1.
Ben Hecht
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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
2.
Doris Day
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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
3.
Jimmy Durante
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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
4.
Richard Rodgers
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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
5.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California and it is one of the worlds oldest film studios. In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3,2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MGM, is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios, the studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and a film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up production, as well as keeping production going at UA. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production, the studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt, MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the major creditor. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, and Australias Seven Network in 1996, the debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGMs ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem and he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loews Theatres chain. With Loews lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality, however, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17,1924, Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production. MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years, in 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loews passed to Nicholas Schenck, in 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew familys holdings with Schencks assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds
6.
Busby Berkeley
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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
7.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
8.
Broadway theatre
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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
9.
Stanley Donen
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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
10.
Columbia Records
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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
11.
Stephen Boyd
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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
12.
Musical film
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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
