William H. Macy
William Hall Macy Jr. is an American actor. His film career has been built on appearances in small, independent films, though he has appeared in summer action films. Macy has described himself as "sort of a Middle American, WASPy, Lutheran kind of guy... Everyman". Macy has won two Emmy Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Fargo. Since 2011, he has played Frank Gallagher, a main character in the Showtime adaptation of the British television series Shameless. Macy and actress Felicity Huffman have been married since 1997. Macy was born in Miami and grew up in Georgia and Maryland, his father, William Hall Macy, Sr. was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal for flying a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in World War II. His mother, was a war widow who met Macy's father after her first husband died in 1943. Macy graduated from Allegany High School in Cumberland, Maryland in 1968, went on to Bethany College in West Virginia where he studied veterinary medicine.
A'wretched student' by his own admission, he transferred to Goddard College in rural Vermont, where he studied under playwright David Mamet. He studied theatre at HB Studio in New York City. After graduating from Goddard in 1972, Macy originated roles in a number of plays by collaborator David Mamet, such as American Buffalo and The Water Engine. While in Chicago in his twenties, he did a TV commercial, he was required to join AFTRA in order to do the commercial, received his SAG card within a year, which for an elated Macy represented an important moment in his career. Macy spent time in Los Angeles before moving to New York City in 1980, where he had roles in over 50 Off Broadway and Broadway plays. One of his early on-screen roles was as a turtle named Socrates in the direct-to-video film The Boy Who Loved Trolls, under the name W. H. Macy, he had a minor role as a hospital orderly on the sitcom Kate & Allie in the fourth-season episode "General Hospital", played an assistant district attorney in "Everybody's Favorite Bagman", the first produced episode of Law & Order.
He has appeared in numerous films that Mamet wrote and/or directed, such as House of Games, Things Change, Oleanna, Wag the Dog and Main and Spartan. Macy's leading role in Fargo helped boost his career and recognizability, though at the expense of nearly confining him to a narrow typecast of a worried man down on his luck. Other Macy roles of the 1990s and 2000s included Benny & Joon, Above Suspicion, Mr. Holland's Opus, Ghosts of Mississippi, Air Force One, Boogie Nights, A Civil Action, Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, Texas, Mystery Men, Jurassic Park III, Panic, Welcome to Collinwood, The Cooler and Sahara, his work on ER and Sports Night has been recognized with Emmy nominations. In a November 2003 interview with USA Today, Macy stated that he wanted to star in a big-budget action movie "for the money, for the security of a franchise like that, and I love big action-adventure movies. They're way cool." He serves as director-in-residence at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, where he teaches a technique called Practical Aesthetics.
A book describing the technique, A Practical Handbook for the Actor, is dedicated to Mamet. In 2007, Macy starred in Wild Hogs, a film about middle-aged men reliving their youthful days by taking to the open road on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles from Cincinnati to the Pacific Coast. Despite being critically panned, with a 14% "rotten" rating from Rotten Tomatoes, it was a financial success, grossing over $168 million; the film reunited him with his A Civil Action costar, John Travolta. In 2009, Macy completed filming on The Maiden Heist, a comedy that co-starred Morgan Freeman and Christopher Walken. On June 23, 2008, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, would each receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the upcoming year. On January 13, 2009, Macy replaced Jeremy Piven in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow on Broadway. Piven and unexpectedly dropped out of the play in December 2008 after he experienced health problems. Dirty Girl, which starred Macy along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, Mary Steenburgen and Tim McGraw, premiered September 12, 2010 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In summer 2010, Macy joined the Showtime pilot Shameless as Frank Gallagher. The project went to series, its first season premiered on January 9, 2011. Macy has received high critical acclaim for his performance getting an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014. In the 2012 film The Sessions, Macy played a priest who helps a man with a severe disability find personal fulfillment through a sex surrogate, he made his directorial debut with the independent drama Rudderless, which stars Billy Crudup, Felicity Huffman, Selena Gomez and Laurence Fishburne. In 2017, he directed The Layover, a road trip sex comedy starring Alexandra Daddario and Kate Upton, in which Macy appeared. In 2015, he had a small role as Grandpa in the drama film Room, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture; the film reunited him with his Plea
Mary Stuart Masterson
Mary Stuart Masterson is an American actress. She has starred in the films At Close Range, Some Kind of Wonderful, Chances Are, Fried Green Tomatoes and Benny & Joon, she won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1989 film Immediate Family, was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the 2003 Broadway revival of Nine. Masterson was born in Manhattan, the daughter of writer-director-actor-producer Peter Masterson and singer-actress Carlin Glynn, she has two siblings: Alexandra. As a teen, she attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York with actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Cryer. She attended schools in New York, including eight months studying anthropology at New York University. Masterson's first film appearance was in The Stepford Wives at the age of eight, playing a daughter to her real-life father. Rather than continue her career as a child actor, she chose to continue her studies, although she did appear in several productions at the Dalton School.
In 1985, she returned to cinema in Heaven Help Us as Danni, a courageous teen running the soda shop of her gravely depressed Dad. She appeared with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken in the film At Close Range as Brad Jr's girlfriend Terry, a film based on an actual rural Pennsylvania crime family led by Bruce Johnston, Sr. during the 1960s and 1970s. She starred as the tomboyish drummer Watts in the teenage drama Some Kind of Wonderful; as a result, she is loosely connected with the Brat Pack. The same year Francis Ford Coppola cast her in Gardens of Stone in which she acted with her parents, hired by Coppola to play her on-screen parents. In 1989, she played in Chances Are alongside Cybill Shepherd, Ryan O'Neal and Robert Downey Jr. and she starred as Lucy Moore, a teenage girl giving up her first baby to a wealthy couple, played by Glenn Close and James Woods in Immediate Family. For her work in that film she received a "Best Supporting Actress" award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
Masterson continued acting in television during the 1990s. In 1991, she starred in Fried Green Tomatoes, a film based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe; the film was well-received, with film critic Roger Ebert applauding Masterson's work. The following year she was invited to host Saturday Night Live. In 1993, she played opposite Johnny Depp in Benny & Joon as his mentally ill love interest. In 1994, she acted in Bad Girls, playing Anita Crown, a former prostitute, who joins with three other former prostitutes in traveling the Old West. In 1996, Masterson acted alongside Christian Slater in the romantic drama Bed of Roses. Although Masterson carried on her work in the film industry, by 2000 she had made a move towards television. In 2001, she produced her own television series, Kate Brasher, canceled by CBS after six episodes. In 2004, Masterson starred in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning HBO biographical drama Something the Lord Made. Between 2004 and 2007, she made five guest starring appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Dr. Rebecca Hendrix.
A decade she appeared in a recurring role as FBI director Eleanor Hirst in the second and third seasons of Blindspot. Masterson has appeared in Broadway theatre productions, was nominated for a 2003 Tony Award as "Best Featured Actress in a Musical" in the Maury Yeston musical Nine: The Musical, directed by David Leveaux. Masterson has narrated several audiobooks, including I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass, Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell, The Quickie by James Patterson and Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. By May 1993, Masterson revealed she had written a screenplay for a film tentatively entitled Around the Block, a romantic comedy about a "woman who conquers her fears by becoming a singer". In 2001, she began her directing career with a segment titled "The Other Side" in the television movie On the Edge. Masterson made her feature film directorial debut in 2007, with The Cake Eaters, which premiered at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival as well as the Ashland Independent Film Festival where it received the'Audience Award – Dramatic Feature' prize in 2008.
Of her move to directing, Masterson said in an interview, "When I signed to do this, I wasn't scared but, yes, it was scary. I'm 40, although we don't want to talk about that. In'92, I wrote my first screenplay, which I was to direct, but I ended up taking an acting job because it takes forever to get a movie made." Masterson was married to filmmaker Damon Santostefano from 2000 to 2004. In 2006, Masterson married actor Jeremy Davidson after they starred together in the 2004 stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Masterson gave birth to their first child, a son named Phineas Bee Greenberg, on October 11, 2009, she gave birth to twins in August 2011, daughter Clio Greenberg. Ashland Independent Film Festival 2008: Won, "Best Dramatic Feature" – The Cake EatersDVD Exclusive Awards 2001: Nominated, "Best Actress" – The Book of StarsFt. Lauderdale International Film Festival 2007: Won, "Best American Indie" – The Cake EatersLone Star Film & Television Awards 1997: Won, "Best TV Actress" – Lily DaleMTV Movie Awards 1994: Nominated, "Best On-Screen Duo" – Benny and Joon National Board of Review of Motion Pictures 1989: Won, "Best Supporting Actress" – Immediate FamilySatellite Awards 2005: Nominated, "Best Ac
Aidan Quinn
Aidan Quinn is an Irish-American actor, who made his film debut in Reckless. He has starred in over 40 feature films, including Desperately Seeking Susan, The Mission, Avalon, Benny & Joon, Legends of the Fall, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Michael Collins, Practical Magic, Song for a Raggy Boy, Unknown. Quinn has received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work in An Early Frost and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, he plays Captain Thomas "Tommy" Gregson in the CBS television series Elementary. Quinn was born in Illinois, to Irish Catholic parents, he was raised in Chicago and Rockford, Illinois, as well as in Dublin and Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. His mother, was a homemaker, but worked as a bookkeeper and in the travel business, his father, Michael Quinn, was a professor of English literature, he has a sister. His older brother, Declan Quinn, is a noted cinematographer, while his younger sister, Marian, is an actress and writer. Though a roofer by trade, Quinn received his start in the Chicago theatre at nineteen.
He trained at the Piven Theatre Workshop. His first significant film role was in Reckless, followed by a breakthrough role in Desperately Seeking Susan as the character "Dez". Quinn next starred in the controversial television film An Early Frost, about a young gay lawyer dying of AIDS, he received his first Emmy Award nomination for the role which allowed him to gain recognition in Hollywood. He made a short impressive contribution as Robert De Niro's brother in The Mission, he played escaped convict Richard "Stick" Montgomery in the action comedy Stakeout opposite Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez. In 1983, Quinn lost the role of Jesus Christ when Paramount Pictures dropped the distribution rights to the Martin Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ; when Universal Pictures picked up the film, the role went to Willem Dafoe. In the meantime, Quinn starred as protagonist in the film Crusoe, finished in 1989. During the 1990s, he appeared in Legends of the Fall, Benny & Joon, The Handmaid's Tale and Practical Magic.
He starred in Michael Collins, Song for a Raggy Boy, This Is My Father, Evelyn. He played a small cameo as the captain of a doomed Arctic vessel in the Francis Ford Coppola-produced adaptation of Frankenstein. In 2000, Quinn portrayed Paul McCartney in Two of Us. Quinn appeared in the 2005 movie The Exonerated a true story about people on death row, freed in which Quinn played Kerry Max Cook. Quinn played the main character on the NBC drama The Book of Daniel, in 2006; the show was canceled after the first three weeks of its run, its last five episodes never aired. In 2007, Quinn received his second Emmy nomination for the television movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. In 2010, he played a cameo role as William Rainsferd in the French-made film Sarah's Key, set during World War II, he starred as "Dermot" opposite Taylor Schilling in the Canadian-Irish drama film Stay. Quinn co-stars in the CBS Television series Elementary. In 1987, Quinn married Elizabeth Bracco, they have two daughters: Ava Eileen, who has autism.
Ava appeared as the baby "David" in Avalon, Mia played a ghost in The Eclipse. Former residents of Englewood, New Jersey and his family now live in Palisades, Rockland County, New York and Marbletown in the Catskills / Woodstock region of Ulster County, New York; as an avid sports fan, Quinn supports the Chicago Cubs, the Green Bay Packers, Michael Jordan, Rory McIlroy, Roger Federer. Quinn has participated in charity golf events for the East Lake Foundation, a community redevelopment program, Samuel L. Jackson's "One for the Boys" campaign about testicular cancer awareness. In 2010, Quinn attended a premiere benefit screening of A Shine of Rainbows for the International Children's Media Center and The American Ireland Fund. In 1991, he read a segment from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis as part of MTV's "Books: Feed Your Head" literacy promotion PSAs. Quinn spoke at the 2003 "Night of Too Many Stars" gala benefiting The Autism Coalition, he was an honorary board member of the National Alliance for Autism Research, which merged with Autism Speaks.
Aidan Quinn on IMDb Aidan Quinn at the Internet Broadway Database Aidan Quinn at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd Sr. was an American actor and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films. Lloyd is considered alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947, his bespectacled "Glass" character was a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who matched the zeitgeist of the 1920s-era United States. His films contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! is considered one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd performed the lesser stunts himself, despite having injured himself in August 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific, made more money overall.
Harold Clayton Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. His paternal great-grandparents were Welsh. In 1910, after his father had several business ventures fail, Lloyd's parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California. Lloyd had acted in theater since a child, but in California he began acting in one-reel film comedies around 1912. Lloyd worked with Thomas Edison's motion picture company, his first role was a small part as a Yaqui Indian in the production of The Old Monk's Tale. At the age of 20, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles, took up roles in several Keystone comedies, he was hired by Universal Studios as an extra and soon became friends with aspiring filmmaker Hal Roach. Lloyd began collaborating with Roach who had formed his own studio in 1913. Roach and Lloyd created "Lonesome Luke", similar to and playing off the success of Charlie Chaplin films. Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress in 1914.
In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. That year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom he would marry. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie; the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd's first reaction in seeing her was that "she looked like a big French doll". By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop his character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism; the persona Lloyd referred to as his "Glass" character was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. The "Glass" character is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy without some sort of disguise. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed glasses but wore normal clothing. "When I adopted the glasses," he recalled in a 1962 interview with Harry Reasoner, "it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being.
He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable." Unlike most silent comedy personae, "Harold" was never typecast to a social class, but he was always striving for success and recognition. Within the first few years of the character's debut, he had portrayed social ranks ranging from a starving vagrant in From Hand to Mouth to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd's Kids. In August 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he was injured holding a prop bomb thought to be a smoke pot, it exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger. The blast was severe enough that the cameraman and prop director nearby were seriously injured. Lloyd was in the act of lighting a cigarette from the fuse of the bomb when it exploded badly burning his face and chest and injuring his eye.
Despite the proximity of the blast to his face, he retained his sight. As he recalled in 1930, "I thought I would be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought,'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so."Beginning in 1921, Roach and Lloyd moved from shorts to feature-length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy, which pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the popular Safety Last!, which cemented Lloyd's stardom, Why Worry?. Although Lloyd performed many athletic stunts in his films, Harvey Parry was his stunt double for the more dangerous sequences. Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films; these included his most accomplished mature f
Horror film
A horror film is a film that seeks to elicit fear. Inspired by literature from authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, horror has existed as a film genre for more than a century; the macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes. Horror may overlap with the fantasy, supernatural fiction, thriller genres. Horror films aim to evoke viewers' nightmares, fears and terror of the unknown. Plots with in the horror genre involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage into the everyday world. Prevalent elements include ghosts, extraterrestrials, werewolves, Satanism, evil clowns, torture, vicious animals, evil witches, zombies, psychopaths, ecological or man-made disasters, serial killers; some sub-genres of horror film include low-budget horror, action horror, comedy horror, body horror, disaster horror, found footage, holiday horror, horror drama, psychological horror, science fiction horror, supernatural horror, gothic horror, natural horror, zombie horror, disaster films, first-person horror, teen horror.
The first depiction of the supernatural on screen appear in several of the short silent films created by the French pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès in the late 1890s. The best known of these early supernatural-based works is the 3-minute short film Le Manoir du Diable known in English as The Haunted Castle or The House of the Devil; the film is sometimes credited as being the first horror film. In The Haunted Castle, a mischievous devil appears inside a medieval castle and harasses the visitors. Méliès' other popular horror film is La Caverne maudite, which translates to "the accursed cave"; the film known for its English title The Cave of the Demons, tells the story of a woman stumbling over a cave, populated by the spirits and skeletons of people who died there. Méliès would make other short films that historians consider now as horror-comedies. Une nuit terrible, which translates to A Terrible Night, tells a story of a man who tries to get a good night's sleep but ends up wrestling a giant spider.
His other film, L'auberge ensorcelée, or The Bewitched Inn, features a story of a hotel guest getting pranked and tormented by an unseen presence. In 1897, the accomplished American photographer-turned director George Albert Smith created The X-Ray Fiend, a horror-comedy that came out a mere two years after x-rays were invented; the film shows a couple of skeletons courting each other. An audience full of people unaccustomed to the idea would have found it frightening and otherworldly; the next year, Smith created the short film Photographing a Ghost, considered a precursor to the paranormal investigation subgenre. The film portrays three men attempting to photograph a ghost, only to fail time and again as the ghost eludes the men and throws chairs at them. Japan made early forays into the horror genre. In 1898, a Japanese film company called Konishi Honten released two horror films both written by Ejiro Hatta. Though there are no records of the cast, crew, or plot of Bake Jizo, it was based on the Japanese legend of Jizo statues, believed to provide safety and protection to children.
The presence of the word bake—which can be translated to "spook," "ghost," or "phantom"—may imply a haunted or possessed statue. Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón, regarded as one of the most significant silent film directors, was popular for his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions, an innovation that contributed to the popularity of trick films in the period, his famous works include Satan at Play. The Selig Polyscope Company in the United States produced one of the first film adaptations of a horror-based novel. In 1908, the company released Mr. Hyde, now a lost film, it is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published 15 years prior, about a man who transforms between two contrasting personas. Georges Méliès liked adapting the Faust legend into his films. In fact, the French filmmaker produced at least six variations of the German legend of the man who made a pact with the devil. Among his notable Faust films include Faust aux enfers, known for its English title The Damnation of Faust, or Faust in Hell.
It is the filmmaker's third film adaptation of the Faust legend. In it, Méliès took inspiration from Hector Berlioz's Faust opera, but it pays less attention to the story and more to the special effects that represent a tour of hell; the film takes advantage of stage machinery techniques and features special effects such as pyrotechnics, substitution
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city in Spokane County in the state of Washington in the northwestern United States. It is located on the Spokane River west of the Rocky Mountain foothills in eastern Washington, 92 miles south of the Canada–US border, 18 miles from the Washington–Idaho border, 228 miles east of Seattle along Interstate 90. Known as the birthplace of Father's Day, Spokane's official nickname is the "Lilac City". A pink, double flower lilac variety known as'Syringa Spokane' is named for the city, it is the seat of Spokane County and the economic and cultural center of the Spokane Metropolitan Area, the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene combined statistical area, the Inland Northwest. The city, along with the whole Inland Northwest, is served by Spokane International Airport, 5 miles west of downtown Spokane. According to the 2010 Census, Spokane had a population of 208,916, making it the second-largest city in Washington, the 101st-largest city in the United States; the first people to live in the area, the Spokane tribe, lived off plentiful game.
David Thompson explored the area with the westward expansion and establishment of the North West Company's Spokane House in 1810. This trading post was the first long-term European settlement in Washington. Completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1881 brought settlers to the Spokane area; the same year it was incorporated as a city with the name of Spokane Falls. In the late 19th century and silver were discovered in the Inland Northwest; the local economy depended on mining and agriculture until the 1980s. Spokane hosted the first environmentally themed World's Fair at Expo'74. Many of the downtown area's older Romanesque Revival-style buildings were designed by architect Kirtland Kelsey Cutter after the Great Fire of 1889; the city features Riverfront and Manito parks, the Smithsonian-affiliated Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, the Davenport Hotel, the Fox and Bing Crosby theaters. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, the city is the center of the Mormon Spokane Washington Temple District.
The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist represents the Anglican community. Gonzaga University was established in 1887 by the Jesuits, the private Presbyterian Whitworth University was founded three years and moved to north Spokane in 1914 In sports, the Gonzaga Bulldogs collegiate basketball team competes at the Division I level. Professional and semi-professional sports teams include the Spokane Chiefs in junior ice hockey, the Spokane Indians Minor League Baseball team located in nearby Spokane Valley; as of 2010, Spokane's only major daily newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, had a daily circulation of over 76,000. The first humans to live in the Spokane area were hunter-gatherer societies that lived off plentiful fish and game; the Spokane tribe, after which the city is named, are believed to be either their direct descendants, or descendants of people from the Great Plains. When asked by early white explorers, the Spokanes said their ancestors came from "up North." Early in the 19th century, the Northwest Fur Company sent two white fur trappers west of the Rocky Mountains to search for fur.
These were the first white men met by the Spokanes, who believed they were sacred, set the trappers up in the Colville River valley for the winter. The explorer-geographer David Thompson, working as head of the North West Company's Columbia Department, became the first European to explore the Inland Empire. Crossing what is now the Canada–US border from British Columbia, Thompson wanted to expand the North West Company further south in search of furs. After establishing the Kullyspell House and Saleesh House trading posts in what are now Idaho and Montana, Thompson attempted to expand further west, he sent out two trappers, Jacques Raphael Finlay and Finan McDonald, to construct a fur trading post on the Spokane River, which flows west from Lake Coeur d'Alene to the Columbia River, trade with the local Indians. This post was established in 1810, at the confluence of the Little Spokane and Spokane rivers, becoming the first enduring European settlement of significance in what became Washington state.
Known as the Spokane House, or "Spokane", it was in operation from 1810 to 1826. Operations were run by the British North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, the post was the headquarters of the fur trade between the Rocky and Cascade mountains for 16 years. After the latter business absorbed the North West Company in 1821, the major operations at the Spokane House were shifted north to Fort Colville, reducing the post's significance. In 1836, Reverend Samuel Parker visited the area and reported that around 800 Native Americans were living in Spokane Falls. A medical mission was established by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman to cater for Cayuse Indians and hikers of the Oregon Trail at Walla Walla in the south. After the Whitmans were killed by Indians in 1847, Reverend Cushing Eells established Whitman College in their memory setting up the first church in Spokane. In 1853, two years after the establishment of the Washington Territory, the first governor, Isaac Stevens, made an initial effort to make a treaty with Chief Garry and the Spokanes at Antoine Plantes' Ferry, not far from Millwood.
After the last campaign of the Yakima Indian War, the Coeur d'Alene War of 1858 was brought to a close by the actions of Col. George Wright, who won decisive victories agai
Paper Mill Playhouse
Paper Mill Playhouse is a regional theater with 1200 seats, located in Millburn, New Jersey. Due to its close location to Manhattan, it draws from the pool of actors who live in New York City. Paper Mill was designated as the "State Theater of New Jersey". From 1971 to 2008, Paper Mill held the New Jersey Ballet as its resident ballet company, with the annual production of Nutcracker until the premiere 25th Anniversary tour of Les Misérables took up the ballet's performance slot. Mark S. Hoebee serves as the Artistic Todd Schmidt serves as the Managing Director. In 2016, the playhouse received the Regional Theatre Tony Award. In March 1795, Sam Campbell built The Thistle Paper Mill on land along a brook in the town of Millville renamed Millburn. Campbell ran his business for about 20 years; the building remained vacant for ownership changed several times. In the late 1870s, Diamond Mill Paper Company took over the property and used it for their paper making business until 1928. Writer and performer Antoinette Scudder, along with actor and director Frank Carrington formed a partnership in the late 1920s to create their own theater.
The found the vacant mill, spent many years working on it, turning it into a theater. Another fire in 1980 changed the course of the theater, it closed for rebuilding. On October 30, 1982, the Paper Mill reopened for their first theatrical production since the fire; this period of time became the focal point of a lawsuit between the theater and Millburn on whether or not they would be exempt from property taxes during the time the property was not in use. Founded in 1934, Paper Mill Playhouse raised the curtain on its first performance with Gregorio Martinez Sierra’s The Kingdom of God on November 14, 1938. By the end of the first year, Carrington had coaxed entertainer Irene Castle out of retirement to make her dramatic debut in Noël Coward’s Shadow Play; the first few years featured a variety of modern plays. By 1941, the Playhouse had begun to specialize in operettas, which it continued until the early 1950s. Change marked this period in Paper Mill’s history with Miss Scudder’s death in 1958.
Angelo Del Rossi joined as Associate Producer in 1964, working with Carrington until his death in 1975. Del Rossi became Executive Producer and remained in that role for nearly 40 years until their death in August 2014. In 1971, the New Jersey Ballet staged its first production of The Nutcracker at Paper Mill with world-renowned dancer Edward Villella in the role of the Cavalier; the Nutcracker production has been produced annually at Paper Mill since then. In 1972, Governor of New Jersey William Cahill proclaimed Paper Mill the "Official State Theater of New Jersey." The theater has been cited as a State Center of Artistic Excellence and as a Major Impact and Distinguished Arts Organization by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Through the years, Paper Mill Playhouse has welcomed such talent as Christopher Patterson, Gloria Stuart, Alice Ripley, Eddie Bracken, Laura Benanti, Orson Bean, Betty Buckley, Carol Channing, Kristin Chenoweth, Christine Ebersole, George S. Irving, Laurence Guittard, Anne Hathaway, Shanice Williams, Dee Hoty, John Mahoney, Dorothy Louden, Donna McKechnie, Ann Miller, Stephanie Mills, Liza Minnelli, Estelle Parsons, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Tony Roberts, Patrick Swayze, Karen Ziemba, Adrian Zmed, Nick Jonas, Bailey Hanks, Lynn Redgrave, Lorna Luft, David Garrison.
In April 2003, Michael Gennaro, former Executive Director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, joined Paper Mill as President and CEO. Paper Mill Playhouse was one of the first theaters to begin the regional theater movement in the United States, it has grown to be one of the most acclaimed not-for-profit professional theaters in the country, attracts more than 450,000 people annually, has one of the largest subscription based audiences. On April 3, 2007, Paper Mill announced that it would need $1.5 million to open its season and an equal amount to complete its season, or it would be forced to close its doors. On April 6, 2007, Paper Mill announced that it had received $300,000, enough to cover costs of rehearsals and preview performances for its production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Paper Mill announced. On June 17, 2008, the Township of Millburn voted to purchase building and four acres of land the Paper Mill sits on for $9 million, they have entered into a 75-year lease with the theater.
Prior to this deal the Paper Mill had accumulated $4.5 million in debt. Based on the terms of the lease, the Paper Mill would pay $1 for the first two years. After 2 years the rent would grow to equal 1% of the theater's annual operation income; the Paper Mill maintained an option to repurchase the property from the town after 11 years of the lease. The Artistic Director at the time, Mark S. Hoebee, is attributed with saving the Paper Mill. Paper Mill is a member of the Council of Stock Theatres, a group of theaters who join together to negotiate with the various unions that are involved in stage productions. COST's contract with Actors' Equity allows for a minimum weekly salary, smaller than what Broadway productions must pay their actors.
