1.
Springfield, Ohio
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Springfield is a city in the U. S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River, Buck Creek and Beaver Creek, Springfield is home to Wittenberg University, a liberal arts college. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,608. The Springfield Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 138,333 residents, and the Dayton-Springfield-Greenville, OH Combined Statistical Area had 1,072,891 residents. In 1983, Newsweek featured Springfield in its 50th anniversary issue, entitled and it chronicled the impact of the past 50 years on five local families. In 2004, Springfield was chosen as an All-America City, in 2010, Springfield ranked third worst in a national wellbeing survey conducted by The Gallup Organization. In 2011, Springfield was named the unhappiest city in America by another Gallup survey. In 2015, Springfield was founded by James Demint, a former teamster from Kentucky, in 1801. Dayton and Eaton wanted the road to veer south after Springfield, during the mid-and-late 19th century, Springfield was dominated by industrialists including Oliver S. Kelly, Asa S. Bushnell, James Leffel, P. P. Asa S. Bushnell built the Springfield, Ohio Bushnell Building where the patent attorney to the Wright Brothers, Harry Aubrey Toulmin, to promote the products of his agricultural equipment company, P. P. Mast started the Farm and Fireside magazine, mast’s publishing company – Mast, Crowell, and Kirkpatrick – grew to become Crowell-Collier Publishing Company best known for Colliers Weekly. In 1894, The Kelly Springfield Tire Company was founded, at the turn of the 20th century Springfield became known as the Home City. Several lodges including the Masonic Lodge, Knights of Pythias and Odd Fellows built homes for orphans, Springfield also became known as The Champion City. A reference to the Champion Farm Equipment brand manufactured by the Warder, Bushnell & Glessner Company, International remains in Springfield as Navistar International, a producer of medium to large trucks. In 1902 A. B. Graham, then the superintendent of schools for Springfield Township in Clark County, established a Boys and Girls Agricultural Club. Approximately 85 children from 10 to 15 years of age attended the first meeting on January 15,1902 in Springfield, Ohio and this was the start of what would be called the 4-H Club within a few years, quickly growing to a nationwide organization. The first projects included food preservation, gardening and elementary agriculture, today, the Courthouse still bears a large 4H symbol under the flag pole at the front of the building to commemorate its part in founding the organization. The Clark County Fair is the second largest fair in the state in part to 4H still remaining very popular in the area. On March 7,1904, over a thousand residents formed a mob, stormed the jail and removed prisoner Richard Dixon
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
4.
Dorothy Gish
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Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress of the screen and stage, as well as a director and writer. Dorothy and her sister Lillian Gish were major movie stars of the silent era, Dorothy also had great success on the stage, and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Dorothy Gish was noted as a comedian, and many of her films were comedies. Gish was born in Dayton, Ohio and she had an older sister, Lillian. The Gish sisters mother, Mary Robinson McConnell Gish, supported the family after her husband, James Leigh Gish, when they were old enough, Dorothy and Lillian were brought into their mothers act, and they also modeled. In 1912, their friend, actress Mary Pickford, introduced them to director D. W. Griffith. Dorothy and Lillian Gish both debuted in Griffiths An Unseen Enemy, Dorothy would go on to star in over 100 short films and features, many of them with Lillian. As the “little disturber”, a singer, her performance was the comic highlight of the film. They were directed by young Griffith protégés such as Donald Crisp, James Kirkwood and these films were wildly popular with the public and the critics. She specialised in pantomime and light comedy, while her sister appeared in tragic roles, almost all of these films are now considered to be lost films. Today my objection to playing comedy is that it is so often misunderstood by the audiences, both in the theater and in the picture houses. In the eyes of so many persons comedy is not only the absence of studied effect and acting, but it is not considered an art. ”When the film converted to talking pictures, Dorothy made one, Wolves. George Cukor directed her in Young Love, and the comedy found success with New York audiences as well as those on the road. A London production followed with equal success, in 1939, both Dorothy and Lillian Gish found the role of a lifetime. “Dorothy and I went to see the New York production of Life With Father, starring Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney, Pickford did not make the film version, but the Gish sisters took the two road companies on extensive tours. Television in the 1950s offered many actors the opportunity to appear in plays broadcast live, Dorothy ventured into the new medium, appearing on NBC’s Lux Video Theatre on the night of November 24,1955, in a production of Miss Susie Slagle’s. The play had been a film in 1945 with her sister, Lillian, “The truth is, that she did not know what she really wanted to do, ” wrote her sister, Lillian, in her autobiography. “She had always had trouble making decisions and assuming responsibilities, In some ways she had never grown up and she was such a witty and enchanting child that we enjoyed indulging her
5.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
6.
Short film
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A short film, is a cinema format, denoting any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The term featurette originally applied to a longer than a short subject. The increasingly rare term short subject means approximately the same thing and it is an industry term which carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short is an abbreviation for either term, Short films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals and made by independent filmmakers for non profit, either with a low budget or no budget at all. They are usually funded by grants, non profit organizations. Short films are used by filmmakers to gain experience or prove their talent in order to gain funding for future films from private investors, entertainment companies. Longer and shorter films coexisted with similar popularity throughout the days of film. However, comedy films were produced in large numbers compared to lengthy features such as D. W. Griffiths The Birth of a Nation. By the 1920s, a ticket purchased a varied program including a feature and several supporting works from such as second feature, short comedy, 5–10 minute cartoon, travelogue. Short comedies were popular, and typically came in a serial or series. Even though there was no set release schedule, these series could be considered somewhat like a modern TV sitcom – lower in status than feature films. Animated cartoons came principally as short subjects, in the 1930s, the distribution system changed in many countries owing to the Great Depression. Instead of the cinema owner assembling a program of their own choice, the studios sold a package centered on a main and supporting feature, with the rise of the double feature, two reel shorts went into decline as a commercial category. Hal Roach, for example, moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935, by the mid-1950s, with the rise of television, the commercial live-action short was virtually dead, The Three Stooges being the last major series of 2-reelers, ending in 1959. Short films had become a medium for student, independent and specialty work, cartoon shorts had a longer life, due in part to the implementation of lower-cost limited animation techniques, but also declined in this period. Warner Bros. one of the most prolific of the golden era, the Pink Panther was the last regular theatrical cartoon short series, having begun in 1964 and ended in 1980. By the 1960s, the market for animated shorts had largely shifted to television, a few animated shorts continue within mainstream commercial distribution. For instance, Pixar has screened a short along with each of its feature films during its theatrical run since 1995
7.
D. W. Griffith
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David Wark D. W. Griffith was an American director, writer, and producer who pioneered modern filmmaking techniques. Griffith is best remembered for The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, the Birth of a Nation made use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States. Today, it is noted for its radical technique and condemned for its inherently racist philosophy. The film was subject to boycotts by the NAACP and, after screenings of the film had caused riots at several theaters, Intolerance, his next film, was, in part, an answer to his critics. By the time of his feature, The Struggle, he had made roughly 500 films. Griffith is one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and he is credited with popularizing the use of the close-up shot. Griffith was born on a farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, Jacob was a Confederate Army colonel in the American Civil War and was elected as a Kentucky state legislator. He attended a one-room schoolhouse where he was taught by his older sister, after his father died when he was ten, the family struggled with poverty. When Griffith was 14, his mother abandoned the farm and moved the family to Louisville, Griffith then left high school to help support the family, taking a job in a dry goods store and later in a bookstore. Griffith began his career as an actor in touring companies. Meanwhile, he was learning how to become a playwright, but had little success—only one of his plays was accepted for a performance, Griffith then decided to become an actor, and appeared in many films as an extra. Griffith began making films in 1908, and released his first feature film, Judith of Bethulia. A few years earlier, in 1907, Griffith, still struggling as a playwright, Porter rejected Griffiths script, but gave him an acting part in Rescued from an Eagles Nest instead. Finding this attractive, Griffith began to explore a career as an actor in the picture business. At Biograph, Griffiths career in the industry would change forever. In 1908, Biographs main director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon, McCutcheon, Jr. however, was not able to bring the studio any success. As a result, Biograph co-founder, Henry Harry Marvin, decided to give Griffith the position, Griffith would end up directing forty-eight shorts for the company that year. His short In Old California was the first film shot in Hollywood, four years later he produced and directed his first feature film Judith of Bethulia, one of the earliest to be produced in the United States
8.
The Birth of a Nation
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The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from the novel and play The Clansman and it was released on February 8,1915. Three hours long, the film was presented in two parts separated by an intermission, it was the first 12-reel film in America. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized, there were widespread African-American protests against The Birth of a Nation, such as in Boston, while thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film. The NAACP spearheaded a campaign to ban the film. Griffiths indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year. The films release is credited as being one of the events that inspired the formation of the second era Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The Birth of a Nation, along with the trial and lynching of Leo Frank for the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan in Atlanta, was used as a tool for the KKK. Under President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first American motion picture to be screened at the White House, Griffiths innovative techniques and storytelling power have made The Birth of a Nation one of the landmarks of film history. In 1992, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, the film follows two juxtaposed families. One is the Northern Stonemans, abolitionist U. S, representative Austin Stoneman, his daughter, and two sons. The other is the Southern Camerons, Dr. Cameron is married to his wife, the couple also has three sons and two daughters. Phil, the elder Stoneman son, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while the visit to the the Cameron estate in South Carolina. Meanwhile, young Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman, during the Civil War, the young men from both families enlist in their respective armies for the war. The younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war, meanwhile, the Cameron women are rescued by Confederate soldiers who rout a Black militia, after an attack on the Cameron home. Ben Cameron leads a charge at the Siege of Petersburg. But he is wounded and captured. He is then taken to a Union hospital in Washington, D. C, during his stay at the hospital, he is told that he will be hanged
9.
Duel in the Sun (film)
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The movie stars Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore. Pearl Chavez is orphaned after her father Scott Chavez kills her mother, before Scott Chavez is executed as a punishment for killing his wife, he arranges for his daughter Pearl to live with his second cousin and old sweetheart, Laura Belle. Arriving by stagecoach, Pearl is met by Jesse McCanles, one of Laura Belles two grown sons and he takes her to Spanish Bit, their enormous cattle ranch. The second son, Lewt, is a man with a personality quite unlike that of his gentlemanly brother Jesse. He expresses his interest in Pearl in direct terms and she takes a dislike to him. Laura Belle calls in Mr. Jubal Crabbe, the Sinkiller, Pearl is determined to remain a good girl. When she submits to Lewts aggressive advances one night, Pearl is angry with him, but she also cannot help but be flattered by his lust and attentions. Jesse, meanwhile, is ostracized by his father and no longer welcome at the ranch after siding with railroad men, headed by Mr. Langford, against the Senators personal interests. Jesse is in love with Pearl but he leaves for Austin to pursue a career and becomes engaged to Helen Langford. Offended when Lewt reneges on a promise to marry her, Pearl takes up with Sam Pierce and she does not love him but says yes to his proposal. Before they can be married, however, Lewt picks a fight with Pierce in a saloon and he insists that Pearl can belong only to him. On the run from the law, Lewt finds time to derail a train and occasionally drop by the ranch late at night and she cannot resist her desire for him and lies for Lewt to the law, hiding him in her room. Afterward, however, he walks out on her, despite her pleas that she loves him, Laura Belles health takes a turn for the worse and the Senator admits his love for her before she dies. Jesse returns to visit but is too late, his mother is dead, the Senator continues to shun him, as does Lewt, their family feud finally resulting in a showdown. Lewt tosses a gun to his brother but Jesse stands his ground without attempting to pick it up. Jesse warns that Lewt will eventually be hanged as a murderer, the Senators old friend, Lem Smoot tells him that Jesses wound is not mortal and the old man softens up towards his son. A livid Pearl is relieved that Jesse is going to survive, when Helen arrives, she invites Pearl to leave Spanish Bit forever and come live with them in Austin. Pearl agrees, but she is tipped off by one of the Spanish Bit hands and she arms herself and engages in a shootout with Lewt in the desert, where they die in each others arms
10.
The Night of the Hunter (film)
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The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American film noir directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the name by Davis Grubb. The plot focuses on a corrupt reverend-turned-serial killer who attempts to charm an unsuspecting widow, the novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time, in West Virginia in the 1930s, along the Ohio River, Reverend Harry Powell, a serial killer, flees the scene of his latest murder. Powell is a preacher with a penchant for switchblade knives. He travels rural roads, preaching in towns, and rationalizes his murders by telling himself that he is punishing sinful women. The letters L-O-V-E are tattooed on the fingers of his hand. Powell uses them as symbols in impromptu sermons, in one small town, police arrest Powell for driving a stolen car and he is sentenced to jail. Meanwhile, a family man named Ben Harper kills two people in a bank robbery. He arrives home and hides the money he has stolen inside his daughters rag doll and he convinces his two young children, John and Pearl, to keep the hiding place secret. The police arrive and arrest Ben, while John is shocked by the way the police roughly overpower his father, Harper and Powell share a cell where Powell, soon to be released, tries without success to learn the location of the stolen money. Harper lets slip enough information to allow Powell to determine that Harpers children must know where the money is, Harper is executed for his crimes, while Powell is released from jail, and then woos and marries Harpers widow, Willa. Powell charms most of the townsfolk, but John remains distrustful, John does not share the moneys hiding place with Powell and must constantly remind his younger and more trusting sister Pearl to maintain the secret. Willa eventually discovers that Powell is searching for the money, though he has denied this to her. Still, the pious Willa believes he married her to show her Gods light rather than to gain access to the money. Powell murders her, dumps her body in the river, and covers up her disappearance by claiming she has abandoned him, with this cover story Powell retains the trust and sympathy of the townsfolk. His position in the town even more secure. Willas drowned body is discovered by Birdie Steptoe, an man who spends his days drinking on his riverboat and is friendly with John
11.
Bette Davis
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Ruth Elizabeth Bette Davis was an American actress of film, television, and theater. After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, however, her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances, in 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract. Although she lost the legal case against the studio, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinemas most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful, Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational. She clashed with executives and film directors as well as many of her co-stars. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona, Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her career went through periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institutes list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Bettys younger sister, Barbara Harriet Bobby, was born October 25,1909, at 55 Ward Street in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1915, Daviss parents separated and Betty and Bobby attended a Spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough, which is located in the Berkshires. In 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, Betty changed the spelling of her name to Bette after Honoré de Balzacs La Cousine Bette. Davis attended Cushing Academy, a school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. In 1926, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsens The Wild Duck with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle, Davis later recalled for Al Cohn of Newsday, The reason I wanted to go into theater was because of an actress named Peg Entwistle. She auditioned for admission to Eva LeGalliennes Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne who described her attitude as insincere, upon graduating from Cushing Academy, Bette enrolled in John Murray Andersons Dramatic School. In 1929, Davis was chosen by Blanche Yurka to play Hedwig, after performing in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes, and followed it with Solid South. In 1930, Davis moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios, Davis and her mother traveled by train to Hollywood and arrived on December 13,1930. She would later recount her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her at the train, in fact, a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who looked like an actress
12.
The Whales of August
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The Whales of August is a 1987 American drama film based on the play of the same name by David Berry and starring Bette Davis and Lillian Gish as elderly sisters. Also in the cast were Ann Sothern as one of their friends, the film was shot on location on Maines Cliff Island. The house still stands and is a subject of artists on the island. This was the film directed by Lindsay Anderson and the final film role by Lillian Gish. The Whales of August tells the story of two elderly widowed sisters near the end of their lives, spending a summer in a house in Maine. The surroundings cause them to recall their relationship as young women, and they reflect on the passage of time, and the bitterness, jealousies and misunderstandings that slowly festered over the years and kept them from establishing a true closeness in their relationship. Libby, played by Davis, is the elder and the infirm of the two sisters, and her nature has become bitter and cold as a result. Sarah, played by Gish, is the sister, a softer and more tolerant character, intent on nursing her sister through her discomfort. The resentment that Libby so clearly displays to her stifles Sarahs every attempt at making a friendly overture towards her, maranov is an expatriate from Russia who has recently lost the friend that he has been living with. Tisha is a lifelong friend who provides common sense, fun and laughter. In flashbacks, actresses Margaret Ladd, Mary Steenburgen and Tisha Sterling play respectively Libby, Sarah and this was to be the final film role for the 93-year-old Gish. As opposed to the stage production, the movie made it possible to showcase stars who were the age peers of the characters. Actors and actresses of an age and stature were contacted to see whether they were both interested in and physically capable of playing the roles. Many screen greats were approached to play a role but demurred because they suffered from various infirmities, e. g. Shirley Booth, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred Astaire and Paul Henreid. Gish and Davis themselves were somewhat infirmed — Davis had recently recovered from several strokes which inhibited movement on the side of her body. Ironically, Gish, playing the sister, was fifteen years older than Davis. Other greats turned down the producers overtures for other reasons, e. g. Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Katharine Hepburn, even Davis and Gish turned down the parts more than once before being persuaded to star in the film. This film marks a reunion between Bette Davis and Vincent Price, after 48 years, having last appeared on together in The Private Lives of Elizabeth
13.
Film preservation
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In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible. For many years the term preservation was synonymous with duplication of film, the goal of a preservationist was to create a durable copy without any significant loss of quality. In more modern terms, film preservation now includes the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, the archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public. By the 1980s, it was becoming apparent that the collections of motion picture heritage were at risk of becoming lost, at that time, the best known solution was to duplicate the original film onto a more secure medium. 90 percent of all American silent films made before 1929 and 50 percent of American sound films made before 1950 are lost films, the great majority of films made in the silent era are now considered lost forever. Most films made on nitrate stock were not preserved, over the years, their negatives, many of them were recycled for their silver content, or destroyed in studio or vault fires. The largest cause, however, was intentional destruction, as film preservationist Robert A. Harris explains, Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house, silent films had little or no commercial value after the advent of sound films in the 1930s, and as such, they were not kept. As a result, preserving the now rare silent films has been a priority amongst film historians. Because of the fragility of film stock, proper preservation of film usually involves storing the original negatives, the vast majority of films were not stored in this manner, which resulted in the widespread decay of film stocks. The problem of film decay is not limited to films made on cellulose nitrate, Film industry researchers and specialists have found that color films are also decaying at an increasingly rapid rate. A number of well-known films only exist as copies of original productions or exhibition elements because the originals have decomposed beyond use. Cellulose acetate film, which was the replacement for nitrate, has been found to suffer from vinegar syndrome. The film was paired together with a composed by Michael Gordon. The preservation of film usually refers to storage of the film in a climate-controlled vault. Film is best preserved by proper protection from external forces while in storage along with being under controlled temperatures, for most film materials, the Image Permanence Institute finds that storing film media in frozen temperatures, with RH between 30% and 50%, greatly extends its useful life. These measures inhibit deterioration better than any other methods and is a solution than replicating deteriorating films
14.
Episcopal Church (United States)
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The Episcopal Church is the United States-based member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The current presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Michael Bruce Curry, in 2014, the Episcopal Church had 1,956,042 baptized members. In 2011, it was the nations 14th largest denomination, in 2015, Pew Research estimated that 1.2 percent of the adult population in the United States, or 3 million people, self-identify as mainline Episcopalians/Anglicans. The Episcopal Church describes itself as Protestant, yet Catholic, the Episcopal Church is an apostolic church, tracing its bishops back to the apostles via holy orders. The Book of Common Prayer, a collection of traditional rites, blessings, liturgies, the Episcopal Church was active in the Social Gospel movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the church has pursued a more liberal course. It has opposed the death penalty and supported the civil rights movement, some of its leaders and priests are known for marching with influential civil rights demonstrators such as Martin Luther King Jr. The Church calls for the legal equality of gay and lesbian people. Due to the process of editing or making additions to the Prayer Book, the BCP still describes marriage as being the union of a man. The Episcopal Church ordains women and LGBT people to the priesthood, the diaconate, in 2003, Gene Robinson was the first non-celibate openly gay person ordained as a bishop in documented Christian history. There are two names of the Episcopal Church specified in its constitution, The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The latter is the commonly used name. In other languages, an equivalent is used, until 1964, the only official name in use was The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. In the 19th century, High Church members advocated changing the name and they were opposed by the churchs evangelical wing, which felt that the Protestant Episcopal label accurately reflected the Reformed character of Anglicanism. After 1877, alternative names were proposed and rejected by the General Convention. A commonly proposed alternative was the American Catholic Church, by the 1960s, opposition to dropping the word Protestant had largely subsided. The 66th General Convention voted in 1979 to use the name The Episcopal Church in the Oath of Conformity of the Declaration for Ordination, the evolution of the name can be seen in the churchs Book of Common Prayer. The alternate name The Episcopal Church in the United States of America has never been a name of the church but is commonly seen in English
15.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
16.
Lutheranism
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway
17.
Majestic Theatre (East St. Louis, Illinois)
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The Majestic Theatre is a historic movie theater located at 240-246 Collinsville Ave. in East St. Louis, Illinois. Built in 1928, the theater replaced a 1907 theater which had burned down, the Spanish Gothic theater was designed by the Boller Brothers, who were nationally prominent theater architects. Multicolored tiles decorate the front facade, forming patterned mosaics. The front facade also features piers with decorative peaks and tall arched windows, the theater closed in the 1960s. The theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 9,1985
18.
Mary Pickford
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Gladys Louise Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress, writer, director, and producer. She was a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Known in her prime as Americas Sweetheart and the girl with the curls, Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. Pickford was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her name and she was awarded the second ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette and also received an honorary Academy Award in 1976. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute ranked Pickford as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema, Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in 1892 at 211 University Avenue, A Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants and her mother, Charlotte Hennessey, was of Irish Catholic descent and worked for a time as a seamstress. She had two siblings, Charlotte, called Lottie, and John Charles, called Jack, who also became actors. To please her husbands relatives, Pickfords mother baptized her children as Methodists, John Charles Smith was an alcoholic, he abandoned the family and died on February 11,1898, from a fatal blood clot caused by a workplace accident when he was a purser with Niagara Steamship. When Gladys was age four, her household was under infectious quarantine and their devoutly Catholic maternal grandmother asked a visiting Roman Catholic priest to baptize the children. Pickford was at this time baptized as Gladys Marie Smith, Charlotte Smith began taking in boarders after being widowed. One of these was a stage manager. At his suggestion, Gladys was given two roles, one as a boy and the other as a girl, in a stock company production of The Silver King at Torontos Princess Theatre. She subsequently acted in many melodramas with Torontos Valentine Company, finally playing the child role in their version of The Silver King. By the early 1900s, theatre had become a family enterprise, Gladys, her mother and two younger siblings toured the United States by rail, performing in third-rate companies and plays. After six impoverished years, Pickford allowed one more summer to land a role on Broadway. In 1906 Gladys, Lottie and Jack Smith supported singer Chauncey Olcott on Broadway in Edmund Burke, Gladys finally landed a supporting role in a 1907 Broadway play, The Warrens of Virginia. The play was written by William C. deMille, whose brother, Cecil, David Belasco, the producer of the play, insisted that Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford. After completing the Broadway run and touring the play, however, on April 19,1909, the Biograph Company director D. W. Griffith screen-tested her at the companys New York studio for a role in the nickelodeon film, Pippa Passes
19.
Victor Maurel
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Victor Maurel was a French operatic baritone who enjoyed an international reputation as a great singing-actor. Educated in music and stage craft at the Paris Conservatory, he made his debut in opera at the city of his birth, Marseilles, the following year, he performed on stage in Paris for the first time. The city of New York first heard him in 1873, when he performed at the Academy of Music, later, he would sing at New Yorks Metropolitan Opera House. In 1887, Maurel created the role of Iago in Otello at La Scala, Milan and these were the final two operatic masterpieces composed by Giuseppe Verdi, and it was Verdi who selected Maurel to perform in the premieres. Maurel made operatic history for a time in 1892 when he was chosen to be the first Tonio in Ruggero Leoncavallos enduringly popular verismo opera. Like many Paris-trained singers of his day, Maurel was equally adept at performing roles in Italian and he appeared, too, in several German operas by Richard Wagner, and was a famous Don Giovanni in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts opera of the same name. After retiring from opera, Maurel taught singing in Paris and New York City and his pupils included the contralto Frances Ingram and the baritones Herbert Heyner and Thomas Quinlan. Some impressive examples of his vocalism are preserved on gramophone records which he made during the years of the 20th century. These recordings, which include a few French songs and arias from Otello, Falstaff, Maurel also wrote a number of books on opera and the art of singing and dabbled in theatrical set design. Volume One of Michael Scotts The Record of Singing contains an overview of the baritones career, an assessment of his musical importance
20.
Biograph Company
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The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. The company was distinguished with pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, an unrelated company, with the same name, was incorporated in California in 1991. As of 2012, its operations are suspended, the company was started by William Kennedy Dickson, an inventor at Thomas Edisons laboratory who helped pioneer the technology of capturing moving images on film. Dickson left Edison in April 1895, joining with inventors Herman Casler, Henry Marvin, in the summer of 1896 the Biograph projector was released, offering superior image quality to Edison’s Vitascope projector. The company soon became a leader in the industry, with distribution and production subsidiaries around the world including the British Mutoscope Company. In 1899 it changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, the camera used friction feed, instead of Edison’s sprocket feed, to guide the film to the aperture. The camera itself punched a hole on each side of the frame as the film was exposed at 30 frames per second. Biograph offered prints in both formats to exhibitors until 1905, when it discontinued the larger format, the occasional narrative film, usually a comedy, was typically shot in one scene, with no editing. Spurred on by competition from Edison and British and European producers, as the stories became more complex, the films became longer, with multiple scenes to tell the story, although an individual scene was still usually presented in one shot without editing. Biographs production of actualities ended by 1908 in favor of the narrative film, the companys first studio was located on the roof of 841 Broadway at 13th Street in Manhattan, known then as the Hackett Carhart Building and today as the Roosevelt Building. The set-up was similar to Thomas Edisons Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey, as of 1988, the foundations of this machinery were still extant. The company moved in 1906 to a brownstone mansion at 11 East 14th Street near Union Square. This was Biographs first indoor studio, and the first movie studio in the world to rely exclusively on artificial light, Biograph moved again in 1913, as it entered feature film production, to a new, state-of-the-art studio on 175th Street in the Bronx. In order to make the audience aware that they were watching an American Biograph movie the AB logo would be prominently placed in random parts of the movie. Director D. W. Griffith joined Biograph in 1908 as a writer and actor, but within months became their principal director. In 1908, the head director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. took his place. As a result of failed productions, studio head Henry Marvin gave the position of head director to Griffith. Although Griffith did not invent these techniques, he made them a part of the film vocabulary
21.
Risingsun, Ohio
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Risingsun is a village in Wood County, Ohio, United States. The population was 606 at the 2010 census, the first settlement at what is now Risingsun was made in the 1830s. A post office called Rising Sun was established in 1873, the village was incorporated in 1879. Risingsun is located at 41°16′8″N 83°25′28″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 0.57 square miles, all land. As of the census of 2010, there were 606 people,222 households, the population density was 1,063.2 inhabitants per square mile. There were 247 housing units at a density of 433.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the village was 96. 0% White,0. 7% Native American,0. 2% Asian,0. 3% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 4. 5% of the population. 22. 5% of all households were made up of individuals and 12. 2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.73 and the average family size was 3.09. The median age in the village was 36 years. 27. 9% of residents were under the age of 18,10. 2% were between the ages of 18 and 24,25. 8% were from 25 to 44,23. 8% were from 45 to 64, and 12. 4% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the village was 52. 8% male and 47. 2% female, as of the census of 2000, there were 620 people,232 households, and 171 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,073.8 people per square mile, there were 246 housing units at an average density of 426.1 per square mile. The racial makeup of the village was 97. 42% White,0. 48% Native American,0. 16% Asian,1. 13% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. 26% of the population. 24. 1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10. 3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.67 and the average family size was 3.10. In the village, the population was out with 30. 8% under the age of 18,7. 4% from 18 to 24,32. 3% from 25 to 44,19. 0% from 45 to 64. The median age was 34 years, for every 100 females there were 85.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.9 males, the median income for a household in the village was $37,656, and the median income for a family was $40,417. Males had an income of $31,000 versus $24,821 for females
22.
Sarah Bernhardt
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Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress. She was referred to as the most famous actress the world has ever known, Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, at the beginning of the Belle Epoque period, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas. She developed a reputation as a dramatic actress and tragedienne. In her later career she starred in some of the earliest films ever produced, Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris as Rosine Bernardt on October 23,1844. She was the daughter of a Dutch-Jewish courtesan, or upper-class prostitute, Judith Bernard. Four different addresses in Paris are claimed as her birthplace,125 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré,5 rue de lEcole-de-Medicine,22 rue de la Michodière and 265 rue Saint-Honoré. The father, whoever he was, left a sum of one hundred francs for her future dowry when she came of age. Sarah lived for months with the nurse and her husband in the tiny apartment of the concierge. While there, the child showed the first signs of tuberculosis. Sarah was discovered on the street by her aunt Rosine, who was passing by, when Sarahs mother finally returned to Paris, Sarah was taken to her apartment at 265 rue Saint-Honoré, where she lived, attended by servants, rarely ever seeing her mother. At the age of eight, Sarah could neither read or writer and her mother sent her away to a school for young ladies in Auteuil run by a Madame Fressard, where for the first time she was with other children her own age. The other children made fun of her appearance and curly hair. During the two years she attended the school, her mother came to see her only twice and she completely forgot all of her lines and fled the stage in tears. At the age of ten, by obtaining the sponsorship of the Duc de Morny, her mother sent Sarah to Grandchamp, at the convent, she was soon on the stage again, performing the part of the Archangel Raphael in the story of Tobias and the Angel. She received her first communion as a Roman Catholic in 1856, however, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied, No, Im a Roman Catholic, Im waiting until Christians become better. At the age of fifteen, her mother withdrew her from the school and her mother summoned a family council, which also included the Duc de Morny, one of her friends. Morny proposed that Sarah should become an actress, an idea which horrified the young girl, Morny arranged for her to attend her first theater performance at the Comedie Française in a party which included her mother, the Duc de Morny, and his friend Alexandre Dumas
23.
Broken Blossoms
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Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl, often referred to simply as Broken Blossoms, is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith. It was distributed by United Artists and premiered on May 13,1919 and it was the second film released by United Artists. It is based on Thomas Burkes short story The Chink and the Child from the 1916 collection Limehouse Nights, Cheng Huan leaves his native China because he dreams to spread the gentle message of Buddha to the Anglo-Saxon lands. His idealism fades as he is faced with the reality of Londons gritty inner-city. However, his mission is realized in his devotion to the broken blossom Lucy Burrows. After being beaten and discarded one evening by her father, Lucy finds sanctuary in Chengs home. As Cheng nurses Lucy back to health, the two form a bond as two unwanted outcasts of society, all goes astray for them when Lucys father gets wind of his daughters whereabouts and in a drunken rage drags her back to their home to punish her. Fearing for her life, Lucy locks herself inside a closet to escape her contemptuous father, by the time Cheng arrives to rescue Lucy, whom he so innocently adores, it is too late. Lucys lifeless body lies on her modest bed as Battling has a drink in the other room. As Cheng gazes at Lucys youthful face which, in spite of the circumstances, beams with innocence and even the slightest hint of a smile, Battling enters the room to make his escape. The two stand for a long while, exchanging spiteful glances, until Battling lunges for Cheng with a hatchet, after returning to his home with Lucys body, Cheng builds a shrine to Buddha and takes his own life with a knife to the chest. Conversely, the Burrows bare cell reeks of oppression and hostility, Griffith was unsure of his final product and took several months to complete the editing, saying, I cant look at the damn thing, it depresses me so. The film was made for Famous Players Lasky. That company sold it to the newly founded United Artists for $250,000, the movie turned out to be a hit at the box office and earned a profit of $700,000. Broken Blossoms premiered in May 1919, at the George M. Cohan Theatre in New York City as part of the D. W. Griffith Repertory Season. According to Lillian Gishs autobiography, theaters were decorated with flowers, moon lanterns, critics and audiences were pleased with Griffiths follow-up film to his 1916 epic Intolerance. Contrasting with Intolerances grand story, set and length, Griffith charmed audiences by the delicacy with which Broken Blossoms handled such a complex subject, few pictures have enjoyed greater or more lasting success destime. She said Griffith himself was sickened while directing her in the closet scene, today, Broken Blossoms is widely regarded as one of Griffiths finest works
24.
Way Down East
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Way Down East is a 1920 American silent romantic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. It is one of four film adaptations of the melodramatic 19th century play Way Down East by Lottie Blair Parker, there were two earlier silent versions and one sound version in 1935 starring Henry Fonda. Griffiths version is remembered for its exciting climax in which Lillian Gishs character is rescued from doom on an icy river. Some sources, quoting newspaper ads of the time, say a sequence was filmed in a color process. The rich, typified by the handsome man-about-town Lennox, are exceptionally selfish, Anna is a poor country girl whom Lennox tricks into a fake wedding. When she becomes pregnant, he leaves her and she has the baby, named Trust Lennox, on her own. When the baby dies she wanders until she gets a job with Squire Bartlett, David, Squire Bartletts son, falls for her, but she rejects him due to her past. Then Lennox shows up lusting for another girl, Kate. Seeing Anna, he tries to get her to leave, but she refuses to go, finally, Squire Bartlett learns of Annas past from Martha, the town gossip. In his anger, he tosses Anna out into a snow storm, before she goes, she fingers the respected Lennox as her despoiler and the father of her dead baby. Anna becomes lost in the storm while David leads a search party. In the famous climax, the unconscious Anna floats on an ice floe down a river towards a waterfall, until rescued at the last moment by David, subplots relate the romances and eventual marriages of some of the picaresque characters inhabiting the village. Davies died in 1912 but had toured the play for well over ten years, the play was considered outdated by the time of its cinematic production in 1920. The play was a story that espoused nineteenth century Americana. Although it was Griffiths most expensive film to date, it was one of his most commercially successful. Way Down East is the fourth highest grossing silent film in cinema history, silentEra. com says that some sequences of Way Down East were filmed in an early Technicolor process. Clarine Seymour had appeared in four previous Griffith films, and was hired to play Kate, however, her role was given to Mary Hay, and Seymours footage reshot, when Seymour died after surgery. The famous ice floe sequence was filmed in White River Junction, an actual waterfall was used, though it was only a few feet high — the long shot where a large drop is shown was filmed at Niagara Falls
25.
Photoplay
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Photoplay is a dated term for a motion picture that can also refer to a type of novel popular during the silent era of Hollywood. Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines and it was founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story, a magazine also directed at fans. For most of its run, Photoplay was published by Macfadden Publications, Photoplay began as a short-fiction magazine concerned mostly with the plots and characters of films at the time and was used as a promotional tool for those films. In 1915, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk became the editors, by 1918 the circulation exceeded 200,000, with the popularity of the magazine fueled by the publics increasing interest in the private lives of celebrities. Photoplay reached its apex in the 1920s and 1930s and was considered influential within the motion picture industry. The magazine was renowned for its portraits of film stars on the cover by such artists as Earl Christy. Macfadden Publications purchased the magazine in 1934, with the advancement of color photography, the magazine began using photographs of the stars instead by 1937. The magazine was edited by Quirk until 1932, later editors include Kathyrn Dougherty, Ruth Waterbury and it also featured the health and beauty advice of Sylvia of Hollywood, arguably the first fitness guru to the stars. Beginning in 1920, Photoplay gave out what is considered the first significant annual movie award, the worth of its dramatic message. By 1939 the Medal of Honor had declined in importance and the award was discontinued that year. From 1944 to 1968, Photoplay awarded a Gold Medal for film of the based on polling done by George Gallups Audience Research Inc. through the 1950s. It also awarded Most Popular Male Star and Most Popular Female Star based on an actor and actress popularity, the awards were based on polling through the 1950s, and then on a vote by the readers, similar to the Gold Medal. Most popular television stars were named in the 1960s. In 1948, the Photoplay Awards were broadcast on television as part of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show. Photoplay merged with another fan magazine, Movie Mirror, in 1941, and with TV-Radio Mirror in 1977, the magazine ceased publication in 1980 and its staff were moved to Us magazine. A British version of Photoplay debuted in 1950, featuring a mix of American and British films and stars. Original Photoplay interview with Greta Garbo - as told by her to Ruth Biery
26.
Rolf Armstrong
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Rolf Armstrong was an American painter of pin-up art. Rolf Armstrong was born in Bay City, Michigan on April 21,1889, to Richard and his father owned the Boy-Line Fire Boat Company, which included a line of passenger ships. Some were deployed in Chicago for use at the Chicago Worlds Fair there in 1893, however, the fathers business and family were struggling, and the family homestead was lost to foreclosure. In 1899, the moved to Detroit, Michigan. Rolfs father died in 1903, and a later he and his mother moved to Seattle, Washington, following the footsteps of his oldest brother, William. By now Rolfs artistic interests were emerging to more than a part-time pleasure and he moved to Chicago in 1908, where he later studied at the Art Institute. He then went on to New York, where he studied with Robert Henri, after a trip to Paris in 1919 to study at the Académie Julian, he returned to New York and established a studio. In 1921 he went to Minneapolis to study calendar production at Brown & Bigelow. During the 1920s and 1930s, his work appeared on pieces of sheet music, as well as on the covers of many magazines, most famously for movie fan magazines such as Photoplay. His work mostly consists of women, Mary Pickford, Bebe Daniels, armstrongs work for the Pictorial Review was largely responsible for that magazine achieving a circulation of more than two million by 1926. A year later, he was the best-selling calendar artist at Brown & Bigelow, in 1930, RCA hired him to paint pin-ups to advertise their products, and in 1933 the Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company signed him to produce a series of paintings for their line. Rolf Armstrong died in 1960 on the island of Oahu, Hawaii as one of the best pin-up artists of the first half of the twentieth century, in the January 1930 issue of Screenland, Rolf Armstrong chose sixteen actresses to symbolize different colors. Here are the original captions and portraits in the order which appeared in the magazine. Pin up Dreams, The Glamour Art of Rolf Armstrong, Rolf Armstrong artwork can be viewed at American Art Archives web site AskArt auction records for Rolf Armstrong art
27.
An Unseen Enemy
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An Unseen Enemy is a 1912 Biograph Company short silent film directed by D. W. Griffith, and was the first film to be made starring the actresses Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. A critic of the stated that the Gish sisters gave charming performances in this one-reel film. The film was shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey where early film studios in Americas first motion picture industry were based at the beginning of the 20th century. Elmer Booth Lillian Gish Dorothy Gish Harry Carey Sr. Robert Harron Grace Henderson - The Unseen Enemy Charles Hill Mailes - Walter Miller - Henry B. Walthall - Adolph Lestina - Antonio Moreno - Man on Bridge and their older brother is able to convert some of the doctors small estate to cash. It is late in the day, and with the banks closed he stores the money in his fathers household safe, the slatternly housekeeper, aware of the money, enlists a criminal acquaintance to help crack the safe. They lock the daughters in an adjacent room, and the drunken housekeeper menaces them by brandishing a gun through a hole in the wall, the resourceful girls use the telephone to call their brother who has returned to town. He gets the message and organizes a rescue party
28.
Intolerance (film)
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Intolerance is a 1916 epic silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Subtitles include Loves Struggle Throughout the Ages and A Sun-Play of the Ages, Bartholomews Day massacre of 1572, and a Babylonian story, the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print, the scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle. It was not, as is implied, an apology for the racism of his earlier film. In numerous interviews, Griffith made clear that the films title, in the years following its release, Intolerance would strongly influence European film movements despite its lack of commercial success domestically. The film sets up moral and psychological connections among the different stories, the timeline covers approximately 2,500 years. The ancient Babylonian story depicts the conflict between Prince Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Great of Persia, the fall of Babylon is a result of intolerance arising from a conflict between devotees of two rival Babylonian gods—Bel-Marduk and Ishtar. The Biblical Judean story recounts how—after the Wedding at Cana and the Woman Taken in Adultery—intolerance led to the Crucifixion of Jesus and this sequence is the shortest of the four. The Renaissance French story tells of the religious intolerance led to the St. Bartholomews Day Massacre of Protestant Huguenots fomented by Catholic royals. The American Modern story demonstrates how crime, moral puritanism, to get more money for his spinster sisters charities, a mill owner orders a 10% pay cut to his workers wages. An ensuing workers strike is crushed and The Boy and The Dear One make their way to another city, she lives in poverty, after they marry he tries to break free of crime but is framed for theft by his ex-boss. While he is in prison, his wife must endure their child being taken away by the same moral uplift society that instigated the strike, upon his release from prison, he discovers his ex-boss attempting to rape his wife. A struggle begins and in the confusion the girlfriend of the boss shoots and she escapes and The Boy is convicted and sentenced to the gallows. A kindly policeman helps The Dear One find the killer and together they try to reach the Governor in time so her reformed husband will not be hanged. Breaks between the time periods are marked by the symbolic image of a mother rocking a cradle. The film simultaneously cross-cuts back and forth and interweaves the segments over great gaps of space and time, One of the unusual characteristics of the film is that many of the characters do not have names. Griffith wished them to be emblematic of human types, thus, the central female character in the modern story is called The Dear One. Her young husband is called The Boy, and the leader of the local Mafia is called The Musketeer of the Slums
29.
Orphans of the Storm
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Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 silent drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution. Like his earlier films, Griffith used historical events to comment on contemporary events, the film is about class conflict and a plea for inter-class understanding and against destructive hatred. At one point, in front of the Committee of Public Safety, a main character pleads, Yes I am an aristocrat and it had been filmed in the United States twice before Griffith did his film, in 1911 by Otis Turner and in 1915 by Herbert Brenon. The play had also filmed twice in France in 1910, by Albert Capellani. Just before the French Revolution, Henriette takes her adopted sister Louise to Paris in the hope of finding a cure for her blindness. She promises Louise that she not marry until Louise can look upon her husband to approve him. Lustful aristocrat de Praille meets the two outside Paris, taken by the virginal Henriettes beauty, he has her abducted and brought to his estate where a lavish party is being held, leaving Louise helpless in the big city. An honorable aristocrat, the Chevalier de Vaudrey helps Henriette to escape de Praille, the scoundrel Mother Frochard, seeing an opportunity to make money, tricks Louise into her underground house to be kept prisoner. Unable to find Louise with the help of the Chevalier, Henriette rents a room, later, Henriette gives shelter to admirable politician Danton, who after an attack by Royalist spies following a public speech falls for her. As a result, she runs foul of the radical revolutionary Robespierre, Mother Frochard forces Louise into begging. Meanwhile, de Vaudrey proposes to Henriette and she refuses, after expressing love for each other, he promises Henriette that Louise will be found. King Louis XVI orders Henriette to be arrested, due to his disapproval of de Vaudreys choice of wife, during the meeting, Louise is heard singing outside, where Frochard has told her to walk blindly and sing. Henriette calls out from her upstairs balcony, but the panicked Louise is dragged off by Frochard and Henriette is arrested, Louise and Frochards begging continues with the other two Frochards, and before long the Revolution begins. A battle between the Royalist soldiers and the people allied with the police, who are successful, results in aristocrats being killed, a peoples rag-tag government is formed, and Forget-not takes his revenge against de Praille. Robespierre and Forget-not send Henriette and her lover, the Chevalier de Vaudrey, to the guillotine, for hiding de Vaudrey, an aristocrat, however, Danton manages to obtain a pardon for them. After a race through the streets of Paris he just manages to save Henriette and offers her to the Chevalier, a doctor restores Louises sight, she approves marriage between Henriette and the Chevalier, and a better-organized Republic forms in France. The Two Orphans, the English-language version of the French play upon which the movie is based, had been filmed at least twice by 1920, and had been a staple of the actress Kate Claxton. In securing the rights, Griffith had to wrangle with Miss Claxton
30.
Remodeling Her Husband
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Remodeling Her Husband is a 1920 American silent comedy film that marked the only time Lillian Gish directed a film. D. W. Griffith is stated in some sources as co-director or perhaps had limited input as the production was filmed at his Mamaroneck, Lillian Gish wrote the story and scenario incognito as Dorothy Elizabeth Carter with Algonquin Round Table writer Dorothy Parker supplying the intertitles. Thus the movie was nearly an all-woman produced movie with the exception of the cameraman, the film stars Lillians sister Dorothy Gish and Dorothys husband at the time James Rennie. George W. Hill, who is the cinematographer, would go on to direct classic films at MGM like Tell It to the Marines. As described in publications, Janie gets married with the goal of reforming her husband Jack. He promises to reform, but says he is ashamed because she lacks the style of a flapper, all goes well until he meets a pretty woman with a heavy suitcase. He helps her into a cab and takes her home. Janie sees him as she rides by on a bus and that affair gets him into wrong, but he manages to square it with his wife. Then a good looking manicure girl comes into his life, once again Janie is on the job at the psychological moment. This time she leaves him in haste and goes home to her mother, Janie tries to forget Jack by taking a job in her fathers office. Jack, who loves her sincerely, is filled with remorse and he calls upon her to beg her forgiveness and, since she still loves him, she yields. But when he attempts to lay down the law to her, she presses a button on her desk and he threatens suicide, and this is too much for Janie. She comes back to him and they live together happily, Dorothy Gish as Janie Wakefield James Rennie as Jack Valentine Marie Burke as Mrs. Wakefield Downing Clarke as Mr. Wakefied Frank Kingdon as Mr. The picture seems to be a real Gish family affair, with Dorothy starring and Lillian directing. Much is made of the latter in a leader, which sets forth that this day is one where woman is asserting herself in all the arts. But Lillian does not qualify as a particularly strong directress in this production, the story may have had something to do with that. It is not a world beater but with the action that Dorothy supplies it gets by with laughs, James Rennie, who plays opposite the star, is the only member of the supporting cast who seems to have more than a ‘bit’ to do. The others while acceptable fail to show enough to get a line on them
31.
Greta Garbo
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Greta Garbo, was a Swedish-born American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her luminous, Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B, Mayer, chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She immediately stirred interest with her first silent film, Torrent, released in 1926, a later, her performance in Flesh. Garbos first talking film was Anna Christie, MGM marketers enticed the public with the catch-phrase Garbo talks. That same year she starred in Romance, for her performances in these films she received the first of three Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. In 1932, her popularity allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract and her success continued in films such as Mata Hari and Grand Hotel. Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille to be her finest, the role gained her a second Academy Award nomination. Garbos career soon declined, however, and she was one of the many stars labeled Box Office Poison in 1938, from then on, Garbo declined all opportunities to return to the screen. Shunning publicity, she began a life, and neither married nor had children. Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden and she was the third and youngest child of Anna Lovisa —a housewife who later worked at a jam factory—and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. Garbo had a brother, Sven Alfred, and an older sister. Her parents met in Stockholm where her father visited from Frinnaryd and he moved to Stockholm to become independent and worked in various odd jobs—street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butchers assistant. He married Anna, who had moved from Högsby. The Gustafssons were impoverished and lived in a three-bedroom cold-water flat at Blekingegatan No.32 and they brought up their three children in a working class district regarded as the citys slum. Garbo would later recall, It was eternally grey—those long winters nights and my father would be sitting in a corner, scribbling figures on a newspaper. On the other side of the room my mother is repairing ragged old clothes and we children would be talking in very low voices, or just sitting silently. We were filled with anxiety, as if there were danger in the air, such evenings are unforgettable for a sensitive girl
32.
The Scarlet Letter (1926 film)
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The Scarlet Letter is a 1926 American drama film, based on the book by the same name, and directed by Victor Sjöström. Louis B. Mayer was reluctant on using Miss Gish, fearing opposition from church groups, the film was announced as Its a real A picture, taking advantage of the A for Adultery. Prints of the film survive in the MGM/United Artists film archives, lillian Gish - Hester Prynne Lars Hanson - The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale Henry B. She asked Louis B. Mayer specifically to make it and he reluctantly agreed, the film made a profit of $296,000
33.
The Wind (1928 film)
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The Wind is a 1928 American silent romantic drama film directed by Victor Sjöström. The movie was adapted by Frances Marion from the novel of the name written by Dorothy Scarborough. It features Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Montagu Love and it was one of the last silent films released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and is considered one of the greatest silent films. An impoverished young woman named Letty travels west by train from Virginia to live at her cousin Beverlys isolated ranch in Sweetwater, on the way, she is bothered by the constantly blowing wind. Fellow passenger and cattle buyer Wirt Roddy makes her acquaintance and tells her the wind usually drives women crazy, upon arrival, she is picked up by Beverlys closest neighbors, Lige Hightower and the older, balding Sourdough, who live 15 miles from her cousin. Wirt assures her he will drop by occasionally to see how she is doing, after endless miles in sand and wind, they arrive at the ranch. Beverly is delighted to see her, but his jealous wife Cora gives her a cold reception, despite Letty saying she, Cora is further angered when her children seem to like Letty better. At a party, Sourdough tells Lige that he intends proposing to Letty, Lige explains he was planning to do the same. After Wirt drops by, a cyclone interrupts the festivities, most of the guests seek shelter in the basement, where Wirt declares his love for Letty and offers to take her away from the dismal place. After the cyclone passes, Lige and Sourdough talk to Letty in private, when they flip a coin to see who will ask for her hand in marriage, Letty thinks it is just a joke. Afterward, Cora demands that she leave Beverly alone and that she has to leave the ranch. Because she has neither money nor a place to go, she decides to go away with Wirt and she goes back to Cora, who tells her to choose from her two other suitors. When Lige takes her home, he kisses Letty for the first time, worse for the drink, he becomes more forceful, and this makes her tell him that he has made her hate him, which she did not want to do. Lige promises her he will never touch her and he states he will try to make enough money to send her back to Virginia. In the meantime, Letty works around the house, but is bothered by the ever present wind, one day, Lige is invited to a meeting of the cattlemen, who must do something to avoid starvation. Letty, terrified of being alone with only the wind for company. After she cannot control her horse in the wind, he has her get on behind him on his horse. When she falls off, Lige tells Sourdough to take her home, when the cattlemen return, they bring an unwanted guest, an injured Wirt
34.
Uncle Vanya
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Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, the play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Sonya, the daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going. Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhovs major plays because it is essentially a reworking of his own play published a decade earlier. Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revised The Wood Demon during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891. Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov, a university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wifes rural estate. Helena Andreyevna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs young and beautiful second wife, sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs daughter from his first marriage. She is of an age, but is considered plain. Maria Vasilyevna Voynitsky, the widow of a councilor and mother of Vanya. Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky, Marias son and Sonyas uncle, the character of the play. Mikhail Lvovich Astrov, a middle aged country doctor, ilya Ilych Telegin, an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family. A Workman A garden in Serebryakovs country estate, Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown, and how he feels bored with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains about how all order has been disrupted since the professor and his wife, Yelena, as they’re talking, Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of the professors earshot, Vanya calls him an old dried mackerel, criticizing him for his pomposity. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects to her son’s derogatory comments, Vanya also praises the professor’s wife, Yelena, for her beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like Serebryakov is an immoral waste of vitality. Astrov is forced to depart to attend a patient, but not before delivering a speech on the preservation of the forests, act I closes with Vanya declaring his love for an exasperated Yelena. The dining room, several days later, before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of being in pain and of old age. Astrov arrives, having sent for by Sonya, but the professor refuses to see him
35.
Sound film
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A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s, at first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as talking pictures, or talkies, were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects, the first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon, in the United States, they helped secure Hollywoods position as one of the worlds most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence. In Europe, the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, in Japan, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance, talking pictures were slow to take root. In India, sound was the element that led to the rapid expansion of the nations film industry. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27,1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison, the two inventors privately met. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope, essentially a peep-show system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph. The two devices were brought together as the Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection and these appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition, three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation. The primary issue was synchronization, pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. Finally, there was the challenge of recording fidelity, cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in a variety of ways. In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons
36.
Motion Picture Production Code
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The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays. Under Hays leadership, the MPPDA, later known as the Motion Picture Association of America, adopted the Production Code in 1930, the Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. From 1934 to 1954, the code was identified with Joseph Breen. In 1968, after years of minimal enforcement, the Production Code was replaced by the MPAA film rating system. In 1922, after several films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars. Many felt the industry had always been morally questionable. Political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred movie censorship bills in 1921, Hays was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year. Hays, Postmaster General under Warren G, Virginia followed suit the following year, with eight individual states having a board by the advent of sound film, but many of these were ineffectual. By the 1920s, the New York stage—a frequent source of subsequent screen material—had topless shows, performances filled with words, mature subject matters. Early in the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas. Moviemakers were looking at the possibility that many states and cities would adopt their own codes of censorship, in 1927, Hays suggested to studio executives that they form a committee to discuss film censorship. This list consisted of eleven subjects best avoided and twenty-six to be handled very carefully, the list was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, and Hays created the Studio Relations Committee to oversee its implementation, however, there was still no way to enforce tenets. The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929, the Code enumerated a number of key points known as the Donts and Be Carefuls, In 1929, a Catholic layman, Martin Quigley and the Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord created a code of standards and submitted it to the studios, Lord was particularly concerned with the effects of sound film on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to their allure. In February 1930, several studio heads—including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer —met with Lord, after some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It was the responsibility of the SRC to supervise film production, on March 31, the MPPDA agreed it would abide by the Code
37.
Femme fatale
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A femme fatale is a stock character of a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art, in American early 20th century film, femme fatale characters were referred to as vamps, an allusion to their role as sexual vampires. The phrase is French for fatal woman, a femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. In some situations, she uses lies or coercion rather than charm and she may also make use of some subduing weapon such as sleeping gas, a modern analog of magical powers in older tales. She may also be a victim, caught in a situation from which she cannot escape, a younger version of a femme fatale is called a fille fatale, or fatal girl. Femmes fatale are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, the femme fatale archetype exists in the culture, folklore and myth of many cultures. Ancient mythical or legendary examples include Mohini, Lilith, the Sirens, historical examples from Classical times include Cleopatra and Messalina, as well as the Biblical figures Delilah, Jezebel and Salome. An example from Chinese literature and traditional history is Daji, the femme fatale was a common figure in the European Middle Ages, often portraying the dangers of unbridled female sexuality. The pre-medieval inherited Biblical figure of Eve offers an example, as does the wicked, along with them, there rose the gothic novel, The Monk featuring Matilda, a very powerful femme fatale. This led to her appearing in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, pre-Raphaelite painters frequently used the classic personifications of the femme fatale as a subject. Later, Salome was the subject of an opera by Strauss, and was popularized on stage, screen, another enduring icon of glamour, seduction, and moral turpitude is Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, 1876–1917. While working as a dancer, she took the stage name Mata Hari. Although she may have been innocent, she was accused of German espionage and was put to death by a French firing squad, after her death she became the subject of many sensational films and books. Other considerably famous femmes fatales are Isabella of France, Hedda Gabler of Kristiania, Marie Antoinette of Austria, one traditional view portrays the femme fatale as a sexual vampire, her charms leech the virility and independence of lovers, leaving them shells of themselves. Rudyard Kipling took inspiration from a vampire painted by Philip Burne-Jones, the poem inspired the 1913 eponymous film The Vampire by Robert Vignola, sometimes cited as the first vamp movie. Like much of Kiplings verse it became popular, and its refrain. Describing a seduced man, became the title of the popular 1915 film A Fool There Was that made Theda Bara a star, the poem was used in the publicity for the film. On this account, in the American slang of the era the femme fatale was called a vamp, from the American film-audience perspective, the femme fatale often appeared foreign, usually either of indeterminate Eastern European or Asian ancestry
38.
Louise Brooks
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Mary Louise Brooks, who worked professionally as Louise Brooks, was an American film actress and dancer noted as an iconic symbol of the flapper, and for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known as the lead in three films made in Europe, Pandoras Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, and Miss Europe. She starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films before retiring in 1938, Brooks published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982, three years later she died of a heart attack at the age of 78. Rude was a talented pianist who played the latest Debussy and Ravel for her children, inspiring them with a love of books and music. When she was nine years old, a neighborhood predator sexually abused Louise. For me, nice, soft, when Brooks at last told her mother of the incident, many years later, her mother suggested that it must have been Louises fault for leading him on. Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn modern dance company in Los Angeles in 1922, in her second season with the company, Brooks had advanced to a starring role in one work opposite Shawn. The words left an impression on Brooks, when she drew up an outline for a planned autobiographical novel in 1949, The Silver Salver was the title she gave to the tenth. As a result of her work in the Follies, she came to the attention of Paramount Pictures producer Walter Wanger, Brooks made her screen debut in the silent The Street of Forgotten Men, in an uncredited role in 1925. Soon, however, she was playing the lead in a number of silent light comedies and flapper films over the next few years, starring with Adolphe Menjou. She was noticed in Europe for her pivotal role in the Howard Hawks directed silent buddy film. In an early sound film drama, Beggars of Life, Brooks played a country girl who kills her foster father in a moment of desperation. A hobo, Richard Arlen, happens on the scene and convinces Brooks to disguise herself as a young boy. In a hobo encampment, or jungle, they meet another hobo, Brookss disguise is soon uncovered and she finds herself the only female in a world of brutal, sex-hungry men. Her distinctive bob haircut helped start a trend, many women styled their hair in imitation of her, Paramount attempted to use the coming of sound films to pressure the actress, but she called the studios bluff. It was not until 30 years later that this move would come to be seen as arguably the most savvy of her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend. Actress Margaret Livingston was hired to dub Brookss voice for the film, once in Germany, she starred in the 1929 film Pandoras Box, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in his New Objectivity period. The film is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind and Brooks plays the figure, Lulu. This film is notable for its treatment of modern sexual mores
39.
Ophelia
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Ophelia is a character in William Shakespeares play Hamlet. She is a noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes. She is one of the two characters in the play. In Ophelias first speaking appearance in the play, she is seen with her brother, Laertes, Laertes warns her that Hamlet, the heir to the throne of Denmark, does not have the freedom to marry whomever he wants. Ophelias father, Polonius, who enters while Laertes is leaving, also forbids Ophelia from pursuing Hamlet, based on what Ophelia told him, Polonius concludes that he was wrong to forbid Ophelia from seeing Hamlet, and that Hamlet must be mad with love for her. Polonius immediately decides to go to Claudius, the new King of Denmark and also Hamlets uncle and stepfather, Polonius later suggests to Claudius that they hide behind an arras to overhear Hamlet speaking to Ophelia, when Hamlet thinks the conversation is private. Since Polonius is now sure that Hamlet is lovesick for Ophelia, Claudius agrees to try the eavesdropping plan later. The plan leads to what is called the Nunnery Scene. Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand in the lobby of the castle while he, Hamlet enters the room in a different world from the others, and recites his To be, or not to be soliloquy. Hamlet approaches Ophelia and talks to her, saying Get thee to a nunnery, Hamlet asks Ophelia where her father is and she lies to him, saying her father must be at home. Hamlet realizes he is being spied and he exits after declaring, I say we will have no more marriages. Ophelia is left bewildered and heartbroken, sure that Hamlet is insane and she knows that ultimately it is she that broke him because she lied. She was the woman he had loved and a friend whom he trusted, after Hamlet storms out, Ophelia makes her O, what a noble mind is here oerthrown soliloquy. The next time Ophelia appears is at the Mousetrap Play, which Hamlet has arranged in order to try to prove that Claudius killed King Hamlet, Hamlet sits with Ophelia and makes sexually suggestive remarks, he also says that womans love is brief. Later that night, after the play, Hamlet kills Polonius during a meeting between Hamlet and his mother, Queen Gertrude. At Ophelias next appearance, after her fathers death, she has gone mad and she talks in riddles and rhymes, and sings some mad and bawdy songs about death and a maiden losing her virginity. She exits after bidding everyone a good night, the last time Ophelia appears in the play is after Laertes comes to the castle to challenge Claudius over the death of his father, Polonius. Ophelia sings more songs and hands out flowers, citing their symbolic meanings, although interpretations of the meanings differ
40.
Hamlet
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlets father, Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brothers widow. It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and he almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeares time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors in each successive century. Three different early versions of the play are extant, the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, each version includes lines and entire scenes missing from the others. The plays structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny, the protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his fathers brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlets widow, Gertrude, Hamlets mother, Denmark has a long-standing feud with neighboring Norway, which culminated when King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras of Norway in a battle years ago. Although Denmark defeated Norway, and the Norwegian throne fell to King Fortinbrass infirm brother, Denmark fears that an invasion led by the dead Norwegian kings son, Prince Fortinbras, is imminent. On a cold night on the ramparts of Elsinore, the Danish royal castle and they vow to tell Prince Hamlet what they have witnessed. As the court gathers the next day, while King Claudius and Queen Gertrude discuss affairs of state with their elderly adviser Polonius, after the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his fathers death and his mothers hasty remarriage. Learning of the ghost from Horatio, Hamlet resolves to see it himself, as Poloniuss son Laertes prepares to depart for a visit to France, Polonius gives him contradictory advice that culminates in the ironic maxim to thine own self be true. Poloniuss daughter, Ophelia, admits her interest in Hamlet, and that night on the rampart, the ghost appears to Hamlet, telling the prince that he was murdered by Claudius and demanding that Hamlet avenge him. Hamlet agrees and the ghost vanishes, the prince confides to Horatio and the sentries that from now on he plans to put an antic disposition on and forces them to swear to keep his plans for revenge secret. Privately, however, he remains uncertain of the ghosts reliability, soon thereafter, Ophelia rushes to her father, telling him that Hamlet arrived at her door the prior night half-undressed and behaving crazily. Polonius blames love for Hamlets madness and resolves to inform Claudius, as he enters to do so, the king and queen finish welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two student acquaintances of Hamlet, to Elsinore. The royal couple has requested that the students investigate the cause of Hamlets mood, additional news requires that Polonius wait to be heard, messengers from Norway inform Claudius that the King of Norway has rebuked Prince Fortinbras for attempting to re-fight his fathers battles. The forces that Fortinbras conscripted to march against Denmark will instead be sent against Poland, Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude his theory regarding Hamlets behavior, and speaks to Hamlet in a hall of the castle to try to uncover more information. Hamlet feigns madness but subtly insults Polonius all the while, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet greets his friends warmly, but quickly discerns that they are spies
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Lillian Gish talks with Studs Terkel on WFMT; 1963/01/16, Studs Terkel Radio Archive[23]
