New Zealand
New Zealand is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, the South Island —and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 2,000 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia and Tonga; because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal and plant life; the country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington. Sometime between 1250 and 1300, Polynesians settled in the islands that were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands.
In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire and in 1907 it became a dominion. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4.9 million is of European descent. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration; the official languages are English, Māori, NZ Sign Language, with English being dominant. A developed country, New Zealand ranks in international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, education, protection of civil liberties, economic freedom. New Zealand underwent major economic changes during the 1980s, which transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy; the service sector dominates the national economy, followed by the industrial sector, agriculture. Nationally, legislative authority is vested in an elected, unicameral Parliament, while executive political power is exercised by the Cabinet, led by the prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Queen Elizabeth II is the country's monarch and is represented by a governor-general Dame Patsy Reddy. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes; the Realm of New Zealand includes Tokelau. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ASEAN Plus Six, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Community and the Pacific Islands Forum. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and named it Staten Land "in honour of the States General", he wrote, "it is possible that this land joins to the Staten Land but it is uncertain", referring to a landmass of the same name at the southern tip of South America, discovered by Jacob Le Maire in 1616. In 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand. Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand.
It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole country before the arrival of Europeans, with Aotearoa referring to just the North Island. Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North and South. In 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907 this was the accepted norm; the New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised, names and alternative names were formalised in 2013. This set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, South Island or Te Waipounamu. For each island, either its English or Māori name can be used. New Zealand was one of the last major landmasses settled by humans. Radiocarbon dating, evidence of deforestation and mitochondrial DNA variability within Māori populations suggest New Zealand was first settled by Eastern Polynesians between 1250 and 1300, concluding a long series of voyages through the southern Pacific islands.
Over the centuries that followed, these settlers developed a distinct culture now known as Māori. The population was divided into iwi and hapū who would sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete and sometimes fight against each other. At some point a group of Māori migrated to Rēkohu, now known as the Chatham Islands, where they developed their distinct Moriori culture; the Moriori population was all but wiped out between 1835 and 1862 because of Taranaki Māori invasion and enslavement in the 1830s, although European diseases contributed. In 1862 only 101 survived, the last known full-blooded Moriori died in 1933; the first Europeans known to have reached New Zeala
Friday Foster (film)
Friday Foster is a 1975 American blaxploitation film written and directed by Arthur Marks and starring Pam Grier in the title role. Yaphet Kotto, Eartha Kitt, Scatman Crothers and Carl Weathers co-starred, it was an adaptation of the 1970-74 eponymous syndicated newspaper comic strip, scripted by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Jorge Longarón and Gray Morrow. This was Grier's final film with American International Pictures; the tagline on the film's poster is "Wham! Bam! Here comes Pam!" Friday Foster is an ex-magazine model turned magazine photographer who refuses to heed her boss's admonitions against becoming involved in the stories to which she is assigned. After witnessing an assassination attempt on the nation's wealthiest African American, Blake Tarr, seeing her best friend Cloris Boston murdered, Friday finds herself targeted for death, she teams up with private detective Colt Hawkins to investigate, soon the two are hot on the trail of a plot to eliminate the country's African-American political leadership.
Pam Grier — Friday Foster Carl Weathers — Yarbro Eartha Kitt — Madame Rena Edmund Cambridge — Jake Wayne Godfrey Cambridge — Ford Malotte Jason Bernard — Charles Foley Jim Backus — Enos Griffith Julius Harris — Monk Riley Paul Benjamin — David Lee Hart Rosalind Miles — Cloris Boston Scatman Crothers — Noble Franklin Ted Lange — Fancy Dexter Thalmus Rasulala — Blake Tarr Tierre Turner — Cleve Yaphet Kotto — Colt Hawkins The movie reflects a lot of the ideologies of and issues exposed by the black power movement: black unity, self-determination, the threat of systemic oppression. One of the most prevalent themes throughout the film is black unity and self-determination, ideologies of black nationalism adopted by the black power movement. Black unity and self-determination preached the unification of all blacks, regardless of class and nation, under a common struggle and oppressor in order to create their own nationhood. Friday Foster touches on the national and local levels of Black unity and self-determination through family and commerce.
Uplifting the black family was an important part of black unity and self-determination. The black family black women, was expected to play an important role in shaping the next generation. Although the viewer never see who Friday's parents are, her younger brother, whom she cares for, is a presence in the film. Cleave represents the next generation in this film, he is intelligent, young and quick-witted, as can be seen from his interactions with the neighborhood pimp, but innocent. Friday's mission to find and have the hitmen arrested is a mission to protect her younger brother; this mission becomes clear in the scene. Her younger brother, not knowing anything about the present danger directs the hitman to their apartment. In doing this, the film induces fear, not only for Friday's life; as we are to assume that Friday is his only family, if she were to die, her brother would become an orphan and might fall victim to the common traps of black life: poverty, gangs, etc. Grier herself talks about the disintegration of black family in an interview with Ebony.
People are not going to church anymore. There's more corruption, more kids dropping out, more young girls from the ages for 13 to 16 who are becoming pregnant. Families have disintegrated. Our parents aren't as strict today. They're not showing that firm love like they used to. I feel. Protecting the next generation from the criminal life would give them the opportunity to be better educated than the last and be leaders in the community and promote Black unity. Education was an important part of Black Power, it was believed that "treating black children as creative, educable beings, these revamped institutions would emphasize racial and cultural difference in a positive way--by nurturing a youngster's sense of self and instilling respect for collective responsibility and action." By doing this, every generation would come and help build their community in the same way that they were helped. The film introduces viewers to comedic versions of two common characters within the Black community—the Black cop and the pimp.
Although comedic, these characters are essential to the themes of Black Power that reverberate throughout the film. As expressed by Stokely Carmichael, "... black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise form this two-sided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men." These characters are a part of a disillusioned older generation caught in the claws of systemic oppression and being Black. The cop is portrayed as lazy, when in reality he is overworked and disillusioned by his job. Throughout the film, he is asking for a beer and refuses to investigate the murder of Cloris any further despite the insistence from Friday and Colt based on evidence; the cop is a representation of what happens when Black people work for a government that does not support them and understand that justice will never land on their side. On the other hand, the pimp, is a representation of what could happen to Black men when they are not protected and properly educated, because of poverty.
Both of these men represent possibilities for Cleve's future. In the film, there are a lot of Black business owners and Black bosses, for example, Friday's boss at Glance Magazine. Although it is unclear as to whether or not he owns the magazine, it is clear that he has a lot of power and influence in the city, he is able to get Friday out of jail after s
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The films, though receiving backlash for stereotypical characters, are among the first in which black characters and communities are the heroes and subjects of film and television, rather than sidekicks or villains or victims of brutality; the genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s. Blaxploitation films were aimed at an urban African-American audience, but the genre's audience appeal soon broadened across racial and ethnic lines. Hollywood realized the potential profit of expanding the audiences of blaxploitation films across those racial lines; the Los Angeles National Association for the Advancement of Colored People head and ex-film publicist Junius Griffin coined the term from the words "black" and "exploitation." Variety credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and the less radical, Hollywood-financed film Shaft with the invention of the blaxploitation genre.
Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. When set in the Northeast or West Coast, blaxploitation films are set in poor urban neighborhoods. Pejorative terms for white characters, such as "cracker" and "honky," are used. Blaxploitation films set in the South deal with slavery and miscegenation; the genre's films are bold in their statements and utilize violence, drug trade, other shocking qualities to provoke the audience. The films portray black protagonists overcoming "The Man" or emblems of the white majority that had oppressed the black community in the preceding decades. Blaxploitation includes several subtypes, including crime, action/martial arts, horror, comedy, coming-of-age/courtroom drama, musical. Following the example set by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, many blaxploitation films feature funk and soul jazz soundtracks with heavy bass, funky beats, wah-wah guitars; these soundtracks are notable for complexity, not common to the radio-friendly funk tracks of the 1970s.
They often feature a rich orchestration which included flutes and violins. Following the popularity of these films in the 1970s, movies within other genres began to feature black characters with stereotypical blaxploitation characteristics, such as the Harlem underworld characters in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, Jim Kelly's character in Enter the Dragon, Fred Williamson's character in The Inglorious Bastards. Afeni Shakur claimed that every aspect of culture in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by the Black Power movement. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was one of the first films to incorporate black power ideology and permit black actors to be the stars of their own narratives, rather than being relegated to the typical roles available to them. Films such as Shaft brought the black experience to film in a new way, allowing black political and social issues, ignored in cinema to be explored. Shaft and its protagonist, John Shaft, brought African American culture to the mainstream world.
Sweetback and Shaft were both influenced by the black power movement, containing Marxist themes and social consciousness alongside the genre-typical images of sex and violence. Knowing that film could bring about social and cultural change, the Black Power movement seized the genre to highlight black socioeconomic struggles in the 1970s. Films such as Superfly softened the rhetoric of black power, encouraging resistance within the capitalist system rather than a radical transformation of society. Superfly did, still embrace the black nationalist movement in its argument that black and white authority cannot coexist easily; the genre's role in exploring and shaping race relations in the US has been controversial. Some held that the blaxploitation trend was a token of black empowerment, but others accused the movies of perpetuating common white stereotypes about black people; as a result, many called for the end of the genre. The NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Urban League joined to form the Coalition Against Blaxploitation.
Their influence in the late 1970s contributed to the genre's demise. Literary critic Addison Gayle wrote in 1974, "The best example of this kind of nihilism / irresponsibility are the Black films. Blaxploitation films such as Mandingo provided mainstream Hollywood producers, in this case Dino De Laurentiis, a cinematic way to depict plantation slavery with all of its brutal and ongoing racial contradictions and controversies, including sex, rebellion and so on; the story world depicts the plantation as one of the main origins of boxing as a sport in the U. S. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new wave of acclaimed black filmmakers Spike Lee (
New York City
The City of New York called either New York City or New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, exerts a significant impact upon commerce, research, education, tourism, art and sports; the city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of, a separate county of the State of New York. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898; the city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world. In 2017, the New York metropolitan area produced a gross metropolitan product of US$1.73 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan.
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, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, it has been the country's largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U. S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U. S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability, as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, with the city having three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013 and receiving a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world. Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
The names of many of the city's landmarks and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top universities in the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In 1664, the city was named in honor of the Duke of York.
James's older brother, King Charles II, had appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, which England had seized from the Dutch. During the Wisconsinan glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth; the erosive forward movement of the ice contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown. He named it Nouvelle Angoulême. A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio.
The Padrón Rea
Glynn Turman
Glynn Russell Turman is an American stage and film actor as well as a writer and producer. Turman is known for his roles as Lew Miles on the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place, high school student Leroy "Preach" Jackson in the 1975 coming-of-age film Cooley High, math professor and retired Army colonel Bradford Taylor on the NBC sitcom A Different World, fictional Baltimore mayor Clarence Royce on the HBO drama series The Wire, he portrayed Jeremiah Kaan on the Showtime series House of Lies. Turman had his first prominent acting role at the age of 13 as Travis Younger in the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun, opposite Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Ivan Dixon, Louis Gossett Jr. Lonne Elder III, John Fiedler and Diana Sands. While he did not play the role when it transferred to film in 1961, he intensified his studies at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts. Upon graduation he apprenticed in regional and repertory companies throughout the country, including Tyrone Guthrie's Repertory Theatre, in which he performed in late'60s productions of Good Boys, Harper's Ferry, The Visit and The House of Atreus.
He made his Los Angeles stage debut in Vinnette Carroll's Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. An impressive 1974 performance in The Wine Sellers earned him a Los Angeles Critics Award nomination and a Dramalogue Award; the play was produced on Broadway as What The Wine Sellers Buy. He won his first NAACP Image Award for his work in the play Eyes of the American. A stage director as well, he received his second NAACP Image award for his directing of Deadwood Dick at the Inner City Cultural Center, he segued these directing talents to TV where he helmed several episodes of The Parent'Hood, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, The Wayans Bros, among others, he directed during his seasons of steady employment on A Different World, in which he played the role of Colonel Taylor for five seasons. Turman began his film career in the 1970s with such blaxploitation flicks as Five on the Black Hand Side, Thomasine & Bushrod and Together Brothers progressed to roles in Cooley High, plus The River Niger, J. D.'s Revenge and A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.
TV movies included Carter's Army, the prestigious Centennial and Minstrel Man, for which he won his third NAACP Image Award. The quality of Glynn's work has shown over the decades with his participation in such prominent TV-movies as Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in 1994, Buffalo Soldiers and Freedom Song. More notable films include Penitentiary II, Deep Cover, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Men of Honor, Kings of the Evening and Super 8. In 2004, he joined the hit HBO series The Wire portraying the recurring role of Mayor Clarence Royce, becoming a full-time regular in 2006, his portrayal of Mayor Royce has given him an NAACP Image award nomination for Outstanding Support Actor in a Drama Series for the 2007 awards ceremony. Since The Wire, Turman guest-starred as a patient in the Scrubs episode "My Last Words". Turman's other television appearances include Hawaii Five-O, the Twilight Zone segment "Paladin of the Lost Hour", Matlock and the sitcom All of Us. In 2008, he won a Primetime Emmy award for his guest appearance on the HBO series In Treatment.
He appeared on the ABC series Detroit 1-8-7. He is performing and producing a one-man show, Movin' Man, about his life and plans a book as well. Turman was cast for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars. In a 2007 interview, Turman recalled: "That was in George Lucas' book. George Lucas had me in mind for the role, thought that there might be too much controversy between a white Princess Leia and a black Han Solo – because those were the times – and he didn't want to get into that. At the time, I had no idea. I just went to the audition, did it and got out of there." In 2012, he began starring in House of Lies on Showtime as the father of the characters played by Don Cheadle and Larenz Tate. In 2016, he appeared in the Oprah Winfrey Network tv show Queen Sugar in which he played the father, Ernest Bordelon; the character died in season one, episode one. In In 2017, Turman was cast as Nate Lahey Sr in 10 episodes, seasons 4 and 5 of the ABC drama How to Get Away With Murder, his character was the imprisoned father of Nate Lahey a former police office and lover to series star Annalise Keating.
Keating made Turman's character the face of a class action U. S Supreme Court case of mistreatment of minorities in the criminal justice system; the court found Lahey Sr to be mentally ill and during transfer to a mental facility he was shot and killed. 2018, Turman appeared on the Legal Drama Suits as Vic. Turman was born in New York, New York, in 1947. According to a DNA analysis, Turman shares maternal ancestry with the Edo people of Nigeria. Turman was married to Ula M. Walker, from 1965 until 1971. Together and Walker had three children. Turman married singer Aretha Franklin on April 11, 1978 at her father's New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. Turman and Franklin separated in 1982 and divorced in 1984. Since 1992, Turman has been married to Jo-Ann Allen. Glynn Turman on IMDb Glynn Turman at the Internet Broadway Database Glynn Turman at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Glynn Turman at Rotten Tomatoes
New Orleans
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U. S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 393,292 in 2017, it is the most populous city in Louisiana. A major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for its distinct music, Creole cuisine, unique dialect, its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras; the historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the "most unique" in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Founded in 1718 by French colonists, New Orleans was once the territorial capital of French Louisiana before being traded to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. New Orleans in 1840 was the third-most populous city in the United States, it was the largest city in the American South from the Antebellum era until after World War II.
The city's location and flat elevation have made it vulnerable to flooding. State and federal authorities have installed a complex system of levees and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city. New Orleans was affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which resulted in flooding more than 80% of the city, thousands of deaths, so much displacement because of damaged communities and lost housing as to cause a population decline of over 50%. Since Katrina, major redevelopment efforts have led to a rebound in the city's population. Concerns about gentrification, new residents buying property in closely knit communities, displacement of longtime residents have been expressed; the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. As of 2017, Orleans Parish is the third most-populous parish in Louisiana, behind East Baton Rouge Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish; the city and parish are bounded by St. Tammany Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, St. Bernard Parish and Lake Borgne to the east, Plaquemines Parish to the south, Jefferson Parish to the south and west.
The city anchors the larger New Orleans metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1,275,762 in 2017. It is the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the 46th-most populated MSA in the United States; the city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723. It has many illustrative nicknames: Crescent City alludes to the course of the Lower Mississippi River around and through the city; the Big Easy was a reference by musicians in the early 20th century to the relative ease of finding work there. It may have originated in the Prohibition era, when the city was considered one big speakeasy due to the government's inability to control alcohol sales, in open violation of the 18th Amendment; the City that Care Forgot has been used since at least 1938, refers to the outwardly easy-going, carefree nature of the residents. La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded in the Spring of 1718 by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha.
It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans; the French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War. During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Beginning in the 1760s, Filipinos began to settle around New Orleans. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez launched a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779. Nueva Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted to French rule. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew with influxes of Americans, French and Africans.
Immigrants were Irish, Germans and Italians. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on nearby large plantations. Thousands of refugees from the 1804 Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color, arrived in New Orleans. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population; as more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans, Haitian émigrés who had first gone to Cuba arrived. Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in retaliation for Bonapartist schemes. Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans; the 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color, 3,226 slaves of African descent, doubling the city's population. The city became a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina's 53 percent. During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in a
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
