1.
Philadelphia
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In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia was one of the capitals in the Revolutionary War. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became an industrial center. It became a destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration. The areas many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational, with a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the center of activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States. The 67 National Historic Landmarks in the city helped account for the $10 billion generated by tourism, Philadelphia is the only World Heritage City in the United States. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon, the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are also called Delaware Indians and their territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people occasionally fought the Lenape, surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and United States independence pushed them further west, in the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the US state of Oklahoma, with communities living also in Wisconsin, Ontario. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony, in 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their defeat of the English colony of Maryland
2.
Houston
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Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the United States. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 2.239 million within an area of 667 square miles, it also is the largest city in the southern United States and the seat of Harris County. Located in Southeast Texas near the Gulf of Mexico, it is the city of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land. Houston was founded on August 28,1836, near the banks of Buffalo Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5,1837. The city was named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had commanded, the burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the citys population. Houstons economy has an industrial base in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics. Leading in health care sectors and building equipment, Houston has more Fortune 500 headquarters within its city limits than any city except for New York City. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled, the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse city in Texas and has described as the most diverse in the United States. It is home to cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has a visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District. In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, purchased 6,642 acres of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the general at the Battle of San Jacinto. The great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the slave trade. New Orleans was the center of trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved African Americans lived near the city before the Civil War, many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. Houston was granted incorporation on June 5,1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor, in the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas
3.
Gene Raymond
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Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, Raymond was born Raymond Guion on August 13,1908 in New York City. He attended the Professional Childrens School while appearing in productions like Rip Van Winkle and his Broadway debut, at age 17, was in The Cradle Snatchers which ran two years. His screen debut was in Personal Maid, another early appearance was in the multi-director If I Had a Million with W. C. He wrote a number of songs, including the popular Will You, which he sang to Sothern in Smartest Girl In Town. MacDonald and Raymond made one film together, Smilin Through, which came out as the U. S. was on the verge of entering World War II, after service in the United States Army Air Forces Raymond returned to Hollywood. He wrote, directed and starred in the 1949 film Million Dollar Weekend, in later years he appeared in only a few films. His last major film was “The Best Man” in 1964 with Henry Fonda, in the 1950s he mostly worked in television, appearing in Playhouse of Stars, Fireside Theatre, Hollywood Summer Theatre and TVs Readers Digest. In the 1970s he appeared on ABC Television Networks Paris 7000 and had guest roles in The Outer Limits, Robert Montgomery Presents, Playhouse 90, The Man from U. N. C. L. E. Ironside, The Defenders, Mannix, The Name of the Game, Lux Video Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, following the beginning of war in Europe in 1939, Raymond felt certain the U. S. would eventually enter the war. He trained as a pilot for that eventuality, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and he served as an observer aboard B-17 anti-submarine flights along the Atlantic coast before attending intelligence school and shipping out to England in July 1942. He served with the 97th Bomb Group before taking over as assistant operations officer in the VIII Bomber Command and he was transferred back to the U. S. in 1943 and piloted a variety of aircraft, both bombers and fighters, in stateside duties. He remained in the United States Air Force Reserve following the war, on May 3,1998, at 89 years of age, Raymond died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California. For his contributions to the picture and television industries, Gene Raymond has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 7001 Hollywood Boulevard and 1708 Vine Street. Raymond married Jeanette MacDonald in 1937 and they remained together until her death in 1965. In 1974, he married Nel Bentley Hees, who died in 1995, a 2001 biography of Nelson Eddy and MacDonald, Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, states that Raymond had affairs with men during his marriage to MacDonald. The book has documentation showing that Raymond was arrested three times for having sex with other men, the book also claims that Louis B. Mayer engineered the 1937 marriage of MacDonald to Raymond—even though Mayer knew Raymond was bisexual—to prevent MacDonald from marrying Nelson Eddy. Mayer was concerned that a MacDonald-Eddy marriage would end in divorce because of their temperaments and he was worried a break-up would destroy his lucrative box office team
4.
Maurice Chevalier
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Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer. He is perhaps best known for his songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine. His trademark attire was a hat, which he always wore on stage with a tuxedo. He made his name as a star of comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in menial jobs as a teenager. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at the time, Fréhel. Although their relationship was brief, she secured him his first major engagement, as a mimic, in 1917, he discovered jazz and ragtime and went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre. After this, he toured the United States, where he met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and he developed an interest in acting and had success in Dédé. When talkies arrived, he went to Hollywood in 1928, where he played his first American role in Innocents of Paris, in 1957, he appeared in Love in the Afternoon, which was his first Hollywood film in more than 20 years. In 1958, he starred with Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan in Gigi, in the early 1960s, he made eight films, including Can-Can in 1960 and Fanny the following year. In 1970, he made his contribution to the film industry where he sang the title song of the Disney film The Aristocats. He died in Paris, on January 1,1972, aged 83, Chevalier was born in Paris, France. His father was a French house painter and his mother, Joséphine van den Bosch, was French of Belgian descent. He worked a number of jobs, an apprentice, electrician, printer. He started in business in 1901. He was singing, unpaid, at a café when a member of the theatre saw him, Chevalier made a name as a mimic and a singer. His act in lAlcazar in Marseille was so successful, he made a triumphant rearrival in Paris, in 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France, Fréhel. However, due to her alcoholism and drug addiction, their liaison ended in 1911, Chevalier then started a relationship with 36-year-old Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère, where he was her 23-year-old dance partner, they eventually played out a public romance. In 1917, Chevalier became a star in le Casino de Paris and played before British soldiers and he discovered jazz and ragtime and started thinking about touring the United States
5.
The Love Parade
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The Love Parade is a 1929 American Pre-Code musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania and her consort, Count Alfred Renard. Despite his love for Louise and his promise to be an obedient husband, the Love Parade is notable for being both the film debut of Jeanette MacDonald and the first talkie film made by Ernst Lubitsch. It was also released in a French-language version called Parade damour, Chevalier had thought that he would never be capable of acting as a Royal courtier, and had to be persuaded by Lubitsch. This huge box-office hit appeared just after the Wall Street crash, in the meantime Queen Louise, ruler of Sylvania in her own right, is royally fed-up with her subjects preoccupation with whom she will marry. Intrigued rather than offended by Count Alfreds dossier, Queen Louise invites him to dinner and their romance progresses to the point of marriage when, despite his qualms, for love of Louise Alfred agrees to obey the Queen. Alfred grows tired of having to listen to every command of the Queen and decides to leave Louise, return to Paris, after Louise says she will make him the King he decides to remain. Maurice Chevalier as Count Alfred Renard Jeanette MacDonald as Queen Louise Lupino Lane as Jacques Lillian Roth as Lulu Eugene Pallette as Minister of War E. H, in one scene, two couples sing the same song alternately. To do this with the technology, Lubitsch had two sets built, with an off-camera orchestra between them, and directed both scenes simultaneously. This enabled him to cut back and forth from one scene to the other in editing, something unheard of at the time, criterion Collection essay, criterion. com, accessed August 6,2015. The Love Parade, jeanettemacdonaldandnelsoneddy. com, accessed August 6,2015, the Love Parade, virtual-history. com, accessed August 6,2015
6.
Love Me Tonight
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Love Me Tonight is a 1932 American Pre-Code musical comedy film produced and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with music by Rodgers and Hart. It stars Maurice Chevalier as a tailor who poses as a nobleman and it also stars Charles Ruggles as a penniless nobleman, along with Charles Butterworth and Myrna Loy as members of his family. The film is an adaptation by Samuel Hoffenstein, George Marion Jr. and Waldemar Young of the play Le Tailleur au château by Paul Armont and it features the classic Rodgers and Hart songs Love Me Tonight, Isnt it Romantic. Lover is sung not romantically, as it often is in nightclubs, the staging of Isnt It Romantic. was revolutionary for its time, combining both singing and film editing, as the song is passed from one singer to another, all of whom are at different locales. In 1990, Love Me Tonight was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, the story describes an encounter between a Parisian tailor named Maurice Courtelin and a family of local aristocrats. DArtelines has been unable to find Jeanette a new husband of suitable age, the household also includes three aunts and an ineffectual suitor the Comte de Savignac. Maurice custom-tailors clothing for de Varèze on credit, but the Vicomtes unpaid tailoring bills become intolerable, on the way, he has a confrontation with Princesse Jeanette. He immediately professes his love for her, but she rejects him. When Maurice arrives at the castle, Gilbert introduces him as Baron Courtelin in order to hide the truth from the Comte, Maurice is fearful of this scheme at first, but changes his mind when he sees Jeanette. While staying at the castle, he arouses Valentines desire, charms the rest of the family except for Jeanette, saves a life during a hunt. The Comte de Savignac discovers that Maurice is a fake, finally, Jeanette succumbs to Maurices charms, telling him Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are, I love you. When Maurice criticizes Jeanettes tailor, the family confronts him for his rudeness, only to catch him, Maurice explains that he is redesigning Jeanettes riding outfit, and he proves this by successfully altering it, but in the process he is forced to reveal his true identity. Despite her earlier promise, Jeanette recoils from him and runs to her room on hearing that he is a commoner, the entire household is outraged, and Maurice leaves. However, as a train carries him back to Paris, Jeanette struggles with her fears, finally realizes her mistake, when the engineer refuses to stop the train, she rides ahead and stands on the track. The train stops, Maurice jumps out, and the two embrace as steam from the train envelops them. - #73 AFIs Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated Love Me Tonight was released through Kino International DVD on November 25,2003, there are no existing pre-Code uncensored versions of the original film. Love Me Tonight at the Internet Movie Database Love Me Tonight at Rotten Tomatoes Love Me Tonight at Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, A Tribute
7.
One Hour with You
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One Hour with You is a 1932 American Pre-Code musical comedy film about a married couple who find themselves attracted to other people. It was produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch with the assistance of George Cukor and it stars Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and Genevieve Tobin and features Charles Ruggles and Roland Young. A French-language version, called Une heure près de toi was made simultaneously, the film is a musical remake of The Marriage Circle, the second film that Lubitsch made in the United States. In 1932, One Hour with You was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, parisian doctor Andre Bertier is faithful to his loving wife, Colette, much to the surprise of his lovely female patients. But when Colettes best friend Mitzi Olivier insists upon being treated by Dr. Bertier, unless otherwise noted, the music is by Oscar Straus and lyrics are by Leo Robin. One Hour with You music by Richard A, within two weeks after filming started, however, conflicts between Chevalier and Cukor brought Lubitsch back to the helm, although Cukor remained on the set
8.
Nelson Eddy
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Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred with soprano Jeanette MacDonald. He was one of the first crossover stars, a superstar appealing both to shrieking bobby soxers and opera purists, and in his heyday, he was the highest paid singer in the world. S, president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. He also introduced millions of young Americans to classical music and inspired many of them to pursue a musical career, Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the only child of Caroline Isabel and William Darius Eddy. His father was a machinist and toolmaker whose work required him to move from town to town, Nelson grew up in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a boy, he was a redhead and quickly acquired the nickname Bricktop, as an adult, his red hair was streaked with silver, so his hair photographed as blond. He came from a musical family and his Atlanta-born mother was a church soloist, and his grandmother, Caroline Netta Ackerman Kendrick, was a distinguished oratorio singer. His father occasionally moonlighted as a stagehand at the Providence Opera House, sang in the choir, played the drums. His parents divorced when he was 14, living in near poverty, Eddy was forced to drop out of school and moved with his mother to Philadelphia, where her brother, Clark Kendrick, lived. His uncle helped Eddy secure a job at the Mott Iron Works. He later worked as a reporter with the Philadelphia Press, the Evening Public Ledger, and he also worked briefly as a copywriter at N. W. Ayer Advertising, but was dismissed for constantly singing on the job, Eddy never returned to school, but educated himself with correspondence courses. He was bitter that his father refused to provide support after the divorce. Eddy developed his talent as a boy soprano in church choirs, throughout his teens, Eddy studied voice and imitated the recordings of baritones such as Titta Ruffo, Antonio Scotti, Pasquale Amato, Giuseppe Campanari, and Reinald Werrenrath. He gave recitals for womens groups and appeared in society theatricals, having had a job in an iron works factory, he then spent ten years as a newspaper reporter, but was fired for paying more attention to music than to journalism. His first professional break came in 1922, when he was singled out by the press after an appearance in a society theatrical, The Marriage Tax, in 1924, Eddy won the top prize in a competition that included a chance to appear with the Philadelphia Opera Society. With Savoy, Eddy sang the role of Strephon in Iolanthe at the Broad Street Theatre in Philadelphia in 1922. The next year, he played the role of Major-General Stanley in Savoys production of The Pirates of Penzance and he reprised the role of Strephon with Savoy in 1927, when the theater group moved their performances to the famed Academy of Music
9.
Naughty Marietta (film)
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Naughty Marietta is a 1935 film based on the operetta Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert. Jeanette MacDonald stars as a princess who flees an arranged marriage and she sails for New Orleans and is rescued from pirates by Captain Richard Warrington. Five of Victor Herberts most famous come from the score of Naughty Marietta, with words by lyricist Rida Johnson Young. Sweet Mystery of Life Italian Street Song Neath the Southern Moon Im Falling in Love With Someone Tramp, additional lyrics for several of Herberts songs were penned for the film by Gus Kahn. The film was written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, John Lee Mahin, en route, the women discuss what type of man they want to marry. Marietta shocks the girls by stating that she does not intend to get married to anyone. Shortly after, the ship is boarded by pirates, who kill the entire crew, after the pirates divide the loot, they turn their attention to the girls. The pirates extinguish their torches and fire to try to avoid detection, mercenaries rout the pirates and rescue the women. The mercenaries leader, Captain Richard Warrington, sings Neath a Southern Moon to Marietta, despite his attraction to her, however, Warrington declares that he does not intend to get married. Warrington and his men take the girls to New Orleans. The women are housed in the convent while they get to know their potential husbands, when some men approach Marietta, she declares that she does not want to marry any of them. The Governor feels that he has seen Marietta before in Paris, when she pretends to have a disreputable past, the Governor orders a pair of soldiers to escort her away in disgrace. Warrington relieves them of their duty and finds her a place to stay, though Marietta tries to rid herself of Warrington, he is undaunted. Just then, a group of gypsies stroll by, advertising their Marionette Theater, the gypsy leader, Rodolpho, has his daughter sing, and Warrington joins in. Stung by Warringtons remark that she not be able to sing as well as the gypsy. While he is distracted getting rid of three suitors, she slips away. The following day, Warrington discovers that Marietta is working at the Marionette Theater, when he visits her after the performance, Marietta tells him that his presence is most unwelcome. The captain asks her if he would be somewhere else
10.
Rose Marie (1936 film)
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Rose Marie is a 1936 musical film starring Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy and Reginald Owen and directed by W. S. Van Dyke. It was the second of three movie adaptations from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer of the 1924 Broadway musical of the same name, a silent version was released in 1928 and a color film in 1954. All three versions are set in the Canadian wilderness, portions of Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stotharts original score for the Broadway musical are utilized in both the 1936 and 1954 films. Although the original plot was changed, and most of the songs were dropped and their duet of Indian Love Call was a major hit for the two singers and remained a signature song throughout their careers. Marie de Flor is a Canadian soprano performing in Roméo et Juliette in Montreal, making her excuses, she leaves for the Canadian wilderness with Boniface, hoping to help Jack. At the same time, Sergeant Bruce, of the Mounties reports to headquarters and receives his latest mission, he must find Jack Flower, Marie and Boniface reach an outpost near Lake Chibougam, where Boniface disappears with Maries money. Marie falls in with Sergeant Bruce, but Marie cannot tell him the truth for fear of compromising Jack, Marie tries singing at a local cafe to earn some money, but is unused to such boisterous singing and fails to attract any tips. Bruce insists that Marie reports Bonifaces theft, but she cannot admit her real identity, but Bruce has recognised her via her voice. They travel together to an Indian ceremony that night, Bruce, despite his strong sense of duty, proves to be a womaniser, and they sing together. Marie finds Boniface and they leave together, but Bruce has discovered that Rose Marie de Flor is really Jack Flowers sister and sets off after her, knowing that she will lead him to Jack. Boniface and Marie travel on horseback to Haymans Landing where Jack is hiding, Sergeant Bruce, following her, rescues her from drowning as they cross a deep river and Boniface runs off into the forest. Marie haughtily refuses the Sergeants help, but realises that she not reach Jack without that help. She and the Sergeant travel together for the three days, before she leaves him with a new guide. Marie finds Jack being nursed by Bonifaces Mother, and tries to him to reform. She gives him the necessary to escape and start over. But Bruce appears and arrests Jack, Marie begs him to let her brother go, but the Sergeant is unmoved by her plea. No more is heard of Jack, but Marie, although unwell and she has the title role in the opera Tosca. She keeps imagining that she hears Indian Love Call throughout the opera and she retires to a mountain lodge and refuses to sing for six months
11.
Maytime (1937 film)
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Maytime is a 1937 American musical romantic drama film distributed by MGM. It was directed by Robert Z. Leonard and stars Jeanette MacDonald, the screenplay was rewritten from the book for Sigmund Rombergs 1917 operetta Maytime by Rida Johnson Young, Rombergs librettist, however, only one musical number by Romberg was retained. The films storyline greatly resembles that of Noël Cowards operetta Bitter Sweet, three years later, MGM filmed a Technicolor version of Bitter Sweet, but altered the plot slightly so that audiences would not notice the similarities. At a small town May Day celebration, elderly Miss Morrison tries to console her young friend Kip, later, Barbara goes for comfort to Miss Morrison, who reveals that years ago she was the internationally famous opera diva Marcia Mornay. That night, Nicolai proposes to Marcia and she accepts, even though both know that she is not in love with him. Later, feeling restless, Marcia takes a ride, and is stranded in the Latin Quarter when her drivers horse runs away, in a tavern, she meets American student Paul Allison, who is also a singer, but not as ambitious as Marcia. Though they are attracted to other, she at first refuses to see him again out of loyalty to Nicolai. They enjoy their lunch together, but Marcia again says that they can no longer see each other, cloud for a May Day celebration. During the celebration, Paul tells her he loves her, but she says that she owes Nicolai too much and they then part after vowing always to remember their day together. Seven years later, Marcia, who has married Nicolai, has become the toast of the operatic world, though faithful and devoted to Nicolai, her lack of passion for him has made them both unhappy. In New York, Nicolai arranges for Marcia to sing Czaritza, co-starring with Paul, Nicolai does not realize that she is still in love with Paul. Nicolai then recognizes Paul as the man who left Marcias dressing room after the performance of Les Huguenots. On a brilliant opening night, Nicolai becomes jealous over the obvious emotion in Paul and Marcias onstage love scenes, later, at their hotel, when Nicolai questions Marcia, she asks for her freedom, which he promises to give. Marcia soon discovers, however, that Nicolai has gone after Paul with a gun, at Pauls apartment, Nicolai shoots him just as Marcia arrives. Paul then dies in her arms, telling her that memories of their May Day together did last him all his life and it is presumed that Nicolai will be arrested for Pauls killing. At the conclusion of her story, Miss Morrison helps Barbara realize that she, as she watches the young lovers embrace, Miss Morrison quietly dies. Her spirit is united with her own sweetheart in death. Rudyard Guy Bates Post as Louis Napoleon The film was nominated for two Academy Awards
12.
San Francisco (1936 film)
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San Francisco is a 1936 musical-drama directed by Woody Van Dyke, based on the April 18,1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film, which was the movie of that year, stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald. The then very popular singing of MacDonald helped make this film a hit, coming on the heels of her other 1936 blockbuster, famous silent film directors D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim worked on the film without credit. Griffith directed some of the mob scenes while von Stroheim contributed to the screenplay, the film opens with two men in boxing gloves and trunks sparring vigorously. They conclude their session and get dressed, one dons a natty suit, the other a priests collar. The first man is Blackie Norton, a saloonkeeper and gambler and he owns the Paradise Club on Pacific Street in the notorious Barbary Coast. The other is Blackies childhood friend, Father Tim Mullen, a Roman Catholic priest, Blackie hires Mary Blake, a promising, but impoverished, classically trained singer from Benson, Colorado. She becomes an attraction at the Paradise, especially for singing San Francisco. The club piano player, The Professor, can tell Mary has a trained voice. Mat, Blackies good friend at the Paradise, wisely predicts that Mary is not going to stay on the Coast. Father Tim makes several attempts to reform Blackie, while the other nightclub owners urge him to run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in order to protect their crooked interests. Encouraged by Father Tim, who believes Blackie can use the position to implement reform. However, despite Father Tims best efforts, Blackie remains a jaunty Barbary Coast atheist, Blackies feelings for Mary intensify, but complications arise when she is offered an opportunity to sing in the opera. Although she initially refuses to break her contract with Blackie, she leaves the Paradise Club due to the overtly sexual manifestation of Blackies feelings for her. Mary is hired by the Tivoli Opera House on Market Street, there she becomes involved with Nob Hill scion Jack Burley. After her performance, Blackie visits Mary in her dressing room, realizing she still loves him, Mary asks him to marry her. Blackie agrees, but their reunion is interrupted by Burley. Blackie, seeing Burley as competition for Marys affections, is happy to tell him of their intent to marry
13.
Music recording sales certification
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Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies. The threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory, almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories, which are named after precious materials. The number of sales or shipments required for these awards depends upon the population of the territory in which the recording is released, typically, they are awarded only to international releases and are awarded individually for each country in which the album is sold. Different sales levels, some perhaps 10 times lower than others, the original gold record awards were presented to artists by their own record companies to publicize their sales achievements. The first of these was awarded by RCA Victor to Glenn Miller and His Orchestra in February 1942, another example of a company award is the gold record awarded to Elvis Presley in 1956 for one million units sold of his single Dont Be Cruel. The first gold record for an LP was awarded by RCA Victor to Harry Belafonte in 1957 for the album Calypso and these sales were restricted to U. S. -based record companies and did not include exports to other countries. For albums in 1968, this would mean shipping approximately 250,000 units, the platinum certification was introduced in 1976 for the sale of one million units, album or single, with the gold certification redefined to mean sales of 500,000 units, album or single. No album was certified platinum prior to this year, for instance, the recording by Van Cliburn of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto from 1958 would eventually be awarded a platinum citation, but this would not happen until two decades after its release. In 1999, the certification was introduced for sales of ten million units. On 14 March 1958, the RIAA certified its first gold record, soundtrack was certified as the first gold album four months later. In 1976, RIAA introduced the platinum certification, first awarded to Johnnie Taylors single, Disco Lady, as music sales increased with the introduction of compact discs, the RIAA created the Multi-Platinum award in 1984. Diamond awards, honoring those artists whose sales of singles or albums reached 10,000,000 copies, were introduced in 1999 and this became much less common once the majority of retail sales became paid digital downloads and digital streaming. In most countries certifications no longer apply solely to physical media, in June 2006, the RIAA also certified the ringtone downloads of songs. Streaming from on-demand services such as Rhapsody and Spotify has been included into existing digital certification in the U. S since 2013, in the U. S. and Germany video streaming services like YouTube, VEVO, and Yahoo. Music also began to be counted towards the certification, in both cases using the formula of 100 streams being equivalent to one download, other countries, such as Denmark and Spain, maintain separate awards for digital download singles and streaming. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was founded in 1996, and grants the IFPI Platinum Europe Award for album sales over one million within Europe, multi-platinum Europe Awards are presented for sales in subsequent multiples of one million. Eligibility is unaffected by time, and is not restricted to European-based artists, IMPALA sales awards were launched in 2005 as the first sales awards recognising that success on a pan-European basis begins well before sales reach one million. The award levels are Silver, Double Silver, Gold, Double Gold, Diamond, Platinum, below are certification thresholds for the United States and United Kingdom
14.
The Addams Family (1964 TV series)
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The Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was created by David Levy and shot in black-and-white and it is often compared to its CBS rival, The Munsters, which ran for the same two seasons and achieved somewhat higher Nielsen ratings. The show is the first adaptation of the Addams family characters to feature The Addams Family Theme composed by Vic Mizzy, the Addams Family was originally produced, by head writer Nat Perrin for Filmways, Inc. at General Service Studios in Hollywood, California. Successor company MGM Television now owns the rights to the show, the Addamses are a close-knit extended family with decidedly macabre interests and supernatural abilities. No explanation for their powers is explicitly given in the series, the very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams is madly in love with his refined wife, Morticia, née Frump. Occasionally, episodes would feature other relatives such as Cousin Itt, Morticias older sister Ophelia, or Grandma Frump, much of the humor derives from their culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, though some of their guests often have bad intentions. They are puzzled by the reactions to their own good-natured and normal behavior. Accordingly, they view conventional tastes with generally tolerant suspicion, for example, Fester once cites a neighboring familys meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are nothing but riffraff. A recurring theme in the epilogue of many episodes was the Addamses getting an update on the most-recent visitor to their home, either via mail, something in the newspaper, or a phone call. Invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, the Addamses would always misinterpret the update and see it as good news for their most-recent visitor. The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, who was a friend of Groucho Marx. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script, as a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, black mustache and ever-present cigar, is comparable to Groucho Marx. The series often employed the type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films. It lampooned politics, the system, rock n roll and Beatlemania. The television series featured a theme song, written and arranged by longtime Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy. The songs arrangement was dominated by a harpsichord and featured finger snaps as percussive accompaniment, actor Ted Cassidy, in his Lurch voice, punctuated the lyrics with words like neat, sweet, and petite. Mizzys theme was popular enough to enjoy a release as a 45 rpm single, the song was revived for the 1990s animated series, as well as in 2007 for a series of Addams Family television commercials for M&Ms candies
15.
Jerome Kern
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Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and his musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the musicals of his day. Although dozens of Kerns musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived, songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kerns songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes, Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was then the citys brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern, a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles, at the time of Kerns birth, his father ran a stable, later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, where he attended public schools and he showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher. In 1897, the moved to Newark, New Jersey. He wrote songs for the schools first musical, a show, in 1901. Kern left high school graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. In response, Kerns father insisted that his son work with him in business, Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks, he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico and his first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his training under private tutors in Heidelberg, Germany. For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres, while in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, in 1905, Kern contributed the song Howd you like to spoon with me. To Ivan Carylls hit musical The Earl and the Girl when the transferred to Chicago. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season, The Little Cherub and The Orchid, Kern was much taken with the proprietors daughter, Eva Leale, who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Marys in Walton on October 25,1910, the couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England
16.
Irene Dunne
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Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron, Theodora Goes Wild, The Awful Truth, Love Affair, in 1985, Dunne was given Kennedy Center Honors for her services to the arts. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Joseph John Dunn, an inspector for the United States government, and Adelaide Henry. Irene Dunne would later write, No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the boats with my father. She was fourteen when her father died on April 6,1913 and she saved all of his letters and often remembered and lived by what he told her the night before he died, Happiness is never an accident. It is the prize we get when we choose wisely from lifes great stores, following her fathers death, Irene, her mother, and her younger brother Charles moved to her mothers hometown of Madison, Indiana. Dunnes mother taught her to play the piano as a small girl. According to Dunne, Music was as natural as breathing in our house, Dunne was raised as a devout Roman Catholic. Nicknamed Dunnie, she took piano and voice lessons, sang in local churches, Dunne earned a diploma to teach art, but took a chance on a contest and won a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, where she graduated in 1926. With a soprano voice, she had hopes of becoming an opera singer, Irene, after adding an e to her surname, turned to musical theater. She toured several cities in 1921–22 playing the lead role in the popular play Irene. The following year, Dunne played a season of opera in Atlanta. Though in her own words Dunne created no great furor, by 1929 she had a successful Broadway career playing leading roles, grateful to be at center stage rather than in the chorus line. On July 16,1927, Dunne married Francis Griffin, a New York dentist, despite differing opinions and battles that raged furiously, Dunne eventually agreed to marry him and leave the theater. She was discovered by Hollywood while starring with the company of Show Boat in 1929. She signed a contract with RKO and appeared in her first movie in 1930, Leathernecking, already in her thirties when she made her first film, she would be in competition with younger actresses for roles, and found it advantageous to evade questions that would reveal her age. Her publicists encouraged the belief that she was born in 1901 or 1904, Dunne moved to Hollywood with her mother and brother and maintained a long-distance marriage with her husband in New York until he joined her in California in 1936. That year, she re-created her role as Magnolia in what is considered the film version of the famous musical Show Boat
17.
Helen Shipman
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Helen Shipman was an American singer, dancer and actress who starred in various Broadway musicals and musical comedies and who also acted in movies. Helen Shipman was the daughter of William H. and Annie L. Shipman of Pennsylvania and her full name was Helen Phyllis Shipman. Helens mother was an actress of some note in her youth. Her exact date of birth is unknown, however, it is believed that she was born in 1899, Helen began performing at the age of three doing impressions of famous adult stars in the entertainment business. Her first professional job was as Baby Phyllis at the Duquesne Theater in Pittsburgh and she later toured on the B. F. Keith show circuit in a play titled Little Nemo. After that tour, she moved with her mother and older sister to New York City to advance her career, however, between tours, she worked in variety shows at the Palace Theatre in NYC where she sang songs composed for her by the well-known lyricist, Neville Fleeson. It was in these shows that she got to other entertainers such as Jimmy Durante. She was childhood friends with Ira and George Gershwin, the latter of which became enamored with her, nelson Eddy was also one of her suitors when she was a teenager in New York. In 1915, Shipman was invited by Florenz Ziegfeld to co-star in his new Midnight Frolic production on the rooftop of the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City. She had her first starring role on Broadway in the musical Oh, Boy. in 1917 and she then took the 1919 Broadway musical, Irene, on tour playing the title role and introducing the song My Sweet Little Alice Bluegown to audiences in places like Cleveland and Chicago. Her longest running Broadway play was The Lady In Ermine which ran for 232 performances at the Ambassador Theatre in 1922 and she also starred in many other Broadway plays. In 1937, Shipman married the Broadway, movie, and radio actor Edward Pawley while he was in Hollywood performing in movies, Pawley had been a star on Broadway and was the first actor to portray Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry character on the Broadway stage in 1928. Shipman effectively quit show business after their marriage and focused attention on her other interests, such as gardening. She was also a member of the fraternal order known as the Rosicrucians. In 1951 when her husband left his role as Steve Wilson on the very popular radio show, Big Town, they retired to Rappahannock County. She died there of heart failure on April 13,1984 at the age of 85 and she did not have any children. Helena Shipman was also an actress for a while. Helen Shipman at the Internet Movie Database Helen Shipman at the Internet Broadway Database
18.
Queenie Smith
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Queenie Smith was an American stage, television, and film actress. Smith was born in New York City, New York and she got an early start, being trained in ballet and dance and spent her teen years performing as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company in operas such as Aida, La Traviata, and Faust. By the 1920s she was a star on Broadway in shows such as Helen of Troy, New York, Sitting Pretty, and The Street Singer and she starred on Broadway in George and Ira Gershwins musical Tip-Toes. She costarred in the 1936 Universal Pictures film version of Jerome Kerns Show Boat, Smith replaced stage actress Eva Puck who had starred as Chipley in the 1927 premiere and 1932 revival of Show Boat. In 1947 she appeared in the film The Long Night and then played other roles on film. She was seen as Jimmy Durantes wife in The Great Rupert, queenie Smith was a teacher and mentor to many a young actor. She taught at the Hollywood Professional School and was the Director for the program at Melodyland Theater, Anaheim, California. She worked right up until the year of her death, her last role being Elsie in the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn film Foul Play and she died of cancer a month before her 80th birthday. Mississippi Special Agent K-7 From This Day Forward The Killers as Mary Ellen Daugherty
19.
George Gershwin
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George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwins compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known, among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell and he began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, after returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century, Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a malignant brain tumor – glioblastoma multiforme. Gershwins compositions have been adapted for use in films and for television. Many celebrated singers and musicians have covered his songs, Gershwin was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of travel and residence as a Jew. His teenage son, Moishe Gershowitz, worked as a cutter for womens shoes. Moishe Gershowitz met and fell in love with Roza Bruskina, the daughter of a furrier in Vilnius. She and her family moved to New York due to increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to. Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris, Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a womens shoe factory. When he married Rose on July 21,1895, Gershowitz soon Americanized his name to Gershwine. Their first child was born on December 6,1896, Gershwin then moved his family into a second-floor apartment on Brooklyns Snediker Avenue. Their second son, soon to be renamed George, was born at there on September 26,1898 and his birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced Gersh-vin in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community. He was named after his grandfather, the one time Russian army mechanic, American practice by then was to give children a first and a middle name, but had no other. He changed the spelling of his name to Gershwin when he became a professional musician, George and Ira lived in many different residences, as their father changed dwellings with each new enterprise which he became involved in. Mostly, the boys grew up around the Yiddish Theater District and they frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George occasionally appearing onstage as an extra
20.
No, No, Nanette
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Its songs include the well-known Tea for Two and I Want to Be Happy. During its 1924 pre-Broadway tour, No, No, Nanette became a hit in Chicago, in 1925, the show opened both on Broadway and in the West End, running 321 and 665 performances respectively. A popular 1971 Broadway revival, with a book adapted by Burt Shevelove, led to the becoming an favorite of school. A popular myth held that the show was financed by selling baseball superstar Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, however, it was My Lady Friends, rather than No, No, Nanette, that was directly financed by the Ruth sale. No, No, Nanette was not successful in its first pre-Broadway tour in 1924, when the production arrived in Chicago, producer Harry Frazee re-cast the show with new stars, had the book rewritten and asked Youmans and Caesar to write additional songs. These additional songs, Tea for Two and I Want to Be Happy, the Chicago production was a hit and ran for over a year. Frazee eagerly capitalized on this success, but Broadway was not his first priority, the London production featured two songs that were not included in U. S. productions, Ive Confessed to the Breeze and Take a Little One-Step. Three touring productions were circulating throughout the U. S. when the Broadway production finally opened on September 16,1925, starring Louise Groody and Charles Winninger. The musical was translated into languages and enjoyed regional productions, U. S. tours. It was made into films in both 1930 and 1940, with film adaptations featuring character actress ZaSu Pitts. In 1950, a film entitled Tea for Two, a loose adaptation of the show, was released. It starred Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Eve Arden, the musical was seen with decreasing frequency in the following decades. For the nostalgic 1971 Broadway revival conceived and produced by Harry Rigby, while the 1925 book was considered quite racy at the time of the original production, Shevelove wrote from a nostalgic perspective, depicting the 1920s as a time of innocent fun. He made extensive changes and cuts to the book, but most of the score was left intact, with only a few cuts. The cast featured veteran screen star Ruby Keeler and also included Helen Gallagher, Bobby Van, Jack Gilford, Patsy Kelly, a young Ed Dixon was in the ensemble. The production was supervised by aging Hollywood legend Busby Berkeley, although members of the cast, Rigby later accepted a $300,000 settlement from Rubin. The 1971 production was well-reviewed and ran for 861 performances and it sparked interest in the revival of similar musicals from the 1920s and 30s. This production transferred to London in 1973, with a cast starring Anna Neagle, Anne Rogers, Tony Britton, further tours and international productions followed
21.
Cary Grant
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Cary Grant was a British-American actor, known as one of classic Hollywoods definitive leading men. He began a career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became known for his accent, debonair demeanor. He became an American citizen in 1942, Born in Horfield, Bristol, Grant became attracted to theatre at a young age, and began performing with a troupe known as The Penders from the age of six. After attending Bishop Road Primary School and Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, he toured the country as a stage performer and he established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. Along with the later Arsenic and Old Lace and I Was a Male War Bride, having established himself as a major Hollywood star, he was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart. In the 1940s and 1950s, Grant forged a relationship with the director Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in films such as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock admired Grant and considered him to have been the actor that he had ever loved working with. His comic timing and delivery made Grant what Premiere magazine considers to have quite simply. Grant was married five times, three of his marriages were elopements with actresses—Virginia Cherrill, Betsy Drake and Dyan Cannon and he has one daughter with Cannon, Jennifer Grant. After his retirement from acting in 1966, Grant pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé. He was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970, in 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema, after Humphrey Bogart. Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18,1904 at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol suburb of Horfield and he was the second child of Elias James Leach and Elsie Maria Leach. Elias, the son of a potter, worked as a tailors presser at a factory, while Elsie. Grants elder brother, John William Elias Leach, died of tuberculous meningitis, Grant considered himself to have been partly Jewish. He had an upbringing, his father was an alcoholic. Wanting the best for her son, Elsie taught Grant song and dance when he was four and she would occasionally take him to the cinema where he enjoyed the performances of Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain and Broncho Billy Anderson. Grant entered education when he was four-and-a-half and was sent to the Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol, another biographer, Geoffrey Wansell, notes that Elsie blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grants older brother John, and never recovered from it. Grant later acknowledged that his experiences with his fiercely independent mother affected his relationships with women later in life
22.
Richard Dix
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Richard Dix was an American motion picture actor who achieved popularity in both silent and sound film. His standard on-screen image was that of the rugged and stalwart hero and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his lead role in the Best Picture-winning epic, Cimarron. Dix was born Ernst Carlton Brimmer on July 18,1893, in St. Paul, there he was educated, and, at the desire of his father, studied to be a surgeon. His obvious acting talent in his school dramatic club led him to leading roles in most of the school plays, at 6 and 180 pounds, Dix excelled in sports, especially football and baseball. These skills would serve him well in the film roles he would go on to play. After a year at the University of Minnesota, he took a position at a bank and his professional start was with a local stock company, and this led to similar work in New York City. The death of his father left him with a mother and sister to support and he went to Los Angeles and became leading man for the Morosco Stock Company. His success there got him a contract with Paramount Pictures and he then changed his name to Dix. After his move to Hollywood, he began a career in Western movies, one of the few actors to successfully bridge the transition from silent films to talkies, Dixs best-remembered early role was in Cecil B. Demilles silent version of The Ten Commandments and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1931 for his performance as Yancey Cravat in Cimarron, in which he was billed over Irene Dunne. Cimarron, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, took the Best Picture award. Dix starred in another RKO adventure, The Lost Squadron, a memorable role for Dix was in the 1935 British futuristic film The Tunnel. Dix starred in The Great Jasper and Blind Alibi in the late 1930s and his popular RKO Radio Pictures co-star in Blind Alibi was Ace the Wonder Dog. Dixs human co-stars were Whitney Bourne and Eduardo Ciannelli, the film was directed by Lew Landers, Dix also starred as the homicidal Captain Stone in the Val Lewton production of The Ghost Ship, directed by Mark Robson. In 1941, Dix played Wild Bill Hickok in Badlands of Dakota and portrayed Wyatt Earp the following year in Tombstone, in 1944, he starred in The Whistler, the first in a series of eight Whistler films made by Columbia Pictures. He also starred in the six movies in the offbeat, crime-related series. Dix retired from acting after the seventh of these films, The Thirteenth Hour and he died two years later, after suffering a heart attack at age 56. According to the July 1934 Movies magazine, on his ranch near Hollywood and he also had a collection of thousands of pipes, and a collection of 36 dogs, Scotties and English setters
23.
Helen Kane
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Helen Kane born Helen Clare Schroeder was an American popular singer, her signature song was I Wanna Be Loved by You. Kanes voice and appearance were a source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop. Born as Helen Clare Schroeder, Kane attended St. Anselms Parochial School in the Bronx and she was the youngest of three children. Her father, Louis Schroeder, the son of a German immigrant, was employed intermittently, her Irish immigrant mother, Ellen Schroeder, Kanes mother reluctantly paid $3 for her daughters costume as a queen in Kanes first theatrical role at school. By the time she was 15 years old, Kane was onstage professionally and she spent the early 1920s trouping in vaudeville as a singer and kickline dancer with a theater engagement called the All Jazz Revue. She played the New York Palace for the first time in 1921 and her Broadway days started there as well with the Stars of the Future. She also sang onstage with a singing trio, the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce. Kanes roommate in the early 1920s was Jessie Fordyce, the singing trio act might have become the Hamilton Sisters and Schroeder, however, Pearl Hamilton chose Fordyce to tour as a trio act just to see what happens at the end of the theatrical season. Kanes career break came in 1927, when she appeared in a musical called A Night in Spain and it ran from May 3,1927, through Nov 12,1927, for a total of 174 performances, at the 44th Street Theatre in NYC. Subsequently, Paul Ash, a conductor, put Kanes name forward for a performance at New Yorks Paramount Theater. Kanes first performance at the Paramount Theater in Times Square proved to be her careers launching point and she was singing Thats My Weakness Now, when she interpolated the scat lyrics boop-boop-a-doop. This resonated with the culture, and four days later. Oscar Hammerstein’s 1928 show Good Boy was where she first introduced the hit I Wanna Be Loved by You, then it was back to the Palace, as a headliner for $5,000 a week. She rejoined her friends from vaudeville, The Three X Sisters for one night, in a 1935 live stage performance, she harmonized with their unique banter to a novelty tune The Preacher and the Bear. Kane had excellent diction, intonation, and timing, learned during her apprenticeship in vaudeville and her songs have a strong word focus and capitalize on her coquettish voice. She blended several fashionable styles of the late 1920s and these included scat singing, a kind of vocal improvisation, and also blending singing and speech. Sprechgesang was fashionable at this time in Germanys Weimar Republic in both nightclubs and in serious music, Kane recorded 22 songs between 1928 and 1930. After 1930 and up to 1951, she recorded four sides for Columbia Records in addition to the Three Little Words soundtrack single recording of I Wanna Be Loved by You and she also recorded four songs that comprise a 1954 MGM 45Ep entitled The Boop Boop a Doop Girl
24.
Ernst Lubitsch
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Ernst Lubitsch was a German American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywoods most elegant and sophisticated director, as his prestige grew, in 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture. Ernst Lubitsch was born on January 29,1892 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Anna and Simon Lubitsch and his family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno in the Russian Empire and his mother from Wriezen, outside Berlin. He turned his back on his fathers tailoring business to enter the theater, in 1913, Lubitsch made his film debut as an actor in The Ideal Wife. He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and he appeared in approximately thirty films as an actor between 1912 and 1920. His last film appearance as an actor was in the 1920 drama Sumurun, opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener, in 1918, he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma, starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying international success with both. His reputation as a master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry. Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921 and they, along with Lubitschs Carmen were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company, however, with World War I still fresh, and with a slew of German New Wave releases encroaching on American movie workers livelihoods, Lubitsch was not gladly received. He cut his trip short after little more than three weeks and returned to Germany, but he had already seen enough of the American film industry to know that its resources far outstripped the spartan German companies. Lubitsch finally left Germany for Hollywood in 1922, contracted as a director by Mary Pickford, settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle, Lady Windermeres Fan, and So This Is Paris. But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitschs contract was dissolved by mutual consent, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, was well regarded, the Patriot, produced by Paramount, earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Directing. Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals, with his first sound film, The Love Parade, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies. The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, and The Smiling Lieutenant were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time and his next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise. Later described as amoral by critic David Thomson, the cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences
25.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film studio based in Hollywood, California, that has been a subsidiary of the American media conglomerate Viacom since 1994. In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor contracted 22 actors and actresses and these fortunate few would become the first movie stars. Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company and Pathé, followed by the Nordisk Film company. It is the last major film studio headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company, hungarian-born founder, Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time. By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success and its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, the Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies, Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor, until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation, in 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one, with only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its Paramount Pictures soon dominated the business. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, the driving force behind Paramounts rise was Zukor. In 1926, Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg and they purchased the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility at 5451 Marathon Street for US$1 million. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took the name Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, three years later, because of the importance of the Publix Theatres, it became Paramount Publix Corporation. In 1928, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps, animated cartoons produced by Max, the Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957, Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as talkies, and in 1929, released their first musical, Innocents of Paris
26.
The Vagabond King (1930 film)
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The Vagabond King is a 1930 American musical operetta film photographed entirely in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film was based on the 1925 operetta of the same name, the play told the story of a renegade French poet named François Villon. The music of the film was based on a 1925 operetta, the operetta is also titled The Vagabond King with music by Rudolph Friml and lyrics by Brian Hooker and W. H. Post. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction, the story takes place in medieval France. King Louis XI, hoping to enlist the French peasants in his battle against the Burgundians. Despite being successful against the Burgundians, François Villon is sentenced to hang by King Louis XI for writing verses about him. Jeanette MacDonald is Katherine, the girl whom Villon pines for, while Huguette. Dennis King and costar Jeanette MacDonald did not get along particularly well, as MacDonald was singing a solo passage, the egotistical King managed to edge his profile into the shot, forever afterward, the diva scornfully referred to the number as Only a Nose. Composer Rudolf Friml had a stipulation in his contract forbade the use of newly composed songs in this production. Paramount attempted to change the title to If I Were King. When Friml was made aware of the new songs, he sued the studio, as a result, Paramount changed the title back to The Vagabond King and paid Friml $50,000 to allow for the use of non-original songs. For many years, this film was only in black-and-white prints made for television release in the 1950s. At one time even the black-and-white prints were considered irretrievably lost, one nitrate Technicolor print did survive at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and it was restored and preserved in 1990. List of early color feature films The Vagabond King at the Internet Movie Database
27.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
28.
Rudolf Friml
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Charles Rudolf Friml was a Czech-born composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States. His best-known works are Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King, each of which enjoyed success on Broadway, born in Prague, Czech Republic Friml showed aptitude for music at an early age. He entered the Prague Conservatory in 1895, where he studied the piano, Friml was expelled from the conservatory in 1901 for performing without permission. In Prague and later in America he composed and published songs, piano pieces and other music, including the set of songs. The last of these, Za tichych noci, later became the basis for a film in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1941. After the conservatory, Friml took a position as accompanist to the violinist Jan Kubelík and he toured with Kubelik twice in the United States and moved there permanently in 1906, apparently with the support of the Czech singer Emmy Destinn. His first post in New York was as a repetiteur at the Metropolitan Opera and he had made his American piano debut at Carnegie Hall in 1904, and premiered his Piano Concerto in B major in 1906 with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Walter Damrosch. He settled for a time in Los Angeles where he married Mathilde Baruch. They had two children, Charles Rudolf and Marie Lucille, the first three marriages ended in divorce. One of the most popular theatrical forms in the decades of the 20th century in America was the operetta. It was announced in 1912 that operetta diva Emma Trentini would be starring in a new operetta on Broadway by Herbert with lyricist Otto Harbach entitled The Firefly, shortly before the writing of the operetta, Trentini appeared in a special performance of Herberts Naughty Marietta conducted by Herbert himself. When Trentini refused to sing Italian Street Song for the encore, arthur Hammerstein, the operettas sponsor, frantically began to search for another composer. Not finding any other composer who could compose as well as Herbert. After a month of work, Friml produced the score for what would be his first theatrical success, after tryouts in Syracuse, New York, The Firefly opened at the Lyric Theatre on December 2,1912 to a warm reception by both the audience and the critics. The production moved to the Casino Theatre after Christmas, where it ran until March 15,1913, after The Firefly, Friml produced three more operettas that each had longer runs than The Firefly, although they are not as enduringly successful. These were High Jinks, Katinka and Youre in Love and he also contributed songs to a musical in 1915 entitled The Peasant Girl. Trentini was named as a co-respondent in Frimls divorce from his first wife in 1915, another show, Sometime, written with Rida Johnson Young and starring Ed Wynn and Mae West, ran well on Broadway in 1918–1919
29.
Dennis King
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Dennis King was an English actor and singer. Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK as Dennis Pratt and he emigrated to the USA in 1921 and went on to a successful career on the Broadway stage. He also played roles on television. He died in New York City,21 May 1971, aged 73 and he was the father of musical theatre actor John Michael King who originated the role of Freddy Eynsford Hill in My Fair Lady. Dennis King pursued his hobby of painting later in life, Dennis King at the Internet Broadway Database Dennis King at the Internet Movie Database Dennis King at Find a Grave
30.
Paramount on Parade
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The screenplay was written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, with cinematography by Victor Milner and Harry Fischbeck. The film had 20 individual segments—several of them in two-color Technicolor — directed by 11 directors, and almost every star on the Paramount roster except Claudette Colbert, there was also a Dutch version, Paramount op Parade with Theo Frenkel. The Scandinavian version starred Ernst Rolf and his wife, Tutta Rolf, the film, including some of its Technicolor sequences, has been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The original title sequence and chorus girl number immediately following it, the sound for two of the Technicolor sequences are also missing. The archive had a report of the soundtrack for this film still existing on disc until the 1994 Northridge earthquake destroyed a set of discs that a collector was planning to donate. In August 2010, CapitolFest in Rome, New York showed a 102-minute version restored by UCLA Film, some sequences are still missing the sound, for some sequences only the soundtrack exists. Kane sings What Did Cleopatra Say, japanese comedian Suisei Matsui introduced the film in Japan. Mira Zimińska and Mariusz Maszynski appeared in the Polish version, and Dina Gralla, Paramount filmed most of the above versions, along with Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, and Italian versions, at their Joinville Studios in Paris
31.
Nino Martini
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Nino Martini was an Italian operatic tenor and actor. He began his career as a singer in Italy before moving to the United States to pursue an acting career in films. He appeared in several Hollywood movies during the 1930s and 1940s while simultaneously working as a tenor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Martini possessed a warm lyric tenor voice that had a wide range, Martini studied singing under Giovanni Zenatello and Maria Gay who were married and both well known opera singers. In 1925 he made his opera debut in Milan as the Duke of Mantua in Verdis Rigoletto. Shortly thereafter he toured Europe as a concert artist appearing in many of the major music centers. While in Paris he was discovered by the film producer Jesse Louis Lasky who engaged him for several Italian language speaking roles in short films, in 1929, under the influence of Lasky, Martini immigrated to the United States to pursue a film career. His first appearance was in the Paramount Pictures all-star revue film Paramount on Parade and this film has been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Further forays into film were postponed, however, as Martini decided to continue to pursue an opera career and he made his U. S. opera debut in 1931 in Philadelphia. This was followed by broadcasts of opera for radio. In 1933 Martini joined the roster at the Metropolitan Opera, making his debut on December 28 as the Duke of Mantua and his last performance at the Met was as Count Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia on April 20,1946. While performing at the Met, Martini occasionally returned to Hollywood to appear in films and his film credits include Heres to Romance, Music for Madame, and The Gay Desperado. The latter film featured Ida Lupino as his co-star, was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, produced by Jesse Lasky and Mary Pickford and his last film appearance was in One Night With You in 1948. In 1945 Martini portrayed Rodolfo to Grace Moores Mimi for the performance of the San Antonio Grand Opera Festival. In the late 1940s and 1950s Martini continued to perform as a singer mostly on the radio and he eventually returned to Italy where he lived in Verona until his death in 1976. Martini made a few recordings of opera arias for Columbia Records who also produced the soundtracks to several of the films that he appeared in. He also recorded music with RCA Victor and recorded the entire role of Ernesto in Don Paquale with the Metropolitan Opera in 1940 opposie Bidu Sayão in the title role. Nino Martini at the Internet Movie Database Nino Martini at Moviefone The Gay Desperado at NY Times Movie Reviews
32.
Leo McCarey
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Thomas Leo McCarey was a three-time Academy Award winning American film director, screenwriter and producer. He was involved in nearly 200 movies, the most well known today being Duck Soup, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth, Going My Way, McCarey was one of the most popular and established comedy directors of the pre-World War II era. Born in Los Angeles, California, McCarey attended St. Joseph’s Catholic school and his father was Thomas J. McCarey, whom the Los Angeles Times called the greatest fight promoter in the world. Leo McCarey would later make a comedy with Harold Lloyd called The Milky Way. Leo McCarey graduated from the University of Southern California law school and besides the law tried mining, boxing and it was McCareys boyhood friend, the actor and future fellow director David Butler, who referred him to Browning. Browning convinced McCarey, despite his looks, to work on the creative side as a writer rather than as an actor. McCarey then honed his skills at the Hal Roach Studios, Roach had hired him as a gagman in 1923, after McCarey had impressed him with his sense of humor, following a game of handball together at a sports club. McCarey initially wrote gags for the Our Gang series and other stars, then produced and directed shorts. Chase would in fact become McCareys mentor, upon the comedians death in 1940, McCarey was quoted as saying, Whatever success I have had or may have, I owe to his help because he taught me all I know. The two men were especially compatible, as they enjoyed a hobby on the side trying to write popular songs. He only officially appeared as director of the duos shorts We Faw Down, Liberty and Wrong Again, by 1929, he was vice-president of production for the studio. Less well known from this period are the shorts he directed with Max Davidson when Roach put together the Irish-American McCarey with the Jewish-American actor for a series of dialect comedies. These shorts such as Pass The Gravy have been rediscovered in recent years, Pass The Gravy was added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 1999. In the sound era McCarey focused on feature-film direction, working with many of the biggest stars of the era, including Gloria Swanson, Eddie Cantor, a series of six films at Paramount came to a crashing halt with his production of Make Way for Tomorrow in 1937. Nonetheless the film was recognized early on for its importance by being selected for the permanent collection of the recently formed Museum Of Modern Art in New York City. In later years it became canonical, and even considered by some as McCareys masterpiece, due to champions such as Bertrand Tavernier, Charles Silver. Along with the similarity in their names, McCarey and Cary Grant shared a physical resemblance. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich notes, After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant, McCarey was a devout Roman Catholic and deeply concerned with social issues
33.
Jack Oakie
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Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He is best remembered for portraying Napaloni in Chaplins The Great Dictator, Jack Oakie was born as Lewis Delaney Offield in Sedalia, Missouri at 522 w 7th Street. His father was a dealer and his mother a psychology teacher. When he was five years old the Offield family moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma and his adopted first name, Jack, was the name of the first character he played on stage. Young Lewis/Jack grew up mostly in Oklahoma but also lived for periods of time with his grandmother in Kansas City, while there he attended Woodland Elementary and made spending money as a paperboy for The Kansas City Star. He recalled years later that he made good money selling extras in November,1916 during the reelection of President Woodrow Wilson. Oakie worked as a runner on Wall Street, New York City, Oakie worked in various musicals and comedies on Broadway from 1923 to 1927, when he moved to Hollywood to work in movies at the end of the silent film era. Oakie appeared in five silent films during 1927 and 1928, as the age of the talkies began, he signed with Paramount Pictures, making his first talking film, The Dummy, in 1929. When his contract with Paramount ended in 1934, Oakie decided to freelance and he was remarkably successful, appearing in 87 films, most made in the 1930s and 1940s. In the film Too Much Harmony, the part of Oakies on-screen mother was played by his real mother Mary Evelyn Offield, during the 1930s he was known as The Worlds Oldest Freshman, as a result of appearing in numerous films with a collegiate theme. He was also known for refusing to wear screen make-up of any kind, and this role was a broad parody of the fascist then-dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini. Not being limited by a studio contract, Oakie branched into radio and had his own radio show between 1936 and 1938. Late in his career he appeared in episodes of a number of television shows, including The Real McCoys, Breaking Point, Daniel Boone. His first marriage to Venita Varden in 1936 ended in 1938 when Venita got a decree of divorce. They reconciled, but finally divorced in 1944, Oakies second marriage was to actress Victoria Horne in 1950, with whom he lived at Oakridge until his death in 1978. Jack Oakie died on January 23,1978, in Los Angeles and his remains were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, in Los Angeles County. Jack and Victoria Oakie lived their married life at Oakridge, their 11-acre estate at 18650 Devonshire Street in Northridge. They acquired the former Marwyck estate of actress Barbara Stanwyck in 1950, Stanwyck commissioned the original residence designed by Paul Williams
34.
Kay Francis
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Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. Some of her material and personal papers are available to scholars and researchers in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives. Francis was born Katherine Edwina Gibbs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1905 and her parents, Joseph Sprague Gibbs and his actress wife Katharine Clinton Francis, had been married in 1903, however, by the time their daughter was four, Joseph had left the family. Francis inherited her height from her father, who stood 6 feet 4 inches. In reality, her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, Young Kay was often out on the road with her mother, and attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at age five. After also attending Miss Fuller’s School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York, at age 17, Kay became engaged to a well-to-do Pittsfield, Massachusetts man, James Dwight Francis. Their December 1922 marriage at New Yorks Saint Thomas Church ended in divorce, Kay and her husband lived in Pittsfield in a house next to and now owned by St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church,1304 North St.01201. In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce, while there, she was courted by a former Harvard athlete and member of the Boston Bar Association, Bill Gaston. Kay and Bill saw each other only on occasion, he was in Boston and Kay had decided to follow her mother’s footsteps and she made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeares Hamlet in November 1925. Francis claimed she got the part by “lying a lot, to the right people”, by February 1927, Francis returned to Broadway in the play Crime. Sylvia Sidney, although a teenager at the time, had the lead in Crime, after Kays divorce from Gaston, she became engaged to a society playboy, Alan Ryan Jr. She promised Alans family that she would not return to the stage – a promise that only a few months before she was back on Broadway as an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play. Francis was to appear in one other Broadway production, a play called Elmer the Great in 1928. Written by Ring Lardner and produced by George M. Cohan and he was so impressed by Francis that he encouraged her to take a screen test for the Paramount Pictures film Gentlemen of the Press. Francis made this film and the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts at Paramounts Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, Francis, signed to a Paramount contract, also made the move, and created an immediate impression. She frequently costarred with William Powell and appeared in as many as six to eight movies a year, franciss career flourished in spite of a slight but distinctive speech impediment that gave rise to the nickname Wavishing Kay Fwancis. Francis career at Paramount changed gears when Warner Bros. promised her star status at a better salary and she appeared in George Cukors Girls About Town and Twenty-Four Hours. After Francis career skyrocketed at Warner Bros. she would return to Paramount for Ernst Lubitschs Trouble in Paradise, in 1932, Warner Bros. persuaded both Francis and Powell to join the ranks of Warners stars, along with Ruth Chatterton
35.
Monte Carlo (1930 film)
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Monte Carlo is a 1930 American Pre-Code musical comedy film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It stars Jeanette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara, the film is notable for the song Beyond the Blue Horizon, which was written for the film and was performed by Jeanette MacDonald. The film was hailed by critics as a masterpiece of the newly emerging musical genre. The screenplay was based on the Booth Tarkington novel Monsieur Beaucaire, Countess Helene Mara is engaged to be married to Prince Otto Von Liebenheim but leaves him at the altar. She flees on a train to Monte Carlo and checks into a hotel. When she arrives at the casino a count named Rudolph Falliere takes a liking to her and poses as a hairdresser whom she hires and falls in love with but could not marry if he is a commoner. Her fiance later arrives and takes her to an opera and she sees Rudolph there in one of the expensive seats indicating he is too wealthy to be a hairdresser, when he reveals to her that he is a count, she realises she can marry him. Franke Harling, with uncredited music by Karl Hajos, Herman Hand, Sigmund Krumgold, the best-known song in the film is Beyond the Blue Horizon by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling with lyrics by Leo Robin. The song became a hit record for Jeanette MacDonald on the films release
36.
United Artists
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United Artists is an American film and television entertainment studio. The studio was bought, sold and restructured over the ensuing century. On December 14 of the year, however, MGM acquired the 48% stake of UAMG it did not own. UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5,1919, by Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks, each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, already Hollywood veterans, the four stars talked of forming their own company to better control their own work. They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over salaries and creative decisions. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before anything was formalized, when he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, The inmates are taking over the asylum. The four partners, with advice from McAdoo, formed their distribution company and its headquarters was established at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City. The original terms called for each of the stars to produce five pictures each year, UAs first film was a success. Without selling stock to the public, following the other studios, as a result, production was slow and the company distributed an annual average of five films during its first five years. By 1924 Griffith had dropped out and the company was facing a crisis, veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. He had been producing pictures for a decade, and he brought commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, contracts were signed with independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn, and Howard Hughes. In 1933, Schenck organized a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, called Twentieth Century Pictures, Schenck formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They began international operations, first in Canada and then in Mexico, by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries. When he was denied a share in 1935, Schenck resigned. He set up 20th Century Pictures merger with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century Fox, al Lichtman succeeded Schenck as company president. Other independent producers distributed through United Artists in the 1930s including, Walt Disney Productions, Alexander Korda, Hal Roach, David O. Selznick, as the years passed, and the dynamics of the business changed, these producing partners drifted away. Samuel Goldwyn Productions and Disney went to RKO, and Wanger to Universal Pictures, in the late 1930s, UA turned a profit
37.
The Lottery Bride
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The Lottery Bride is a 1930 American Pre-Code movie musical starring Jeanette MacDonald, John Garrick, ZaSu Pitts, and Joe E. Brown. The film was produced by Joseph M. Schenck and Arthur Hammerstein, based on the musical by Rudolf Friml, william Cameron Menzies is credited with the production design and special effects. The films final reel was in Technicolor in the original 80-minute release in 1930, however, most existing prints are black-and-white prints of the shorter 1937 re-release. On December 14,2011, Turner Classic Movies presented a print of film from George Eastman House, which restored the tinted sequences. List of early color feature films The Lottery Bride at the Internet Movie Database
38.
Fox Film
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The Fox Film Corporation was an American company that produced motion pictures, formed by William Fox on 1 February 1915. It was the successor to his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company. On July 23,1926, the company bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound on to film, after the Crash of 1929, William Fox lost control of the company in 1930, during a hostile takeover. Under new president Sidney Kent, the new owners merged the company with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox in 1935, William Fox entered the film industry in 1904 when he purchased a one-third share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon for $1,667. Fox invested further in the industry by founding the Greater New York Film Rental Company as a film distributor. In 1914, reflecting the broader scope of his business, he renamed it the Box Office Attraction Film Rental Company and he also continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCays early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. Later that year, Fox concluded that depending on other companies for the products he depended on was insufficient and he purchased the Éclair studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, along with property in Staten Island, and arranged for actors and crew. The company became a studio, with its name shortened to the Box Office Attractions Company. Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Fox concentrated on acquiring and building theaters, in 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood to oversee the studios West Coast production facilities where a more hospitable and cost-effective climate existed for filmmaking. Fox had purchased the Edendale studio of the failing Selig Polyscope Company, with the introduction of sound technology, Fox moved to acquire the rights to a sound-on-film process. In the years 1925–26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens and this resulted in the Movietone sound system later known as Fox Movietone developed at the Movietone Studio. Later that year, the company began offering films with a track, and the following year Fox began the weekly Fox Movietone News feature. The growing company needed space, and in 1926 Fox acquired 300 acres in the country west of Beverly Hills and built Movietone City. When rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew familys holdings, Loews Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters, as well as the MGM studio. When the family agreed to the sale, the merger of Fox, but MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer was not included in the deal and fought back. Using political connections, Mayer called on the Justice Departments antitrust unit to delay giving final approval to the merger, overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox was stripped of his empire in 1930 and ended up in jail. Fox Film, with more than 500 theatres, was placed in receivership, a bank-mandated reorganization propped the company up for a time, but it soon became apparent that despite its size, Fox could not stand on its own. Under new president Sidney Kent, the new owners began negotiating with the upstart, the two companies merged that spring as 20th Century-Fox
39.
Reginald Denny (actor)
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Reginald Leigh Denny was an English stage, film and television actor as well as an aviator and UAV pioneer. He was once an amateur boxing champion of Great Britain, years later he joined an opera company as a baritone, and toured India. After continuing his career in America, his film career started in 1915 with the old World Film Company. He came from a family which went to the United States in 1912 to appear in the stage production Quaker Girl. His father was the actor and singer W. H. Denny, Reginald appeared in John Barrymores 1920 Broadway production of Richard III, the two actors became friends. Denny was an actor in silent films and with the advent of talkies. His last role was in Batman as Commodore Schmidlapp and he made frequent appearances in television during the 1950s and 1960s. He served as an observer/gunner in World War I in the Royal Flying Corps, in the early 1930s, Denny became interested in radio controlled model aeroplanes. He and his business partners formed Reginald Denny Industries and opened a model shop in 1934 known as Reginald Denny Hobby Shops. He bought a design from Walter Righter in 1938 and began marketing it as the Dennyplane. In 1940, Denny and his partners won a US Army contract for their radio-controlled target drone and they manufactured nearly fifteen thousand drones for the US Army during the Second World War. The company was purchased by Northrop in 1952, marilyn Monroe was discovered working as an assembler at Radioplane. A photographer assigned by Dennys friend, Army publicist Captain Ronald Reagan, took several shots and persuaded her to work as a model, Reginald Denny died on 16 June 1967 in his 75th year after suffering a stroke whilst in England. His body was buried at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles and he was survived by his widow, Betsy who died in 1996 aged 89 and their three children. Denny was preceded in death by his daughter, Barbara Denny-Simmons who died in 1948, at age 32
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