1.
Tottenham Court Road
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Tottenham Court Road is a major road in Central London, running from St Giles Circus to Euston Road. Historically a market street, it well known for selling electronics. Tottenham Court Road runs from St Giles Circus north to Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden near its boundary with the City of Westminster, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. It has for years been a one-way street, all three lanes are northbound only, the corresponding southbound traffic uses Gower Street which runs parallel to it to the east. It is generally regarded as marking the boundary between Bloomsbury to the east and Fitzrovia to the west, linking Somers Town to the north with Soho to the south. The south end of the road is close to the British Museum and to Centre Point, there are a number of buildings belonging to University College London along the road, and University College Hospital is near the north end of the road. The road is served by three stations on the London Underground—from south to north these are Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street, on 3 June 2014 Camden Council announced plans to reserve the road for buses and bicycles only, during daylight hours from Monday to Saturday. They claimed it will make the street safer and boost business ahead of the opening of a new Crossrail station in 2018, the current one-way system will be replaced with two-way traffic flows. Wider pavements, cycle lanes and safer pedestrian crossings will also be installed as part of the £26m plan, the area through which the road is built is mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls Cathedral. In the time of Henry III, a manor house slightly north-west of what is now the corner of Tottenham Court Road, in about the 15th century, the area was known variously as Totten, Totham, or Totting Hall. After changing hands several times, the manor was leased for 99 years to Queen Elizabeth, in the following century, it became the property of the Fitzroys, who built Fitzroy Square on a part of the manor estate towards the end of the 18th century. Tottenham Court Road was predominantly rural in nature until well into the 19th century, when Heals was established on former farmland, the lease stipulated there must be appropriate accommodation for 40 cows. These cowsheds were destroyed in a fire in 1877, further north there are several furniture shops, including Habitat and Heals. Shops such as Proops Brothers and Z & I Aero Services lined both sides of the road at that time, by the 1960s they were also selling Japanese transistor radios, audio mixers and other electronic gadgets. Many British-made valve stereos were offered too, lisle Street, on the north side of Leicester Square, was another place where a large variety of electronic surplus was available. One of the stores was the furniture maker Maple & Co. In recent years, the growth of e-commerce has reduced the importance of electronics retailing in the area, opposite Habitat and Heals is a small public open space called Whitfield Gardens. On the side of a house is a painting, the Fitzrovia Mural and it was painted in 1980 in a style resembling that of Diego Rivera
2.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
3.
WC postcode area
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The WC postcode area, also known as the London WC postcode area, is a group of postcode districts in central London, England. It includes parts of the London Borough of Camden, City of Westminster, London Borough of Islington, the area covered is of very high density development. The current postcode districts are relatively recent, divisions WC1 and WC2 districts established only in 1917. Where the districts are used for other than the sorting of mail, such as use as a geographic reference and on street signs. Both the WC1 and WC2 postcode districts are part of the London post town, there are no dependent localities used in the postcode districts. The numbered districts were created in 1917, before then they had been included in the WC postal district. There has been no significant recoding of the area from 1990 to 2007. There are Post Office branches in the WC1 postcode district at Grays Inn, High Holborn, Marchmont Street and Russell Square, the Western Central District Office was located on New Oxford Street, which was a stop on the London Post Office Railway. Deliveries for WC1 and WC2 now come from Mount Pleasant Mail Centre in Farringdon Road
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
London Underground
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The London Underground is a public rapid transit system serving London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. The network has expanded to 11 lines, and in 2015–16 carried 1.34 billion passengers, the 11 lines collectively handle approximately 4.8 million passengers a day. The system has 270 stations and 250 miles of track, despite its name, only 45% of the system is actually underground in tunnels, with much of the network in the outer environs of London being on the surface. In addition, the Underground does not cover most southern parts of Greater London, the current operator, London Underground Limited, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London, the statutory corporation responsible for the transport network in Greater London. As of 2015, 92% of operational expenditure is covered by passenger fares, the Travelcard ticket was introduced in 1983 and Oyster, a contactless ticketing system, in 2003. Contactless card payments were introduced in 2014, the LPTB was a prominent patron of art and design, commissioning many new station buildings, posters and public artworks in a modernist style. Other famous London Underground branding includes the roundel and Johnston typeface, to prepare construction, a short test tunnel was built in 1855 in Kibblesworth, a small town with geological properties similar to London. This test tunnel was used for two years in the development of the first underground train, and was later, in 1861, the worlds first underground railway, it opened in January 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. It was hailed as a success, carrying 38,000 passengers on the opening day, the Metropolitan District Railway opened in December 1868 from South Kensington to Westminster as part of a plan for an underground inner circle connecting Londons main-line termini. The Metropolitan and District railways completed the Circle line in 1884, built using the cut and this opened in 1890 with electric locomotives that hauled carriages with small opaque windows, nicknamed padded cells. The Waterloo and City Railway opened in 1898, followed by the Central London Railway in 1900, the Metropolitan Railway protested about the change of plan, but after arbitration by the Board of Trade, the DC system was adopted. When the Bakerloo was so named in July 1906, The Railway Magazine called it an undignified gutter title, by 1907 the District and Metropolitan Railways had electrified the underground sections of their lines. In January 1913, the UERL acquired the Central London Railway, the Bakerloo line was extended north to Queens Park to join a new electric line from Euston to Watford, but World War I delayed construction and trains reached Watford Junction in 1917. During air raids in 1915 people used the stations as shelters. An extension of the Central line west to Ealing was also delayed by the war, the Metropolitan promoted housing estates near the railway with the Metro-land brand and nine housing estates were built near stations on the line. Electrification was extended north from Harrow to Rickmansworth, and branches opened from Rickmansworth to Watford in 1925, the Piccadilly line was extended north to Cockfosters and took over District line branches to Harrow and Hounslow. In 1933, most of Londons underground railways, tramway and bus services were merged to form the London Passenger Transport Board, the Waterloo & City Railway, which was by then in the ownership of the main line Southern Railway, remained with its existing owners. In the same year that the London Passenger Transport Board was formed, in the following years, the outlying lines of the former Metropolitan Railway closed, the Brill Tramway in 1935, and the line from Quainton Road to Verney Junction in 1936
6.
Tottenham Court Road tube station
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Tottenham Court Road is a London Underground and future Crossrail station in central London. It is an interchange between the Central line and the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line, on the Central line it is between Oxford Circus and Holborn, and on the Northern line it is between Leicester Square and Goodge Street. It is located at St Giles Circus, the junction of Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street, New Oxford Street, the station opened as part of the Central London Railway on 30 July 1900. From that date until 24 September 1933, the station eastbound on the Central line was the now-defunct British Museum. The platforms are under Oxford Street west of St Giles Circus, the original station building is in Oxford Street and was designed in common with other CLR stations by Harry Bell Measures. Much modified, it now part of the station entrance. Apart from those very limited features of the entrance, the station building otherwise together with a whole row of other elegant old buildings were demolished in 2009. The next station north on the Northern line was originally called Tottenham Court Road, the original ticket office was on the south east corner of the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, and its original lift shafts and emergency stairs are still extant. A set of stairs can used as access down to the ends of the Northern line platform. The lift shafts are used for offices and station facilities, the original CCE&HR station buildings were destroyed when the Centre Point tower block was built. Like a number of other area stations, Tottenham Court Road underwent improvements during the 1920s to replace the original sets of lifts with escalators. Works commenced in 1923, a new ticket hall, under St Giles Circus, was constructed. A shaft for three escalators was driven from the hall under the junction down to the east end of the Central line platforms ending at an intermediate circulation space. A further pair of escalators descend from level to the north end of the Northern line platforms. The lifts were removed and the redundant shafts were used as ventilation ducts, in 1938 a chiller plant began operating at the station. However, this is in itself a cause of congestion, as trying to leave the station from the Northern line finds itself in the path of traffic entering and travelling to the Central line. In 1984 the entire station was redecorated, losing the distinctive Leslie Green-designed platform tiling pattern of the Yerkes tube lines, the 1980s design includes panels of tessellated mural mosaic by Eduardo Paolozzi, and is a distinct and noticeable feature of the station. The mosaics frenetic design is intended to reflect the stations position adjacent to Tottenham Court Roads large concentration of hi-fi, some of this mosaic has now been removed in the expansion of the station for Crossrail
7.
Nederlander Organization
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The Nederlander Organization, founded in 1912 by David T. Nederlander and based in Detroit, Michigan, is one of the largest operators of legitimate theatres and music venues in the United States. Its first acquisition was a lease on the Detroit Opera House in 1912, the building was demolished in 1928. It later operated the Shubert Lafayette Theatre until its demolition in 1964, mechanic Theatre – Baltimore National Theatre – Washington, D. C.5 million. In January 2014, Nederlander settled a suit with the U. S. Attorneys Office over violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the consent decree, Nederlander agreed to make alterations within three-years to nine of its theatres in New York to make more accessible. The case was one in a series filed by the U. S. Attorney against a number of venues in the city
8.
Listed building
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, however, the preferred term in Ireland is protected structure. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them. When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing. Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order 1972, the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK. In the UK, the process of protecting the historic environment is called ‘designation’. A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation. However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed – it does not have to be a building, Buildings and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category. Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website. Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, then decides whether or not to list or delist the building. In England and Wales the authority for listing is granted to the Secretary of State by the Planning Act 1990, Listed buildings in danger of decay are listed on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register
9.
West End theatre
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West End theatre is a common term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of Theatreland in and near the West End of London. Along with New York Citys Broadway theatre, West End theatre is considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London, in 2013, ticket sales reached a record 14.4 million, making West End the largest English speaking audience in the world. Famous screen actors frequently appear on the London stage, helen Mirren received an award for her performance as the Queen on the West End stage, and then stated, theatre is such an important part of British history and British culture. Theatre in London flourished after the English Reformation, the first permanent public playhouse, known simply as The Theatre, was constructed in 1576 in Shoreditch by James Burbage. It was soon joined by The Curtain, both are known to have been used by William Shakespeares company. In 1599, the timber from The Theatre was moved to Southwark and these theatres were closed in 1642 due to the Puritans who would later influence the interregnum of 1649. After the Restoration, two companies were licensed to perform, the Dukes Company and the Kings Company, performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisles Tennis Court. The first West End theatre, known as Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal and it opened on 7 May 1663 and was destroyed by a fire nine years later. It was replaced by a new designed by Christopher Wren and renamed the Theatre Royal. Outside the West End, Sadlers Wells Theatre opened in Islington on 3 June 1683. Taking its name from founder Richard Sadler and monastic springs that were discovered on the property, it operated as a Musick House, with performances of opera, as it was not licensed for plays. In the West End, the Theatre Royal Haymarket opened on 29 December 1720 on a site north of its current location. The Patent theatre companies retained their duopoly on drama well into the 19th century, by the early 19th century, however, music hall entertainments became popular, and presenters found a loophole in the restrictions on non-patent theatres in the genre of melodrama. Melodrama did not break the Patent Acts, as it was accompanied by music, initially, these entertainments were presented in large halls, attached to public houses, but purpose-built theatres began to appear in the East End at Shoreditch and Whitechapel. The West End theatre district became established with the opening of small theatres and halls. South of the River Thames, the Old Vic, Waterloo Road, the next few decades saw the opening of many new theatres in the West End. It abbreviated its name three years later, the theatre building boom continued until about World War I
10.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
11.
St Giles Circus
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It is near to Soho, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia. The word Circus is used although the buildings around the junction are not all rounded. From the Middle Ages until the fifteenth century, gallows were located at St Giles Circus alongside a cage for prisoners, the area was an infamous rookery until it was cleared in the mid-19th century with the creation of New Oxford Street parallel to St Giles High Street by clearances. The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway joined the station with what is now part of the Northern Line in September 1908, the main station ticket hall was later moved underground, built below the circus in the 1920s. The area today is dominated by Centre Point Tower, located on the south-east corner on New Oxford Street, built between 1963 and 1966 by developer Harry Hyams, the brutalist tower was Londons first skyscraper, and is now a Grade II listed building. As part of the Centre Point project the developer was to have included a traffic roundabout and transport interchange. St Giles Circus has been since 2009 the site of construction for Crossrail, the Dominion Theatre is close to the north-east corner, on Tottenham Court Road just above New Oxford Street. The London Astoria theatre was on the south west side, a new theatre to replace the Astoria is planned. An auditorium/gallery is planned for the south-east corner
12.
Centre Point
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The site was once occupied by a gallows. The building is 117 m high, has 34 floors and 27,180 m2 of floor space, constructed from 1963 to 1966, it was one of the first skyscrapers in London and as of 2009 is the citys joint 27th tallest building. It stood empty from its completion until 1975, and was occupied by housing activists in 1974. Since 1995 it has been a Grade II listed building, in 2015 it was converted from office space to luxury flats. The building was designed by George Marsh of the architects R. Seifert and Partners, the precast segments were formed of fine concrete utilising crushed Portland Stone and were made by Portcrete Limited at Portland, Isle of Portland, Dorset. They were transported to London by lorry, Centre Point was built as speculative office space by property tycoon Harry Hyams, who had leased the site at £18,500 a year for 150 years. Giles Circus, Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which the LCC could not afford to build on its own, on completion, the building remained vacant for many years, leading to its being referred to as Londons Empty Skyscraper. At that point, skyscrapers were rare in London, and Centre Points prominence led to its becoming a symbol for opponents. Some campaigners demanded that the government of Edward Heath intervene and take over the building, eventually, Hyams agreed to lease the building by floors but the arrangements were stalled. The publicity around the occupation increased the pressure on the government. From July 1980 to March 2014, Centre Point was the headquarters of the Confederation of British Industry, at 33 years and seven months, in October 2005, Centre Point was bought from the previous owners, Blackmoor LP, by commercial property firm Targetfollow for £85 million. It has since purchased by Almacantar, who have received planning permission to further refurbish the building to plans by Rick Mather Architects. As of 2009 occupants included US talent agency William Morris, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, Aramco, Chinese oil company Petrochina. In 2015 it was converted from office space to luxury flats, the promised transport interchange and highways improvements were not delivered following the original plan. The pedestrian subway attracted anti-social activities, with the planned redevelopment of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, a framework has been adopted to redevelop the traffic island beneath Centre Point as an open space. The site of the plaza and fountains will be a site for the Crossrail. The plaza is being demolished and the fountains have been removed, architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner described Centre Point as coarse in the extreme. In 1995 it became a Grade II listed building, in 2009, it won the Concrete Societys Mature Structures Award
13.
London Borough of Camden
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The London Borough of Camden /ˈkæmdən/ is a borough in north west London, and forms part of Inner London. The southern reaches of Camden form part of central London, the local authority is Camden London Borough Council. The borough was created in 1965 from the area of the metropolitan boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St Pancras. The borough was named after Camden Town, which had gained its name from Charles Pratt, the transcribed diaries of William Copeland Astbury, recently made available, describe Camden and the surrounding areas in great detail from 1829–1848. There are 162 English Heritage blue plaques in the borough of Camden representing the diverse personalities that have lived there. The area is in the part of the city, reaching from Holborn. Neighbouring areas are the City of Westminster and the City of London to the south, Brent to the west, Barnet and Haringey to the north and Islington to the east. It covers all or part of the N1, N6, N7, N19, NW1, NW2, NW3, NW5, NW6, NW8, EC1, WC1, WC2, W1 and it contains parts of central London. Camden Town Hall is located in Judd Street in St Pancras, Camden London Borough Council was controlled by the Labour Party continuously from 1971 until the 2006 election, when the Liberal Democrats became the largest party. In 2006, two Green Cllrs, Maya de Souza and Adrian Oliver, were elected and were the first Green Party councillors in Camden, Camden was the fourth to last council to drop out of the campaign, doing so in the early hours of 6 June. Borough councillors are elected every four years, between 2006 and 2010 Labour lost two seats to the Liberal Democrats through by-elections, in Kentish Town and Haverstock wards. A Labour Councillor in Haverstock ward also defected to the Liberal Democrats in February 2009, at the local elections on 6 May 2010 the Labour party regained full control of Camden council. The new council is made up of 30 Labour,13 Liberal Democrats,10 Conservatives, at the Councils AGM, Labours Nasim Ali took office as Camdens first leader from the Bengali community. Labour Councillor Jonathan Simpson was elected the Mayor of the Borough, the organisations staff are led by the Chief Executive who is currently Mike Cooke. Each directorate is divided into a number of divisions headed by an assistant director and they in turn are divided into groups which are themselves divided into services. This is a model to most local government in London. Pancras in the south, represented by Labours Keir Starmer, in 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise throughout the 19th century as the district became built up
14.
Britain's Got Talent
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Britains Got Talent is a British television talent show reality TV competition which started in June 2007 and originated from the Got Talent franchise. The show is a Thames production distributed by FremantleMedia and is produced in association with Syco TV, the show is broadcast on ITV and its sister show Britains Got More Talent is broadcast on ITV2. Anyone of any age with some sort of talent can audition for the show, acts compete against each other in order to gain the audience support while trying to win the title of The winner of Britains Got Talent. The original judging panel consisted of the shows creator Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Kelly Brook was brought in briefly as a fourth judge in series 3, but was axed after one audition site. Morgan did not return for series 5 and Cowell was only present during the shows, while David Hasselhoff. Alesha Dixon and David Walliams joined the panel in series 6 as replacements for McIntyre, throughout the show, contestants must perform in front of the judges, and each year initial auditions have been held in front of a live audience. Auditions precede live semi-finals, where the final 45 contestants perform nightly for a week in order to impress the British public, each night, two acts from each semi-final progress to the live final. There have been ten winners to date, Paul Potts, George Sampson, Diversity, Spelbound, Jai McDowall, Ashleigh and Pudsey, Attraction, Collabro, Jules ODwyer & Matisse and Richard Jones. A significant show in British popular culture, Britains Got Talent is the UKs biggest television talent competition, the series 3 live final brought in 17.3 million viewers, a 64. 6% audience share. On 29 February 2016, it was announced that ITV had signed a contract to renew Britains Got Talent until 2019. The shows format was devised by The X Factor creator and Sony Music executive Simon Cowell, a pilot episode was filmed in September 2005, with the judging panel consisting of Cowell, then-This Morning presenter Fern Britton, and tabloid journalist Piers Morgan. It was originally planned that the show would be broadcast in 2006, however, after defection to Channel 4 for The Paul OGrady Show, he refused to appear on another ITV show, so the show was put on hold. The pilot remained unbroadcast on television until it was shown during The Talent Show Story in January 2012, in a 2010 interview, OGrady said, I did the pilot for Britains Got Talent – which was originally going to be called Paul OGradys Got Talent. But I told the producers they were having a joke if they thought I would front a show with that title, the original panel of judges was going to be Simon Cowell, Fern Britton and Piers Morgan. Then when I had the row with ITV I was banned from the studios, I remember I rang Simon and told him he had a huge hit on his hands, but there was no way I could do it. I said, if I am banned I have to be banned from everything, I can’t be a hypocrite and come in and do this. On 12 February 2007, following the success of Americas Got Talent the previous year, it was announced that the show would air in June 2007 with Cowell, Morgan and actress Amanda Holden as judges. Ant & Dec were announced as presenters, with Stephen Mulhern as the presenter of ITV2 spin-off series Britains Got More Talent, the auditions take place in front of the judges and a live audience at different cities across the UK
15.
Evita (musical)
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Evita is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. It concentrates on the life of Argentine political leader Eva Perón, the story follows Evitas early life, rise to power, charity work, and eventual death. The musical began as a rock concept album released in 1976. This has been followed by a string of tours and worldwide productions and numerous cast albums, as well as a major 1996 film of the musical starring Madonna. The musical was revived in London in 2006, and on Broadway in 2012, in 1972, Robert Stigwood proposed that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice develop a new musical version of Peter Pan, but they abandoned the project. Travelling late to a one night in 1973, though. As a child stamp collector, he had been fascinated by her image on the Argentine stamps, but was unaware of her significance in Argentinas history. The executive also arranged for Rice to see the film at Thames Television which he did at least twenty times saying also that by that time I had seen Pasinis superbly researched film, after Jeeves, Lloyd Webber returned to Rice, and they began developing Rices proposed musical. The authors of the 1996 book Evita, The Real Life of Eva Perón claim the musical was based on Mary Mains biography The Woman with the Whip, though Rice praised the Main biography, it was never officially credited as source material. Rice created a character, Che, to serve as a narrator, when Harold Prince later became involved with the project, he insisted that the actors portraying Che should use Guevara as a role model. In the 1996 film adaptation, the returned to his more anonymous roots. This was also the case for the 2006 London revival, Lloyd Webber and the conductor Anthony Bowles presented the musical at the second Sydmonton Festival before making the recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording, which was released by MCA Records who had previously marketed Jesus Christ Superstar, commenced in April 1976 and was produced by Lloyd Webber, the recording was engineered by David Hamilton Smith, whose work Rice later acknowledged was effectively that of a third producer. He also delivered the line, Statesmanship is more than entertaining peasants, released in 1976, the two-record set included Paul Jones as Juan Perón, Colm Wilkinson as Che, Barbara Dickson as Peróns mistress, and Tony Christie as Agustín Magaldi. The writers had originally considered Steve Marriott and John Fogerty but neither was interested, murray Head, who had enormous success with the Superstar album, recorded some demos but Rice later admitted they didnt really reproduce the magic that his portrayal of Judas had. Colm Wilkinson had recently played Judas in the London production of Superstar and agreed to audition, mike dAbo, who had succeeded Paul Jones as lead singer of Manfred Mann, had a minor role on the album which was notable as the first one which both had appeared. Mike Smith, former lead vocalist with the Dave Clark Five and dAbos then working partner, Pasini wrote the dialogue in Spanish of the first scene, A Cinema in Buenos Aires,26 July 1952. On this recording, he played the part of the actor in the soundtrack of a movie that grinds to a halt, when the album was presented to the press at Lloyd Webbers country home Sydmonton, Pasini organised a photographic presentation with his colleague Anton Furst to accompany it
16.
Marquee (sign)
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A marquee is most commonly a structure placed over the entrance to a hotel or theatre. It has signage stating either the name of the establishment or, in the case of theatres, the play or movie, the marquee is often identifiable by a surrounding cache of light bulbs, usually yellow or white, that flash intermittently or as chasing lights. The English word marquee is derived from the Middle French word marquise, the oldest form of the words root *merg- meant boundary, border. Other words that descended from this Proto-Indo-European root include margin, margrave, early examples of the modern use of marquee include 1931, The American Mercury, Marquee, the canopy at the main entrance. 1933, Billboard, The marquee of the Rivoli, where Samarang is playing, reads,1967, The Boston Globe, British actors mean little on an American movie marquee and Sherlock Holmes always seems old-fashioned. Movie marquee designs in the United States are closely related to the social, political, the invention of the automobile influenced many elements of theater architecture. The marquee in particular became larger, and stood out from the street to serve as a physical, the shape also evolved from a small rectangle to a trapezoid, making it more readable to automobile traffic. The text also became less detailed but larger, the larger size of the sign and text, combined with the flashing lights and color, made the façade easily visible to fast-passing cars. Movie marquee designs in the 1930s prompted theater historian Ben M. Hall to call them electric tiaras, during World War II, aesthetic considerations of the marquee were dictated by the availability of labor and materials. Building materials such as steel, copper, bronze, and aluminum were limited, even in the postwar years, these building materials were mostly dedicated to building civilian housing for returning soldiers and their families. Concrete and glass, two building materials that were not restricted, became essential to movie theater architects, light was also an unrestricted resource for architects, and combined with glass it produced striking visual effects. The mild climate of certain locations, such as the American West Coast, also permitted the use of materials such as porcelain. Another benefit of using light and glass together was the bonus of it being cheap. Marquees are also used to illuminate the name of a game at the top of its cabinet
17.
Portland stone
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Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds and it has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major public buildings in London such as St Pauls Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. It is also exported to many countries—Portland stone is used in the United Nations headquarters building in New York City, Portland stone formed in a marine environment, on the floor of a shallow, warm, sub-tropical sea probably near land. When seawater is warmed by the sun, its capacity to hold dissolved gas is reduced, calcium and bicarbonate ions within the water are then able to combine, to form calcium carbonate as a precipitate. The process of lime scale build up in a kettle in hard water areas is similar, calcium carbonate is the principal constituent of most limestones. Billions of minute crystals of precipitated calcium carbonate accumulated forming lime mud which covered the sea floor, small particles of sand or organic detritus, such as shell fragments, formed a nucleus, which became coated with layers of calcite as they were rolled around in the muddy micrite. The calcite gradually accumulated around the fragments of shell in concentric layers and this process is similar to the way in which a snowball grows in size as it is rolled around in the snow. Over time, countless billions of these balls, known as ooids or ooliths, became partially cemented together by more calcite and this is one of the reasons why Portland stone is so favoured as a monumental and architectural stone. Dr Geoff Townson conducted three years research on the Portlandian, being the first to describe the patch-reef facies. Stone has been quarried on Portland since Roman times and was being shipped to London in the 14th century, Extraction as an industry began in the early 17th century, with shipments to London for Inigo Jones Banqueting House. Wrens choice of Portland for the new St Pauls Cathedral was a great boost for the quarries, the island was connected by railway to the rest of the country from 1865. Albion Stone PLC has been quarrying and mining Portland stone since 1984, Portland Stone Firms Ltd have been quarrying Portland stone since 1994. Jordans is part of the Inmosthay Quarry in the centre of the Island, the quarry has been worked since the late 19th century. Albion Stone leases the section from The Crown Estate and purchased the northern part of the site in 2006. The majority of the southern reserves lie under the grounds of the cricket club. To avoid disturbing the site at surface level, the company has applied and received permission to extract the stone using mining rather than quarrying techniques, the reserves to the north will be quarried using the diamond bladed cutting machines, hydro bags and wire saws to shape the blocks. Albion Stone PLC now extract all their stone through mining which dramatically reduces the impact on the environment, jordans Mine is currently the biggest mine on Portland. Bowers Quarry has been operational since the late 18th century and it has been leased from The Crown Estate since 1979 and in 2002 it became the site of the first Portland stone mine by Albion Stone PLC
18.
Freddie Mercury
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Freddie Mercury was a British singer, songwriter and record producer, known as the lead vocalist and co-principal songwriter of the rock band Queen. He also became known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range, Mercury wrote and composed numerous hits for Queen, occasionally served as a producer and guest musician for other artists, and concurrently led a solo career while performing with Queen. Mercury died in 1991 at age 45 due to complications from AIDS, in 1992 Mercury was posthumously awarded the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and had a tribute concert held at Wembley Stadium, London. In 2002, he was placed at number 58 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Mercury was born in the British protectorate of Sultanate of Zanzibar, East Africa. His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, were Parsis from the Gujarat region of the province of Bombay Presidency in British India. The family surname is derived from the town of Bulsar in southern Gujarat, as Parsis, Mercury and his family practised the Zoroastrian religion. The Bulsara family had moved to Zanzibar so that his father could continue his job as a cashier at the British Colonial Office and he had a younger sister, Kashmira. Mercury spent most of his childhood in India and began taking lessons at the age of seven. In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peters School, at the age of 12, he formed a school band, The Hectics, and covered rock and roll artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard. The only music he listened to, and played, was Western pop music, a friend from the time recalls that he had an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano. It was also at St. Peters where he began to call himself Freddie, at the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution, in which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed. The family moved into a house at 22 Gladstone Avenue, Feltham, Middlesex. Mercury enrolled at Isleworth Polytechnic in West London where he studied art and he ultimately earned a diploma in Art and Graphic Design at Ealing Art College, later using these skills to design the Queen heraldic arms. A British citizen at birth, Mercury remained so for the rest of his life, following graduation, Mercury joined a series of bands and sold second-hand clothes in the Kensington Market in London with girlfriend Mary Austin. He also held a job at Heathrow Airport, friends from the time remember him as a quiet and shy young man who showed a great deal of interest in music. In 1969 he joined the Liverpool-based band Ibex, later renamed Wreckage and he lived briefly in a flat above the Liverpool pub, The Dovedale Towers. When this band failed to take off, he joined a band called Sour Milk Sea. However, by early 1970 this group had broken up as well, in April 1970 Mercury joined guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor who had previously been in a band called Smile
19.
Rank Organisation
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The Rank Organisation is or was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated company in Britain. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers, the company logo, the Gongman, first used in 1935 by the groups distribution company General Film Distributors and seen in the opening titles of the films, became an iconic film emblem. From these modest origins, the British film company emerged in 1937 as Rank sought to consolidate his film-making interests, the company grew quickly, largely through acquisition. 1939 - UK sites of Paramount Cinemas purchased 1941 - Purchase of the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, which also owned Gainsborough Pictures,251 cinemas and the Lime Grove Studios. In the mid-1940s Two Cities Films became part of the Rank Organisation producing key films such as Odd Man Out, Hamlet, Vice Versa and The Rocking Horse Winner. 1946 - Bought for £1 million+ a 50 per cent share in a chain of 133 cinemas from New Zealander Robert James Kerridge, many of the waning film company assets were hastily converted and pressed into Rank Xerox service. The Company of Youth, the Rank Organisation acting school often referred to as The Charm School, was founded in 1945 and it launched several careers including those of Donald Sinden, Dirk Bogarde, Diana Dors and Christopher Lee. Also under contract to Rank was the Canadian actor Philip Gilbert, despite backing some excellent films, Rank was in crisis by 1949, having built up a debt of £16 million. And reported a loss of £3.5 million, Managing Director John Davis cut staff, reduced budgets. Other studio facilities were closed, sold or leased, the Rank Organisation closed Independent Producers Ltd. In 1949, the company bought the Bush Radio manufacturing facility, in the early 1960s Rank took over Murphy Radio to form the Rank Bush Murphy Group. In 1956 Rank began a partnership with the Haloid Corporation to form Rank Xerox, Rank was also a significant shareholder in the consortium which became Southern Television, the first ITV television contract holder for the south of England. In the late 1950s, Rank set up Rank Records Ltd. in 1960, Top Rank was taken over by EMI, and in 1962 they replaced it with Stateside Records. Top Rank artists included Gary U. S. Bonds, the Shirelles, bumble and the Stingers, Wilbert Harrison, Skip & Flip, Andy Stewart, Craig Douglas and John Leyton. Rank Audio Visual was created in 1960, bringing together Ranks acquisitions in multimedia, including Bell and Howell, Andrew Smith Harkness Ltd, subsequent acquisitions included Strand Electric Holdings and H. J. Leak & Co. In the mid and late 1970s Rank Audio Visual made a 3-in-1 stereo music centre, the production of the classic Rank TV ran in the mid to late 70s, some interim models appeared and the modern Rank TV appeared in the early 80s. The NEC badge did not appear in the PAL/ 220/240 volt countries until the mid-1980s, J. Arthur Rank had stepped down as managing director of the Rank Organisation in 1952, but remained as chairman until 1962
20.
Charlie Chaplin
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Sir Charles Spencer Charlie Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame during the era of silent film. Chaplin became an icon through his screen persona the Tramp and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, Chaplins childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. As his father was absent and his mother struggled financially, he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine, when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor. At 19 he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, Chaplin was scouted for the film industry, and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon developed the Tramp persona and formed a fan base. Chaplin directed his own films from a stage, and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay, Mutual. By 1918, he was one of the best known figures in the world, in 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films. His first feature-length was The Kid, followed by A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush and he refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue. Chaplin became increasingly political, and his film, The Great Dictator. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin, and he was accused of communist sympathies, while his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women caused scandal. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and he abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which include Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, A King in New York, and A Countess from Hong Kong. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in and he was a perfectionist, and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterised by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramps struggles against adversity, many contain social and political themes, as well as autobiographical elements. In 1972, as part of an appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times. Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Hannah Chaplin, there is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London
21.
City Lights
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City Lights is a 1931 American pre-Code silent romantic comedy film written, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplins Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl, although sound films were on the rise when Chaplin started developing the script in 1928, he decided to continue working with silent productions. Filming started in December 1928, and ended in September 1930, City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions, and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston. The main theme, used as a leitmotif for the flower girl, is the song La Violetera from Spanish composer José Padilla. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla for not crediting him, City Lights was immediately successful upon release on January 30,1931 with positive reviews and box office receipts of $5 million. Today, many consider it not only the highest accomplishment of Chaplins career. In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, in 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it 11th on its list of the best American films ever made. In 1949, the critic James Agee referred to the scene in the film as the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid. The Little Tramp first meets the Flower Girl, and discovers she is blind when she find a dropped flower. That evening, the Tramp runs into a millionaire who is attempting suicide on the waterfront. He takes the Tramp back to his mansion and gives him a change of clothes, early the next morning, they return to the mansion and encounter the Flower Girl en route to her vending spot. The Tramp asks The Millionaire for some money, which he uses to buy all the girls flowers, after he leaves, the Flower Girl tells her grandmother about her wealthy acquaintance. When the Tramp returns to the mansion, the Millionaire has sobered-up and does not remember him, later that day, the Millionaire meets the Tramp again while intoxicated and invites him home for a lavish party. The next morning, having sobered again and planning to leave for a cruise, returning to the Flower Girls apartment, the Tramp spies her being attended by a doctor. Deciding to take a job to earn money for her, he becomes a street sweeper, meanwhile, the grandmother receives a notice that she and the girl will be evicted if they cannot pay their back rent by the next day, but she hides it. The Tramp visits the girl on his break and sees a newspaper story about a Viennese doctor who has devised an operation that cures blindness. He then finds the eviction notice and reads it aloud at the girls request and he reassures her that he will pay the rent. But he returns to work late and is fired, as he is walking away, a boxer persuades him to stage a fake fight, promising to split the $50 prize money
22.
The Blitz
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By September 1940—two months into the battle—faulty German intelligence suggested that the Royal Air Force was close to defeat at the hands of the Luftwaffe. The German air fleets were ordered to attack London, thereby drawing up the last remnants of RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation, Adolf Hitler and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, sanctioned the change in emphasis on 6 September 1940. From 7 September 1940, one year into the war, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 out of the following 57 days, on 15 September 1940, a large daylight attack against London was repulsed with significant German losses. Thereafter, the Luftwaffe gradually decreased daylight operations in favour of nocturnal attacks, ports and industrial centres outside London were also attacked. The main Atlantic sea port of Liverpool was bombed, the North Sea port of Hull, a convenient and easily found target or secondary target for bombers unable to locate their primary targets, was subjected to raids in the Hull Blitz during the war. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, by May 1941, the threat of an invasion of Britain had ended, and Hitlers attention turned to Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The bombing failed to demoralise the British into surrender or significantly damage the war economy, the eight months of bombing never seriously hampered British production and the war industries continued to operate and expand. The German offensives greatest effect was forcing the dispersal of aircraft production, British wartime studies concluded that cities generally took 10 to 15 days to recover when hit severely but exceptions like Birmingham took three months. The German air offensive failed for several reasons, discussions in OKL revolved around tactics rather than strategy. Poor intelligence on British industry and economic efficiency was also a factor, in the 1920s and 1930s, air power theorists Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell espoused the idea that air forces could win wars, without a need for land and sea fighting. It was thought there was no defence against air attack, particularly at night, enemy industry, seats of government, factories and communications could be destroyed, taking away their means to resist. It was also thought the bombing of residential centres would cause a collapse of civilian will, democracies, where the populace was allowed to show overt disapproval of the state, were thought particularly vulnerable. This thinking was prevalent in both the RAF and the United States Army Air Corps, the policy of RAF Bomber Command became an attempt to achieve victory through the destruction of civilian will, communications and industry. In the Luftwaffe, there was a view of strategic bombing. OKL did not believe that air power alone could be decisive, contrary to popular belief, evidence suggests that the Luftwaffe did not adopt an official bombing policy in which civilians became the primary target until 1942. The vital industries and transport centres that would be targeted for shutdown were valid military targets and it could be claimed civilians were not to be targeted directly, but the breakdown of production would affect their morale and will to fight. German legal scholars of the 1930s carefully worked out guidelines for what type of bombing was permissible under international law. Wever outlined five points of air strategy, To destroy the air force by bombing its bases and aircraft factories
23.
Judy Garland
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Judy Garland was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two sisters and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two films with MGM, including nine with Mickey Rooney. Garlands most famous role was as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and her other roles at MGM included Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls and Easter Parade. After 15 years, she was released from the studio and made record-breaking concert appearances, a recording career. Film appearances became fewer in her years, but included two Academy Award nominated performances in A Star Is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg. Garland received a Golden Globe Award, a Juvenile Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. She was the first woman to win a Grammy for Album of the Year for her recording of Judy at Carnegie Hall. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema, from an early age Garland struggled in her personal life. The pressures of adolescent stardom sent her to a psychiatrist at age eighteen and her self-image was influenced by film executives who said she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. She was plagued by instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce and she also had a long battle with drugs and alcohol, which ultimately led to her death from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47. Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10,1922, in Grand Rapids and she was the youngest child of Ethel Marion and Francis Avent Frank Gumm. Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a theater that featured vaudeville acts. She was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church, baby shared her familys flair for song and dance. The Gumm Sisters performed there for the few years, accompanied by their mother on piano. The family relocated to Lancaster, California, in June 1926, Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel began managing her daughters and working to get them into motion pictures
24.
Todd-AO
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Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area, Todd-AO is also the name of the widescreen,70 mm film format that was developed by Mike Todd and the American Optical Company in the mid-1950s. Todd-AO had been founded to promote and distribute this system, Todd-AO began as a high resolution widescreen film format. It was co-developed in the early 1950s by Mike Todd, a Broadway producer, in partnership with the American Optical Company in Buffalo, New York. It was developed to provide a high definition single camera widescreen process to compete with Cinerama, or as characterized by its creator, where Cinerama used a complicated setup of three separate strips of film photographed simultaneously, Todd-AO required only a single camera and lens. The companys focus began to shift after Mike Todds sudden death in an accident in 1958. The 70 mm Todd-AO process was adopted by Panavision, Cinerama, in May 2014, Todd-AOs parent company, Todd Soundelux, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As part of the proceedings, they closed their Hollywood and Santa Monica facilities. On November 17,2014 the Todd-Soundelux Trademarks and Copyrights were acquired in Federal Bankruptcy Court by Rob Nokes of Sounddogs. com, Inc. The Todd-AO process uses two separate stocks, a 65 mm negative is used during production and then used to produce the 70 mm positives for distribution. The image size and sprocket perforations on the two are the same, and the positives are printed using contact printing with the centered on the larger 70 mm film. The extra space on the 70 mm positive lies outside the perforations and this allows the Todd-AO format to support six sound channels and much better fidelity. Four lens options covered a 128,64,48 or 37 degree field of view. The aspect ratio of this format was 2.20,1. Both film sizes had been used in the past, in the 70 mm Fox Grandeur process in 1929–1930, the use of 65 mm photography and 70 mm printing became the standard adopted by others, Super Panavision 70 and Ultra Panavision 70 are both 65/70 processes. The Soviet film industry also copied Todd-AO with their own Sovscope 70 process, identical, the IMAX format also uses 65 mm camera and lab film to create 70 mm prints for projection, conforming to the pitch and perforation standard for 70 mm Todd-AO film. However, IMAX frame is 15-perfs long and runs horizontally through the projector, whereas the Todd-AO frame is only 5-perfs high, the original version of the Todd-AO process used a frame rate of 30 frames per second, faster than the 24 frames per second that was the standard. The original system generated an image that was almost twice as intense as any ever seen onscreen before, only the first two Todd-AO films, Oklahoma. And Around the World in Eighty Days, employed 30 frames per second photography, because of the need for conventional versions at 24 frames per second, every scene of the former film was shot twice in succession, once in Todd-AO and once in 35 mm CinemaScope
25.
Philips
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Koninklijke Philips N. V. is a Dutch technology company headquartered in Amsterdam with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891, by Gerard Philips and it is one of the largest electronics companies in the world and employs around 105,000 people across more than 60 countries. Philips is organized into three divisions, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Philips Healthcare and Philips Lighting. As of 2012, Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world measured by applicable revenues, Philips said it would seek damages for breach of contract in the US$200-million sale. In April 2016, the International Court of Arbitration ruled in favour of Philips, Philips has a primary listing on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. It has a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The Philips Company was founded in 1891, by Gerard Philips and this first factory has been adapted and is used as a museum. In 1895, after a difficult first few years and near bankruptcy, though he had earned a degree in engineering, Anton started work as a sales representative, soon, however, he began to contribute many important business ideas. After Gerard and Anton Philips changed their business by founding the Philips corporation. In the 1920s, the company started to other products. In 1939, they introduced their electric razor, the Philishave, the Chapel is a radio with built-in loudspeaker, which was designed during the early 1930s. On 11 March 1927, Philips went on the air with shortwave radio station PCJJ which was joined in 1929 by sister station PHOHI, PHOHI broadcast in Dutch to the Dutch East Indies while PCJJ broadcast in English, Spanish and German to the rest of the world. The international program on Sundays commenced in 1928, with host Eddie Startz hosting the Happy Station show, broadcasts from the Netherlands were interrupted by the German invasion in May 1940. The Germans commandeered the transmitters in Huizen to use for pro-Nazi broadcasts, some originating from Germany, Philips Radio was absorbed shortly after liberation when its two shortwave stations were nationalised in 1947 and renamed Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the Dutch International Service. Some PCJ programs, such as Happy Station, continued on the new station, by the late 1940s, the Type 10 was ready to be handed over to Philips subsidiary Johan de Witt in Dordrecht to be produced and incorporated into a generator set as originally planned. The result, rated at 180/200 W electrical output from a bore, approximately 150 of these sets were eventually produced. However, they filed a number of patents and amassed a wealth of information. The first Philips shaver was introduced in the 1930s, and was simply called “The Philishave”, in the USA, it was called the “Norelco”, which remains a part of their product line today
26.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
27.
Rodgers and Hammerstein
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Rodgers and Hammerstein refers to an influential, innovative and successful American musical theatre writing team consisting of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, five of their Broadway shows, Oklahoma. Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music, were outstanding successes, of the other four that the team produced on Broadway during their lifetimes, Flower Drum Song was well-received, and none was an outright flop. Most of their shows have received frequent revivals around the world, among the many accolades their shows garnered were thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and two Grammy Awards. Their musical theatre writing partnership has been called the greatest of the 20th century, prior to their partnership, both Rodgers and Hammerstein achieved success independently. Rodgers had collaborated for more than two decades with Lorenz Hart, among their many Broadway hits were the shows A Connecticut Yankee, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, and By Jupiter, as well as many successful film projects. Their 1927 musical Show Boat is considered to be one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre, other Hammerstein/Kern collaborations include Sweet Adeline and Very Warm for May. Although the last of these was panned by critics, it one of Kern and Hammersteins best-loved songs. By the early 1940s, Hart had sunk deeper into alcoholism and emotional turmoil, independently of each other, Rodgers and Hammerstein had been attracted to making a musical based on Lynn Riggs stage play Green Grow the Lilacs. When Jerome Kern declined Hammersteins offer to work on such a project and Hart refused Rodgers offer to do the same, Rodgers, marked a revolution in musical drama. Although not the first musical to tell a story of emotional depth and psychological complexity, introduced a number of new storytelling elements and techniques. These included its use of song and dance to convey plot and character rather than act as a diversion from the story, was originally called Away We Go. and opened at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven in March 1943. Only a few changes were made before it opened on Broadway, the original Broadway production opened on March 31,1943, at the St. James Theatre. Although the typical musical of the time was written around the talents of a specific performer, such as Ethel Merman or Fred Astaire. Ultimately the original cast included Alfred Drake, Joan Roberts, Celeste Holm, Howard Da Silva, Betty Garde, Lee Dixon, marc Platt danced the role of Dream Curly, and Katharine Sergava danced the part of Dream Laurey. The story and the songs were considered more important than sheer star power, nevertheless, the production ran for a then-unprecedented 2,212 performances, finally closing on May 29,1948. In 1955 it was made into an Academy Award-winning musical film, the film starred Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and its soundtrack was #1 on the 1956 album charts. After their initial success with Oklahoma, the musical was adapted to the screen in 1954, and scored a Best Actress Oscar nomination for leading lady Dorothy Dandridge
28.
South Pacific (musical)
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South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, the plot of the musical is based on James A. Micheners Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Micheners work that would be successful and, at the same time. A secondary romance, between a U. S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenants song. Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girls mother, the original Broadway production enjoyed immense critical and box-office success, became the second-longest running Broadway musical to that point, and has remained popular ever since. After they signed Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin as the leads, Rodgers, the piece won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Especially in the Southern U. S. its racial theme provoked controversy, the production won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Libretto, and it is the only musical production to win Tony Awards in all four acting categories. Its original cast album was the record of the 1940s. The show has enjoyed many revivals and tours, spawning a 1958 film. The 2008 Broadway revival, a success, ran for 996 performances and won seven Tonys. Although book editor and university instructor James Michener could have avoided military service in World War II as a birthright Quaker, he enlisted in the U. S. Navy in October 1942. He was not sent to the South Pacific theater until April 1944 and he survived a plane crash in New Caledonia, the near-death experience motivated him to write fiction, and he began listening to the stories told by soldiers. One journey took him to the Treasury Islands, where he discovered an unpleasant village, called Bali-hai, populated by scrawny residents, struck by the name, Michener wrote it down and soon began to record, on a battered typewriter, his version of the tales. On a plantation on the island of Espiritu Santo, he met a woman named Bloody Mary, she was small, almost toothless and she told him also of her plans to oppose colonialism in French Indochina. These stories, collected into Tales of the South Pacific, won Michener the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Tales of the South Pacific comprises nineteen stories. Each stands independently but revolves around the preparation for an American military operation to dislodge the Japanese from a nearby island and this operation, dubbed Alligator, occurs in the penultimate story, The Landing at Kuralei. Many of the die in that battle, and the last story is titled The Cemetery at Huga Point
29.
Elizabeth Taylor
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Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began as an actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well known figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend in 1999, Born in London to wealthy, socially prominent American parents, Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939, and she soon was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a role in Theres One Born Every Minute. Taylor was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet, becoming one of the studios most popular teenaged stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, despite being one of MGMs most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studios control and disliked many of the films to which she was assigned. She began receiving roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant. These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer, although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8, her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the role in the historical epic Cleopatra. During the filming, Taylor and co-star Richard Burton began having an affair which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, Burton and she continued their relationship and were married the first time in 1964. Dubbed Liz and Dick by the media, they starred in 11 films together, including The V. I. P. s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award, in the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand. Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism and she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy and she received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. Taylors personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life and she was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including amassing one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011
30.
Cleopatra (1963 film)
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Cleopatra is a 1963 American epic historical drama film chronicling the struggles of Cleopatra VII, the young Queen of Egypt, to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome. It was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and shot in the 70 mm Todd-AO format, with a screenplay adapted by Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall, the film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, and Martin Landau. It was the most expensive ever made up to that point. Cleopatra later won four Academy Awards, and was nominated for five more, Caesar follows him to Egypt, under the pretext of being named the executor of the will of their father, Ptolemy XII. Much to his dismay, Caesar is given Pompeys head as a gift, as Caesar stays in one of the palaces, a slave named Apollodorus brings him a gift. When the suspicious Caesar unrolls the rug, he finds Cleopatra herself concealed within and he is intrigued with her beauty and warm personality, and she convinces him to restore her throne from her younger brother. Soon after, Cleopatra warns Caesar that her brother has surrounded the palace with his soldiers, counterattacking, he orders the Egyptian fleet burned so he can gain control of the harbor. The fire spreads to the city, destroying the famous Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra angrily confronts Caesar, but he refuses to pull troops away from the fight with Ptolemys forces to quell the fire. In the middle of their spat, Caesar forcefully kisses her, the Romans hold, and the armies of Mithridates arrive on Egyptian soil, causing Ptolemys offensive to collapse. The following day, Caesar is in control of the kingdom. Cleopatra is crowned Queen of Egypt and she begins to develop megalomaniacal dreams of ruling the world with Caesar, who in turn desires to become king of Rome. They marry, and when their son Caesarion is born, Caesar accepts him publicly, which becomes the talk of Rome, after he is made dictator for life, Caesar sends for Cleopatra. She arrives in Rome in a procession and wins the adulation of the Roman people. The Senate grows increasingly discontented amid rumors that Caesar wishes to be made king, on the Ides of March in 44 BC, the Senate is preparing to vote on whether to award Caesar additional powers. They assassinate Caesar and split up the empire, Lepidus receives Africa, Octavian Spain and Gaul, however, the rivalry between Octavian and Antony is becoming apparent. Cleopatra is angered after Caesars will recognizes his adopted son Octavian instead of Caesarion as his official heir, while planning a campaign against Parthia in the east, Antony realizes he needs money and supplies, and cannot get enough from anywhere but Egypt. After refusing several times to leave Egypt, Cleopatra gives in, Antony becomes drunk during a lavish feast. Cleopatra sneaks away, leaving a slave dressed as her, but Antony discovers the trick, the war is decided at the naval Battle of Actium on September 2,31 BC where Octavians fleet, under the command of Agrippa, defeats the Antony-Egyptian fleet
31.
The Sound of Music
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The Sound of Music is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938, the tells the story of Maria. She falls in love with the children, and eventually their widowed father and he is ordered to accept a commission in the German navy, but he opposes the Nazis. He and Maria decide on a plan to flee Austria with the children, many songs from the musical have become standards, such as Edelweiss, My Favorite Things, Climb Evry Mountain, Do-Re-Mi, and the title song The Sound of Music. The original Broadway production, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel, opened in 1959 and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, the first London production opened at the Palace Theatre 1961. The show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then and it was adapted as a 1965 film musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, which won five Academy Awards. The Sound of Music was the last musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the producers originally envisioned a non-musical play that would be written by Lindsay and Crouse and that would feature songs from the repertoire of the Trapp Family Singers. Then they decided to add a song or two, perhaps by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But it was agreed that the project should feature all new songs. Details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical, the real Georg von Trapp did live with his family in a villa in Aigen, a suburb of Salzburg. He wrote to the Nonnberg Abbey in 1926 asking for a nun to help tutor his daughter. His wife had died in 1922, the real Maria and Georg married at the Nonnberg Abbey in 1927. Lindsay and Crouse altered the story so that Maria was governess to all of the children, whose names and ages were changed, the von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married and was offered a commission in Germanys navy. Since Von Trapp opposed the Nazis by that time, the family left Austria after the Anschluss, going by train to Italy and then traveling on to London and the United States. To make the more dramatic, Lindsay and Crouse had the family, soon after Marias. In Salzburg, Austria, just before World War II, nuns from Nonnberg Abbey sing the Dixit Dominus, one of the postulants, Maria Rainer, is on the nearby mountainside, regretting leaving the beautiful hills where she was brought up. The Mother Abbess and the other nuns consider what to do about her, Maria explains her lateness, saying she was raised on that mountain, and apologizes for singing in the garden without permission
32.
Tangerine Dream
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Tangerine Dream are a German electronic music collective founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member until his death in January 2015. Noted electronic music artist, drummer, and composer Klaus Schulze was briefly a member in an early lineup. The best known and most constant line-up of the group, which worked during their most influential period, was a trio with Froese, Christopher Franke. In the late 1970s, Johannes Schmoelling replaced Baumann, and this lineup was stable, Tangerine Dreams recorded output has been prolific, having released over one hundred albums. Their Virgin Years, so-called because of their association with Virgin Records and these and later albums were influential in both the development of electronic dance music and also new-age music, although the band themselves disliked that term. From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream continued to other styles of electronica. Even with their studio and live recordings, many fans were introduced to Tangerine Dream by their film soundtracks. The group created over sixty soundtracks which include those for the films Sorcerer, Thief, Risky Business, The Keep, Firestarter, Legend, Near Dark, Shy People, and Miracle Mile. They also composed the score for the video game Grand Theft Auto V. Froeses most notable association was his partnership with Christopher Franke, Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 after serving time in the group Agitation Free, originally to replace Schulze as the drummer. Franke stayed with the group for 17 years, leaving in 1987 because of exhausting touring schedules as well as differences with Froese. A number of members were also part of Tangerine Dream for shorter periods of time. Unlike session musicians, these also contributed to compositions of the band during their tenures. Some of the notable members are Steve Schroyder, Michael Hoenig, Steve Jolliffe, Klaus Krieger. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream was often joined on stage by Zlatko Perica or Gerald Gradwohl on guitars, Jerome Froese left in 2006 after a concert at the Tempodrom in Berlin. Until late 2014, Tangerine Dream comprised Edgar Froese as well as Thorsten Quaeschning, for concerts and recordings, they were usually joined by Linda Spa on saxophone and flute, Iris Camaa on drums and percussion, and Bernhard Beibl on guitar. In 2011, electric violinist Hoshiko Yamane was added to the lineup, in late 2014, Bernhard Beibl announced on his Facebook page that he would stop collaborating with Tangerine Dream. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Tangerine Dream would no longer be touring with Linda Spa or Iris Camaa, Edgar Froeses death in January 2015, however, left this a short-lived line-up
33.
Logos Live
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Logos Live is the fourth live album and eighteenth overall by Tangerine Dream. It is an album from the concert at the Dominion Theatre in London. From the two-hour concert,50 minutes of music original to the concert was included on the album, the entire concert is included on the Tangerine Tree release Tangerine Leaves Volume 1, London 1982. The same concert was played at Fairfield Halls in Croydon on 31 October 1982 and released in a quality as Tangerine Tree Volume 12. The releases of Logos Live do not split parts one and two, but these sections have been remixed or re-recorded and used in other albums as separate tracks. Some CD releases combine parts one and two into a single track, edgar Froese Christopher Franke Johannes Schmoelling
34.
Dolly Parton
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After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967, with her album Hello, Im Dolly. However, in the new millennium, Parton achieved commercial success again and has released albums on independent labels since 2000, including albums on her own label, Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach No.1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, all-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, and digital downloads during her career have topped 100 million worldwide. Parton has received 46 Grammy nominations, in 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has composed over 3,000 songs, notably I Will Always Love You, Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and she is also one of the few to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. As an actress, she starred in such as 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone. Parton was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton, a farmer and construction worker, Partons middle name comes from her maternal great-great grandmother, Rebecca Whitted. She has described her family as being dirt poor, Partons father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of oatmeal. She outlined her familys poverty in her early songs Coat of Many Colors and they lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area. Music played an important role in her early life and she was brought up in the Church of God, the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six, at seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle bought her first real guitar, Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, the day after she graduated from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville. Her songs were recorded by other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at 19, where she was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the one that charted, Happy, Happy Birthday Baby. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, after her composition, Put It Off Until Tomorrow, as recorded by Bill Phillips, went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country
35.
Duran Duran
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Duran Duran are an English new wave and synthpop band formed in Birmingham in 1978. The band grew from alternative sensations in 1982 to mainstream pop stars by 1984, by the end of the decade, membership and music style changes challenged the band before a resurgence in the early 1990s. The group were a band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US. They have placed 14 singles in the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart and 21 in the Billboard Hot 100, when they first emerged, they were generally considered part of the New Romantic scene, along with bands such as Spandau Ballet. Soon they would shed this image, using fashion and marketing to build a more refined and they were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The video age catapulted Duran Duran into the mainstream with the introduction of the 24-hour music channel MTV, many of their videos were shot on 35 mm film, which gave a much more polished look than was standard at the time. They also collaborated with film directors to take the quality a step further. In 1984, the band were early innovators with video technology in their stadium shows. These five members featured the most commercially successful line-up, the reunion of the original five members in the early 2000s created a stir among the bands fans and music media. Andy Taylor left the once again in mid-2006, and guitarist Dom Brown has since been working with the band as a session player. John Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in Birmingham, England in 1978, at the club they were doing jobs such as John working the door and with Nick deejaying for £10 a night. They began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue, There were many nearby nightclubs, and the one significant one, where bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash played gigs, was called Barbarellas. They would go on to name the band after a character from Barbarella, the character, played by Milo OShea, is named Dr. Durand Durand. The bands first singer was Stephen Duffy, Simon Colley soon joined Taylor, Rhodes and Duffy. Colley was the original bass player, as John Taylor was the guitarist at this point. This was the first complete line-up of the band played live shows. For drums and percussion, a drum machine belonging to Rhodes was used. Colley left the prior to the addition of Andy Taylor
36.
The Blockheads
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The Blockheads are an English rock and roll band. Originally fronted by lead singer Ian Dury as Ian Dury and the Blockheads, current members include Derek Hussey, Chaz Jankel, Norman Watt-Roy, Mick Gallagher, John Turnbull and John Roberts. There is rolling line-up of saxophonists that includes Gilad Atzmon, Terry Edwards or Dave Lewis and from time to time, the original sax player, Davey Payne. The band are best known for their hit singles, recorded with Dury, What a Waste, Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3, and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. In 1976 The Loving Awareness Band released their album, Loving Awareness. The album has appeared on CD more than once, although these reissues have been sourced from a mint vinyl pressing rather than from the master tapes. The Loving Awareness Band broke up in 1977 and Watt-Roy and Charles joined a new band being formed by Ian Dury, who had begun writing songs with pianist and guitarist Chaz Jankel. With Jankel fashioning Durys lyrics into number of songs, the two began recording with Charles, Watt-Roy, Gallagher, Turnbull and former Kilburn and the High Roads saxophonist Davey Payne, an album was recorded, but was of no interest to major record labels. Next door to Durys managers office, however, was the newly formed Stiff Records, under the management of Andrew King and Peter Jenner Ian Dury and the Blockheads quickly gained a reputation as one of the top live new wave music acts. Their first single, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, marked Durys Stiff debut and it was soon followed by the album New Boots and Panties. Which was eventually to achieve platinum status, the tune is based on part of Charlie Hadens bass solo on Ramblin on Ornette Colemans 1959 album Change of the Century. Bubbles also designed the Blockhead logo, which received international acclaim, the hit single Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick was notably not included, however, on the original release of the album. The single and its music video featured a Davey Payne sax solo with dual saxophones, in evident homage to jazz saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Durys lyrics are a combination of lyrical poetry, word play, observation of British everyday life, acute character sketches. The song Billericay Dickie continues this sexual content, rhyming I had an affair with Nina, In the back of my Cortina with A seasoned-up hyena. The Blockheads sound drew from its members diverse musical influences, which included jazz, rock and roll, funk, and reggae, Jankel left the band temporarily and relocated to the U. S. Partly due to personality clashes with Dury, Jankel quit the group again in 1980, after the recording of the Do It Yourself LP, and he returned to the U. S. to concentrate on his solo career. The group worked solidly over the eighteen months between the release of Rhythm Stick and their single, Reasons to Be Cheerful, which returned them to the charts
37.
Time (musical)
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Time is a musical with a book and lyrics by Dave Clark and David Soames, music by Jeff Daniels, and additional songs by David Pomeranz. The heavily-amplified multi-media event relied heavily on effects, including a huge projected floating head named Akash that served as a narrator throughout the show. The interior of the Dominion Theatre was gutted and reconstructed to accommodate the massive steel set with hydraulic lift designed by John Napier. The West End production, directed and choreographed by Larry Fuller, had a premiere on April 9,1986, at the Dominion Theatre in London, England. Cliff Richard starred as Wilder, Jodie Brooke Wilson as Louise, Jeff Shankley as Melchisedic, David Cassidy replaced Richard later in the run, closing with Grease producer David Ian. Stephanie Lawrence was also a replacement in the Time musical and played opposite Cassidy. 2nd cast, Kim Rosato, Stacey Haynes, Sandra Easby, Annabel Haydn, Ian Stewart, Cavin Cornwall A concept album was released in the United States by Capitol Records and EMI for the rest of the world. Oliviers spoken Theme From Time was released as a single in some countries and was a hit on the Australian charts. The soundtrack has never released on CD. The iTunes digital version features a 20-page color booklet. Its like a science-fiction Sunday-school lesson, London critics had a field day sneering at its greeting-card philosophy and 1960s flower-power platitudes. But children, the young at heart, tourists with little English, but its actual genius is the man who invented its gravity-defying, sense-bombarding scenic effects, the modern theaters most astounding designer. The worst of it, though, are the speeches from The Time Lord who sounds like Captain Highliner after transcendental meditation. If vinyl ever deserved to be melted, the Official Time - The Album website Fan website Time - The Musical Fansite
38.
Grease (musical)
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Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey with additional songs written by John Farrar. The score attempts to recreate the sounds of rock and roll. In its original production in Chicago, Grease was a raunchy, raw, aggressive, subsequent productions sanitized it and tamed it down. Grease was first performed in 1971 in the original Kingston Mines nightclub in Chicago, from there, it has been successful on both stage and screen, but the content has been diluted and its teenage characters have become less Chicago habitués and more generic. At the time that it closed in 1980, Greases 3, 388-performance run was the longest yet in Broadway history and it remains Broadways 15th longest-running show. Aspects of the play would be incorporated into the productions 2016 live TV musical. The script was based on Jim Jacobs experience at William Taft High School, Warren Casey collaborated with Jim and together they wrote the music and lyrics. Producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox saw the show and made a deal to produce it Off-Broadway, the team headed to New York City to collaborate on the New York production of Grease. The new production, directed by Tom Moore and choreographed by Patricia Birch, though Grease opened geographically off-Broadway, it did so under first class Broadway contracts. The show was deemed eligible for the 1972 Tony Awards, receiving seven Tony Award nominations. On June 7,1972, the moved to the Broadhurst Theatre in Broadway, and on November 21, it moved to the Royale Theatre there. For the five weeks of the run, the show moved to the larger Majestic Theatre. By the time it closed on April 13,1980, it had run 3,388 performances. Replacements later in the run included Jeff Conaway, Gail Edwards, Marilu Henner, Peter Gallagher, Ilene Graff, Judy Kaye, Patrick Swayze, John Travolta, Jerry Zaks and Treat Williams. Richard Gere was an understudy for many roles in production, including Danny Zuko, Teen Angel. Later Paul Nicholas and Elaine Paige, who had been in the London production of Hair, kim Braden would also play Sandy. It was revived in London at the Astoria in 1979 with Su Pollard, the revival opened at the Dominion Theatre and transferred to the Cambridge Theatre in October 1996, where it ran until September 11,1999. Other performers who played Danny were Shane Richie, Luke Goss, Ian Kelsey, the original score includes four songs written for the film adaptation, Hopelessly Devoted to You, Sandy, Youre the One That I Want, and the title number
39.
Paul Nicholas
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Paul Nicholas is an English actor and singer. He started out with a pop career, but soon changed to musical theatre, later, in the 1970s, he began an acting career. He returned to the pop charts, starring in the 1983 BBC sitcom Just Good Friends, the show won a BAFTA and Nicholas was also nominated for best comedy performance. After the show ended, he returned to theatre and various other entertainment roles. Paul Nicholas was born Paul Oscar Beuselinck on 3 December 1944 in Peterborough and his maternal grandfather was a London docker. Nicholas father, Oscar Beuselinck, a former MI6 agent, became a highly esteemed entertainment, the family spent holidays at his maternal grandparents home on the Isle of Sheppey, until Nicholas was 10. After his parents divorced when he was 12, his fathers home was at Letchmore Heath, Hertfordshire. His paternal grandparents, Winnie and Oscar, lived in a cottage on the grounds. Nicholas began his pop career as early as 1960, adopting the stage name Paul Dean, he formed Paul Dean & The Dreamers who were booked to support The Savages, the backing band for the British rocker Screaming Lord Sutch. It was here that Sutch first noticed the young Nicholas, who was soon to become vocalist and pianist with The Savages, still using the name Paul Dean, he released two solo singles in 1965–66. After taking a new name, Oscar, he began a long association with the Australian-born entrepreneur. In 1966, Nicholas signed with Stigwoods Reaction Records label and his first single under his new name, Club of Lights, the second Oscar single was a version of a Pete Townshend song Join My Gang, which The Who never recorded. His third single, a novelty song called Over the Wall We Go is notable for being written, the part of Danny to Elaine Paiges Sandy made them the first British couple to play the leads in Grease. He joined The Young Vic under Frank Dunlop and played Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing and appeared in Crete and he appeared as the Bully of the Boulevard in Richard O’Brien’s T-Zee at Londons Royal Court Theatre. He performed in Prospect Theatre Companys Carl Davies musical Pilgrim, while touring with OBrien in Hair in 1970 he first heard songs from the yet to be produced Rocky Horror Show and made the first professional recording with OBrien singing That Aint No Crime. On the b-side was a song entitled Very 50s, where OBrien introduces the characters Brad, Janet, Nicholas film career began in 1970 in Cannabis. He followed this with See No Evil and What Became of Jack and he then appeared in Stardust, and Three for All. In 1975, he played Cousin Kevin, Tommys vicious cousin, in Tommy and he released the single Heaven On The 7th Floor in 1977
40.
Matthew Bourne
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Sir Matthew Christopher Bourne OBE is an English choreographer. His work includes contemporary dance and dance theatre, Bourne was knighted in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to dance. Matthew Bourne, was born in Hackney, London, England and he went to William Fitt and Sir George Monoux School in Walthamstow, London. From the ages of 14 to 16 he was an autograph hunter, attending most West End opening nights and waiting outside Stage Doors. In 1978 he left education and worked in various jobs at the BBC, Keith Prowse Theatre Agents. Despite having never done a dance class, he ran and directed various amateur Dance Companies in his teenage years, in 1982 he enrolled at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in Deptford, southeast London, where he was awarded a BA in Dance Theatre. For his final year he danced with the Laban Centres Transitions Dance Company, after graduation he formed the dance company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, with fellow directors, and friends, Emma Gladstone and David Massingham. Bourne has worked as a choreographer and director since 1987, becoming sole artistic director of AMP in 1991. He now lives in Islington, London and Brighton, East Sussex, Matthew Bourne is the only British director to have won the Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreography. He has been said to be the most audience-conscious artist and he does not go into detail about his works because he wants the audience to have their own interpretations. Bourne started training as a dancer at the late age of 22. He studied Dance Theatre and Choreography at Laban, graduating in 1985 and he danced professionally for 14 years, creating many roles in his own work. In 1999 he gave his performance, playing The Private Secretary in the Broadway production of Swan Lake. Matthew Bourne was the director of his first company, Adventures in Motion Pictures. During those 15 years AMP became the UKs most innovative and popular dance/theatre company, in 2002 Bourne launched his latest company, New Adventures, with two highly successful productions. Play Without Words premiered as part of the National Theatres Transformations Season and went on to win Best Entertainment and it then embarked on a World Tour and premiered in New York, Los Angeles and Moscow in 2005. Also premiered at Sadlers Wells in 2002 and became an instant popular hit with audiences and critics and it became the first ballet to be screened by BBC1 in over 20 years and then also embarked on a world tour. New Adventures has continued to revive Bournes work, including The Car Man in 2007, in 2005, New Adventures presented Matthew Bournes production of Edward Scissorhands, based on Tim Burtons classic film, received its world premiere at Sadlers Wells Theatre
41.
Swan Lake
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Swan Lake, Op.20, is a ballet composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets, the scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerers curse. The choreographer of the production was Julius Reisinger. The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on 4 March 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, for this revival, Tchaikovskys score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo. Many critics have disputed the original source of the Swan Lake story, the libretto is based on a story by the German author Johann Karl August Musäus, Der geraubte Schleier, though this story provides only the general outline of the plot of Swan Lake. The Russian folktale The White Duck also bears resemblance to the story of the ballet. According to Lopukhov, both the plot of Swan Lake, the image of the Swan and the idea of a faithful love are essentially Russian. However, Geltser was in all probability merely the first person to copy the scenario for publication and this ballet featured the famous Leitmotif known as the Swans Theme. The choreographer assigned to the production was the Czech Julius Reisinger and it is not known what sort of collaborative processes were involved between Tchaikovsky and Reisinger. It seems that Tchaikovsky worked with only the most basic outline from Reisinger of the requirements for each dance, Tchaikovsky likely had some form of instruction in composing Swan Lake, as he had to know what sort of dances would be required. But unlike the instructions that Tchaikovsky received for the scores of The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, when Reisinger began choreographing after the score was completed, he demanded some changes from Tchaikovsky. Whether by demanding the addition or removal of a dance, Reisinger made it clear that he was to be a large part in the creation of this piece. Although the two artists were required to collaborate, each seemed to prefer working as independently of the other as possible, Tchaikovsky studied the music of specialists such as the Italian Cesare Pugni and the Austrian Ludwig Minkus, before setting to work on Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky had a negative opinion of the specialist ballet music until he studied it in detail. Tchaikovsky most admired the music of such composers as Léo Delibes, Adolphe Adam. He would later write to his protégé, the composer Sergei Taneyev, I listened to the Delibes ballet Sylvia. what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony. I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, Tchaikovsky drew on previous compositions for his Swan Lake score. He made use of material from The Voyevoda, an opera that he had abandoned in 1868, the Grand adage from the second scene of Swan Lake was fashioned from an aria from that opera, as was the Valse des fiancées from the third scene
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Disney Theatrical Productions
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The company is a division of Disney Theatrical Group, led by Thomas Schumacher. Walt Disney Theatrical Production, Ltd. was formed on February 8,1993 with Ron Logan, Disney Parks live production head, as president to produce Beauty, Beauty and the Beast opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on April 18,1994. Disney Theatrical signed a 49-year revenue based lease for New Amsterdam Theatre in May 1995, the building was renovated by Disney Development Company. In 1997, DTP reopened New Amsterdam with King David followed by The Lion King musical, schneider left Disney Theatrical in June 2001 to form his own theater production company partly funded by Disney. His first project there was developing and directing the version of Sister Act with Michael Reno. The musical had its world premiere on November 3,2006 at the Pasadena Playhouse. Disney Theatrical Productions will have its musical production of Newsies debut in cinemas on February 19,2017 with international distribution by Arts Alliance Distribution, the show began previews in New York City on March 9,1994 and officially opened at the Palace Theatre on April 18,1994. The musical was the first Broadway adaptation by Disney, based on the 1991 animated film by Linda Woolverton and with music and lyrics by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. Several new songs were written for the Broadway musical, including Home and it had a continuous run and the final performance took place on July 29,2007 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to make room for another Disney production, The Little Mermaid. At 5,461 performances, the show is currently the ninth-longest run in Broadway history, in the Netherlands this production was co-produced by Joop van den Endes Stage Entertainment. The production had new sets and costumes, on June 13,2006, the Broadway production moved to the Minskoff Theatre to make way for the musical version of Mary Poppins, which later was replaced by Aladdin. It is now Broadways third longest-running show in history and it has consistently been one of the highest grossing musicals on Broadway every week, always performing to nearly sold-out audiences. The production won the Tony Award for Best Musical at the 1998 Tony Awards, in 2008, Stephen Schwartz said, I think were starting up Hunchback of Notre Dame, hopefully, next year. Rumor has reached my ear that its happening, Thomas Schumacher, head of Disney Theatrical, discussed current and future stage productions in an article published by the Columbus Dispatch on September 21,2008. S. The musical had its US premiere at La Jolla Playhouse from October 28 through December 7,2014, the Hunchback of Notre Dame had a workshop in February 2014. The La Jolla Playhouse production transferred to the Paper Mill Playhouse from March 4 through April 5,2015. The show was based on the movie of the name and the novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The show was publicized with Phil Collins and the lead actors promoting the new musical on several media shows including The Today Show, Good Morning America
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Beauty and the Beast (musical)
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Beauty and the Beast is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton. To revert back into his human form, the Beast must first earn the love of a bright. All eight songs from the film were reused in the musical. Original songwriter Menken composed six new songs for the production alongside lyricist Rice, Woolverton, who had written the films screenplay, adapted her own work into the musicals libretto, and specifically expanded upon the characterization of the Beast. Woolverton also expanded the storylines of the staff from servants who had already been transformed into household objects into humans who were gradually turning into inanimate objects. After completing tryouts in Houston, Beauty and the Beast premiered on Broadway on April 18,1994, starring Susan Egan and Terrence Mann as the eponymous Belle and Beast, respectively. The musical opened to mixed reviews from critics, but was a massive commercial success. Beauty ran on Broadway for 5,461 performances between 1994 and 2007, becoming Broadways tenth longest-running production in history, the musical has grossed more than $1.4 billion worldwide and played in thirteen countries and 115 cities. It has also become a choice for high school productions. The Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner was hired to ensure the performance of the next animated projects. Eisner himself had been a major in college. Eager to redeem himself, Ashman agreed to work on Disneys animated film The Little Mermaid, upon release, The Little Mermaid was a massive critical and commercial success, garnering two Academy Awards, both of them for Ashman and Menkens original music. Disney established a successful period, during which Ashman and Menken became responsible for teaching the art of transforming traditional animated films into animated musicals. Before the film had even completed, executive vice president Ron Logan suggested to Eisner that he consider adapting Beauty and the Beast for Broadway. Beauty and the Beast became the last project on which Menken worked with Ashman, once again, Academy Awards were won for Ashman and Menkens music. Several critics noticed the films live musical potential, among them prolific New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich. Lamenting the Broadway selection at the time, Rich famously praised the duo for having written The best Broadway musical score of 1991. Than anything he had seen on Broadway in 1991, richs review would ultimately provide Eisner and Katzenberg with the confidence needed to seriously consider the film as a potential Broadway project
Tottenham Court Road
