McVicker's Theater
McVicker's Theater was a playhouse in Chicago, United States. Built for actor James Hubert McVicker, the theater was the leading stage for comedic plays in Chicago's early years, it hosted performances by Edwin Booth, who married McVicker's daughter and was once targeted there in an attempted murder. Adler & Sullivan designed a remodel in 1883. Although destroyed in two fires, including the Great Chicago Fire, McVicker's remained an operating theater until 1984, it was demolished the next year James Hubert McVicker was born in New York City, New York on February 14, 1822. His father James died shortly after his birth, so he was raised by his mother Nancy and two siblings, he attended some public school before apprenticing as a printer. For the next five years, he operated machines in New York printing houses. In October 1837, he was hired as an apprentice for the Republican in St. Louis and was named a journeyman three years later; however he found little enjoyment in the trade and he decided to acquire a classic education.
In 1843, he entered a production at the St. Charles Theater in Louisiana. McVicker traveled to various cities around the country to perform. In April 1848, he settled in Illinois; the comedian who had worked at John Blake Rice's theater was just about to leave and Rice offered his position to McVicker. His first performance there was on May 1848 in My Neighbor's Wife, his wife performed, starring in Hue and Cry. McVicker starred opposite Rice's wife in Lend Me Five Shillings on April 27, 1849. Two years after the death of Dan Marble, McVicker purchased the right to use his plays from the family estate, he went on a national tour and toured England in 1855. The next year, McVicker became manager of the People's Theater in St. Louis; the playhouse was successful and in March 1857 he used the proceeds to establish a new theater in Chicago. McVicker's Theater opened on November 5, 1857 featuring its own stock company performing the comedic plays Honeymoon and Rough Diamond. Edwin Booth starred in A New Way to Pay Old Debts on May 31, 1858.
He would perform Richelieu, Richard III, Brutus there, he married one of McVicker's daughters in 1869. The theater was remodeled in 1864. James Henry Hackett performed as Falstaff in 1865, it was again extensively remodeled in August 1871, but was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire weeks later. However, it was rebuilt, reopened on August 15, 1872. Mark Gray fired two bullets in an unsuccessful attempt to murder Edwin Booth on April 23, 1879 while the actor was performing Richard II. Actors who performed in McVicker's company over the years included James O'Neill and Robert B. Mantell. McVicker's was remodeled again in 1883 by Adler & Sullivan, but again destroyed in a fire in 1890; the rebuilt theater, designed by the same, opened on March 31, 1891 with a performance of The Rivals featuring Joseph Jefferson, William J. Florence, Louisa Lane Drew, Viola Allen. McVicker died on March 7, 1896, his widow assumed management until she sold the theater to Jacob Litt on May 1, 1898. The theater was demolished and rebuilt in 1922.
Balaban & Katz purchased the building in 1926. It showed films until it was shut down in 1984, it was demolished the next year. The theater's decor, interior design work, steelwork and other features were designed by many of Chicago's leading firms including Structural steel work by Albert H. Wolf. Price. Clark & Sons; the curtains March Through The Fort Dearborn Massacre were by Johannes Gelert. The act drop curtain, Reverie of the Future, was by Ernest Albert. Graphic historical sketch of McVicker's Theater published in 1891McVicker's Theatre in Chicago 1891 McVicker's Theatre McVicker's Theatre programme McVicker's Theatre auditorium Bas-reliefs by Johannes Gelert La Salle's Triumphant March Through Illinois The Fort Dearborn Massacre
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre known as Broadway, refers to the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats located in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world; the Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City. According to The Broadway League, for the 2017–2018 season total attendance was 13,792,614 and Broadway shows had US$1,697,458,795 in grosses, with attendance up 3.9%, grosses up 17.1%, playing weeks up 2.8%. The majority of Broadway shows are musicals. Historian Martin Shefter argues that "'Broadway musicals', culminating in the productions of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, became enormously influential forms of American popular culture" and contributed to making New York City the cultural capital of the Western Hemisphere.
New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager, they established a theatre in Williamsburg and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida; the Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street. The Bowery Theatre opened followed by others. By the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblo's Garden opened and soon became one of New York's premiere nightspots.
The 3,000-seat theatre presented all sorts of non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmo's Opera House opened and presented opera for only four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burton's Theatre; the Astor Opera House opened in 1847. A riot broke out in 1849 when the lower-class patrons of the Bowery objected to what they perceived as snobbery by the upper class audiences at Astor Place: "After the Astor Place Riot of 1849, entertainment in New York City was divided along class lines: opera was chiefly for the upper middle and upper classes, minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle class, variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class and the slumming middle class."The plays of William Shakespeare were performed on the Broadway stage during the period, most notably by American actor Edwin Booth, internationally known for his performance as Hamlet. Booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, would revive the role at his own Booth's Theatre.
Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, Charles Fechter. Theatre in New York moved from downtown to midtown beginning around 1850, seeking less expensive real estate. In the beginning of the 19th century, the area that now comprises the Theater District was owned by a handful of families and comprised a few farms. In 1836, Mayor Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street and invited Manhattanites to "enjoy the pure clean air." Close to 60 years theatrical entrepreneur Oscar Hammerstein I built the iconic Victoria Theater on West 42nd Street. Broadway's first "long-run" musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857. In 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Theatres did not arrive in the Times Square area until the early 1900s, the Broadway theatres did not consolidate there until a large number of theatres were built around the square in the 1920s and 1930s.
New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keene's "musical burletta" The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keene's troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, D. C. that Abraham Lincoln was shot. The first theatre piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical, adding dance and original music that helped to tell the story, is considered to be The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12, 1866; the production was five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy". Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham.
These musical comedies featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes and represented a significant step forward from vaudeville and burlesque, towards a more literate form. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of questionable repute who had starred in earlier m
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American film actress. She was noted for her energetic off-beat roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s, she was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. She was the third wife of actor Clark Gable. Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, but was raised in Los Angeles by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by the film director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in A Perfect Crime. Eager to become an actress, she signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but played bit parts, she was dropped by Fox. Lombard appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett between 1927 and 1929, began appearing in feature films such as High Voltage and The Racketeer. After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid, she was signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures. Paramount began casting Lombard as a leading lady in drama films, her profile increased when she married William Powell in 1931, but the couple divorced after two years. A turning point in Lombard's career came when she starred in Howard Hawks' pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century.
The actress found her niche in this genre, continued to appear in films such as Hands Across the Table, My Man Godfrey, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Nothing Sacred. At this time, Lombard married "the King of Hollywood", Clark Gable, the supercouple gained much attention from the media. Keen to win an Oscar, Lombard began to move towards more serious roles at the end of the decade. Unsuccessful in this aim, she returned to comedy in Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be —her final film role. Lombard's career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 on board TWA Flight 3 on Mount Potosi, while returning from a war bond tour. Today, she is remembered as one of the definitive actresses of the screwball comedy genre and American comedy, ranks among the American Film Institute's greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Lombard was born in Fort Indiana, on October 6, 1908 at 704 Rockhill Street. Christened with the name Jane Alice Peters, she was the third child and only daughter of Frederick Christian Peters and Elizabeth Jayne "Bessie" Peters.
Her two older brothers, to each of whom she was close, both growing up and in adulthood, were Frederick Charles and John Stuart. Lombard's parents both descended from wealthy families and her early years were lived in comfort, with the biographer Robert Matzen calling it her "silver spoon period"; the marriage between her parents was strained, in October 1914, her mother took the children and moved to Los Angeles. Although the couple did not divorce, the separation was permanent, her father's continued financial support allowed the family to live without worry, if not with the same affluence they had enjoyed in Indiana, they settled into an apartment near Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. Described by her biographer Wes Gehring as "a free-spirited tomboy", the young Lombard was passionately involved in sports and enjoyed watching movies. At Virgil Junior High School, she participated in tennis and swimming, won trophies for her achievements in athletics. At the age of 12, this hobby unexpectedly landed Lombard her first screen role.
While playing baseball with friends, she caught the attention of the film director Allan Dwan, who recalled seeing "a cute-looking little tomboy... out there knocking the hell out of the other kids, playing better baseball than they were. And I needed someone of her type for this picture." With the encouragement of her mother, Lombard took a small role in the melodrama A Perfect Crime. She was on set for two days. Dwan commented, "She ate it up". A Perfect Crime was not distributed, but the brief experience spurred Lombard and her mother to look for more film work; the teenager attended several auditions. While appearing as the queen of Fairfax High School's May Day Carnival at the age of 15, she was scouted by an employee of Charlie Chaplin and offered a screen test to appear in his film The Gold Rush. Lombard was not given the role, her test was seen by the Vitagraph Film Company, which expressed an interest in signing her to a contract. Although this did not materialize, the condition that she adopt a new first name lasted with Lombard throughout her career.
She selected the name "Carol" after a girl with. In October 1924, shortly after these disappointments, 16-year-old Lombard was signed to a contract with the Fox Film Corporation. How this came about is uncertain: in her lifetime, it was reported that a director for the studio scouted her at a dinner party, but more recent evidence suggests that Lombard's mother contacted Louella Parsons, the gossip columnist, who got her a screen test. According to the biographer Larry Swindell, Lombard's beauty convinced Winfield Sheehan, head of the studio, to sign her to a $75-per-week contract; the teenager abandoned her schooling to embark on this new career. Fox was happy to use the name Carol. From this point, she became "Carol Lombard", the new name taken from a family friend; the majority of Lombard's appearances with Fox were bit parts in low-budget Westerns and adventure films. She commented on her di
A Self-Made Widow
A Self-Made Widow is a lost 1917 silent film comedy drama directed by Travers Vale and starring Alice Brady. Alice Brady - Sylvia John Bowers - Fitzhugh Castleton Curtis Cooksey - Bobs Justine Cutting - Semphronia Benson Henrietta Simpson - Lydia Van Dusen Herbert Barrington - Crosby Lila Chester - Della A Self-Made Widow at IMDb.com synopsis at AllMovie
Grace George
Grace George was a prominent American stage actress, who had a long career on Broadway stage and appeared in two films. She was born on December 25, 1879, she was was stepmother to his daughter Alice Brady. George appeared in a silent film called Tainted Money in 1915, she starred as Esther in the hugely successful 1899 Broadway adaptation of Ben Hur from Lew Wallace's novel. In 1935, she gave an acclaimed performance as Mary Herries in Edward Chodorov's mystery drama, Kind Lady at the Booth Theatre, she appeared in Johnny Come Lately in 1943 with James Cagney. In 1950 she was awarded the Delia Austrian Medal, she died on May 19, 1961. Grace George married William A. Brady in 1899. A son William Brady Jr. was born in 1900. Brady Jr. married the actress Katharine Alexander and had a daughter Barbara Brady who became an actress. Her niece, Maude George, was a silent film character actor who appeared in a number of Erich von Stroheim films. Grace George at the Internet Broadway Database Grace George on IMDb Grace George, NY Public Library Billy Rose Collection Grace George.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 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 emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more 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 studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's 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. Approached by Louis B. 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. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's 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. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
Woman and Wife
Woman and Wife is a 1918 American silent drama film directed by Edward Jose and starring Alice Brady. It is based on the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; the Select Pictures Corporation distributed the film. The film was known as The Lifted Cross; the film survives in an incomplete state at the BFI National Television Archive. As described in a film magazine, Jane Eyre is sent to an orphan's home by her domineering aunt, is expelled from that institution after she slaps the superintendent's face for trying to embrace her, she secures a position in the Rochester home as a governess for their only child. The lonesome Edward Rochester, believing his wife dead, proposes to Jane, his wife's brother appears, bringing along his demented sister, Edward's wife. He hides her in a room, while the household is asleep the demented woman escapes and stabs Edward. Upon his recovery, the wedding proceeds, at its height Edward's demented wife escapes from her room and interrupts the ceremony. Pursued by servants, she drowns.
Alice Brady as Jane Eyre Elliott Dexter as Edward Rochester Helen Greene as Therese Helen Lindroth as Grace Poole Victor Benoit as Raoul Daquin Leonora Morgan as Valerie Rochester Madge Evans Like many American films of the time and Wife was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required a cut in Reel 1 of the first scenes of the woman drinking. Woman and Wife on IMDb synopsis at AllMovie
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