1.
Lower East Side
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The Lower East Side is roughly bounded by the Bowery to the west, East Houston Street to the north, the F. D. R. Drive to the east and Canal Street to the south, the western boundary below Grand Street veers east off of the Bowery to approximately Essex Street. The neighborhood is bordered in the south and west by Chinatown – which extends north to roughly Grand Street, in the west by Nolita and in the north by the East Village. Historically, the Lower East Side referred to the area alongside the East River from about the Manhattan Bridge and Canal Street up to 14th Street and it included areas known today as East Village, Alphabet City, Chinatown, Bowery, Little Italy, and NoLIta. Parts of the East Village are still known as Loisaida, a Latino pronunciation of Lower East Side, Avenue C is known directly as Loisaida and is home to the Loisaida Festival every summer. Their main trail took approximately the route of Broadway, one encampment in the Lower East Side area, near Corlears Hook was called Rechtauck or Naghtogack. Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or half-free Africans, one of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place. These black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area, gradually, during the 17th century, there was an overall consolidation of the boweries and farms into larger parcels, and much of the Lower East side was then part of the Delancy farm. James Delanceys pre-Revolutionary farm east of post road leading from the city survives in the names Delancey Street, on the modern map of Manhattan, the Delancey farm is represented in the grid of streets from Division Street north to Houston Street. In response to the pressures of a city, Delancey began to survey streets in the southern part of the West Farm in the 1760s. The point of land on the East River now called Corlears Hook was also called Corlaers Hook under Dutch and British rule, and briefly Crown Point during British occupation in the Revolution. It was named after the schoolmaster Jacobus van Corlaer, who settled on this plantation that in 1638 was called by a Europeanized version of its Lenape name, Nechtans or Nechtanc. Corlaer sold the plantation to Wilhelmus Hendrickse Beekman, founder of the Beekman family of New York, the projection into the East River that retained Corlaers name was an important landmark for navigators for 300 years. On older maps and documents it is usually spelled Corlaers Hook, in the course of the 19th century they came to be called hookers. In 1833, Corlears Hook was the location of some of the first tenements built in New York City, the original location of Corlears Hook is now obscured by shoreline landfill. It was near the east end of the present pedestrian bridge over the FDR Drive near Cherry Street, the name is preserved in Corlears Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the East River Drive. The bulk of immigrants who came to New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to the Lower East Side, moving into crowded tenements there. By the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants settled in the area, later, more radical artists such as the Beat poets and writers were drawn to the neighborhood – especially the parts which later became the East Village – by the inexpensive housing and cheap food
2.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
3.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
4.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
5.
David Oppenheim (clarinetist)
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David Jerome Oppenheim was an American clarinetist, and classical music and television producer. Oppenheim directed the Masterworks division of Columbia Records from 1950 to 1959, during this time he worked with numerous notable figures in the music world including Igor Stravinsky, with whom he formed a friendship, later producing for him. In the 1960s, he worked for the production company Robert Saudek Associates. His 1964 documentary about cellist Pablo Casals, Casals at 88, dean of the New York University School of the Arts from 1969 to 1991, in 1985, he was the principal architect of the Tisch School of the Arts. One of his achievements was developing the NYU arts programs into a major institution with courses offered in photography, cinema, musical theater, dramatic acting. Oppenheim was born in Detroit in 1922 to Louis Oppenheim and Julia Nurko Oppenheim and his father owned a department store. He had one sibling, a brother, Stanley, at the age of 13, upon the death of his father, he and his family relocated to New York City, where he spent most of his life. He began playing the clarinet after this move and by age 20 was considered to be an accomplished player and he attended Juilliard and graduated from the Eastman School of Music in 1943. During World War II he served as an anti-tank gunner, david Diamonds Quintet for clarinet,2 violas and 2 cellos was written for Oppenheim and was first performed in 1952. Throughout the 1950s, Oppenheim directed the Masterworks division of Columbia Records and he recorded Leonard Bernsteins Clarinet Sonata, overseen by Aaron Copland. Also in 1955, he worked with Stravinsky who conducted his Story of a Soldier, the two became friends, and Oppenheim later produced several of his works and documentaries. In the 1960s, he worked for the production company under Robert Saudek, and helped produce Leonard Bernstein. He produced the Omnibus TV series, and worked as a writer and producer for CBS from 1962 until 1967, in 1964, Oppenheim wrote, produced and directed Casals at 88, a documentary about the cellist, which garnered the Prix Italia. Oppenheim became the dean of the NYU School of the Arts. Under his tenure, the school expanded from four departments to 16, in 1985 he obtained a $7.5 million grant from the Tisch brothers, Laurence and Preston, which helped centralize the school in one location, a 12-story building at 721 Broadway. Oppenheim was the architect on the renovation project. His first marriage was to actress Judy Holliday, from 1948 to 1957 and they had a son, Jonathan, who became a film editor whose work includes Paris Is Burning, Children Underground, and Arguing the World. Oppenheims second marriage was to Ellen Adler, daughter of Stella Adler and they had a daughter, Sara, and a son, Thomas, who became president and artistic director of Stella Adler Studio of Acting
6.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
7.
Born Yesterday (1950 film)
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Born Yesterday is a 1950 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay was credited to Albert Mannheimer based on the play of the same name by Garson Kanin. Because of some legal entanglements, Kanin did not receive screen credit and he hires a journalist to educate Billie, and, in the process, she learns just how deep Harrys corruption goes. According to Cohn biographer Bob Thomas, Cohn knew of the connection but was not bothered by it, in 2012 this film was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Uncouth tycoon Harry Brock goes to Washington, D. C. with his girlfriend, Emma Billie Dawn. The lawyer also presses Harry to marry Billie on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband, Harry becomes disgusted with Billies ignorance and lack of manners. He hires a tutor for her—journalist Paul Verrall, blossoming under Pauls encouragement and her own hard work, Billie learns about literature, history, politics and the law, and turns out to be much smarter than anybody knew. She begins to think for herself and apply her reading and learning to her life situation, the two begin to fall in love. Meanwhile, Devery has persuaded Harry to sign many of his assets to Billie to hide them from the government. When Harry needs to get back, he comes into conflict with Billies new-found independence. She and Paul use her leverage to escape from Harrys domination and she promises to give him back his property little by little as long as he leaves them alone. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Judy Holliday winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, the other nominations were for Best Costume Design - Black-and-White, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing - Screenplay. Holliday also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical or Comedy, the film received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture - Drama, and Best Motion Picture Director. The film was nominated for the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Award, in addition, Holliday received a Jussi Award, the primary film award in Finland for Best Foreign Actress. The magazine admired Hollidays performance and spoke of her in the breath as Carole Lombard. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists,2000,100 Laughs – #242005, AFIs 100 Years.100 Movie Quotes, Billie Dawn, Wouldja do me a favor, Harry. – Nominated 2008, AFIs 10 Top 10, Nominated Romantic Comedy Film A new version of Born Yesterday was released in 1993, starring Melanie Griffith, Don Johnson and John Goodman. In the Stage 5 episode of The Sopranos, J. T. cites this film as the inspiration for the mob boss character in the film Cleaver
8.
Academy Award for Best Actress
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The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered a performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories, at that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. The following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a performance in a single film. Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was officially limited to five nominations per year, one actress has been nominated posthumously, Jeanne Eagels. Only three film characters have been nominated more than once in this category, elizabeth I of England, Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, and Esther Blodgett in A Star is Born. Six women on the list have received an Honorary Academy Award for their acting, they are Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Deborah Kerr, Gena Rowlands, since its inception, the award has been given to 74 actresses. Katharine Hepburn has won the most awards in this category, with four Oscars, meryl Streep, who has a total of 20 Oscar nominations, has been nominated in this category on 16 occasions, resulting in two awards. As of the 2017 ceremony, Emma Stone is the most recent winner in category for her role as Mia Dolan in La La Land. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933
9.
Bells Are Ringing (musical)
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Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at a service. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Greens answering service, three of the shows tunes, Long Before I Knew You, Just in Time, and The Partys Over, became popular standards. Judy Holliday reprised her Broadway starring role in the 1960 film of the same name and it starred Judy Holliday as Ella and Sydney Chaplin as Jeff Moss. It also featured Jean Stapleton as Sue Summers, Eddie Lawrence as Sandor, George S. Irving, Jack Weston, Peter Gennaro, scenic and Costume design was by Raoul Pène Du Bois and the lighting design was by Peggy Clark. During her vacation, Holliday was replaced briefly by Betty Garrett, an original cast album was released by Columbia Records. The West End production opened on November 14,1957 at the Coliseum, the cast included Janet Blair as Ella Peterson, George Gaynes as Jeff Moss, Jean St. Clair as Sue Summers, Eddie Molloy as Sandor, and Allyn McLerie as Gwynne Smith. In 1960, a adaptation of the same name was released by MGM. The cast included Faith Prince as Ella, Marc Kudisch as Jeff, David Garrison, the Union Theatre in London staged a revival of Bells Are Ringing in late 2010, with leading lady Anna-Jane Casey in the role of Ella Peterson. The production was well-reviewed and sold out its brief run, in November 2010 New York City Centers Encores. Series produced a concert of the show starring Kelli OHara, Will Chase. Reviews for OHara were excellent, but critics felt the show itself was too dated for modern audiences. Ben Brantley in his New York Timesreview wrote, Ms. O’Hara is the possessor of a soprano that was made for the shimmering romantic confessions so essential to classic American musicals. Offering sincerity without saccharine, her voice seems to emerge almost involuntarily, was revived on Broadway only nine years ago, and it seemed irretrievably dated then. ACT ONE Ella Peterson works for Susanswerphone, an answering service owned by a woman named Sue. She listens in on others lives and adds some interest to her own existence by adopting different identities –. They include Blake Barton, an out-of-work Method actor, Dr. Ella considers the relationships with these clients perfect because she cant see them, Jeff is writing a play called The Midas Touch, the first play hes written since his writing partner left him. One day the producer of the play insists that he finish the play by the next morning, while asking her to wake him up on time, he turns to Ella for help in writing the play
10.
Communism
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Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism, and the political ideologies grouped around both. The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production. Likewise, some communists defend both theory and practice, while others argue that historical practice diverged from communist principles to a greater or lesser degree, according to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, in the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has also traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on ownership of property. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine, in the early 19th century, Various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the emphasis with a rational. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, in its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, in 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to power of Lenins Bolsheviks. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority, the event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development, Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule, the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenins Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalins attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party and its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a role in many independence movements
11.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
12.
Yiddish
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Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script, the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קדש, the term Yiddish, short for Yiddish-Teitsch, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts. Modern Yiddish has two major forms, Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern, Mideastern, and Northeastern dialects, Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern, Midwestern, and Northwestern dialects, the term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture. Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish, 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities, the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. Exactly what German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed, both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreichs view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, recent linguistic research has finessed, contested, or challenged the Weinreich model, providing alternative approaches to the origins of Yiddish. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base, the two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East, wexlers model has met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Alternative theories recognize the extent of Yiddishs Germanic vocabulary. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany and its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews
13.
Jewish National Fund
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The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a non-profit organization, by 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees in Israel and it has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres of land and established more than 1,000 parks. In 2002, the JNF was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society, the JNF was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 with Theodor Herzls support based on the proposal of a German Jewish mathematician, Zvi Hermann Schapira. Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee, in 1909, the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. The establishment of the “Olive Tree Fund” marked the beginning of Diaspora support of afforestation efforts, the Blue Box has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the Diaspora. In the period between the two wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money, for a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel. The first parcel of land,200 dunams east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres, at the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land, JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km². By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the held by Jews in the region. By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of 936,000 dunums of land, most of the JNFs activities during the Mandatory period were closely associated with Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department. From the beginning, JNFs policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it, after Israels establishment in 1948, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF. On January 27,1949,1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF for the price of I£11 million, another 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF in October 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised, in 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company under the name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. In 1960, administration of the held by the JNF-KKL, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency. The ILA was then responsible for managing some 93% of the land of Israel, all the land managed by the ILA was defined as Israeli lands, it included both land owned by the government and land owned by the JNF-KKL
14.
Russian Jewish
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Jews in the Russian Empire have historically constituted a large religious diaspora, the vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest population of Jews in the world. The presence of Jewish people in the European part of Russia can be traced to the 7th–14th centuries CE, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Jewish population in Kiev, in present-day Ukraine, was restricted to a separate quarter. Evidence of the presence of Jewish people in Muscovite Russia is first documented in the chronicles of 1471, during the reign of Catherine II in the 18th century, Jewish people were restricted to the Pale of Settlement within Russia, the territory where they could live or immigrate to. Beginning in the 1880s, waves of pogroms swept across different regions of the empire for several decades. More than two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920, mostly to the United States, before 1917 there were 300,000 Zionists in Russia, while the main Jewish socialist organization, the Bund, had 33,000 members. Only 958 Jews had joined the Bolshevik Party before 1917, thousands joined after the Revolution, the chaotic years of World War I, the February and October Revolutions, and the Russian Civil War had created social disruption that led to anti-Semitism. Some 150,000 Jews were killed in the pogroms of 1918–1922,125,000 of them in Ukraine,25,000 in Belarus and these were probably the largest-scale European massacres of Jews to date. The pogroms were perpetrated by anti-communist forces, sometimes, Red Army units engaged in pogroms as well. After a short period of confusion, the Soviets started executing guilty individuals, the Russian Civil War pogroms shocked world Jewry and rallied many Jews to the Red Army and the Soviet regime, and also strengthened the desire for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people. In August 1919 the Soviet government arrested many rabbis, seized Jewish properties, including synagogues, the Jewish section of the Communist Party labeled the use of the Hebrew language reactionary and elitist and the teaching of Hebrew was banned. Zionists were persecuted harshly, with Jewish communists leading the attacks, following the civil war, however, the new Bolshevik governments policies produced a flourishing of secular Jewish culture in Belarus and western Ukraine in the 1920s. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Jews were 1.8 percent of the Soviet population, in 1934 the Soviet state established the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Far East, but the region never came to have a majority Jewish population. Today, the JAO is Russias only autonomous oblast and, aside of Israel, the observance of the Sabbath was banned in 1929, foreshadowing the dissolution of the Communist Partys Yiddish-language Yevsektsia in 1930 and worse repression to come. Numerous Jews were victimized in Stalins purges as counterrevolutionaries and reactionary nationalists, the share of Jews in the Soviet ruling elite declined during the 1930s, but was still more than double their proportion in the general Soviet population. According to Israeli historian Benjamin Pinkus, We can say that the Jews in the Soviet Union took over the privileged position, in the 1930s, many Jews held high rank in the Red Army High Command, Generals Iona Yakir, Yan Gamarnik, Yakov Smushkevich and Grigori Shtern. During World War Two, an estimated 500,000 soldiers in the Red Army were Jewish, about 160,000 were decorated, and more than a hundred achieved the rank of Red Army general. Over 150 were designated Heroes of the Soviet Union, the highest award in the country, more than two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust in warfare and in Nazi-occupied territories. For many years during this period, Russia had a rate of immigration to Israel than any other country
15.
Sunnyside, Queens
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Sunnyside is a upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Western portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It shares borders with Hunters Point and Long Island City to the west, Astoria to the north, Woodside to the east, the neighborhood is part of Queens Community District 2, served by Queens Community Board 2. The name Sunnyside originates with the Bragraw family, French Huguenots who had purchased the land in 1713, Sunnyside was a rural hamlet mostly consisting of small farms and marshland. It was incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, and developed into a community after the Queensboro Bridge was completed in 1909. A large portion of the neighborhood is six-story apartment buildings constructed during the 1920s and 1930s, each private residence has a small front garden facing the street and a private garden in the rear. The rental units in the two- and three-family houses enjoy private terraces overlooking the gardens. There are two configurations, the condition and the mews condition, at the edges of the community some homes simply line the street. Homes in the courtyard blocks enclose a courtyard that was designated a common, landscaped. Each homeowner actually owned, and paid taxes on, the part of the common in the block and lot, the mews houses face a common front court and back on alleys, each mews house also has a private rear yard. This model allowed for denser development, while also providing ample open/green-space amenities. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright served as the architects and planners for this development. As an amenity for the residents, the City Housing Corporation reserved lots on the edge of the development abutting the railroad yards for a private park. This is one of two private parks in the city, the other being Gramercy Park. These well-planned garden homes are now listed as a historic district, the project grew out of discussions in the early 1920s about housing and planning, Lewis Mumford was a leading participant. In the early years of the Great Depression, nearly 60 percent of the residents lost their homes to foreclosure and those difficult years saw organized resistance by residents who forcefully resisted efforts by city marshals to evict families. Those covenants lapsed in the mid-1960s, and some rushed to claim their property. With that designation came rules protecting the inner courts and landscaping, and prohibiting driveways and curbcuts, rear sheds, the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District is a national historic district that includes 66 contributing buildings and 12 contributing sites. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, in 2003, a grassroots movement started to request designation as a New York City Historic District, in response to lack of protection for the historic character of the homes in the neighborhood
16.
Julia Richman High School
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Julia Richman High School is a defunct comprehensive high school in New York City, New York. Built in 1923 and located at East 67th Street and Second Avenue, the school is named after Julia Richman, the first woman district superintendent of schools in New York City. For much of the history it was a girls high school. In 1995, after years of decline, the city reorganized the school into six separately functioning small schools within a building renamed as the Julia Richman Education Complex. Hunter College is anticipated to acquire the school site, schools chancellor Joel Klein has joined this effort. Hunter College seeks to build a tower on the site of the school. In 2007, Hunter College offered the Julia Richman Education Complex one of its properties at East 25th Street, under the plan, the JREC schools would temporarily relocate to a site near the East River Drive while Hunter builds a new site for JREC. S
17.
Mercury Theatre
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The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures, the Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools. After a series of acclaimed Broadway productions, the Mercury Theatre progressed into its most popular incarnation as The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The radio series included one of the most notable and infamous radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds, the Mercury Theatre on the Air produced live radio dramas in 1938–1940 and again briefly in 1946. In addition to Welles, the Mercury players included Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Martin Gabel, Norman Lloyd, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, Much of the troupe would later appear in Welless films at RKO, particularly Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. In 1935, John Houseman, director of the Negro Theatre Unit in New York, invited his recent collaborator, 20-year-old Orson Welles and their first production was an adaptation of William Shakespeares Macbeth with an entirely African-American cast. The play opened April 14,1936, at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and was received rapturously and that production was followed by an adaption of the farce Horse Eats Hat and, in 1937, Marlowes Doctor Faustus and Marc Blitzsteins socialist musical The Cradle Will Rock. The latter received much publicity when on the eve of its preview the theatre was padlocked by the WPA, Welles invited the waiting audience to walk several blocks to a neighboring theatre where the show was performed without sets or costumes. Blitzstein played an upright piano while the cast, barred from taking the stage by their union, sat in the audience and rose from their seats to sing. Welles and Houseman broke with the Federal Theatre Project in August 1937 and founded their own repertory company, the name was inspired by the title of the iconoclastic magazine, The American Mercury. To be sure, this generated a bit of resentment among his collaborators. However, in a profound sense, that credit is, in fact. The concepts that animated each of them originated with him and, Welles and Houseman secured the Comedy Theatre, a 687-seat Broadway theatre at 110 West 41st Street in New York City, and reopened it as the Mercury Theatre. It was the venue for all their productions from November 1937 through November 1938. The Mercury Theatre began with a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed adaption of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar that evoked comparison to contemporary Fascist Italy and it premiered on Broadway on November 11,1937. The production moved from the Mercury Theatre to the larger National Theatre on January 24,1938 and it ran through May 28,1938, for a total of 157 performances. At the National Theatre, Polly Rowles took the role of Calpurnia, from January 20,1938, a roadshow version of Caesar with a different cast toured the United States. The company included Tom Powers as Brutus, and Edmond OBrien as Marc Antony, the Mercury Theatres second production was a staging of Thomas Dekkers Elizabethan comedy The Shoemakers Holiday, which attracted unanimous raves again
18.
Orson Welles
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George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring, although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety. His first film was Citizen Kane, which he co-wrote, produced, directed, Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He has been praised as the ultimate auteur, Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai and Chimes at Midnight, are underappreciated. Known for his voice, Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor. George Orson Welles was born May 6,1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles and he was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head. Despite his familys affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood and his parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital May 10,1924, the Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrices funeral. After his mothers death Welles ceased pursuing music and it was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony in Wyoming, New York, established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward. There he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, Welles briefly attended public school before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, when the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again. During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom, in some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know, said Roger Hill, who became Welless teacher and lifelong friend. Welles briefly attended school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade. At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions there, Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences, wrote critic Richard France
19.
John Houseman
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He is perhaps best known for his role as Professor Charles W. Kingsfield in the film The Paper Chase, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised his role as Kingsfield in the subsequent television series adaptation of The Paper Chase, Houseman was also known for his commercials for the brokerage firm Smith Barney. He had a distinctive Mid-Atlantic English accent, in common with many actors of his generation, Houseman was born in Bucharest, Romania, on September 22,1902, the son of May and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business. His mother was British, from a Christian family of Welsh and Irish descent and his father was an Alsatian-born Jew. He became a United States citizen in 1943, Houseman died at age 86 of spinal cancer on October 31,1988 at his home in Malibu, California. He also directed Lute Song, The Country Girl, and Don Juan in Hell, Houseman himself worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, only turning to the theater following the 1929 stock market crash. He received his first opportunity of any note in 1933 when composer Virgil Thomson recruited him to direct Four Saints in Three Acts, Welles consented and, after preliminary conversations, agreed to leave the play he was in after a single night to take the lead in Housemans production. Panic opened at the Imperial Theatre on March 15,1935, among the cast was Housemans ex-wife, Zita Johann, who had co-starred with Boris Karloff three years earlier in Universals The Mummy. In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration put unemployed theatre performers, the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project was headed by Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress, and Houseman, a theatre producer. The incidental music was composed by Virgil Thomson, the play premiered at the Lafayette Theatre on April 14,1936, to enthusiastic reviews and remained sold out for each of its nightly performances. The play was regarded by critics and patrons as an enormous, if controversial, after 10 months with the Negro Theater Project, however, Houseman felt he was faced with the dilemma of risking his future. In 1936, the two were running a WPA unit in midtown Manhattan for classic productions called Project No.891 and their first production would be Christopher Marlowes Tragical History of Dr. Faustus which Welles directed, also playing the title role. In June 1937, Project No.891 would produce their most controversial work with The Cradle Will Rock, written by Marc Blitzstein the musical was about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown, which is run by the boss, Mister Mister. The show was thought to have had left-wing and unionist sympathies, shortly before the show was to open, FTP officials in Washington announced that no productions would open until after July 1,1937, the beginning of the new fiscal year. In his memoir, Run-Through, Houseman wrote about the surrounding the opening night at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. All the performers had been enjoined not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on July 14,1937, the cast and crew left their government-owned theatre and walked 20 blocks to another theatre, with the audience following. No one knew what to expect, when they got there Blitzstein himself was at the piano, one of the non-professional performers, Olive Stanton, who played the part of Moll, the prostitute, stood up in the audience, and began singing her part. All the other performers, in turn, stood up for their parts, thus the oratorio version of the show was born
20.
Betty Comden
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Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in Brooklyn, New York, to Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and her mother, Rebecca, an English teacher, were both Russian immigrants, both observant Jews. Basya attended Erasmus Hall High School and studied drama at New York University, according to the New York Times. In 1938, mutual friends introduced her to Adolph Green, an aspiring actor, along with the young Judy Holliday and Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Due to the success, the Revuers appeared in the 1944 film Greenwich Village, but their roles were so small they were barely noticed. Comden and Green wrote the book and lyrics, which included parts for themselves. Their next musical, Billion Dollar Baby in 1945, with music by Morton Gould was not a success, Comden and Green headed to California and soon found work at MGM. The duo reunited with Gene Kelly for their most successful project, Comden and Green provided the story and screenplay, the songs were hits from the late 1920s and early 1930s by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. They followed this with another hit, The Band Wagon, in which the characters of Lester and Lily and they were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and Its Always Fair Weather. They earned three Screen Writers Guild Awards, for the two aforementioned movies as well as On the Town, the score, including the standards Just in Time, Long Before I Knew You, and The Partys Over, proved to be one of their richest. In 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green and it was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977. Comden and Greens Broadway work in the 1960s included four collaborations with Jule Styne and they wrote the lyrics for Do Re Mi, and the book and lyrics for Subways Are For Sleeping, Fade Out – Fade In, and Hallelujah, Baby. Comden and Green wrote the libretto for the 1970 musical Applause, an adaptation of the film All About Eve, Comden also played Letitia Primrose in that musical when original star Imogene Coca left the show. Comden and Greens final musical hit was 1991s The Will Rogers Follies, in 1980, Comden was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And, in 1981, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, in the early 1980s, Comden acted in Wendy Wassersteins play Isnt It Romantic, portraying the lead characters mother. In 1984, filmmaker Sidney Lumet directed a film about Greta Garbo, Garbo Talks, starring Anne Bancroft, the producers of the film were sure that the real Garbo either could not be located or would flatly turn them down, to appear in a cameo. They did try however, with an associate of Garbo. The associate never responded, so Comden was asked to appear in the film for the brief, Comden and Green received Kennedy Center Honors in 1991. Comden and Green were a partnership, not a romantic couple
21.
Adolph Green
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Many people thought the pair were married, but in fact they were not a romantic couple at all. Nevertheless, they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a partnership that produced some of Hollywood. Green was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen, after high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University and they formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Comden and Green wrote the lyrics and book, which included parts for themselves. Their next two musicals, Billion Dollar Baby and Bonanza Bound were not successful, and once again headed to California. They reunited with Kelly for their most successful project, the classic Singin in the Rain and they were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and Its Always Fair Weather, both of which earned them a Screen Writers Guild Award, as did On the Town. The score, including the standards Just in Time, Long Before I Knew You, in 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a revue that included some of their early sketches. It was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977 and their many collaborators included Garson Kanin, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne, and André Previn. The team was not without its failures, in 1980, Green was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And, in 1981, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, in 1989 he appeared as Dr. Pangloss in Bernsteins Candide. Comden and Green received Kennedy Center Honors in 1991, greens third wife was actress Phyllis Newman, who had understudied Holliday in Bells Are Ringing. They had two children, Adam and Amanda, both of whom are songwriters and these shows are collated from the biography above. Pangloss / Martin Frasier as Walter The Substance of Fire as Mr
22.
Village Vanguard
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The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22,1935, by Max Gordon, at first, it featured many forms of music, such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957. For years prior to 1935, the Vanguard’s proprietor, Max Gordon and his first attempt at a Village Vanguard opened in 1934 on Charles Street and Greenwich Avenue. Gordon intended for the Vanguard to be a forum for poets and artists as well as a site for musical performances. Yet, due to insufficient facilities, Gordon was refused a license from the police department and was unable to create the club that he originally envisioned. ”In 1934, Gordon moved his business and purchased the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle, first opened its doors in 1935, the Golden Triangles basement facility structure resembled that of an isosceles triangle. After purchasing the property, Gordon changed the name of the club to the Village Vanguard, like its prototype on Charles Street, the Vanguard was initially dedicated to poetry readings and folk music. Painters would go there to have discussions regarding the Spanish Civil War, political posters dotted the walls, enhancing the atmosphere of intensity and discourse. The club also had a rich history, with comedians like Phil Leeds performing there. Yet throughout the thirties and forties, amidst the neo-bohemian culture that flourished in the Village, “The biggest reason my pals and I went to the Vanguard, though, was because there were jazz jam sessions in the afternoons on Sundays. You could go hear Lester Young, Ben Webster, all the greatest jazz musicians for fifty cents at the door, or something like that. ”Even though jazz was not yet the main attraction at the club, the Vanguard was still a haven for the then established small group swing idiom. In the 1930s and 1940s, performers of the standing of Sidney Bechet, Una Mae Carlisle, Art Hodes, and Mary Lou Williams performed at the Vanguard. The wife of Max Gordon, Lorraine Gordon, has commented on the growth of jazz at the club, stating “in time, Max began to book acts, many proved to be high-caliber jazzmen. ”In 1940, Roy Eldridge performed at the Vanguard. His virtuosic performance coupled with his dedicated following presented the possibility that jazz sets could be at the top of the bill, as modern jazz developed in the 1940s, small group sets began to dominate the Vanguard scene. The maturation of jazz at the Vanguard can be attributed to the growing interest in and identification with the music among college students. In 1940, a resident trio was formed that included the pianist Eddie Heywood, along with Zutty Singleton, mirroring the culture in the Village, the jazz scene at the Vanguard was steadily growing. By 1957, one writes, “Gordon reversed his policy, putting jazz at the top of the bill. Thus the Vanguard booked Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, the story of Monk’s introduction to the Vanguard began with the first ever encounter between Max and Lorraine
23.
Rainbow Room
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The Rainbow Room is a fine-dining restaurant and event space previously run by the Cipriani family on the 65th floor of the Comcast Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. It is the second highest restaurant in New York City behind ONE Dine on the 101st floor of One World Trade Center, opened in 1934, it was the first restaurant to be located in a high-rise building and remained the highest elevated restaurant in the United States for decades. Suffering from a decline in business following the crisis of 2007–08. In 2012, it was declared a New York City landmark by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, on September 17,2013, it was announced that the Rainbow Room would reopen in fall 2014 after undergoing a full restoration along with a new executive chef and management team. After a years-long restoration process by Gabellini Sheppard Associates, it reopened to the public on October 5,2014, the renovation includes the landmarked dance floor and a new cocktail lounge called SixtyFive. The Rainbow Room was originally designed by architect Wallace K. Harrison of Associated Architects, supposedly inspired by French architect Jacques Carlu Round Room, the Rainbow Room draws its inspiration from the Round Room in the Carlu, his design for a restaurant in Toronto. Designed in a classical style, The Rainbow Room featured a revolving dance floor, a live big band orchestra. Private events were hosted in several rooms on the floor below. Culinarily, the Rainbow Room has focused on Modern American cuisine, on the same floor of the Comcast building was The Rainbow Grill, a separate, somewhat less expensive restaurant that had an à la carte menu and its own celebrations on major holidays. David Rockefeller, the son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. commissioned the restoration, led by Joe Baum, Arthur Emil, and architect Hugh Hardy. In 1988, Phil Donahue presented a special from the Rainbow Room, honoring Mary Martin, with Steve Leeds leading the Rainbow Room Orchestra, and guest vocalists Michael Feinstein, bandleader Leeds sang the final number Isnt It Romantic. The Ciprianis extensively remodeled the grill and fired all union workers, in 2003 Michael DiLeonardo, an associate of Peter Gotti, turned states evidence against the accused mobster. In his testimony DiLeonardo said the Ciprianis gave $120,000 to the Gambino crime family to make union problems at the Rainbow Room disappear. On New Years Eve, the price of admission included caviar, truffles, champagne, and mixed drinks, admission to the 2007 New Years Eve party was $1600.00 per person. In 2008, the Cipriani company filed a brief with the City of New York, the designation would prevent the Rainbow Room from being converted into office space. In 2009 the Ciprianis announced that they planned to close the grill although part would remain open as a bar, the Ciprianis chief operating officer blamed the current economic crisis in New York and around the world, on top of an ongoing dispute with our landlord. Tishman Speyer said it intended to evict the Ciprianis unless they paid back rent, the two sides settled the dispute, with the Ciprianis agreeing to give up possession of the restaurant and banquet hall on August 1,2009. The last night of dancing at the hot spot took place on June 5,2009
24.
Trocadero (Los Angeles)
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Cafe Trocadero was an upscale nightclub that opened on the Sunset Strip in 1934 and immediately became the place where Hollywood stars went to be seen. Not surprisingly, photographs of the stars out on the town at the Troc one night might appear in The Hollywood Reporter the next day, as both Cafe Trocadero and THR were owned by William R. Wilkerson. A black tie French-inspired supper club, at 8610 Sunset Blvd. in the posh Sunset Plaza section of the Strip, it was one of the most famous nightclubs in the world. In May 1938, Wilkerson announced that he had sold Cafe Trocadero to Nola Hahn, the owner of Club Continental, formerly the Airport Gardens, an illegal casino on Sonora Avenue in Glendale, California. Within a year, however, Cafe Trocadero was under the management of Felix Young, Young got into a dispute over the lease with the landlord, Chateau Sunset Corp. and abruptly closed the nightclub in October 1939. Before the month was over, Cafe Trocadero was thrown into involuntary bankruptcy, the club briefly reopened later that year as The Trocadero, in time to host the Hollywood premiere party for Gone with the Wind in December 1939. But by May 1940, the new owners were out of business, Wilkerson later launched Ciros nightclub and LaRue Restaurant, both also on the Strip. He was also the developer of the Flamingo Las Vegas. The cafe operated under a series of managers, including composer, many ads for the Trocadero in the California Eagle contained the headline Turk Prujan Presents. Followed by a musical artist that was to perform at the club. In January 1942, just a few weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Felix Young opened a night club six blocks west of the Cafe Trocadero site. His premiere act was a singer, Lena Horne. Her sell-out performances there made her a sensation in Hollywood and led to an engagement at Mocambo, another Strip nightclub. In August 1943, bandleader Eddie LeBaron and his brother Albert Gastine opened a new club at 8610 Sunset called Eddie LeBarons Trocadero, the club would become famous for featuring jitterbugging contests. After World War II, the Trocadero went through a series of owners and managers and it closed for good in 1947. Actress/comedian Thelma Todd, who died mysteriously in December 1935, spent an evening at the Trocadero at a party thrown by Ida Lupino, Todd had formerly been married to Pat DiCicco, and was angry that he had shown up there with another actress, Margaret Lindsay. The party was one of the last times that she was seen alive, Cafe Trocadero was featured in the 1937 movie A Star is Born starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It was also parodied in the 1938 Warner Bros. cartoon, the club also received a brief mention, via actual film footage, in 1944s Whats Cookin Doc
25.
Hollywood
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Hollywood is an ethnically diverse, densely populated neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its studios, and its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the industry. Hollywood was a community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, in 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished, the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley, known as the Father of Hollywood, along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood. The man got out of the wagon and bowed, the Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, I holly-wood, meaning hauling wood. H. J. Whitley had an epiphany and decided to name his new town Hollywood, Holly would represent England and wood would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had already started over 100 towns across the western United States, Whitley arranged to buy the 500-acre E. C. Hurd ranch and disclosed to him his plans for the land. They agreed on a price and Hurd agreed to sell at a later date, before Whitley got off the ground with Hollywood, plans for the new town had spread to General Harrison Gray Otis, Hurds wife, eastern adjacent ranch co-owner Daeida Wilcox, and others. Daeida Wilcox may have learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and she recommended the same name to her husband, Harvey. In August 1887, Wilcox filed with the Los Angeles County Recorders office a deed and parcel map of property he had sold named Hollywood, Wilcox wanted to be the first to record it on a deed. The early real-estate boom busted that year, yet Hollywood began its slow growth. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent, the old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood. The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley who was a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard, having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitleys company developed and sold one of the residential areas
26.
Leonard Bernstein
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Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim, according to music critic Donal Henahan, he was one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of lectures on classical music, starting in 1954. He was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard, as a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular. He was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein and he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity. Within the world of music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West. His family spent their summers at their home in Sharon. His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents called him Leonard. He officially changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, to his friends and many others he was simply known as Lenny. His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a hair product store in downtown Lawrence, it is no longer standing on the corners of Amesbury, Sam initially opposed young Leonards interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to concerts in his teenage years. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School, as a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates. After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, one of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes play The Birds in the original Greek. Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet Fancy Free, during his time at Harvard he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. Bernstein also mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a friend and influence on Bernstein
27.
Carmen Miranda
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Carmen Miranda, GCIH • OMC was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, dancer, Broadway actress, and film star who was popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. Nicknamed The Brazilian Bombshell, Carmen Miranda is noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in her American films, as a young woman, Miranda worked in a boutique designing hats before ultimately recording her first album with composer Josué de Barros in 1929. Throughout the 1930s, Miranda performed on Brazilian radio stations and appeared in five Brazilian sound films known as chanchadas, which celebrated Brazilian music, dance, and carnival culture. In 1939, Lee Shubert, a Broadway businessman, offered Carmen Miranda an eight-week contract to perform in The Streets of Paris on Broadway after seeing her at Cassino da Urca, in Rio de Janeiro. In 1940, she made her first Hollywood film, Down Argentine Way, with Don Ameche and Betty Grable, her exotic clothing and Latin accent became her trademark. In the same year, she was voted the third most popular personality in the United States and was invited to sing and dance for President Franklin Roosevelt, along with her group, Bando da Lua. In 1943, Miranda starred in Busby Berkleys The Gangs All Here, by 1945, she was the highest paid woman in the United States. Miranda made a total of fourteen Hollywood films between 1940 and 1953, though hailed as a talented performer, her popularity waned by the end of World War II. She later grew to resent the stereotypical Brazilian Bombshell image she cultivated and attempted to free of it with limited success. Carmen Miranda was the first Latin American star to be invited to imprint her hands and feet in the courtyard of Graumans Chinese Theatre and she became the first South American to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is considered the precursor of Brazils Tropicalismo cultural movement of the 1960s, a museum was later constructed in Rio de Janeiro in her honor, and in 1995 she was the subject of the acclaimed documentary Carmen Miranda, Bananas is My Business. Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada and she was the second daughter of José Maria Pinto da Cunha and Maria Emília Miranda. In 1909 when she was ten months old, her father emigrated alone to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro and her mother followed in 1910 with their daughters Olinda and Maria do Carmo. Maria do Carmo, later Carmen, never returned to Portugal, in Brazil, her parents had four more children, Amaro, Cecília, Aurora and Óscar. She was christened Carmen by her father because of his love for the opera comique and this passion for opera influenced his children, and Mirandas love for singing and dancing at an early age. She went to school at the Convent of Saint Therese of Lisieux and her father did not approve of her plans to enter show business. However, her mother supported her and was beaten when her husband discovered Miranda had auditioned for a radio show and she had previously sung at parties and festivals in Rio. Her older sister Olinda contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Portugal for treatment, Miranda went to work in a tie shop at age 14 to help pay her sisters medical bills
28.
Greenwich Village (film)
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Greenwich Village is a 1944 American film from Twentieth Century Fox directed by Walter Lang. It stars Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche, in 1922, aspiring composer Kenneth Harvey travels from the Midwest to Greenwich Village, New York, where he hopes to interest famed composer Kavosky in his concerto. Kenneth wanders into a speakeasy owned by the brash Danny OHare, Danny hopes that the show will make Bonnie a star and make up for the fact that he cost her an opportunity of playing a leading role for Ziegfeld. Dannys other main entertainer, Princess Querida, mistakenly assumes that Kenneth is rich, Danny immediately targets Kenneth as a chump and begins to get friendly with him, but Bonnie disapproves and allows Kenneth to escort her home. At her apartment, Bonnie confesses that when she came to Greenwich Village, she had aspirations to become a poet, and advises Kenneth to be more careful about displaying his money. Danny, jealous of Kenneth and Bonnies obvious attraction to other, brings the gang up to Bonnies apartment for a party. Meanwhile, Hofer, a former violinist with Kavoskys orchestra, persuades the maestro to hear Kenneth play, Hofer then lies to Kenneth, telling him that Kavosky wants to perform his concerto at Carnegie Hall, and that they should begin the orchestrations immediately. Kenneth works hard on his music, which he withdraws from Dannys show, Danny is infuriated, especially when he sees Bonnie and Kenneth kiss, but Bonnie is thrilled by Kenneths seeming good fortune. Hofer disappears with the money, and Kenneth discovers his treachery after speaking to the surprised Kavosky, the heartbroken Kenneth is on his way home when he sees Hofer returning the money to Danny, who has realized that Bonnie is truly in love with Kenneth. The young composer misunderstands the situation and assumes that Danny and Bonnie were in on the swindle, while Kenneth is angrily packing, Querida questions him and learns of his misapprehension. She then gets him arrested by giving him some bootleg liquor to carry, and while Kenneth languishes in jail, Danny, Bonnie and the others step up their rehearsals and prepare to open the show. On opening night, Dannys right-hand man, Brophy, bails Kenneth out of jail, as he watches from the audience, Kenneth is amazed to see Kavosky conduct his concerto, which has been turned into an elaborate number featuring Querida and Bonnie. Kenneth rushes backstage, where Danny reveals that Kavosky volunteered his services after learning of the swindle perpetrated by Hofer, Danny also advises Kenneth to make up with Bonnie, and after her final number, Kenneth embraces her in the wings. Their contribution to the film is doubtful, however. According to a news published by The Hollywood Reporter in 29 October 1942, Alice Faye, other actors announced by Hollywood Reporter as having been cast included Ronald Graham, Jack Oakie, Phil Baker and Perry Como. In July 1943, The Hollywood Reporter also reported that Lillian Porter had been cast in the film, the picture marked the screen debut of The Revuers, a cabaret group featuring Judy Holliday, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Alvin Hammer. After the group broke up, Holliday became a well-known Broadway and motion picture comedian, Comden and Green became a popular songwriting team whose films included On the Town. Actor Felix Bressart was borrowed from MGM for the production, Carmen Mirandas rendition of Give Me a Band and a Bandana includes excerpts from O Que e que a baiana tem. by Dorival Caymmi and Quando eu penso na baia by Ary Barroso
29.
20th Century Fox
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
30.
U.S. Army Air Forces
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Each of these forces had a commanding general who reported directly to the Army Chief of Staff. S. Army to control its own installations and support personnel, the peak size of the AAF during the Second World War was over 2.4 million men and women in service and nearly 80,000 aircraft by 1944, and 783 domestic bases in December 1943. By V-E Day, the Army Air Forces had 1.25 million men stationed overseas, in its expansion and conduct of the war, the AAF became more than just an arm of the greater organization. By the end of World War II, the Army Air Forces had become virtually an independent service and this contrast between theory and fact is. fundamental to an understanding of the AAF. Gen. Billy Mitchell that led to his later court-martial, a strategy stressing precision bombing of industrial targets by heavily armed, long-range bombers emerged, formulated by the men who would become its leaders. Since 1920, control of units had resided with commanders of the corps areas. Both were created in 1933 when a conflict with Cuba seemed possible following a coup détat. Activation of GHQ Air Force represented a compromise between strategic airpower advocates and ground force commanders who demanded that the Air Corps mission remain tied to that of the land forces. GHQ Air Force organized combat groups administratively into a force of three wings deployed to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts but was small in comparison to European air forces. Corps area commanders continued to control over airfields and administration of personnel. The expected activation of Army General Headquarters prompted Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to request a study from Chief of the Air Corps Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold resulting on 5 October 1940 in a proposal for creation of an air staff, unification of the air arm under one commander, and equality with the ground and supply forces. Marshall implemented a compromise that the Air Corps found entirely inadequate, naming Arnold as acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Air but rejecting all organizational points of his proposal. GHQ Air Force instead was assigned to the control of Army General Headquarters, although the latter was a training and not an operational component, when it was activated in November 1940. A division of the GHQ Air Force into four air defense districts on 19 October 1940 was concurrent with the creation of air forces to defend Hawaii. The air districts were converted in March 1941 into numbered air forces with an organization of 54 groups. Marshall had come to the view that the air forces needed a simpler system, Arnold and Marshall agreed that the AAF would enjoy a general autonomy within the War Department until the end of the war, while its commanders would cease lobbying for independence. Marshall, a proponent of airpower, left understood that the Air Force would likely achieve its independence following the war
31.
Belasco Theatre
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The Belasco Theatre is a Broadway theatre opened in 1907 at 111 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan. Originally known as the Stuyvesant Theatre, it was designed by architect George Keister for impresario David Belasco, the theatre opened as the Stuyvesant Theatre on October 16,1907 with the musical A Grand Army Man with Antoinette Perry. The theatre was outfitted with the most advanced stagecraft tools available including extensive lighting rigs, a hydraulics system, meyer R. Bimberg was the actual owner of the Stuyvesant/Belasco. He made his fortune selling political campaign buttons, in 1910 Belasco attached his own name to the venue. After his death in 1931, it was leased first by actress Katharine Cornell, marlon Brando had his first widely noticed success in this theater, in a production of Maxwell Andersons Truckline Cafe which opened on February 27,1946. He played the small but crucial role of Sage MacRae, the play flopped, but the press celebrated Brando as a new genius actor. The Shuberts bought the theater in 1949 and leased it to NBC for three years before returning it to legitimate use and this theater is the subject of an urban legend that David Belascos ghost haunts the theater every night. Some performers in the shows that there have even claimed to have spotted him or other ghosts during performances. It was also reported that after Oh, played at the theater, the ghost of David Belasco stopped appearing. She then asks audience members in one of the boxes to tell her if the ghost appears, on Neil Patrick Harris final night playing Hedwig, a man dressed as the ghost appeared during curtain call. Warfields Play a Page of Real Life, official website Belasco Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database Belasco Theatre history Broadway Theatre Guide Belascos Ghost from the Museum of the City of New Yorks Collections blog
32.
Garson Kanin
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Garson Kanin was an American writer and director of plays and films. Garson Kanin began his business career as a jazz musician, burlesque comedian. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, in 1935, Kanin was cast in a George Abbott play and soon became Abbotts assistant. Kanin made his Broadway debut as a director in 1936, at the age of twenty-four, in 1945, Kanin directed Spencer Tracy in Tracys first play in 15 years. Tracy had been through a dark patch personally—culminating with a stay in hospital—and Katharine Hepburn felt that a play would help restore his focus, Tracy told a journalist in April, Im coming back to Broadway to see if I can still act. The play was The Rugged Path by Robert E. Sherwood, the Rugged Path was a difficult production, with Kanin later writing, In the ten days prior to the New York opening all the important relationships had deteriorated. Spencer was tense and unbending, could not, or would not, Tracy considered leaving the show before it even opened on Broadway, and lasted there just six weeks before announcing his intention to close the show. It closed on January 19,1946, after 81 performances, Tracy later explained to a friend, I couldnt say those goddamn lines over and over and over again every night. At least every day is a new day for me in films, but this thing—every day, every day, over and over again. Kanins 1946 play Born Yesterday, which he directed, ran for 1,642 performances. Kanin worked, uncredited, on the screenplay of the 1950 film adaptation and his other stage work includes directing The Diary of Anne Frank, which ran for 717 performances, and the musical Funny Girl, which ran for 1,348 performances. Kanin wrote and directed his last play, Peccadillo, in 1985 and his first film as a director was A Man to Remember, which The New York Times considered one of the ten best films of 1938. Kanin was twenty-six at the time, other directing credits include The Great Man Votes, My Favorite Wife, They Knew What They Wanted and Tom, Dick and Harry. Kanins Hollywood career was interrupted by the draft and he served in the United States Army from 1941 to 1945. During this time Kanin, with Carol Reed, co-directed General Dwight D. Eisenhowers official record of the Allied Invasion, during this time, he began writing what would become his greatest play, Born Yesterday. Kanins best-remembered screenplays, however, were written in collaboration with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, together, they wrote the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film comedies Adams Rib and Pat and Mike, as well as A Double Life, starring Ronald Colman, all directed by George Cukor. In the 1950s through the 1980s, Kanin adapted several of his stories and plays for television, most notably Mr. Broadway, kanins best-selling novel Smash, about the pre-Broadway tryout of a musical comedy, has recently been adapted into the television series Smash. He was a colleague of Thornton Wilder, who mentored him, Kanin said Id rather be Capra than God, if there is a Capra
33.
Jean Arthur
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Jean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. Arthur had feature roles in three Frank Capra films, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Cant Take It With You, Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier. James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur. So much was she part of it, so much was her star personality defined by it and she has been called the quintessential comedic leading lady. Her last film performance was the memorable, and distinctly non-comedic, to the public, Arthur was known as a reclusive woman. News magazine Life observed in a 1940 article, Next to Garbo, as well as recoiling from interviews, she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity. Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene in Plattsburgh, New York to Protestant parents, Johanna Augusta Nelson and her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Norway who settled in the American West, she also had distant ancestors from England. She had three brothers, Donald Hubert, Robert B. and Albert Sidney. She lived on and off in Westbrook, Maine, from 1908 to 1915 while her father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland, Maine, as a photographer. The familys relocation to New York City occurred in 1915, where Arthur dropped out of school in her junior year due to a change in family circumstances. Presaging many of her film roles, she worked as a stenographer on Bond Street in lower Manhattan during World War I. Both her father and siblings registered for the draft and her brother Albert died as a result of injuries sustained in battle during World War I. She reputedly took her name from two of her greatest heroes, Joan of Arc and King Arthur. The studio was at the looking for new American sweethearts with sufficient sex appeal to interest the Jazz Age audiences. Arthur was remodeled as such a personality, a flapper, following the small role in Cameo Kirby, she received her first female lead role in The Temple of Venus, a plotless tale about a group of dancing nymphs. Dissatisfied with her lack of acting talent, the films director Henry Otto replaced Arthur with actress Mary Philbin during the day of shooting. Arthur agreed with the director, There wasnt a spark from within, I was acting like a mechanical doll personality. I thought I was disgraced for life and she was planning on leaving the California film industry for good, but reluctantly stayed due to her contract, and appeared in comedy shorts instead
34.
Harry Cohn
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Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation. Cohn was born to a working-class Jewish family in New York City and his mother, Bella Joseph, was from Russia, and his father, Joseph Cohen, was a tailor from Germany. After working for a time as a conductor, and then as a promoter for a sheet music printer, he got a job with Universal Pictures. In 1919, Cohn joined his brother and Joe Brandt to found CBC Film Sales Corporation, the initials officially stood for Cohn, Brandt, and Cohn, but Hollywood wags noted the companys low-budget, low-class efforts and nicknamed CBC Corned Beef and Cabbage. Harry Cohn managed the film production in Hollywood, while his brother managed its finances from New York. Most of Columbias early work was action fare starring rock-jawed leading man Jack Holt, Columbia was unable to shake off its stigma as a Poverty Row studio until 1934, when director Frank Capras Columbia comedy It Happened One Night swept the Academy Awards. Exhibitors who formerly wouldnt touch Columbia product became steady customers, as a horizontally integrated company that only controlled production and distribution, Columbia had previously been at the mercy of theater owners. Columbia expanded its scope to offer moviegoers a regular program of economically made features, short subjects, serials, travelogues, sports reels, Columbia would release a few class productions each year, but depended on its popular budget productions to keep the company solvent. During Cohns tenure, the studio always turned a profit, Cohn did not build a stable of movie stars like other studios. Instead, he generally signed actors who worked for more expensive studios to attract a pre-sold audience. Columbias own stars generally rose from the ranks of small-part actors, some of Columbias producers and directors also graduated from lesser positions as actors, writers, musicians, and assistant directors. Cohn was known for his autocratic and intimidating management style, when he took over as Columbias president, he remained production chief as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. He respected talent above any personal attribute, but he made sure his employees knew who was boss, writer Ben Hecht referred to him as White Fang. An employee of Columbia called him as absolute a monarch as Hollywood ever knew and it was said he had listening devices on all sound stages and could tune in any conversation on the set, then boom in over a loudspeaker if he heard anything that displeased him. Throughout his tenure, his most popular moniker was King Cohn, moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled that Cohn was a real Jekyll-and-Hyde-type guy. Socially, he could be very charming, Cohn was known to scream and curse at actors and directors in his office all afternoon, and greet them cordially at a dinner party that evening. There is some suggestion that Cohn deliberately cultivated his reputation as a tyrant, Cohn is said to have kept a signed photograph of Benito Mussolini, whom he met in Italy in 1933, on his desk until the beginning of World War II. Cohn also had a number of ties to organized crime and he had a long-standing friendship with Chicago mobster John Roselli, and New Jersey mob boss Abner Zwillman was the source of the loan that allowed Cohn to buy out his partner Brandt
35.
George Cukor
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George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations and his career flourished at RKO when David O. Selznick, the studios Head of Production, assigned Cukor to direct several of RKOs major films, including What Price Hollywood. A Bill of Divorcement, Our Betters, and Little Women, when Selznick moved to MGM in 1933, Cukor followed and directed Dinner at Eight and David Copperfield for Selznick and Romeo and Juliet and Camille for Irving Thalberg. He was replaced as the director of Gone with the Wind, but he went on to direct The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adams Rib, Born Yesterday, A Star Is Born, Bhowani Junction and he continued to work into the 1980s. Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, the child and only son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants Viktor, an assistant district attorney. His parents selected his middle name in honor of Spanish–American War hero George Dewey, as a result, he was ambivalent about his faith and dismissive of old world traditions from childhood, and as an adult he embraced Anglophilia to remove himself even further from his roots. As a teenager, Cukor frequently was taken to the New York Hippodrome by his uncle, infatuated with theatre, he often cut classes at DeWitt Clinton High School to attend afternoon matinees. During his senior year, he worked as a supernumerary with the Metropolitan Opera, earning 50¢ per appearance, following his graduation in 1917, Cukor was expected to follow in his fathers footsteps and pursue a career in law. He halfheartedly enrolled in the City College of New York, where he entered the Students Army Training Corps in October 1918 and his military experience was limited, Germany surrendered in early November, and Cukors duty ended after only two months. In 1925 he formed the C. F. and Z, Production Company with Walter Folmer and John Zwicki, which gave him his first opportunity to direct. Following their first season, he made his Broadway directorial debut with Antonia by Hungarian playwright Melchior Lengyel, then returned to Rochester, lasting only one season with the company was Bette Davis. Cukor later recalled, Her talent was apparent, but she did buck at direction and she had her own ideas, and though she only did bits and ingenue roles, she didnt hesitate to express them. For the next decades, Davis claimed she was fired. For the next few years, Cukor alternated between Rochester in the months and Broadway in the winter. His direction of a 1926 stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby by Owen Davis brought him to the attention of the New York critics. Writing in the Brooklyn Eagle, drama critic Arthur Pollock called it a piece of work by a director not nearly so well known as he should be. Cukor directed six more Broadway productions before departing for Hollywood in 1929, when Hollywood began to recruit New York theater talent for sound films, Cukor immediately answered the call. In December 1928, Paramount Pictures signed him to a contract that reimbursed him for his airfare and he arrived in Hollywood in February 1929, and his first assignment was to coach the cast of River of Romance to speak with an acceptable Southern accent
36.
Spencer Tracy
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Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American actor, noted for his natural style and versatility. One of the stars of Hollywoods Golden Age, Tracy was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor. Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College and he spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. Tracys breakthrough came in 1930, when his performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful debut in Up the River, Tracy was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox were unremarkable, and he remained unknown to audiences after 25 films. In 1935 Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time Hollywoods most prestigious studio and his career flourished with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy was one of the top stars. In 1942 he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, Tracy left MGM in 1955 and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite an increasing weariness as he aged. His personal life was troubled, with a struggle against alcoholism. Tracy became estranged from his wife in the 1930s, but never divorced, towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It was for Kramer that he made his last film, Guess Whos Coming to Dinner in 1967, during his career, Tracy appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screens greatest actors. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, Tracy was born on April 5,1900, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the son of Caroline and John Edward Tracy. His mother was a Presbyterian from a wealthy Midwestern family, and his one brother, Carroll, was four years older. Spencer was a difficult and hyperactive child with poor school attendance, raised as a Catholic, at nine years old he was placed in the care of Dominican nuns in the hope of transforming his behavior. Later in life he remarked, I never would have back to school if there had been any other way of learning to read the subtitles in the movies. He became fascinated with motion pictures, watching the same ones repeatedly and then re-enacting scenes to his friends, Tracy attended several Jesuit academies in his teenage years, which he claimed took the badness out of him and helped him improve his grades
37.
Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress. Known for her independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from comedy to literary drama. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the rights to The Philadelphia Story. In the 1940s, she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy, the screen-partnership spanned 25 years and produced nine movies. Hepburn challenged herself in the half of her life, as she regularly appeared in Shakespearean stage productions. She found a niche playing middle-aged spinsters, such as in The African Queen, three more Oscars came for her work in Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond. In the 1970s, she began appearing in films, which became the focus of her career in later life. She remained active into old age, making her screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96, Hepburn famously shunned the Hollywood publicity machine and refused to conform to societys expectations of women. She was outspoken, assertive, athletic, and wore trousers before it was fashionable for women to do so and she married once, as a young woman, but thereafter lived independently. A 26-year affair with her co-star Spencer Tracy was hidden from the public, Hepburn was born on May 12,1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, the second of six children. Her parents were Thomas Norval Hepburn, a urologist at Hartford Hospital, and Katharine Martha Houghton, as a child, Hepburn joined her mother on several Votes For Women demonstrations. The Hepburn children were raised to exercise freedom of speech and encouraged to think and her parents were criticized by the community for their progressive views, which stimulated Hepburn to fight against barriers she encountered. Hepburn said she realized from an age that she was the product of two very remarkable parents, and credited her enormously lucky upbringing with providing the foundation for her success. She remained close to her throughout her life
38.
Adam's Rib
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Adams Rib is a 1949 American film written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor. It stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as married lawyers who come to each other in court. Judy Holliday co-stars as the lead in her second credited movie role. The music was composed by Miklós Rózsa, except for the song Farewell, Amanda, Doris Attinger follows her husband with a gun one day after suspecting he is having an affair with another woman. In her rage, she fires at the multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the shoulder, the following morning, married lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner read about the incident in the newspaper. Amanda sympathizes with the woman, particularly noting the double standard exists for men and women regarding adultery. Adam thinks Doris is guilty of attempted murder, when Adam arrives at work, he learns that he has been assigned to prosecute the case. When Amanda hears this, she seeks out Doris and becomes her defense lawyer, Amanda bases her case on the belief that women and men are equal, and that Doris had been forced into the situation through her husbands poor treatment of her. Adam thinks Amanda is showing a disregard for the law, since there should never be an excuse for such behavior, tension increasingly builds at home as the two battle each other in court. The situation comes to a head when Adam feels humiliated during the trial when Amanda encourages one of her witnesses, Adam, still angry, later storms out of their apartment. When the verdict for the trial is returned, Amandas plea to the jury to judge this case as you would if the sexes were reversed proves successful, and Doris is acquitted. That night, Adam sees Amanda and their neighbor Kip Lurie and he breaks into the apartment, pointing a gun at the pair. Amanda is horrified, and says to Adam, Youve no right to do this -- nobody does, Adam feels he has proven his point about the injustice of Amandas line of defense. He then puts the gun in his mouth, Amanda and Kip scream in terror. Adam then bites down on the gun and chews off a piece, Amanda is furious with this prank, and a three-way fight ensues. Adam and Amanda, in the midst of a divorce, reluctantly reunite for a meeting with their tax accountant and they talk about their relationship in the past tense. They become emotional when talking about the farm they own and realize how much they love each other and they go to the farm, where Adam announces that he has been selected as the Republican nominee for County Court Judge
39.
Gloria Swanson
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Gloria May Josephine Swanson was an American actress and producer best known for her role as Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star, in the critically acclaimed 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. Swanson was also a star in the silent film era as both an actress and an icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. She starred in dozens of silent films and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category and she also produced her own films, including Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. In 1929, Swanson transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser, personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s when she moved into theater, and later television. Gloria May Josephine Swanson was born in a house in Chicago in 1899 to Adelaide and Joseph Theodore Swanson. Her father was from a strict Lutheran Swedish American family, and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry. Because of her fathers attachment to the U. S. Army, the family moved frequently and Swanson ended up spending most of her childhood in Puerto Rico and she also spent time in Key West, Florida. After a few months as a working with others like Charlie Chaplin. Her parents would soon separate and she and her mother moved to California, Swanson made her film debut in 1914 as an extra in The Song of Soul for Essanay. She reportedly asked to be in the movie just for fun, Essanay hired her to feature in several movies, including His New Job, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. Swanson auditioned for the female role in Swanson moved to California in 1916 to appear in Mack Sennetts Keystone comedies opposite Bobby Vernon. With their great chemistry, the pair became popular. Director Charley Chase recalled that she was frightened to death of Vernons dangerous stunts, conquering her fears, however, she often cooperated with Vernon. Surviving films in which appear together include The Danger Girl, The Sultans Wife. In 1919 she signed with Paramount Pictures and worked often with Cecil B. DeMille, who turned her into a lead in such films as Dont Change Your Husband, Male and Female with the famous scene posing as the Lions Bride with a real lion. Something to Think About, and The Affairs of Anatol, in the space of two years, Swanson rocketed to stardom and was one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. She later appeared in a series of films directed by Sam Wood and she starred in Beyond the Rocks with her longtime friend Rudolph Valentino
40.
Sunset Boulevard (film)
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Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after the boulevard runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough and Jack Webb play supporting roles, DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the U. S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1998, it was ranked number twelve on the American Film Institutes list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century, at a Sunset Boulevard mansion, the body of Joe Gillis floats in the swimming pool. In a flashback, Joe relates the events leading to his death, six months earlier, down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe tries selling Paramount Pictures producer Sheldrake on a story he submitted. Script reader Betty Schaefer harshly critiques it in Joes presence, unaware that he is the author, later, while fleeing from men trying to repossess his car, Joe turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion. After concealing the car, he hears a woman calling him, ushered in by Max, her butler, Joe recognizes the woman as almost-forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond. Learning he is a writer, she asks his opinion of a script she has written for a film about Salome and she plans to play the title role herself in a comeback attempt. Joe finds her script abysmal, but flatters her into hiring him as a script doctor, moved into Normas mansion at her insistence, Joe resents but gradually accepts his dependent situation. He sees that Norma refuses to face the fact that her fame has evaporated, Max tells him Norma is subject to depression and has made suicide attempts. Norma lavishes attention on Joe and buys him expensive clothes, at her New Years Eve party, he discovers he is the only guest and realizes she has fallen in love with him. He tries to let her down gently, but she slaps him, Joe leaves the mansion and visits his friend Artie Green, who is having his own New Years Eve party. Joe asks Artie about staying at his place and again meets Betty, Betty believes a scene in one of Joes scripts has potential, but Joe is uninterested in pursuing it. When Joe phones Max to have him pack his things, Max informs him that Norma has cut her wrists with his razor, Norma has Max deliver the edited Salome script to her former director, Cecil B. Afterwards, she begins to receive calls from Paramount executive Gordon Cole, eventually, she has Max drive her and Joe to Paramount in her 1929 Isotta Fraschini, where she is greeted warmly by the older studio employees. DeMille receives her affectionately and treats her with respect
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