1.
Beverly Hills, California
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Beverly Hills is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, surrounded by the cities of Los Angeles and West Hollywood. By 2013, its population had grown to 34,658, sometimes referred to as 90210, one of its primary ZIP codes, it was home to many actors and celebrities throughout the 20th century. The city includes the Rodeo Drive shopping district and the Beverly Hills Oil Field, gaspar de Portolá arrived in the area that would later become Beverly Hills on August 3,1769, travelling along native trails which followed the present-day route of Wilshire Boulevard. The area was settled by Maria Rita Quinteros de Valdez and her husband in 1828 and they called their 4,500 acres of property the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. in 1854, she sold the ranch to Benjamin Davis Wilson and Henry Hancock. By the 1880s, the ranch had been subdivided into parcels of 75 acres and was being bought up by anglos from Los Angeles. Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker acquired most of it, at this point, the area was known as the Hammel and Denker Ranch. By 1888, Denker and Hammel were planning to build a town called Morocco on their holdings and they did not find enough to exploit commercially by the standards of the time, though. In 1906, therefore, they reorganized as the Rodeo Land and Water Company, renamed the property Beverly Hills, subdivided it, the development was named Beverly Hills after Beverly Farms in Beverly, Massachusetts and because of the hills in the area. The first house in the subdivision was built in 1907, although sales remained slow, Beverly Hills was one of many all-white planned communities started in the Los Angeles area around this time. Restrictive covenants prohibited non-whites from owning or renting property unless they were employed as servants by white residents and it was also forbidden to sell or rent property to Jews in Beverly Hills. Burton Green began construction on The Beverly Hills Hotel in 1911, the hotel was finished in 1912. The visitors drawn by the hotel were inclined to purchase land in Beverly Hills and that same year, the Rodeo Land and Water Company decided to separate its water business from its real estate business. The Beverly Hills Utility Commission was split off from the company and incorporated in September 1914, buying all of the utilities-related assets from the Rodeo Land. In 1919, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford bought land on Summit Drive and built a mansion, finished in 1921, the glamor associated with Fairbanks and Pickford as well as other movie stars who built mansions in the city contributed to its growing appeal. By the early 1920s the population of Beverly Hills had grown enough to make the water supply a political issue, in 1923 the usual solution, annexation to the city of Los Angeles, was proposed. There was considerable opposition to annexation among such famous residents as Pickford, Fairbanks, Will Rogers, the Beverly Hills Utility Commission, opposed to annexation as well, managed to force the city into a special election and the plan was defeated 337 to 507. In 1925, Beverly Hills approved an issue to buy 385 acres for a new campus for UCLA. The cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Venice also issued bonds to pay for the new campus
Beverly Hills, California
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Beverly Hills at the corner of Rodeo Drive & Via Rodeo
Beverly Hills, California
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Seal
Beverly Hills, California
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Aerial view, 3D computer generated image
Beverly Hills, California
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Hammel and Denker ranch, c. 1905
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
California
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A forest of redwood trees in
Redwood National Park
California
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Flag
California
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Mount Shasta
California
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Aerial view of the
California Central Valley
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
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Flag
United States
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The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
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The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
4.
Film
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A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène. Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
Film
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A vintage Fox movietone motion picture camera
Film
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The
Berlin Wintergarten theatre was the site of the first
cinema ever, with a short film presented by the
Skladanowsky brothers on 1 November 1895. The image depicts a July 1940
variety show.
Film
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A shot from
Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), an early narrative film.
Film
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This
16 mm spring-wound
Bolex "H16" Reflex camera is a popular entry level camera used in
film schools.
5.
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
Academy Awards
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Academy Awards
Academy Awards
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31st Academy Awards Presentations,
Pantages Theatre, Hollywood, 1959
Academy Awards
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81st Academy Awards Presentations,
Dolby Theatre, Hollywood, 2009
Academy Awards
–
Pantages Theatre, 2008
6.
Margaret Herrick Library
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The Margaret Herrick Library, located in Beverly Hills, California, is the main repository of print, graphic and research materials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The library contains a repository and has historical materials that include those relating to The Oscars awards show. The library also collects and maintains oral histories of the industry, the original research library was created in 1928, a year after the founding of AMPAS. It is funded by the Academy Foundation, which is AMPAS educational division and it one of the biggest film research libraries in the world, holding in excess of 32,000 books,80,000 screenplays, and 300,000 files of clippings. There are also such as Academy Award statuettes. The library is governed by the Academys Board of Governors, in 1947, Herrick was responsible for the first acquisition of an archival collection, the William Selig collection. AMPAS research library was renamed for Margaret Herrick, who served as AMPAS librarian from 1936 to 1943 before becoming director from 1945 to 1971. Dedicated to AMPAS mission of broadening the film industrys educational and cultural outreach, in its inception, the Academy library had offices in the Roosevelt Hotel. The library moved to its current building, a former waterworks, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sands, Pierre Norman. A Historical Study of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, originally presented as the authors thesis, University of Southern California, Arno Press Cinema Program,1966 Slide, Anthony. The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry, official website Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections
Margaret Herrick Library
–
Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study, where the library is housed
7.
Hollywood
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Hollywood is an ethnically diverse, densely populated neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its studios, and its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the industry. Hollywood was a community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, in 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished, the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley, known as the Father of Hollywood, along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood. The man got out of the wagon and bowed, the Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, I holly-wood, meaning hauling wood. H. J. Whitley had an epiphany and decided to name his new town Hollywood, Holly would represent England and wood would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had already started over 100 towns across the western United States, Whitley arranged to buy the 500-acre E. C. Hurd ranch and disclosed to him his plans for the land. They agreed on a price and Hurd agreed to sell at a later date, before Whitley got off the ground with Hollywood, plans for the new town had spread to General Harrison Gray Otis, Hurds wife, eastern adjacent ranch co-owner Daeida Wilcox, and others. Daeida Wilcox may have learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and she recommended the same name to her husband, Harvey. In August 1887, Wilcox filed with the Los Angeles County Recorders office a deed and parcel map of property he had sold named Hollywood, Wilcox wanted to be the first to record it on a deed. The early real-estate boom busted that year, yet Hollywood began its slow growth. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent, the old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood. The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley who was a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard, having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitleys company developed and sold one of the residential areas
Hollywood
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The Four Ladies installation at the
Hollywood Boulevard –
La Brea Avenue Gateway
Hollywood
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Glen-Holly Hotel, first hotel in Hollywood, at the corner of what is now Yucca Street. It was built in the 1890s.
Hollywood
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Hollywood Hotel, 1905
Hollywood
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The intersection of
Hollywood and Highland, 1907
8.
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
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
9.
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
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The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is a future museum in Los Angeles, California, currently under construction by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is scheduled to open in 2018 and will contain over 290,000 square feet of galleries, exhibition spaces, movie theaters, educational areas, the expansion and architectural plans were designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano and innovative contemporary architect Zoltan Pali. The project is led by Kerry Brougher, director of the Academy Museum. Academy Museum of Motion Pictures official website http, //www. latimes. com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-academy-film-museum-bill-kramer-resigns-risd-20151012-story. html Official website
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
–
Future museum location at the 1939
Streamline Moderne May Company building
10.
Louis B. Mayer
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Louis Burt Mayer was an Belarusian-Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in 1924. Mayer was skilled at developing star actors, including actors, then placing them in consistently slick productions, such as musicals or comedies. Under Mayers management, MGM became the most prestigious film studio and he renovated and expanded several other theaters in the Boston area catering to higher end audiences. After expanding and moving to Los Angeles, he teamed up with Irving Thalberg, Mayer handled the business part of running the studio, such as setting budgets and approving new productions, while Thalberg, still in his twenties, ran all MGM productions. During his reign at MGM, after Thalbergs early death in 1936, some stars did not appreciate his control over their lives, while others saw him as a father figure, important in their lives. He believed in wholesome entertainment and went to lengths to discover new actors. Actors working under Mayer would generally portray an idealized vision of men and women, family life, virtue and he believed that movies should not be a mere reflection of life, but be an entertaining escape from life. Because of his gift for understanding the nature of stardom and the needs of the audience and he was forced to resign MGM as its vice president in 1951, when the studios parent company, Loews, Inc. wanted to improve MGMs declining profits. Mayer was a conservative, at one time the chairman of Californias Republican party. In 1927 he was one of the founders of AMPAS, famous for its annual Academy Awards, Mayer was born Lazar Meir to a Jewish family in Minsk, Russian Empire. Probably his date of birth was July 12,1884 and his parents were Jacob Meir and Sarah Meltzer, and he had two sisters—Yetta, born in 1878, and Ida, born in 1883. Mayer first moved with his family to Rhode Island, where lived from 1887 to 1892. Then, they moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada where Mayer attended school and his father started a scrap metal business, J. Mayer & Son. An immigrant unskilled in any trade, he struggled to earn a living, young Louis quit school at age twelve to work with his father and help support his family. He roamed the streets with a cart that said Junk Dealer, wilson remembered that he was impressed with the boys good manners and bright personality. Whenever Mayer visited Saint John in later years, he placed flowers on Wilsons grave and it was a crappy childhood, said Mayers nephew Gerald. His family was poor, and Mayers father spoke little English and had no valuable skills and it thereby became young Mayers ambition and drive which supported the family. With his family speaking mostly Yiddish at home, his goal of self-education when he quit school was more difficult
Louis B. Mayer
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Mayer with wife, Lorena in 1948
Louis B. Mayer
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With
Joan Crawford at the premiere of
Torch Song (1953)
11.
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
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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MGM Tower, former company headquarters highlighted by the famous
Leo the Lion logo at the top
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
–
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
–
Clark Gable
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
–
Marie Dressler and
Wallace Beery in
Min and Bill (1930)
12.
Conrad Nagel
–
Conrad Nagel was an American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a sound film and television and radio performer. Born in Keokuk, Iowa, into a family, he was the son of a musician father, Frank, and a mother, Frances. Nagels mother died early in his life, and he attributed his artistic inclination to growing up in a family environment that encouraged self-expression. His father, Frank, became dean of the conservatory at Highland Park College. Nagel was immediately cast in roles that cemented his unspoiled lover image. His first film was the 1918 retelling of the Louisa May Alcott classic, Little Women and his breakout role came in the 1920 film, The Fighting Chance, opposite Swedish starlet Anna Q. In 1918, Nagel joined The Lambs, the theater club. In 1927, Nagel starred alongside Lon Chaney, Sr. Marceline Day, walthall and Polly Moran in the now lost Tod Browning directed horror film, London After Midnight. The film is possibly the most famous lost film ever. He was also heard on radio and made many notable appearances on television. From 1937 to 1947 he hosted and directed the radio program Silver Theater, from 1949 to 1952, he hosted the popular TV game show, Celebrity Time and from 1953 to 1954, the DuMont Television Network program Broadway to Hollywood. In 1961 he made a guest appearance on Perry Mason as art collector, fellow actors involved in the founding included, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Richard Barthelmess, Jack Holt, Milton Sills, and Harold Lloyd. He served as president of the organization from 1932 to 1933 and he was also a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. The 21-year gap between his appearances in 1932 and 1953 is a record for an Oscar ceremonies host, Nagel was the announcer for Alec Templeton Time, a musical variety program on NBC Radio in the summer of 1939. He was the host on Silver Theatre, a replacement program that began June 8,1947. Templeton later hosted his own TV show Its Alec Templeton Time on the DuMont Television Network from June 1955 to August 1955. From September 14,1955 to June 1,1956, Nagel hosted Hollywood Preview, Nagel married and divorced three times
Conrad Nagel
–
Conrad Nagel
13.
Fred Niblo
–
Fred Niblo was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer. He was born Frederick Liedtke in York, Nebraska, to a French mother, using the stage name, Fred Niblo, Liedtke began his show business career performing in vaudeville and in live theater. On June 2,1901, Niblo married Broadway actress Josephine Cohan and he managed the Four Cohans in their two big successes, The Governors Son and Running for Office. From 1904–05, Fred resumed his career, appearing as Walter Lee Leonard in The Rogers Brothers in Paris. Josephine died young in 1916, the year he began acting and directing motion pictures, while in Australia, he met actress Enid Bennett, whom he would later marry. As a Hollywood director, he is most remembered for several films beginning with his 1920 work The Mark of Zorro which starred Douglas Fairbanks. The following year he teamed up with Fairbanks again in The Three Musketeers and then directed Rudolph Valentino in Blood, in 1924, Niblo directed the film Thy Name Is Woman. In 1925, Niblo was the director of the epic Ben-Hur that was one of the most expensive films of the day. Niblo followed up on this success with two major 1926 works, The Temptress starring Greta Garbo in her film in America. Niblo went on to some of the greatest stars of the era including Joan Crawford, Lillian Gish. In 1930 he directed his first talkie with two of the biggest names in business, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in a film titled Redemption. Fred Niblo retired in 1933 after more than forty years in show business, the last sixteen years were used to make more than forty films, most of which were feature length projects. He was an important personality in the years of Hollywood and was one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. In recognition of his role in the development of the film industry and his Ben-Hur film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Fred Niblo died in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery near his wife Enid Bennett in Glendale and his son with Josephine Cohan, Fred Niblo, Jr. was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Niblo has three children with Enid Bennett, daughters Louise Loris, Judith and son Peter, Fred Niblo at the Internet Movie Database Fred Niblo page at York, Nebraskas public library Fred Niblo at Find a Grave Fred Niblo at Virtual History
Fred Niblo
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Fred Niblo, 1926
Fred Niblo
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The Mark of Zorro (1920)
Fred Niblo
–
Blood and Sand (1922)
Fred Niblo
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Ben-Hur (1925)
14.
Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)
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The Ambassador Hotel was a hotel in Los Angeles, California, and location of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub until it was demolished in 2005. S. It was designed by Pasadena architect Myron Hunt in an eclectic Mediterranean Revival style with Art Deco elements, the Ambassador Hotel was frequented by celebrities, some of whom, such as Pola Negri, resided there. From 1930 to 1943, six Academy Awards ceremonies were performed at the hotel, perhaps as many as seven U. S. presidents stayed at the Ambassador, from Hoover to Nixon, along with chiefs of state from around the world. Little Richard, Liberace, Natalie Cole, and Richard Pryor, the hotel served alcoholic beverages during the Prohibition. During the 1920s, the Ambassador Hotels nightclub Cocoanut Grove was frequented by celebrities like Louis B, mayer, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Howard Hughes, Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Anna May Wong, Norma Talmadge and others. According to Photoplay, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard were frequent competitors in the Charleston contests held on Friday nights, starting in 1928, Gus Arnheim led the Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. Six to seven songs were sung a night, there was a two-hour broadcast of the orchestra on the radio. The names of the hotel and its nightclub quickly became synonymous with glamour, Cocoanut Grove would become a name for bars. On February 29,1940, the 1939 Academy Awards Ceremony was held in the Cocoanut Grove, with Bob Hope hosting. Loyce Whiteman, singer for the Cocoanut Grove Orchestra, recalled, Joan Crawford would stand at the stand and sing a couple of choruses with the band. It was a full of stars. The Ambassador Los Angeles was built as part of the Ambassador Hotels System, the Santa Barbara property burned down soon after on April 13,1921, and the Alexandria left the chain in 1925, while the Ambassador Palm Beach joined in 1929. The chain was dissolved in the 1930s. The Ambassador Los Angeles was sold to Schine Hotels, the Ambassador New York was sold and operated independently until 1958, when it was sold to Sheraton Hotels and renamed the Sheraton-East. It was demolished in 1966 for the construction of 345 Park Avenue, the Ambassador Atlantic City was gutted in the late 1970s and converted to the Tropicana Casino & Resort. The Ambassador Palm Beach was sold in 1933 and became the Palm Beach Biltmore, before being converted to condos, Kennedy, was shot along with five other people. Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan was arrested at the scene and later convicted of the murder, Kennedy died one day later from his injuries, while the other victims survived their wounds. During the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel during late 2005 and early 2006, the portion of Wilshire Boulevard in front of the hotel has been signed the Robert F. Kennedy Parkway
Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)
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Ambassador Hotel, 2004.
Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)
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Poster for the film
Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)
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The
Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools
Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)
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Life
15.
Douglas Fairbanks
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Douglas Fairbanks was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood. Fairbanks was a member of United Artists. Fairbanks was also a member of The Motion Picture Academy. With his marriage to Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became Hollywood royalty and Fairbanks was referred to as The King of Hollywood, a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable. Though widely considered as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the 1910s and 1920s and his final film was The Private Life of Don Juan. Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado and he had two half-brothers, John Fairbanks, Jr. and Norris Wilcox, and a full brother, Robert Payne Ullman. Douglas Fairbankss father, Hezekiah Charles Ullman was born in Berrysburg, Pennsylvania and he was the fourth child in a Jewish family consisting of six sons and four daughters. Charless parents, Lazarus Ullman and Lydia Abrahams, had immigrated to the U. S. in 1830 from Baden, when he was 17, Charles started a small publishing business in Philadelphia. Two years later, he left for New York to study law and he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1856 and began building a substantial practice. At the onset of the Civil War, Charles joined the Union forces and he engaged in several battles, was wounded, and later became a captain in the 5th Pennsylvania Reserves. Charles left the service in 1864 and returned to his law practice, law Association, a forerunner of the American Bar Association. Charles met Ella Adelaide Marsh, after she married his friend and client John Fairbanks, the Fairbankses had a son, John, and shortly thereafter John Senior died of tuberculosis. Ella, born into a wealthy southern Catholic family, was overprotected, consequently, she was swindled out of her fortune by her husbands partners. Even the efforts of Charles Ullman, acting on her behalf, distraught and lonely, she met and married a courtly Georgian, Edward Wilcox, who turned out to be an alcoholic. After they had a son, Norris, she divorced Wilcox with Charles acting as her own lawyer in the suit, the pretty southern belle soon became romantically involved with Charles and agreed to move to Denver with him to pursue mining investments. They arrived in Denver in 1881 with her son, John and they were married and in 1882 had a child, Robert and then a second son, Douglas, a year later. Charles purchased several mining interests in the Rocky Mountains, and he re-established his law practice, Charles Ullman, after hearing of his wifes philandering, abandoned the family when Douglas was five years old
Douglas Fairbanks
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in Private Life of Don Juan (1934)
Douglas Fairbanks
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D.W. Griffith,
Mary Pickford,
Charlie Chaplin (seated) and Douglas Fairbanks at the signing of the contract establishing
United Artists motion picture studio in 1919. Lawyers Albert Banzhaf (left) and Dennis F. O'Brien (right) stand in the background.
Douglas Fairbanks
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Fairbanks speaking in front of a crowd at a 1918 war bond drive in New York City.
Douglas Fairbanks
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The Mark of
Zorro.
16.
Thomas Edison
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Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as Americas greatest inventor. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Edison was an inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France. Edisons inventions contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications and these included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of generation and distribution to homes, businesses. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York, Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott. His father, the son of a Loyalist refugee, had moved as a boy with the family from Nova Scotia, settling in southwestern Ontario, in a known as Shewsbury, later Vienna. Samuel Jr. eventually fled Ontario because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 and his father, Samuel Sr. had earlier fought in the War of 1812 as captain of the First Middlesex Regiment. By contrast, Samuel Jr. s struggle found him on the losing side, once across the border, he found his way to Milan, Ohio. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey and his mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R. G, parkers School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age, the cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, Edisons family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined. Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit and he briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford, Ontario railway at age 16. He was held responsible for a near collision and he also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments on the train until he left the job. Edison obtained the right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald
Thomas Edison
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"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." – Thomas Alva Edison,
Harper's Monthly (September 1932 edition)
Thomas Edison
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Edison as a boy
Thomas Edison
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Mina Edison in 1906
Thomas Edison
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Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in
Mathew Brady 's Washington, DC studio in April 1878.
17.
University of Southern California
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The University of Southern California is a private research university founded in 1880 with its main campus in Los Angeles, California. As Californias oldest private university, USC has historically educated a large number of the regions business leaders. In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia, an engine for economic activity, USC contributes $8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California. For the 2014–15 academic year, there were 18,740 students enrolled in undergraduate programs. USC also has 23,729 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the world, consistently ranking among the top 3 in external contributions, multiple academic rankings list the University of Southern California as being among the top 25 universities in the United States. With an acceptance rate of 16 percent, USC is also among the most selective academic institutions in the nation. USC maintains a tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship, with alumni having founded companies such as Lucasfilm, Myspace, Salesforce. com, Intuit, Qualcomm, Box, Tinder. As of 2014, the university has produced the fourth largest number of billionaire alumni out of all institutions in the world. USC is home to the world’s most powerful computer, which is presently housed in a super-cooled. The only other commercially available quantum computing system is operated jointly by NASA, USC was also one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Domain Name System. Other technologies invented at USC include DNA computing, dynamic programming, image compression, VoIP, USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Members of the teams, the Trojans, have won 102 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the nation. Trojan athletes have won 288 medals at the Olympic games, more than any university in the United States. If USC were a country, its athletes would have received the 12th-most Olympic gold medals in history. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities, the University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Hellman. The three donated 308 lots of land to establish the campus and provided the seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that no student would be denied admission because of race, the university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952
University of Southern California
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The Widney Alumni House, the campus's first building
University of Southern California
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University of Southern California
University of Southern California
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"
Tommy Trojan " is a major symbol of the university, though he is not the mascot.
University of Southern California
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Doheny Library
18.
D. W. Griffith
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David Wark D. W. Griffith was an American director, writer, and producer who pioneered modern filmmaking techniques. Griffith is best remembered for The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, the Birth of a Nation made use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States. Today, it is noted for its radical technique and condemned for its inherently racist philosophy. The film was subject to boycotts by the NAACP and, after screenings of the film had caused riots at several theaters, Intolerance, his next film, was, in part, an answer to his critics. By the time of his feature, The Struggle, he had made roughly 500 films. Griffith is one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and he is credited with popularizing the use of the close-up shot. Griffith was born on a farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, Jacob was a Confederate Army colonel in the American Civil War and was elected as a Kentucky state legislator. He attended a one-room schoolhouse where he was taught by his older sister, after his father died when he was ten, the family struggled with poverty. When Griffith was 14, his mother abandoned the farm and moved the family to Louisville, Griffith then left high school to help support the family, taking a job in a dry goods store and later in a bookstore. Griffith began his career as an actor in touring companies. Meanwhile, he was learning how to become a playwright, but had little success—only one of his plays was accepted for a performance, Griffith then decided to become an actor, and appeared in many films as an extra. Griffith began making films in 1908, and released his first feature film, Judith of Bethulia. A few years earlier, in 1907, Griffith, still struggling as a playwright, Porter rejected Griffiths script, but gave him an acting part in Rescued from an Eagles Nest instead. Finding this attractive, Griffith began to explore a career as an actor in the picture business. At Biograph, Griffiths career in the industry would change forever. In 1908, Biographs main director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon, McCutcheon, Jr. however, was not able to bring the studio any success. As a result, Biograph co-founder, Henry Harry Marvin, decided to give Griffith the position, Griffith would end up directing forty-eight shorts for the company that year. His short In Old California was the first film shot in Hollywood, four years later he produced and directed his first feature film Judith of Bethulia, one of the earliest to be produced in the United States
D. W. Griffith
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D. W. Griffith in 1922
D. W. Griffith
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Griffith (c. 1907)
D. W. Griffith
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Griffith on the set of Birth of a Nation (1915) with actor
Henry Walthall and others.
D. W. Griffith
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Left to right: Griffith, cameraman
G. W. "Billy" Bitzer (behind
Pathé camera),
Dorothy Gish watching from behind Bitzer,
Karl Brown keeping script, and
Miriam Cooper in profile, in a production still for
Intolerance (1916).
19.
William C. deMille
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William Churchill de Mille was an American screenwriter and film director from the silent movie era through the early 1930s. He was also a noted playwright prior to moving into film, once he was established in film he specialized in adapting Broadway plays into silent films. He was the brother of the versatile Cecil B. DeMille, who altered the capitalization of his last name when he went to Hollywood, in 1903 he married Anna Angela George, the daughter of notable economist Henry George. Anna bore William two children, Agnes de Mille – named after a sister who died in childhood – who became a noted choreographer and Peggy George. In 1905 he became successful Broadway playwright, following its development in 1904 and his first play, Strongheart was eventually released as a movie by his brother as Braveheart. Two of Williams works, The Warrens of Virginia and The Woman were produced by the flamboyant impresario David Belasco, the former featured future film star Mary Pickford and Cecil, both struggling actors playing minor roles. He wrote a number of sketches including In 1999, Food, Poor Old Jim, The Squealer, The Martyrs. Cecil eventually moved to Hollywood, and William followed and his directorial debut was The Only Son. Though not as today as Cecil, he was one of the silent film eras most respected directors. And though most of his silents have been lost, those that remain, one of the writers involved in the film was Clara Beranger, whom deMille would marry in 1929. At about this time, William also met Lorna Moon, an established New York author from Scotland, who also wrote sophisticated Hollywood comedies. In 1998, Richard de Mille, who had grown up in Cecils household, revealed in the memoir My Secret Mother, Richard had been adopted by Cecil B. and Constance DeMille to avoid a family scandal. Apparently, Williams wife never knew the truth of Richards birth, in addition to his filmmaking fame, William deMille was an early member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. With Douglas Fairbanks, he co-hosted the 1st Academy Awards in 1929 and he also served as President of the Academy briefly. DeMille helped found the USC Film School in 1929, and after his East Coast theatrical career failed to revive in the early 1930s, DeMille died in 1955 while living in Playa del Rey, California, and was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. New York, NY, E. P. Dutton, notes William C. deMille at the Internet Broadway Database William C. deMille at the Internet Movie Database William deMille profile, silentgents. com William C. deMille profile, Virtual-History. com
William C. deMille
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c.1904
William C. deMille
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De Mille directing a scene using a "Magna Vox" voice amplification device
William C. deMille
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Tombs of Cecil Blount DeMille (right), Constance DeMille (left), William DeMille (urn in front), Clara DeMille (stone below urn in front)
20.
Ernst Lubitsch
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Ernst Lubitsch was a German American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywoods most elegant and sophisticated director, as his prestige grew, in 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. Ernst Lubitsch was born on January 29,1892 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Anna and Simon Lubitsch and his family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno in the Russian Empire and his mother from Wriezen, outside Berlin. He turned his back on his fathers tailoring business to enter the theater, in 1913, Lubitsch made his film debut as an actor in The Ideal Wife. He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and he appeared in approximately thirty films as an actor between 1912 and 1920. His last film appearance as an actor was in the 1920 drama Sumurun, opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener, in 1918, he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma, starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying international success with both. His reputation as a master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry. Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921 and they, along with Lubitschs Carmen were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company, however, with World War I still fresh, and with a slew of German New Wave releases encroaching on American movie workers livelihoods, Lubitsch was not gladly received. He cut his trip short after little more than three weeks and returned to Germany, but he had already seen enough of the American film industry to know that its resources far outstripped the spartan German companies. Lubitsch finally left Germany for Hollywood in 1922, contracted as a director by Mary Pickford, settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle, Lady Windermeres Fan, and So This Is Paris. But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitschs contract was dissolved by mutual consent, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, was well regarded, the Patriot, produced by Paramount, earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Directing. Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals, with his first sound film, The Love Parade, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies. The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, and The Smiling Lieutenant were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time and his next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise. Later described as amoral by critic David Thomson, the cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences
Ernst Lubitsch
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Ernst Lubitsch, c. 1922
Ernst Lubitsch
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Lubitsch, c. 1920
Ernst Lubitsch
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Lubitsch and his wife, Helene Kraus
Ernst Lubitsch
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Lubitsch in
The Merry Widow, 1934
21.
Irving Thalberg
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Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called The Boy Wonder for his youth, innate commercial instincts, Thalberg had little interest in films as an art form, he notoriously remarked that filmmakers are like servant girls, they need a good slap on the backside now and then. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and as a child was afflicted with a heart disease that doctors said would kill him before he reached the age of thirty. After graduating from school he took night classes in typing. Among the films he produced was The Hunchback of Notre Dame and he then partnered with Louis B. Mayers studio and, after it merged with two studios, helped create Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was made head of production of MGM in 1925, at the age of twenty-six, and after three years MGM became the most successful studio in Hollywood as a result of his supervision. During his twelve years with MGM, until his death at age 37, he produced four hundred films, most of which bore his imprint. Among those innovations were story conferences with writers, sneak previews to gain early feedback, in addition, he introduced horror films to audiences and coauthored the “Production Code, ” guidelines for morality followed by all studios. During the 1920s and 1930s, he synthesized and merged the world of stage drama, Thalberg created numerous new stars and groomed their screen images. He had the ability to combine quality with commercial success, and was credited with bringing his artistic aspirations in line with the demands of audiences. After his death, Hollywoods producers declared him to have been, despite his young age, President Roosevelt wrote, The world of art is poorer with the passing of Irving Thalberg. His high ideals, insight and imagination went into the production of his masterpieces, the Irving G. Thalberg was born in Brooklyn, to German-Jewish immigrant parents, William and Henrietta. Shortly after birth, he was diagnosed with blue baby syndrome, the prognosis from the family doctor, and from specialists years later, was that he would possibly live to age twenty, or at most, age thirty. During his high school years in Brooklyn, he began having attacks of chest pains, dizziness and this affected his ability to study, though until that time he was a good student. When he was 17, he contracted fever, and was confined to bed for a year. His mother, Henrietta, to prevent him falling too far behind other students, brought him homework from school, books and she also hoped that the schoolwork and reading would distract him from the tantalizing sounds of children playing outside his window. With little to him, he read books as a main activity
Irving Thalberg
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Irving Thalberg, c. 1930s
Irving Thalberg
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Thalberg, 1929
Irving Thalberg
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Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Irving Thalberg
–
Thalberg (L) with wife, Norma Shearer, and Louis B. Mayer, 1932
22.
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
Darryl F. Zanuck
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Darryl F. Zanuck, 1964
Darryl F. Zanuck
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Darryl F. Zanuck at the Academy Awards celebration
Darryl F. Zanuck
–
Darryl Zanuck's grave at the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
23.
88th Academy Awards
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During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by David Hill and Reginald Hudlin, Actor Chris Rock hosted the show for the second time, having previously hosted the 77th ceremony held in 2005. In related events, the Academy held its 7th Annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center on November 14,2015. On February 13,2016, in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, Spotlight won two awards including Best Picture, and Mad Max, Fury Road won six awards, the most for the evening. The Revenant earned three awards including Best Director for Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, brie Larson won Best Actress for Room, while Mark Rylance and Alicia Vikander won supporting acting honors for Bridge of Spies and The Danish Girl, respectively. The telecast garnered 34.42 million viewers in the United States, the nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced on January 14,2016, at 5,30 a. m. PST, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, by directors Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Revenant led all nominees with twelve nominations, Mad Max, Fury Road came in second with ten. The winners were announced during the ceremony on February 28,2016. With two Oscars, Spotlight was the first film since 1952s The Greatest Show on Earth to win Best Picture with only one other award, Alejandro G. Iñárritu became the third individual to win two consecutive Oscars for Best Director. At the age of 87, Ennio Morricone was believed to be the oldest competitive winner in Oscar history, having previously won for Gravity and Birdman, Emmanuel Lubezki became the first person to win three consecutive Best Cinematography awards. Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger, gena Rowlands — Who has illuminated the human experience through her brilliant, passionate and fearless performances. Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Debbie Reynolds — For her charitable contributions, the following individuals presented awards or performed musical numbers. Due to the reception and lower ratings resulting from the previous years ceremony, producers Neil Meron. Shortly afterwards, actor Neil Patrick Harris announced that he would not host the Oscars for a second time, in an interview released from The Huffington Post, he said I dont know that my family nor my soul could take it. It was fun to check off the list, but for the amount of time spent, in September 2015, AMPAS recruited David Hill and Reginald Hudlin as producers of the ceremony. Were delighted to have this talented team on board, AMPAS president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a release announcing the decision. His vast experience as an events producer, coupled with Reginalds energy, creativity. The following month, Hill and Hudlin selected actor and comedian Chris Rock to host the 2016 telecast and they explained their decision to hire Rock back as host saying, Chris Rock is truly the MVP of the entertainment industry
88th Academy Awards
–
Chris Rock will host the 88th Academy Awards.
24.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs
–
Cheryl Boone Isaacs is an American film marketing and public relations executive. She has represented the Public Relations Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, known for its annual Academy Awards, on July 30,2013 she was elected as the 35th president of AMPAS. Boone Isaacs is the first African American to hold office. Boone Isaacs was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to father, postal worker Ashley Boone, Sr. and her family was middle class and she grew up near Springfield College until her family moved to the Sixteen Acres neighborhood of Springfield. She is the youngest of four children, two brothers and an older sister. In 1967, Boone Isaacs graduated from Springfield Central High School, in 1971, she graduated from Whittier College with a degree in political science. During college she spent time in an abroad program in Copenhagen. Boone Isaacs married Stanley Isaacs who is of English-Jewish descent and they live and work in the greater Los Angeles area. After college, Boone Isaacs worked as an attendant for Pan Am based out of San Francisco. At the age of 25, she ended up following her older brother Ashley Boone, Jr. who worked as an executive, in 1977, Boone Isaacs began working in publicity at Columbia Pictures. Her first job was publicizing the Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Boone Isaacs was then Director of Advertising and Publicity for The Ladd Company and worked to promote films like The Right Stuff and Once Upon a Time in America. In 1984, she was Director, Publicity and Promotion, West Coast, eventually becoming the worldwide publicity director for Paramount Pictures, as Paramounts Executive Vice President of Worldwide Publicity, she orchestrated the marketing campaigns for Best Picture winners Forrest Gump and Braveheart. She was at Paramount for 13 years, from 1997 to 1999, she was President of Theatrical Marketing for New Line Cinema, where she promoted Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Wedding Singer and Boogie Nights. In this position, she was the first black woman to head a studio marketing department, Boone Isaacs started her own company, called CBI Enterprises, Inc. where she has worked on publicity for films that have included Best Picture winners The Kings Speech and The Artist. Boone Isaacs has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, all work for the Academy, even leadership roles, is on a volunteer basis. As President of the AMPAS, Boone Isaacs was instrumental in removing the restriction of the number of members allowed into the Academy and she also initiated a drive to invite over 400 new members, many of whom were young and came from diverse backgrounds. Boone Isaacs has been a force in addressing the lack of diversity. Other efforts that she is addressing is focusing on improving AMPAS mentorship programs, enhancing the student version of the Academy Awards and improving the scientific, part of her duties as President is to oversee the Academy Awards
Cheryl Boone Isaacs
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Boone Isaacs in 2015 at the announcement of nominees for the
87th Academy Awards
25.
Spike Lee
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Shelton Jackson Spike Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company,40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983, Lee has acted in ten of his own films. Lees movies have examined race relations, colorism in the community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty. Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Jacqueline Carroll, a teacher of arts and black literature, and William James Edward Lee III, a jazz musician and composer. Lee also had three younger siblings Joie, David, and Cinqué, who all worked in different positions in Lees films. Director Malcolm D. Lee is his cousin, when he was a child, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. His mother nicknamed him Spike during his childhood and he attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyns Gravesend neighborhood. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College, a black college, where he made his first student film. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B. A. in mass communication from Morehouse and he did graduate work at New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in film & television. In 1991, Lee taught a course at Harvard about filmmaking and it was there that he received his Master of Fine Arts and was appointed Artistic Director in 2002. Lees independent film, Joes Bed-Stuy Barbershop, We Cut Heads, was the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Centers New Directors/New Films Festival, in 1985, Lee began work on his first feature film, Shes Gotta Have It. With a budget of $175,000, he shot the film in two weeks, when the film was released in 1986, it grossed over $7,000,000 at the U. S. box office. Lees 1989 film Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989, many people, including Hollywoods Kim Basinger, believed that Do the Right Thing also deserved a Best Picture nomination. Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture that year, after the 1990 release of Mo Better Blues, Lee was accused of antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League and several film critics. They criticized the characters of the club owners Josh and Moe Flatbush, Lee denied the charge, explaining that he wrote those characters in order to depict how black artists struggled against exploitation. Lee said that Lew Wasserman, Sidney Sheinberg or Tom Pollock and he said he could not make an antisemitic film because Jews run Hollywood, and thats a fact. His 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls, about the killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. On May 2,2007, the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival honored Spike Lee with the San Francisco Film Societys Directing Award and he received the 2008 Wexner Prize
Spike Lee
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Lee at the 2009
Tribeca Film Festival
Spike Lee
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Lee in 2007
Spike Lee
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Lee in September 2011
Spike Lee
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Lee with his
Peabody Award, 2011
26.
Will Smith
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Willard Carroll Will Smith Jr. is an American actor, producer, rapper, and songwriter. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood, Smith has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards. In the late 1980s, Smith achieved modest fame as a rapper under the name The Fresh Prince, in 1990, his popularity increased dramatically when he starred in the popular NBC television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for six seasons until 1996. After the series ended, Smith transitioned from television to film, Smith has been ranked as the most bankable star worldwide by Forbes. As of 2016, his films have grossed $7.5 billion at the box office. For his performances as boxer Muhammad Ali in Ali and stockbroker Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness, Smith received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Willard Carroll Smith Jr. was born on September 15,1968 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Caroline, a Philadelphia school board administrator and he grew up in West Philadelphias Wynnefield neighborhood, and was raised Baptist. He has three siblings, sister Pamela, who is four years older, and twins Harry and Ellen, Smith attended Our Lady of Lourdes, a private Catholic elementary school in Philadelphia. His parents separated when he was 13, but did not actually divorce until around 2000, though widely reported, it is untrue that Smith turned down a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he never applied to college because he wanted to rap. Smith says he was admitted to a program at MIT for high school students. According to Smith, My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, but I had no intention of going to college. The trio was known for performing humorous, radio-friendly songs, most notably Parents Just Dont Understand and they gained critical acclaim and won the first Grammy awarded in the Rap category. Smith spent money freely around 1988 and 1989 and underpaid his income taxes, the Internal Revenue Service eventually assessed a $2.8 million tax debt against Smith, took many of his possessions, and garnished his income. Smith was nearly bankrupt in 1990, when the NBC television network signed him to a contract and built a sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the show was successful and began his acting career. Will Smith set for himself the goal of becoming the biggest movie star in the world, Smiths first major roles were in the drama Six Degrees of Separation and the action film Bad Boys in which he starred opposite Martin Lawrence. In 1996, Smith starred as part of an ensemble cast in Roland Emmerichs Independence Day, the film was a massive blockbuster, becoming the second highest-grossing film in history at the time and establishing Smith as a prime box office draw. In the summer of 1997 he starred alongside Tommy Lee Jones in the summer hit Men in Black playing Agent J, in 1998, Smith starred with Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State
Will Smith
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Smith in 2012
Will Smith
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Smith at the Emmy Awards in 1993
Will Smith
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Nobel Peace Prize Concert December 11, 2009, in
Oslo, Norway: Smith with wife Jada and children Jaden and Willow
27.
Jada Pinkett Smith
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Jada Koren Pinkett–Smith is an American actress, dancer, singer-songwriter, and businesswoman. She began her career in 1990, when she made a guest appearance in the short-lived sitcom True Colors and she starred in A Different World, produced by Bill Cosby, and she featured opposite Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor. She starred in films such as Menace II Society and Set It Off. Pinkett Smith launched her career in 2002, when she helped create the metal band Wicked Wisdom. Smith also created a company, in addition to authoring a book. In 1997, she married actor Will Smith and they have two children, Jaden and Willow. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Jada Koren Pinkett was named after her mothers favorite soap-opera actress, Pinkett Smith is of African American, West Indian, Creole, and Portuguese-Jewish ancestry. Her parents are Adrienne Banfield-Jones, the nurse of an inner-city clinic in Baltimore. Banfield-Jones became pregnant in high school, the married but divorced after several months. Banfield-Jones raised Pinkett with the help of her own mother, Marion Martin Banfield, Banfield noticed her granddaughters passion for the performing arts and enrolled her in piano, tap dance, and ballet lessons. She has a brother, actor/writer Caleeb Pinkett. Pinkett Smith has remained close to her mother and said, A mother and daughters relationship is usually the most honest and she also added, understood what I wanted and never stood in my way. She participated as the maid of honor in Banfield-Jones 1998 wedding to telecommunications executive Paul Jones, Pinkett Smith has shown great admiration for her grandmother, saying, My grandmother was a doer who wanted to create a better community and add beauty to the world. Pinkett Smith attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where she met and she majored in dance and theatre and graduated in 1989. She continued her education at the North Carolina School of the Arts and she ultimately moved to Los Angeles, California, where she quickly found success in show business. She began her career in 1990, when she starred in an episode of True Colors. She then appeared in a pilot for a supernatural drama titled Moes World that was never aired. She received guest roles in shows such as Doogie Howser
Jada Pinkett Smith
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Pinkett Smith at the 2014 NY PaleyFest for
Gotham
Jada Pinkett Smith
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Pinkett Smith in 2001
Jada Pinkett Smith
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Pinkett Smith with her husband and children at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Concert
28.
Al Sharpton
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In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U. S. presidential election. He hosts his own talk show, Keepin It Real, and he makes regular guest appearances on Fox News, CNN. In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBCs PoliticsNation, in 2015, the program was shifted to Sunday mornings. Sharptons supporters praise his ability and willingness to defy the power structure that is seen as the cause of their suffering, President Barack Obama said that Sharpton is the voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden. A2013 Zogby Analytics poll found that one quarter of African Americans said that Sharpton speaks for them and his critics describe him as a political radical who is to blame, in part, for the deterioration of race relations. Sociologist Orlando Patterson has referred to him as a racial arsonist, while liberal columnist Derrick Z. Jackson has called him the equivalent of Richard Nixon. Sharpton sees much of the criticism as a sign of his effectiveness, in many ways, what they consider criticism is complimenting my job, he said. An activists job is to make public civil rights issues until there can be a climate for change, Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to Ada and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, in 1963, Sharptons father left his wife to have a relationship with Sharptons half-sister. Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, in 1972, he accepted the position of youth director for the presidential campaign of African-American Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Between the years 1973 and 1980 Sharpton served as James Browns tour manager, in 1971 Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth. Bernhard Goetz shot four African-American men on a New York City Subway 2 train in Manhattan on December 22,1984, at his trial Goetz was cleared of all charges except for carrying an unlicensed firearm. Sharpton led several marches protesting what he saw as the prosecution of the case. Sharpton and other civil rights leaders said Goetzs actions were racist, a federal investigation concluded the shooting was due to an attempted robbery and not race. On December 20,1986, three African-American men were assaulted in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens by a mob of white men. The three men were chased by their attackers onto the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was struck, a week later, on December 27, Sharpton led 1,200 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Howard Beach. Residents of the neighborhood, who were white, screamed racial epithets at the protesters. A special prosecutor was appointed by New York Governor Mario Cuomo after the two surviving victims refused to co-operate with the Queens district attorney, Sharptons role in the case helped propel him to national prominence
Al Sharpton
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Al Sharpton, January 2015
Al Sharpton
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Sharpton leading the first protest march over the death of Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst, 1989
Al Sharpton
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Al Sharpton at National Action Network's headquarters.
Al Sharpton
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Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, where Sharpton was imprisoned
29.
Mary Pickford
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Gladys Louise Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress, writer, director, and producer. She was a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Known in her prime as Americas Sweetheart and the girl with the curls, Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. Pickford was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her name and she was awarded the second ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette and also received an honorary Academy Award in 1976. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute ranked Pickford as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema, Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in 1892 at 211 University Avenue, A Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants and her mother, Charlotte Hennessey, was of Irish Catholic descent and worked for a time as a seamstress. She had two siblings, Charlotte, called Lottie, and John Charles, called Jack, who also became actors. To please her husbands relatives, Pickfords mother baptized her children as Methodists, John Charles Smith was an alcoholic, he abandoned the family and died on February 11,1898, from a fatal blood clot caused by a workplace accident when he was a purser with Niagara Steamship. When Gladys was age four, her household was under infectious quarantine and their devoutly Catholic maternal grandmother asked a visiting Roman Catholic priest to baptize the children. Pickford was at this time baptized as Gladys Marie Smith, Charlotte Smith began taking in boarders after being widowed. One of these was a stage manager. At his suggestion, Gladys was given two roles, one as a boy and the other as a girl, in a stock company production of The Silver King at Torontos Princess Theatre. She subsequently acted in many melodramas with Torontos Valentine Company, finally playing the child role in their version of The Silver King. By the early 1900s, theatre had become a family enterprise, Gladys, her mother and two younger siblings toured the United States by rail, performing in third-rate companies and plays. After six impoverished years, Pickford allowed one more summer to land a role on Broadway. In 1906 Gladys, Lottie and Jack Smith supported singer Chauncey Olcott on Broadway in Edmund Burke, Gladys finally landed a supporting role in a 1907 Broadway play, The Warrens of Virginia. The play was written by William C. deMille, whose brother, Cecil, David Belasco, the producer of the play, insisted that Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford. After completing the Broadway run and touring the play, however, on April 19,1909, the Biograph Company director D. W. Griffith screen-tested her at the companys New York studio for a role in the nickelodeon film, Pippa Passes
Mary Pickford
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Portrait photograph, 1918
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
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Mary Pickford, 1920
