1.
Jeanette MacDonald
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Jeanette Anna MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy. During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars and she later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to movie-going audiences, MacDonald was born June 18,1903, at her familys Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Anna Mae and Daniel MacDonald and she had Scottish, English, and Dutch ancestry. Starting at an age, she took dancing lessons with Al White, imitated her mothers opera records. She performed at church and school functions and began touring in kiddie shows and she was the younger sister of character actress Blossom Rock who is most famous as Grandmama on the TV show Addams Family. In 1920 she appeared in two musicals, Jerome Kerns Night Boat as a replacement, and Irene on the road as the second female lead. Shipman once remarked that MacDonald did not have the legs for a chorus girl. In 1921 MacDonald played in Tangerine, as one of the Six Wives, in 1922 MacDonald was a featured singer in a Greenwich Village revue, Fantastic Fricassee. Good press notices brought her a role in The Magic Ring, MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred Mitzi Hajos. In 1925 MacDonald again had the female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes. The following year found her still in a female lead in Bubblin Over. MacDonald finally landed the role in Yes, Yes, Yvette. Planned as a sequel to producer H. H. Frazees No, No, Nanette, MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays, Sunny Days, her first show for producers Lee and J. J. Shubert, for which she received rave reviews, and Angela and her last play was Boom Boom, with her name above the title. While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing, the Shuberts wouldn’t let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane, the Boop-boop-a-doop girl. In 1929, famed film director Ernst Lubitsch was looking through old screen tests of Broadway performers and he cast her as the leading lady in his first sound film, The Love Parade, which starred the Continental sensation Maurice Chevalier. In the first rush of sound films, 1929–30, MacDonald starred in six films and her first, The Love Parade, directed by Lubitsch and co-starring Chevalier, was a landmark of early sound films and received a Best Picture nomination
2.
Nelson Eddy
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Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred with soprano Jeanette MacDonald. He was one of the first crossover stars, a superstar appealing both to shrieking bobby soxers and opera purists, and in his heyday, he was the highest paid singer in the world. S, president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. He also introduced millions of young Americans to classical music and inspired many of them to pursue a musical career, Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the only child of Caroline Isabel and William Darius Eddy. His father was a machinist and toolmaker whose work required him to move from town to town, Nelson grew up in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a boy, he was a redhead and quickly acquired the nickname Bricktop, as an adult, his red hair was streaked with silver, so his hair photographed as blond. He came from a musical family and his Atlanta-born mother was a church soloist, and his grandmother, Caroline Netta Ackerman Kendrick, was a distinguished oratorio singer. His father occasionally moonlighted as a stagehand at the Providence Opera House, sang in the choir, played the drums. His parents divorced when he was 14, living in near poverty, Eddy was forced to drop out of school and moved with his mother to Philadelphia, where her brother, Clark Kendrick, lived. His uncle helped Eddy secure a job at the Mott Iron Works. He later worked as a reporter with the Philadelphia Press, the Evening Public Ledger, and he also worked briefly as a copywriter at N. W. Ayer Advertising, but was dismissed for constantly singing on the job, Eddy never returned to school, but educated himself with correspondence courses. He was bitter that his father refused to provide support after the divorce. Eddy developed his talent as a boy soprano in church choirs, throughout his teens, Eddy studied voice and imitated the recordings of baritones such as Titta Ruffo, Antonio Scotti, Pasquale Amato, Giuseppe Campanari, and Reinald Werrenrath. He gave recitals for womens groups and appeared in society theatricals, having had a job in an iron works factory, he then spent ten years as a newspaper reporter, but was fired for paying more attention to music than to journalism. His first professional break came in 1922, when he was singled out by the press after an appearance in a society theatrical, The Marriage Tax, in 1924, Eddy won the top prize in a competition that included a chance to appear with the Philadelphia Opera Society. With Savoy, Eddy sang the role of Strephon in Iolanthe at the Broad Street Theatre in Philadelphia in 1922. The next year, he played the role of Major-General Stanley in Savoys production of The Pirates of Penzance and he reprised the role of Strephon with Savoy in 1927, when the theater group moved their performances to the famed Academy of Music
3.
Victor Herbert
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Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor and he was also prominent among the tin pan alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna, Austria, Herbert and his opera singer wife, Therese Förster, moved to the U. S. in 1886 when both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera. In the U. S. Herbert continued his career, while also teaching at the National Conservatory of Music. His most notable compositions were his Cello Concerto No.2 in E minor, Op.30, which entered the standard repertoire. He led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1898 to 1904 and then founded the Victor Herbert Orchestra, Herbert began to compose operettas in 1894, producing several successes, including The Serenade and The Fortune Teller. Some of the operettas that he wrote after the turn of the 20th century were more successful, Babes in Toyland. Modiste, The Red Mill, Naughty Marietta, Sweethearts and Eileen, after World War I, with the change of popular musical tastes, Herbert began to compose musicals and contributed music to other composers shows. While some of these were well-received, he never achieved the level of success that he had enjoyed with his most popular operettas. Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland to Protestants Edward Herbert and his grandfather was the Irish novelist, playwright, poet and composer Samuel Lover. The Lovers welcomed a steady flow of musicians, writers and artists to their home, Herbert joined his mother in Stuttgart, Germany in 1867, a year after she had married a German physician, Carl Schmidt of Langenargen. In Stuttgart he received a liberal education at the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium. Herbert initially planned to pursue a career as a medical doctor, although his stepfather was related by blood to the German royal family, his financial situation was not good by the time Herbert was a teenager. Medical education in Germany was expensive, and so Herbert focused instead on music and he initially studied the piano, flute and piccolo but ultimately settled on the cello, beginning studies on that instrument with Bernhard Cossmann from age 15 to age 18. He then attended the Stuttgart Conservatory, after studying cello, music theory and composition under Max Seifritz, Herbert graduated with a diploma in 1879. Even before studying with Cossmann, Herbert was engaged professionally as a player in concerts in Stuttgart and his first orchestra position was as a flute and piccolo player, but he soon turned solely to the cello. By the time he was 19, Herbert had received engagements as a soloist with several major German orchestras. He played in the orchestra of the wealthy Russian Baron Paul von Derwies for a few years and, Herbert joined the court orchestra in Stuttgart in 1881, where he remained for the next five years
4.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California and it is one of the worlds oldest film studios. In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3,2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MGM, is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios, the studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and a film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up production, as well as keeping production going at UA. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production, the studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt, MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the major creditor. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, and Australias Seven Network in 1996, the debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGMs ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem and he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loews Theatres chain. With Loews lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality, however, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17,1924, Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production. MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years, in 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loews passed to Nicholas Schenck, in 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew familys holdings with Schencks assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds
5.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
6.
Ray Bolger
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Raymond Wallace Ray Bolger was an American actor, singer, and dancer of vaudeville, stage and screen best known for his portrayal of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Raymond Wallace Bolger was born into a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent in Dorchester, Boston and his entertainment aspirations evolved from the vaudeville shows of his youth. He began his career in a vaudeville tap show, creating the act Sanford & Bolger with his dance partner, in 1926, he danced at New York Citys legendary Palace Theatre, the premier vaudeville theatre in the U. S. His limber body and improvisational dance movement won him leading roles on Broadway in the 1930s. Eventually, his career would also film, television and nightclub work. In 1932 he was elected to the theater club, The Lambs. Bolger signed his first cinema contract with MGM in 1936 and although The Wizard of Oz was early in his career he appeared in other movies of note. His best known appearance was The Great Ziegfeld, in which he portrayed himself. He also appeared in Sweethearts, the first MGM film in Technicolor, starring Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald and he also appeared in the 1937 Eleanor Powell vehicle, Rosalie, which also starred Eddy and Morgan. Following Oz, Bolger moved to RKO, in 1941, he was a featured act at the Paramount Theatre in New York, working with the Harry James Band. He would do tap dance routines, sometimes in a challenge dance with the bands pianist. One day during this period the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Bolger toured in USO shows with Joe E. Lewis in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and was featured in the United Artists war-time film Stage Door Canteen. In 1946 he returned to MGM for a role in The Harvey Girls. He repeated his role in the 1952 film version of the musical. Also in 1952 he made April in Paris with Doris Day, Bolger appeared in his own ABC television sitcom with a variety show theme, Wheres Raymond. Renamed the second year as The Ray Bolger Show and he continued to star in several films, including Walt Disneys 1961 remake of Babes in Toyland. Bolger made frequent guest appearances on television, including the episode Rich Man and his last television appearance was on Diffrent Strokes in 1984, three years before his death. In his later years, he danced in a Dr Pepper television commercial, and in 1985, he and Liza Minnelli, a film also written by Jack Haley, Jr. the son of Jack Haley, who portrayed the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz
7.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
8.
Dorothy Parker
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Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist, dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a wisecracker. Nevertheless, her output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild to Jacob Henry and Eliza Annie Rothschild at 732 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey, dorothys mother was of Scottish descent, and her father was of German Jewish descent. Parker wrote in her essay My Hometown that her parents got her back to their Manhattan apartment shortly after Labor Day so she could be called a true New Yorker and her mother died in West End in July 1898, when Parker was a month shy of turning five. Her father remarried in 1900 to a woman named Eleanor Francis Lewis, Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of the Immaculate Conception as spontaneous combustion. Her stepmother died in 1903, when Parker was nine, Parker later went to Miss Danas School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey. She graduated from Miss Danas School in 1911, at the age of 18, following her fathers death in 1913, she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living while she worked on her verse. She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an assistant for another Condé Nast magazine. She moved to Vanity Fair as a writer after two years at Vogue. In 1917, she met and married a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II and she had ambivalent feelings about her Jewish heritage given the strong antisemitism of that era and joked that she married to escape her name. Her career took off while she was writing criticism for Vanity Fair. At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, the trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel on a near-daily basis and became founding members of the Algonquin Round Table. The Round Table numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin Pierce Adams, through their re-printing of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams column The Conning Tower, Dorothy began developing a national reputation as a wit. One of her most famous comments was made when the group was informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, How could they tell. Parkers caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was terminated by Vanity Fair in 1920 after her criticisms began to offend powerful producers too often. In solidarity, both Benchley and Sherwood resigned in protest, when Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors established by Ross to allay concerns of his investors
9.
Musical film
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The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline. The musical film was a development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater, performers often treat their song, in a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. The 1930s through the early 1950s are considered to be the age of the musical film. Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24, beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include a track including non-diegetic music and diegetic music. This feature-length film was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing Dirty Hands, Dirty Face, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Blue Skies and My Mammy. Historian Scott Eyman wrote, As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights and she saw terror in all their faces, she said, as if they knew that the game they had been playing for years was finally over. Still, only isolated sequences featured live sound, most of the film had only a musical score. In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than an all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The Broadway Melody had a plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing feature film, it was a hit, there was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits. The Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton, Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor and this was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show
10.
George Barbier (actor)
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George W. Barbier was an American film and stage actor. Barbier entered Crozier Seminary to study for the ministry but gave it up to go on the stage and he began his career in light opera and spent several years in repertory and stock companies. He eventually played on Broadway, where he appeared in seven productions between 1922 and 1930, among them The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Man Who Came Back. He signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1929 and later worked as an actor for most of the major studios. His first film was The Big Pond, the weighty, white-haired Barbier often played pompous, but mostly kind-hearted businessmen or patriarchs in supporting roles. George Barbier appeared in 88 films until his death in 1945, George Barbier at the Internet Movie Database George Barbier at the Internet Broadway Database George Barbier at Find a Grave
11.
Frank Morgan
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Francis Phillip Wuppermann, known by his stage name of Frank Morgan, was an American character actor. He is best known as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player and as the character in The Wizard of Oz. Morgan was born Francis Phillip Wuppermann in New York City, the youngest of children born to Josephine Wright. His father was born in Venezuela, of German and Spanish ancestry and his mother was born in the United States, of English ancestry. The family earned its wealth distributing Angostura bitters, allowing Wuppermann to attend Cornell University where he joined Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity and he then followed his older brother Ralph Morgan into show business, first on the Broadway stage and into motion pictures. After his film debut The Suspect, he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, morgans career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good hearted middle-aged man. By the mid-1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had been so impressed by Morgan that they signed him to a lifetime contract, Morgan was cast in the role on September 22,1938. Fields was originally chosen for the role of the Wizard, mGMs 1946 film The Great Morgan was written with the story centering on Frank Morgan. In the 1940s, Morgan co-starred with Fanny Brice in one version of the radio program Maxwell House Coffee Time, during the first half of the show Morgan would tell increasingly outlandish tall tales about his life adventures, much to the dismay of his fellow cast members. After the Morgan segment there was a song, followed by Brice as Baby Snooks for the last half of the show, in 1947, Morgan starred as the title character in the radio series The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy. He also recorded a number of records, including the popular Gossamer Wump. Like most character actors of the era, Morgan was sought out for numerous motion picture roles. One of his last roles was as Barney Wile in The Stratton Story and his final film Key to the City was released posthumously, in which he played Fire Chief Duggan. He was the lead, after Clark Gable and Loretta Young. Morgan married Alma Muller in 1914, they had one son and their marriage ended with his death in 1949. He was widely known to have had a problem, according to several who worked with him, including actress Margaret Hamilton. Morgan sometimes carried a briefcase to work fully equipped with a small mini-bar. Morgans niece, Claudia Morgan was a stage and film actress, Morgan was also a brother of playwright Carlos Wupperman, who was killed in the Rhineland in 1919 while on duty there with the Army of Occupation
12.
Lucile Watson
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Lucile Watson was a Canadian-American actress. She was famous for her roles of formidable dowagers, Watson was Canadian-born, raised in Ottawa after having been born in Quebec, the daughter of an officer in the British Army. Despite his wishes, she traveled to New York City and enrolled in a dramatic school, Watson began her career on the stage debuting on Broadway in the play Hearts Aflame in 1902. Her next play was The Girl With Green Eyes, the first of several Clyde Fitch stories, at the end of 1903, Watson appeared in Fitchs Glad of It. For the rest of the decade, she appeared in several more Fitch stories into the 1910s, Watson was primarily a stage actress, appearing in 39 Broadway plays. She starred in plays as Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Heartbreak House, Ghosts, The Importance of Being Earnest. Watsons first film role was in the 1916 silent film The Girl with Green Eyes and she did not appear in another movie until 1930, when she had an uncredited role in The Royal Family of Broadway. In 1939, she played a role as Norma Shearers wise mother in the multi-Academy-Award-winning cultural comedy/drama from the Clare Booth Luce play, The Women. Watson reached the height of her acting career in playwright Lillian Hellmans anti-fascist dramatic stage play Watch on the Rhine on Broadway in 1941. Two years later in Hollywood, she and Lukas reprised their roles in the film adaptation, Lucile Watson played Aunt March in the 1949 film version of Little Women, whose stars included Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. Watsons first name, Lucile, is misspelled in her movie credits as Lucille. Watson in her youth had a beauty but with a stern expression on her face. Photos taken during her Broadway years show a look to which audiences would become accustomed. It is not known if she cultivated this look for films or if she wanted to ward off a lot of attention to her subtle beauty. Sometime in the 1910s, she was married to silent film star Rockliffe Fellowes. Her second husband was playwright Louis E. Shipman, whom she married in 1928, Watson died on June 25,1962, after suffering a heart attack at age 83. She is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, no More Ladies as Mrs. Fanny Townsend Watch on the Rhine as Fanny Farrelly Lucile Watson biography by Film historian T. R
