1.
Maverick (TV series)
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Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22,1957 to July 8,1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick and they would typically find themselves weighing a financial windfall against a moral dilemma. More often than not, their consciences trumped their wallets since both Mavericks were intrinsically ethical, when Garner left the series after the third season due to a legal dispute, Roger Moore was added to the cast as their cousin Beau Maverick. Robert Colbert appeared later in the season as a third Maverick brother. No more than two of the series ever appeared together in the same episode, and usually only one. Budd Boetticher directed several of the episodes of the first season and Robert Altman wrote. The show was part of the Warner Bros. array of Westerns, which included Cheyenne, Colt.45, Lawman, Bronco, The Alaskans, Bret Maverick is the epitome of a poker-playing rounder, always seeking out high-stakes games and rarely remaining in one place for long. Staff casting their new television series, Maverick often bested The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show in the television ratings. Huggins inverted the usual cowboy hero characteristics familiar to television and movie viewers of the time, Bret Maverick was vocally reluctant to risk his life, though he typically ended up being courageous in spite of himself. He frequently flimflammed adversaries, but only those who deserved it, otherwise he was honest almost to a fault, in at least one case insisting on repaying a questionable large debt. None of the Mavericks were particularly fast draws with a pistol, Bart once commented to a lady friend, My brother Bret can outdraw me any day of the week, and hes known as the Second Slowest Gun in the West. However, it was almost impossible for anyone to beat them in any sort of a fistfight, critics have repeatedly referred to Bret Maverick as arguably the first TV anti-hero, and have praised the show for its photography and Garners charisma and subtly comedic facial expressions. Nonetheless, most TV anti-heroes, such as Eddie Haskell, Dr. Zachery Smith, and J. R. Ewing are at heart self-serving and egocentric, a description that does not fit any Maverick. Though Garner was originally supposed to be the only Maverick, the studio eventually hired Jack Kelly to play brother Bart, starting with the eighth episode. The producers had realized that it took over a week to shoot an episode, so Kelly was hired to rotate with Garner as the series lead. In Barts first episode, Hostage. in order to engender audience sympathy for the new character, there was however, one distinct—but accidental—difference between the two. Garners episodes tended to be more due to his obvious talent in that area. Huggins noted in the aforementioned Archive of American Television interview that Kelly, while funnier than Garner off camera, dropped a funny line while shooting a scene like a load of coal
2.
Mel Gibson
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Mel Colmcille Gerard Gibson AO is an American actor and filmmaker. He was born in Peekskill, New York, and moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia and he studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art. During the 1980s, he founded Icon Entertainment, a company which independent film director Atom Egoyan has called. Director Peter Weir cast him as one of the leads in the critically acclaimed World War I drama Gallipoli, the film also helped to earn Gibson the reputation of a serious, versatile actor. He later directed and produced the successful and controversial, biblical drama film The Passion of the Christ. He received further critical notice for his work of the action-adventure film Apocalypto. Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, the sixth of eleven children, and the son of Hutton Gibson, a writer. One of Gibsons younger brothers, Donal, is also an actor, because of his mother, Gibson retains dual Irish and American citizenship. Mel was twelve years old at the time, Gibson was educated by members of the Congregation of Christian Brothers at St Leos Catholic College in Wahroonga, New South Wales, during his high school years. Gibson gained very favorable notices from critics when he first entered the cinematic scene. In 1982, Vincent Canby wrote that Mr. Gibson recalls the young Steve McQueen, I cant define star quality, but whatever it is, Mr. Gibson has it. Gibson has also likened to a combination Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. Gibsons roles in the Mad Max series of films, Peter Weirs Gallipoli, later, Gibson expanded into a variety of acting projects including human dramas such as Hamlet, and comedic roles such as those in Maverick and What Women Want. He expanded beyond acting into directing and producing, with, The Man Without a Face, in 1993, Braveheart, in 1995, The Passion of the Christ, in 2004, jess Cagle of Time compared Gibson with Cary Grant, Sean Connery, and Robert Redford. Connery once suggested Gibson should play the next James Bond to Connerys M. Gibson turned down the role, Gibson studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. The students at NIDA were classically trained in the British-theater tradition rather than in preparation for screen acting. As students, Gibson and actress Judy Davis played the leads in Romeo and Juliet, and Gibson played the role of Queen Titania in an experimental production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. After graduation in 1977, Gibson immediately began work on the filming of Mad Max, but continued to work as a stage actor, and joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia in Adelaide
3.
Jodie Foster
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Alicia Christian Jodie Foster is an American actress and filmmaker who has worked in films and on television. She has often cited as one of the best actresses of her generation. Foster began her career at the age of three as a model in 1965, and two years later moved to acting in television series, with the sitcom Mayberry R. F. D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in several television series. Fosters breakthrough came in Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver, in which she played a teenage prostitute, the role garnered her a nomination for an Academy Award. She won her second Academy Award three years later for her role in the sleeper hit The Silence of the Lambs, where she played Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee investigating a serial murder case. Foster made her debut as a director the same year with the moderately successful Little Man Tate. The companys first production was Nell, in which she played the title role. Her other films in the 1990s included period drama Sommersby, Western comedy Maverick, science fiction film Contact, and period drama Anna and her second film direction, Home for the Holidays, was not well-received commercially, while critical reviews were mixed. She has focused on directing in the 2010s, directing the films The Beaver and Money Monster, as well as episodes for Netflix television series Orange is the New Black and she also starred in the film Elysium. In addition to her two Academy Awards, Foster has won three BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and the Cecil B DeMille Award. Foster was born on November 19,1962 in Los Angeles, as the youngest child of Evelyn Ella Brandy and her father came from a wealthy Chicago family, whose forebears included John Alden, who had arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620. He was a Yale University graduate and a decorated U. S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and he had already been married once and had three sons from the union before marrying Brandy in Las Vegas in 1953. Brandy Foster was of German heritage and grew up in Rockford, Foster also has Irish roots, with ancestry that can be traced back to County Cork. Before Fosters birth, she and Lucius had three children, daughters Lucinda Cindy Foster and Constance Connie Foster, and son Lucius Fisher Buddy Foster. Their marriage ended before Foster was born, and she never established a relationship with her father, following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, until focusing on managing the careers of Buddy. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her Jodie, Foster was a gifted child, and learned to read at the age of three
4.
James Garner
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James Garner was an American actor, producer, and voice artist. Garner was born in Norman, Oklahoma on April 7,1928 and he was the youngest of three sons of Weldon Warren Bumgarner and Mildred Scott. His older brothers were Jack Garner and Charles Bumgarner, an administrator who died in 1984. His mother died when he was 5 years old, after their mothers death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried, Garner came to hate one of his stepmothers, Wilma, who beat all three boys. He said that his stepmother also punished him by forcing him to wear a dress in public, when he was 14 years old, he fought with her, knocking her down and choking her to keep her from killing him in retaliation. She left the family and never returned and his brother Jack later commented, She was a damn no-good woman. Garners last stepmother was Grace, whom he said he loved and called Mama Grace, after the war, Garner joined his father in Los Angeles and enrolled at Hollywood High School, where he was voted the most popular student. A high school gym teacher recommended him for a job modeling Jantzen bathing suits and it paid well, but in his first interview for the Archives of American Television, he said he hated modeling, he soon quit and returned to Norman. He played football and basketball at Norman High School), and competed on the track, however, he dropped out in his senior year. In a 1976 Good Housekeeping magazine interview, he admitted, I was a student and I never actually graduated from high school. Shortly after his fathers marriage to Wilma broke up, his father moved to Los Angeles, leaving Garner, after working at several jobs he disliked, Garner joined the United States Merchant Marine at age 16 near the end of World War II. He liked the work and his shipmates, but he suffered from chronic seasickness, Garner enlisted in the California Army National Guard, serving his first 7 months in California. He then went to Korea for 14 months, as a rifleman in the 5th Regimental Combat Team during the Korean War, Garner received the Purple Heart in Korea for the first wound. He qualified for a second Purple Heart, but he did not actually receive it until 1983,32 years after the event, Garner was a self-described scrounger for his company in Korea, a role he later played in The Great Escape and The Americanization of Emily. During the week of Garners death, TCM broadcast most of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, Garner subsequently moved to television commercials and eventually to television roles. His first film appearances were in The Girl He Left Behind, Boyne, a librarian from 1997, and involved a 1997 Almanac that was mistakenly left in the past by Boyne and found by Johnny in a bookstore. He changed his last name from Bumgarner to Garner after the studio had credited him as James Garner without permission and he then legally changed it upon the birth of his first child, when he decided she had too many names
5.
James Coburn
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James Harrison Coburn III was an American actor. and Cross of Iron. Coburn provided the voice of Henry Waternoose in the Pixar film Monsters, Coburn was born on August 31,1928 in Laurel, Nebraska, the son of James Harrison Coburn II and Mylet Coburn. His father was of Scottish-Irish ancestry and his mother was an immigrant from Sweden, the elder Coburn had a garage business that was destroyed by the Great Depression. Coburn himself was raised in Compton, California, where he attended Compton Junior College, in 1950, he enlisted in the United States Army, in which he served as a truck driver and an occasionally disc jockey on an Army radio station in Texas. Coburn also narrated Army training films in Mainz, Germany, Coburn attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting alongside Jeff Corey and Stella Adler, and later made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Herman Melvilles Billy Budd. Coburns film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott western Ride Lonesome, Coburn also appeared in dozens of television roles including, with Roberts, several episodes of NBCs Bonanza. During the 1960 to 1961 season, Coburn co-starred with Ralph Taeger and Joi Lansing in the NBC adventure/drama series, Klondike, when Klondike was cancelled, Taeger and Coburn were regrouped as detectives in Mexico in NBCs equally short-lived Acapulco. Coburn also made two guest appearances on CBSs Perry Mason, both times as the victim in The Case of the Envious Editor and The Case of the Angry Astronaut. In 1962, he portrayed the role of Col. Briscoe in the episode Hostage Child on CBSs Rawhide, Coburn became well known in the 1960s and the 1970s for his tough-guy roles in numerous action and western films. Coburn played the part of a villainous Texan in the successful Charade and he was then cast as a glib naval officer in Paddy Chayefskys The Americanization of Emily. Coburn was signed to a contract with 20th Century Fox. His performance as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee gained him much notice, in 1966, Coburn became a genuine star following the release of the James Bond parody film Our Man Flint. The following year, he was voted the twelfth biggest star in Hollywood, Coburn teamed with director Sam Peckinpah for the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which he played Pat Garrett. The two had worked together in 1965 on Major Dundee, in 1973 Coburn was voted the 23rd most popular star in Hollywood. Peckinpah and Coburn turned next to Cross of Iron, a critically acclaimed war epic that performed poorly in the United States but was a hit in Europe. Peckinpah and Coburn remained close friends until Peckinpahs death in 1984, in 1973, Coburn was among the featured celebrities dressed in prison gear on the cover of the album Band on the Run made by Paul McCartney and his band Wings. During that same year as a spokesman for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, in Japan his masculine appearance was so appealing he became an icon for its leading cigarette brand. He also supported himself in later years by exporting rare automobiles to Japan and he was deeply interested in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, and collected sacred Buddhist artwork
6.
Warner Bros.
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Entertainment Inc. – colloquially known as Warner Bros. or Warner Bros. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios, Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. The companys name originated from the four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, the owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, in 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, in 1918 they opened the first Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, on April 4,1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. The first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwoods 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, however, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins, the movie was so successful that Jack signed the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week. Rin Tin Tin became the top star. Jack nicknamed him The Mortgage Lifter and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanucks career, Zanuck eventually became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jacks right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director, lubitschs film The Marriage Circle was the studios most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners remained a lesser studio, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel. The film was so successful that Harry signed Barrymore to a contract, like The Marriage Circle. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywoods most successful independent studio, as the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan
7.
Western (genre)
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Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Other characters include Native Americans, bandits, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, mounted cavalry, settlers, Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a. mythic vision of the plains, specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution. The Western was the most popular Hollywood genre, from the early 20th century to the 1960s, Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Fords landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939, Westerns were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time – including High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–frontier justice–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, a showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. And like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress, similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, Westerns often stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Apart from the wilderness, it is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West, it is the place to go for music, women, gambling, drinking, brawling and shooting. The American Film Institute defines western films as those set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle, the term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World Magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th century popular Western fiction and were firmly in place before film became an art form. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds, Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era. With the advent of sound in 1927-28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and these smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream star in the wake of a decade of headlining B westerns
8.
Card game
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A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games, a small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules, but most are folk games whose rules vary by region, culture, and person. Many games that are not generally placed in the family of games do in fact use cards for some aspect of their gameplay. Similarly, some games that are placed in the game genre involve a board. Given the association of card games and gambling, the pope, Benedict XIV, a card game is played with a deck or pack of playing cards which are identical in size and shape. Each card has two sides, the face and the back, normally the backs of the cards are indistinguishable. The faces of the cards may all be unique, or there can be duplicates, the composition of a deck is known to each player. In some cases several decks are shuffled together to form a pack or shoe. The first playing cards appeared in the century during Tang dynasty China. The Song dynasty statesman and historian Ouyang Xiu has noted that playing cards arose in connection to an earlier development in the book format from scrolls to pages. During the Ming dynasty, characters from novels such as the Water Margin were widely featured on the faces of playing cards. A precise description of Chinese money playing cards survived from the 15th century, mahjong tiles are a 19th-century invention based on three-suited money playing card decks, similar to the way in which Rummikub tiles were derived recently from modern Western playing cards. The same kind of games can also be played with tiles made of wood, plastic, bone, the most notable examples of such tile sets are dominoes, mahjong tiles and Rummikub tiles. Chinese dominoes are also available as playing cards and it is not clear whether Emperor Muzong of Liao really played with domino cards as early as 969, though. Legend dates the invention of dominoes in the year 1112,500 years later domino cards were reported as a new invention. Playing cards first appeared in Europe in the last quarter of the 14th century, the 1430s in Italy saw the invention of the tarot deck, a full Latin-suited deck augmented by suitless cards with painted motifs that played a special role as trumps. Tarot card games are played with these decks in parts of Central Europe. A full tarot deck contains 14 cards in suit, low cards labeled 1–10, and court cards Valet, Chevalier, Dame, and Roi, plus the Fool or Excuse card
9.
Paddle steamer
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A paddle steamer is a steamship or riverboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, modern paddle wheelers may be powered by diesel engines. The paddle wheel is a steel framework wheel. The outer edge of the wheel is fitted with numerous, regularly-spaced paddle blades, the bottom quarter or so of the wheel travels underwater. An engine rotates the wheel in the water to produce thrust. More advanced paddle wheel designs feature feathering methods that keep each paddle blade closer to vertical while in the water to increase efficiency, the upper part of a paddle wheel is normally enclosed in a paddlebox to minimise splashing. There are two ways to mount paddle wheels on a ship, either a single wheel on the rear, known as a sternwheeler, or a paddle wheel on each side. Both sternwheelers and sidewheelers were used as riverboats in the United States, some still operate for tourists, for example on the Mississippi River. Sidewheelers are used as riverboats and as coastal craft and this extra maneuverability makes sidewheelers popular on the narrower, winding rivers of the Murray-Darling system in Australia, where a number still operate. European sidewheelers, such as the PS Waverley, connect the wheels with solid drive shafts that limit maneuverability, some were built with paddle clutches that disengage one or both paddles so they can turn independently. However, wisdom gained from experience with sidewheelers deemed that they be operated with clutches out. Crews noticed that as ships approached the dock, passengers moved to the side of the ready to disembark. The shift in weight, added to independent movements of the paddles, could lead to imbalance, in a simple paddle wheel, where the paddles are fixed around the periphery, power is lost due to churning of the water as the paddles enter and leave the water surface. Ideally, the paddles should remain vertical while under water and this ideal can be approximated by use of levers and linkages connected to a fixed eccentric. The eccentric is fixed slightly forward of the wheel centre. It is coupled to each paddle via a rod and lever, the geometry is designed such that the paddles are kept almost vertical for the short duration that they are in the water. One of the drawings of the Anonymous Author of the Hussite Wars shows a boat with a pair of paddle-wheels at each end turned by men operating compound cranks. In 1704, the French physicist Denis Papin constructed the first ship powered by his steam engine and this made him the first to construct a steam-powered boat
10.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
11.
John Wesley Hardin
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John Wesley Hardin was an American, Old West outlaw, gunfighter, and controversial folk icon. From an early age, Hardin often got himself into trouble with the law, pursued by lawmen for most of his life, he was finally sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder in 1877. When he was sentenced, Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men, while in prison, Hardin wrote a biased autobiography and studied law. In August 1895, Hardin was shot to death by Constable John Selman Sr. in an El Paso saloon, Hardin was born in 1853 near Bonham, Texas, to a Methodist preacher and circuit rider, James Gip Hardin, and Mary Elizabeth Dixson. He was named after John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist denomination of the Christian church, in his autobiography, Hardin described his mother as blond, highly cultured. Hardins father traveled over much of central Texas on his preaching circuit until he and his family settled in Sumpter in Trinity County, there, Joseph Hardin established and taught at the school that John Hardin and his siblings attended. Hardin was the surviving son of ten children. While in prison later in life, Hardin wrote in his autobiography which is the source for stories about him. However, he was known for wildly exaggerating or completely making up stories about his life. In several of his stories, he claimed to have involved in events which cannot be confirmed. For example, Hardin wrote that he was first exposed to violence in 1861 when he saw a man named Turner Evans stabbed by John Ruff, Evans died of his injuries and Ruff was jailed. Hardin wrote. Readers you see what drink and passion will do, If you wish to be successful in life, be temperate and control your passions, if you dont, ruin and death is the result. In 1862, at age nine, Hardin tried to run away, in 1867, while attending his fathers school, Hardin was taunted by another student, Charles Sloter. Sloter accused Hardin of being the author of graffiti on the wall that insulted a girl in his class. Hardin denied writing the poetry, claiming in turn that Sloter was the author, Sloter charged at Hardin with a knife but Hardin stabbed him with his own knife, almost killing him. Hardin was nearly expelled over the incident, in November 1868, when he was 15, Hardin challenged his uncle Holshousens former slave, Major Maje Holshousen, to a wrestling match, which Hardin won. According to Hardin, the day, Maje ambushed him as he rode past shouting at him. Hardin drew his revolver and shot Maje five times, Hardin wrote in his autobiography that he rode to get help for the wounded man, but he died three days later
12.
Danny Glover
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Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. He is well known for his role as Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series, The Color Purple, To Sleep with Anger. He also has prominent supporting roles in Silverado, Witness, Predator 2, Saw, Shooter,2012, Death at a Funeral, Beyond the Lights, and Dirty Grandpa. He has appeared in other movies, television shows, and theatrical productions. Glover was born in San Francisco, the son of Carrie and his parents, who worked as postal workers, were highly active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, working to advance equal rights. Glovers mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia and graduated from Paine College in Augusta, as an adolescent and a young adult, Glover suffered from epilepsy but has not suffered a seizure since age 35. He attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and he attended San Francisco State University in the late 1960s but did not graduate. SFSU later awarded him an honorary degree, Glover trained at the Black Actors Workshop of the American Conservatory Theater. Glover originally worked in city administration working on community development before transitioning to theater and he has said, I didnt think it was a difficult transition. Acting is a platform that can become a conveyer for ideas, art is a way of understanding, of confronting issues and confronting your own feelings—all within that realm of the capacity it represents. It may have been a leap of faith for me, given not only my learning disability, I felt all the things that someone thats 63 or 64 feels and with my own diminished expectations of who I could be would feel. Whether its art, acting or theater that Ive devoted myself to I put more passion and his first theater involvement was with Conservatory Theater, a regional training program in San Francisco. Glover also trained with Jean Shelton at the Shelton Actors Lab in San Francisco, in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Glover credited Jean Shelton for much of his development as an actor. Deciding that he wanted to be an actor, Glover resigned from his city administration job, later he once again starred with Busey in the blockbuster Predator 2. He also starred as the husband to Whoopi Goldbergs character Celie in the celebrated literary adaptation The Color Purple, in 1994 he made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override. Also in 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory founded the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles, focusing on theatre by, during his career, he has made several cameos, appearing, for example, in the Michael Jackson video Liberian Girl of 1987. Glover earned top billing for the first time in Predator 2 and that same year he starred in Charles Burnetts To Sleep with Anger, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. In addition, Glover has been an actor in many childrens movies
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