1.
Woody Allen
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Heywood Woody Allen is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. He worked as a writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, as a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians and he is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup, some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In 2007 he said Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, critic Roger Ebert described Allen as a treasure of the cinema. Allen won four Academy Awards, three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director and he also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays, in 2011, PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen, A Documentary on the American Masters TV series. Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York and he and his sister, Letty, were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her familys delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg and his family was Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His childhood was not particularly happy, his parents did not get along, Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School, at that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street. Unlike his comic persona, he was interested in baseball than school. He impressed students with his talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money, he wrote jokes for agent David O. Alber, at the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and later began to call himself Woody Allen. According to Allen, his first published joke read, Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O. P. S and he was then earning more than both parents combined
2.
Mia Farrow
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María de Lourdes Mia Villiers Farrow is an American actress, activist and former fashion model. She first gained notice for her role as Allison MacKenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place. An early film role, as Rosemary in Roman Polanskis Rosemarys Baby, saw her nominated for a BAFTA and she went on to appear in films such as John and Mary, Follow Me. The Great Gatsby and Death on the Nile and her later film roles include Widows Peak, The Omen, Be Kind Rewind, Dark Horse and Luc Bessons Arthur series. Farrow is known for her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She is involved in activities in Darfur, Chad. In 2008, Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world and her eldest brother, Michael Farrow, died in a plane crash in 1958, at age 19, Patrick, a sculptor, committed suicide in 2009. Her fathers family was originally from England, Farrow grew up in Beverly Hills, California, where she occasionally put on performances with toy daggers and fake blood for passing celebrity tour buses. Aged two, she made her debut in a short documentary Unusual Occupations, Film Tot Holiday. She was raised Roman Catholic and had 13 years of convent education with nuns, when she was nine, she contracted polio during an outbreak in Los Angeles reportedly affecting 500 people. She was placed in a ward for three weeks and later said the experience marked the end of my childhood. Farrow screen-tested for the role of Liesl von Trapp in The Sound of Music, the footage has been preserved, and appears on the fortieth Anniversary Edition DVD of The Sound of Music. Farrow began her career by appearing in supporting roles in several 1960s films. In 1964, she achieved stardom on the primetime soap opera Peyton Place as naive. Farrow left the series in 1966 at the urging of Frank Sinatra whom she married on July 19,1966, before her acting career, Farrow worked as a fashion model for many years. Farrows first leading role was in Rosemarys Baby, which was a critical and commercial success at the time. Her performance garnered numerous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress, Film critic and author Stephen Farber described her performance as having an electrifying impact. Film critic Roger Ebert called the brilliant, and noted, A great deal of the credit for this achievement must go to Mia Farrow
3.
Anton Chekhov
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in esteem by writers. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his career, Medicine is my lawful wife, he once said. These four works present a challenge to the ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a theatre of mood. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew and he made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great 29 January 1860, the third of six surviving children, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a serf and his Ukrainian wife, were from the village Vilkhovatka near Kobeliaky. A director of the choir, devout Orthodox Christian, and physically abusive father. Chekhovs mother, Yevgeniya, was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth-merchant father all over Russia and our talents we got from our father, Chekhov remembered, but our soul from our mother. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that its sickening and frightening to think about it, remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool. Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium and he sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his fathers choirs. In 1876, Chekhovs father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, to avoid debtors prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow, Chekhovs mother physically and emotionally broken by the experience, Chekhov was left behind to sell the familys possessions and finish his education. Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three years, boarding with a man called Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches and he sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. Chekhov also enjoyed a series of affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, Chekhov now assumed responsibility for the whole family
4.
Vermont
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Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It borders the other U. S. states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Lake Champlain forms half of Vermonts western border with the state of New York, Vermont is the 2nd-least populous of the U. S. states, with nearly 50,000 more residents than Wyoming. The capital is Montpelier, the least populous state capital in the U. S, the most populous municipality, Burlington, is the least populous city in the U. S. to be the most populous within a state. As of 2015, Vermont continued to be the producer of maple syrup in the U. S. It was ranked as the safest state in the country in January 2016, for thousands of years inhabited by indigenous peoples, including the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki and Mohawk, much of the territory that is now Vermont was claimed by Frances colony of New France. France ceded the territory to Great Britain after being defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years War, for many years, the nearby colonies, especially the provinces of New Hampshire and New York, disputed control of the area. Settlers who held land titles granted by New York were opposed by the Green Mountain Boys militia, ultimately, those settlers prevailed in creating an independent state, the Vermont Republic. Founded in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War, the republic lasted for 14 years, aside from the original 13 states that were formerly colonies, Vermont is one of only four U. S. states that were previously sovereign states. Vermont was also the first state to join the U. S. as its 14th member state after the original 13, while still an independent republic, Vermont was the first of any future U. S. state to partially abolish slavery. It played an important geographic role in the Underground Railroad, sights in Vermont Vermont is located in the New England region of the northeastern United States and comprises 9,614 square miles, making it the 45th-largest state. It is the state that does not have any buildings taller than 124 feet. Land comprises 9,250 square miles and water comprises 365 square miles, making it the 43rd-largest in land area, in total area, it is larger than El Salvador and smaller than Haiti. The west bank of the Connecticut River marks the eastern border with New Hampshire. 41% of Vermonts land area is part of the Connecticut Rivers watershed, Lake Champlain, the major lake in Vermont, is the sixth-largest body of fresh water in the United States and separates Vermont from New York in the northwest portion of the state. From north to south, Vermont is 159 miles long and its greatest width, from east to west, is 89 miles at the Canada–U. S. Border, the narrowest width is 37 miles at the Massachusetts line, the states geographic center is approximately three miles east of Roxbury, in Washington County. There are fifteen U. S. federal border crossings between Vermont and Canada, the origin of the name Vermont is uncertain, but likely comes from the French les Verts Monts, meaning the Green Mountains
5.
Christopher Walken
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He was nominated for the same award and won BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Awards for his performance as Frank Abagnale Sr. in Catch Me If You Can. Walkens films have grossed more than $1 billion in the United States and he has also played the lead in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Coriolanus. He is a popular guest-host of Saturday Night Live, having hosted seven times as of April 2008, Walken debuted as a film director and scriptwriter with the short film Popcorn Shrimp in 2001. He also wrote and acted the role in a play about his idol Elvis Presley, titled Him. Named after actor Ronald Colman, Walken was born Ronald Walken on March 31,1943 in Astoria, Queens, New York City. He is the son of Rosalie, a British emigrant from Glasgow, Scotland, and Paul Wälken and his father owned and operated Walkens Bakery in Astoria. Influenced by their mothers own dreams of stardom, he and his brothers, Kenneth, at age 15, when a girlfriend showed him a magazine photo of Elvis, Walken said, This guy looked like a Greek god. Then I saw him on television and he changed his hairstyle to imitate Elvis and hasnt changed it since. As a teenager, he worked as a lion tamer in a circus, Walken initially trained as a dancer in music theatre at the Washington Dance Studio before moving on to dramatic roles in theatre and then film. As a child, Walken appeared on screen as an extra in numerous anthology series, after appearing in a sketch with Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour, Walken decided to become an actor. He landed a role in the 1953 television show The Wonderful John Acton as the shows narrator. During this time, he was credited as Ronnie Walken, over the next two years, he appeared frequently on television and had a thriving career in theatre. From 1954 to 1956, Walken and his brother Glenn originated the role of Michael Bauer on the soap opera The Guiding Light, in 1963, he appeared as a character named Chris in an episode of Naked City, starring Paul Burke. In 1966, Walken played the role of King Philip of France in the Broadway premiere of The Lion in Winter, in 1969, Walken guest-starred in Hawaii Five-O as Navy SP Walt Kramer. He prefers to be known informally as Chris instead of Christopher, Walken made his feature film debut with a small role opposite Sean Connery in Sidney Lumets The Anderson Tapes. In 1972s The Mind Snatchers a. k. a, the Happiness Cage, Walken played his first starring role. In this science fiction film, which deals with control and normalization. Paul Mazurskys 1976 film Next Stop, Greenwich Village had Walken, under the name Chris Walken, playing fictional poet, in Woody Allens 1977 film Annie Hall, Walken played the homicidal and borderline crazy brother of Annie Hall
6.
Charles Durning
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Charles Edward Durning was an American actor, with appearances in over 200 movies, television shows and plays. Durnings best-known roles included The Sting and Dog Day Afternoon, along with the comedies The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Tootsie, Durning was born in Highland Falls, New York, the ninth of ten children. His three brothers and sister, James, Clifford, Frances and Gerald, survived to adulthood but five sisters lost their lives to scarlet fever and he was the son of Louise, a laundress at West Point, and James E. Durning. His father was an Irish immigrant. and his mother was also of Irish descent, in 1959, Durning married his first wife, Carole Doughty. A Declaration of Separation was filed in 2010 from his second wife and he is survived by his three children from his first marriage. Charles Durning served in the U. S. Army during World War II and he was drafted at age 20 and discharged with the rank of Private First Class on January 30,1946. Durning was known for participating in various functions to honor American veterans and he was an honored guest speaker for 17 years at the National Memorial Day Concert televised by PBS every year on the Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend. Durning was paid a tribute at the May 26,2013 National Memorial Day Concert when Taps was sounded in his honor. For his valor and the wounds he received during the war, Durning was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and his badges included the Combat Infantryman Badge, Expert Badge with Rifle Bar, and Honorable Service Lapel Pin. Durning received the French National Order of the Legion of Honor from the French Consul in Los Angeles in April 2008, while pursuing an acting career, Durning, a professional ballroom dancer, taught at Fred Astaire Dance Studio in New York City. Referred to as the King of Character Actors, Durning began his career in 1951, while working as an usher in a burlesque joint, he was hired to replace a drunken actor on stage. Beginning in 1961, he appeared in 35 plays as part of the Shakespeare Festival and that time in my life was my best time, Durning told Pittsburghs Post Gazette in 2001. I had no money at all, and he didnt pay much and you were getting a salary for performance plus a rehearsal salary. We would do three plays in Central Park for the summer, and then youd do three to six plays every year down on Lafayette Street -- new plays by new writers, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, David Rabe, John Ford Noonan, Jason Miller. During this period, he segued into television and movies and he made his film debut in 1965, appearing in Harvey Middleman, Fireman. He appeared in John Frankenheimers I Walk the Line starring Gregory Peck and he also appeared in Dealing, Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow. Durnings performances in Broadway productions include Drat. Pousse-Café, The Happy Time, Indians, That Championship Season, In the Boom Boom Room, The au Pair Man, Knock Knock, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Inherit the Wind, The Gin Game, and The Best Man
7.
Annie Hall
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Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. Produced by Allens manager, Charles H, principal photography for the film began on May 19,1976 on the South Fork of Long Island, and filming continued periodically for the next ten months. Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in March 1977, the film received widespread critical acclaim, and along with winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, it received Oscars in three other categories, two for Allen, and Keaton for Best Actress. The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe and its North American box office receipts of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allens works when not adjusted for inflation. Film critic Roger Ebert called it just about everyones favorite Woody Allen movie, the films screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays. The comedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago, growing up in New York, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy, instead, they discuss his first wife, whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who didnt like sports and was unable to reach orgasm, the two of them have fun making a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the men in her past. He met her playing tennis doubles with friends, following the game, awkward small talk led her to offer him first a ride up town and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of personal data is revealed in mental subtitles as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annies singing audition for a night club and he suggests they kiss first, to get it out of the way. After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is a wreck, while she relaxes with a joint, soon Annie admits she loves him, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When she moves in with him, things become very tense, eventually, he finds her arm in arm with one of her college professors and the two begin to argue whether this is the flexibility they had discussed. Alvy returns to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis, bad sex, and finally an interruption from Annie and it turns out she needs him to kill a spider. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together come what may, however, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they fly out to Los Angeles, with Alvys friend, however, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing her to her producer, Tony Lacey, he unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal
8.
Maureen O'Sullivan
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Maureen Paula OSullivan was an Irish actress best known for playing Jane in the Tarzan series of films starring Johnny Weissmuller. Maureen returned to Boyle in 1988 to be honoured by the town and she was of Irish, English and Scottish ancestry. She attended a convent school in Dublin, then the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton, one of her classmates there was Vivian Mary Hartley, future Academy Award-winning actress Vivien Leigh. After attending finishing school in France, OSullivan returned to Dublin to work with the poor, OSullivans film career began when she met motion picture director Frank Borzage, who was doing location filming on Song o My Heart for 20th Century Fox. He suggested she take a screen test and she did and won a part in the movie, which starred Irish tenor John McCormack. She traveled to the United States to complete the movie in Hollywood, OSullivan appeared in six movies at Fox, then made three more at other movie studios. In 1932, she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after several roles there and at other movie studios, she was chosen by Irving Thalberg to appear as Jane Parker in Tarzan the Ape Man, opposite co-star Johnny Weissmuller. She was one of the more popular ingenues at MGM throughout the 1930s, in all, OSullivan played Jane in six features between 1932 and 1942. She starred with William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man and played Kitty in Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo, Fredric March, and Basil Rathbone. After co-starring with the Marx Bros in A Day At The Races, she appeared as Molly Beaumont in A Yank at Oxford, at her request, he rewrote her part to give it substance and novelty. She played another Jane in Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, after appearing in Tarzans New York Adventure, OSullivan asked MGM to release her from her contract so she could care for her husband who had just left the Navy with typhoid. She retreated from show business, devoting her time to her family, in 1948, she re-appeared on the screen in The Big Clock, directed by her husband for Paramount Pictures. She continued to occasionally in her husbands movies and on television. However, by 1960 she believed she had permanently retired, in 1958, Farrows and OSullivans eldest son, Michael, died in a plane crash in California. Actor Pat OBrien encouraged her to take a part in summer stock, and that led to another play, Never Too Late, in which she co-starred with Paul Ford in what was her Broadway debut. Shortly after it opened on Broadway, John Farrow died of a heart attack, OSullivan stuck with acting after Farrows death, she was the Today Girl for NBC for a while, then made the movie version of Never Too Late for Warner Bros. She was also a director of a bridal consulting service. In June and July 1972, OSullivan was in Denver, Colorado, to star in the Elitch Theatre production of Butterflies are Free with Karen Grassle, the show ended on July 1,1972
9.
Uncle Vanya
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Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, the play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Sonya, the daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going. Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhovs major plays because it is essentially a reworking of his own play published a decade earlier. Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revised The Wood Demon during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891. Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov, a university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wifes rural estate. Helena Andreyevna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs young and beautiful second wife, sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs daughter from his first marriage. She is of an age, but is considered plain. Maria Vasilyevna Voynitsky, the widow of a councilor and mother of Vanya. Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky, Marias son and Sonyas uncle, the character of the play. Mikhail Lvovich Astrov, a middle aged country doctor, ilya Ilych Telegin, an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family. A Workman A garden in Serebryakovs country estate, Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown, and how he feels bored with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains about how all order has been disrupted since the professor and his wife, Yelena, as they’re talking, Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of the professors earshot, Vanya calls him an old dried mackerel, criticizing him for his pomposity. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects to her son’s derogatory comments, Vanya also praises the professor’s wife, Yelena, for her beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like Serebryakov is an immoral waste of vitality. Astrov is forced to depart to attend a patient, but not before delivering a speech on the preservation of the forests, act I closes with Vanya declaring his love for an exasperated Yelena. The dining room, several days later, before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of being in pain and of old age. Astrov arrives, having sent for by Sonya, but the professor refuses to see him
10.
Sam Shepard
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Samuel Shepard Rogers III, known professionally as Sam Shepard, is an American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director, whose body of work spans over half a century. He is the author of plays as well as several books of short stories, essays. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child and he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009, New York described him as the greatest American playwright of his generation. Shepards plays are known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor. His style has evolved over the years, from the absurdism of his early Off-Off-Broadway work to the realism of Buried Child, Shepard was born November 5,1943, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was named Samuel Shepard Rogers III after his father, Samuel Shepard Rogers, Jr. but his nickname was Steve Rogers. His father was a teacher and farmer who served in the United States Army Air Forces as a pilot during World War II, Shepard has characterized him as a drinking man. His mother, Jane Elaine, was a teacher and a native of Chicago, Shepard worked on a ranch as a teenager. Shepard soon dropped out to join a repertory group, the Bishops Company. At this time Samuel Steve Rogers adopted the professional name Sam Shepard, although his plays would go on to be staged at several Off-Off-Broadway venues, he was most closely connected with Cooks Theatre Genesis, housed at St. Marks Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattans East Village, several of Shepards early plays, including Red Cross and La Turista, were directed by Jacques Levy. A habitué of the Chelsea Hotel scene of the era, he contributed to Kenneth Tynans ribald Oh. Calcutta. and drummed sporadically from 1967 through 1971 with psychedelic folk band The Holy Modal Rounders, appearing on Indian War Whoop, Shepards early science fiction play The Unseen Hand would influence Richard OBriens stage musical The Rocky Horror Show. Shepards Cowboy Mouth – a collaboration with his then-lover Patti Smith – was staged at The American Place Theater in April 1971, providing early exposure for the future punk rock singer. The story and characters were inspired by their relationship, and after opening night, he abandoned the production. He wrote plays out of his house and served for a semester as Regents Professor of Drama at the University of California and his diary of the tour was published by Penguin Books in 1978. A decade later, Dylan and Shepard co-wrote the 11-minute Brownsville Girl, included on Dylans Knocked Out Loaded album, in 1975, he was named playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre, where he created many of his notable works, including his Family Trilogy
11.
Elaine Stritch
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Elaine Stritch was an American actress and singer, known for her work on Broadway. She made her stage debut in 1944 and appeared in numerous stage plays, musicals, feature films. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995 and her one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty, won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. Stritch relocated to London in the 1970s and starred in several West End productions, including Tennessee Williams Small Craft Warnings and she also starred with Donald Sinden in the ITV sitcom Twos Company, which earned her a 1979 BAFTA TV Award nomination. She won an Emmy Award in 1993 for her guest role on Law & Order and another for the 2004 television documentary of her one-woman show. From 2007 to 2012, she had a role as Colleen Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Stritch was born on February 2,1925, in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest daughter of Mildred, a homemaker, and George Joseph Stritch and her Roman Catholic family was well-off. Her father was of Irish descent, while her mother had Welsh ancestry, samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago from 1940 to 1958, was one of her uncles. She trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City under Erwin Piscator, alongside Marlon Brando, Stritch made her stage debut in 1944. Stritch understudied Ethel Merman for Call Me Madam, and, at the time, appeared in the 1952 revival of Pal Joey. Stritch later starred in the tour of Call Me Madam. She was the lead in the musical Goldilocks and she starred in Noël Cowards Sail Away on Broadway in 1961. During out-of-town tryouts in Boston, Coward was unsure about the talents of one of the leads. Joe Layton suggested What would happen if. we just eliminated role, the show was very old-fashioned, and the thing that was working was Elaine Stritch. Every time she went on stage was a sensation. The reconstructed Sail Away opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 3,1961, with Stritch giving what Howard Taubman of The New York Times said “must be the performance of her career. ”In 1966, she played Ruth Sherwood in the musical Wonderful Town at New Yorks City Center, and appeared in an Off Broadway revival of Private Lives in 1968. Stritch became known as a singer with a brassy, powerful voice and she was the original performer cast in the role of Joanne in Stephen Sondheims Company on Broadway. After over a decade of successful runs in shows in New York, Stritch moved in 1972 to London, where she starred in the West End production of Company
12.
Jack Warden
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Jack Warden was an American character actor of film and television. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Shampoo and he received a BAFTA nomination for the former movie and won an Emmy for his performance in Brians Song. Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter Jr. in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. and John Warden Lebzelter and he was of Pennsylvania Dutch and Irish ancestry. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he was expelled from school for fighting. He fought in 13 bouts as a welterweight, but earned little money, Warden worked as a nightclub bouncer, tugboat deckhand and lifeguard before joining the United States Navy in 1938. He was stationed for three years in China with the Yangtze River Patrol, in 1944, on the eve of the D-Day invasion, Warden, now a Staff Sergeant, shattered his leg when he landed in a tree during a night-time practice jump in England. He spent almost eight months in the hospital recuperating, during which time he read a Clifford Odets play, ironically, Warden would later portray a paratrooper from the 101sts rivals – the 82nd Airborne Division – in That Kind of Woman. After leaving the military, he moved to New York City and he joined the company of the Dallas Alley Theatre and performed on stage for five years. In 1948 he made his debut on the anthology series, The Philco Television Playhouse. His first film role, uncredited, was in the 1951 film Youre in the Navy Now, Warden appeared in his first credited film role in the 1951 in The Man with My Face. From 1952 to 1955, Warden appeared in the television series Mister Peepers with Wally Cox, in 1953, Warden was cast as a sympathetic corporal in From Here to Eternity. Wardens breakthrough film role was his performance as Juror No,7, a salesman who wants a quick decision in a murder case, in 12 Angry Men. Warden was nominated for Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Shampoo and his final film was The Replacements in 2000, opposite Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves. Warden married French actress Vanda Dupre in 1958 and had one son, although they separated in the 1970s, the couple never divorced. Warden suffered from declining health in his last years which resulted in his retirement from acting in 2000 and he died of heart and kidney failure in a New York hospital on July 19,2006, at the age of 85. Jack Warden at the Internet Movie Database Jack Warden at the Internet Broadway Database Jack Warden at Find a Grave Cinema2000 obituary
