Eugene Pallette
Eugene William Pallette was an American actor. He appeared in over 240 silent era and sound era motion pictures between 1913 and 1946. After an early career as a slender leading man, Pallette became a stout character actor, he had a deep voice, which some critics have likened to the sound of a croaking frog, is best-remembered for comic character roles such as Alexander Bullock, Carole Lombard's character's father, in My Man Godfrey, as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, his similar role as Fray Felipe in The Mark of Zorro starring Tyrone Power. He starred in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Heaven Can Wait, he was born in Winfield, the son of William Baird Pallette and Elnora "Ella" Jackson. Both of his parents had been actors in their younger years, but by 1889 Pallette's father was an insurance salesman, his sister was Beulah L. Pallette. Pallette attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana, he worked as a jockey, did a stage act which included three horses. Pallette began his acting career on the stage in stock company roles, appearing for a period of six years.
Pallette began his silent film career as an extra and stunt man in 1910 or 1911. His first credited appearance was in the one-reel short western/drama The Fugitive, directed by Wallace Reid for Flying "A" Studios at Santa Barbara; the up-and-coming actor was splitting an apartment with actor Wallace Reid. Advancing to featured status, Pallette appeared in many westerns, he worked with D. W. Griffith on such films as The Birth of a Nation, where he played two parts, one in blackface, Intolerance, he played a Chinese role in Tod Browning's The Highbinders. At this time, Pallette had a slim, athletic figure, a far cry from his portly build in his career, he starred as the slender sword-fighting swashbuckler Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, one of the great smash hits of the silent era. However, his girth had begun ending his ambitions of becoming a leading man. Discouraged, Pallette left Hollywood for the oil fields of Texas, where he both made and lost a sizable fortune of $140,000 in the same year.
He returned to film work. After gaining a great deal of weight, he became one of the screen's most recognizable character actors. In 1927, he signed as a regular for Hal Roach Studios and was a reliable comic foil in several early Laurel and Hardy movies. In years, Pallette's weight may have topped out at more than 300 pounds; the advent of the talkies proved to be the second major career boost for Pallette. His inimitable rasping gravel voice made him one of Hollywood's most sought-after character actors in the 1930s and 1940s; the typical Pallette role was gruff and down to earth. He played the comically exasperated head of the family, the cynical backroom sharpy, the gruff police sergeant in five Philo Vance films including The Kennel Murder Case. Pallette thus appeared in more Philo Vance films than any of the ten actors who played the aristocratic lead role of Vance. Pallette's best-known role may be as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood. BBC commentator Dana Gioia described Pallette's onscreen appeal: The mature Pallette character is a creature of provocative contradictions—tough-minded but indulgent, earthy but epicurean, relaxed but excitable.
His grit and gravel voice sounds tough and comic.... Pallette uses his girth to create a common touch. Stuffed into a tuxedo that seems perpetually near bursting, he seems more down-to-earth than the stylish high society types who surround him. Pallette was cast as the father of lead actress Jeanne Crain for the film In Darling. Director Otto Preminger clashed with Pallette and claimed he was "an admirer of Hitler and convinced that Germany would win the war". Pallette refused to sit at the same table with black actor Clarence Muse in a scene set in a kitchen. "You're out of your mind, I won't sit next to a nigger", Pallette hissed at Preminger. Preminger furiously informed Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. Although Pallette remains in scenes he had filmed, the remainder of his role not yet shot was eliminated from the script. However, a 1953 issue of the African-American magazine Jet listed Pallette as being among the attendees of a Hollywood banquet honoring the "oldest Negro actress in the world," Madame Sul-Te-Wan.
For his part, Pallette always maintained. In ill health by his late 50s, Pallette made fewer and fewer movies, for lesser studios, his final movie, was released in 1946. In 1946, convinced that there was going to be a "world blow-up" by atomic bombs, the hawkish Pallette received considerable publicity when he set up a "mountain fortress" on a 3,500-acre ranch near Imnaha, Oregon, as a hideaway from universal catastrophe; the "fortress" was stocked with a sizable herd of prize cattle, enormous supplies of food, had its own canning plant and lumber mill. When the "blow-up" he anticipated failed to materialize after two years, he began disposing of the Oregon ranch and returned to Los Angeles and his movie colony friends, he never appeared in another movie, however. Eugene Pallette died at age 65 in 1954 from throat cancer at his apartment, 10835 Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles, his wife, Marj
Exsultate, jubilate
Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165, is a 1773 motet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This religious solo motet was composed when Mozart was staying in Milan during the production of his opera Lucio Silla, being performed there in the Teatro Regio Ducal, it was written for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, who had sung the part of the primo uomo Cecilio in Lucio Silla the previous year. While waiting for the end of the run, Mozart composed the motet for his singer, whose technical excellence he admired, its first performance took place at the Theatine Church on 17 January 1773, while Rauzzini was still singing in Mozart's opera at night. Mozart made some revisions around 1780. In modern times, the motet is sung by a female soprano, it has four sections: Exsultate jubilate – Allegro Fulget amica dies – Secco Recitative Tu virginum corona – Andante Alleluja – Molto allegro Although nominally for liturgical use, the motet has many features in common with Mozart's concert arias, such as those drawn from his operas.
Mozart used elements of concerto form in this motet. Written in Latin, the author of the text may have been Rauzzini. Exsultate, jubilate: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project Exsultate, jubilate: Score and critical report in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
J. Scott Smart
J. Scott Smart was an American radio and stage actor during the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Smart was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, his family moved to Buffalo, where he was a 1922 graduate of Lafayette High School. He attended Miami Military Institute. Smart told a reporter; those jobs included selling shoe polish, heaving coal on a boat, being fire chief in a factory, drawing cartoons for a newspaper and designing ads for an advertising agency. When he was 21, Smart began acting in stock theater in New York, he acted there for five years. After that, a friend set up an audition for a program on NBC; the result was Smart's first role on that of a singing waiter on Whispering Tables. His Broadway credits include A Bell for Separate Rooms. Smart is best known for his lead as Brad Runyon in the detective show The Fat Man, which aired on ABC Radio from 1946 to 1951.:114-115 Jack was a regular on The March of Time and The Fred Allen Show.:121-123 In fact, he played so many character roles during the early days of radio drama that he became known as the "Lon Chaney of Radio".
Jack was an accomplished stage actor and played roles in major productions of A Bell For Adano and Waiting for Godot. He appeared including Kiss of Death and the movie version of The Fat Man. A running gag in the film was Smart getting in and out of the car he rented - a tiny MG! The film was an early major role for Rock Hudson, he vied with noted other rotund actor Bud Stevens for roles requiring fat fellows. In his life, Smart's roles in radio programs included those shown in the table below, he was a member of the casts of The Family Hour and The Teen-Timers Club:327 and was heard on Grand Central Station and Inner Sanctum Mystery. When Love Is Young The Wildcatter Love in a Bungalow Panama Patrol The Fat Man Smart married Alice Coy Wright on July 23, 1931, he was married to Mary-Leigh Smart from 1951 until his death in 1960. They had no children. Jack, together with his wife, were an established part of the arts colony. Late in life, as a widow, Mary-Leigh Smart and her partner of 40 years, Beverly Hallam bequeathed their 41-acre oceanfront estate as the Surf Point Artist Colony.
Smart lived in Ogunquit and indulged his lifelong passion for art in becoming a painter and sculptor. He had a summer theater in Ogunquit. Smart died of pancreatic cancer in Illinois. Buxton and Bill Owen The Big Broadcast: 1920-1950, New York: Scarecrow Press. Dallman, V. Y. Obituary in the Illinois State Register, January 15, 1960. Dunning, John Tune In Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925–1976, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Laughlin, Charles D. J. Scott Smart, a.k.a. The Fat Man. York, Maine: Three Faces East Press. MacDonald, J. Fred Don't Touch That Dial: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, p. 173. Plante, William C. "J. Scott Smart"; the Players Bulletin, spring issue. Taylor, Robert Fred Allen: His Life and Wit. Boston: Little and Company. Internet Archive: The Fat Man Note: Only the last six episodes in this archive are from the original American J. Scott Smart series. J. Scott Smart official website J. Scott Smart on IMDb J. Scott Smart at the Internet Broadway Database
Deanna Durbin
Edna Mae Durbin, known professionally as Deanna Durbin, was a Canadian-born actress and singer settled in France, who appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. With the technical skill and vocal range of a legitimate lyric soprano, she performed many styles from popular standards to operatic arias. Durbin made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday, subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios, her success as the ideal teenaged daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. In 1938, at the age of 17, Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award; as she matured, Durbin grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her, attempted to portray a more womanly and sophisticated style. The film noir Christmas Holiday and the whodunit Lady on a Train were, not as well received as her musical comedies and romances had been. Durbin retired from acting and singing in 1949, withdrew from public life, granting no interviews for the remainder of her life, except for one in 1983.
She married film producer-director Charles Henri David in 1950, the couple moved to a farmhouse near Paris. Edna Mae Durbin was born on December 4, 1921, at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, the younger daughter of James Allen Durbin and his wife Ada Durbin, who were from Chester, England; when she was an infant, her family moved from Winnipeg to Southern California, her parents became United States citizens in 1923, which would have conferred United States citizenship via Jus sanguinis to her and her elder sister, Edith Mrs. Heckman, although it is unclear if she or her sister elected to claim U. S. citizenship. At the age of one, Edna Mae was singing children's songs. By the time she was 10, her parents recognized that she had definite talent and enrolled her in voice lessons at the Ralph Thomas Academy. Durbin soon became Thomas's prize pupil, he showcased her talent at various local clubs and churches. In early 1935, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was planning a biographical film on the life of opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink and was having difficulty finding an actress to play the young opera singer.
MGM casting director Rufus LeMaire heard about a talented young soloist performing with the Ralph Thomas Academy and called her in for an audition. Durbin sang "Il Bacio" for the studio's vocal coach, stunned by her "mature soprano" voice, she sang the number again for Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a six-month contract. Durbin made her first film appearance in the short Every Sunday with Judy Garland; the film was intended as a demonstration of their talent as performers, as studio executives had questioned the wisdom of casting two female singers together. Louis B. Mayer decided to sign both, but by Durbin's contract option had lapsed. Instead, Durbin was placed under contract by Universal Pictures, where she was given the professional name Deanna, she was 14 years old when she made Three Smart Girls. When producer Joe Pasternak cast the film, he wanted to borrow Garland from MGM, but Garland was not available at the time; when Pasternak learned that Durbin was no longer with MGM, he cast her in the film instead.
Three Smart Girls was established Durbin as a star. With Pasternak producing for Universal, Durbin starred in a succession of successful musical films, including One Hundred Men and a Girl, Mad About Music, That Certain Age, Three Smart Girls Grow Up, First Love —most of which were directed by Henry Koster. During the 1930s, Durbin continued to pursue singing projects. In 1936, she auditioned to provide the vocals for Snow White in Disney's animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but was rejected by Walt Disney, who said the 15-year-old Durbin's voice was "too old" for the part. In late 1936, Cesar Sturani, the general music secretary of the Metropolitan Opera, offered Durbin an audition, she turned down his request. Andrés de Segurola, the vocal coach working with Universal Studios—himself a former Metropolitan Opera singer—believed that Durbin was a potential opera star. De Segurola was commissioned to advise the Metropolitan Opera on her progress. In 1936, Durbin began a radio collaboration with Eddie Cantor which lasted until 1938, when her heavy workload for Universal forced her to quit her weekly appearances.
The success of Durbin's films was reported to have saved Universal from bankruptcy. In 1938, she received an Academy Juvenile Award with Mickey Rooney, her producer, Joe Pasternak, said:Deanna's genius had to be unfolded, but it was hers and hers alone, always has been, always will be, no one can take credit for discovering her. You can't hide that kind of light under a bushel. You just can't, no matter how hard you try! In the early 1940s, Durbin continued her success with It's a Date, Spring Parade, Nice Girl?, It Started with Eve, her last film with Pasternak and director Henry Koster. After Pasternak moved from Universal to MGM, Durbin was suspended between October 16, 1941 and early February 1942 for refusing to appear in They Lived Alone, scheduled to be directed by Koster; the project was canceled when Universal settled their differences. In the agreement, Universal conceded to Durbin the approval of her directors and songs. Following the two sequels to her first film Three Smart Girls, Durbin issued a press release announcing that she was no longer inclined to participate in these team efforts and was now performing as a solo artist.
The T
Academy Award for Best Film Editing
The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. For 33 consecutive years, 1981 to 2013, every Best Picture winner had been nominated for the Film Editing Oscar, about two thirds of the Best Picture winners have won for Film Editing. Only the principal, "above the line" editor as listed in the film's credits are named on the award; the nominations for this Academy Award are determined by a ballot of the voting members of the Editing Branch of the Academy. The members may vote for up to five of the eligible films in the order of their preference; the Academy Award itself is selected from the nominated films by a subsequent ballot of all active and life members of the Academy. This process is the reverse of that of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts; this award was first given for films released in 1934. The name of this award is changed.
Four film editors have won this award three times in their career: Ralph Dawson won for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Anthony Adverse, The Adventures of Robin Hood Daniel Mandell won for The Pride of the Yankees, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Apartment. Michael Kahn won for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan. Thelma Schoonmaker won for Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Departed. To date, two film directors have won this award, James Cameron and Alfonso Cuarón for the films Titanic and Gravity, respectively. Directors David Lean, Steve James, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Michel Hazanavicius and Jean-Marc Vallée have been nominated for editing their own films, with Cameron, Cuarón, the Coens each being nominated for the award twice. Additionally, Best Film Editing winner, Walter Murch, although known for film editing and sound, directed the Oscar nominated Return to Oz and is, to date, the only person with Oscars for both sound engineering and film editing, winning them in the same year for his work on The English Patient.
Nominated editors Robert Wise, Francis D. Lyon, who won for Body and Soul and Hal Ashby, who won for In the Heat of the Night, became directors whose films were in turn nominated for Best Film Editing, namely Somebody Up There Likes Me, I Want to Live!, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles and The Andromeda Strain for Wise, Crazylegs for Lyon and Bound for Glory and Coming Home for Ashby. Superlatives taken from a document published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; these listings are based on the Awards Database maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The following editors have received multiple nominations for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing; this list is sorted by the number of total awards. BAFTA Award for Best Editing Academy Award for Best Sound Editing Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Editing American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Comedy or Musical
Jed Prouty
Jed Prouty was an American film actor. From Boston, Prouty was a vaudeville performer before becoming a film actor. Appearing in comedies, he performed a serious character role, for instance a small part as an oily publicist in A Star is Born. After a significant career in silent films, a large part of Prouty's career was the Jones Family film series, they were 17 low-budget 20th Century Fox family comedies between 1936 and 1940, along with Spring Byington as Mrs. Jones, for such directors as Malcolm St. Clair and Frank R. Strayer. Prouty appeared in all but the final entry. Jed Prouty on IMDb Jed Prouty at the Internet Broadway Database
