Constance Towers
Constance Mary Towers is an American actress and singer. A native of Montana, Towers began her career doing radio plays as a child in the Pacific Northwest before relocating to New York City where she professionally studied at the Juilliard School of Music, she made her film debut in the Technicolor picture Bring Your Smile Along before earning recognition for her roles in John Ford's civil war film The Horse Soldiers and western Sergeant Rutledge. She would appear in two controversial roles in Samuel Fuller's experimental thrillers Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss. Beginning in 1965, Towers embarked on a career in theater, making her Broadway debut in the musical Anya, opposite Lillian Gish, followed by a 1966 production of Show Boat at Lincoln Center. Towers would star in four other Broadway productions throughout the 1970s, most notably as Anna in The King and I in 1977 and 1978, her career has been based in television, with notable roles as matriarch Clarissa McCandless on the daytime drama Capitol and the villainous Helena Cassadine on General Hospital, the latter of whom she began portraying in 1997.
Towers was born in Whitefish, the daughter of Ardath L. and pharmacist Harry J. Towers. Both of her parents were Irish immigrants. In 1940, when Towers was in first grade, she was discovered by talent scouts visiting Montana in search of child actors for radio programs, she worked as a child voice actress in Pacific Northwest-based radio programs for three years. According to her official website, Towers was offered a contract with Paramount Pictures at age 11, but the offer was declined by her parents. At age 12, she worked at a small local movie theater in her hometown of Whitefish. In her adolescence, her family relocated to New York City for her father's work. There, she attended American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she studied singing with well known voice teacher Beverley Peck Johnson. Towers made her film debut in a supporting part in the Technicolor film Bring Your Smile Along, followed by a supporting part in the crime thriller Over-Exposed. In 1958, Towers was cast in her first lead role as Hannah Hunter in John Ford's civil war film The Horse Soldiers, opposite John Wayne and William Holden.
The following year, she appeared in Ford's follow-up film Sergeant Rutledge, a racially themed crime Western. In 1963, Towers was cast in a supporting role in Samuel Fuller's experimental thriller Shock Corridor, which tells the story of a journalist who commits himself to a psychiatric hospital to solve a murder, her role as a stripper in the film was described by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times as "hard and realistic." In preparation for the role, Towers spent time at exotic dance clubs in Los Angeles. Fuller cast Towers again in a lead role in his following film The Naked Kiss, another lurid and hard-edged thriller, in which she plays a crazed prostitute who attempts to assimilate in suburbia after having battered her pimp. Though critics remarked the film's outrageous subject matter, it received some critical acclaim. Between his stylish handling of sensational nonsense and Mr. Marton's turgid floundering around a serious theme, Mr. Fuller's wild little movie has a decided edge."The same year, Towers appeared in the thriller Fate Is the Hunter, which chronicles the investigation of an airline crash.
She worked as a model for the Heart Fund Benefit at a fashion show held in Reno, Nevada. Between 1961 and 1965, she had five guest roles on the series Perry Mason. After several film and stage roles, Towers made her Broadway debut playing the title role in Anya, a short-lived 1965 musical. Towers appeared as Julie in a 1966 production of Show Boat at Lincoln Center, she starred in Carousel in 1966 and The Sound of Music in 1967, which she would reprise in 1970, 1971 and 1980 at the Jones Beach Theater in Long Island, New York. She played Anna Leonowens in 1968, she played opposite Yul Brynner in a long-running revival of The King and I on tour and on Broadway. Clive Barnes praised Towers in the role, theatre writer John Kenrick calls her performance on the 1977 cast album "great."In 1995 she played the role of Phyllis in the TUTS production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. From the mid-1960s until the 1990s, Towers' career was focused on theatre, though she did appear in films occasionally, she starred in the 1974 television film Once in Her Life, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Special Program.
She appeared on television, playing Marian Hiller, the wife of Dr. Sanford Hiller in Love is a Many Splendored Thing, she had a starring role as noble widow Clarissa McCandless in Capitol, playing rival to the scheming matriarch Myrna Clegg in trying to see her son succeed in politics and the long-term love of powerful Senator Mark Denning. A memorable storyline had her being shot by Mark's mentally ill wife Paula and finding out that her husband Baxter was still alive. For this part, she received a Soap Opera Digest Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Towers had a supporting part in the film The Next Karate Kid and appeared on television as John Abb
Susan Blanchard (actress)
Susan Blanchard-Frank is an American actress, known for playing Mary Kennicott Martin, R. N. #2 on the ABC soap opera All My Children from 1971 to 1975. She is married to actor Charles Frank, who played her onscreen husband, Dr. Jeff Martin #2, on All My Children, they worked together in 1978 on the TV-movie The New Maverick with James Garner and Jack Kelly and the following year on the short-lived prime-time television western series Young Maverick, a sequel to the 1957 series, Maverick. Her film credits include Russkies, again opposite her husband Charles Frank, the John Carpenter films Prince of Darkness and They Live. In 1976, she starred as Tina in Tina. Blanchard played Nurse Sandra Cooper on M*A*S*H, appeared on CBS' series Beacon Hill. Blanchard was known for her attractive legs and, was the television commercial spokesperson for No Nonsense, a brand of pantyhose, from 1976 to 1982. Susan Blanchard on IMDb
Chicago (That Toddlin' Town)
"Chicago" is a popular song written by Fred Fisher and published in 1922. The original sheet music variously spelled the title "Todd'ling" or "Toddling." The song has been recorded by many artists. The song mentions evangelist Billy Sunday as having not been able to "shut down" the city; the song made a minor appearance on the U. S. pop charts, reaching #84 in the fall of 1957. It was the first of two charting songs about Chicago recorded by Sinatra; the other was "My Kind of Town" from 1964, which reached U. S. #110. 1939 - featured in H. C. Potter's 1939 film, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. 1942 - the song was featured in the opening and closing credits of the 1942 movie Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou. 1949 - included in the fictionalized biography of Fred Fisher, Oh, You Beautiful Doll 1952 - used in the 1952 film With a Song in My Heart. 1957 - performed by Frank Sinatra in a 1957 movie in which he starred, The Joker Is Wild.
His separately-recorded rendition is the only charting version of the song. 1974 - appears in the film Harry and Tonto. Jamey Aebersold Ann-Margret George Barnes Luis Barreiro Count Basie Laura Benanti - The Playboy Club Tony Bennett Pierre Blanchard Claude Bolling Boston Pops Orchestra James Brown Dave Brubeck John Bunch Benny Carter Chicago - Night and Day: Big-Band Rosemary Clooney Bing Crosby for his 1957 album New Tricks. Graham Dalby & the Grahamophones Sammy Davis Jr. Jimmy Dorsey Tommy Dorsey John Eaton Duke Ellington Bob Florence Pete Fountain Sergio Franchi on his 1964 RCA single Bud Freeman Jackie and Roy Judy Garland on her double LP Judy at Carnegie Hall The Georgians Harry Goldson Nat Gonella & His Georgians Benny Goodman Stéphane Grappelli Coleman Hawkins Earl Hines Mimi Hines Franz Jackson Milt Jackson Jazzbo's Carolina Serenaders Jive Bunny & the Mastermixers Al Jolson Greetje Kauffeld François Laudet Lead Belly Joe Lovano Billy May Dudley Moore Jaye P. Morgan Jack Mudurian Bill O'Connell Anita O'Day Original Piano Trio Oscar Peterson Louis Prima Quintet of the Hot Club of France Lou Rawls Django Reinhardt Buddy Rich Tony Sandler Bob Scobey The Sentimental Strings John Serry, Sr. and his ensemble.
Screeching Weasel Ray Sherman Victor Silvester Frank Sinatra - Come Fly with Me Muggsy Spanier The Starlite Orchestra Wally Stott and his Orchestra Barbara Sutton Curtis George Holmes Tate Gary Tesca Rufus Wainwright - Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra World's Greatest Jazz Band Wurlitzer Band Organ Wurlitzer Model 165 Band Organ Penn Glee Club George Scott Wood's Six Swingers Green Day during a concert at Chicago's United Center on July 13, 2009 Sergio Franchi recorded this song in Italian during his concert in 1965 for RCA Victor, Live at The Coconut Grove CM Punk at the end of the 27 June 2011 edition of Monday Night Raw Sheet music in the Lilly Library collection at Indiana University
Tokyo
Tokyo Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603, it became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is referred to as a city but is known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo; the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo were Tokyo City. On July 1, 1943, it merged with Tokyo Prefecture and became Tokyo Metropolis with an additional 26 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture, the Izu islands and Ogasawara islands south of Tokyo.
The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million. The prefecture is part of the world's most populous metropolitan area called the Greater Tokyo Area with over 38 million people and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy; as of 2011, Tokyo hosted 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world at that time. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development Index; the city is home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo third in the Global Cities Index; the GaWC's 2018 inventory classified Tokyo as an alpha+ world city – and as of 2014 TripAdvisor's World City Survey ranked Tokyo first in its "Best overall experience" category. As of 2018 Tokyo ranked as the 2nd-most expensive city for expatriates, according to the Mercer consulting firm, and the world's 11th-most expensive city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's cost-of-living survey.
In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle. The Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo was ranked first out of all sixty cities in the 2017 Safe Cities Index; the QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student in 2016 and 2nd in 2018. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, the 1993 G-7 summit, will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Tokyo was known as Edo, which means "estuary", its name was changed to Tokyo when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph; some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei".
The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, he got the idea from that book. Tokyo was a small fishing village named Edo, in what was part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from Mikawa Province to Kantō region; when he became shōgun in 1603, Edo became the center of his ruling. During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century, but Edo was Tokugawa's home and was not capital of Japan. The Emperor himself lived in Kyoto from 794 to 1868 as capital of Japan. During the Edo era, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, in the presence of such peace, Edo adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city.
The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. However, this prolonged period of seclusion came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Meiji Emperor leveraged the disruption that t
Ted Lange
Theodore William "Ted" Lange is an American actor and screenwriter best known for his role as the bartender, Isaac Washington, in the TV series The Love Boat. Lange was born in Oakland, California, in 1948, the son of Geraldine and Ted Lange, both working in theatre and television. Lange graduated from Oakland Technical High where he was class and student body president before majoring in Drama at San Francisco City College, completing an associate of arts degree at Merritt Junior College in Oakland. At San Francisco City College, Lange was active on the theatre scene and named Best Actor by the Black Students Association as well as winning a scholarship to the University of Colorado Shakespearean Festival in the summer of 1968. After college, Lange started in theatre appearing in local Oakland productions and as guest artist in residence at the University of Santa Clara, he joined the New Shakespearan Company, acting in plays at the University of California, Berkeley. Lange made his Broadway debut in the musical Hair and was featured in the first national touring of that show.
He performed in a one-man show, Behind the Mask: An Evening with Paul Laurence Dunbar. Lange's first screen appearance was in the documentary film Wattstax in 1973. After starring in the film Black Belt Jones in 1974, he portrayed Junior on the series That's My Mama before landing the role of the ship's bartender, Isaac, on The Love Boat in 1977, opposite Gavin MacLeod. In the early 1980s, following a letter of recommendation from Lynn Redgrave, Lange attended a summer school at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to perfect his Shakespeare acting skills. After he left the show in 1987, Lange appeared in various films and guest roles on 227, The Cleveland Show, Glitch!, Evening Shade, Drake & Josh, The King of Queens, Boy Meets World and Are We There Yet. In 1977, he wrote the screenplay for the 1977 drama Passing Through, starring Cora Lee Day and Marla Gibbs. During the run of The Love Boat, Lange served as director and screenwriter on various episodes of the series. In 1999, Lange directed two episodes of Love Boat: The Next Wave, the UPN series based on The Love Boat.
He directed episodes of Moesha, Dharma & Greg, Eve. In 2008, he directed the drama For Love of Amy. Lange has done extensive theater work as playwright and stage director, he has penned 17 plays, including George Washington's Boy, a historical drama about the relationship between the first president and his favorite slave, along with the comedy Lemon Meringue Facade. Lange remains close to Gavin MacLeod, his acting mentor, a Palm Springs resident, sees his plays, he said in a 2014 interview with CBS New York.com of his long-running friendship with him, "Gavin lives in Palm Springs, I'm in LA. So, when I do my plays, he comes down and sees my plays or I'll go see what he's doing!"Lange said in a 2017 interview with The Wiseguyz Show, if his mentor enjoyed all the acting/dancing on The Love Boat series was: "Oh yeah, Gavin was wonderful. Gavin lives down here in Palm Springs and we're still tight, all of us, Gavin and Bernie and Jill. Fred lives in a different state, we're still close, we're still good friends."
Before the American edition of FHM folded in 2006, Lange wrote a sex and advice column, titled "Ask Isaac", with adult film actress Jenna Jameson. In 2006, Lange appeared in the fourth season of the VH1 reality show Celebrity Fit Club, he lost 28 pounds during the show's run. Lange married Sheryl Thompson in 1978, they divorced in 1989; the couple has Ted IV and Turner Wallace Lange. Lange remarried in 2001 to Mary Ley, his mother is Geraldine Lange, a personal secretary to a San Francisco mayor and was public affairs director of KBHK-TV in San Francisco in the early 1970s. She hosted television programs on KBHK-TV. For his work theater directing, Lange received the NAACP's Renaissance Man Theatre Award, the Heroes and Legends HAL Lifetime Achievement Award, the Dramalogue Award. Lange has been the recipient of the James Cagney Directing Fellow Scholarship Award from the American Film Institute along with the Paul Robeson Award from Oakland's Ensemble Theatre. Ted Lange on IMDb Ted Lange at the Internet Broadway Database
Pat Morita
Noriyuki "Pat" Morita was an American film and television actor who played Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi on Happy Days, Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid film series and The Toymaster in Babes in Toyland. Morita was nominated for the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. Morita voiced the Emperor of China in the Disney animated film Mulan and portrayed Ah Chew in Sanford and Son. Morita was the series lead actor in the television program Mr. T and Tina and in Ohara, a police-themed drama; the two shows made history for being among the few TV shows with an Asian American series lead. Morita was born in California. Morita's father Tamaru, born in 1897, had immigrated to California from Kumamoto Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu in 1915. Tamaru's wife Momoe, born in 1903, had emigrated to California in 1913. Noriyuki, as Pat was named, had a brother named Hideo, twelve years older. Morita developed spinal tuberculosis at the age of two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in the Weimar Institute in Weimar, at the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco.
For long periods he was told that he would never walk. During his time at a sanatorium near Sacramento, Morita befriended a visiting priest who would joke that, if Morita converted to Catholicism, the priest would rename him to "Patrick Aloysius Ignatius Xavier Noriyuki Morita". Released from the hospital at age 11 after undergoing extensive spinal surgery and learning how to walk, Morita was transported from the hospital directly to the Gila River camp in Arizona to join his interned family. After about a year and a half, he was transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center. For a time after the war, the family operated Ariake Chop Suey, a restaurant in Sacramento, California. Morita would serve as master of ceremonies for group dinners. Morita began working as a stand-up comic after high school, he took the stage name "Pat Morita", in part due to the presence of comedians including Pat Henry and Pat Cooper, in part due to memories of the priest he had befriended as a boy. Morita struggled for many years in comedy.
Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce's mother, acted as his manager in his early days. Morita sometimes worked as the opening act for singers Vic Damone and Connie Stevens and for his mentor, the comedian Redd Foxx. Foxx gave him a role on his sitcom Sanford and Son in the early 1970s. Morita's first movie roles were as a stereotypical henchman in Thoroughly Modern Millie and another similarly-stereotypical role in The Shakiest Gun In The West, starring Don Knotts. A recurring role as South Korean Army Captain Sam Pak on the sitcom M*A*S*H helped advance the comedian's acting career, he was cast as Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka in the war film Midway. He had a recurring role on the show Happy Days as Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi, owner of the diner Arnold's for the show's third season and made guest appearances in 1977 and 1979. After the season's end, he left the show to star as inventor Taro Takahashi in his own show Mr. T and Tina, the first Asian-American sitcom on network TV; the sitcom was placed on Saturday nights by ABC and was canceled after a month in the fall of 1976.
Morita revived the character of Arnold on Blansky's Beauties in 1977 and returned to Happy Days for the 1982–1983 season. Morita had another notable recurring television role on Sanford and Son as Ah Chew, a good-natured friend of Lamont Sanford. Morita gained particular fame playing wise karate teacher Mr. Miyagi, who taught young "Daniel-san" the art of karate in The Karate Kid, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a corresponding Golden Globe Award, reprising his role in three sequels: The Karate Kid Part II, The Karate Kid Part III and The Next Karate Kid, the last of which starred Hilary Swank instead of Macchio. Though he was never a student of karate, he learned all, required for the films. Although he had been using the name Pat for years, producer Jerry Weintraub suggested that he be billed with his given name to sound "more ethnic." Morita put this advice into practice and was recognized as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita at the 57th Academy Awards ceremony. Weintraub did not want to cast Morita for the part of Mr. Miyagi, wanting a dramatic actor for the part and labeling Morita a comedic actor.
Morita tested five times before Weintraub himself offered him the role. Morita went on to play Tommy Tanaka in the Kirk Douglas-starring television movie Amos, receiving his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination and second Golden Globe Award nomination for the role, he starred in the ABC detective show Ohara. He wrote and starred in the World War II romance film Captive Hearts. Morita hosted the educational home video series Britannica's Tales Around the World. In his career Morita starred on the Nickelodeon television series The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, had a recurring role on the sitcom The Hughleys, he made a guest appearance on a 1996 episode of Married... with Children. He went on to star in the short film Talk To Taka as a sushi chef who doles out advice to anyone who will hear him. Morita voiced the Emperor of China in Disney's 36th animated feature Mulan and reprised the role in Kingdom Hearts II and Mulan II, a direct-to-video sequel. Morita had a cameo appearance in the 2001 Alien Ant Farm music video "Movies".
Morita's appearance in the vide
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