1.
Elia Kazan
–
Elia Kazan was a Greek-American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history. He was born in Istanbul, to Cappadocian Greek parents, after attending Williams College and then the Yale School of Drama, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theater in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford, his actors studio introduced Method Acting under the direction of Lee Strasberg, Kazan acted in a few films, including City for Conquest. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations and he directed a string of successful films, including A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden. During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globes and his films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, I dont move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme and his first such issue film was Gentlemans Agreement, with Gregory Peck, which dealt with anti-Semitism in America. It received 8 Oscar nominations and 3 wins, including Kazans first for Best Director and it was followed by Pinky, one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against black people. In 1954, he directed On the Waterfront, a film about corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. A Streetcar Named Desire, an adaptation of the play which he had also directed, received 12 Oscar nominations, winning 4. In 1955, he directed John Steinbecks East of Eden, which introduced James Dean to movie audiences and his testimony helped end the careers of former acting colleagues Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, along with ending the work of playwright Clifford Odets. Kazan later justified his act by saying he took only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong, nearly a half-century later, his anti-Communist testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event. Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 60s with his provocative, Director Stanley Kubrick called him, without question, the best director we have in America, capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses. Film author Ian Freer concludes that if his achievements are tainted by political controversy, in 2010, Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film A Letter to Elia as a personal tribute to Kazan. Elia Kazan was born in the Fener district of Istanbul, to Cappadocian Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia and his parents, George and Athena Kazantzoglou, emigrated to the United States when he was four years old. He was named after his grandfather, Elia Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou, elias brother, Avraam, was born in Berlin and later became a psychiatrist. As a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, America America, which he made into a film in 1963
2.
Gregory Peck
–
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor who was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck continued to major film roles until the late 1980s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor and he had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentlemans Agreement and Twelve OClock High. Other notable films he appeared in include Spellbound, Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, How the West Was Won, The Omen, President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema and he was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983. His father was of English and Irish heritage and his mother of English and she converted to her husbands religion, Roman Catholicism, when she married his father, and Peck was raised as a Catholic. Pecks parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, at the age of 10 he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. Johns Military Academy in Los Angeles. While he was a student there, his grandmother died, at 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father, attended San Diego High School, and after graduating enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teachers College. While there he joined the team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses. Peck however had ambitions to be a doctor and the following year gained admission to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major, standing 6 ft 3 in, he rowed on the university crew. Although his tuition fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay, at Berkeley, encouraged by the acting coach, who saw in him perfect material for university theatre, Peck became more and more interested in acting. He was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the universitys Little Theater, Peck would later say about Berkeley that, it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life. It woke me up and made me a human being, in 1997, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley rowing crew in honor of his coach, the renowned Ky Ebright. He was often broke and sometimes slept in Central Park and he worked at the 1939 Worlds Fair and as a tour guide for NBCs television broadcasting. In 1940, Peck learned more of the craft, working in exchange for food, at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, appearing in five plays including Family Portrait. His stage career began in 1941 when he played the secretary in a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaws play The Doctors Dilemma, unfortunately, the play opened in San Francisco just one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams The Morning Star in 1942 and his second Broadway performance that year was in The Willow and I with Edward Pawley. Twentieth Century Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, ive been trying to straighten out that story for years
3.
John Garfield
–
John Garfield was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City, in the early 1930s, he became a member of the Group Theater. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner Bros. stars, called to testify before the U. S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities, he denied communist affiliation and refused to name names, some have alleged that the stress of this incident led to his premature death at 39 from a heart attack. Garfield is acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, in early infancy, a middle name—Julius—was added, and for the rest of his life those who knew him well called him Julie. His father, a presser and part-time cantor, struggled to make a living. When Garfield was five, his brother Max was born and their mother never fully recovered from what was described as a difficult pregnancy. She died two years later, and the boys were sent to live with various relatives, all poor, scattered across the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens. Several of these lived in tenements in a section of East Brooklyn called Brownsville. At school, he was judged a poor reader and speller and he would later say of his time on the streets there, that he learned all the meanness, all the toughness its possible for kids to acquire. His father remarried and moved to the West Bronx, where Garfield joined a series of gangs, much later, he would recall, Every street had its own gang. Thats the way it was in poor sections and he soon became a gang leader. At this time, people started to notice his ability to mimic well-known performers and he also began to hang out and eventually spar at a boxing gym on Jerome Avenue. At some point, he contracted fever, causing permanent damage to his heart. After being expelled three times and expressing a wish to quit school altogether, his parents sent him to P. S,45, a school for difficult children. It was under the guidance of the schools principal—the noted educator Angelo Patri—that he was introduced to acting, noticing Garfields tendency to stammer, Patri assigned him to a speech therapy class taught by a charismatic teacher named Margaret ORyan. She gave him acting exercises and made him memorize and deliver speeches in front of the class and, as he progressed, ORyan thought he had natural talent and cast him in school plays. She encouraged him to sign up for a citywide debating competition sponsored by the New York Times, to his own surprise, he took second prize
4.
Celeste Holm
–
Celeste Holm was an American stage, film and television actress. Holm won an Academy Award for her performance in Gentlemans Agreement and she originated the role of Ado Annie in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma. Born and raised in Manhattan, Holm was an only child and her mother, Jean Parke, was an American portrait artist and author, her father, Theodor Holm, was a Norwegian businessman whose company provided marine adjustment services for Lloyds of London. Because of her parents occupations, she traveled often during her youth and attended schools in the Netherlands, France. She graduated from University School for Girls in Chicago, where she performed in school stage productions. She then studied drama at the University of Chicago before becoming an actress in the late 1930s. Holms first professional role was in a production of Hamlet starring Leslie Howard. The role that got her the most recognition from critics and audiences was as Ado Annie in the production of Rodgers. After she starred in the Broadway production of Bloomer Girl, 20th Century Fox signed Holm to a contract in 1946. In 1947 she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in Gentlemans Agreement, after another supporting role in All About Eve, however, Holm realized she preferred live theater to movie work, and only accepted a few select film roles over the next decade. The most successful of these were the comedy The Tender Trap and she starred as a professor-turned-reporter in New York City in the CBS television series Honestly, Celeste. and was thereafter a panelist on Who Pays. She also appeared several times on ABCs The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, in 1958, she starred as a reporter in an unsold television pilot called The Celeste Holm Show, based on the book No Facilities for Women. Holm also starred in the musical The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall, in 1965, she played the Fairy Godmother alongside Lesley Ann Warren in the CBS production of Cinderella. In 1970–71, she was featured on the NBC sitcom Nancy, with Renne Jarrett, John Fink and Robert F. Simon. In the story line, Holm played Abby Townsend, the secretary of the First Lady of the United States and the chaperone of Jarretts character, Nancy Smith. In 1979, she played the role of First Lady Florence Harding in the television mini-series and she was a regular on the ABC soap opera Loving, appearing first in 1986 in the role of Lydia Woodhouse and again as Isabelle Dwyer Alden #2 from 1991 to 1992. She last appeared on television in the CBS television series Promised Land, Olav by King Olav of Norway in 1979, and inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1992. She remained active for social causes as a spokesperson for UNICEF, from 1995 she was Chairman of the Board of Arts Horizons, a not-for-profit arts-in-education organization
5.
20th Century Fox
–
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
6.
Jews
–
The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
7.
New York City
–
The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
8.
Darien, Connecticut
–
Darien /dɛəriˈæn/ is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Located on Connecticuts Gold Coast, the population was 20,732 at the 2010 census, Darien is one of the wealthiest communities in the U. S. it was listed at #2 on CNN Moneys list of top-earning towns in the United States as of 2010. Situated just off of I-95 between the cities of Norwalk and Stamford, the town is a community with relatively few office buildings. Most workers commute to Manhattan, and many work in adjacent cities. Two Metro-North railroad stations – Noroton Heights and Darien – link the town to Grand Central Terminal, for recreation, the town includes four small parks, two public beaches on Long Island Sound, four country clubs, a hunt club, and two yacht clubs. According to early records, the first clearings of land were made by men from the New Haven and Wethersfield colonies and from Norwalk in about 1641. It was not until 1740, however, that the Middlesex Society of the Town of Stamford built the first community church, the area became Middlesex Parish in 1737. It was incorporated as the Town of Darien in 1820, tories raided the town several times during the American Revolution, at one point taking 26 men in the parish prisoner for five months, including the Reverend Moses Mather, pastor of the parish. The Loyalist-Patriot conflict in Darien is the setting for the novel Tory Hole, a sailor who had traveled to Darién, Panama, then part of the Spanish Empire, suggested the name Darien, which was eventually adopted by the people of the town. The town name is pronounced /dɛəriˈæn/, with stress on the last syllable, residents say this is still the proper pronunciation, which in most American English, including the local variety, is more precisely. You can always tell when someone is not from here, because they do pronounce it the way its spelled, Louise Berry, director of the town library, until the advent of the railroad in 1848, Darien remained a small, rural community of about 1,000. After the Civil War, the town one of the many resorts where New Yorkers built luxurious. Darien has a reputation as a former sundown town, having effectively kept out African American. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 14.8 square miles, of which 12.9 square miles is land and 2.0 square miles. The town has four exits on the side of Interstate 95. Its northern border is just south of the Merritt Parkway, where Exits 36 and 37 are closest to the town. It also has two Metro-North railroad stations for commuter trains into New York City, with a 38 to 39 miles commute of 46–50 minutes from Noroton Heights, most trains run non-stop after Stamford into New York Citys 125th Street, then Grand Central Terminal. Except for the Noroton Heights business district, commercial zoning is extremely limited outside of the strip along the Post Road
9.
Academy Awards
–
The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
10.
Academy Award for Best Director
–
The Academy Award for Best Director is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of a director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS, winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 89 films that have been awarded Best Picture,63 have also been awarded Best Director, since its inception, the award has been given to 69 directors or directing teams. John Ford has received the most awards in this category with four, william Wyler was nominated on twelve occasions, more than any other individual. As of the 2017 ceremony, Damien Chazelle is the most recent winner in category for his work on La La Land. Chazelle also became the youngest director in history to receive this award, two directing teams have shared the award, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The Coen brothers are the siblings to have won the award. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full calendar year from January 1 to December 31. org The Academy Awards Database Oscar. com
.jpg)
