Warrant officer (United States)
In the United States Armed Forces, the ranks of warrant officer are rated as officers above senior non-commissioned officers, candidates and midshipmen but subordinate to the officer grade of O‑1. This application differs from the Commonwealth of Nations and other militaries, where warrant officers are the most senior of the other ranks, equivalent to the US Armed Forces grades of E‑8 and E‑9. Warrant officers are skilled, single-track specialty officers, while the ranks are authorized by Congress, each branch of the uniformed services selects and uses warrant officers in different ways. For appointment to warrant officer one, a warrant is approved by the secretary of the respective service. For chief warrant officer ranks, warrant officers are commissioned by the President of the United States and take the same oath as regular commissioned officers. Warrant officers can and do command detachments, activities, vessels and armored vehicles, as well as lead, coach and counsel subordinates. However, the warrant officer's primary task as a leader is to serve as a technical expert, providing valuable skills and expertise to commanders and organizations in their particular field.
The Army warrant officer traces lineage to 1896 with the War Department's creation of civilian Headquarters Clerks and Pay Clerks. In 1916, an Army Judge Advocate General review determined that field clerks should be members of the military. Legislation in 1916 authorized those positions as military rather than civilian and created the ranks of Army Field Clerk and Quarter Master Corps Field Clerk. In July, 1917, all Field Clerks were considered were assigned an enlisted uniform, their branch insignia was two crossed quill pens. In December 19, 1917, Special Regulation 41 stated that the Army Field Clerk and Quarter Master Corps Field Clerk ranks were authorized the same uniform as an officer, their rank insignia was now a freework pin of crossed quill pens on either side of the freework "U. S." pins worn on the standing collar of the M1909 tunic. They were not permitted the brown mohair cuff braid band of an Army officer, but were authorized a silver-and-black braid hatcord for wear with the M1911 Campaign Hat and the officer's "G.
I. Eagle" on the M1902 peaked cap. On 9 July 1918, Congress established the rank and grade of warrant officer concurrent with establishing the Army Mine Planter Service within the Coast Artillery Corps. Creation of the Mine Planter Service replaced an informal service crewed by civilians, replacing them with military personnel, of whom the vessel's master, chief engineer, assistant engineers were Army warrant officers. Warrant officer rank was indicated by rings of brown cord worn on the lower sleeve of the uniform jacket: two for 2nd Mate and 2nd Assistant Engineer, three for 1st Mate and Assistant Engineer, four for Ship's Master and Chief Engineer. Since that time, the position of warrant officer in the Army has been refined. On August 21, 1941, under Pub. L. 77–230, Congress authorized two grades: warrant officer and chief warrant officer. In 1942, temporary appointments in about 40 occupational areas were made; the insignia for warrant officer was a gold bar 3⁄8 inch wide and 1 inch long, rounded at the ends with brown enamel on top and a latitudinal center of gold 1/8 inch wide.
The insignia for chief warrant officer was a gold bar 3⁄8 inch in width and 1 inch in length with rounded ends, brown enamel on top with a longitudinal center stripe of gold 1⁄8 inch wide. The brown enamel backing of the warrant officer insignia was based on the color of the sleeve insignia of rank for ship's officers of the AMPS. On July 18, 1942 Pub. L. 77–658, the Flight Officer Act, was enacted, creating the rank of flight officer, equivalent to warrant officer and assigned to the U. S. Army Air Forces. Insignia was the same as for a warrant officer, except the backing was in blue enamel rather than brown. Most flight officers were graduates of various USAAF flight-training programs, including power and glider pilots, navigator and bombardier ratings. Graduates were appointed to the rating of flight officer, but some of each graduating class were commissioned as second lieutenants. Once reaching operational units and after gaining flying experience, flight officers were offered direct commissions as lieutenants.
Flight sergeants, who were assigned as transport and glider pilots, were appointed as flight officers when the new rank was created. Some of the first eligible flight officers were Americans who had served as sergeant pilots in the Royal Air Force and who transferred to the USAAF after the U. S. entered the war. In November 1942, the War Department defined the rank order as having warrant officers above all enlisted grades and below all commissioned grades. In March 1944, the first six women were appointed to the warrant officer grades as Band Leaders and administrative specialists. In 1947, legislation was sought to introduce four grades of warrant officers. Proposed rank titles were: chief warrant officer, senior warrant officer, warrant officer first class, warrant officer. In 1949, Pub. L. 81–351, the Career Compensation Act, created four pay grades, W-1 through W-4, for all the armed services. The two warrant ranks were unchanged, but warrant officer was pay grade W-1, while chief warrant officer started at W-2 and could advance to W-3 and -4.
In late 1949, th
Pine Brook Country Club
Pine Brook Country Club began when Benjamin Plotkin purchased Pinewood Lake and the surrounding countryside on Mischa Hill in the historic village of Nichols, Connecticut. Plotkin built an auditorium with a revolving stage and forty rustic cabins and incorporated as the Pine Brook Country Club in 1930. Plotkin's dream was to market the rural lakeside club as a summer resort for people to stay and enjoy theatrical productions; the Club remained in existence until major fighting broke out in Europe in the mid-1940s and was reorganized as a private lake association in 1944. Group Theatre Pine Brook is best known for having been the 1936 summer rehearsal headquarters of the most important experiment in the history of American theatre; the Group Theatre was formed in New York City in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg and was made up of actors, directors and producers. During this summer the artists "sng for their supper" while taking classes, attempting to reorganize their structure, beginning rehearsals on Johnny Johnston, their next Broadway production.
ArtistsIncluding and in addition to the Group Theatre, some of the artists who are known to have spent the summer at Pine Brook at one time or another were: Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Roman Bohnen, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Carol Channing, Montgomery Clift, Lee J. Cobb, Imogene Coca, Betty Comden, Howard Da Silva, Frances Farmer, John Garfield, Betty Garrett, Michael Gordon, Will Geer, Adolph Green, Paul Green, Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, Elia Kazan, Arthur Laurents, Canada Lee, Lotte Lenya, Robert Lewis, Sanford Meisner, Harry Morgan, Clifford Odets, Luise Rainer, John Randolph, Jerome Robbins, Irwin Shaw, Anna Sokolow, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Franchot Tone, Nancy Walker and Kurt Weill. ScandalsDuring the summer of 1936, Paul Green, Cheryl Crawford, Kurt Weill and Weill's wife Lotte Lenya rented an old house at 277 Trumbull Avenue located two miles from Pine Brook in Bridgeport, Connecticut, it was here that Green and Weill wrote the screenplay and music for the controversial Broadway play Johnny Johnson, titled after the most occurring name on the American casualty list of World War I.
It was during this time that Lotte Lenya had her first American love affair with Paul Green. Pinewood Lake AssociationIn 1944 Pine Brook went into receivership and was sold and chartered as the Pinewood Lake Association, a private lake association
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery "Monty" Clift was an American actor. His New York Times obituary said he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men", he is best remembered for roles in Red River, The Heiress, A Place in the Sun, Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, From Here to Eternity, The Young Lions, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Misfits. He received four Oscar nominations during his career: three for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor. Along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift was one of the original method actors in Hollywood, he executed a rare move by not signing a contract after arriving in Hollywood, only doing so after his first two films were a success. This was described as "a power differential that would go on to structure the star-studio relationship for the next 40 years". Clift was born on October 1920, in Omaha, Nebraska, his father, William Brooks "Bill" Clift, was the vice-president of Omaha National Trust Company. His mother was Ethel Fogg "Sunny" Clift, they had married in 1914.
Clift had a twin sister, who survived him by 48 years, a brother, William Brooks Clift, Jr. who had an illegitimate son with actress Kim Stanley and was married to political reporter Eleanor Clift. Clift had Dutch and Scottish ancestry, his mother was an adopted child who, at the age of 18, had been told that her birth parents were members of prominent Yankee families who were forced to part by the tyrannical will of the girl's mother. She spent the rest of her life trying to gain the recognition of her alleged relations. Part of Clift's mother's effort was her determination that her children should be brought up in the style of true aristocrats. Thus, as long as Clift's father was able to pay for it, he and his siblings were tutored, travelled extensively in America and Europe, became fluent in German and French, led a protected life, sheltered from the destitution and communicable diseases which became legion following the First World War; the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s ruined Clift's father financially.
Unemployed and broke, he was forced to move his family to New York, but Clift's mother still persisted in her plans, as her husband's situation improved, she was able to enroll Brooks at Harvard and Ethel at Bryn Mawr College. Clift, could not adjust to school, never went to college. Instead, he took to stage acting, beginning in a summer production, which led to his debut on Broadway by 1935. In the next ten years, Clift built a successful stage career working with, among others, Dame May Whitty, Alla Nazimova, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, he appeared in plays written by Moss Hart, Robert Sherwood, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, creating the part of Henry in the original production of The Skin of Our Teeth. In 1939, as a member of the cast of the 1939 Broadway production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Clift participated in one of the first television broadcasts in the United States. A performance of Hay Fever was broadcast by NBC's New York television station W2XBS and was aired during the World's Fair as part of the introduction of television.
He resided in Jackson Heights, until he got his break on Broadway. Clift first acted on Broadway at age 15, when he appeared as Prince Peter in the Cole Porter musical Jubilee at the Imperial Theater. At 20, he appeared in the Broadway production of There Shall Be No Night, a work which won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize. Clift did not serve during World War II, having been given 4-F status after suffering dysentery in 1942. At the age of 25, Clift moved to Hollywood, his first movie role was opposite John Wayne in Red River, shot in 1946 and released in 1948. His second movie was The Search. Clift was unhappy with the quality of the script, reworked it himself; the movie was awarded a screenwriting Academy Award for the credited writers. Clift's naturalistic performance led to director Fred Zinnemann's being asked, "Where did you find a soldier who can act so well?", he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Clift signed on for The Heiress, in order to avoid being typecast. Clift was unhappy with the script, unable to get along with most of the cast.
He criticized co-star Olivia de Havilland, saying that she let the director shape her entire performance and telling friends that he wanted to change de Havilland's lines because "She isn't giving me enough to respond ". The studio marketed Clift as a sex symbol prior to the movie's release in 1949. Clift had a large female following, Olivia de Havilland was flooded with angry fan letters because her character rejects Clift's character in the final scene of the movie. Clift ended up unhappy with his performance, left early during the film's premiere. Clift starred in The Big Lift, shot on location in Germany. Clift's performance in A Place in the Sun is regarded as one of his signature method acting performances, he worked extensively on his character, was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. For his character's scenes in jail, Clift spent a night in a real state prison, he refused to go along with director George Stevens' suggestion that he do "something amazing" on his character's walk to the electric chair.
Instead, he walked to his death with a depressed facial expression. His main acting rival, Marlon Brando, was so moved
William Wyler
William Wyler was an American film director and screenwriter. Notable works include Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver, all of which won Academy Awards for Best Director, as well as Best Picture in their respective years, making him the only director of three Best Picture winners as of 2018. Wyler received his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, starring Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor, "sparking a 20-year run of unbroken greatness."Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a "bona fide perfectionist", whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance, "became the stuff of legend." His ability to direct a string of classic literary adaptations into huge box-office and critical successes made him one of "Hollywood's most bankable moviemakers" during the 1930s and 1940s and into the 60's. Through his talent for staging and camera movement, he turned dynamic theatrical spaces into cinematic ones, he helped propel a number of actors to stardom and directing Audrey Hepburn in her Hollywood debut film, Roman Holiday, directing Barbra Streisand in her debut film, Funny Girl.
Both of these performances won Academy Awards. He directed Olivia de Havilland to her second Oscar in The Heiress and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, for his first Oscar nomination. Olivier credited Wyler with teaching him, and Bette Davis, who received three Oscar nominations under his direction and won her second Oscar in Jezebel, said Wyler made her a "far, far better actress" than she had been. Other popular Wyler films include: Hell's Heroes, The Westerner, The Letter, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, The Children's Hour and How to Steal a Million. Wyler was born to a Jewish family in Alsace, his Swiss-born father, started as a traveling salesman but became a thriving haberdasher in Mulhouse. His mother, was German-born, a cousin of Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures. During Wyler's childhood, he attended a number of schools and developed a reputation as "something of a hellraiser", being expelled more than once for misbehavior, his mother took him and his older brother Robert to concerts and the theatre, as well as the early cinema.
Sometimes at home his family and their friends would stage amateur theatricals for personal enjoyment. Wyler was supposed to take over the family haberdashery business in France. After World War I, he spent a dismal year working in Paris at 100.000 Chemises selling shirts and ties. He was so poor that he spent his time wandering around the Pigalle district. After realizing that Willy was not interested in the haberdashery business, his mother, contacted her distant cousin, Carl Laemmle who owned Universal Studios, about opportunities for him. Laemmle was in the habit of coming to Europe each year, searching for promising young men who would work in America. In 1921, while traveling as a Swiss citizen, met Laemmle who hired him to work at Universal Studios in New York; as Wyler said: "America seemed as far away as the moon." Booked onto a ship to New York with Laemmle upon his return voyage, he met a young Czech man, Paul Kohner, aboard the same ship. Their enjoyment of the first class trip was short-lived, however, as they found they had to pay back the cost of the passage out of their $25 weekly income as messengers to Universal Pictures.
After working in New York for several years, serving in the New York Army National Guard for a year, Wyler moved to Hollywood to become a director. Around 1923, Wyler arrived in Los Angeles and began work on the Universal Studios lot in the swing gang, cleaning the stages and moving the sets, his break came. But his work ethic was uneven, he would sneak off and play billiards in a pool hall across the street from the studio, or organize card games during working hours. After some ups and downs, Wyler put all his effort into it, he started as a third assistant director and by 1925 he became the youngest director on the Universal lot directing the westerns that Universal was famed for turning out. Wyler was so focused on his work that he would dream about "different ways to get on a horse". In several of the one-reelers, he would join the posse in the inevitable chase of the'bad man', he directed his first non-Western, the lost Anybody Here Seen Kelly?, in 1928. This was followed by The Shakedown and The Love Trap.
He proved himself an able craftsman. In 1928 he became a naturalized United States citizen, his first all-talking film, Universal's first sound production to be filmed on location, was Hell's Heroes, filmed in the Mojave Desert in 1929. In the early 1930s Wyler directed a wide variety of films at Universal, ranging from high profile dramas such as The Storm, A House Divided, Counsellor at Law, to comedies like Her First Mate and The Good Fairy, he became well known for his insistence on multiple retakes, resulting in award-winning and critically acclaimed performances from his actors. After leaving Universal he began a long collaboration with Samuel Goldwyn for whom he directed such classics as Dodsworth, These Three, Dead End, Wuthering Heights, The Westerner, The Littl
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a college of the City University of New York, located in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. Brooklyn College originated in 1930 with the establishment of an extension division of the City College for Teachers; the school began offering evening classes for first-year male college students in 1917. In 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the college authorized the combination of the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College – at that time a women's college – and the City College of New York – a men's college – both of, established in 1926. With the merger of these branches, Brooklyn College became the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. U. S. News & World Report has ranked the school tied for number 83 as a Regional college; the school was ranked in the top ten for value and location by Princeton Review in 2003 and in the top fifty for value in 2009. In 1932, the architect Randolph Evans drafted a plan for the college's campus on a substantial plot of land his employer owned in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.
He sketched out a Georgian-style campus facing a central quadrangle, anchored by a library building with a tall tower. Evans presented the sketches to the President of the college at Dr. William A. Boylan. Boylan was pleased with the plans, the lot of land was purchased for $1.6 million. Construction of the new campus began in 1935, with a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Brooklyn Borough President Raymond Ingersoll. In 1936, the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt went to Brooklyn College to lay the cornerstone of the Brooklyn College Gymnasium. President Boylan, Borough President Ingersoll, President Roosevelt all had buildings on Brooklyn College's campus named after them. Harry Gideonse was the second President of Brooklyn College, from 1939 to 1966. During his tenure Brooklyn College was one of the top colleges in the US in terms of the number of alumni receiving doctorate degrees. In May 1983, Brooklyn College named its library the Harry D. Gideonse Library.
John Kneller was the fifth President of Brooklyn College, from 1969 to 1979. Students occupied his office at the college during a student strike after the Kent State shootings and the Cambodian Campaign in 1970, he kept campus buildings open for students and faculty. A member of the Brooklyn College Fencing Team introduced streaking to the college in 1974, dashing across the Quad; the campus located in Midwood became the only Brooklyn College campus after the school's Downtown Brooklyn campus was shut down during the 1975 budget emergency. Robert Hess was the sixth President of Brooklyn College, from 1979 until 1992. In a 1988 survey of thousands of academic deans, the college ranked 5th in the United States in providing students with a strong general education. Brooklyn College was the only college in the top five in the survey, a public institution. While Brooklyn College was referred to as “the poor man’s Harvard,” Hess quipped: “I like to think of Harvard as the rich man’s Brooklyn College.”
Brooklyn College's campus East Quad looks much like it did when it was constructed. The campus serves as home to BCBC/ Brooklyn College Presents complex and its four theaters, including the George Gershwin; the demolition of Gershwin Hall, replaced by The Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts, is the most recent construction on an evolving campus. Other changes to the original design include the demolition of Plaza Building, due to its inefficient use of space, poor ventilation, significant maintenance costs. To replace the Plaza Building, the college constructed West Quad Center, designed by the notable Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly; the new building contains classroom space, gymnasiums and a swimming pool. It houses the offices of Registration, Financial Aid, the Department of Physical Education and Exercise Science; the grounds contain a quadrangle with grassy trees. New façades are being constructed on Roosevelt and James halls where they once connected with Plaza Building.
The 2009–10 CUNYAC championship men's basketball team now plays its home games in the West Quad Center. This follows a major library renovation that saw the library moved to a temporary home while construction took place; the Brooklyn College library is now located in its original location in a renovated and expanded LaGuardia Hall. Noted as one of the most beautiful in the United States, In 2016, Brooklyn College announced a new home for the Koppelman School of Business, with the construction of a new building, Koppelman Hall, on property adjacent to the 26-acre campus bought in 2011; this increased the campus size to 35 acres. The campus has been shown on numerous movies and television shows. Brooklyn College is made up of five schools: Murray Koppelman School of Business School of Education School of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences School of Visual and Performing Arts Beginning in 1981, the college instituted a group of classes that all undergraduates were required to take, called "Core Studies".
The classes were: Classical Origins of Western Culture, Introduction to Art, Introduction to Music, People and Politics, The Shaping of the Modern World, Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning and Computer Programming, Landmarks of Literature, Physics, Geology, Studies in African and Latin American Cultures, Knowledge and Values. In 2006, the Core Curriculum was revamped, the 13 required courses were replaced with 15 courses in 3 disciplines, from which students were required to take 11. In the fall of 2
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was a Greek-American director, producer 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 Constantinople. After attending Williams College and the Yale School of Drama, he acted professionally for eight years joining the Group Theatre in 1932, 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 including City for Conquest. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins, he directed a string of successful films, including A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden. During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director, three Tony Awards, four Golden Globes, he received an Honorary Oscar. His films were concerned with social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme."
His first such "issue" film was Gentleman's Agreement, with Gregory Peck, which dealt with anti-Semitism in America. It received 3 wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director, 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 union corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. A Streetcar Named Desire, an adaptation of the stage play which he had directed, received 12 Oscar nominations, winning 4, was Marlon Brando's breakthrough role. In 1955, he directed John Steinbeck's East of Eden. A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, which brought him strong negative reactions from many liberal friends and colleagues, 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 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 his anti-Communist testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event. Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with issue-driven subjects. 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, the debt Hollywood—and actors everywhere—owes him is enormous." 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 from Kayseri in Anatolia, he arrived with his parents and Athena Kazantzoglou, to the United States on 8 July 1913.
He was named after Elia Kazantzoglou. His maternal grandfather was Isaak Shishmanoglou. Elia's brother, was born in Berlin and became a psychiatrist. Kazan was raised in the Greek Orthodox religion, attended Greek Orthodox services every Sunday, where he had to stand for several hours with his father, his mother did not go to church. When Kazan was about eight years old, the family moved to New Rochelle, New York, his father sent him to a Roman Catholic catechism school because there was no Orthodox church nearby; as a young boy, he was remembered as being shy, his college classmates described him as more of a loner. Much of his early life was portrayed in his autobiographical book, America America, which he made into a film in 1963. In it, he describes his family as "alienated" from both their parents' Greek Orthodox values and from those of mainstream America, his mother's family were cotton merchants who imported cotton from England, sold it wholesale. His father had become a rug merchant after emigrating to the United States, expected that his son would go into the same business.
After attending public schools through high school, Kazan enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he helped pay his way by waiting tables and washing dishes. He worked as a bartender at various fraternities, but never joined one. While a student at Williams, he earned the nickname "Gadg," for Gadget, because, he said, "I was small and handy to have around." The nickname was taken up by his stage and film stars. In America America he tells how, why, his family left Turkey and moved to America. Kazan notes, he says during an interview that "it's all true: the wealth of the family was put on the back of a donkey, my uncle still a boy, went to Istanbul... to bring the family there to escape the oppressive circumstances... It's true that he lost the money on the way, when he got there he swept rugs in a little store."Kazan notes some of the controversial aspects of what he put in the film. He writes "I used to say to myself when I was making the film that America was a dream of total freedom in all areas."
To make his point, the character who portrays Kazan's uncle Avraam kisses
