1.
Saul Bass
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Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos. During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywoods most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Bass designed some of the most iconic logos in North America, including the Bell System logo in 1969. He also designed Continental Airlines 1968 jet stream logo and United Airlines 1974 tulip logo and he died from non-Hodgkins lymphoma in Los Angeles on April 25,1996 at the age of 75. Saul Bass was born on May 8,1920, in the Bronx, New York, United States and he graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx and studied part-time at the Art Students League in Manhattan until attending night classes with György Kepes at Brooklyn College. He began his time in Hollywood in the 1940s, designing print advertisements for films including Champion, Death of a Salesman and The Moon Is Blue and his next collaboration with Preminger was to design a film poster for his 1954 film Carmen Jones. Preminger was so impressed with Basss work that he asked him to produce the sequence as well. Bass was one of the first to realize the potential of the opening and closing credits of a movie. Bass became widely known in the industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Premingers The Man with the Golden Arm. The subject of the film was a musicians struggle to overcome his heroin addiction. Bass decided to create a title sequence to match the films controversial subject. He chose the arm as the image, as it is a strong image relating to heroin addiction. The titles featured an animated, white on black paper cut-out arm of a heroin addict, as he hoped, it caused quite a sensation. For Alfred Hitchcock, Bass provided effective, memorable title sequences, inventing a new type of kinetic typography, for North by Northwest, Vertigo, working with John Whitney and it was this kind of innovative, revolutionary work that made Bass a revered graphic designer. One of the most studied film credit designers, Bass is known for integrating a stylistic coherence between the designs and the films in which they appear. Bass once described his goal for his title sequences as being to ‘’try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about. Another philosophy that Bass described as influencing his title sequences was the goal of getting the audience to see parts of their world in an unfamiliar way. In 1955, Elaine Makatura came to work with Bass in his Los Angeles office, by 1960, with the opening to Spartacus, she was directing and producing title sequences, and in 1961 the two married, beginning more than 40 years of close collaboration
2.
William Wyler
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William Wyler, born as Willy Wyler was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Wyler received his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, starring Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor, Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a bona fide perfectionist, whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance, became the stuff of legend. Through his talent for staging, editing, and camera movement and he helped propel a number of actors to stardom, finding and directing Audrey Hepburn in her Hollywood debut film, Roman Holiday, and directing Barbra Streisand in her debut film, Funny Girl. He directed Olivia de Havilland to her second Oscar in The Heiress and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Olivier credited Wyler with teaching him how to act for the screen. And Bette Davis, who received three Oscar nominations under his direction and won her second Oscar in Jezebel, said Wyler made her a far, far better actress than she had ever been. Other popular Wyler films include, Hells Heroes, Dodsworth, The Westerner, The Letter, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, The Childrens Hour, Wyler was born to a Jewish family in Mulhouse, Alsace. His Swiss father, Leopold, started as a traveling salesman which he turned into a thriving haberdashery business in Mulhouse. His mother, Melanie, was German, and a cousin of Carl Laemmle, during Wylers childhood, he attended a number of schools and developed a reputation as something of a hellraiser, being expelled more than once for misbehavior. His mother often took him and his older brother Robert to concerts, opera, sometimes at home his family and their friends would stage amateur theatricals for personal enjoyment. Wyler was supposed to take over the family business in Mulhouse. After World War I, he spent a year working in Paris at 100.000 Chemises selling shirts. He was so poor that he spent his time wandering around the Pigalle district. After realizing that Willy was not interested in the business, his mother, Melanie, contacted her distant cousin, Carl Laemmle who owned Universal Studios. Laemmle was in the habit of coming to Europe each year, in 1921, Wyler, while traveling as a Swiss citizen, met Laemmle who hired him to work at Universal Studios in New York. As Wyler said, America seemed as far away as the moon, booked onto a ship to New York with Laemmle upon his return voyage, he met a young Czech man, Paul Kohner, aboard the same ship. Their enjoyment of the first class trip was short-lived, however, after working in New York for several years, and even serving in the New York Army National Guard for a year, Wyler moved to Hollywood to become a director. Around 1923, Wyler arrived in Los Angeles and began work on the Universal Studios lot in the gang, cleaning the stages. His break came when he was hired as an assistant editor
3.
The Saturday Evening Post
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The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, the magazine declined in readership through the 1960s, and in 1969 The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication in 1971. It now appears six times a year, the magazine was redesigned in 2013. The Saturday Evening Post was founded in 1821 and grew to become the most widely circulated magazine in America. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer, the editors claimed it had historical roots in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was first published in 1728 by Samuel Keimer and sold to Benjamin Franklin in 1729. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction, illustrations were featured on the cover and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations became popular and continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, Curtis Publishing Co. stopped publishing the Post in 1969 after the company lost a landmark defamation suit and was ordered to pay over $3 million in damages. The Post was revived in 1971 as a limited circulation quarterly publication, as of the late 2000s, The Saturday Evening Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwell, Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwells illustrations of the American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons, during his 50-year career with the Post, Rockwell painted more than 300 covers. He produced 120 covers for the Post between 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers, another prominent artist was Charles R. Chickering, a freelance illustrator who went on to design numerous postage stamps for the U. S. Other popular cover illustrators include the artists George Hughes, Constantin Alajalov, John Clymer, W. H. D. Koerner, J. C. Leyendecker, Charles Archibald MacLellan, John E. Sheridan, Douglass Crockwell, the magazines line-up of cartoonists included Bob Barnes, Irwin Caplan, Tom Henderson, Al Johns, Clyde Lamb, Jerry Marcus, Frank ONeal, B. Tobey, Pete Wyma and Bill Yates, the magazine ran Ted Keys cartoon panel series Hazel from 1943 to 1969. Each issue featured several original stories and often included an installment of a serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, the opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators. Lincoln, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, Sax Rohmer, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck and Rex Stout and it also published poetry by such noted poets as Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker and Hannah Kahn. Jack Londons best-known novel The Call of the Wild was first published, in serialized form, emblematic of the Posts fiction was author Clarence Budington Kelland, who first appeared in 1916–17 with stories of homespun heroes, Efficiency Edgar and Scattergood Baines
4.
Gregory Peck
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Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor who was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck continued to major film roles until the late 1980s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor and he had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentlemans Agreement and Twelve OClock High. Other notable films he appeared in include Spellbound, Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, How the West Was Won, The Omen, President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema and he was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983. His father was of English and Irish heritage and his mother of English and she converted to her husbands religion, Roman Catholicism, when she married his father, and Peck was raised as a Catholic. Pecks parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, at the age of 10 he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. Johns Military Academy in Los Angeles. While he was a student there, his grandmother died, at 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father, attended San Diego High School, and after graduating enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teachers College. While there he joined the team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses. Peck however had ambitions to be a doctor and the following year gained admission to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major, standing 6 ft 3 in, he rowed on the university crew. Although his tuition fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay, at Berkeley, encouraged by the acting coach, who saw in him perfect material for university theatre, Peck became more and more interested in acting. He was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the universitys Little Theater, Peck would later say about Berkeley that, it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life. It woke me up and made me a human being, in 1997, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley rowing crew in honor of his coach, the renowned Ky Ebright. He was often broke and sometimes slept in Central Park and he worked at the 1939 Worlds Fair and as a tour guide for NBCs television broadcasting. In 1940, Peck learned more of the craft, working in exchange for food, at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, appearing in five plays including Family Portrait. His stage career began in 1941 when he played the secretary in a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaws play The Doctors Dilemma, unfortunately, the play opened in San Francisco just one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams The Morning Star in 1942 and his second Broadway performance that year was in The Willow and I with Edward Pawley. Twentieth Century Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, ive been trying to straighten out that story for years
5.
Jean Simmons
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Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE was an English-born American actress and singer. One of J. Simmons was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hamlet, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Guys and Dolls. Other notable film appearances included Young Bess, The Robe, Elmer Gantry, Spartacus, and she also won an Emmy Award for the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds. Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, to Charles Simmons, jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Lorna, Harold and Edna. She began acting at the age of 14, during the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset. Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, Simmons was spotted by the director Val Guest, small roles in several other films followed including the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal. Pascal saw potential in Simmons and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract, prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Leans version of Great Expectations and Ophelia in Laurence Oliviers Hamlet, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. She played an Indian girl in the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus, but I figured Id just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on, in 1949 Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne. In 1950 she was voted the fourth most popular star in Britain, in 1951 Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned the RKO Pictures. In 1950 she married Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in films. She made four films for Hughes, including Angel Face, directed by Otto Preminger, according to David Thomson if she had made only one film – Angel Face – she might now be spoken of with the awe given to Louise Brooks. A court case freed her from the contract with Hughes in 1952, in 1953 she starred alongside Spencer Tracy in The Actress, a film that was one of her personal favourites. In the opinion of film critic Philip French, Home Before Dark saw her give perhaps her finest performance as a housewife driven into a breakdown in Mervyn LeRoys psychodrama, by the 1970s Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheims A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Performing in the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheims music, No matter how tired or off you felt, the music would just pick you up. She portrayed Fiona Fee Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds, in 1985-86 she appeared in North and South, again playing the role of the family matriarch as Clarissa Main. She made a late appearance in the Star Trek, The Next Generation episode The Drumhead as a retired Starfleet admiral
6.
Charlton Heston
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Charlton Heston was an American actor and political activist. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years and he played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments, for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil with Orson Welles, Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid and he also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth, Secret of the Incas, and The Big Country. A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a political action committee. Hestons most famous role in politics came as the president of the National Rifle Association. After being diagnosed with Alzheimers disease in 2003, he retired from acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5,2008, aged 84, from pneumonia, Charlton Heston was born on October 4,1923, to Russell Whitford Carter, a sawmill operator and Lilla. Many sources indicate he was born in Evanston, Illinois, Hestons autobiography, however, and some other sources, place his birth in No Mans Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy Chicago suburb. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood, Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English. His earliest immigrant ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s and his maternal great-grandparents, William Charlton and Mary Drysdale Charlton, were English. They emigrated to Canada, where his grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in 1872, in his autobiography, Heston refers to his father participating in his familys construction business. When Heston was an infant, his fathers work moved the family to St. Helen and it was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area. When Heston was 10 years old, his parents divorced, shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and the new family moved back to Wilmette. Heston attended New Trier High School and he recalled living there, All kids play pretend games, but I did it more than most. Even when we moved to Chicago, I was more or less a loner and we lived in a North Shore suburb, where I was a skinny hick from the woods, and all the other kids seemed to be rich and know about girls. Contradictions on paper and in an interview surround when Charlton became Hestons first name, the 1930 United States Census record for Richfield, Michigan, in Roscommon County, shows his name as being Charlton J. Carter at age six. Later accounts by sources and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter, interestingly, Charlton was his maternal grandmother Marians maiden name, not his mother Lillas. This is contrary to how 20th century references read and what Heston said, when Hestons maternal grandmother and his true maternal grandfather Charles Baines separated or divorced in the early 1900s, Marian Baines married William Henry Lawton in 1907
7.
Carroll Baker
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Carroll Baker is a former American film, stage, and television actress. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Bakers range of roles from naive ingenues to brash, while performing on Broadway in 1954, she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in the film of Tennessee Williamss Baby Doll. Other early roles included Giant and But Not for Me, as well as such as The Big Country, How the West Was Won. In the mid-1960s, Baker became a sex symbol for her roles in The Carpetbaggers, Sylvia and she formally retired from acting in 2002. In addition to acting, Baker is also the author of three books, Carroll Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a Roman Catholic family, the daughter of Edith Gertrude and William Watson Baker, who was a traveling salesman. She is of Polish descent, which has given rise to a rumor that her name was Karolina Piekarski. However, this currently cannot be substantiated by known records, Bakers parents separated when she was eight years old, and she moved with her mother and younger sister, Virginia, to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. According to Baker, her mother struggled as a parent. Baker attended Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where she was a team member and active in the marching band. At eighteen, she moved with her family to St. Petersburg, Florida, after her first year in college, Baker began working as a magicians assistant on the vaudeville circuit and joined a dance company, working as a professional dancer. In 1949, Baker won the title of Miss Florida Fruits, in 1951, Baker moved to New York City, where she rented a dirt floor basement apartment in Queens. She worked as a dancer and also took stint jobs as a chorus girl in traveling vaudeville shows, which took her to Windsor, Detroit. In 1952, Baker enrolled at the Actors Studio and studied under Lee Strasberg, there, she was a classmate of Mike Nichols, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters, and Marilyn Monroe, she also became a close friend of James Dean for the rest of his life. The following year, she made her debut with a small walk-on part in the musical Easy to Love. In 1955, she tested and auditioned for the lead role in Picnic. She was also considered for the lead in Rebel Without a Cause after James Dean recommended her for the part to director Nicholas Ray, which she turned down. Bakers first major role was the supporting part of Luz Benedict II in Giant, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson. And this was a town that had one paved street, they had one hotel, simultaneously, Baker was cast as the title character in Elia Kazans Baby Doll, a role initially intended for Marilyn Monroe
8.
Burl Ives
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Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American singer and actor of stage, screen, radio and television. He began as an itinerant singer and banjoist, and launched his own show, The Wayfaring Stranger. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlins This Is the Army, in the 1960s, he successfully crossed over into country music, recording hits such as A Little Bitty Tear and Funny Way of Laughing. Ives was born near Hunt City, a town in Jasper County, Illinois, near Newton, Illinois, to Levi Frank Ives. He had six siblings, Audry, Artie, Clarence, Argola, Lillburn and his father was first a farmer and then a contractor for the county and others. One day, Ives was singing in the garden with his mother and he invited his nephew to sing at the old soldiers reunion in Hunt City. The boy performed a rendition of the folk ballad Barbara Allen, from 1927 to 1929, Ives attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College in Charleston, Illinois, where he played football. During his junior year, he was sitting in English class, listening to a lecture on Beowulf, as he walked out of the door, the professor made a snide remark, and Ives slammed the door behind him, shattering the window in the door. Sixty years later, the school named a building after its most famous dropout, Ives was also involved in Freemasonry from 1927 onward. On July 23,1929, in Richmond, Indiana, Ives made a recording of Behind the Clouds for the Starr Piano Companys Gennett label. In later years, Ives did not recall having made the record, Ives traveled about the U. S. as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo. He was jailed in Mona, Utah, for vagrancy and for singing Foggy Dew, around 1931, he began performing on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana. He also went back to school, attending classes at Indiana State Teachers College, in 1933, Ives also attended the Juilliard School in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1938 with a role in Rodgers and Hart’s hit musical. In 1937, he met and befriended actor Eddie Albert, the two lived together for a while in Hollywood. In 1940, Ives began his own show, titled The Wayfaring Stranger after one of his ballads. Over the next decade, he popularized several traditional songs, such as Foggy Dew, The Blue Tail Fly. He was also associated with the Almanac Singers, a group which at different times included Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, Millard Lampell
9.
Charles Bickford
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Charles Ambrose Bickford was an American actor best known for his strong supporting roles. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for The Song of Bernadette, The Farmers Daughter, other notable roles include Whirlpool, A Star is Born and The Big Country. Bickford was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the first minute of 1891, the fifth of seven children, Charles was an intelligent but very independent and unruly child. He had a strong relationship with his maternal grandfather who was a powerful influence during his formative years. In his late teens he drifted aimlessly around the United States for a time, before breaking into acting he worked as a lumberjack, investment promoter, and for a short time, ran a pest extermination business. He was a stoker and fireman in the United States Navy when a friend dared him to get a job in Burlesque, Bickford served as an Engineer Lieutenant in the United States Army during World War I. His first entry into acting was on the stage, eventually including Broadway and this venue provided him with an occasional living and served as the principal training ground for developing his acting and vocal talents. DeMille and offered a contract with MGM studios to star in DeMilles first talking picture and he soon became a star after playing Greta Garbos lover in Anna Christie but never developed into a leading man. During the production of DeMilles Dynamite, he punched out his director following a string of heated arguments primarily, throughout his early career on both the stage and later films Bickford rejected numerous scripts and made no secret of his disdain for much of the material he was offered. Not surprisingly, his association with MGM was short-lived, with Bickford asking for, however, he soon found himself blacklisted at other studios, forcing him, 274-277 to take the highly unusual step of becoming an independent actor for several years. His career took another turn when in 1935 he was mauled by a lion, much preferring the character roles that now became his forte, Bickford appeared in many notable films, including The Farmers Daughter, Johnny Belinda, A Star is Born, and Not As a Stranger. Most often he played lovable father figures, stern businessmen, heavies, during the 1940s, he was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He served as host of the 1950s television series The Man Behind the Badge, on April 16,1958, Bickford appeared with Roger Smith in The Daniel Barrister Story on NBCs Wagon Train. In this first-season episode, Daniel Barrister, played by Bickford, objects to medical treatment for his wife, Jenny, meanwhile, Dr. Peter H. Culver, played by Smith, has successfully fought a smallpox epidemic in a nearby town. He is brought to the train by scout Flint McCullough, portrayed by series regular Robert Horton. Viewers never knew if Barrister yielded to allow Dr. Culver to treat Jenny, Bickford continued to act in generally prestigious projects right up to his death. He guest-starred on ABCs The Islanders and on NBCs The Barbara Stanwyck Show, in his final years, Bickford played rancher John Grainger, owner of the Shiloh Ranch, on NBCs The Virginian western series. Two of the actors most memorable late-career big-screen roles came in the western The Big Country and in the drama Days of Wine and Roses
10.
Chuck Connors
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Kevin Joseph Aloysius “Chuck” Connors was an American actor, writer and professional basketball and baseball player. He is one of only 12 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played both Major League Baseball and in the National Basketball Association. With a 40-year film and television career, he is best known for his role as Lucas McCain in the highly rated ABC series The Rifleman. Connors was raised Roman Catholic and served as a boy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn. Connors had one sibling, a sister, Gloria, Connors did not like his first name and was seeking another one. He tried out Lefty and Stretch before settling on Chuck, because while playing first base, he would yell, Chuck it to me, baby. The rest of his teammates and fans soon caught on and the name stuck and he loved the Brooklyn Dodgers despite their losing record during the 1930s, and hoped to someday join the team himself. Connors athletic abilities earned him scholarships to the Adelphi Academy and Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, which he left after two years. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky, during his Army service, Connors moonlighted as a professional basketball player, joining the Rochester Royals and helping to lead them to the 1946 National Basketball League championship. Connors took a shot that caught the front of the rim of an improperly installed glass backboard during the Celtics warm up at Boston Arena on November 5,1946, Connors left the team for spring training with Major League Baseballs Brooklyn Dodgers. He played for minor league teams before joining the Dodgers in 1949. He joined the Chicago Cubs in 1951, playing in 66 games as a first baseman, in 1952, he was sent to the minor leagues again to play for the Cubs top farm team, the Los Angeles Angels. He was drafted into American Football by the NFLs Chicago Bears, Connors can be seen in the Associated Press photo with Drysdale, Koufax and Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi announcing the pitchers new contracts. Connors was listed as 6 foot 5 inches when he played baseball, Connors realized that he would not make a career in professional sports, so he decided to pursue an acting career. Playing baseball near Hollywood proved fortunate, as he was spotted by an MGM casting director and subsequently signed for the 1952 Tracy–Hepburn film Pat and Mike. In 1953, he starred opposite Burt Lancaster as a rebellious Marine private in the film South Sea Woman, Connors had a rare comedic role in a 1955 episode of The Adventures of Superman. He portrayed Sylvester J. Superman, a lanky rustic yokel who shared the name as the title character of the series. Connors was cast as Lou Brissie, a professional baseball player wounded during World War II
11.
United Artists
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United Artists is an American film and television entertainment studio. The studio was bought, sold and restructured over the ensuing century. On December 14 of the year, however, MGM acquired the 48% stake of UAMG it did not own. UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5,1919, by Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks, each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, already Hollywood veterans, the four stars talked of forming their own company to better control their own work. They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over salaries and creative decisions. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before anything was formalized, when he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, The inmates are taking over the asylum. The four partners, with advice from McAdoo, formed their distribution company and its headquarters was established at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City. The original terms called for each of the stars to produce five pictures each year, UAs first film was a success. Without selling stock to the public, following the other studios, as a result, production was slow and the company distributed an annual average of five films during its first five years. By 1924 Griffith had dropped out and the company was facing a crisis, veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. He had been producing pictures for a decade, and he brought commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, contracts were signed with independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn, and Howard Hughes. In 1933, Schenck organized a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, called Twentieth Century Pictures, Schenck formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They began international operations, first in Canada and then in Mexico, by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries. When he was denied a share in 1935, Schenck resigned. He set up 20th Century Pictures merger with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century Fox, al Lichtman succeeded Schenck as company president. Other independent producers distributed through United Artists in the 1930s including, Walt Disney Productions, Alexander Korda, Hal Roach, David O. Selznick, as the years passed, and the dynamics of the business changed, these producing partners drifted away. Samuel Goldwyn Productions and Disney went to RKO, and Wanger to Universal Pictures, in the late 1930s, UA turned a profit
12.
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
13.
Epic film
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Epic film is a style of filmmaking with large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre, like epics in the classical literary sense it is often focused on a heroic character. An epics ambitious nature helps to set it apart from other types of such as the period piece or adventure film. The most common subjects of epic films are royalty, and important figures from various periods in world history, the term epic originally came from the poetic genre exemplified by such works as the Iliad, Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Odyssey. In classical literature, epics are considered works focused on deeds or journeys of heroes upon which the fate of a number of people depend. Similarly, films described as epic typically take a historical character, common subjects of epics are royalty, gladiators, great military leaders, or leading personalities from various periods in world history. Such films usually have a setting, although fantasy or science fiction settings have become common in recent decades. The central conflict of the film is seen as having far-reaching effects. The main characters actions are often central to the resolution of the societal conflict, in its classification of films by genre, the American Film Institute limits the genre to historical films such as Ben-Hur. However, film scholars such as Constantine Santas are willing to extend the label to science-fiction films such as 2001, A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. Stylistically, films classed as epic usually employ spectacular settings and specially designed costumes, often accompanied by a musical score. Epics are usually among the most expensive of films to produce and they often use on-location filming, authentic period costumes, and action scenes on a massive scale. Biographical films may be less lavish versions of this genre, many writers may refer to any film that is long as an epic, making the definition epic a matter of dispute, and raise questions as to whether it is a genre at all. As Roger Ebert put it, in his Great Movies article on Lawrence of Arabia, what you realize watching Lawrence of Arabia is that the word epic refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzogs Aguirre, The Wrath of God didnt cost as much as the catering in Pearl Harbor, but it is an epic, the comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail had the joking tagline Makes Ben Hur look like an epic. This boom period of international co-productions is generally considered to have ended with Cleopatra, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Epic films continue to be produced, although since the development of CGI they typically use computer effects instead of an actual cast of thousands. Since the 1950s, such films have regularly been shot with an aspect ratio for a more immersive. Epic films were recognized in a montage at the 2006 Academy Awards, War epics are generally focused on specific battles in a war, P. O. W camps or the personal consequences of living in an invaded/occupied country
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Western (genre)
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Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Other characters include Native Americans, bandits, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, mounted cavalry, settlers, Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a. mythic vision of the plains, specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution. The Western was the most popular Hollywood genre, from the early 20th century to the 1960s, Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Fords landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939, Westerns were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time – including High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–frontier justice–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, a showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. And like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress, similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, Westerns often stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Apart from the wilderness, it is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West, it is the place to go for music, women, gambling, drinking, brawling and shooting. The American Film Institute defines western films as those set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle, the term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World Magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th century popular Western fiction and were firmly in place before film became an art form. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds, Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era. With the advent of sound in 1927-28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and these smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream star in the wake of a decade of headlining B westerns
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Technirama
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Technirama is a screen process that has been used by some film production houses as an alternative to CinemaScope. It was first used in 1957 but fell into disuse in the mid-1960s, the process was invented by Technicolor and is an anamorphic process with a screen ratio the same as revised CinemaScope, but its actually 2.25,1 on the negative. The Technirama process used an area twice that of CinemaScope. Cameras used 35-mm film running horizontally with an 8-perforation frame, double the normal size, Technirama used a 1.5,1 anamorphic optic in front of the lens in order to stretch the vertical image. To achieve the wider format, lenses of shorter focal-length had to be used. These prints could be shown with the same lenses as CinemaScope productions. The name Super Technirama 70 was used on films where the shooting was done in Technirama, such prints would be compatible with those made by such 65-mm negative processes as Todd-AO and Super Panavision. The quality would have very good but perhaps a bit less than those processes, because the negative was not quite as large. After the 1956 delivery by Mitchell Camera Corporation, the converted Technicolor Three-Strip cameras immediately became obsolete, the logistical advantage of using 35mm film, end-to-end, should not be underestimated. A few 8-perf titles have been preserved on 65mm film, the color was enhanced through the use of a special development process that was used to good effect in films such as The Vikings and The Music Man. However, fewer than 40 films were produced using this process in the United States and it was more popular and longer-lasting in Europe. Walt Disney Productions used the process twice for animated features, Sleeping Beauty. The 2008 DVD and Blu-ray Disc release of Walt Disneys Sleeping Beauty was shown at an aspect-ratio of 2.55,1 for the first time, film,35 mm running horizontally using eight perforations at 24 frames per second. Anamorphic power,1.5 Aspect ratio,2.35,12.25,1 See List of Technirama films, List of film formats Widescreen museum Technirama page
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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
