Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Nicknamed the Showplace of the Nation, it is the headquarters for the Rockettes, the precision dance company. Radio City Music Hall was built on a plot of land, intended for a Metropolitan Opera House; the opera house plans were canceled in 1929. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style. One of the more notable parts of the Music Hall is its large auditorium, the world's largest when the Hall first opened; the new complex included two theaters, the "International Music Hall" and the Center Theatre, as part of the "Radio City" portion of Rockefeller Center. The 5,960-seat Music Hall was the larger of the two venues, it was successful until the 1970s, when declining patronage nearly drove the Music Hall to bankruptcy. Radio City Music Hall was designated a New York City Landmark in May 1978, the Music Hall was restored and allowed to remain open.
The hall was extensively renovated in 1999. The Music Hall contains a variety of art. Although Radio City Music Hall was intended to host stage shows, it hosted performances in a film-and-stage-spectacle format through the 1970s, was the site of several movie premieres, it now hosts concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, live stage shows such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Music Hall has hosted televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, the NFL Draft; the construction of Rockefeller Center occurred between 1932 and 1940 on land that John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased from Columbia University. The Rockefeller Center site was supposed to be occupied by a new opera house for the Metropolitan Opera. By 1928, Benjamin Wistar Morris and designer Joseph Urban were hired to come up with blueprints for the house. However, the new building was too expensive for the opera to fund by itself, it needed an endowment, the project gained the support of John D. Rockefeller Jr.
The planned opera house was canceled in December 1929 due to various issues, but Rockefeller made a deal with RCA to develop Rockefeller Center as a mass media complex with four theaters. This was downsized to two theaters. Samuel Roxy Rothafel, a successful theater operator, renowned for his domination of the city's theater industry, joined the center's advisory board in 1930, he offered to build two theaters: a large vaudeville "International Music Hall" on the northernmost block with more than 6,200 seats, the smaller 3,500-seat "RKO Roxy" movie theater on the southernmost block. The idea for these theaters was inspired by Roxy's failed expansion of the 5,920-seat Roxy Theatre on 50th Street, one and a half blocks away. Roxy envisioned an elevated promenade between the two theaters, but this was never published in any of the official blueprints. In September 1931, a group of NBC managers and architects went to tour Europe to find performers and look at theater designs. However, the group did not find any significant architectural details that they could use in the Radio City theaters.
In any case, Roxy's friend Peter B. Clark turned out to have much more innovative designs for the proposed theaters than the Europeans did. Roxy had a list of design requests for the Music Hall. First, he did not want the hall to have either a large balcony over the box seating, or rows of box seating facing each other, as implemented in opera houses; this resulted in a "tiered" balcony system where several shallow balconies were built at the back of the theater, cantilevered off the back wall. Second, Roxy specified that the stage contain a central section with three parts, so that the sets could be changed easily. Roxy wanted red seats because he believed it would make the theater successful, he wished for an auditorium with an oval shape because contemporary wisdom held that oval-shaped auditoriums had better acoustic qualities. He wanted to build at least 6,201 seats in the Music Hall so it would be larger than the Roxy Theatre. There were only 5,960 audience seats, but Roxy counted 6,201 seats by including elevator stools, orchestra pit seats, dressing-room chairs.
Despite Roxy's specific requests for design features, the Music Hall's general design was determined by the Associated Architects, the architectural consortium, designing the rest of Rockefeller Center. The Radio City Music Hall was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and interior designer Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style. Stone used Indiana Limestone for the facade, as with all the other buildings in Rockefeller Center, but he included some distinguishing features. Three 90-foot-tall signs with the hall's name on it were placed on the facade, while intricately ornamented fire escapes were installed on the walls facing 50th and 51st Streets. Inside, Stone designed 165-foot-long Grand Foyer with a large staircase and mirrors, commissioned Ezra Winter for the grand foyer's 2,400-square-foot mural, "Quest for the Fountain of Eternal Youth". Deskey, was selected as part of a competition for interior designers for the Music Hall, he had called Winter's painting "God-awful" and regarded the interior and exterior as not much better.
To make the Music Hall presentable in his opinion, Deskey designed upholstery and furniture, custom to the Hall. Deskey's plan was regarded the best of 35 submissions, he used the rococo style in his interior design; the International Music Hall became the Radio City Music Hall. The names "Radio City" and "Radio
Academy Award for Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role while working within the film industry; the award was traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actor winner. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, Sunrise. Nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. However, during the 3rd ceremony held in 1930, only one of those films was cited in each winner's final award though each of the acting winners had two films following their names on the ballots; the following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a specific performance in a single film.
Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was limited to five nominations per year. One actress has been nominated posthumously, Jeanne Eagels. Since its inception, the award has been given to 76 actresses. Katharine Hepburn has won the most awards with four Oscars. With 17 nominations, Meryl Streep is the most nominated in this category, resulting in two wins; as of the 2019 ceremony, Olivia Colman is the most recent winner in this category for her portrayal of Anne, Queen of Great Britain in The Favourite. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31. For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31. All Academy Award acting nominees Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role César Award for Best Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Oscars.org The Academy Awards Database Oscar.com
Texas
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U. S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast. Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth largest in the U. S. while San Antonio is the second-most populous in the state and seventh largest in the U. S. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively. Other major cities include Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the U. S. and El Paso. Texas is nicknamed "The Lone Star State" to signify its former status as an independent republic, as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico; the "Lone Star" can be found on the Texan state seal.
The origin of Texas's name is from the word taysha. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes common to both the U. S. Southern and Southwestern regions. Although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10% of Texas's land area is desert. Most of the population centers are in areas of former prairies, grasslands and the coastline. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the desert and mountains of the Big Bend; the term "six flags over Texas" refers to several nations. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas. France held a short-lived colony. Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the union as the 28th state; the state's annexation set off a chain of events that led to the Mexican–American War in 1846.
A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, joined the Confederate States of America on March 2nd of the same year. After the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. Four major industries shaped the Texas economy prior to World War II: cattle and bison, cotton and oil. Before and after the U. S. Civil War the cattle industry, which Texas came to dominate, was a major economic driver for the state, thus creating the traditional image of the Texas cowboy. In the 19th century cotton and lumber grew to be major industries as the cattle industry became less lucrative, it was though, the discovery of major petroleum deposits that initiated an economic boom which became the driving force behind the economy for much of the 20th century. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy and high tech industry in the mid-20th century.
As of 2015, it is second on the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with 54. With a growing base of industry, the state leads in many industries, including agriculture, energy and electronics, biomedical sciences. Texas has led the U. S. in state export revenue since 2002, has the second-highest gross state product. If Texas were a sovereign state, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world; the name Texas, based on the Caddo word táyshaʼ "friend", was applied, in the spelling Tejas or Texas, by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves the Hasinai Confederacy, the final -s representing the Spanish plural. The Mission San Francisco de los Tejas was completed near the Hasinai village of Nabedaches in May 1690, in what is now Houston County, East Texas. During Spanish colonial rule, in the 18th century, the area was known as Nuevo Reino de Filipinas "New Kingdom of the Philippines", or as provincia de los Tejas "province of the Tejas" also provincia de Texas, "province of Texas", it was incorporated as provincia de Texas into the Mexican Empire in 1821, declared a republic in 1836.
The Royal Spanish Academy recognizes both spellings and Texas, as Spanish-language forms of the name of the U. S. State of Texas; the English pronunciation with /ks/ is unetymological, based in the value of the letter x in historical Spanish orthography. Alternative etymologies of the name advanced in the late 19th century connected the Spanish teja "rooftile", the plural tejas being used to designate indigenous Pueblo settlements. A 1760s map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin shows a village named Teijas on Trinity River, close to the site of modern Crockett. Texas is the second-largest U. S. state, with an area of 268,820 square miles. Though 10% larger than France and twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Zambia. Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers; the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the south.
The Red River forms a natural border with Arkansas to the north. The Sabine River forms a natural border with Louisiana to the east; the Texas Panhandle has an eastern border with Oklahoma at 100° W, a northern border with Oklahoma at 36°30' N and a western
John Eldredge (actor)
John Eldredge was an American actor from San Francisco. He was the younger brother of character actor George Eldredge. Born August 30, 1904, John Eldredge was the son of a clergyman who made a speciality of dramatics at university; when he confessed to his father that he wanted to be an actor, his father grinned and said: "That's all right son so long as you are a good one." He began his theatrical career in repertory and in comic opera and played small parts in New York City till he made a hit on Broadway and it was a role opposite Lillian Gish that won him a Warners film contract. Eldredge's Broadway credits include Three-Cornered Moon, The Good Fairy, The Cherry Orchard, The Would-be Gentleman. In 1954–1955, Aldredge played Harry Archer, father of the title character, in the CBS Television situation comedy Meet Corliss Archer, he died September 23, 1961 of a heart attack at Laguna Beach, United States. Film Stars Who's Who on the Screen 1938 Film Star Who's Who 1948 John Eldredge on IMDb John Eldredge at the Internet Broadway Database John Eldredge at Find a Grave
Marc Lawrence
Marc Lawrence was an American character actor who specialized in underworld types. He has been credited as F. A. Foss, Marc Laurence and Marc C. Lawrence. Lawrence was born in New York City, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Minerva Norma, a Russian Jewish father, Israel Simon Goldsmith, he participated in plays in school attended the City College of New York. In 1930, he received a two-year scholarship to the repertory theater operated by Eva Le Gallienne. In 1930, Lawrence befriended John Garfield; the two appeared in a number of plays before Lawrence was given a film contract with Columbia Pictures. Lawrence's film debut came in 1933. Lawrence's pock-marked complexion, brooding appearance and New York street-guy accent made him a natural for heavies, he played scores of gangsters and mob bosses over the next six decades. Lawrence found himself under scrutiny for his political leanings; when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he admitted he had once been a member of the Communist Party.
He named Sterling Hayden, Lionel Stander, Anne Revere, Larry Parks, Karen Morley and Jeff Corey as Communists. He departed for Europe, where he continued to make films. Following the demise of the blacklist, he returned to America and resumed his position as a familiar and talented purveyor of gangland types, he played gangsters in two James Bond movies: 1971's Diamonds Are Forever opposite Sean Connery, 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun opposite Roger Moore. He portrayed a henchman opposite Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man and a stereotypical Miami mob boss alongside Jerry Reed and Dom DeLuise in the comedy Hot Stuff. One of his last roles was as Mr. Zeemo in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Badda-Bing Badda-Bang", which aired in February 1999, he played the elderly Gatherer Volnoth in the 1989 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Vengeance Factor". His final film role was in Looney Tunes Back in Action, appearing as an Acme Corporation vice president. Lawrence directed Nightmare in the Sun.
In 1991 Lawrence's autobiography was published entitled Long Time No See: Confessions of a Hollywood Gangster. Lawrence was the subject of a novel, The Beautiful and the Profane. Lawrence married screenwriter Fanya Foss, they had two children and Toni. Lawrence died of heart failure on November 28, 2005 at the age of 95, he was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in California. Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget, by Justin Humphreys. BearManor Media, Albany, 2006. ISBN 1-59393-041-0. Marc Lawrence on IMDb Marc Lawrence at AllMovie Marc Lawrence at the Internet Broadway Database Marc Lawrence at Memory Alpha
Karl Freund
Karl W. Freund, A. S. C. was a German Jewish cinematographer and film director best known for photographing Metropolis and television's I Love Lucy. Freund was an innovator in the field of cinematography and is credited with the invention of the unchained camera technique. Karl Freund was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia. At age 11 he moved with his family to Berlin, his career began in 1905 when, at age 15, he was hired as an apprentice projectionist for Alfred Duskes films. In 1907 he began work at Light Effect Society. Freund was drafted by the Imperial Army to fight in World War I but was released from duty after only three months. After beginning his career in film in 1905 Freund work on various projects, he was a newsreel cameraman in 1907 and a year was working for Sascha-Film in Vienna. In 1911 Frend moved to Belgrade to create a film laboratory for the Brothers Savic. Freund worked as a cinematographer on over 100 films, including the German Expressionist films The Golem, The Last Laugh and Metropolis.
Freund co-wrote, was cinematographer on, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, directed by Walter Ruttmann. Freund worked with director Fritz Lang on a number of projects, most notably Metropolis. Between 1926 and 1929 Freund was the production head at Fox Europa Film. Early in his career Freund began to experiment with different ways of filming and new aspects of film. In 1914 he worked with Oskar Messter, a pioneering inventor and experimenter with sound film technology; the Unchained Camera Karl Freund is the inventor of the unchained camera. With its first appearance in Der letzte Mann, the unchained camera was a revolution in early film. For the first time, the camera could move around the set; because it was no longer confined to one position, thousands of new shots were possible. Freund was known to walk around while it was filming, he would put the camera on a cart that moves along a track. Several other innovative ways of moving the camera were introduced by Freund, including putting the camera on a crane.
Between 1921 and 1935, Freund directed 10 films, of which the best known are his two credited horror films, The Mummy starring Boris Karloff, his last film as director, Mad Love starring Peter Lorre. Freund worked under contract for Warner Bros.. In 1944 he founded the Photo Research Corporation of Burbank to manufacture TV cameras and exposure meters. Freund and his production team worked on other sitcoms produced at/through Desilu, such as Our Miss Brooks. Freund's only known film as an actor is Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael in which he appears as a sycophantic art dealer who saves the tobacco ashes dropped by a famous painter. In an interview Richard Brooks tells a story of his interactions with Freund when they worked on the film Key Largo together. Freund showed him two pornographic films he gave him some advice about direction. Brooks says Freund told him not to worry so much about where to put the camera and instead "get to fucking point."Freund emigrated to the United States in 1929, where he continued to shoot well-remembered films such as Dracula and Key Largo.
Notably, his work on Dracula came under a disorganized shoot, with the meticulous director Tod Browning leaving cinematographer Freund to take over during much of filming, making Freund something of an uncredited director on the film. He won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Good Earth. At the beginning of the 1950s, he was persuaded by Desi Arnaz at Desilu to be the cinematographer for the television series I Love Lucy from 1951. Critics have credited Freund for the show's lustrous black and white cinematography, but more Freund designed the "flat lighting" system for shooting sitcoms, still in use today; this system covers the set in light, thus eliminating shadows and allowing the use of three moving cameras without having to modify the lighting between shots. While Freund did not invent the three-camera shooting system, he did perfect it for use with film cameras in front of a live audience; the cameras that were used were BNC Mitchell cameras with T-stop calibrated lenses on dollies.
The center camera was for wider shots. The other two were positioned 75 to 90 degrees away from center and were used for close-ups. Despite his extensive experience in Film cinematography, Freund said that switching to television was a challenge for him; because "Lucy" was filmed in front of a live audience there were restrictions on where the camera could be placed. He used film cameras as opposed to traditional TV cameras in the filming to allow greater control in editing, to provide a better image than the live video and kinescope images available in the 1950s. Shooting on film gave "Lucy" new life in syndication, extended the lifespan of the show for many generations after the original broadcast. In 1937, he visited Germany to bring to the United States his only daughter, Gerda Maria Freund, saving her from certain death in the concentration camps, his ex-wife, Susette Freund, remained in Germany, where she was murdered at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1942. List of German-speaking Academy Award winners and nominees Karl Freund on IMDb Karl Freund at Find a Grave The Life and Films of Karl Freund, Hollywood Innovator
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work on one particular motion picture. In its first film season, 1927–28, this award was not tied to a specific film; the problem with this system became obvious the first year, since Karl Struss and Charles Rosher were nominated for their work together on Sunrise but three other films shot individually by either Rosher or Struss were listed as part of the nomination. The second year, 1929, there were no nominations at all, although the Academy has a list of unofficial titles which were under consideration by the Board of Judges. In the third year, 1930, not cinematographers, were nominated, the final award did not show the cinematographer's name. For the 1931 awards, the modern system in which individuals are nominated for a single film each was adopted in all profession-related categories. From 1939 to 1967 with the exception of 1957, there were separate awards for color and for black-and-white cinematography.
Since the only black-and-white films to win are Schindler's List and Roma. Floyd Crosby won the award for Tabu in 1931, the last silent film to win in this category. Hal Mohr won the only write-in Academy Award in 1935 for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mohr was the first person to win for both black-and-white and color cinematography. No winners are lost, although some of the earliest nominees are lost, including The Devil Dancer, The Magic Flame, Four Devils; the Right to Love is incomplete, Sadie Thompson is incomplete and reconstructed with stills. The first nominees shot on digital video were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire in 2009, with Slumdog Millionaire the first winner; the following year Avatar was the first nominee and winner to be shot on digital video. In 2018, Rachel Morrison became the first woman to receive a nomination. Prior to that it had been the last gender-neutral Academy Award category. In 2019, Alfonso Cuarón became the first winner of this category to have served as director on the film, for his film Roma.
Winners are listed first followed by the other nominees. BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Cinematography American Society of Cinematographers Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official site The Official Academy Awards Database, listing all past nominees and winners
