Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City is the largest city in the U. S. state of Missouri. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city had an estimated population of 488,943 in 2017, making it the 37th most-populous city in the United States, it is the central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Kansas–Missouri state line. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west. On June 1, 1850 the town of Kansas was incorporated. Confusion between the two ensued and the name Kansas City was assigned to distinguish them soon after. Sitting on Missouri's western boundary, with Downtown near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, the modern city encompasses some 319.03 square miles, making it the 23rd largest city by total area in the United States. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, but portions spill into Clay and Platte counties. Along with Independence, one of its major suburbs, it serves as one of the two county seats of Jackson County.
Other major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Blue Springs and Lee's Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park and Kansas City. The city is composed of several neighborhoods, including the River Market District in the north, the 18th and Vine District in the east, the Country Club Plaza in the south. Kansas City is known for its long tradition of jazz music and culture, for its cuisine, its craft breweries. Kansas City, Missouri was incorporated as a town on June 1, 1850, as a city on March 28, 1853; the territory straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers was considered a good place to build settlements. The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, Woodneath are listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the first documented European visitor to Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, he had deserted his post as fort commander and was avoiding French authorities.
Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles east near Brunswick, where he illegally traded furs. To clear his name, he wrote Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors and Rivers, Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony in 1713 followed in 1714 by The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River. In the documents, he describes the junction of the "Grande Riv des Cansez" and Missouri River, making him the first to adopt those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the area's first reasonably accurate map; the Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but were not to play a major role other than taxing and licensing Missouri River ship traffic. The French continued their fur trade under Spanish license; the Chouteau family operated under Spanish license at St. Louis in the lower Missouri Valley as early as 1765 and in 1821 the Chouteaus reached Kansas City, where François Chouteau established Chouteau's Landing.
After the 1804 Louisiana Purchase and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, noting it was a good place to build a fort. In 1831, a group of Mormons from New York settled in, they built the first school within Kansas City's current boundaries, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833 and their settlement remained vacant. In 1833 John McCoy, son of missionary Isaac McCoy, established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail, 3 miles away from the river. In 1834 McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a landing point for West Port. Soon after, the Kansas Town Company, a group of investors, began to settle the area, taking their name from an English spelling of "Cansez." In 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the Town of Kansas. By that time, the Town of Kansas and nearby Independence, had become critical points in the United States' westward expansion. Three major trails – the Santa Fe, Oregon – all passed through Jackson County. On February 22, 1853, the City of Kansas was created with a newly elected mayor.
It had an area of 0.70 square miles and a population of 2,500. The boundary lines at that time extended from the middle of the Missouri River south to what is now Ninth Street, from Bluff Street on the west to a point between Holmes Road and Charlotte Street on the east; the Kansas City area was rife with animosity just prior to the U. S. Civil War. Kansas petitioned the U. S. to enter the Union as a free state that did not allow slavery under the new doctrine of popular sovereignty. Missouri had many slaves, slavery sympathizers crossed into Kansas to sway the state towards allowing slavery, at first by ballot box and by bloodshed. During the Civil War, the city and its immediate surroundings were the focus of intense military activity. Although the First Battle of Independence in August 1862 resulted in a Confederate States Army victory, the Confederates were unable to leverage their win in any significant fashion, as Kansas City was occupied by Union troops and proved too fortified to assault.
The Second Battle of Independence, which occurred on October 21–22, 1864 as part of Sterling Price's Missouri expedition of 1864 resulted in a Confederate triumph. Once again their victory proved hollow, as Price was decisively defeated in the pivotal Battle of Westport the next day ending Confederate e
Forever Young (1992 film)
Forever Young is a 1992 American science fiction-romantic drama film directed by Steve Miner and starring Mel Gibson, Elijah Wood, Jamie Lee Curtis. The screenplay was written by J. J. Abrams from an original story named "The Rest of Daniel". In 1939, Captain Daniel McCormick is a United States Army Air Corps test pilot. After a successful run and subsequent crash landing in a prototype North American B-25 Mitchell bomber at Alexander Field in Northern California, McCormick is greeted by his longtime friend, Harry Finley, a scientist. Finley confides that "Project B", has succeeded in doing the impossible; the machine, built by Finley and his team of scientists, is a prototype chamber for cryonic freezing. When McCormick's girlfriend, Helen goes into a coma from an accident and the doctors doubt she will recover, McCormick insists he be put in suspended animation for one year, starting November 26, 1939, so he will not have to watch Helen die. Fifty-three years two boys are playing inside a military storage warehouse, being emptied in preparation for its demolition.
They are enticed by it. Believing it to be a miniature submarine, they proceed to play with its dials and controls and accidentally activate the restoration process; the chamber opens and McCormick reflexively grabs one boy's coat, causing them to flee in terror, leaving the coat clasped in McCormick's hand. Shortly after, McCormick awakens to the realization that it is now 1992. After appropriating shorts and a shirt from a clothesline, he first approaches the military about his experiences; when they dismiss him as crazed, McCormick becomes more determined to learn what happened to Finley and the world that has evolved overnight around him. An address tag inside the jacket leads McCormick to the owner, 10-year old Nat Cooper, one of the two boys who opened the chamber. Though the boys are terrified, McCormick is able to calm Nat and his friend with the truth of his story. While hiding in Nat's tree house with a secret stash of junk food, he witnesses Nat's single mother Claire being assaulted by her abusive, alcoholic ex-boyfriend, goes to her defense.
After McCormick receives a gash in the fight, Claire, a nurse, fixes it up and a bond develops between the two. This bond is strengthened when she offers McCormick a place to stay, until he can discover what to do with his search. Nonetheless, McCormick's time is running out, as his body starts to age because the suspended animation chamber process was not successful; when another "aging attack" cripples McCormick, Claire is told the amazing truth. Susan, Finley's daughter, informs him. Susan gives McCormick her father's journals, hoping he can use them to reverse his own condition. However, according to the journals, the subject did not properly stop aging, but rather postponed it, thus explaining Daniel's own rapid aging. Before leaving, Susan gives McCormick one further revelation: Helen is alive; the government is after McCormick, but in the end, Claire hands over Finley's journals on "Project B" and no one is arrested as the government investigates what went wrong. McCormick's final task is to find Helen in the present day.
McCormick commandeers a B-25 bomber from an air show with Nat a stowaway on board. Claire notices Nat is gone and he was last in the plane with Daniel; the Government will wait for Nat and Daniel to get back and escort them home, so they can finish their research on Harry's machine and research from the hospital on Daniel's condition too. Nat helps McCormick land, his true age having caught up with him, the now-elderly McCormick reunites with the elderly Helen and asks her to marry him and she accepts. In November 1990, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to "The Rest of Daniel" for $2 million, the most paid for a screenplay. Ostensibly purchased as a star vehicle for Gibson, he turned down the opportunity to direct the feature. A North American B-25J Mitchell known as "Photo Fanny" is featured prominently in the film, both as the B-25 prototype and as the restored warbird McCormick flies to his beloved. Critically, Forever Young met with mixed reviews, Roger Ebert noted, " is not one of the most inspired though it has its heart in the right place."
Box Office characterized it as "gooey melodrama", playing on Gibson's name. Rita Kempley from the Washington Post dismissed the film as "A pablum of schmaltz and science fiction..." As of December 2018, the film holds a 57% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews. Despite the lukewarm reviews focused on the script, the film did well with audiences, took in $127,956,187 worldwide. Forever Young opened to a first weekend gross of $5,609,875 and went on to gross $55,956,187 in the domestic market, it grossed $72,000,000 in the foreign market. A Hollywood premiere was turned into a fund-raiser for two of Gibson's charities, the West Hollywood Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center and the Santa Monica Homeless Drop-in Center. A total of $70,000 was raised for both charities. Cryostasis The Final Countdown The Philadelphia Experiment Axis of Time Time travel G. I. Samurai Zipang Portals in fiction Project rainbow Science fiction Late for Dinner Idiocracy Forever Young on IMDb Forever Young at AllMovie Forever Young at the TCM Movie Database Forever Yo
Chevy Chase
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian and writer. Born into a prominent New York family, Chase worked a variety of jobs before moving into comedy and began acting with National Lampoon, he became a key cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live, where his recurring Weekend Update segment soon became a staple of the show. As both a performer and writer, he earned three Primetime Emmy Awards out of five nominations. Chase had his first leading film role in the comedy Foul Play, earning two Golden Globe Award nominations, he is further known for his portrayals of Clark W. Griswold in five National Lampoon's Vacation films and Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher in both Fletch and Fletch Lives. Other prominent titles include Caddyshack, Seems Like Old Times, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Orange County and Hot Tub Time Machine, he has hosted the Academy Awards twice and had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show. He played the character Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC comedy series Community from 2009 to 2014.
Cornelius Crane Chase was born on October 8, 1943 in Lower Manhattan, New York, grew up in Woodstock, New York. His father, Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase, was a Princeton-educated, prominent Manhattan book editor and magazine writer, his mother, Cathalene Parker, was a concert pianist and librettist whose own father Admiral Miles Browning served as Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance's Chief of Staff on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise at the Battle of Midway in World War II. Cathalene was adopted as a child by her stepfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, heir to The Crane Company, took the name Cathalene Crane. Chase's paternal grandfather was artist and illustrator Edward Leigh Chase, his great-uncle was painter and teacher Frank Swift Chase, his maternal grandmother, was an opera singer who performed several times at Carnegie Hall. Chase was named for his adoptive grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, while the nickname "Chevy" was bestowed by his grandmother, derived from the medieval English ballad "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".
As a descendant of the Scottish Clan Douglas, the name seemed appropriate to her. He is a 14th-generation New Yorker, was listed in the Social Register at an early age, his mother's ancestors arrived in Manhattan starting in 1624 — among his ancestors are New York City mayors Stephanus Van Cortlandt and John Johnstone. According to his brother John: As a child, Chase vacationed at Castle Hill, the Cranes' summer estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Chase's parents divorced, he has stated that he grew up in an upper middle class environment and that his adoptive maternal grandfather did not bequeath any assets to Chase's mother when he died. In a 2007 biography, Chase stated that he was physically and psychologically abused as a child by his mother and stepfather, John Cederquist. Both his parents died in 2005. Chase was educated at Riverdale Country School, an independent day school in the Riverdale neighborhood of New York City, before being expelled, he graduated from the Stockbridge School, an independent boarding school in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
He attended Haverford College during the 1962–1963 term, where he was noted for slapstick comedy and an absurd sense of physical humor, including his signature pratfalls and "sticking forks into his orifices". During a 2009 interview on the Today show, he ostensibly verified the oft-publicized urban legend that he was expelled for harboring a cow in his fourth floor room, although his former roommate David Felson asserted in a 2003 interview that Chase left for academic reasons. Chase transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he studied a pre-med curriculum and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Chase did not enter medical school. Chase was not drafted. Chase played drums with the college band The Leather Canary, headed by school friends Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Chase has called the group "a bad jazz band". Chase has absolute pitch, he played drums and keyboards for a rock band called Chamaeleon Church, which recorded one album for MGM Records before disbanding in 1969.
To give the album a more soft-rock sound, producer Alan Lorber made several alterations in the mixing, including the muting of Chase's bass drum, Chase was incensed when he heard the final mix. Before fame, Chase worked as a cab driver, truck driver, motorcycle messenger, construction worker, busboy, fruit picker, produce manager in a supermarket, audio engineer, salesman in a wine store, theater usher. Chase was a member of an early underground comedy ensemble called Channel One which he co-founded in 1967, he wrote a one-page spoof on Mission: Impossible for Mad magazine in 1970 and was a writer for the short-lived Sm
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago, Illinois. The Bears compete in the National Football League as a member club of the league's National Football Conference North division; the Bears have won nine NFL Championships, including one Super Bowl, hold the NFL record for the most enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the most retired jersey numbers. The Bears have recorded more victories than any other NFL franchise; the franchise was founded in Decatur, Illinois, on September 17, 1920, moved to Chicago in 1921. It is one of only two remaining franchises from the NFL's founding in 1920, along with the Arizona Cardinals, also in Chicago; the team played home games at Wrigley Field on Chicago's North Side through the 1970 season. The Bears have a long-standing rivalry with the Green Bay Packers; the team headquarters, Halas Hall, is in the Chicago suburb of Illinois. The Bears practice at adjoining facilities there during the season. Since 2002, the Bears have held their annual training camp, from late July to mid-August, at Ward Field on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois.
In March of 1920 a man telephoned me... George Chamberlain and he was general superintendent of the A. E. Staley Company... In 1919, had formed a football team, it had done well against other local teams but Mr. Staley wanted to build it into a team that could compete with the best semi-professional and industrial teams in the country... Mr. Chamberlain asked if I would like to come to work for the Staley Company. Named the Decatur Staleys, the club was established by the A. E. Staley food starch company of Decatur, Illinois in 1919 as a company team; this was the typical start for several early professional football franchises. The company hired Edward "Dutch" Sternaman in 1920 to run the team; the 1920 Decatur Staleys season was their inaugural regular season completed in the newly formed American Professional Football Association. Full control of the team was turned over to Halas and Sternaman in 1921. Official team and league records cite Halas as the founder as he took over the team in 1920 when it became a charter member of the NFL.
The team relocated to Chicago in 1921. Under an agreement reached by Halas and Sternaman with Staley, Halas purchased the rights to the club from Staley for US$100. In 1922, Halas changed the team name from the Staleys to the Bears; the team moved into Wrigley Field, home to the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise. As with several early NFL franchises, the Bears derived their nickname from their city's baseball team. Halas liked the bright orange-and-blue colors of his alma mater, the University of Illinois, the Bears adopted those colors as their own, albeit in a darker shade of each; the Staleys/Bears dominated the league in the early years. Their rivalry with the Chicago Cardinals, the oldest in the NFL, was key in four out of the first six league titles. During the league's first six years, the Bears lost twice to the Canton Bulldogs, split with their crosstown rival Cardinals, but no other team in the league defeated the Bears more than a single time. During that span, the Bears posted 34 shutouts.
The Bears' rivalry with the Green Bay Packers is one of the oldest and most storied in American professional sports, dating back to 1921. In one infamous incident that year, Halas got the Packers expelled from the league in order to prevent their signing a particular player, graciously got them re-admitted after the Bears had closed the deal with that player; the franchise was an early success under Halas, capturing the NFL Championship in 1921 and remaining competitive throughout the decade. In 1924 the Bears claimed the Championship after defeating the Cleveland Bulldogs on December 7 putting the title "World's Champions" on their 1924 team photo, but the NFL had ruled that games after November 30 did not count towards league standings, the Bears had to settle for second place behind Cleveland. Their only losing season came in 1929. During the 1920s the club was responsible for triggering the NFL's long-standing rule that a player could not be signed until his college's senior class had graduated.
The NFL took that action as a consequence of the Bears' aggressive signing of famous University of Illinois player Red Grange within a day of his final game as a collegian. Despite much of the on-field success, the Bears were a team in trouble, they faced the problem of flatlined attendance. The Bears would only draw 5,000–6,000 fans a game, while a University of Chicago game would draw 40,000–50,000 fans a game. By adding top college football draw Red Grange to the roster, the Bears knew that they found something to draw more fans to their games. C. C. Pyle was able to secure a $2,000 per game contract for Grange, in one of the first games, the Bears defeated the Green Bay Packers, 21–0. However, Grange remained on the sidelines while learning the team's plays from Bears quarterback Joey Sternaman. In 1925, The Bears would go on a barnstorming tour, showing off the best football player of the day. 75,000 people paid to see Grange
Jason Sudeikis
Daniel Jason Sudeikis is an American comedian, actor and producer. In the 1990s, he began his career in improv comedy, he has performed with ComedySportz and The Second City. In 2003, Sudeikis was hired as a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live and was a cast member from 2005 to 2013, he is known for his roles in the films Horrible Bosses, Hall Pass, We're the Millers, Horrible Bosses 2, Mother's Day and The Angry Birds Movie. Daniel Jason Sudeikis was born on September 18, 1975 in Fairfax, Virginia to Daniel Joseph Sudeikis, Vice President of business development, Kathryn, a travel agent at Brennco and President of the American Society of Travel Agents, his father is of Lithuanian ancestry, while his mother has German and Irish descent. His maternal uncle is actor George Wendt, known for his role as Norm Peterson on Cheers, his maternal great-grandfather was photographer Tom Howard. Sudeikis was born with anosmia, leaving him with no sense of taste or smell, he has two sisters and Kristen. As a child, Sudeikis moved with his family to Overland Park, which he has described as his hometown.
He graduated from Shawnee Mission West High School. He left before finishing. In the 1990s, Sudeikis began his career in improv comedy, he began performing at ComedySportz in Missouri. He moved to Chicago, where he studied at the Annoyance Theatre and IO Theater and was one of the founding members of the longform team, J. T. S. Brown, he performed with Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sudeikis was cast in The Second City Touring Company and performed greatest hit shows while on the road. In the early 2000s, he became a founding member of The Second City Las Vegas, where he performed at the Flamingo. In 2003, while a regular performer at The Second City Las Vegas, Sudeikis was hired as a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live or SNL, would make bit appearances as audience members or extras. In May 2005, he became a featured player on the show, was upgraded to repertory status at the beginning of the show's 32nd season on September 30, 2006. In July 2013, Sudeikis announced. In 2015, 2016, 2019, he made occasional appearances on the show.
Recurring characters George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States. Joe Biden, 47th Vice President of the United States. Mitt Romney, 70th Governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Male A-hole of the Two A-Holes with actress Kristen Wiig. Ocean Billy, a parody of the 1980s singer Billy Ocean and his hit "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car". Gil, a news anchor who treats his field correspondent Michelle Dison's misfortunes as amusement. One of the guys from the "Song Memories" sketches, the first to tell strange stories about where he was when he first heard a song. Ed Mahoney, a brash man who makes a fool of himself in public. Officer Sikorsky, a police officer who brings in convict Lorenzo McIntosh in an attempt to "scare straight" the three delinquent teens that he arrests. In the earlier sketches, Officer Sikorsky's last name was Matthews. Dancer on What Up with That, an overzealous background dancer dressed in a red and white Adidas tracksuit with a 1980s man perm.
The Ed Helms/Paul Simon episode reveals. One half of Bon Jovi opposite band "Jon Bovi" appearing on Weekend Update with actor Will Forte. DJ Supersoak. Spoof on DJ Clay. Emcee for Kickspit Underground Music with Lil' Blaster and MC George Castanza, he has appeared in the "Underground Rock Minute", the "Crunkmas Karnival", the "Kickspit Underground Easter Festival", the "Columbus Day Assblast" and the "Donkey Punch the Ballot" sketches. Pete Twinkle, ESPN Classic host of obscure women's sports with dim-witted Greg Stink as his co-host Jeff, a disgruntled film and theatre technician who starts unprovoked arguments with the star of the piece; the Devil, who comes on Weekend Update to point out religious and moral hypocrisy on Earth. On the Emma Stone/Coldplay episode, the Devil gets so upset over the Penn State University sex scandal that he quits his job as The Prince of Darkness and returns to his old job as a customer service representative for Time Warner Cable. Jack Rizzoli, an anchor at WXPD News who always tells veteran reporter Herb Welch to do his job.
Tommy, a strip club M. C. for Bongo's Clown Room. Sensei Mark Hoffman, the faculty adviser and Japanese Studies teacher to Jonathan Cavanaugh-san and Rebecca Stern-Markowitz-san, hosts of "J-Pop America Fun Time Now". Considers Jonathan and Rebecca to be the worst students in his Japanese studies class due to their stereotypical perceptions of Japanese culture and is only on the show because university policy states that one of the teachers have to be present if students are using the campus studio. Marshall T. Boudreaux: The host of the courtroom reality show, Maine Justice; the character was an archetypical Southern gentleman known as Mr. Aymong who appeared on a one-shot sketch on the season 35 episode hosted by Blake Lively in which a Southern man ruins his chances of being hired to NASA by eating his interviewer's potato chip. Sudeikis had a recurring role on 30 Rock, appearing in a total of twelve episodes, he played Floyd DeBarber, a love interest of Tina Fey's chara
Actor
An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film and television; the analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής "one who answers". The actor's interpretation of their role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. In ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval world, the time of William Shakespeare, only men could become actors, women's roles were played by men or boys. After the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. In modern times in pantomime and some operas, women play the roles of boys or young men. After 1660 in England, when women first started to appear on stage, the terms actor or actress were used interchangeably for female performers, but influenced by the French actrice, actress became the used term for women in theater and film.
The etymology is a simple derivation from actor with -ess added. When referring to groups of performers of both sexes, actors is preferred. Actor is used before the full name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the post-war period of the 1950 and'60s, when the contributions of women to cultural life in general were being reviewed; when The Observer and The Guardian published their new joint style guide in 2010, it stated "Use for both male and female actors. The guide's authors stated that "actress comes into the same category as authoress, manageress,'lady doctor','male nurse' and similar obsolete terms that date from a time when professions were the preserve of one sex.". "As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper:'An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor – I can play anything.'" The UK performers' union Equity has no policy on the use of "actor" or "actress". An Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the "...subject divides the profession".
In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that "Actress" remains the common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. With regard to the cinema of the United States, the gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the silent film era and the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code, but in the 2000s in a film context, it is deemed archaic. However, "player" remains in use in the theatre incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company, such as the American Players, the East West Players, etc. Actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as "players". In 2015, Forbes reported that "...just 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead, while only 28.1% of characters in 100 top-grossing films were female...". "In the U. S. there is an "industry-wide in salaries of all scales. On average, white women get paid 78 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic women earn 56 cents to a white male's dollar, Black women 64 cents and Native American women just 59 cents to that."
Forbes' analysis of US acting salaries in 2013 determined that the "...men on Forbes' list of top-paid actors for that year made 21/2 times as much money as the top-paid actresses. That means that Hollywood's best-compensated actresses made just 40 cents for every dollar that the best-compensated men made." The first recorded case of a performing actor occurred in 534 BC when the Greek performer Thespis stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Prior to Thespis' act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are called Thespians; the male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama: tragedy and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded under the Romans; the theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, acrobatics, to the staging of situation comedies, to high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies.
As the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies and other entertainments were popular. From the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder. Small nomadic bands of actors traveled around Europe throughout the period, performing wherever they could find an audience. Traditionally, actors were not of high status. Early Middle Ages actors were denounced by the Church during the Dark Ages, as they were viewed as dangerous and pagan. In many parts of Europe, traditional beliefs of the region and time period meant actors could not receive a Christian burial. In the Early Middle Ages, churches in Europe began staging dramatized versions of biblical events. By the middle of the 11th century, liturgical drama had spread from Russia to Scandinavia
