Charles Durning
Charles Edward Durning was an American actor, with appearances in over 200 movies, television shows and plays. Durnings best-known roles included The Sting and Dog Day Afternoon, along with the comedies The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Durning was born in Highland Falls, New York, the ninth of ten children. His three brothers and sister, Clifford and Gerald, survived to adulthood but five sisters lost their lives to scarlet fever and he was the son of Louise, a laundress at West Point, and James E. Durning. His father was an Irish immigrant. and his mother was of Irish descent, in 1959, Durning married his first wife, Carole Doughty. A Declaration of Separation was filed in 2010 from his second wife and he is survived by his three children from his first marriage. Charles Durning served in the U. S. Army during World War II and he was drafted at age 20 and discharged with the rank of Private First Class on January 30,1946. Durning was known for participating in various functions to honor American veterans and he was an honored guest speaker for 17 years at the National Memorial Day Concert televised by PBS every year on the Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend.
Durning was paid a tribute at the May 26,2013 National Memorial Day Concert when Taps was sounded in his honor. For his valor and the wounds he received during the war, Durning was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and his badges included the Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Badge with Rifle Bar, and Honorable Service Lapel Pin. Durning received the French National Order of the Legion of Honor from the French Consul in Los Angeles in April 2008, while pursuing an acting career, Durning, a professional ballroom dancer, taught at Fred Astaire Dance Studio in New York City. Referred to as the King of Character Actors, Durning began his career in 1951, while working as an usher in a burlesque joint, he was hired to replace a drunken actor on stage. Beginning in 1961, he appeared in 35 plays as part of the Shakespeare Festival and that time in my life was my best time, Durning told Pittsburghs Post Gazette in 2001. I had no money at all, and he didnt pay much and you were getting a salary for performance plus a rehearsal salary.
We would do three plays in Central Park for the summer, and youd do three to six plays every year down on Lafayette Street -- new plays by new writers, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, David Rabe, John Ford Noonan, Jason Miller. During this period, he segued into television and movies and he made his film debut in 1965, appearing in Harvey Middleman, Fireman. He appeared in John Frankenheimers I Walk the Line starring Gregory Peck and he appeared in Dealing, Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow. Durnings performances in Broadway productions include Drat. Pousse-Café, The Happy Time, That Championship Season, In the Boom Boom Room, The au Pair Man, Knock Knock, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Inherit the Wind, The Gin Game, and The Best Man
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence Lilly Hellman was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52, although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party. As a playwright, Hellman had many successes on Broadway, including Watch on the Rhine, The Autumn Garden, Toys in the Attic, Another Part of the Forest, The Childrens Hour and The Little Foxes. She adapted her semi-autobiographical play The Little Foxes into a screenplay, Hellmans accuracy was challenged after she brought a libel suit against Mary McCarthy. In 1979, on the The Dick Cavett Show, McCarthy said that every word she writes is a lie, including and, during the libel suit, investigators found errors in Hellmans popular memoirs such as Pentimento.
They said that the Julia section of Pentimento, which had been the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 movie of the name, was actually based on the life of Muriel Gardiner. Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingways ex-wife, said that Hellmans remembrances of Hemingway, McCarthy and others accused Hellman of lying about her membership in the Communist Party and being an unrepentant Stalinist. Lillian Florence Hellman was born in New Orleans, into a Jewish family and her mother was Julia Newhouse of Demopolis and her father was Max Hellman, a New Orleans shoe salesman. Julia Newhouses parents were Sophie Marx, from a banking family, and Leonard Newhouse. During most of her childhood she spent half of year in New Orleans, in a boarding home run by her aunts. She studied for two years at New York University and took courses at Columbia University. On December 31,1925, Hellman married Arthur Kober, a playwright and press agent, in 1929, she traveled around Europe for a time and settled in Bonn to continue her education.
Years she wrote, Then for the first time in my life I thought about being a Jew, beginning in 1930, for about a year she earned $50 a week as a reader for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, writing summaries of novels and periodical literature for potential screenplays. Although she found the job rather dull, it opened doors for her to meet a greater range of creative people while getting involved in more political. While there she met and fell in love with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett and she divorced Kober and returned to New York City in 1932. When she met Hammett in a Hollywood restaurant, she was 24 and they maintained their relationship off and on until his death in January 1961. Hellmans drama The Childrens Hour premiered on Broadway on November 24,1934 and it depicts a false accusation of lesbianism by a schoolgirl against two of her teachers
Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the U. S. State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the edge of Rensselaer County. Troy has close ties to the cities of Albany and Schenectady. The city is one of the three centers for the Albany Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of 1,170,483. At the 2010 census, the population of Troy was 50,129, troja est, which means Ilium was, Troy is. Before European arrival, the area was settled by the Mahican Indian tribe, the Dutch began settling in the mid 17th century, the patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer called the area Pafraets Dael, after his mother. Control of New York passed to the English in 1664 and in 1707 Derick Van der Heyden purchased a farm near todays downtown area, in 1771, Abraham Lansing had his farm in todays Lansingburgh laid out into lots. Responding to Lansings success to the north, in 1787, Van der Heydens grandson Jacob had his extensive holdings surveyed and laid out into lots as well, in 1789, Troy got its current name after a vote of the people.
In 1791, Troy was incorporated as a town and extended east across the county to the Vermont line, in 1796, Troy became a village and in 1816 it became a city. Lansingburgh, to the north, became part of Troy in 1900, prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Mohican Indians had a number of settlements along the Hudson River near the confluence with the Mohawk River. The land comprising the Poesten Kill and Wynants Kill areas were owned by two Mohican groups, the land around the Poesten Kill was owned by Skiwias and was called Panhooseck. The area around the Wynants Kill, was known as Paanpack, was owned by Peyhaunet, the land between the creeks, which makes up most of downtown and South Troy, was owned by Annape. South of the Wynants Kill and into present-day North Greenbush, the land was owned by Pachquolapiet and these parcels of land were sold to the Dutch between 1630 and 1657 and each purchase was overseen and signed by Skiwias, the sachem at the time. In total, more than 75 individual Mohicans were involved in deed signings in the 17th century, the site of the city was a part of Rensselaerswyck, a patroonship created by Kiliaen van Rensselaer.
Dirck Van der Heyden was one of the first settlers, in 1707, he purchased a farm of 65 acres which in 1787 was laid out as a village. One skeleton was female and Caucasian with an iron ring, the other was Native-American and male. The name Troy was adopted in 1789 before which it had known as Ashleys Ferry. The township included Brunswick and Grafton, Troy became a village in 1801 and was chartered as a city in 1816
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Tennessee Williams III was an American playwright. Along with Eugene ONeill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama, after years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie, closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and his work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on the short list of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Long Days Journey into Night, much of Williams most acclaimed work was adapted for the cinema. He wrote stories, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, of English and Huguenot ancestry and his father was an alcoholic traveling shoe salesman who spent much of his time away from home.
Williams early childhood was spent in the parsonage there, Williams had two siblings, sister Rose Isabel Williams and brother Walter Dakin Williams. As a small child Williams suffered from a case of diphtheria which nearly ended his life, leaving him weak, at least in part as a result of his illness, he was less robust as a child than his father wished. Cornelius Williams, a descendant of hearty East Tennessee pioneer stock, had a violent temper and was a man prone to use his fists. He regarded his sons effeminacy with disdain, and his mother Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, many critics and historians note that Williams found inspiration for much of his writing in his own dysfunctional family. When Williams was eight years old, his father was promoted to a job at the office of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis. He attended Soldan High School, a setting he referred to in his play The Glass Menagerie, Later he studied at University City High School. At age 16, Williams won third prize for an essay published in Smart Set entitled, a year later, his short story The Vengeance of Nitocris was published in the August 1928 issue of the magazine Weird Tales.
That same year he first visited Europe with his grandfather, from 1929 to 1931, he attended the University of Missouri, in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. Williams found his classes boring and was distracted by his love for a girl. He was soon entering his poetry, essays and plays in writing contests and his first submitted play was Beauty Is the Word, followed by Hot Milk at Three in the Morning. As recognition for Beauty, a play about rebellion against religious upbringing, at University of Missouri, Williams joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, but he did not fit in well with his fraternity brothers
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress and humanitarian. She began as an actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well known figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend in 1999, Born in London to wealthy, socially prominent American parents, Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939, and she soon was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a role in Theres One Born Every Minute. Taylor was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet, becoming one of the studios most popular teenaged stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, despite being one of MGMs most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studios control and disliked many of the films to which she was assigned.
She began receiving roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant. These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer, although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8, her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the role in the historical epic Cleopatra. During the filming, Taylor and co-star Richard Burton began having an affair which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval and she continued their relationship and were married the first time in 1964. Dubbed Liz and Dick by the media, they starred in 11 films together, including The V. I. P. s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award, in the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand.
Taylor was one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism and she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy and she received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. Taylors personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life and she was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including amassing one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011
Lonelyhearts
Lonelyhearts, known as Miss Lonelyhearts, is a 1958 drama film directed by Vincent J. Donehue. It is based on the 1957 Broadway play by Howard Teichmann, the film stars Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Jackie Coogan, Dolores Hart, and Maureen Stapleton in her first film role. Stapleton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as for a Golden Globe for her performance as Fay Doyle, the story opens on a small-town street. A man throws a bundle of papers onto the sidewalk from the back of a truck labeled Chronicle, Adam White is sitting in a bar when a woman offers him a drink. He refuses, explaining that alcohol seems to be poisonous to him, after talking with her for a while, he learns she is married to William Shrike, Editor-in-Chief of the Chronicle, where Adam is hoping to work. The editor shows up to meet his wife only to find her talking with Adam, when Shrike asks how Adam found him, Adam explains, I heard there was a bar where newspaper people hang out.
I came here since it is the closest to the Chronicle, florence Shrike says Adam can write, and he deserves the chance to prove it. Adam hems and haws momentarily, but delivers the following story and he met the Editor in Chief, who went so far as to insult his own wife in an effort to provoke the new staff member. Instead of punching the editor in the face, he accepted a position on the paper, Adam tells his girlfriend Justy about his new job. He doesnt tell her about his father, a man named Lassiter, on his first day at the newspaper, Adam is astounded at being assigned the Miss Lonelyhearts advice-to-the-lovelorn column. One of his colleagues, reporter Ned Gates, is disappointed, having wanted that column for himself, while another, Frank Goldsmith, after a few weeks, Shrike refuses a request by Adam to give him a different assignment. He insists that Adam personally contact the letter writers to substantiate their stories, Adam randomly selects a letter from a Fay Doyle and meets her. She relates how her husband, came home from the war crippled, as they share a lonely moment and Fay are briefly thrown together romantically.
When he declines meeting her a time, she is furious. Adam decides to leave the newspaper for good, justys father offers her a trust endowment to get their new life under way. At a party in the bar, Pat Doyle turns up with a gun, Adam manages to talk him out of using it. He leaves, whereupon Shrike decides to buy flowers for his own neglected wife. Nathanael Wests 1933 novel, on which film was based, was adapted for the screen in 1933 as Advice to the Lovelorn starring Lee Tracy
Film
A film, called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens.
The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, sets, production, actors, storyboards, much terminology used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène.
Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
Irish Americans
Irish Americans are an ethnic group comprising Americans who have full or partial ancestry from Ireland, especially those who identify with that ancestry, along with their cultural characteristics. About 33.3 million Americans—10. 5% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2013 American Community Survey conducted by the U. S. Census Bureau and this compares with a population of 6.4 million on the island of Ireland. Three million people identified as Scots-Irish, whose ancestors were Ulster Scots who emigrated from Ireland to the United States. An estimated 250,000 migrated to the United States during the colonial era, only 20,000 immigrants of these immigrants from Ireland were Catholics—English, Irish or a few Germans. Catholics numbered 40,000 or 1. 6% of the population of 2.5 million in 1775. The Scots-Irish settled mainly in the back country of the Appalachian Mountain region. Irish Americans signed the documents of the United States—the Declaration of Independence. The early Ulster immigrants and their descendants at first usually referred to simply as Irish.
However, most descendants of the Scots-Irish continued to consider themselves Irish or American rather than Scots-Irish, beginning in the early 19th century, many Irish migrated individually to the interior for work on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and, in the century, railroads. During the colonial period, Scots-Irish settled in the southern Appalachian backcountry, by the 19th century, through intermarriage with settlers of English and German ancestry, the descendants of the Scots-Irish lost their identification with Ireland. This generation of pioneers. was a generation of Americans, not of Englishmen or Germans or Scots-Irish, in 1820 Irish-born John England became the first Catholic bishop in the mainly Protestant city of Charleston, South Carolina. During the 1820s and 30s, Bishop England defended the Catholic minority against Protestant prejudices, in 1831 and 1835, he established free schools for free African American children. Inflamed by the propaganda of the American Anti-Slavery Society, a mob raided the Charleston post office in 1835, England led Charlestons Irish Volunteers to defend the school.
Soon after this, all schools for blacks were closed in Charleston. The Irish Catholics concentrated in a few medium-sized cities, where they were visible, especially in Charleston, Savannah. After secession in 1861, the Irish Catholic community supported the Confederacy and 20,000 served in the Confederate Army, civilian leaders of the Irish and the South did embrace the Confederate national project and most became advocates of a hard-war policy. Although most began as unskilled laborers, Irish Catholics in the South achieved average or above average economic status by 1900, the large Erie Canal project was one such example where Irishmen were many of the laborers. Small but tight communities developed in growing such as Philadelphia, New York
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith was an American actor, director and writer in theater and television. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called a virtuosic actor and one of the most accomplished actors of the century. A life member of the Actors Studio by invitation, he won several Emmys, was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, and was nominated for two Academy Awards. He established himself as a man in Hollywood with critically acclaimed performances as George Milton in Of Mice and Men. Joe, and the narrator of A Walk in the Sun, Meredith was born in 1907 in Cleveland, the son of Ida Beth and Dr. William George Meredith, a Canadian-born physician, of English descent. Meredith graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and attended Amherst College and he served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1944 to work on the movie The Story of G. I, Joe, in which he played the war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
In 1929, he became a member of Eva Le Galliennes Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City, although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage. He made his Broadway debut as Peter in Le Galliennes production of Romeo and Juliet and became a star in Maxwell Andersons Winterset and his early life and theatre work were the subject of a New Yorker profile. He garnered critical acclaim in the 1935 Broadway revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street starring Katharine Cornell and she subsequently cast him in several of her productions. Other Broadway roles included Van van Dorn in High Tor, Liliom in Liliom, Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World and he created the role of Erie Smith in the English-language premiere of Eugene ONeills Hughie at the Theater Royal in Bath, England in 1963. He played Hamlet in avant garde theatrical and radio productions of the play, a distinguished theatre director, he won a Tony Award nomination for his 1974 Broadway staging of Ulysses in Nighttown, a theatrical adaptation of the Nighttown section of James Joyces Ulysses.
Meredith shared a Special Tony Award with James Thurber for their collaboration on A Thurber Carnival. I and he was featured in many 1940s films, including three — Second Chorus, Diary of a Chambermaid, and On Our Merry Way — co-starring then-wife Paulette Goddard. He was in Stay Away Joe, appearing as the father of Elvis Presleys character. In 1975, he received acclaim for his performance as Harry Greene in The Day of the Locust and received nominations for the BAFTA, Golden Globe. Meredith played Rocky Balboas trainer, Mickey Goldmill, in the first three Rocky films, though his character died in the third Rocky film, he returned briefly in a flashback in the fifth film, Rocky V. His portrayal in the first film earned him his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Meredith played an old Korean War veteran Captain J. G, williams in The Last Chase with Lee Majors
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered a performance in a supporting role while working within the film industry. At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony held in 1937, Gale Sondergaard was the first winner of award for her role in Anthony Adverse. Initially, winners in both supporting acting categories were awarded instead of statuettes. Beginning with the 16th ceremony held in 1944, winners received full-sized statuettes, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS, winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. Since its inception, the award has given to 78 actresses. Dianne Wiest and Shelley Winters have received the most awards in this category with two awards each, despite winning no awards, Thelma Ritter was nominated on six occasions, more than any other actress.
As of the 2017 ceremony, Viola Davis is the most recent winner in category for her role as Rose Maxson in Fences. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. Toronto, Canada, University of Toronto Press, inside Oscar, The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards. New York, United States, Ballantine Books, oscars. org Oscar. com The Academy Awards Database
Warren Beatty
Henry Warren Beatty, better known as Warren Beatty, is an American actor and filmmaker. In 1999, he was awarded the Academys highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award, Beatty has been nominated for eighteen Golden Globe Awards, winning six, including the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he was honored with in 2007, among his Golden Globe-nominated films are Splendor in the Grass, his screen debut, and Bonnie and Clyde, Dick Tracy, Bugsy and Rules Dont Apply, all of which he produced. Arthur Penn, who directed Bonnie and Clyde, described Beatty as the producer, adding. Warren stays with a picture editing and scoring. He plain works harder than anyone else I have ever seen, Henry Warren Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne, was Canadian and a teacher from Nova Scotia and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, had a PhD in educational psychology and worked as a public school administrator, in addition to dealing in real estate. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, during the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.
Beattys elder sister is the actress and writer Shirley MacLaine and his uncle, by marriage, was Canadian politician A. A. MacLeod. Beatty became interested in movies before his teens, when he accompanied his sister to theaters. One film that had an important early influence on him was The Philadelphia Story and he noticed a strong resemblance between its star, Katharine Hepburn, and his mother, in both appearance and personality, saying that they symbolized perpetual integrity. Another film that had an impact on him was Love Affair and he found it deeply moving, and recalls that This is a movie I always wanted to make. He did remake Love Affair in 1994, in which he starred alongside Annette Bening, among his favorite TV shows in the 1950s was the Texaco Star Theatre, and he began to mimic one if its regular host comedians, Milton Berle. Beatty learned to do an imitation of Berle and his routine, said a friend. His sister saw Beatty close off emotionally from his father, among her lasting memories of her brother during this period was seeing him withdrawn and spending time alone reading books by Eugene ONeill or singing along to Al Jolson records.
In Rules Dont Apply, Beatty plays Howard Hughes, who is talking about. He has to have control over everything, and I used to say that I supposed I did. Beatty was a football player at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington
