1.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
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.
Song writer
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A songwriter is an individual who writes the lyrics, melodies and chord progressions for songs, typically for a popular music genre such as rock or country music. A songwriter can also be called a composer, although the term tends to be used mainly for individuals from the classical music genre. The pressure from the industry to produce popular hits means that songwriting is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with a gift for creating original melodies, pop songs may be written by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own publishers, while others have outside publishers. The old-style apprenticeship approach to learning how to write songs is being supplemented by university degrees and college diplomas, a knowledge of modern music technology, songwriting elements and business skills are necessary requirements to make a songwriting career in the 2010s. Several music colleges offer songwriting diplomas and degrees with music business modules, the legal power to grant these permissions may be bought, sold or transferred. This is governed by international copyright law, song pitching can be done on a songwriters behalf by their publisher or independently using tip sheets like RowFax, the MusicRow publication and SongQuarters. Skills associated with song-writing include entrepreneurism and creativity, songwriters who sign an exclusive songwriting agreement with a publisher are called staff writers. In the Nashville country music scene, there is a staff writer culture where contracted writers work normal 9-to-5 hours at the publishing office and are paid a regular salary. This salary is in effect the writers draw, an advance on future earnings, the publisher owns the copyright of songs written during the term of the agreement for a designated period, after which the songwriter can reclaim the copyright. In an interview with HitQuarters, songwriter Dave Berg extolled the benefits of the set-up, unlike contracted writers, some staff writers operate as employees for their respective publishers. Under the terms of work for hire agreements, the compositions created are fully owned by the publisher. In Nashville, young writers are often encouraged to avoid these types of contracts. Staff writers are common across the industry, but without the more office-like working arrangements favored in Nashville. All the major publishers employ writers under contract, songwriter Allan Eshuijs described his staff writer contract at Universal Music Publishing as a starter deal. His success under the arrangement eventually allowed him to found his own publishing company, so that he could. keep as much as possible, songwriters are also often skilled musicians. In addition to selling their songs and musical concepts for other artists to sing, songwriters need to create a number of elements for a song
4.
Composer
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A composer is a person who creates or writes music, which can be vocal music, instrumental music or music which combines both instruments and voices. The core meaning of the term refers to individuals who have contributed to the tradition of Western classical music through creation of works expressed in written musical notation, many composers are also skilled performers, either as singers, instrumentalists, and/or conductors. Examples of composers who are well known for their ability as performers include J. S. Bach, Mozart. In many popular genres, such as rock and country. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers interpretations of the work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others, although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composers written intention came to be highly valued. This musical culture is almost certainly related to the esteem in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers. The movement might be considered a way of creating greater faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In Classical music, the composer typically orchestrates her own compositions, in some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. In as much as the role of the composer in western art music has seen continued solidification, for instance, in certain contexts the line between composer and performer, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles, can be quite blurred. The term composer is often used to refer to composers of music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art. In popular and folk music, the composer is usually called a songwriter and this is distinct from a 19th-century conception of instrumental composition, where the work was represented solely by a musical score to be interpreted by performers
5.
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
6.
Musical theatre
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Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement, since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. Musicals are performed around the world and they may be presented in large venues, such as big-budget Broadway or West End productions in New York City or London. Alternatively, musicals may be staged in smaller fringe theatre, Off-Broadway or regional theatre productions, musicals are often presented by amateur and school groups in churches, schools and other performance spaces. In addition to the United States and Britain, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in continental Europe, Asia, Australasia, Canada, the three main components of a book musical are its music, lyrics and book. The interpretation of a musical is the responsibility of its team, which includes a director. A musicals production is also characterized by technical aspects, such as set design, costumes, stage properties, lighting. The creative team, designs and interpretations generally change from the production to succeeding productions. Some production elements, however, may be retained from the production, for example. There is no fixed length for a musical, while it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length, most musicals range from one and a half to three hours. Musicals are usually presented in two acts, with one intermission, and the first act is frequently longer than the second. A book musical is usually built four to six main theme tunes that are reprised later in the show. Several shorter musicals on Broadway and in the West End have been presented in one act in recent decades, moments of greatest dramatic intensity in a book musical are often performed in song. Proverbially, when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing, typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore, there is time to develop drama in a musical than in a straight play of equivalent length. Within the compressed nature of a musical, the writers must develop the characters, the material presented in a musical may be original, or it may be adapted from novels, plays, classic legends, historical events or films. On the other hand, many musical theatre works have been adapted for musical films, such as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver
7.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
8.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
9.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
10.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
11.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
12.
Child prodigy
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In psychology research literature, the term child prodigy is defined as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain to the level of an adult expert performer. Child prodigies are rare, and, in domains, there are no child prodigies at all. Prodigiousness in childhood does not always predict adult eminence, the term Wunderkind is sometimes used as a synonym for prodigy, particularly in media accounts. Wunderkind also is used to recognize those who achieve success and acclaim early in their adult careers, PET scans performed on several mathematics prodigies have suggested that they think in terms of long-term working memory. This memory, specific to a field of expertise, is capable of holding relevant information for extended periods, the PET scans also answer questions about which specific areas of the brain associate themselves with manipulating numbers. One subject never excelled as a child in mathematics, but he taught himself algorithms and tricks for calculatory speed and his brain, compared to six other controls, was studied using the PET scan, revealing separate areas of his brain that he manipulated to solve the complex problems. Some of the areas that he and presumably prodigies use are brain sectors dealing in visual and spatial memory, as well as visual mental imagery. Other areas of the brain showed use by the subject, including a sector of the brain related to childlike finger counting. Citing extensive imaging evidence, Vandervert first proposed this approach in two publications appeared in 2003. In addition to imaging evidence, Vanderverts approach is supported by the award winning studies of the cerebellum by Masao Ito. Some researchers believe that prodigious talent tends to arise as a result of the talent of the child. Others believe that the environment plays the dominant role, many times in obvious ways, but on the other hand George Frideric Handel was an example of the natural talent. He had discovered such a strong propensity to music, that his father who intended him for the study of the Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. He strictly forbade him to meddle with any musical instrument but Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately conveyd to a room at the top of the house, to this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep. Despite his fathers opposition, Handel became a performer on the harpsichord. Chess prodigy List of child prodigies List of music prodigies Gifted education Giftedness Late bloomer Malleable intelligence Polymath Savant syndrome Ellenberg, the Wrong Way to Treat Child Geniuses. How working memory and the cerebellum collaborate to produce creativity and innovation, the Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. Notebook, Child Prodigies, CBS News Online, YouTube, February 26,2010
13.
St. Louis
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St. Louis is an independent city and major U. S. port in the state of Missouri, built along the western bank of the Mississippi River, on the border with Illinois. Prior to European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture. The city of St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, in 1764, following Frances defeat in the Seven Years War, the area was ceded to Spain and retroceded back to France in 1800. In 1803, the United States acquired the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, during the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River. In the 1870 Census, St. Louis was ranked as the 4th-largest city in the United States and it separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Summer Olympics, the economy of metro St. Louis relies on service, manufacturing, trade, transportation of goods, and tourism. This city has become known for its growing medical, pharmaceutical. St. Louis has 2 professional sports teams, the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball, the city is commonly identified with the 630-foot tall Gateway Arch in Downtown St. Louis. The area that would become St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture and their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the Mound City and these mounds were mostly demolished during the citys development. Historic Native American tribes in the area included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane. The earliest European settlements in the area were built in Illinois Country on the east side of the Mississippi River during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, migrants from the French villages on the opposite side of the Mississippi River founded Ste. In early 1764, after France lost the 7 Years War, Pierre Laclède, the early French families built the citys economy on the fur trade with the Osage, as well as with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe, French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city. In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was attacked by British forces, mostly Native American allies, the founding of St. Louis began in 1763. Pierre Laclede led an expedition to set up a fur-trading post farther up the Mississippi River, before then, Laclede had been a very successful merchant. For this reason, he and his trading partner Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent were offered monopolies for six years of the fur trading in that area
14.
Detroit
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Detroit is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Michigan, the fourth-largest city in the Midwest and the largest city on the United States–Canada border. It is the seat of Wayne County, the most populous county in the state, the municipality of Detroit had a 2015 estimated population of 677,116, making it the 21st-most populous city in the United States. Roughly one-half of Michigans population lives in Metro Detroit alone, the Detroit–Windsor area, a commercial link straddling the Canada–U. S. Border, has a population of about 5.7 million. Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, a strait that connects the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hubs in the United States, the City of Detroit anchors the second-largest economic region in the Midwest, behind Chicago, and the thirteenth-largest in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor are connected through a tunnel and various bridges, Detroit was founded on July 24,1701 by the French explorer and adventurer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and a party of settlers. During the 19th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region, with expansion of the American automobile industry in the early 20th century, the Detroit area emerged as a significant metropolitan region within the United States. The city became the fourth-largest in the country for a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, suburban expansion continued with construction of a regional freeway system. A great portion of Detroits public transport was abandoned in favour of becoming a city in the post-war period. Due to industrial restructuring and loss of jobs in the auto industry, between 2000 and 2010 the citys population fell by 25 percent, changing its ranking from the nations 10th-largest city to 18th. In 2010, the city had a population of 713,777 and this resulted from suburbanization, corruption, industrial restructuring and the decline of Detroits auto industry. In 2013, the state of Michigan declared an emergency for the city. Detroit has experienced urban decay as its population and jobs have shifted to its suburbs or elsewhere, conservation efforts managed to save many architectural pieces since the 2000s and allowed several large-scale revitalisations. More recently, the population of Downtown Detroit, Midtown Detroit, paleo-Indian people inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago. In the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi, for the next hundred years, virtually no British, colonist, or French action was contemplated without consultation with, or consideration of the Iroquois likely response. When the French and Indian War evicted the Kingdom of France from Canada, the 1798 raids and resultant 1799 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to westward emigration, which began almost immediately, and by 1800 white settlers were pouring westwards. By 1773, the population of Detroit was 1,400, by 1778, its population was up to 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in the Province of Quebec
15.
Mike Todd
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Michael Mike Todd was an American theater and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in 80 Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. He is known as the third of Elizabeth Taylors seven husbands and is the one whom she did not divorce. He was the force behind the development of the eponymous Todd-AO widescreen film format. Todd was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Chaim Goldbogen and Sophia Hellerman and he was one of nine children in a poor family, the youngest son, and his siblings nicknamed him Toat to mimic his difficulty pronouncing the word coat. It was from this that his name was derived, the family later moved to Chicago, arriving on the day World War I ended. Todd was expelled in the grade for running a game of craps inside the school. In high school, he produced the play, The Mikado. He eventually dropped out of school and worked at a variety of jobs, including shoe salesman. One of his first jobs was as a soda jerk, Todd began his career in the construction business, where he made, and subsequently lost, a fortune. He opened the College of Bricklaying of America, buying the materials to teach bricklaying on credit, the school was forced to close when the Bricklayers Union did not view the college as an accepted place of study. Todd and his brother, Frank, next opened their own construction company and his first flirtation with the film industry was when he served as a contractor to Hollywood studios, soundproofing production stages during the transition from silent pictures to sound. The company he owned with his brother went bankrupt when its financial backing failed in early days of the Great Depression, not yet twenty-one, Todd had lost over $1 million. Having married the former Bertha Freshman on February 14,1927, Todds subsequent business career was volatile, and failed ventures left him bankrupt many times. During the 1933–1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, Todd produced an attraction called the Flame Dance, in this number, gas jets were designed to burn part of a dancers costume off, leaving her naked in appearance. The act attracted enough attention to bring an offer from the Casino de Paree nightclub in New York City, Todd got his first taste of Broadway with the engagement and was determined to find a way to work there. The Hot Mikado, starring Bill Bojangles Robinson, opened on Broadway March 23,1939, the subsequent success of Todds production, at the expense of the Chicago production, contributed to the financial crisis and ultimate demise of the Federal Theatre Project unit in Chicago. Todds Broadway success gave him the nerve to try taking on showman Billy Rose, Todd visited Grover Whalen, president of the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, with a proposal to bring the Broadway show to the Fair. Whelan, eager to have the show at the fair, covered Todds Broadway early closing costs, Rose, who had an exclusivity clause in his fair contract, met Todd at Lindys, where Rose learned his contract covered new forms of entertainment only
16.
Ben Pollack
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Ben Pollack was an American drummer and bandleader from the mid-1920s through the swing era. His eye for talent led him to musicians such as Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Jimmy McPartland. This ability earned him the nickname the Father of Swing, Ben Pollack was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1903. He played drums in school and formed groups on the side and he joined the Harry Bastin Band and then the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in the 1920s. In 1924 he played for bands, including some on the west coast, which ultimately led to his forming a band. In 1926, he had a band named the Ten Californians, Pollack formed his own band in 1926. Over time the band included Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, one of the earliest members of his band was Gil Rodin, a saxophonist whose business acumen served him well later as an executive for the Music Corporation of America. Combining Pollacks regular recordings with these groups made Pollacks one of the more prolific bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Pollacks band played in Chicago and moved to New York City around the fall of 1928, having obtained McPartland and this outfit enjoyed immense success, playing for Broadway shows and winning an exclusive engagement at the Park Central Hotel. Pollacks band was involved in extensive recording activity at that time, the orchestra also made a Vitaphone short subject sound film. Pollack, in the meantime, had fancied himself as more of a bandleader-singer type instead of a drummer, to this end, he signed Ray Bauduc to handle the drumming chores. Benny Goodman and Jimmy McPartland left the band in the summer of 1929 and they were replaced by Matty Matlock on clarinet and Jack Teagardens brother, Charlie, on trumpet. Eddie Miller was also signed as a tenor saxophonist in 1930, the band broke up in 1934. Many of its members formed a group led by Bob Crosby. Pollack reformed his band with Harry James and Irving Fazola, with James he wrote the hit Peckin. In the early 1940s, he orgainzed a band led by comedian Chico Marx and he started Jewel Records, opened restaurants in Hollywood and Palm Springs, appeared as himself in the movie The Benny Goodman Story, and made a cameo in The Glenn Miller Story. Pollack and Doris Robbins, who had no children, were divorced in 1957, in later years, after suffering a series of financial losses, Pollack grew despondent and committed suicide by hanging in his home in Palm Springs in 1971. He was buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in 1992, Pollack was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
17.
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
18.
Darryl F. Zanuck
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Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American film producer and studio executive, he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. He played a part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors. He earned three Academy Awards as producer for Best Picture during his tenure, but was responsible for many more, Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Frank Zanuck, who owned and operated a hotel in Wahoo. Zanuck was of part Swiss descent and was raised a Protestant, at age six, Zanuck and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where the better climate could improve her poor health. At age eight, he found his first movie job as an extra, in 1918, despite being sixteen, he deceived a recruiter, joined the United States Army, and served in France with the Nebraska National Guard. Upon returning to the US, he worked in many jobs while seeking work as a writer. He found work producing movie plots, and sold his first story in 1922 to William Russell and he moved into management in 1929, and became head of production in 1931. In 1933, Zanuck left Warners over a dispute with studio head Jack L. Warner. A few days later, he partnered with Joseph Schenck to form 20th Century Pictures, Inc. with financial help from Josephs brother Nicholas Schenck, mayer, President and Studio head of Loews, Inc and its subsidiary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, along with William Goetz and Raymond Griffith. 20th Century released its material through United Artists, after a dispute with United Artists over stock ownership, Schenck and Zanuck negotiated and bought out the bankrupt Fox studios in 1935 to form Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Zanuck was Vice President of Production of this new studio and took an approach, closely involving himself in scripts. When the U. S. who was chauffeured by limousine to Long Island each morning from a luxury Manhattan hotel. Appalled by such privileged cosseting, Zanuck stormed down to Washington, D. C. and into the War Department, demanding a riskier assignment from Chief of Staff and he even persuaded Lord Mountbatten to allow him along on a secret coastal raid across the Channel to occupied France. The daring nighttime attack on a German radar site was a success, navy even before the U. S. entered the war, and he was horrified to discover himself drafted into Zanucks Africa unit. Cant I ever get away from you, I bet if I die and go to heaven, youll be waiting for me under a sign reading Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. Unlike Col. Warner, most colonels from the studio system—Col, Frank Capra, Col. Anatole Litvak, Col. Hal Roach—were actually doing their cinematic jobs, often, like Zanuck, under enemy fire. Nonetheless, when Col. Zanuck was named in this investigation in 1944, whatever the reason, despite having published his own first-person account of his wartime adventures he resigned. Zanuck returned to Twentieth Century-Fox in 1944 and he avoided the studio and instead read books at home, surrounded by his growing family, and caught up on all the films he had missed while overseas in his private screening room
19.
Frank Sinatra
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Francis Albert Sinatra was an American singer, actor, and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the music artists of all time. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants, Sinatra began his career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943 and he released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946. Sinatras professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas and his career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice n Easy. Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own label, Reprise Records. It was followed by 1968s collaboration with Duke Ellington, using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until a short time before his death in 1998. Sinatra forged a successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm and he appeared in various musicals such as On the Town, Guys and Dolls, High Society, and Pal Joey, winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he associated with playing detectives. Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B, on television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. While Sinatra never formally learned how to read music, he had a natural, intuitive understanding of it, a perfectionist, renowned for his impeccable dress sense and cleanliness, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname Ol Blue Eyes, Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He went on to marry Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976, Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements. He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him the greatest singer of the 20th century, Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12,1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was the child of Italian immigrants Antonino Martino Marty Sinatra
20.
Sammy Cahn
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Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his lyrics to films and Broadway songs. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the tenure at Capitol Records. He played the piano and violin and he won the Academy Award four times for his songs, including the popular song Three Coins in the Fountain. Among his most enduring songs is Let It Snow, cowritten with Jule Styne in 1945. Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen. His sisters, Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and Evelyn and his mother did not approve of Sammy studying it though, feeling that the piano was a womans instrument, so he took violin lessons. After three lessons and following his bar mitzvah, he joined a small band called Pals of Harmony. This new dream of Cahns destroyed any hopes his parents had for him to be a professional man. At age 16, he was watching vaudeville, of which he had been a fan since the age of 10, and he witnessed Jack Osterman singing a ballad Osterman had written. Cahn was inspired and, on his way home from the theater, wrote his first lyric, years later he would say I think a sense of vaudeville is very strong in anything I do, anything I write. They even call it a vaudeville finish, and it comes through in many of my songs, just sing the end of All the Way or Three Coins in the Fountain—Make it mine, make it mine, MAKE IT MINE. If you let people know they should applaud, they will applaud, much of Cahns early work was written in partnership with Saul Chaplin. They first met when Cahn invited Chaplin to audition for him at the Henry Street Settlement, Cahn said, Id learned a few chords on the piano, maybe two, so Id already tried to write a song. Something I called Shake Your Head from Side to Side, billed simply as Cahn and Chaplin, they composed witty special material for Warner Brothers musical short subjects, filmed at Warners Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn, New York. There was an outfit on West 46th Street, Beckman. They were the MCA, the William Morris of the Borscht Belt, I got a room in their offices, and we started writing special material. For anybody whod have us—at whatever price and they did not make much money, but they did work with up-and-comers Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Phil Silvers, and Bob Hope
21.
Harry James
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Harry Haag James was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet playing band leader who led a big band from 1939 to 1946. He broke up his band for a period in 1947. He was also an actor in a number of pictures that usually featured his bands in some way. Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of Myrtle Maybelle, an acrobat and horseback rider, and Everett Robert James, a bandleader in a traveling circus, the Mighty Haag Circus. By the age of 10 he was taking lessons from his father. Each day, James was given one page to learn from the Arbans book and was not allowed to any other pastime until he had learned that particular page. In 1931, his family settled in Beaumont, Texas and it was here, at 15 years of age, that James began playing in local dance bands. James played regularly with Herman Waldmans band, and at one performance was noticed by nationally popular Ben Pollack, in 1935 he joined Pollacks band, but at the start of 1937 left to join Benny Goodmans orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed The Hawk early in his career for his ability to sight-read, a common joke was that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James would play it. His low range had an associated with the cornet and even the flugelhorn. With financial backing from Goodman, in January 1939 James debuted his own big band in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and this big band became known as Harry James and His Music Makers. His hit You Made Me Love You was in the Top 10 during the week of December 7,1941 and he and his band were featured in three films, Private Buckaroo, Two Girls and a Sailor and Springtime in the Rockies. He toured with the band into the 1980s, and to day the Harry James Orchestra still exists. His was the first name band to employ vocalist Frank Sinatra, in 1939, James signed Sinatra to a one-year contract, of which Sinatra worked seven months before leaving to sing for Tommy Dorsey He wanted to change Sinatras name to Frankie Satin but Sinatra refused. His later band included drummer Buddy Rich and his featured vocalist was Helen Forrest. Johnny MacAfee was featured on the sax and vocals and Corky Corcoran was a youthful sax prodigy and his orchestra succeeded Glenn Millers on a program sponsored by Chesterfield Cigarettes in 1942, when Miller disbanded his orchestra to enter the Army. In 1945, James and his orchestra had a replacement program for Danny Kayes program on CBS. He also led the orchestra for Call for Music, which was broadcast on CBS February 13,1948 - April 16,1948 and he played trumpet in the 1950 film Young Man with a Horn, dubbing Kirk Douglas
22.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
23.
Three Coins in the Fountain (film)
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Written by John Patrick, the film is about three American women working in Rome who dream of finding romance in the Eternal City. The films main title song Three Coins in the Fountain went on to become an enduring standard, the story was adapted by John Patrick from the novel Coins in the Fountain by John H. Secondari. It was made in Italy during the Hollywood on the Tiber era, at the 27th Academy Awards in 1955, the film received two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Song, and received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Picture. A young American secretary, Maria Williams, arrives in Rome and is greeted by Anita Hutchins and they drive to the Villa Eden Anita shares with Miss Frances, the longtime secretary of the American author John Frederick Shadwell, an expatriate living in Rome for the past fifteen years. On their way into town, the three women stop at the famous Trevi Fountain, Frances and Anita tell Maria that according to legend, if she throws a coin in the fountain and makes a wish to return to Rome, she will. Maria and Frances throw in their coins, but Anita, who is returning to the United States to marry, Anita takes Maria to the agency and introduces her to Giorgio Bianchi, a translator with whom she works. Maria senses that Anita and Giorgio are attracted to each other, later that evening at a party, Maria is attracted by the handsome Prince Dino di Cessi, despite being warned by Frances and Anita about him being a notorious womanizer. His girlfriends become known as Venice girls after he takes them to Venice for romantic trysts, Dino charms Maria, telling her to ignore what shes heard about him. After the party, Anita and Maria walk home and Anita admits that she has no fiancé waiting back in the United States. Shes leaving because she believes she has a chance of finding a husband in America, wealthy Italian men are not interested in mere secretaries. As they walk, Maria is pinched by a man who pesters her until she is rescued by Giorgio, the next morning, Giorgio picks Anita up in his cousins dilapidated truck. On their way out of town, they are spotted by her boss, on Giorgios family farm, Giorgio tells Anita that he hopes to become a lawyer, despite his poverty. Anita then climbs into the truck and is almost killed when it rolls down the hill, after Giorgio rescues her, the breathless couple gives in to their attraction and they kiss. Meanwhile, back at the apartment, Dino calls for Maria, desiring to see Venice but not wanting to lose Dinos respect, Maria arranges for Frances to chaperone them, to Dinos disappointment. At the agency on Monday, Burgoyne questions Maria about Anitas weekend with Giorgio, the following day he fires Giorgio. When Anita finds out, she blames Maria for betraying her confidence and she visits Giorgio, worried that she may have ruined his chances of becoming a lawyer. Meanwhile, Maria sets out to attract Dinos affections and she learns about the modern art he loves, his favorite food and wine, and pretends to learn the piccolo. Maria even lies about her background, telling Dino she is three-quarters Italian, beguiled by how much he apparently has in common with Maria, Dino introduces her to his mother, the Principessa, who expresses her approval
24.
Doris Day
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Doris Day is a retired American actress and singer, and continuing animal welfare activist. After she began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her popularity increased with her first hit recording Sentimental Journey, in 1948, Day was given a key part in the film Romance on the High Seas, despite not having any acting experience. Its director, Michael Curtiz, gave her the part since she looked like the All-American Girl and it led to a 20-year career in film, including a string of musicals and romantic comedies beginning in the 1950s. She starred with leading men such as Clark Gable in Teachers Pet, Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers, Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink and she was usually one of the top 10 singers between 1951 and 1966. As an actress, she became the biggest female star in the early 1960s. In 2011 – well into her late 80s – she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, among her awards, Day has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. She has been Oscar nominated six times, and in 1989 was given the Cecil B, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Associations Career Achievement Award. Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff was born on April 3,1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Alma Sophia, a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, All of her grandparents were German immigrants. The youngest of three siblings, she had two brothers, Richard and Paul, several years older. Due to her fathers alleged infidelity, her parents separated and she developed an early interest in dance, and in the mid-1930s formed a dance duo with Jerry Doherty that performed locally in Cincinnati. A car accident on October 13,1937, injured her legs, while recovering, Day started to sing along with the radio and discovered a talent she did not know she had. But the one radio voice I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and Id sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, observing her daughter rekindled Almas interest in show business, and she decided to give Doris singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine, after three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had tremendous potential, which led Alma to give her daughter three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style, during her radio performances, Day first caught the attention of Barney Rapp, who was looking for a girl vocalist and asked if Day would like to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 singers when Day got the job, while working for Rapp in 1939, she adopted the stage surname Day, at Rapps suggestion. Rapp felt that Kappelhoff was too long for marquees, and he admired her rendition of the song Day After Day, after working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown
25.
High Button Shoes
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High Button Shoes is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the semi-autobiographical 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Longstreet, the story concerns the comic entanglements of the Longstreet family with two con men in Atlantic City. The musical opened on Broadway in 1947, on the West End in 1948, many involved with High Button Shoes were Broadway first-timers or relatively unknown, except for the director, George Abbott. The designers Oliver Smith and Miles White and choreographer Jerome Robbins were all Broadway veterans, rumors circulated that the book by Longstreet was hopeless and that Abbott and Silvers were heavily rewriting it. The Shuberts, involved because the show was to play in one of their theaters, historian Ken Mandelbaum agrees that the shows book was originally by Longstreet but that it was extensively rewritten by Abbott. The duos dubious intentions are clear as Floy pitches snake-oil schemes including selling fake watches and diamond mines. They are chased by the police, and the scheme is repeated. After they cheat the Longstreets in a land deal, Floy and Pontdue try to escape to Atlantic City, New Jersey with their ill-gotten profits. As the con men Floy and Pontdue are pursued to the Atlantic City beach while carrying a full of stolen money. They tangle with a number of people—including bathing beauties, lifeguards, other criminals. The climax occurs when the Keystone Cops arrive, and Floy loses everything when he bets on the football team. But after his being captured we learn that Pontdue has bet on not a football team, Floy gives the conned citizens their money back, but before he leaves tries to get the audience to buy one more item of great worth. The highlight of the production was a long ensemble dance number at the beginning of the second act. Choreographer Robbins staged this number in the manner of a Mack Sennett silent slapstick film and it uses the music of On A Sunday By the Sea, Liszts Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and Offenbachs can-can from Orpheus in the Underworld. This number was so basic to the show that deleting it would render the evening incoherent and it was a major evocation of a period, a tribute to silent-film comedy. The cast starred Silvers as Harrison Floy and Fabray as Sara Longstreet, the direction was by Abbott, choreography by Jerome Robbins, scenic design by Oliver Smith, costume design by Miles White, and lighting design by Peggy Clark. Robbins won the Tony Award for choreography, the U. S. national tour opened in the summer of 1949, after the Broadway closing, with Joey Faye as Harrison Floy and Jack Whiting as Papa Longstreet. It played at least 16 cities in the Midwest and Great Plains, including Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis, a London production opened at the Hippodrome December 22,1948, and ran for 291 performances
26.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (musical)
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a musical with a book by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos, lyrics by Leo Robin, and music by Jule Styne, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Loos. The story involves an American womans voyage to Paris to perform in a nightclub, the musical opened on Broadway in 1949, a London production was mounted in 1962, and there was a Broadway revival in 1995. An adaptation called Lorelei played on Broadway in 1974 and it was made into a film of the same name in 1953, starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. The popular songs Bye Bye Baby and Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend were introduced in this musical. Act I In the 1920s, Lorelei Lee, a blonde from Little Rock, Arkansas, Lorelei and her boyfriend, Gus Esmond, are parting for a while, Gus is going to Little Rock, and Dorothy is Loreleis chaperone. On the ship, Lorelei has many admirers, including the rich Philadelphian Henry Spofford III, Lorelei is worried that Gus will find out about an old secret of hers and break off their engagement, and she is afraid to open a wire that she receives from him. Meanwhile, Dorothy flirts with a group of olympic sportsmen, Lorelei disapproves of this as the olympians are poor, she is sure that Gus has broken up with her and tells Dorothy that they need to find some rich men. Lorelei chooses the zipper king, Josephus Gage, for Dorothy she chooses Henry Spofford. Lady Beekman is trying to sell her tiara to an American, Lorelei wishes to buy it, but does not have the money, so she decides to persuade Sir Francis to lend her the money. On arrival in Paris, Dorothy and Henry are becoming attracted to each other, two French detectives, Robert and Louie Lemanteur, are looking for Lorelei, trying to recover Lady Beekman’s tiara. They dont speak much English, but they fall for the charms of the girls, Josephus Gage arrives with Lorelei, wearing the first French dress to use a zipper. It is suggested that everyone have cocktails, to Mrs Spofford’s delight, Henry, left alone with Dorothy, proposes marriage, but she says that she is not good enough for him. Gus arrives suddenly and discovers that Lorelei is dating Josephus and his father has always disapproved of Lorelei. Gus retaliates by dating Gloria Stark, a dancer, promising to make her a star, act II Everyone is at a Paris club. Lady Beekman and the two detectives are still trying to recover her tiara, Sir Francis is there with two ladies. Lorelei and Dorothy are there with Josephus and Henry, Gus arrives and nearly comes to blows with Josephus. The floor show includes performances by Gloria and Coquette, Gus tells Lorelei that he loves her so much that he would leave his fathers business for her sake. She admits that she shot a man in Little Rock, but it was in self-defense, so she was acquitted, the Americans miss the United States and go home
27.
Peter Pan (1954 musical)
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Peter Pan is a musical adaptation of J. M. Barries 1904 play Peter Pan and Barries own novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Mark Moose Charlap, with music by Jule Styne. The original 1954 Broadway production, starring Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook and it was followed by NBC telecasts of it in 1955,1956, and 1960 with the same stars, plus several rebroadcasts of the 1960 telecast. In 2014, the musical was broadcast on NBC featuring several new numbers, the show has enjoyed several revivals onstage. Several productions of Peter Pan were staged early in the 20th century, starting in London in 1904, starring Nina Boucicault as Peter and on Broadway in 1905, starring Maude Adams. Producer Edwin Lester, founder and director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, in this ending, Peter returns after many years to take Wendy back to Never Never Land for spring cleaning. He finds that he has been away so long that Wendy is now an adult, despondent at first, he is delighted when Wendys daughter Jane offers to be his new mother, and instead takes her with him. The musical premiered at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco on July 19,1954, the initial four-week run was followed by an eight-week engagement in Los Angeles. The show opened on Broadway on October 20,1954 at the Winter Garden Theatre for a limited run of 152 performances. The busy 1954 Broadway season also included The Boy Friend, Fanny, Silk Stockings, the revised score and Tony Award-winning performances by Martin and Cyril Ritchard made the musical a critical success, and tickets sold out throughout the Broadway run. The show closed on February 26,1955 to prepare for the television broadcast, a Broadway cast album was made of the songs, and it is still in print today. In 1954, Fred Coe, production manager for NBC in New York, began producing Producers Showcase, one aim of the series was to broadcast expensive color spectaculars to promote the new color television system developed by NBCs parent company RCA. On March 7,1955, NBC presented Peter Pan live as part of Producers Showcase as the first full-length Broadway production on color TV, the show attracted a then-record audience of 65-million viewers, the highest ever up to that time for a single television program. Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard had already won Tony Awards for their stage performances and it was so well received that the musical was restaged live for television on January 9,1956. Both of these broadcasts were produced live and in color, Peter Pan was restaged on December 8,1960, this time in a 100-minute version rather than 90 minutes, and with a slightly different cast because the original children had outgrown their roles. Producers Showcase had long gone off the air, so the 1960 production was intended as a stand alone special instead of an episode of an anthology series. Act II was split into two acts, for a total of five instead of three, to allow for more commercial breaks. This version was videotaped in color at NBCs Brooklyn studio, Martin was also starring in Broadways The Sound of Music at the time
28.
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
29.
Gypsy (musical)
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Gypsy is a 1959 musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist and it follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lees sister and it is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements of the mid-20th centurys conventional musical theatre art form, often called the book musical. Gypsy has been referred to as the greatest American musical by numerous critics and writers, among them Ben Brantley, Rich wrote that Gypsy is nothing if not Broadways own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear. Theater critic Clive Barnes wrote that Gypsy is one of the best of musicals. a musical based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee was a project of producer David Merrick and actress Ethel Merman. Merrick had read a chapter of Lees memoirs in Harpers Magazine, Jerome Robbins was interested, and wanted Leland Hayward as co-producer, Merman also wanted Hayward to produce her next show. Merrick and Hayward approached Arthur Laurents to write the book, as he relates, Laurents initially was not interested until he saw that the story was one of parents living their childrens lives. Composers Irving Berlin and Cole Porter declined the project, finally, Robbins asked Stephen Sondheim, who agreed to do it. Sondheim had worked with Robbins and Laurents on the musical West Side Story, however, Merman did not want an unknown composer, and wanted Jule Styne to write the music. Although Sondheim initially refused to write only the lyrics, he was persuaded by Oscar Hammerstein to accept the job, Rose and her two daughters, Baby June and Louise, play the vaudeville circuit around the United States in the early 1920s. Rose, the archetype of a mother, is aggressive. While June is an extroverted, talented child star, the older girl, the kiddie act has one song, Let Me Entertain You, that they sing over and over again, with June always as the center-piece and Louise often as one of the boys. Rose has big dreams for the girls but encounters setbacks, as she tells her father, when Rose meets a former agent, Herbie, she persuades him to become their manager using her seductive and feminine wiles. The girls grow up, and June, now billed as Dainty June, meanwhile, Louise celebrates her birthday alone and asks her birthday present, a lamb, just how old she is this year. After Rose rejects Herbies marriage proposal, he considers leaving, now billed as Dainty June and Her Farmboys, the act finally performs on the Orpheum Circuit. June is soon offered a place at a Performing Arts school after an audition, however, Rose turns this down, refusing to break up the act. Louise and June fantasize what life would be like if Rose were married and finished with show business. Shortly after, June is missing, and in a note she explains that she has grown sick of her mother and the tour and has eloped with Jerry
30.
Do Re Mi (musical)
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Do Re Mi is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a book by Garson Kanin, who also directed the original 1960 Broadway production. The plot centers on a con man who decides to go straight by going into the business of juke boxes. The musical introduced the popular songs Cry Like the Wind and Make Someone Happy, Hubie Cram is a loser endlessly scheming to win big. His long-suffering patient wife Kay urges him to Take a Job and he finds three pals, Fatso ORear, Brains Berman and Skin Demopoulos, and they scheme to enter the juke-box business. Soon they have 300 juke-boxes, which they plan on selling to John Henry Wheeler, Hubie discovers a naive singer, Tilda Mullen, and they plan their future. At a fancy nightclub Hubie explains, and demonstrates, gangsters behavior that he learned from watching the Late Late Show, Kay compares her abandoned comfortable existence with the insecurity of life with Hubie. Tilda and Wheeler fall in love, in the end Hubie realizes that he has nothing except a wonderful marriage. The curtain of juke boxes evoked a cathedrals stained glass effect, in a scene in a night club, the tables had drawn figures instead of actors, and the actors would talk with these drawings. And in the Fireworks number, black light is used to reveal shooting stars and Roman candles as Tilda and Johns love affair explodes in song. James Theatre on December 26,1960, transferred to the 54th Street Theatre on December 25,1961, the West End production opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre on October 12,1961 and ran for 169 performances. It starred Max Bygraves, Maggie Fitzgibbon, Steve Arlen and Jan Waters, the 42nd Street Moon theatre company, San Francisco, California concert version ran in August 2001. The Original Broadway cast recording was released in January 1961 on RCA Victor, cast recording was released on September 21,1999 by DRG. The New York Times called the musical fast, loud and occasionally funny and it commented that Phil Silvers was cast against type, here playing the fall guy, the poor sap who ends as the victim. Betty Comden and Adolph Green have written lyrics, and Jule Styne has contributed some attractive as well as some ear-shattering tunes. The loveliest is Cry Like the Wind which has the quality of a folk song of lamentation. According to Stanley Green, the musical had a score that is worth the price just to hear Miss Walker describe her life of Adventure. Ethan Mordden wrote that the song Adventure is one of the grandest comedy songs ever, here we learn that she, at least, already knows that its a wonderful marriage, because its never boring. Then came a Mad Scene - a bolero complete with trumpets pealing out like the band in the Plaza del Toro on corrida day and woodwinds tripping up the scale with the flash of a hundred capes
31.
Funny Girl (musical)
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Funny Girl is a 1963 musical with a book by Isobel Lennart, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The semi-biographical plot is based on the life and career of Broadway star, film actress and comedian Fanny Brice featuring her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and its original title was My Man. The musical was produced by Ray Stark, who was Brices son-in-law via his marriage to her daughter Frances, the production was nominated for eight Tony Awards but, facing tough competition from Hello, Dolly. It failed to win in any categories, the original cast recording of Funny Girl was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004. The musical is set in and around New York City just prior to, Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, awaiting the return of her husband, Nicky Arnstein, from prison, reflects on their life together, and their story is told as a flashback. Fanny is a teen who gets her first job in vaudeville. Her mother and her friend Mrs. Strakosh try to dissuade her from business because Fanny is not the typical beauty. But Fanny perseveres and is helped and encouraged by Eddie Ryan, once Fannys career takes off, Eddie and Mrs. Brice lament that once shes on Broadway shell forget about them. Fanny performs a supposedly romantic number in the Follies, but she turns it into a comic routine. She meets the sophisticated and handsome Nick Arnstein, who accompanies Fanny to her mothers opening night party on Henry Street, Fanny is clearly falling in love with Nick, while acknowledging their complex vulnerabilities. Later they meet in Baltimore and have a dinner at a swanky restaurant. Fanny is determined to marry Nick, regardless of his gambling past and they do marry and move to a mansion on Long Island. In the meantime, Mrs. Strakosh and Eddie propose to Mrs. Brice that she should find a man to marry, Fanny has become a major star with the Ziegfeld Follies. Nick asks Ziegfeld to invest in a casino, but although Ziegfeld passes. When the venture fails and they lose their money, Fanny tries to light of it. Fanny feels helpless but stronger than ever in her love for him, in the present, Fanny is waiting for Nick to arrive and has time to reflect on her situation. Nick arrives, newly released from prison, and he and Fanny decide to separate and she is heartbroken, but resolves to pick up her life again. Ray Stark had commissioned a biography of Brice, based on taped recollections she had dictated
32.
Sugar (musical)
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Sugar is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Bob Merrill. It is based on the film Some Like It Hot, which was adapted by Billy Wilder, diamond from a story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan. It premiered on Broadway in 1972 and was staged in the West End twenty years later, two unemployed musicians, bass player Jerry and saxophone player Joe, witness the St. Valentines Day Massacre in Chicago. More than anything, Sugar wants to marry a millionaire, prompting Joe to disguise himself as the man of her dreams, meanwhile, wealthy and elderly Osgood Fielding, Jr. is pursuing Daphne, unaware she really is Jerry in drag. As much as he knows he needs to reveal his true gender to his over-amorous paramour, total chaos erupts when Spats and his gang descend upon the hotel and realize who Josephine and Daphne really are. Scenic design was by Robin Wagner, costume design by Alvin Colt, elaine Joyce was replaced by Pamela Blair later in the run. The West End production, starring Tommy Steele, opened at the Prince Edward Theatre on March 19,1992, the production reverted to the films title of Some Like It Hot. A 2002-03 United States national tour starred Tony Curtis as Osgood Fielding, Jr. in a production, titled Some Like It Hot. Curtis had played Joe in the original film and this national tour wardrobe is on display at the Costume World Broadway Collection in Pompano Beach, Florida. A new production of the show ran at the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, in February/March 2011 Pimlico Opera presented a new production in Great Britain at Send Prison in Surrey. The cast included actors and inmates. A Danish production of the show ran in 2011 at Folketeateret in Copenhagen under the title Ingen er Fuldkommen, the show opened in October and starred Danish musical actress Maria Lucia. 42nd Street Moon presented Sugar as part of its 19th Season, in his review of the Broadway production, Time theatre critic T. E. Kalem thought the musical has been so thoroughly processed, refined and filtered that it has lost the energy that makes a good musical strong. He added, If hummable songs are a plus, Jule Stynes songs are hummable, as for Bob Merrills lyrics, they are the labored products of a man hovering over a rhyming dictionary. Sugar is almost a case of a musical born after its time. It may well enjoy great wads of audience favor and he concluded, This is not to say that the big, old-fashioned musical is irrevocably doomed, but it must have a singular mood, manner and meaning all its own. Otherwise, all remains, as Sugar indicates, is a sterile display of high-gloss techniques
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Some Like It Hot
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Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American romantic comedy film set in 1929, directed and produced by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The supporting cast includes George Raft, Pat OBrien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, the plot is based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Michael Logan from the French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed commit a crime inspired by the Saint Valentines Day Massacre, the film was produced in black and white, even though color films were increasing in popularity. Some Like It Hot opened to positive reviews and is today considered to be one of the greatest film comedies of all time. It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFIs 100 Years. The film is notable for featuring cross dressing, and for playing with the idea of homosexuality. The code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to increasing tolerance for previously taboo topics in film. The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot was a nail in the coffin for the Hays Code. It is February 1929 in the city of Chicago, during the era of prohibition, Joe is an irresponsible jazz saxophone player, gambler and ladies man, his friend Jerry is a sensible jazz double-bass player, both are working in a speakeasy owned by mob gangster Spats Colombo. Penniless and in a mad rush to get out of town, disguised as women and renaming themselves Josephine and Daphne, they board a train with the band and their male manager, Bienstock. Before they board the train, Joe and Jerry notice Sugar Kane, Joe and Jerry become enamored of Sugar and compete for her affection while maintaining their disguises. Sugar confides that she has sworn off male saxophone players, who have stolen her heart in the past and she has set her sights on finding a sweet, bespectacled millionaire in Florida. Once in Miami, Joe woos Sugar by assuming a disguise as a millionaire named Junior. An actual millionaire, the much-married aging mamas boy Osgood Fielding III, tries repeatedly to pick up Daphne, Osgood invites Daphne for a champagne supper on his yacht. Joe convinces Daphne to keep Osgood occupied onshore so that Junior can take Sugar to Osgoods yacht, once on the yacht, Junior explains to Sugar that, due to psychological trauma, he is impotent and frigid, but that he would marry anyone who could change that. Sugar tries to arouse some sexual response in Junior, and begins to succeed, meanwhile, Daphne and Osgood dance the tango till dawn. Joe convinces Jerry that he cannot actually marry Osgood, the hotel hosts a conference for Friends of Italian Opera, which is in fact a front for a major meeting of various branches of La Cosa Nostra. Spats and his gang from Chicago recognize Joe and Jerry as the witnesses to the Valentines Day murders, Joe and Jerry, fearing for their lives, realize they must quit the band and leave the hotel
34.
Hallelujah, Baby!
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Hallelujah, Baby. is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and a book by Arthur Laurents. The show is a chronicle of the African American struggle for equality during the 20th century, the musical premiered on Broadway in 1967 and made a young Leslie Uggams a star. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical, Georgina is a talented, beautiful and ambitious African American woman, determined to have a career. Overcoming many obstacles, she rises to stardom and she makes her way through the Great Depression, World War II, and the beginning of the civil rights movement. Her mother advises her to keep her place as a maid on a South Carolina estate and she encounters the racism that pervades society and show business. Two men vie for Georginas attention, Harvey, who is white, is able to provide opportunities for her. Her fiancé Clem, who is a black porter, cannot help her on her journey. By the 1950s, she is a singer in an expensive night club. However, Clem has become an Army captain and then a civil rights activist, witches Brew had a tune that was recycled from Call Me Savage, a song from a prior musical Fade Out – Fade In and was originally sung by Carol Burnett. The musical opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on April 26,1967 and it was directed by Burt Shevelove, choreographed by Kevin Carlisle, with scenic design by William and Jean Eckart, costumes by Irene Sharaff and lighting by Tharon Musser. The cast featured Allen Case as Harvey, Robert Hooks as Clem, Leslie Uggams as Georgina, the production won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and Uggams won the Tony for Best Actress for her performance. The George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey presented the musical in October - November 2004, additional lyrics were written by Amanda Green. The cast featured Suzzanne Douglas as Georgina and Ann Duquesnay as Momma, the Arena Stage, Washington, DC production ran in January and February 2005. Arthur Laurents felt that the production was too soft in its take on black social progress during the first six decades or so of the twentieth century. It was originally written with Lena Horne in mind, when the steely Horne opted out of the project, it was rewritten to suit the more youthful and bubbly Leslie Uggams. In the 2004 production, Laurents attempted to add levels of darker intensity, according to Laurents, after Lena Horne declined to do the show, What we should have done is abandon the show. Instead it was rewriten for a woman who is one of the nicest women I have ever met in the theatre, Leslie Uggams, --and, God knows and she was good, but it wasnt that original show. The show lost its edge, and I must say I lost interest in it, information about the musical Hallelujah, Baby. at the IBDB database Synopsis, song list and production at guidetomusicaltheatre. com Hallelujah, Baby. at Stageagent. com
35.
Amusement park
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An amusement park or theme park is a group of entertainment attractions, rides, and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people. Theme parks, a type of amusement park, are usually much more intricately themed to a certain subject or group of subjects than normal amusement parks. Amusement parks evolved from European fairs and pleasure gardens, which were created for peoples recreation, Worlds fairs and expositions were another influence on the development of the amusement park industry. In common language, the theme park and amusement park are often synonymous. However, a park can be regarded as a distinct style of amusement park. A theme park has landscaping, buildings, and attractions that are based on one or more specific themes or stories. The amusement park evolved from three earlier traditions, the oldest being the periodic fair of the Middle Ages - one of the earliest was the Bartholomew Fair in England, the worlds oldest amusement park appeared in the Continent. Bakken at Klampenborg, north of Copenhagen, Denmark, opened in 1583, a wave of innovation in the 1860s and 1870s created mechanical rides, such as the steam-powered carousel, and its derivatives. This inaugurated the era of the modern funfair ride, as the classes were increasingly able to spend their surplus wages on entertainment. The second influence was the pleasure garden, one of the earliest gardens was the Vauxhall Gardens, founded in 1661 in London. By the late 18th century, the site had a fee for its many attractions. It regularly drew crowds, with its paths being noted for romantic assignations, tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts. Although the gardens were designed for the elites, they soon became places of great social diversity. Public firework displays were put on at Marylebone Gardens, and Cremorne Gardens offered music, dancing, prater in Vienna, Austria, was opened in 1766. The concept of a park for amusement was further developed with the beginning of the worlds fairs. The first World fair began in 1851 with the construction of the landmark Crystal Palace in London, the purpose of the exposition was to celebrate the industrial achievement of the nations of the world and it was designed to educate and entertain the visitors. American cities and business saw the worlds fair as a way of demonstrating economic. The Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois was an precursor to the modern amusement park
36.
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
37.
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
38.
Stephen Sondheim
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Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist known for more than a half-century of contributions to musical theatre. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award, and he has been described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy, Sondheim has also written film music, contributing Goodbye for Now to Warren Beattys 1981 Reds. He wrote five songs for 1990s Dick Tracy, including Sooner or Later by Madonna, the composer was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981. To celebrate his 80th birthday, the former Henry Millers Theatre was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 15,2010, Cameron Mackintosh has called Sondheim possibly the greatest lyricist ever. Sondheim was born into a Jewish family in New York City and his father manufactured dresses designed by his mother. The composer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as Fieldston, Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin. He traces his interest in theatre to Very Warm for May, the curtain went up and revealed a piano, Sondheim recalled. A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys, when Sondheim was ten, his father left his mother for another woman. Herbert sought custody of Stephen but was unsuccessful, Sondheim explained to biographer Secrest that he was what they call an institutionalized child, meaning one who has no contact with any kind of family. Youre in, though its luxurious, youre in an environment that supplies you with everything, No brothers and sisters, no parents, and yet plenty to eat, and friends to play with and a warm bed, you know. Sondheim detested his mother, who was said to be abusive and projected her anger from her failed marriage on her son, When my father left her. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, what she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time. She once wrote him a letter saying that the only ever had was giving him birth. When his mother died in the spring of 1992, Sondheim did not attend her funeral, when Sondheim was about ten years old, he became friends with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheims surrogate father, influencing him profoundly, Sondheim met Hal Prince, who would direct many of his shows, at the opening of South Pacific, Hammersteins musical with Richard Rodgers
39.
This Is Your Life (UK TV series)
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This is Your Life is a British biographical television documentary, based on the 1952 American show of the same name. It was hosted by Eamonn Andrews from 1955 until 1964, michael Aspel then took up the role of host until the show ended in 2003. It returned in 2007 as a special presented by Trevor McDonald. In the show the host surprises a special guest, before taking them through their life with the assistance of the big red book, both celebrities and non-celebrities have been victims of the show. The show was originally broadcast live, and over its run it has alternated between being broadcast on the BBC and on ITV, the surprise element was a very important part of the show, if the guest heard about the project beforehand, it would be immediately abandoned. The British version of the show was launched in 1955 on the BBC and was first presented by Ralph Edwards to the first victim, Eamonn Andrews, the scriptwriter for the first 35 episodes was Gale Pedrick. It ended in 1964 when Andrews moved to Associated British Corporation, the only other occasion during Andrews presentational run where he was not the presenter was in 1974 when he was the subject a second time, and the show was presented by David Nixon. Michael Aspel became presenter after Andrews died in 1987, the show returned to the BBC in 1994 but was still produced independently by Thames Television. The programme was axed again in 2003, at first, the show was always broadcast live, later, programmes were sometimes pre-recorded. The show returned in June 2007 on ITV for a special programme hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald with guest Simon Cowell. The new edition was co-produced by ITV Productions, STV Productions, TIYL Productions, Click TV and Ralph Edwards Productions. Ant & Decs Saturday Night Takeaway featured a return of This is Your Life to celebrate Ant & Decs 25 years together, michael Aspel returned as host alongside Ashley Roberts. Lynn Redgrave, in December 1996, was caught while taking her bow in her show on stage at the Haymarket Theatre. Bob Hope and Dudley Moore have been the subjects of two-part editions of the programme. Both were broadcast over two weeks, clive Mantles profile included a post-credits sequence where he thanked the audience for coming. Footballer Danny Blanchflower turned down the red book in February 1961, author Richard Gordon was asked in 1974 and, like Bill Oddie in 2001, he initially turned it down, but changed his mind and appeared on the show. Actor Richard Beckinsale was a feature on the show shortly after his 31st birthday, in 1996, the Sunday Mirror reported that a planned show for Cockney comedy actor Arthur Mullard was pulled after researchers contacted his eldest son. The same report featured claims that Mullard had terrorised his family and had abused his daughter for many years
