1.
Howard Hawks
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Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him the greatest American director who is not a household name, Hawks was a versatile director whose career included comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and westerns. His most popular films include Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, The Thing from Another World, and Rio Bravo. His frequent portrayals of strong, tough-talking female characters came to define a type—the Hawksian woman and his work has influenced some of the most popular and respected directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino. Howard Winchester Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana, the child of Frank W. Hawks, a wealthy paper manufacturer, and his wife, Helen. Hawkss family on his fathers side were American pioneers and his ancestor John Hawks had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1630. The family eventually settled in Goshen and by the 1890s was one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest, Hawkss maternal grandfather, C. W. Howard, had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1862 at age 17. Within 15 years he had made his fortune in the paper mill. Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895, Howard Hawks was the eldest of five children and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks, William Bellinger Hawks, Grace Louise Hawks and Helen Bernice Hawks. In 1898, the moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where Frank Hawks began working for his father-in-laws Howard Paper Company. Between 1906 and 1909, the Hawks family began to more time in Pasadena. Gradually they began to only their summers in Wisconsin before permanently moving to Pasadena in 1910. The family settled in a house down the street from Throop Polytechnic Institute, Hawks was an average student at school and did not excel in sports, but by 1910 had discovered coaster racing, an early form of soapbox racing. In 1911, Hawkss youngest sibling Helen died suddenly of food poisoning, from 1910 to 1912, Hawks attended Pasadena High School. But in 1912, the Hawks family moved to nearby Glendora, California, while in New England, Hawks often attended the theaters in nearby Boston. In 1914, Hawks returned to Glendora and graduated from Pasadena High School that year and that same year, Hawks was accepted to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. In 1916, Hawkss grandfather, C. W. Howard, bought him a Mercer race car and it was at this time that Hawks first met Victor Fleming, allegedly when the two men raced on a dirt track and caused an accident. Fleming had been an auto mechanic and early aviator when his old friend Marshall Neilan recommended him to film director Allan Dwan as a good mechanic
2.
Ben Hecht
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Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and early 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, in the 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters calls him one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures, Hecht received the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, for Underworld. Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics and he also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach. Film historian Richard Corliss called him the Hollywood screenwriter, someone who personified Hollywood itself, in 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay. In total, six of his movie screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards, of his seventy to ninety screenplays, he wrote many anonymously to avoid the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to his autobiography, he never spent more than eight weeks on a script, in 1983,19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Hecht was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and his father, Joseph Hecht, worked in the garment industry. His father and mother, Sarah Swernofsky Hecht, had immigrated to New York from Minsk, the family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. When Hecht was in his teens he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. On the road much of the time, his father did not have effect on Hecht’s childhood. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, He was considered a prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist. After graduating from school in 1910, at age sixteen Hecht moved to Chicago. He lived with relatives, and started a career in journalism and he found work as a reporter, first for the Chicago Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. He was an excellent reporter who worked on several Chicago papers, after World War I, Hecht was sent to cover Berlin for the Chicago Daily News. There he wrote his first and most successful novel, Erik Dorn and it was a sensational debut for Hecht as a serious writer. The 1969 movie, Gaily, Gaily, directed by Norman Jewison, the film was nominated for three Oscars
3.
Charles Lederer
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Charles Lederer was an American screenwriter and film director. A child prodigy, he entered college at age 13, Lederer is recognized for his comic and acerbic adaptations and collaborative screenplays of the 1940s and early 1950s. His screenplays frequently delved into the corrosive influences of wealth and power, Lederer was born in New York City to two prominent figures in the American theater, Broadway producer George Lederer and singer Reine Davies. After his parents were separated, Lederer and his younger sister Pepi moved to California and were raised by his mothers sister, actress Marion Davies. He grew up in Hollywood, spending time at San Simeon, the enchanted castle on the hill. He was a prodigy and was admitted to UC Berkeley at the age of 13. According to biographer William MacAdams, Hollywood was home to Lederer, virtually none of the film community had grown up in Los Angeles, but Lederer had been brought there when he was 11 by Marion Davies, his mothers sister. Lederer thus knew the movie colony inside out as seen from the top, when he was 19, Lederer became friends with Ben Hecht, who introduced him to the New York literati. His friendship with Hecht led to his being hired to write dialogue for the film The Front Page. He later moved back to Hollywood to become a full-time screenwriter, Lederer is recognized for his acerbic wit, with adaptations and collaborative screenplays written mostly during the 1940s and early 1950s. His screenplays frequently delved into the corrosive influences of wealth and power, yet his comedy writing was also among the best of the period, and he, along with Hecht and Herman Mankiewicz became major contributors to the film genre known as screwball comedy. He was friends with screenwriters Joseph and Herman Mankiewicz, Herman would later become co-screenwriter of Citizen Kane. After becoming friends with Lederer, Herman told Joe to come to the office of their mutual friend Charlie Lederer, as explained by Hollywood columnist Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz found himself on story-swapping terms with the power behind it all, Hearst himself. Lederer, a prodigy, who had entered college at thirteen. Lederer was Marion Davies’s nephew – the son of her sister Reine. Marion was childless, and Lederer was very close to her, he spent a deal of his time at her various dwelling places, and took his friends to meet both her and Hearst. ”After finishing the script for Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz gave a copy to Lederer. In some crazily naive way, Mankiewicz seems to have imagined that Lederer would be pleased by how good it was, but Lederer, apparently, was deeply upset and took the script to his aunt and Hearst. It went from them to Hearsts lawyers, Lederer, however, told director Peter Bogdanovich that Kael was totally incorrect in this matter, and she never bothered to check with him
4.
I. A. L. Diamond
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Diamond was a comedy and drama writer in Hollywood from the 1940s through the 1980s. He wrote eleven screenplays with Billy Wilder for the latters films, Diamond emigrated with his mother and sister, following his father to the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn in the United States at the age of 9. There he studied at the Boys High School, showing ability in mathematics, competing in the state Mathematics Olympiads in 1936–37, Diamond completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia in 1941. There he studied journalism, publishing in the Columbia Daily Spectator under the pseudonym I. A. L. Diamond, as a result, upon graduation he abandoned his plans to pursue his masters in engineering at Columbia and accepted a short-term contract in Hollywood. A succession of limited-term contracts ensued, notably at Paramount Pictures where he worked on projects without ultimately receiving a writing credit and he then moved to Universal, where in 1944 he worked on his first credited feature script, Murder in the Blue Room. It was a later, at Warner Brothers, that he achieved his first real success. He worked at 20th Century Fox from 1951–55, eventually deciding to become independent, in 1957 he began a collaborative relationship with Billy Wilder on the movie Love in the Afternoon. Diamond also had a hit with his 1969 solo adaptation of the play Cactus Flower into the movie of the same name, in total, Diamond and Wilder wrote twelve movies together over 25 years. Some of these films feature characters engaged in never-ending but friendly squabbling, such as Joe and Jerry in Some Like it Hot and Holmes, diamonds widow claims that these characters were based on her husbands relationship with Wilder. In 1980, Diamond and Wilder were given the Writers Guild of Americas Laurel Award for career achievement in screenwriting, Wilder had previously received the Laurel Award in 1957 for his screenwriting partnership with Charles Brackett. Diamond died in Beverly Hills, California in 1988, Buddy Buddy Fedora The Front Page Avanti. – Adapted Screenplay 1974, The Front Page – Adapted Screenplay 1980, Diamond at the Internet Movie Database
5.
Cary Grant
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Cary Grant was a British-American actor, known as one of classic Hollywoods definitive leading men. He began a career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became known for his accent, debonair demeanor. He became an American citizen in 1942, Born in Horfield, Bristol, Grant became attracted to theatre at a young age, and began performing with a troupe known as The Penders from the age of six. After attending Bishop Road Primary School and Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, he toured the country as a stage performer and he established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. Along with the later Arsenic and Old Lace and I Was a Male War Bride, having established himself as a major Hollywood star, he was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart. In the 1940s and 1950s, Grant forged a relationship with the director Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in films such as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock admired Grant and considered him to have been the actor that he had ever loved working with. His comic timing and delivery made Grant what Premiere magazine considers to have quite simply. Grant was married five times, three of his marriages were elopements with actresses—Virginia Cherrill, Betsy Drake and Dyan Cannon and he has one daughter with Cannon, Jennifer Grant. After his retirement from acting in 1966, Grant pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé. He was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970, in 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema, after Humphrey Bogart. Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18,1904 at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol suburb of Horfield and he was the second child of Elias James Leach and Elsie Maria Leach. Elias, the son of a potter, worked as a tailors presser at a factory, while Elsie. Grants elder brother, John William Elias Leach, died of tuberculous meningitis, Grant considered himself to have been partly Jewish. He had an upbringing, his father was an alcoholic. Wanting the best for her son, Elsie taught Grant song and dance when he was four and she would occasionally take him to the cinema where he enjoyed the performances of Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain and Broncho Billy Anderson. Grant entered education when he was four-and-a-half and was sent to the Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol, another biographer, Geoffrey Wansell, notes that Elsie blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grants older brother John, and never recovered from it. Grant later acknowledged that his experiences with his fiercely independent mother affected his relationships with women later in life
6.
Ginger Rogers
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Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer. She is known for her performances in films and RKOs musical films in which Fred Astaire was partened with her and she appeared on stage, as well as on radio and television, throughout much of the 20th century. Born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Rogers and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, after winning a dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her debut stage role in Girl Crazy. This success led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films, Rogers had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street. Throughout the 1930s, Rogers made 10 films with Astaire, among which were some of her biggest successes, such as Swing Time, after two commercial failures with Astaire, Rogers began to branch out into dramatic films and comedies. Her acting was received by critics and audiences, and she became one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s. Her performance in Kitty Foyle won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, Rogers remained successful throughout the 1940s and at one point was Hollywoods highest-paid actress, but her popularity had peaked by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway, after an unsuccessful period through the 1950s, Rogers made a successful return to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly. More lead roles on Broadway followed, along with her directorial debut in 1985 on an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. Rogers also made acting appearances until 1987. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors and she died of a heart attack in 1995, at the age of 83. A Republican and a devout Christian Scientist, Rogers was married five times, with all of her marriages ending in divorce, during her long career, Rogers made 73 films, and her musical films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing their genre. Rogers was successful during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is considered an American icon. She ranks number 14 on the AFIs 100 Years.100 Stars list of stars of classic American cinema. Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath on July 16,1911, in her mothers rented home at 100 Moore Street, Independence and she was the only living child of William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Lela Emogene. She was of Scottish, Welsh, and English ancestry and her mother did not want her born in a hospital, having lost a previous child there. Her parents had separated shortly after she was born, but her grandparents, Walter and Saphrona Owens, after unsuccessfully trying to become a family again, McMath kidnapped his daughter twice. Rogers said that she never saw her father again
7.
Marilyn Monroe
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Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Famous for playing comic dumb blonde characters, she one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s. Although she was an actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. She continues to be considered a popular culture icon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes, while working in a factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career. The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures, after a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became an actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career. Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed at being typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project, when the studio was still reluctant to change her contract, Monroe founded a film production company in late 1954, she named it Marilyn Monroe Productions. She dedicated 1955 to building her company and began studying acting at the Actors Studio. In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. After a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop and acting in the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and her last completed film was the drama The Misfits. Monroes troubled private life received much attention and she struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. She had two highly publicized marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, both of which ended in divorce and she died at the age of 36 on August 5,1962, from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroes death was ruled a suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death. Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1,1926, Gladys, the daughter of two poor Midwestern migrants to California, was a flapper and worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. When she was fifteen, Gladys married a man nine years her senior, John Newton Baker and she filed for divorce in 1921, and Baker took the children with him to his native Kentucky
8.
Charles Coburn
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Charles Douville Coburn was an American film and theatre actor. Best known for his work in comedies, Coburn received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for 1943s The More the Merrier, Coburn was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Scotch-Irish Americans Emma Louise Sprigman and Moses Douville Coburn. Growing up in Savannah, he started out at age 14 doing odd jobs at the local Savannah Theater, handing out programs, ushering, by age 17 or 18, he was the theater manager. He later became an actor, making his debut on Broadway in 1901, Coburn formed an acting company with actress Ivah Wills in 1905. In addition to managing the company, the couple performed frequently on Broadway, after his wifes death in 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and began film work. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired millionaire playing Cupid in The More the Merrier in 1943 and he was also nominated for The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 and The Green Years in 1946. Other notable film credits include Of Human Hearts, The Lady Eve, Kings Row, The Constant Nymph, Heaven Can Wait, Wilson, Impact, The Paradine Case, Everybody Does It, monkey Business, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and John Paul Jones. He usually played comedic parts, but Kings Row and Wilson were dramatic parts, for his contributions to motion pictures, in 1960, Coburn was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6268 Hollywood Boulevard. Coburn was a member of the White Citizens Councils, a group which opposed racial integration, Coburn married Ivah Wills on January 29,1906 in Atlanta, Georgia. Ivah died on December 3,1937 in New York City of congestive heart failure, Coburn married Winifred Natzka on June 30,1959 in Los Angeles. She was the widow of the New Zealand bass opera singer Oscar Natzka and they had one child, a daughter. Coburn died from an attack on August 30,1961
