1.
Salt Lake City
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Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and the most populous municipality of the U. S. state of Utah. With an estimated population of 190,884 in 2014, the city lies at the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo Combined Statistical Area. This region is a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along an approximately 120-mile segment of the Wasatch Front and it is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin. The city was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young, Isaac Morley, George Washington Bradley and numerous other Mormon followers, who extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley. Due to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named Great Salt Lake City—the word great was dropped from the name in 1868 by the 17th Utah Territorial Legislature. Today, however, less than half the population of Salt Lake City proper are members of the LDS Church. It was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913, Salt Lake City has since developed a strong outdoor recreation tourist industry based primarily on skiing, and hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. It is the banking center of the United States. Before Mormon settlement, the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. The land was treated by the United States as public domain, the first U. S. explorer in the Salt Lake area is believed to be Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845, the Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846. The first permanent settlements in the date to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints on July 24,1847. Upon arrival at the Salt Lake Valley, president of the church Brigham Young is recorded as stating, This is the right place, Brigham Young claimed to have seen the area in a vision prior to the wagon trains arrival. They found the broad valley empty of any human settlement, four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young designated the building site for the Salt Lake Temple, which would eventually become a famous Mormon and Salt Lake City landmark. The Salt Lake Temple, constructed on the block that would later be called Temple Square, construction started in 1853, and the temple was dedicated on 6 April 1893. The temple has become an icon for the city and serves as its centerpiece, in fact, the southeast corner of Temple Square is the initial point of reference for the Salt Lake Meridian, and for all addresses in the Salt Lake Valley. The Mormon pioneers organized a new state called Deseret and petitioned for its recognition in 1849, the United States Congress rebuffed the settlers in 1850 and established the Utah Territory, vastly reducing its size, and designated Fillmore as its capital city. Great Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the capital in 1858
2.
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
3.
F. W. Murnau
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Friedrich Wilhelm F. W. Murnau was a German film director. Murnau was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, during World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air force, surviving several crashes without any severe injuries. One of Murnaus acclaimed works is the 1922 film Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula, although not a commercial success due to copyright issues with Stokers novel, the film is considered a masterpiece of Expressionist film. He later directed the 1924 film The Last Laugh, as well as a 1926 interpretation of Goethes Faust and he later emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made three films, Sunrise,4 Devils and City Girl. The first of three is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. In 1931 Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to make the film Tabu with documentary film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty, who left after disputes with Murnau. Of the 21 films Murnau directed, eight are considered to be completely lost, one reel of his feature Marizza, genannt die Schmuggler-Madonna survives. This leaves only 12 films surviving in their entirety, Murnau was born in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia, and grew up in Kassel from the time he was seven. He had two brothers, Bernhard and Robert, and two stepsisters, Ida and Anna, Murnaus mother Otilie Volbracht was the second wife of his father Heinrich Plumpe, the owner of a cloth factory in the north-western part of Germany. Their villa was often turned into a stage for plays, directed by Murnau. He took the name Murnau from the town of that name, the 6 ft 11 in director was said to have an icy, imperious disposition and an obsession with film. He soon became a friend of Franz Marc, Else Lasker-Schüler, in World War I Murnau served as a company commander at the eastern front. Murnau joined the German air force in northern France two years later and survived eight crashes without severe injuries and he landed in Switzerland where he was interned and won a prize for the best production-concept. After World War I ended, Murnau returned to Germany where he established his own film studio with actor Conrad Veidt. His first feature-length film, The Boy in Blue, an inspired by the famous Thomas Gainsborough painting, was released in 1919. He explored the theme of dual personalities, much like Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in 1920s Der Janus-Kopf starring Veidt. Murnaus most famous film is Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula German stage actor Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok, Stokers widow sued for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, also in Murnaus filmography was The Last Laugh, written by Carl Mayer and starring Emil Jannings
4.
Scottish people
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The Scottish people, or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century, and are thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celts. Later, the neighbouring Cumbrian Britons, who spoke a Celtic language, as well as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons. In modern usage, Scottish people or Scots is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, the Latin word Scotti, originally the word referred specifically to the Gaels, but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also used for Scottish people. John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Scotch documents the descendants of 19th-century Scottish pioneers who settled in Southwestern Ontario and he states the book was meant to give a true picture of life in the community in the early decades of the 20th century. People of Scottish descent live in countries other than Scotland. Scottish emigrants took with them their Scottish languages and culture, large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. Canada has the highest level of Scottish descendants per capita in the world, Scotland has seen migration and settlement of many peoples at different periods in its history. The Gaels, the Picts and the Britons have their origin myths. The Venerable Bede tells of the Scotti coming from Spain via Ireland, Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxons, arrived beginning in the 7th century, while the Norse invaded and colonized parts of Scotland from the 8th century onwards. In the High Middle Ages, from the reign of David I of Scotland, there was emigration from France, England. Some famous Scottish family names, including bearing the names which became Bruce, Balliol, Murray. Today Scotland is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Most of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least initially, the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in south-eastern Scotland in the region between the Firth of Forth to the north and the River Tweed to the south. They also occupied the south-west of Scotland up to and including the Plain of Kyle and their language, south-east of the Firth of Forth, then in Lothian and the Borders, a northern variety of Old English, also known as Early Scots, was spoken. The Northern Isles and some parts of Caithness were Norn-speaking, from 1500 on, Scotland was commonly divided by language into two groups of people, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and the Inglis-speaking Lowlanders
5.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
6.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
7.
Edward G. Robinson
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Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star on stage and screen during Hollywoods Golden Age, he appeared in 40 Broadway plays and he is best remembered for his tough-guy roles as a gangster, such as his star-making film Little Caesar and Key Largo. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was a public critic of fascism and Nazism. His activism included contributing over $250,000 to more than 850 organizations involved in war relief, along with cultural, educational, during the 1950s, he was called to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare, but was cleared of any Communist involvement. Robinson received an Honorary Academy Award for his work in the film industry and he is ranked #24 in the American Film Institutes list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classic American cinema. Robinson was born as Emanuel Goldenberg to a Yiddish-speaking Romanian Jewish family in Bucharest, the son of Sarah and Morris Goldenberg, after one of his brothers was attacked by an antisemitic mob, the family decided to emigrate to the United States. Robinson arrived in New York City on February 14,1903, at Ellis Island I was born again, he wrote. Life for me began when I was 10 years old, an interest in acting and performing in front of people led to him winning an American Academy of Dramatic Arts scholarship, after which he changed his name to Edward G. Robinson. He served in the US Navy during World War I, but was never sent overseas and he began his acting career in the Yiddish Theater District in 1913 and made his Broadway debut in 1915. In 1923 made his debut as E. G. Robinson in the silent film. He played a gangster in the 1927 Broadway police/crime drama The Racket. Robinson went on to make a total of 101 films in his 50-year career. In 1939, at the time World War II broke out in Europe, he played an FBI agent in Confessions of a Nazi Spy, the first American film which showed Nazism as a threat to the United States. He volunteered for service in June 1942 but was disqualified due to his age at 48, although he became an active. The following year he played Paul Ehrlich in Dr. Ehrlichs Magic Bullet and Paul Julius Reuter in A Dispatch from Reuters and his career rehabilitation received a boost in 1954, when noted anti-communist director Cecil B. DeMille cast him as the traitorous Dathan in The Ten Commandments, the film was released in 1956, as was his psychological thriller Nightmare. As it turned out, Robinson died only days later. He had been notified of the honor, but died two months before the ceremony, so the award was accepted by his widow, Jane Robinson
8.
James Cagney
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James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film. Known for his energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and White Heat, and was typecast or limited by this view earlier in his career. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Orson Welles said of Cagney, maybe the greatest actor who appeared in front of a camera. In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the line of the revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian and he secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role, Cagneys seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clarkes face. He became one of Hollywoods biggest stars and one of Warner Bros. biggest contracts, in 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces, for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan. In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me, Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family. He exited retirement,20 years later, for a part in the movie Ragtime, Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. several times over the course of his career, each time returning on much improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935, he sued Warner for breach of contract and won and this was one of the first times an actor prevailed over a studio on a contract issue. In reference to Cagneys refusal to be pushed around, Jack L, Warner called him the Professional Againster. Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II and was president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years, Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His biographers disagree as to the location, either on the corner of Avenue D. His father, James Francis Cagney, Sr. was of Irish descent, at the time of his sons birth, he was a bartender and amateur boxer, though on Cagneys birth certificate, he is listed as a telegraphist
9.
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
10.
William Randolph Hearst
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Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak and he later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. Politically he espoused the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class and he controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and thereby exercised enormous political influence. He also called for war in 1898 against Spain—as did many other newspaper editors—but he did it in sensational fashion, after 1918, he called for an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a fierce anti-communist, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians. He was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932–34, but then broke with FDR. His life story was the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane. His famous mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark. William R. Hearst was born in San Francisco, to mining engineer, goldmine owner and U. S. senator George Hearst. His paternal great-grandfather was John Hearst, of Ulster Protestant origin and he migrated to America from Ballybay, County Monaghan as part of the Cahans Exodus with his wife and six children in 1766 and settled in South Carolina. Their immigration to South Carolina was spurred in part by the governments policy that encouraged the immigration of Irish Protestants. The names John Hearse and John Hearse Jr, the Hearse spelling of the family name never was used afterward by the family members themselves, or any family of any size. Hearsts mother, née Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson, was also of Irish ancestry and she was the first woman regent of University of California, Berkeley, funded many anthropological expeditions and founded the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Following preparation at St. Pauls School in Concord, New Hampshire, while there he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the A. D. Searching for an occupation, in 1887, Hearst took over management of a newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, a self-proclaimed populist, Hearst went on to publish stories of municipal and financial corruption, often attacking companies in which his own family held an interest. Within a few years, his paper dominated the San Francisco market, outcault, the inventor of color comics, and all of Pulitzers Sunday staff as well. Another prominent hire was James J. Montague, who came from the Portland Oregonian, Hearst imported his best managers from the San Francisco Examiner and quickly established himself as the most attractive employer among New York newspapers. Hearsts activist approach to journalism can be summarized by the motto, While others Talk, the New York Journal and its chief rival, the New York World, mastered a style of popular journalism that came to be derided as yellow journalism, after Outcaults Yellow Kid comic
11.
Thomas H. Ince
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Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Ince was known as the Father of the Western and was responsible for making over 800 films and he revolutionized the motion picture industry by creating the first major Hollywood studio facility and invented movie production by introducing the assembly line system of filmmaking. He was the first mogul to build his own film studio dubbed Inceville in Palisades Highlands, Ince was also instrumental in developing the role of the producer in motion pictures. Two of his films, The Italian, for which he wrote the screenplay, and Civilization and he later partnered with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company whose studios are the present-day site of Sony Pictures. He then built a new studio about a mile from Triangle which is now the site of Culver Studios. Thomas Harper Ince was born on November 16,1880 in Newport, Rhode Island and his father was born in Wigan, Lancashire, England, in 1841, and was the youngest of nine boys who enlisted in the British Navy as a powder monkey. He later disembarked at San Francisco, and found work as a reporter, around 1887, when Ince was about seven, the family moved to Manhattan to pursue theater work. Inces father worked as both an actor and musical agent and his mother, Ince himself, sister Bertha and brothers, John, Ince made his Broadway debut at 15 in a small role of a revival 1893 play, Shore Acres by James A. Herne. He appeared with several companies as a child and was later an office boy for theatrical manager Daniel Frohman. Later he would form an unsuccessful Vaudeville company known as Thomas H. Ince and His Comedians in Atlantic Highlands, in 1907, Ince met actress Elinor Kershaw and they were married on October 19 of that year. They had three children, William T, richard Kershaw and Thomas H. Jr. Inces directing career began in 1910 through a chance encounter in New York City with an employee from his old acting troupe, William S. Hart. Ince found his first film work as an actor for the Biograph Company, directed by his future partner, Griffith was impressed enough with Ince to hire him as a Production coordinator at Biograph. This led to work coordinating productions at Carl Laemmles Independent Motion Pictures Co. And, although he tackled many different subjects, he was drawn to Westerns. Clashes between the trust and independent films became exacerbated, so Ince moved to California to escape these pressures and he hoped to achieve the effects accomplished with minimal facilities like Griffith, which he believed, could only be accomplished in Hollywood. After only a year with IMP, Ince quit, the offer came as a distinct shock, but I kept cool and concealed my excitement. I tried to convey the impression that he would have to raise the ante a trifle if he wanted me and that also worked, and I signed a contract for three months at $150 a week. Very soon after that, with Mrs. Ince, my cameraman, property man and Ethel Grandin, my leading woman, together with his young wife and a small entourage, Ince moved to Bison Studios to begin work immediately
12.
Paul Whiteman
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Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader, composer, orchestral director and violinist. He also co-wrote the 1925 jazz classic Flamin Mamie and his popularity faded in the swing music era of the middle 1930s, and by the 1940s Whiteman was semi-retired from music. But he experienced a revival and had a comeback in the 1950s with his own television series on ABC, Paul Whitemans Goodyear Revue. He also hosted the 1954 ABC talent contest show On the Boardwalk with Paul Whiteman, Whitemans place in the history of early jazz is somewhat controversial. Detractors suggest that Whitemans ornately-orchestrated music was jazz in name only, in his autobiography, Duke Ellington declared, Paul Whiteman was known as the King of Jazz, and no one as yet has come near carrying that title with more certainty and dignity. Whitemans crowning of the term King of Jazz was likely not meant to take anything away from the performers of the more pure jazz style, Whiteman was born in Denver, Colorado. His father insisted that he learn an instrument, preferably the violin, but young Paul preferred the viola, and that was what he learned to play. His skill at playing the viola led him to an opportunity to perform in the Denver Symphony Orchestra, he was a member from 1907, from 1917 to 1918, Whiteman conducted a 40-piece U. S. Navy band. After the war, he formed the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, moreover, with his classical violinist and violist start, he led a jazz-influenced dance band, which became popular locally in San Francisco, California in 1918. In 1920 he moved with his band to New York City where they started recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company which made the Paul Whiteman Orchestra famous nationally, Whiteman became the most popular band director of that decade. In a time when most dance bands consisted of six to ten men, Whiteman directed a much larger, by 1922, Whiteman already controlled some 28 ensembles on the East Coast and was earning over a $1,000,000 a year. Whiteman recorded Hoagy Carmichael singing and playing Washboard Blues to the accompaniment of his orchestra in 1927, in May 1928 Whiteman signed with Columbia Records, and recorded for the label until September 1931, when he returned to RCA Victor. He would remain with Victor until March 1937, in the early 1960s, he played in Las Vegas before retiring. In the 1920s the media referred to Whiteman as The King of Jazz, Whiteman emphasized the way he had approached the already well-established style of music, while also organizing its composition and style in his own fashion. There were musicians, such as Eddie Condon, who criticized Whiteman for being a bad influence on the due to his attempts to make a lady out of jazz. However, Whitemans recordings were still popular critically and successful commercially, in all, the King of Jazz wrote more than 3000 arrangements. For more than 30 years Whiteman, referred to as Pops, sought and encouraged musicians, vocalists, composers, arrangers, in 1924 Whiteman commissioned George Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered by Whitemans orchestra with George Gershwin at the piano. Another familiar piece in Whitemans repertoire was Grand Canyon Suite, by Ferde Grofé, however, Whiteman crossed racial lines behind-the-scenes, hiring black arrangers like Fletcher Henderson and engaging in mutually beneficial efforts with recording sessions and scheduling of tours
