Edward Vincent Sullivan was an American television personality, impresario and entertainment reporter, syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. He is principally remembered as the creator and host of the television variety program The Toast of the Town popularly—and officially—renamed The Ed Sullivan Show. Broadcast for 23 years from 1948 to 1971, it set a record as the longest-running variety show in US broadcast history. "It was, by any measure, the last great TV show," said television critic David Hinckley. "It's one of our fondest, dearest pop culture memories."Sullivan was a broadcasting pioneer at many levels during television's infancy. As TV critic David Bianculli wrote, "Before MTV, Sullivan presented rock acts. Before Bravo, he presented classical music and theater. Before the Comedy Channel before there was the Tonight Show, Sullivan discovered and popularized young comedians. Before there were 500 channels, before there was cable, Ed Sullivan was.

From the start, he was indeed'the Toast of the Town'." In 1996, Sullivan was ranked number 50 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time". Edward Vincent Sullivan was born on September 28, 1901 in Harlem, New York City, the son of Elizabeth F. and Peter Arthur Sullivan, a customs house employee. He grew up in Port Chester, New York where the family lived in a small red brick home at 53 Washingston Street, he was of Irish descent. The entire family loved music, someone was always playing the piano or singing. A phonograph was a prized possession. Sullivan was a gifted athlete in high school, earning 12 athletic letters at Port Chester High School, he played halfback in football. With the baseball team, Sullivan was catcher and team captain, he led the team to several championships. Baseball made an impression on him as well as the culture of America. Sullivan noted that, in the state of New York, regarding high school sports integration was taken for granted: "When we went up into Connecticut, we ran into clubs that had Negro players.

In those days this was accepted as commonplace. It was just as simple as that."Sullivan landed his first job at The Port Chester Daily Item, a local newspaper for which he had written sports news while in high school and joined the paper full-time after graduation. In 1919, he joined The Hartford Post; the newspaper folded in his first week there, but he landed another job on The New York Evening Mail as a sports reporter. After The Evening Mail closed in 1923, he bounced through a series of news jobs with The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Morning World, The Morning Telegraph, The New York Bulletin and The Leader. In 1927, Sullivan joined The Evening Graphic, first as a sports writer, as a sports editor. In 1929, when Walter Winchell moved to The Daily Mirror, Sullivan was made Broadway columnist, he left the Graphic for the New York Daily News. His column, "Little Old New York", concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip. Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities.

Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career, his popularity long outlived Winchell's. Throughout his career as a columnist, Sullivan had dabbled in entertainment—producing vaudeville shows with which he appeared as master of ceremonies in the 1920s and 1930s, directing a radio program over the original WABC and organizing benefit reviews for various causes. In 1941, Sullivan was host of the Summer Silver Theater, a variety program on CBS, with Will Bradley as bandleader and a guest star featured each week. In 1948, Marlo Lewis, a producer, got the CBS network to hire Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday-night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which became The Ed Sullivan Show. Debuting in June 1948, the show was broadcast from the Maxine Elliott Theatre on West 39th Street in New York City.

In January 1953, it moved to CBS-TV Studio 50, at 1697 Broadway in New York City, which in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater. Studio 50 was a CBS Radio studio, from 1936 to 1953, before, the legitimate Hammerstein Theatre, built in 1927. Television critics gave its host poor reviews. Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality." Sullivan had little acting ability. His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy. Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island, he moves like a sleepwalker

The Latgalians are the ethnic Latvians of Latgale, who speak Latgalian, a distinct dialect of Latvian, share a common culture that sets them apart from other Latvians. In the Latgalian language, the terms latgalīši and latgaļi have been traditionally used as synonyms describing both ancient and contemporary Latgalians as a part of the same continuum; the term latgalīši prevailed in Latgalian literature and mass media during the first decades of the 20th century, whereas the term latgali has been used in Latgalian literature and media published during the 1920s and 1930s in Latvia and from 1940 to 1988 in exile. Since the cultural revival of Latgalians in 1988, there is a tendency in Latgalian literature and media to follow Latvians in their use of both names. Modern Latgalians developed as a result of Latgale having developed separately from other parts of contemporary Latvia after it was divided between Sweden and Poland after 1621 Truce of Altmark, leaving the most eastern part of Latvia under Polish control as Inflanty Voivodeship.

This resulted in the Roman Catholic church becoming the main religious denomination in Latgale. The local dialects of Latvian language underwent a sound change due to Slavic influence, resulting in another feature distinguishing Latgalians from rest of Latvians. After the first Partition of Poland in 1772, Inflanty was incorporated in the Russian Empire. In 1865, as part of Russia's anti-Polish policies, a period of Russification was begun, during which the Latgalian language was forbidden; this ban was lifted in 1904, a period of Latgalian reawakening began. During the first independence of Latvia, Latgale was the only region of Latvia with strong regional political parties. Although Latvian governments promoted a united Latvian culture, fostering assimilation of Latgalians after the coup by Kārlis Ulmanis in 1934, the Latgalian language was used. Books were published in Latgalian, it was taught in some schools, people could choose to use Latgalian when communicating with the government, they were classified as a Narodnosti in the First All Union Census of the Soviet Union in 1926.

In the Nazi German Generalplan Ost, as far as can be told from the surviving documentation, the Latgalians were scheduled for deportation, while only half of the Latvian population was to be treated so. The reasons for this difference are unclear, but based on racist linguistic arguments, considering that the Nazis planned to physically remove 85% of the Lithuanians; the Soviet period damaged Latgalian culture. Although publishing in Latgalian was banned, some political periodicals, like "Ludzas Taisneiba" were published from the end of the 1940s to the 1960s in Latgalian. Russian and Latvian were the only recognized languages. Latgalians continued to publish periodicals abroad. Publishing in Latgalian in Latvia resumed during the Third National Awakening in the late 1980s but is still rare; the Latgalian language is used at home in rural areas and Latvian is overwhelmingly used in official use and in urban areas. Some government protection for the Latgalian language is provided by the language law of 2000 which states that "the State shall ensure the maintenance and development of the Latgalian written language as a historic variant of the Latvian language.."Some Latgalians consider themselves to be an ethnic group separate from Latvians.

The majority opinion is, that present-day Latgalians are a subgroup of the Latvians who are united by a dialect, which has many regional varieties. The number of people who would identify themselves as separate from Latvians is unknown because the Latvian government does not identify Latgalians as a separate group in census data. 2011 Census of Latvia established that 8.8% of Latvia's inhabitants or 164 500 people speak Latgalian dialect daily. 97 600 of them live in 29 400 in Riga and 14 400 in Riga region. Additionally, the majority view is that Latgalians appeared because Latgale was part of Poland for 100 years and under Russian rule, while the rest of Latvia was under German and Swedish rule. Thus, Latvians living in Latgale are more Russified/Polonized as opposed to the rest of the Latvian people

Retreat Through the Wet Wasteland is a 1973 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Yukihiro Sawada and starring Yuri Yamashina and Takeo Chii. A group of five policemen engages in all sorts of corrupt activity including the rape of a girl resulting in her death, they rob a church of funds intended to go to Vietnamese refugees. During the investigation of the robbery, they use their position to frame a local teenage gang. Takeo Chii: Gorō Harada Yuri Yamashina: Mariko Shimizu Maki Kawamura: Kyōko Nakamura Hirokazu Inoue: Kenichi Nakamura Akira Takahashi: Keiji Katō Kōsuke Hisamatsu: Minister Sayori Shima: High school girl Masako Minami: High school girl Setsuko Ōyama: Prostitute Nikkatsu, still in the early stages of the difficulties associated with the trial over Love Hunter, was reluctant to release a film about police brutality and corruption; the high-profile staff was able to convince the executives to green-light the production, but made one compromise with the title.

The addition of the word "Wet" made the film sound more like a typical Roman Porno sex film than one that dealt with serious social issues. The media controversy over the film, as well as a condemnation from a Minister of Internal Affairs only served as free publicity for the film, it became an immediate box-office hit; the film's influence went beyond the pink film genre. Many Japanese critics claim the film noir-style anti-hero in Japanese cinema—represented in films ranging from Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor to the films of Takeshi Kitano—had its origins in Retreat Through the Wet Wasteland. Director Yukihiro Sawada was known for his efforts in attempting to elevate Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films above their pink film origins, such as in his previous Sex Hunter: Wet Target and Assault!. He was known for bringing social issues to the pink film, such as violence, racial prejudice and police corruption. In his career he brought the thriller genre into his Roman Pornos. Screenwriter Kazuhiko Hasegawa went on to direct the acclaimed The Man.

Lead actress Yuri Yamashina had been an actress in the pink film genre before the inception of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series in 1971. Acting under the name Saeko Tsugawa, she was associated with director Kan Mukai's studio, appearing for the director in such films as Cruel Story of a Sex Film Actress. Yamashina had been featured in a few previous Roman Porno films, but her first starring film for Nikkatsu was Retreat Through the Wet Wasteland. Retreat Through the Wet Wasteland was released theatrically in Japan on June 23, 1973, it was released on DVD in Japan on March 24, 2006, as part of Geneon's third wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series. "NURETA KOYA O HASHIRE". Complete Index to World Film. Retrieved 2009-09-19. Nureta koya o hashire on Thomas. Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books: Asian Cult Cinema Publications. ISBN 1-889288-52-7. 濡れた荒野を走れ. Allcinema.net. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 濡れた荒野を走れ. Japanese Cinema Database. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 濡れた荒野を走れ. Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-09-19.

濡れた荒野を走れ. Kinema Junpo. Retrieved 2009-09-19