1.
A Star Is Born (1937 film)
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A Star Is Born is a 1937 American Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick, directed by William A. The supporting cast features Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, north Dakota farmgirl Esther Victoria Blodgett yearns to become a Hollywood actress. Although her aunt and father discourage such thoughts, Esthers grandmother gives her her savings to follow her dream, Esther goes to Hollywood and tries to land a job as an extra, but so many others have had the same idea that the casting agency has stopped accepting applications. Esther is told that her chances of becoming a star are one in 100,000 and she befriends a new resident at her boarding house, assistant director Danny McGuire, himself out of work. When Danny and Esther go to a concert to celebrate Dannys employment, Esther has her first encounter with Norman Maine, Norman has been a major star for years, but his alcoholism has sent his career into a downward spiral. Danny gets Esther a one-time waitressing job at a fancy Hollywood party, while serving hors d’œuvre, she catches Normans eye. He gets his longtime producer and good friend, Oliver Niles, impressed, Oliver gives her a new name and a contract. She practices her few lines for her first tiny role, when the studio has trouble finding a female lead for Normans current film, entitled The Enchanted Hour, Norman persuades Oliver to cast Esther. The film makes her a success, even as viewers continue to lose interest in Norman. Norman proposes to Vicki, she accepts when he promises to give up drinking and they elope without publicity, much to press agent Matt Libbys disgust, and enjoy a trailer-camping honeymoon in the mountains. When they return, Vickis popularity continues to skyrocket, while Norman realizes his own career is over, Norman stays sober for a while, but his frustration over his situation finally pushes him over the edge. When Vicki wins the top award, he interrupts her acceptance speech by drunkenly demanding three awards for the worst acting of the year. Norman goes on a drinking binge and winds up arrested for drunk driving. In court, the judge sentences him to 90 days of incarceration, the judge, who is impressed with Vickis acting success, suspends Normans sentence and puts Normans custody into Vickis hands. Vicki decides to give up her career in order to devote herself to his rehabilitation, after Norman overhears her discussing her plan with Oliver, he drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean. Shattered, Vicki decides to quit and go home, soon afterward, her grandmother shows up once she hears Vicki is quitting. Her grandmother tells her of a letter Norman sent her when they got married, the letter stated how proud he was of Vicki, and how much he loved her. Because of her grandmothers words, and the reminder of Normans deep love, Vicki is convinced to stay in show business
2.
Pittsburgh
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Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. The city proper has a population of 304,391. The metropolitan population of 2,353,045 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U. S. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclines, a fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, Americas 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out. The area has served also as the federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research. The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University, the region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, sustainable energy, and energy extraction. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The current pronunciation, which is unusual in English speaking countries, is almost certainly a result of a printing error in some copies of the City Charter of March 18,1816. The error was repeated commonly enough throughout the rest of the 19th century that the pronunciation was lost. After a public campaign the original spelling was restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee, the first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century, Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers, during 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalles 1669 claims, the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne, the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddocks Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758, Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named Pittsborough
3.
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
4.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
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Hollywood Forever Cemetery, originally named Hollywood Cemetery, is one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles. It is located at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, Paramount Studios is located at the south end of the same block on 40 acres which were once part of the cemetery, but held no interments. People who played roles in shaping Los Angeles are interred throughout the property. The cemetery is active and regularly hosts community events, including music, the cemetery, the only one actually in Hollywood, was founded in 1899 on 100 acres and called Hollywood Cemetery by F. W. </ref></ref> Incorporated. The Hollywood Cemetery Association filed articles of incorporation yesterday, </ref> The cemetery sold off large tracts to Paramount Studios, which, with RKO Studios, bought 40 acres by 1920. Part of the land was set aside for the Beth Olam Cemetery, a dedicated Jewish burial ground. In 1939, Jules Roth, a felon and millionaire, bought a 51% stake in the cemetery. He used the money from the operations to pay for personal luxuries while allowing the cemetery and crematory to fall into disrepair. At the time of her death, Hollywood Memorial, like other cemeteries, was segregated, on the 47th anniversary of McDaniels death, the cemeterys current owner dedicated a cenotaph in her honor at a prime location south of Sylvan Lake. The crematory was shut down in July,1974 after the cremation of singer Cass Elliot, according to the cemetery grounds supervisor Daniel Ugarte, the crematory was in such disrepair that bricks began falling in around Elliots body. By the 1980s, the California Cemetery Board began receiving complaints from the families of people interred there. Family members complained that the grounds were not kept up and were disturbed to hear stories about vandalism on the cemetery grounds, the heirs of well-known makeup artist Max Factor moved his and other Factor family remains after the mausoleum sustained water damage that discolored the walls. In the late 1980s, to settle tax bills and maintain his lavish lifestyle and those lawns are now strip malls which house, among other businesses, an auto parts store and a laundromat. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Roth couldnt afford to repair the roofs, by that time, Hollywood Memorial was no longer making money and only generated revenue by charging families $500 for disinterments. In 1997, Roth became ill after he fell in his Hollywood Hills home and he had been embroiled in a scandal regarding another cemetery he owned, Lincoln Memorial Park, in Carson, California. Roth died on January 4,1998, and he was interred next to his wife Virginia, his father, the state of California had revoked the cemeterys license to sell its remaining interment spaces. After Roths death, it was discovered that the cemeterys endowment care fund, meant to care for the cemetery in perpetuity, was missing about $9 million, according to the current owner. Those owners, Tyler and Brent Cassity, purchased the now 62-acre property which was on the verge of closure in a bankruptcy proceeding, in 1998 for $375,000
5.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
6.
Sound film
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A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s, at first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as talking pictures, or talkies, were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects, the first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon, in the United States, they helped secure Hollywoods position as one of the worlds most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence. In Europe, the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, in Japan, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance, talking pictures were slow to take root. In India, sound was the element that led to the rapid expansion of the nations film industry. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27,1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison, the two inventors privately met. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope, essentially a peep-show system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph. The two devices were brought together as the Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection and these appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition, three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation. The primary issue was synchronization, pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. Finally, there was the challenge of recording fidelity, cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in a variety of ways. In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons
7.
Charlie Chaplin
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Sir Charles Spencer Charlie Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame during the era of silent film. Chaplin became an icon through his screen persona the Tramp and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, Chaplins childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. As his father was absent and his mother struggled financially, he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine, when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor. At 19 he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, Chaplin was scouted for the film industry, and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon developed the Tramp persona and formed a fan base. Chaplin directed his own films from a stage, and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay, Mutual. By 1918, he was one of the best known figures in the world, in 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films. His first feature-length was The Kid, followed by A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush and he refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue. Chaplin became increasingly political, and his film, The Great Dictator. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin, and he was accused of communist sympathies, while his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women caused scandal. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and he abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which include Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, A King in New York, and A Countess from Hong Kong. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in and he was a perfectionist, and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterised by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramps struggles against adversity, many contain social and political themes, as well as autobiographical elements. In 1972, as part of an appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times. Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Hannah Chaplin, there is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London
8.
Stanley Kubrick
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Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. He is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history, Kubrick was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war picture Paths of Glory and the historical epic Spartacus. His reputation as a filmmaker in Hollywood grew, and he was approached by Marlon Brando to film what would become One-Eyed Jacks, though Brando eventually decided to direct it himself. His home at Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, which he shared with his wife Christiane, became his workplace, where he did his writing, research, editing, and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete control over his films. His first British productions were two films with Peter Sellers, Lolita and Dr. Strangelove and he often asked for several dozen retakes of the same scene in a movie, which resulted in many conflicts with his casts. Despite the resulting notoriety among actors, many of Kubricks films broke new ground in cinematography, Steven Spielberg has referred to the film as his generations big bang, and it is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. For the 18th-century period film Barry Lyndon, Kubrick obtained lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA, with The Shining, he became one of the first directors to make use of a Steadicam for stabilized and fluid tracking shots. His last film, Eyes Wide Shut, was completed shortly before his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26,1928, in the Lying-In Hospital at 307 Second Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. He was the first of two children of Jacob Leonard Kubrick, known as Jack or Jacques, and his wife Sadie Gertrude Kubrick, known as Gert and his sister, Barbara Mary Kubrick, was born in May 1934. At Stanleys birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in the Bronx, although his parents had been married in a Jewish ceremony, Kubrick did not have a religious upbringing, and would later profess an atheistic view of the universe. By the district standards of the West Bronx, the family was fairly wealthy, soon after his sisters birth, Kubrick began schooling in Public School 3 in the Bronx, and moved to Public School 90 in June 1938. Although his IQ was discovered to be average, his attendance was poor. He displayed an interest in literature from an age, and began reading Greek and Roman myths. When Kubrick was 12, his father Jack taught him chess, the game remained a lifelong interest of Kubricks, appearing in many scenes of his films. Kubrick himself, who became a member of the United States Chess Federation, explained that chess helped him develop patience. At the age of 13, Kubricks father bought him a Graflex camera and he became friends with a neighbor, Marvin Traub, who shared his passion for photography
9.
Kirk Douglas
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Kirk Douglas is an American actor, producer, director, and author. He is one of the last living people of the film industrys Golden Age, after an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he had his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known for dramas, including westerns. During a 64-year acting career, he has appeared in more than 90 movies, other early films include Young Man with a Horn, playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling, and Detective Story. He received a second Oscar nomination for his role in The Bad and the Beautiful, opposite Lana Turner. In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory, in those two films, he starred and collaborated with the then relatively unknown director, Stanley Kubrick. Douglas helped break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit and he produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave, considered a cult classic, and Seven Days in May, opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, a story he purchased, which he gave to his son Michael Douglas. As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas has received three Academy Award nominations, an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as an author, he has written ten novels and memoirs. Currently, he is No.17 on the American Film Institutes list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema, after barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he has focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lives with his wife, Anne, a producer. He turned 100 on December 9,2016, Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna Bertha and Herschel Harry Danielovitch. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mogilev Region, in the Russian Empire, and his fathers brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglass family adopted in the United States. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the United States Navy during World War II. Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, and I was the ragmans son. Growing up, Douglas sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk, later, he delivered newspapers and during his youth worked at more than forty different jobs before getting a job acting. He found living in a family with six sisters to be stifling, in a sense, it lit a fire under me. In high school, after acting in plays, he knew he wanted to become a professional actor
10.
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
11.
Rudolph Valentino
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He was an early pop icon, a sex symbol of the 1920s, who was known as the Latin lover or simply as Valentino. He had applied for American citizenship shortly before his death at age 31. Valentino was born Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Apulia and his mother, Marie Berta Gabrielle, was French, born in Lure in Franche-Comté. His father, Giovanni Antonio Giuseppe Fedele Guglielmi di Valentina dAntonguella, was Italian, Valentino had an older brother, Alberto, a younger sister, Maria, and an older sister, Beatrice, who had died in infancy. As a child, Rodolfo was indulged because of his exceptional looks and his mother coddled him, while his father disapproved of him. He did poorly in school and was enrolled in agricultural school at Genoa. After living in Paris in 1912, he returned to Italy. Unable to secure employment, he departed for the United States in 1913 and he was processed at Ellis Island at age 18 on December 23,1913. Arriving in New York City, Valentino soon ran out of money and he supported himself with odd jobs such as bussing tables in restaurants and gardening. Eventually, he work as a taxi dancer at Maxims Restaurant-Cabaret. Among the other dancers at Maxims were several displaced members of European nobility, Valentino eventually befriended Chilean heiress Blanca de Saulles, who was unhappily married to prominent businessman John de Saulles, with whom she had a son. Following the divorce, John de Saulles reportedly used his connections to have Valentino arrested, along with a Mrs. Thyme. The evidence was flimsy at best, and after a few days in jail, following the well publicized trial and subsequent scandal, Valentino could not find employment. Shortly after the trial, Blanca de Saulles fatally shot her ex-husband during a dispute over their son. Fearful of being called in as a witness in another trial, Valentino left town. In 1917, Valentino joined a company that traveled to Utah. He then joined an Al Jolson production of Robinson Crusoe, Jr. which was travelling to Los Angeles, by fall, he was in San Francisco with a bit part in a theatrical production of Nobody Home. While in town, Valentino met actor Norman Kerry, who convinced him to try a career in cinema, Valentino and Kerry moved back to Los Angeles and became roommates at the Alexandria Hotel
12.
Gary Cooper
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Gary Cooper was an American film actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style and screen performances. His career spanned thirty-five years, from 1925 to 1960, and he was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres. Coopers ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his appearing natural, the screen persona he sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero. Cooper began his career as an extra and stunt rider. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his silent films, Cooper became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms. In the postwar years, he portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in such as The Fountainhead. In his final films, Cooper played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion and he married New York debutante Veronica Balfe in 1933, and the couple had one daughter. Their marriage was interrupted by a three-year separation precipitated by Coopers love affair with Patricia Neal, Cooper received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for his achievements in 1961. He was one of the top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, the American Film Institute ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the twenty five greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Frank James Cooper was born on May 7,1901, at 730 Eleventh Avenue in Helena, Montana to English immigrants Alice and his father emigrated from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother emigrated from Gillingham, Kent and married Charles in Montana, in 1906, Charles purchased the 600-acre Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch about fifty miles north of Helena near the town of Craig on the Missouri River. Frank and his older brother Arthur spent their summers there and learned to ride horses, hunt, in April 1908, the Hauser Dam failed and flooded the Missouri River valley along portions of the Cooper property, but Cooper and his family were able to evacuate in time. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena, at Dunstable, Cooper studied Latin and French, and took several courses in English history. While he managed to adapt to the discipline of an English school and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the class structure. After completing confirmation classes, Cooper was baptized into the Anglican Church on December 3,1911, Coopers mother accompanied her sons back to the United States in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena
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