1.
Jumbo (musical)
–
Jumbo is a musical produced by Billy Rose, with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and book by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. The musical opened on Broadway at the Hippodrome Theatre on November 16,1935, directed by John Murray Anderson and George Abbott it starred Jimmy Durante, Donald Novis, Gloria Grafton, and a number of circus specialty acts. Jumbo tells the story of a financially strapped circus, at the end of each performance, Durante lay down on the stage and permitted a live elephant to place its foot upon his head. The large 5, 000-seat theatre was turned into a tent where the various specialty acts performed during the show. The music was played by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, bowers and Circus Specialty My Romance – Matt Mulligan, Jr. and Mickey Considine Little Girl Blue – Mickey Considine Act 2 The Song of the Roustabouts – The Razorbacks Women –Claudius B. Bowers, Circus Specialty, Allan K. Foster Girls and Dancers Memories of Madison Square Garden – Ensemble Diavolo – Mr. The musical was made into a movie as Billy Roses Jumbo in 1962, starring Jimmy Durante, Doris Day, Martha Raye and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Scoring of Music-Adaptation or Treatment. However, one piece of business from the stage musical was repeated in the film. In both versions, Durante is working for a circus when its assets are seized by creditors. Durante attempts to sneak his beloved elephant Jumbo off the grounds, only to be confronted by a sheriff. Caught red-handed, Durante blithely replies What elephant, internet Broadway Database listing Joe Leblang Flyer promoting Durantes Jumbo on Broadway
2.
Joe Pasternak
–
Joseph Herman Joe Pasternak was an Hungarian-born American film producer in Hollywood. Born to a Jewish family in Szilágysomlyó, Austria-Hungary, Pasternak was a film producer in Germany. He worked for Universal Pictures in Europe, where he made German-language musicals for the international market and he hit upon a successful formula, building light musical comedies around an adolescent soprano. Following the establishment of the Nazi regime, Pasternak emigrated to the United States, at Universals Hollywood studio in 1936. Pasternak cast 14-year-old Canadian singer Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls, the film became a huge hit and reputedly saved Universal from bankruptcy. Pasternak produced a string of Durbin musicals, and soon discovered another talented soprano, who began her own series in 1939. Pasternak proved to be an asset for the studio, generating a number of popular films, including Destry Rides Again. His career as a film producer spanned 40 years and earned him two Oscar nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations and he retired in 1968, having produced more than ninety feature-length films as well as three Academy Award shows. Pasternak is the father of Michael Joseph Pasternak, the disk jockey known as Emperor Rosko, Jeff Pasternak, a playwright and songwriter, and Peter Pasternak. Joe Pasternak died in Beverly Hills, California from complications arising from Parkinsons disease six days shy of his 90th birthday and he is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. For his contribution to the picture industry, Joe Pasternak has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1541 N. Joe Pasternak at the Internet Movie Database Joe Pasternak at Find a Grave
3.
Ben Hecht
–
Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and early 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, in the 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters calls him one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures, Hecht received the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, for Underworld. Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics and he also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach. Film historian Richard Corliss called him the Hollywood screenwriter, someone who personified Hollywood itself, in 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay. In total, six of his movie screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards, of his seventy to ninety screenplays, he wrote many anonymously to avoid the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to his autobiography, he never spent more than eight weeks on a script, in 1983,19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Hecht was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and his father, Joseph Hecht, worked in the garment industry. His father and mother, Sarah Swernofsky Hecht, had immigrated to New York from Minsk, the family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. When Hecht was in his teens he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. On the road much of the time, his father did not have effect on Hecht’s childhood. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, He was considered a prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist. After graduating from school in 1910, at age sixteen Hecht moved to Chicago. He lived with relatives, and started a career in journalism and he found work as a reporter, first for the Chicago Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. He was an excellent reporter who worked on several Chicago papers, after World War I, Hecht was sent to cover Berlin for the Chicago Daily News. There he wrote his first and most successful novel, Erik Dorn and it was a sensational debut for Hecht as a serious writer. The 1969 movie, Gaily, Gaily, directed by Norman Jewison, the film was nominated for three Oscars
4.
Sidney Sheldon
–
Sidney Sheldon was an American writer and producer. He went on to work in television, where his works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart. He became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling romantic suspense novels, such as Master of the Game, The Other Side of Midnight and he is the seventh best selling fiction writer of all time. Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois and his parents, of Russian Jewish ancestry, were Ascher “Otto” Schechtel, manager of a jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, Sidney made his first sale, US$5 for a poem, during the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, and after graduating from East High School, he attended Northwestern University on a scholarship and contributed short plays to drama groups. He had to drop out six months during the Depression era to help support his family. In 1937, Sheldon moved to Hollywood, California, where he reviewed scripts, Sheldon enlisted in the military during World War II as a pilot in the War Training Service, a branch of the Army Air Corps, His unit was disbanded before he saw any action. Returning to civilian life, he moved to New York City where he began writing musicals for the Broadway stage while continuing to write screenplays for both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. He earned a reputation as a writer, for example. His success on Broadway brought him back to Hollywood where his first assignment was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay of 1947. He was one of the writers on the screenplay for the 1948 musical film Easter Parade and sole writer for the 1950 musical film Annie Get Your Gun, when television became the new popular medium, he decided to try his hand in it. I suppose I needed money, he remembered, I met Patty Duke one day at lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show, and I did something else in TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every episode of the series. Sheldon created, produced and wrote I Dream of Jeannie in his capacity with Screen Gems. He wrote all but two dozen scripts in five years, sometimes using three pseudonyms while simultaneously writing scripts for The Patty Duke Show and he also used the same pseudonyms in writing all seventeen episodes of Nancy. He later admitted that he did this because he felt his name was appearing too often in the credits as creator, producer and he also created and wrote for the series Hart to Hart. Production for I Dream of Jeannie ended in 1970 after five seasons and it was During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie, I decided to try a novel, he said in 1982
5.
Doris Day
–
Doris Day is a retired American actress and singer, and continuing animal welfare activist. After she began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her popularity increased with her first hit recording Sentimental Journey, in 1948, Day was given a key part in the film Romance on the High Seas, despite not having any acting experience. Its director, Michael Curtiz, gave her the part since she looked like the All-American Girl and it led to a 20-year career in film, including a string of musicals and romantic comedies beginning in the 1950s. She starred with leading men such as Clark Gable in Teachers Pet, Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers, Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink and she was usually one of the top 10 singers between 1951 and 1966. As an actress, she became the biggest female star in the early 1960s. In 2011 – well into her late 80s – she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, among her awards, Day has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. She has been Oscar nominated six times, and in 1989 was given the Cecil B, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Associations Career Achievement Award. Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff was born on April 3,1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Alma Sophia, a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, All of her grandparents were German immigrants. The youngest of three siblings, she had two brothers, Richard and Paul, several years older. Due to her fathers alleged infidelity, her parents separated and she developed an early interest in dance, and in the mid-1930s formed a dance duo with Jerry Doherty that performed locally in Cincinnati. A car accident on October 13,1937, injured her legs, while recovering, Day started to sing along with the radio and discovered a talent she did not know she had. But the one radio voice I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and Id sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, observing her daughter rekindled Almas interest in show business, and she decided to give Doris singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine, after three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had tremendous potential, which led Alma to give her daughter three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style, during her radio performances, Day first caught the attention of Barney Rapp, who was looking for a girl vocalist and asked if Day would like to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 singers when Day got the job, while working for Rapp in 1939, she adopted the stage surname Day, at Rapps suggestion. Rapp felt that Kappelhoff was too long for marquees, and he admired her rendition of the song Day After Day, after working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown
6.
Stephen Boyd
–
Stephen Boyd was an actor from Glengormley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. He appeared in some 60 films, most notably as Messala in Ben-Hur and he received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Billy Roses Jumbo. Boyd was born William Millar in 1931, one of nine siblings, he attended Ballyclare High School. At the age of seven he became known in Belfast for his contributions to the Ulster Radios Children Hour. At the age of sixteen, Boyd quit school and joined the Ulster Group Theater, Boyd learned the behind the scenes tasks of the theater, and eventually worked his way up to character parts and leads, touring both Canada and the United States with stock companies. By the time he was twenty, Boyd had a range of theater experience. In 1952 Boyd moved to London and worked in a cafeteria, Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre. The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s, during the awards ceremony he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. Boyds first role which brought him acclaim was as an Irish spy in the movie The Man Who Never Was, the movie was released in 1956. Shortly thereafter he signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, Boyd starred in two Rank productions after this film. Hell in Korea was a role for Boyd, but an interesting movie which featured several renowned actors in early roles, such as Michael Caine. The Beast of Marseilles was a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseilles with Boyd as the main star, for Twentieth Century Fox, Boyd would be cast in the racially provocative film Island in the Sun, based on the Alec Waugh novel. For Columbia pictures he was cast in the nautical, ship-wreck adventure Abandon Ship. starring Tyrone Power, in early 1957 Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man after her success in Roger Vadims And God Created Woman, and she chose Boyd. Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyds film credit, Boyds first true Hollywood role came as a renegade cowboy in the Fox western The Bravados, which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. It was during the making of film in Mexico in the early part of 1958 that Boyd was finally persuaded to audition for the coveted role of Messala in MGMs upcoming epic Ben-Hur. Many other actors had tried for the role, and Boyd initially wasnt interested, but he eventually signed and began filming in the summer of 1958. Boyd was required to wear contact lenses as Messala, which irritated his eyes. Despite this, Boyd described the experience of Ben-Hur, as the most exciting experience of his life
7.
Jimmy Durante
–
James Francis Jimmy Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor. He often referred to his nose as the Schnozzola, and the word became his nickname, Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four born to Rosa and Bartolomeo Durante. Bartolomeo was a barber, and his wife Rosa was the sister of a woman who lived in the boarding house. Young Jimmy served as a boy at Saint Malachys Roman Catholic Church. Durante dropped out of school in grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante and it was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the citys piano bar circuit and earned the nickname Ragtime Jimmy, before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, in 1920 the group was renamed Jimmy Durantes Jazz Band. By the mid-1920s, Durante had become a star and radio personality in a trio called Clayton, Jackson. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durantes closest friends, often reunited with Durante in subsequent years, Jackson and Durante appeared in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, which opened on Broadway on December 8,1930. Earlier that same year, the team appeared in the movie Roadhouse Nights, by 1934, Durante had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, Inka Dinka Doo, with lyrics by Ben Ryan. It became his theme song for the rest of his life, a year later, Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo. A scene in which an officer stopped Durantes character—who was leading a live elephant across the stage—to ask. Followed by Durantes reply, What elephant and this comedy bit, also reprised in his role in Billy Roses Jumbo, likely contributed to the popularity of the idiom the elephant in the room. Durante also appeared on Broadway in Show Girl, Strike Me Pink and Red, Hot, during the early 1930s, Durante alternated between Hollywood and Broadway. His early motion pictures included an original Rodgers & Hart musical The Phantom President and he was initially paired with silent film legend Buster Keaton in a series of three popular comedies for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer -- Speak Easily, The Passionate Plumber, and What. No Beer. -- which were hits and a career springboard for the distinctive newcomer
8.
Martha Raye
–
Martha Raye was an American actress and singer who performed in movies, and later on television. She also acted in plays, including Broadway and she was honored in 1969 with an Academy Award as the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient for her volunteer efforts and services to the troops. Rayes life as a singer and comedic performer began in early childhood. She was born at St. James Hospital in Butte, Montana, as Margy Reed and her father, Peter F. Reed Jr. was an Irish immigrant, while her mother, Maybelle Hazel Reed, was raised in Milwaukee and Montana. Her parents were performing in a vaudeville theatre as Reed. Two days later, her mother was performing again, Martha first appeared in their act when she was three years old. She later performed with her brother Bud, and the children became so popular that their parents act was renamed Margie, in the early 1930s, Raye was a band vocalist with the Paul Ash and Boris Morros orchestras. She made her first film appearance in 1934 in a short titled A Nite in the Nite Club. In 1936, she was signed for comic roles by Paramount Pictures and her first feature film was Rhythm on the Range with crooner Bing Crosby. From 1936–39, she was a featured cast member in 39 episodes of Al Jolsons weekly CBS radio show, The Lifebuoy Program, in addition to comedy, Martha sang both solos and duets with Jolson. Over the next century, she would appear with many of the leading comics of her day, including Joe E. Brown, Bob Hope. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin, and Jimmy Durante and she joined the USO in 1942, soon after the US entered World War II. She was known for the size of her mouth, which was large in proportion to her face, earning her the nickname The Big Mouth. She later referred to this in a series of commercials for Polident denture cleaner in the 1980s, So take it from The Big Mouth. Her large mouth would relegate her motion picture work to supporting comic parts, in the Disney cartoon Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, she is caricatured while dancing alongside Joe E. Brown, another actor known for a big mouth. In the Warner Bros. cartoon The Woods Are Full Of Cuckoos, in 1968, she was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in the form of an Oscar. On November 2,1993, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton for her service to her country. The citation reads, A talented performer whose career spans the better part of a century, Martha Raye has delighted audiences and she brought her tremendous comedic and musical skills to her work in film, stage, and television, helping to shape American entertainment
9.
Richard Rodgers
–
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television and he is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music up to the present day and he has also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of two people to receive each award. Richard began playing the piano at age six,10, Townsend Harris Hall and DeWitt Clinton High School. Rodgers spent his teenage summers in Camp Wigwam where he composed some of his first songs. Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and later collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II all attended Columbia University, at Columbia, Rodgers joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. In 1921, Rodgers shifted his studies to the Institute of Musical Art, Rodgers was influenced by composers such as Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern, as well as by the operettas his parents took him to see on Broadway when he was a child. In 1919, Richard met Lorenz Hart, thanks to Phillip Leavitt, Rodgers and Hart struggled for years in the field of musical comedy, writing several amateur shows. They made their debut with the song Any Old Place With You. Their first professional production was the 1920 Poor Little Ritz Girl and their next professional show, The Melody Man, did not premiere until 1924. When he was just out of college Rodgers worked as director for Lew Fields. Among the stars he accompanied were Nora Bayes and Fred Allen, Rodgers was considering quitting show business altogether to sell childrens underwear, when he and Hart finally broke through in 1925. They wrote the songs for a show presented by the prestigious Theatre Guild, called The Garrick Gaieties. Only meant to run one day, the Guild knew they had a success, the shows biggest hit — the song that Rodgers believed made Rodgers and Hart — was Manhattan. The two were now a Broadway songwriting force, throughout the rest of the decade, the duo wrote several hit shows for both Broadway and London, including Dearest Enemy, The Girl Friend, Peggy-Ann, A Connecticut Yankee, and Present Arms. Their 1920s shows produced standards such as Here in My Arms, Mountain Greenery, Blue Room, My Heart Stood Still, with the Depression in full swing during the first half of the 1930s, the team sought greener pastures in Hollywood. Rodgers also wrote a melody for which Hart wrote three consecutive lyrics which either were cut, not recorded or not a hit, the fourth lyric resulted in one of their most famous songs, Blue Moon. In 1935, they returned to Broadway and wrote an almost unbroken string of hit shows that only with Harts death in 1943
10.
Lorenz Hart
–
Lorenz Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Hart was born in Harlem, the elder of two sons, to Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda Hart, of German background and his father, a business promoter, sent Hart and his brother to private schools. Hart received his education from Columbia Grammar School and then attended Columbia University School of Journalism for two years. A friend introduced him to Richard Rodgers, and the two joined forces to write songs for a series of amateur and student productions, by 1918, Hart was working for the Shubert brothers, partners in theatre, translating German plays into English. In 1919, his and Rodgers song Any Old Place With You was included in the Broadway musical comedy A Lonely Romeo, in 1920, six of their songs were used in the musical comedy Poor Little Ritz Girl, which also had music by Sigmund Romberg. They were hired to write the score for the 1925 Theatre Guild production The Garrick Gaieties, Rodgers and Hart subsequently wrote the music and lyrics for 26 Broadway musicals during a more-than-20-year partnership that ended shortly before Harts early death. Their big four were Babes in Arms, The Boys From Syracuse, Pal Joey, the Rodgers and Hart songs have been described as intimate and destined for long lives outside the theater. Many of their songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz instrumentalists, notable singers who have performed and recorded their songs have included Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, and Carly Simon. Hart has been called the bard of the urban generation which matured during the interwar years. But the encomiums suggest that Larry Hart was a poet caused his friend, Larry in particular was primarily a showman. If you can manage to examine his songs technically, and for the moment elude their spell, you see that they are all meant to be acted. Rodgers and Hart wrote music and lyrics for films, including Love Me Tonight, The Phantom President, Hallelujah, Im a Bum. With their successes, during the Great Depression Hart was earning $60,000 annually, beginning in 1938, he traveled more often and suffered from his drinking. Nevertheless, Rodgers and Hart continued working together through mid-1942, with their new musical being 1942s By Jupiter. Rodgers then teamed with new partner Oscar Hammerstein II for the 1943 musical Oklahoma, Hart, meanwhile, was much affected by his mothers death in late April 1943. Regrouping somewhat, Rodgers and Hart teamed a final time in the fall of 1943 for a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, one new number, To Keep My Love Alive, was written for this reworked version of the play, it would prove to be Harts last lyric. Hart had taken off the night of the opening and was gone for two days and he was found ill in a hotel room and taken to the hospital, but died within a few days. After Harts death, Rodgers continued his collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II, theirs was a long and successful collaboration, one which made them one of the most successful composing teams of the 20th century
11.
William Daniels (cinematographer)
–
William H. Daniels, A. S. C. was a film cinematographer who was Greta Garbos personal lensman. Early in his career he worked regularly with director Erich von Stroheim and he is not to be confused with the stage and TV actor of the same name. Daniels was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1901 and he graduated from the Heinrich VonGerkenstein school of the culinary Sciences in 1920, and started his film career in 1919. His career as a cinematographer extended fifty years from the silent film Foolish Wives to Move and his major films included The Naked City filmed in the streets of New York. He also was associate producer of a few films in the 1960s and was President of American Society of Cinematographers, on his death in 1970 in Los Angeles, California, William H. Daniels was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Source, Wins Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, nominated Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Anna Christie,1930. Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, Color, for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,1959, Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, Color, How the West Was Won, shared with, Milton R. Krasner, Charles Lang, Joseph LaShelle,1964. William H. Daniels at the Internet Movie Database, William H. Daniels at Film Reference
12.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
–
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California and it is one of the worlds oldest film studios. In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3,2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MGM, is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios, the studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and a film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up production, as well as keeping production going at UA. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production, the studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt, MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the major creditor. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, and Australias Seven Network in 1996, the debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGMs ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem and he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loews Theatres chain. With Loews lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality, however, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17,1924, Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production. MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years, in 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loews passed to Nicholas Schenck, in 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew familys holdings with Schencks assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds
13.
Musical film
–
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline. The musical film was a development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater, performers often treat their song, in a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. The 1930s through the early 1950s are considered to be the age of the musical film. Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24, beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include a track including non-diegetic music and diegetic music. This feature-length film was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing Dirty Hands, Dirty Face, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Blue Skies and My Mammy. Historian Scott Eyman wrote, As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights and she saw terror in all their faces, she said, as if they knew that the game they had been playing for years was finally over. Still, only isolated sequences featured live sound, most of the film had only a musical score. In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than an all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The Broadway Melody had a plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing feature film, it was a hit, there was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits. The Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton, Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor and this was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show
14.
Billy Rose
–
Billy Rose was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. For years both before and after World War II, Billy Rose was a force in entertainment, with shows such as Billy Roses Crazy Quilt, Jumbo, Billy Roses Aquacade. As a lyricist, he is credited with many songs, notably Me and My Shadow, More Than You Know, Without a Song, It Happened in Monterrey. Despite his accomplishments, Rose may be best known today as the husband of famed comedian, William Samuel Rosenberg was born to a Jewish family in New York City. He attended Public School 44, where he was the 50-yard dash champion, while in high school, Billy studied shorthand under John Robert Gregg, the inventor of the Gregg System for shorthand notation. He won a dictation contest using Gregg notation, taking over 150 words per minute, Billy Rose began his career as a stenographic clerk to Bernard Baruch of the War Industries Board during World War I, and became head of the clerical staff. Most of Roses lyrical credits were collaborations, biographer Earl Conrad said, Nobody clearly knew what he wrote or didnt write. Publishers tend to him with writing the songs known to bear his name as a lyricist. That Billy could feed and toss in a remark and monkey around, lyricists might have been willing to tolerate a Rose credit grab because Rose was very successful at promoting his songs. He went on to become a Broadway producer, and a theatre/nightclub owner, in June 1934, he opened The Billy Rose Music Hall at 52nd and Broadway in New York with the first Benny Goodman Orchestra. He produced Jumbo, starring Jimmy Durante, at the New York Hippodrome Theatre, for the Fort Worth Frontier Days fair, he constructed the huge elaborate dinner theatre Casa Mañana which featured stripper Sally Rand and the worlds largest revolving stage. He presented a show at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, when he attended a show, his practice was to book four seats, one for himself, one for his date, and the two in front of those so he would have an unobstructed view. In 1929, he married Fanny Brice, who would star in the 1931 Broadway production of Billy Roses Crazy Quilt, the marriage would last for nine years, ending in divorce in 1938. In 1938, he opened Billy Roses Diamond Horseshoe, a nightclub in New York Citys Times Square in the basement of the Paramount Hotel and it initially opened with a version of his Fort Worth show. The Diamond Horseshoe operated under that name until 1951, at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, Billy Roses Aquacade starred Olympian Eleanor Holm in what the fair program called a brilliant girl show of spectacular size and content. Future MGM star Esther Williams and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller were both Aquacade headliners, Rose began an affair with the then-married Holm, who left her husband for Rose. Following the 1939 Worlds Fair, Rose asked John Murray Anderson, Anderson recommended Gene Kelly, then performing in William Saroyans One for the Money. Rose objected that he wanted someone who could choreograph tits and asses, however, after seeing Kellys performance, he gave Kelly the job, an important step in Kellys career
15.
Busby Berkeley
–
Busby Berkeley was a Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeleys works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances, Berkeley was born in Los Angeles, California, to stage actress Gertrude Berkeley. Whether he was actually christened Busby Berkeley William Enos, or Berkeley William Enos, in addition to her stage work, Gertrude played mother roles in silent films while Berkeley was still a child. Berkeley made his stage début at five, acting in the company of his performing family, during World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant. Watching soldiers drill may have inspired his later complex choreography, during the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway, berkeleys top shot technique appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 Universal drama film Night World. As choreographer, Berkeley was allowed a degree of independence in his direction of musical numbers. Berkeleys popularity with an entertainment-hungry Great Depression audience was secured when he choreographed four musicals back-to-back for Warner Bros. 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, the aforementioned Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, berkeleys innovative and often sexually charged dance numbers have been analyzed at length by cinema scholars. In particular, the numbers have been critiqued for their display of the form as seen through the male gaze. Berkeley always denied any deep significance to his work, arguing that his professional goals were to constantly top himself. As the outsized musicals in which Berkeley specialized became passé, he turned to straight directing, the result was 1939s They Made Me a Criminal, one of John Garfields best films. Berkeley had several well-publicized run-ins with MGM stars such as Judy Garland, in 1943, he was removed as director of Girl Crazy because of disagreements with Garland, although the lavish musical number I Got Rhythm, which he directed, remained in the picture. His next stop was at 20th Century-Fox for 1943s The Gangs All Here, the film made money, but Berkeley and the Fox brass disagreed over budget matters. Berkeley returned to MGM in the late 1940s, where many other accomplishments he conceived the Technicolor finales for the studios Esther Williams films. Berkeleys final film as choreographer was MGMs Billy Roses Jumbo, in the late 1960s, the camp craze brought the Berkeley musicals back to the forefront
16.
Academy Awards
–
The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
17.
Rodgers and Hart
–
Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Lorenz Hart. They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Harts death in 1943, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were introduced in 1919, when both attended Columbia University, when asked to write an amateur club show. They quickly became among the most popular songwriters in America, in the early 1930s they moved to Hollywood, where they created several popular songs for film, such as Isnt It Romantic. and Lover, before returning to Broadway in 1935 with Billy Roses Jumbo. From 1935 to Harts death in 1943, they wrote a string of highly regarded Broadway musicals, many of their stage musicals from the late 1930s were made into films, such as On Your Toes and Babes in Arms, though rarely with their scores intact. Pal Joey, termed their masterpiece, has a book by The New Yorker writer John OHara, OHara adapted his own short stories for the show, which featured a title character who is a heel. So unflinching was the portrait that critic Brooks Atkinson famously asked in his review Although it is expertly done, when the show was revived in 1952, audiences had learned to accept darker material. The new production had a longer run than the original and was now considered a classic by critics. Atkinson, reviewing the revival, wrote that it renews confidence in the professionalism of the theatre, time Magazine devoted a cover story to Rodgers and Hart. They wrote that their success rests on a commercial instinct that most of their rivals have apparently ignored, the article also noted the spirit of adventure. As Rodgers and Hart see it, what was killing musicomedy was its sameness, its tameness and their songs have long been favorites of cabaret singers and jazz artists. For example, Ella Fitzgerald recorded their songbook, andrea Marcovicci based one of her cabaret acts entirely on Rodgers and Hart songs. Harts lyrics, facile, vernacular, dazzling, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholic, Rodgers, as a creator of melodies, ranks with Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. Their shows belong to the era when musicals were revue-like and librettos were not much more than excuses for comic turns, Still, just as their songs were a cut above, so did the team try to raise the standard of the musical form in general. Thus, A Connecticut Yankee was based on Mark Twains novel and they had always considered the integration of story and music a crucial factor in a successful show. They used dance significantly in their work, using the ballets of George Balanchine, comparisons between Rodgers and Hart and the successor team of Rodgers and Hammerstein are inevitable. Hammersteins lyrics project warmth, sincere optimism, and occasional corniness, Harts lyrics showed greater sophistication in subject matter, more use of overt verbal cleverness, and more of a New York or Broadway sensibility. Many of the songs are wistful or sad, and emotional ambivalence seems to be perceptible in the background of even the sunnier songs. For example, You Took Advantage of Me appears to be an evocation of amorous joy, according to Chuck Denison, My Heart Stood Still is one of Rodgers and Harts most enduring hits
18.
Broadway theatre
–
Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
19.
New York Hippodrome
–
It was called the worlds largest theatre by its builders and had a seating capacity of 5,300, with a 100x200ft stage. The theatre had state-of-the-art theatrical technology, including a glass water tank. The Hippodrome was built by Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, creators of the Luna Park amusement park at Coney Island, blacks U. S. Realty, a dominant real estate and construction company of the time, and was acquired by The Shubert Organization in 1909. In 1933, it was re-opened as the New York Hippodrome cinema, the theatre closed in August 1939 for demolition, and in 1952 a large modern office building known as The Hippodrome Center, opened on the site. Construction of the Hippodrome began in June 1904, with Frederick Thompson and Jay H. Morgan as architects, finishing touches were still being put in place days before the April 12,1905 opening. With a seating capacity of 5300, almost twice that of the Metropolitan Operas 3000 seats and it also had an 14-foot high, 60-foot diameter,8, 000-gallon clear glass water tank that could be raised from below the stage by hydraulic pistons for swimming-and-diving shows. The exterior of the red-brick and terra-cotta building was Moorish in style, with two corner towers, each of which was topped by a globe covered in electric lights. The gala opening on April 12,1905 was completely sold out, the second act was Andersonville, about the notorious Confederate military prison where many Union soldiers were maltreated. The spectacle depicted the Union raid on the camp, with gunfire, explosions, for a time the Hippodrome was the largest and most successful theater in New York. The Hippodrome featured lavish spectacles complete with animals, diving horses, opulent sets. Until the end of World War I, the Hippodrome housed all sorts of spectacles then switched to musical extravaganzas, the most popular vaudeville artists of the day, including illusionist Harry Houdini, performed at the Hippodrome during its heyday. Others might vanish rabbits, but in 1918, on the brightly lit stage of the Hippodrome, Houdini made a 10, 000-pound elephant disappear, creating a sensation. The Hippodromes huge running costs made it a financial failure. It became a location for productions in 1923 before being leased for budget opera performances. In 1922, the elephants that graced the stage of the Hippodrome since its opening moved uptown to the Bronxs Royal Theater and it was some show to see all those elephants march up those steps to the table where each elephant had a bail of hay. The, the Borough President welcomes the elephants to the Bronx, and that was the worst weeks business we ever done in that theatre. The New York Hippodrome closed on August 16,1939, the start of World War II delayed re-development, and the Hippodrome site remained vacant until 1952, when it was taken over for a combination office building and parking garage. The building was torn down in 1939, though a building and parking garage built on the site in 1951-52 owned by Edison Properties uses the name The Hippodrome Center
20.
The Boys from Syracuse
–
The Boys from Syracuse is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, based on William Shakespeares play, The Comedy of Errors, as adapted by librettist George Abbott. The score includes swing and other contemporary rhythms of the 1930s, the show was the first musical based on a Shakespeare play. The Comedy of Errors was itself based on a Roman play, The Menaechmi, or the Twin Brothers. The play premiered on Broadway in 1938 and Off-Broadway in 1963, with productions including a West End run in 1963. A film adaptation was released in 1940, well-known songs from the score include Falling in Love with Love, This Cant Be Love and Sing for Your Supper. Abbott directed and George Balanchine choreographed the production, which opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theater on November 23,1938, after tryouts in New Haven, Connecticut. The show closed on June 10,1939 after 235 performances and it starred Eddie Albert, Ronald Graham, Teddy Hart, Jimmy Savo, Muriel Angelus and Marcy Westcott. Scenic and lighting design were by Jo Mielziner and costumes were by Irene Sharaff, the show was revived Off-Broadway, opening at Theatre Four on April 15,1963 and running for 500 performances. Directed by Christopher Hewett, the cast featured Stuart Damon, Clifford David, Danny Carroll, Rudy Tronto, Ellen Hanley, Julienne Marie, a film version was released on August 9,1940 by Universal Pictures. Directed by A. Edward Sutherland, the film starred Allan Jones in the roles of the two Antipholuses, Joe Penner in the dual roles of the Dromios, Martha Raye and Irene Hervey. A Stratford Festival of Canada production opened on May 19,1986 and it featured Colm Feore, Geraint Wyn Davies, Susan Wright, Goldie Semple, and Eric McCormack. The production was filmed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and was broadcast in late 1986, a revival directed by Judi Dench was mounted at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre in London in July through August 1991, and toured the UK in September and October 1991. The Roundabout Theatre revival opened on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre on August 18,2002, the revival featured a new book by Nicky Silver based on the original book. It was directed by Scott Ellis with choreography by Rob Ashford, the shows Asian premiere was in Singapore, performed by LASALLE College of the Arts. The production run was at The Singapore Airlines Theatre in March 2012, the show was directed by Tony Knight, musical direction by Bronwyn Gibson, and choreography by Tiffany Wrightson. The cast included Linden Furnell, Taryn Erickson, Mina Kaye, James Simpson, Gimbey Dela Cruz, Elle-May Patterson, Safia Hanifah, Michelle Kraiwitchaicharoen, identical twins Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse, were separated from each other in a shipwreck as young children. Their servants, both named Dromio, are also long-separated identical twins, adrianas sister Luciana and the Syracuse Antipholus fall in love. The 2002 revival ended with, Hurrah
21.
Robert Osborne
–
Robert Jolin Osborne was an American actor, film historian, television presenter, and author best known as the primary host for the cable channel Turner Classic Movies. Prior to TCM, Osborne had been a host on The Movie Channel, and, earlier, Osborne also wrote the official history of the Academy Awards, originally published in 1988, and most recently revised in 2013. Osborne was born on May 3,1932, in the town of Colfax, Washington. His parents were Robert Eugene Osborne, a school teacher. Osborne began his working as a contract actor for Desi Arnaz. There, Osborne became part of Lucille Balls Desilu Workshop, in which Ball worked with and nurtured such young performers as Osborne, one of Osbornes early television appearances was in a 1959 episode of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse called Chain of Command, starring Hugh OBrian. He was also featured in the Christmas Day Desilu Playhouse installment The Desilu Revue in December 1959 and he also had small roles in such TV shows as The Californians and the 1962 pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, The Clampetts Strike Oil. He refrained from signing on for the series, however, not thinking the show would be a success, Robert, instead, Ball suggested that Osborne focus his energies on becoming a journalist, as he would often quip, especially after she saw me act. After The Beverly Hillbillies, Osborne would focus more on writing, in 1965, Osborne had his first book published, Academy Awards Illustrated. In 1977, Osborne began his stint as a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. The following year, he published 50 Golden Years of Oscar, having joined the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, he was elected its president in 1981, and served as such till 1983. In 1982, Osborne began a stint as the entertainment reporter on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles. In addition, he began his Rambling Reporter column for The Hollywood Reporter, in 1984, Osborne began hosting for The Movie Channel, as well as winning the Publicists Guild of America 1984 Press Award. The following year, he began a relationship with Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in 1988, AMPAS commissioned him to write 60 Years of the Oscar, he later wrote five updates to the volume, the latest being 85 Years of the Oscar in 2013. In 1994, Ted Turner created Turner Classic Movies as a competitor to American Movie Classics, Osborne was selected as the host of their nightly broadcasts. For TCM, in addition to hosting four primetime movies seven days a week, beginning in 2006, Osborne also co-hosted TCMs The Essentials. His co-hosts were Molly Haskell from 2006 to 2007, Carrie Fisher from 2007 to 2008, Rose McGowan from 2008 to 2009, Alec Baldwin from 2009 to 2011, Drew Barrymore and finally Sally Field. Osborne also participated in events at the Paley Center for Media in New York City saluting the television careers of Lucille Ball, beginning in 2005, Osborne hosted the annual Robert Osbornes Classic Film Festival in Athens, Georgia
22.
Turner Classic Movies
–
Turner Classic Movies is an American movie-oriented basic cable and satellite television network owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner. TCM is headquartered at the Techwood Campus in Atlanta, Georgias Midtown business district, historically, the channels programming consisted mainly of featured classic theatrically released feature films from the Turner Entertainment film library – which comprises films from Warner Bros. However, TCM now has licensing deals with other Hollywood film studios as well as its Time Warner sister company, Warner Bros. and occasionally shows more recent films. The channel is available in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Latin America, France, Spain, Nordic countries, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In 1986, eight years before the launch of Turner Classic Movies, concerns over Turner Entertainments corporate debt load resulted in Turner selling the studio that October back to Kirk Kerkorian, from whom Turner had purchased the studio less than a year before. As part of the deal, Turner Entertainment retained ownership of MGMs library of films released up to May 9,1986, Turner Broadcasting System was split into two companies, Turner Broadcasting System and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and reincorporated as MGM/UA Communications Co. The film library of Turner Entertainment would serve as the form of programming for TCM upon the networks launch. After the library was acquired, MGM/UA signed a deal with Turner to continue distributing the pre-May 1986 MGM and to begin distributing the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film libraries for video release. Turner Classic Movies debuted on April 14,1994, at 6,00 p. m. Eastern Time, the date and time were chosen for their historical significance as the exact centennial anniversary of the first public movie showing in New York City. The first movie broadcast on TCM was the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, at the time of its launch, TCM was available to approximately one million cable television subscribers. AMC had broadened its content to feature colorized and more recent films by 2002. In the early 90s AMC abandoned its format, leaving TCM as the only movie-oriented cable channel to devote its programming entirely to classic films without commercial interruption. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, which besides placing Turner Classic Movies, in March 1999, MGM paid Warner Bros. and gave up the home video rights to the MGM/UA films owned by Turner to Warner Home Video. In 2008, TCM won a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, in April 2010, Turner Classic Movies held the first TCM Classic Film Festival, an event – now held annually – at the Graumans Chinese Theater and the Graumans Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. In 2007, some of the films featured on TCM were made available for streaming on TCMs website. The networks programming season runs from February until the following March of each year when a retrospective of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated movies is shown, called 31 Days of Oscar. Turner Classic Movies presents many of its features in their original aspect ratio whenever possible – widescreen films broadcast on TCM are letterboxed on the standard definition feed. TCM also regularly presents widescreen presentations of films not available in the format on any video release
23.
Stanley Donen
–
Stanley Donen is an American film director and choreographer whose most celebrated works are Singin in the Rain and On the Town, both of which he co-directed with actor and dancer Gene Kelly. His other noteworthy films include Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face, Indiscreet, Charade, and Two for the Road. He received an Honorary Academy Award in 1998 for his body of work and he was hailed by film critic David Quinlan as the King of the Hollywood musicals. Donen married five times and had three children and his current long term partner is film director and comedian Elaine May. He began his career in the line on Broadway for director George Abbott. In 1943 he went to Hollywood and worked as a choreographer before he and he then worked as a contract director for MGM under producer Arthur Freed producing hit films amid critical acclaim, both as a solo director and with Kelly. In 1952 Donen and Kelly co-directed the musical Singin in the Rain, Donens relationship with Kelly deteriorated in 1955 during their final collaboration on Its Always Fair Weather. He then broke his contract with MGM to become an independent producer in 1957, as musicals began to lose public appeal, Donen switched to comedies. He continued to make hit films until the late 1960s, after which his career slowed down and he briefly returned to the stage as a director in the 1990s and again in 2002. Donen is credited with transitioning Hollywood musical films from realistic backstage dramas to an integrated art form in which the songs were a natural continuation of the story. Donen and Kellys films created a cinematic form and included dances that could only be achieved in the film medium. Donen stated that what he was doing was a continuation from the Astaire – Rogers musicals. Which in turn came from René Clair and from Lubitsch, what we did was not geared towards realism but towards the unreal. Film critic Jean-Pierre Coursodon has said that Donens contribution to the evolution of the Hollywood musical outshines anybody elses and he is the last surviving notable director of Hollywoods Golden Age. Stanley Donen was born in Columbia, South Carolina to Mordecai Moses Donen, a manager, and Helen. His younger sister Carla Donen Davis was born in August 1937, although born to Jewish parents, he became an atheist in his youth. Donen described his childhood as lonely and unhappy as one of the few Jews in Columbia, to help cope with his isolation, he spent much of his youth in local movie theaters and was especially fond of Westerns, comedies and thrillers. The film that had the strongest impact on him was the 1933 Fred Astaire, Donen said that he must have seen the picture thirty or forty times
24.
Singin' in the Rain
–
Singin in the Rain is a 1952 American musical comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald OConnor, and Debbie Reynolds. It offers a depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s. The film was only a modest hit when first released and it topped the AFIs Greatest Movie Musicals list and is ranked as the fifth-greatest American motion picture of all time in its updated list of the greatest American films in 2007. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, Don Lockwood is a popular silent film star with humble roots as a singer, dancer, and stuntman. Don barely tolerates his vain, cunning, and shallow leading lady, Lina Lamont, though their studio, Monumental Pictures, Lina is convinced they are in love, despite Dons protestations otherwise. At the premiere of his newest film, The Royal Rascal, Don tells the crowd an exaggerated version of his life story, including his motto, Dignity. His words are humorously contradicted by flashbacks showing him alongside his best friend Cosmo Brown, to escape from his fans after the premiere, Don jumps into a passing car driven by Kathy Selden. She drops him off, but not before claiming to be a stage actress, later, at a party, the head of Dons studio, R. F. Simpson, shows a short demonstration of a picture. To Dons amusement, Kathy pops out of a mock cake right in front of him, furious at Dons teasing, she throws a real cake at him, only to hit Lina right in the face. Don is smitten with Kathy and searches for her for weeks, while filming a love scene, Lina tells him that she had Kathy fired. Don finally finds Kathy working in another Monumental Pictures production and she confesses to having been a fan of his all along. The production is beset with difficulties, including Linas grating voice, an exasperated diction coach tries to teach her how to speak properly, but to no avail. Don, Kathy and Cosmo come up with the idea to turn The Duelling Cavalier into a musical called The Dancing Cavalier, Cosmo, inspired by a scene in The Duelling Cavalier where Linas voice was out of sync, suggests that they dub Linas voice with Kathys. R. F. approves the idea but tells them not to inform Lina about the dubbing, when Lina finds out, she is infuriated. She becomes even angrier when she discovers that R. F. intends to give Kathy a screen credit, Lina threatens to sue R. F. unless he orders Kathy to continue working uncredited as Linas voice. R. F. reluctantly agrees to her demands, as a clause in her states that she can sue whenever denied a role of her choosing. The premiere of The Dancing Cavalier is a tremendous success, when the audience clamors for Lina to sing live, Don, Cosmo, and R. F. tell her to lip sync into the microphone while Kathy, hidden behind the curtain, sings into a second one
25.
Elephant in the room
–
Elephant in the room or Elephant in the living room is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss, or a condition of groupthink no one wants to challenge. Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel Demons wrote, Belinsky was just like Krylovs Inquisitive Man and its so big you just cant ignore it. This idiomatic expression may have been in use much earlier than 1959. For example, the phrase appears 44 years earlier in the pages of a British journal in 1915, the sentence was presented as a trivial illustration of a question British schoolboys would be able to answer, e. g. Is there an elephant in the class-room, a slightly different version of the phrase was used before this, with George Berkeley talking of whether or not there is an invisible elephant in the room in his debates with scientists. Durante reprises the piece in the 1962 film version of the play, the idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself. The term is used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion. It is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged, and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided. The idiom is used in addiction recovery terminology to describe the reluctance of friends and family of an addicted person to discuss the persons problem. Especially in reference to abuse, the idiom is sometimes coupled with that of the pink elephant. For some, their first encounter with this comes through the poem of the same name by Terry Kettering. In one edition of Time magazine in 2013, Chris Christie was labeled as the Elephant in the Room on the cover page, a variation is the phrase elephant in the corner which is infrequently used to the same effect. Logician and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used an example of a rhinoceros in the room to show the impossibility of proving negative existential statements, mokita is a word in the Kilivila language, which is spoken on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands. It means truth we all know but agree not to talk about, quotations related to Elephant in the room at Wikiquote Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87143-3/ISBN 978-0-521-69196-3, OCLC183392531 __________, Spoken English, a Detailed and Simplified Course for Learning Spoken English. ISBN 978-8-183-82052-3, OCLC297508439 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, Word of the Month, Elephant in the room
26.
Dean Jagger
–
Dean Jeffries Jagger was an American film, stage and television actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Henry Kings Twelve OClock High. Born Dean Jeffries, or Dean Jeffries Jagger, in Columbus Grove or Lima, Ohio, while at Wabash, he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and played football. He dropped out in his year, realizing he was not suited to an academic life. For a few semesters, he taught all eight grades in an elementary school, Jagger studied acting at Chicagos Lyceum Arts Conservatory. He joined a company as Spencer Tracys replacement. He performed in vaudeville, on the radio and on stage, through the 1930s and 1940s, he performed in a number of Broadway plays, including the original production of Tobacco Road. Jagger made his debut in The Woman from Hell with Mary Astor. He became a character actor and appeared in almost 100 films in a career that lasted until shortly before his death. Jagger made his breakthrough with his portrayal of Brigham Young in Brigham Young, according to George D. Pyper, a technical consultant on the film who had personally known Brigham Young, Jagger not only resembled Young, he also spoke like him and had many of his mannerisms. Thirty-two years later, in 1972 he was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Twelve OClock High. In the film, he played the retread World War I veteran, col. Harvey Stovall, who acts as an advisor to the commander, General Savage. He appeared in the biblical epic The Robe as the weaver Justus of Cana, Jagger also portrayed the father of Elvis Presleys character in 1958s King Creole. He was the manager for an evangelist played by Jean Simmons in the acclaimed 1960 drama Elmer Gantry. For the 1956 British science-fiction film X the Unknown, Jagger refused to work with director Joseph Losey because Losey was on the Hollywood blacklist, Losey was removed from the project after a few days of shooting and replaced with Leslie Norman. In 1971, Jagger appeared on The Partridge Family and he played a prospector named Charlie in the Christmas episode Dont Bring Your Guns to Town, Santa. He won a Daytime Emmy award for a guest appearance in the religious series This Is the Life and he played dozens of TV dramatic roles, including an episode of The Twilight Zone called Static. In an early episode of the television series Kung Fu, Jagger appeared as Caines grandfather, who wants little to do with him, Dean Jagger has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1523 Vine Street for his contribution to motion pictures. In later life, Dean Jagger suffered from disease and died in his sleep in Santa Monica
27.
Wilson Wood (actor)
–
Wilson Wood was an American character actor during the middle of the twentieth century. Born in Huron, North Dakota on February 11,1915, he made his debut with a small role in 1946s Two Sisters from Boston. During his 17-year career he would appear in over 100 films, in 1952 he would star in a serial for Republic Pictures. The 12 part series was titled, Zombies of the Stratosphere and his final appearance would be in the 1962 film, Jumbo, starring Doris Day, Stephen Boyd and Jimmy Durante, in which Wood had a featured role. Wood died on October 23,2004 in Culver City, California, Wilson Wood at the Internet Movie Database Wilson Wood at the TCM Movie Database
28.
Grady Sutton
–
Grady Harwell Sutton was an American film and television actor from the 1920s to the 1970s. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sutton was raised in Florida where he attended St. Petersburg High School and he began his career during the silent film era and made the transition to sound films with the college themed shorts The Boy Friends. He moved on to character roles, where he frequently played dimwitted country boys. His most well-known roles were as Frank Dowling, Katharine Hepburns dancing partner, in Alice Adams, Fields in three films, Man on the Flying Trapeze, You Cant Cheat an Honest Man, and The Bank Dick. Film historian William J. Mann characterizes Sutton as a typical Hollywood Sissy and he continued to work throughout the 1950s and 1960s, finally retiring from acting in 1979. The strength of his association with Fields was such that it was mentioned in the commentary for My Fair Lady, Sutton has a non-speaking role in some of the formal-dress scenes, and subtly performs some comic shtick. The commentator refers to him as an old W. C, Sutton died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 89. Grady Sutton at the Internet Movie Database Grady Sutton at AllMovie Literature on Grady Sutton
29.
Paul Wexler (actor)
–
Paul Wexler, was an American character actor. Tall and physically imposing with a face and deep baritone voice. Wexler made his debut in the Bowery Boys 1952 comedy Feudin Fools. Wexler also appeared in television series as The Rifleman, Gunsmoke. For Disney’s 1961 animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians, he performed in reference footage, used by the animators as a guide, playing Jasper Badun. Wexler died of leukaemia in Los Angeles in 1979, seas Paul Wexler at the Internet Movie Database Profile
30.
Howard Keel
–
Harry Clifford Keel, known professionally as Howard Keel was an American actor and singer. He starred in film musicals of the 1950s. He is best known to audiences for his starring role in the CBS television series Dallas from 1981 to 1991, as Clayton Farlow. But to a generation, with his rich bass-baritone singing voice. Harry Clifford Keel was born in Gillespie, Illinois, to Navyman-turned-coalminer Homer Keel and his wife, young Harry spent his childhood in poverty. One of his teachers, Miss Rosa Burke, noticed one day that he had no lunch, from that day forward, Miss Burke would pack two lunches – one for herself and one for Harry. When he became famous and would perform near Gillespie, Burke always received tickets to attend his performances, after his fathers death in 1930, Keel and his mother moved to California, where he graduated from Fallbrook High School at age 17. He worked various odd jobs until settling at Douglas Aircraft Company as a traveling representative, at the age of 20, Keel was overheard singing by his landlady, Mom Rider, and was encouraged to take vocal lessons. One of his heroes was the great baritone Lawrence Tibbett. Keel later remarked that learning that his own voice was a basso cantante was one of the greatest disappointments of his life, nevertheless, his first public performance occurred in the summer of 1941, when he played the role of Samuel the Prophet in Handels oratorio Saul. In 1943 Keel met and married his first wife, actress Rosemary Cooper, in 1945 he briefly understudied for John Raitt in the Broadway hit Carousel before being assigned to Oklahoma. Both written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, while performing in Oklahoma, Keel accomplished a feat that has never been duplicated on Broadway, he once performed the leads in both shows on the same day. Became the first American postwar musical to travel to London, England, on the opening night, April 30, at the Drury Lane Theatre, the capacity audience demanded fourteen encores. Keel was hailed as the great star, becoming the toast of Londons West End. During the London run, his marriage to Rosemary ended in divorce and they married in January 1949, and a year later, Harold celebrated the birth of his daughter, Kaija. While living in London, Keel made his debut as Harold Keel at the British Lion studio in Elstree, in The Small Voice. He played an escaped convict holding a playwright and his hostage in their English country cottage. Additional Broadway credits include Saratoga, No Strings, and Ambassador and he appeared at The Muny in St. Louis as Adam in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Emile de Becque in South Pacific, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, and as General Waverly in White Christmas
31.
Columbia Records
–
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
32.
American Film Institute
–
The American Film Institute is an American film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the moving picture arts in America. AFI is supported by funding and public membership. The institute is composed of leaders from the film, entertainment, business, a board of trustees chaired by Sir Howard Stringer and a board of directors chaired by Robert A. Daly guide the organization, which is led by President and CEO Bob Gazzale. Prior leaders were founding director George Stevens, Jr. and Jean Picker Firstenberg. <ref>AFI Board of Trustees etc. American Film Institute. October 2014. Retrieved December 24,2014. </ref>Two years later, in 1967, AFI was established, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Ford Foundation. The institute established a program for filmmakers known then as the Center for Advanced Film Studies. The institute moved to its current eight-acre Hollywood campus in 1981, the film training program grew into the AFI Conservatory, an accredited graduate school. AFI educates audiences and recognizes excellence through its awards programs and 10 Top 10 Lists. In 1969, the established the AFI Conservatory for Advanced Film Studies at Greystone. The first class included filmmakers Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel and Paul Schrader, mirroring a professional production environment, Fellows collaborate to make more films than any other graduate level program. Admission to AFI Conservatory is highly selective, with a maximum of 140 graduates per year, in 2013, Emmy and Oscar-winning director, producer and screenwriter James L. Brooks joined AFI as Artistic Director of the AFI Conservatory where he provides leadership for the film program. Brooks artistic role at the AFI Conservatory has a legacy that includes Daniel Petrie, Jr. Robert Wise. Award-winning director Bob Mandel served as Dean of the AFI Conservatory for nine years, jan Schuette took over as Dean in 2014. AFI Conservatorys alumni have careers in film, television and on the web and they have been recognized with all of the major industry awards – Academy Award, Emmy Award, guild awards, and the Tony Award. The AFI Catalog, started in 1968, is a web-based filmographic database, early print copies of this catalog may also be found at your local library. Each year the AFI Awards honor the ten outstanding films and ten outstanding television programs, the awards are a non-competitive acknowledgement of excellence. The Awards are announced in December and a luncheon for award honorees takes place the following January. The juries consisted of over 1,500 artists, scholars, critics and historians, with movies selected based on the films popularity over time, historical significance, citizen Kane was voted the greatest American film twice. AFI operates two film festivals, AFI Fest in Los Angeles, and AFI Docs in Silver Spring, Maryland, AFI Fest is the American Film Institutes annual celebration of artistic excellence
33.
IMDb
–
In 1998 it became a subsidiary of Amazon Inc, who were then able to use it as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. As of January 2017, IMDb has approximately 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities in its database, the site enables registered users to submit new material and edits to existing entries. Although all data is checked before going live, the system has open to abuse. The site also featured message boards which stimulate regular debates and dialogue among authenticated users, IMDb shutdown the message boards permanently on February 20,2017. Anyone with a connection can read the movie and talent pages of IMDb. A registration process is however, to contribute info to the site. A registered user chooses a name for themselves, and is given a profile page. These badges range from total contributions made, to independent categories such as photos, trivia, bios, if a registered user or visitor happens to be in the entertainment industry, and has an IMDb page, that user/visitor can add photos to that page by enrolling in IMDbPRO. Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and this fee enrolls them in a membership called IMDbPro. PRO can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the fee, which is $19.99 USD per month, or if paid annually, $149.99, which comes to approximately $12.50 per month USD. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. Enrolling in PRO for industry personnel, enables those members the ability to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as the ability to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as a user, and contribute to the site as well as enjoy its content, however those users enrolled in PRO have greater access and privileges. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled Those Eyes, others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an Actors List, while Dave Knight began a Directors List, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the Actress List. Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, the goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible. By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17,1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, at the time, it was known as the rec. arts. movies movie database
34.
Good News (1947 film)
–
Good News is a 1947 American MGM musical film based on the 1927 stage production of the same name. It starred June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Mel Tormé, the screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green was directed by Charles Walters in Technicolor. Three additional songs were written for the film, The French Lesson, Pass That Peace Pipe, and An Easier Way, Good News was the second adaptation of the stage musical, after the 1930 film Good News. The 1947 film was a sanitized version of the musical. The film is set in 1927 at fictional Tait College, where football is all the rage, taits football star Tommy Marlowe is a prime catch for the college girls. Tommy tells his friend and non-playing teammate Bobby Turner that the trick to attracting girls is to no interest. New student Pat McClellan resists his advances, cutting Tommy down to size at a party, Pat is interested in French, so Tommy enlists part-time school librarian Connie Lane to help him study the language. He gradually falls for Connie, who comes from a poor background, meanwhile, Babe Doolittle is seeking to leave a relationship with football player Beef so she can get involved with Bobby Turner. At a local shop, Babe advises Pat not to lose her temper. Connie grows attracted to Tommy, who she feels is not interested, Tommy asks Connie to the prom, but reneges when Pat shows interest. In the end, Tait wins the big game, Tommy pairs off with Connie, Beef pairs off with Pat, the college bursts out into song in a production number. June Allyson as Connie Lane Peter Lawford as Tommy Marlowe Patricia Marshall as Pat McClellan Joan McCracken as Babe Doolittle Ray McDonald as Bobby Turner Mel Tormé as Danny Robert E and this musical number survives and is included as an extra on the DVD. The film was a box office disappointment, earning $2,545,000 in the US and Canada and $411,000 elsewhere, edens, Martin and Blane were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song for Pass That Peace Pipe. Good News at the Internet Movie Database Good News at AllMovie Good News at the TCM Movie Database Good News at the American Film Institute Catalog DVD information about the 1947 film version
35.
Easter Parade (film)
–
It was the most financially successful picture for both Garland and Astaire as well as the highest-grossing musical of the year. In 1912, Broadway star Don Hewes is buying Easter presents for his sweetheart and he goes into a toy shop and buys a cuddly Easter rabbit, after persuading a young boy to part with it and buy a set of drums instead. Hewes takes the gifts to his partner, Nadine Hale. Don tries to change her mind and it looks as if he has succeeded, until Dons best friend, Johnny, Nadine reveals that she and Don are no longer a team and it becomes obvious that Nadine is attracted to Johnny. She continue to pursue Johnny, but he refuses her out of respect for Don. Angry, Don leaves to drown his sorrows at a bar, Johnny tries to persuade him to talk to Nadine, but Don brags that he can make a star of the next dancer he meets. After Johnny leaves, he picks out one of the dancing on the stage, Hannah Brown. The next morning, Don tries to turn Hannah into a copy of Nadine, teaching her to dance the way, buying her dresses in a similar style and giving her an exotic stage name. However, Hannah makes several mistakes at their first performance, Hannah meets Johnny, who is instantly attracted to her and sings A Fella With An Umbrella while walking her to her rehearsal with Don. Don realizes his mistake and decides to create routines more suited to Hannahs personality, Hannah sings I Love A Piano and works out a dance routine with Don that proves much more successful. The duo, now known as Hannah & Hewes, are shown performing Snookie-Ookums, The Ragtime Violin, at an audition for Ziegfeld Follies, they meet Nadine, who is starring in the show. Hannah realizes that Nadine was Dons former dancing partner and demands to know if they were in love, Don hesitates and Hannah runs out of the rehearsal where she encounters Johnny. Later, Don meets Hannah back at the hotel and reveals that he turned down the Ziegfeld offer, believing that Hannah, Johnny arrives and takes Hannah out for dinner, at which Johnny reveals that he has fallen in love with Hannah. While Hannah does like Johnny, she admits she is actually in love with Don and she and Johnny continue to have a close friendship. Nadines show opens and Don goes to see it and he is the only member of the audience who seems unimpressed. Don goes to see Hannah and tell her they will be starring in another show, Hannah goes to dinner at Dons, only to have him suggest a dance rehearsal. She is immediately upset and tells him that he doesnt see her as a woman, Hannah is particularly annoyed that Don doesnt notice her new clothes and all the effort she has made for him. She tries to leave, but Don stops her and kisses her, Hannah then plays the piano and sings It Only Happens When I Dance With You, after which Don realizes he is in love with Hannah and they embrace
36.
The Barkleys of Broadway
–
The Barkleys of Broadway is a 1949 Technicolor musical film from the Arthur Freed unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that reunited Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers after ten years apart. Also featured in the cast were Oscar Levant, Billie Burke, Jacques François, Rogers came in as a last minute replacement for Judy Garland, whose frequent absences due to a dependency on prescription medication cost her the role. This turned out to be the last film that Astaire and Rogers made together, many critics at the time remarked upon Rogers changed figure, noting that the elfin girl of the 30s had made way for a sturdy, athletic woman. Josh and Dinah Barkley are a musical comedy team at the peak of their careers. After finishing a new show, Dinah meets serious French playwright Jacques Pierre Barredout, Dinah tries to keep the suggestion a secret from Josh, but when he finally discovers Dinah hiding a script for Jacques new show from him, the couple splits up. Their good friend, acerbic composer Ezra Miller tries to trick them back together again, as the result, Dinah gives a brilliant performance. After the show, she learns that her late-night mentor was Josh and not Barredout, so she rushes to Joshs apartment. Barkleys was his first film in English, and was to be his last American film and his French film career was extensive, he worked up until his death in 2003. The Barkleys of Broadway began with the title of You Made Me Love You, and with Judy Garland in the lead role opposite Fred Astaire. In fact, producer Arthur Freed had Comden and Green working on the script for the new film even before Easter Parade was finished, the film went into rehearsals with Garland, but it was soon clear that she would not be physically and emotionally able to do it. Rogers was interested, and The Barkleys of Broadway became their tenth and final film together, the production period was from 8 August through 30 October 1948, with some additional work on 28 December. The Technicolor process was relatively new at the time. The Barkleys of Broadway premiered in New York on 4 May 1949, swing Trot – music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Dance critic Arlene Croce called this the best number in the film, seen through the opening credits, it was released without visual impediment on Thats Entertainment III. Performed by Astaire, Rogers and Oscar Levant, shoes with Wings On – by Harry Warren and Ira Gershwin. Fred Astaire performs this number alone, as part of the show that Josh Barkley does by himself and it utilized green screen technology to have Astaire, a cobbler, dance with many pairs of shoes. Piano Concerto No.1 – Performed by Oscar Levant with full symphony orchestra and they Cant Take That Away From Me – by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. This song was used in RKOs 1937 Astaire-Rogers film Shall We Dance
37.
Summer Stock
–
For the article about the theatre genre, see Summer stock theatre. Summer Stock is a 1950 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film, the film was directed by Charles Walters, stars Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, and features Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, and Phil Silvers. Nicholas Castle Sr was the choreographer, Judy Garland struggled with many personal problems during filming. Summer Stock proved to be her last MGM movie and her last onscreen pairing with Gene Kelly, MGM terminated Garlands contract - by mutual agreement - in September 1950. Jane Falbury is an owner whose actress sister Abigail arrives at the family farm with her theater troupe. They need a place to rehearse, and Jane and her housekeeper Esme reluctantly agree to let them use their barn, the actors and actresses, including the director Joe Ross, repay her hospitality by doing chores around the farm. Although Joe is engaged to Abigail, he begins to fall in love with Jane after Abigail leaves him in an angry fit, similarly, although Jane is engaged to Orville, she falls in love with Joe. The films most famous scene is the final song-and-dance number Get Happy performed by Judy Garland in a jacket, black fedora. This sequence was choreographed by Charles Walters and filmed two months after the rest of the movie, after Garland sought the help of a hypnotist in Santa Barbara, Garland performed the number perfectly in just a couple of takes. According to New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, Get Happy finds Miss Garland looking and performing her best. In another notable sequence, Kelly performs a dance in a darkened barn, using a newspaper and a creaky board as partners and props. The dance turned out to be one of the numbers of his career. In the film, Garland and Kelly share what may be Garlands best dance duet on screen, All songs were written by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon except where noted. Orchestration chores were divided between Conrad Salinger and Skip Martin, Garland was suspended in May 1949, during the filming of Annie Get Your Gun, and spent three months in a hospital in Boston being treated for drug dependency. Betty Hutton replaced her on film, but Garland was reinstated to the lead in Summer Stock. Still, the filming of the movie was sometimes a struggle for Garland, busby Berkeley was originally slated to direct the film, but was replaced by Charles Walters before production began. Both Kelly and Walters worked on the film as a favor to Garland, mayer insisted that Garland be given another chance, saying Judy Garland has made this studio a fortune in the good days, and the least we can do is to give her one more chance. If you stop production now, itll finish her, Dance director Nick Castle did not choreograph You Wonderful You, All for You and Portland Fancy – these were done by Gene Kelly – but did do Dig-Dig-Dig Dig for Your Dinner and other numbers
38.
Texas Carnival
–
Texas Carnival is a 1951 musical film directed by Charles Walters. It stars Esther Williams, Red Skelton and Howard Keel, a dunk tank at a Texas carnival is operated by Debbie Telford and partner Cornie Quinell. An honest man, Cornie helps the inebriated Dan Sabinas, a millionaire rancher, a grateful Dan is put in a taxi, with Cornie promising to return his car. Dan drunkenly has the cab take him to Mexico instead, as Cornie and Debbie drive to Dans hotel in his car, they end up being mistaken for Dan and wealthy sister Marilla. In time, Cornie comes to enjoy the lap of luxury and is attracted to lovely Sunshine Jackson, Debbie is courted by Dans handsome foreman, Slim Shelby, who pretends not to know shes an impostor. In a poker game, Cornie is unaware that jellybeans being used for chips are worth big money and he loses $17,000 that he cant repay unless he can win a Texas chuck wagon race. Debbies in hot water, too, because the real Marilla is suspicious of her, Dan finally returns but cant recall who Cornie is. In an attempt to get Dan drunk again, Cornie gets tipsy instead, but all ends well when he and Debbie end up with their new loves. Texas Carnival at the Internet Movie Database Texas Carnival at the TCM Movie Database Texas Carnival at AllMovie
