persuade him to choose a profession such as the ministry. With advice from Alexander, he was able to out a compromise, he would attend a university
4.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
5.
Maude Adams
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Adamss personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than one million dollars during her peak. Adams began performing as a child while accompanying her actress mother on tour, at age 16, she made her Broadway debut, and under Charles Frohmans management, she became a popular player alongside leading man John Drew, Jr. in the early 1890s. Beginning in 1897, Adams starred in plays by J. M. Barrie, including The Little Minister, Quality Street, What Every Woman Knows and these productions made Adams the most popular actress in New York. She also performed in other plays. Her last Broadway play, in 1916, was Barries A Kiss for Cinderella, after a 13-year retirement, she appeared in more Shakespeare plays and then taught acting in Missouri. She then retired to upstate New York, Adams was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Asaneth Ann Annie and James Henry Kiskadden. Adams mother was an actress, and her father had working for a bank. Little else is known of Adamss father, who died when she was young, James was not a Mormon, and Adams once wrote of her father as having been a gentile. On her mothers side, Adamss great grandfather Platt Banker converted to Mormonism and moved his family to Missouri, the family then migrated to Utah, settling in Salt Lake City, where Maudes mother was born. Adams was also a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland, the extent of Adamss connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is unclear. Adams appeared on stage at two months old in the play The Lost Baby at Brigham Young Theatre and she appeared again at the age of nine months in her mothers arms. Over her fathers objections, Adams began acting as a small child and they toured throughout the western U. S. with a theatrical troupe that played in rural areas, mining towns and some cities. At the age of five, Adams starred in a San Francisco theater as Little Schneider in Fritz, Our German Cousin and she debuted in New York at age ten in Esmeralda and then returned to California. Adams later wrote an essay, The One I Knew Least. She briefly returned to Salt Lake City, where she lived with her grandmother, Adams returned to New York City at age 16 to appear in The Paymaster. She then became a member of E. H. Sotherns theatre company in Boston, appearing in The Highest Bidder, Charles H. Hoyt then cast her in The Midnight Bell where audiences, if not the critics, took notice of her. She soon left behind juvenile parts and began to play leading roles for Frohman, in 1890, Frohman asked David Belasco and Henry C. de Mille to specially write the part of Dora Prescott for Adams in their new play Men and Women, which Frohman was producing. The next year, she appeared as Nell in The Lost Paradise, in 1892, John Drew, Jr. ended his eighteen-year association with Augustin Daly and joined Frohmans company
6.
Empire Theatre (41st Street)
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The Empire Theatre in New York City was a prominent Broadway theatre in the first half of the twentieth century. The Empire Theatre opened in 1893 with a performance of The Girl I Left Behind Me by David Belasco. In February 1927 actress Gail Kane and others were arrested following a performance of The Captive, which was considered indecent, the Empire continued to present both original plays and revivals, including the English premiere of The Threepenny Opera in 1933, until 1953. Its final show, The Time of the Cuckoo, closed May 30,1953 after 263 performances, in the same month, the theatre hosted a benefit celebrating the sixty-year history of the Empire. After the theatres closure and before its demolition, Robert Porterfield salvaged many of its interior furnishings for use at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, items removed by Porterfield included seats, paintings, lighting fixtures, and a lighting control system. Some of the decorations and seating that Porterfield transported are still in use at the Barter today, frank Sanger and Al Hayman were the owners and developers of the uptown vacant lot that became the Empire Theatre. Hayman suggested that theatre producer Charles Frohman have the Empire Theatre built there, the Empire Theatres business manager was Thomas F. Shea for over 20 years from its opening till the death of Charles Frohman, after Frohman died on the RMS Lusitania in 1915, Al Hayman took over ownership of the Empire Theatre. The theatre was sold in 1948 to the Astor estate, in 1953 it was announced that the building would be torn down to make way for an office tower, Charles Frohman hired architect J. B. McElfatrick to design the Empire Theatre, it was the first of the seven theatres designed by McElfatrick, the Empire was the first theatre to have electricity and was said to be thoroughly fireproof. The building was the stock theatre at that time to be on the ground floor. On December 2,1892, it was reported in the New York Times that the building had been completed and was in the hands of the plasterers and decorators, danes Defense Peter Pan What Every Woman Knows The Legend of Leonora A Kiss for Cinderella Déclassée Call the Doctor
7.
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
8.
Betty Bronson
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Betty Bronson was an American television and film actress who began her career during the silent film era. Elizabeth Ada Bronson was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to Frank and she began her film career at the age of sixteen with a bit part in Anna Ascends. At seventeen, she was interviewed by J. M. Barrie and she appeared alongside actresses Mary Brian and Esther Ralston, both of whom remained lifelong friends. Bronson had a role in the 1925 silent film adaptation of Ben-Hur. In 1925, she starred in another Barrie story, A Kiss for Cinderella and she made a successful transition into sound films with The Singing Fool, co-starring Al Jolson. She appeared in the sequel, Sonny Boy, with Davey Lee in 1929 and she was the leading lady opposite Jack Benny in the romantic drama The Medicine Man. Bronson continued acting until 1933 when she married Ludwig Lauerhass, with whom she had one child, Ludwig Lauerhass and she did not appear in films again until Yodelin Kid from Pine Ridge starring Gene Autry. In the 1960s, she appeared in television and feature films. Her last role was a part in the television biopic Evel Knievel. Bronson was reclusive with the press, but received attention after being seen with Douglas Fairbanks and he had his first boyhood crush on her, as he remembered in his autobiography, The Salad Days, Another important picture had just started. It was Peter Pan, directed by a caricature of a wildly temperamental movie director. After exhaustive tests, Betty Bronson, a pretty and gifted girl in her teens, was given this famous role. It was my first intensely juvenile, deep-sighs-and-bad-sonnets love and it is known that Bronson kept all Fairbanks letters and spoke of him fondly until her death. On October 19,1971, Bronson died after an illness in Pasadena, California. Betty Bronson at the Internet Movie Database Betty Bronson at AllMovie Betty Bronson at the TCM Movie Database Photographs and literature
9.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
10.
Cinderella
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Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper, is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world, the title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances, that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune. The oldest documented version comes from China, and the oldest European version from Italy, the most popular version was first published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697, and later by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection Grimms Fairy Tales. Although the storys title and main characters change in different languages. The word Cinderella has, by analogy, come to one whose attributes were unrecognized, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity. The still-popular story of Cinderella continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, the Aarne–Thompson system classifies Cinderella as the persecuted heroine. The story of Rhodopis, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is considered the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story, a version of the story, Ye Xian, appeared in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang by Duan Chengshi around 860. Here, the hardworking and lovely girl befriends a fish, the rebirth of her mother, the fish is later killed by her stepmother and sister. Ye Xian saves the bones, which are magic, and they help her dress appropriately for the New Year Festival, when she loses her slipper after being recognized by her stepfamily, the king finds her slipper and falls in love with her. The Indonesian and Malaysian story Bawang Merah Bawang Putih, are two girls named Bawang Putih and Bawang Merah. While the two countrys respective versions differ in the relationship of the girls and the identity of the protagonist. Both have a fish as the fairy godmother to her daughter. The heroine then finds the bones and buries them, and over the grave a magical swing appears, the protagonist sits on the swing and sings to make it sway, her song reaching the ears of a passing Prince. The swing is akin to the slipper test, which distinguishes the heroine from her sister. In Indonesia, Bawang Putih is the girl, who suffers at the hands of her evil stepmother and stepsister, Bawang Merah. When the Prince enquires after the singer on the swing, Bawang Merah lies, the angry prince forces Bawang Merah and her mother to tell the truth. They then admit that there is another daughter in the house, Bawang Putih comes out and moves the magical swing by her singing. In the end, she and her prince marry and live happily ever after, in the Malaysian version, it is Bawang Merah and her mother Mak Labu who are good, while her half sister Bawang Putih and her mother Mak Kundur are evil
