1.
Alfred Hitchcock
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as The Master of Suspense. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres and he had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Englands best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939, and became a US citizen in 1955 and he also fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style. Hitchcocks stylistic trademarks include the use of movement that mimics a persons gaze. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy and his work often features fugitives on the run alongside icy blonde female characters. Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, Hitchcock later received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours. Hitchcock directed more than fifty films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else, Hitchcocks first thriller, The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog, helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone and he was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock. He was named after his fathers brother, Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, London. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry and he often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to him for behaving badly. This incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment, sources vary on Hitchcocks performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, however, McGilligan writes that Hitchcock certainly excelled academically. When Hitchcock was 15, his father died, in that same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a company called Henleys. Hitchcock joined a regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917
2.
Ben Hecht
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Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and early 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, in the 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters calls him one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures, Hecht received the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, for Underworld. Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics and he also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach. Film historian Richard Corliss called him the Hollywood screenwriter, someone who personified Hollywood itself, in 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay. In total, six of his movie screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards, of his seventy to ninety screenplays, he wrote many anonymously to avoid the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to his autobiography, he never spent more than eight weeks on a script, in 1983,19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Hecht was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and his father, Joseph Hecht, worked in the garment industry. His father and mother, Sarah Swernofsky Hecht, had immigrated to New York from Minsk, the family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. When Hecht was in his teens he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. On the road much of the time, his father did not have effect on Hecht’s childhood. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, He was considered a prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist. After graduating from school in 1910, at age sixteen Hecht moved to Chicago. He lived with relatives, and started a career in journalism and he found work as a reporter, first for the Chicago Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. He was an excellent reporter who worked on several Chicago papers, after World War I, Hecht was sent to cover Berlin for the Chicago Daily News. There he wrote his first and most successful novel, Erik Dorn and it was a sensational debut for Hecht as a serious writer. The 1969 movie, Gaily, Gaily, directed by Norman Jewison, the film was nominated for three Oscars
3.
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
4.
Charles Laughton
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Charles Laughton was an English stage and film character actor, director, producer and screenwriter. Laughton was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death, they had no children. He played a range of classical and modern parts, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he collaborated with Alexander Korda on notable British films of the era. He portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings, among Laughtons biggest film hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap, Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Big Clock. In his later career, he took up directing, notably in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. He directed one film, the thriller The Night of the Hunter, Laughton has been seen by one actor as one of the greatest performers of his generation. Daniel Day-Lewis cited him as one of his inspirations, saying and his generosity as an actor, he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you take your eyes off him. Laughton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Eliza and Robert Laughton, a blue plaque marks his birthplace. He started work in the hotel, though also participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Allowed by his family to become a student at RADA in 1925. Laughton made his first professional appearance on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector and he impressed audiences with his talent and had classical roles in two Chekov plays, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. Laughton played the role as Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Seán OCaseys The Silver Tassie in 1928 in London. He played the roles in Arnold Bennetts Mr Prohack and as Samuel Pickwick in Mr Pickwick at the Theatre Royal in London. He played Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallaces On the Spot and William Marble in Payment Deferred and he took the last role across the Atlantic and made his United States debut on 24 September 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre. Laughton commenced his career in Britain while still acting on the London stage. He made an appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly with Anna May Wong in 1929
5.
Film noir
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Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly such that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywoods classical film noir period is regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression. Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively, before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir were referred to as melodramas. Whether film noir qualifies as a genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars. Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, films now so described have been made around the world, many pictures released from the 1960s onward share attributes with film noir of the classical period, and often treat its conventions self-referentially. Some refer to such works as neo-noir. The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s, the questions of what defines film noir, and what sort of category it is, provoke continuing debate. They emphasize that not every film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike, another, while many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Because of the diversity of noir, certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a style. Other critics treat film noir as a mood, characterize it as a series, there is no consensus on the matter. By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, the Universal horror that comes closest to noir, in story and sensibility is The Invisible Man, directed by Englishman James Whale and photographed by American Arthur Edeson. Edeson later photographed The Maltese Falcon, widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era, josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood at the same time. Films of his such as Shanghai Express and The Devil Is a Woman, with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, the commercial and critical success of Sternbergs silent Underworld was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Successful films in that such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy. An important, possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude, the movements sensibility is mirrored in the Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, a forerunner of noir. Among films not considered films noir, perhaps none had an effect on the development of the genre than Citizen Kane
6.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
7.
Charles Coburn
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Charles Douville Coburn was an American film and theatre actor. Best known for his work in comedies, Coburn received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for 1943s The More the Merrier, Coburn was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Scotch-Irish Americans Emma Louise Sprigman and Moses Douville Coburn. Growing up in Savannah, he started out at age 14 doing odd jobs at the local Savannah Theater, handing out programs, ushering, by age 17 or 18, he was the theater manager. He later became an actor, making his debut on Broadway in 1901, Coburn formed an acting company with actress Ivah Wills in 1905. In addition to managing the company, the couple performed frequently on Broadway, after his wifes death in 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and began film work. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired millionaire playing Cupid in The More the Merrier in 1943 and he was also nominated for The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 and The Green Years in 1946. Other notable film credits include Of Human Hearts, The Lady Eve, Kings Row, The Constant Nymph, Heaven Can Wait, Wilson, Impact, The Paradine Case, Everybody Does It, monkey Business, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and John Paul Jones. He usually played comedic parts, but Kings Row and Wilson were dramatic parts, for his contributions to motion pictures, in 1960, Coburn was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6268 Hollywood Boulevard. Coburn was a member of the White Citizens Councils, a group which opposed racial integration, Coburn married Ivah Wills on January 29,1906 in Atlanta, Georgia. Ivah died on December 3,1937 in New York City of congestive heart failure, Coburn married Winifred Natzka on June 30,1959 in Los Angeles. She was the widow of the New Zealand bass opera singer Oscar Natzka and they had one child, a daughter. Coburn died from an attack on August 30,1961
8.
Ethel Barrymore
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Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Regarded as the First Lady of the American Theater, Barrymore was a preeminent stage actress in her era, Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. Her father was killed four months before her birth in a famous Old West encounter in Texas while heading a traveling road company. She was named for her father’s favorite character—Ethel in William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes and she was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore, and the grand-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. She was also a granddaughter of actress and theater-manager Louisa Lane Drew and she spent her childhood in Philadelphia, and attended Roman Catholic schools there. In 1884 she, her parents and brothers sailed to England, Maurice had inherited a substantial amount of money from an aunt and decided to exhibit a play and star in some plays at Londons Haymarket Theatre. Ethel recalled being frightened on first meeting Oscar Wilde when handing him some cakes, returning to the U. S. in 1886, her father took her to her first baseball game. She established a lifelong love of baseball and wanted to be a concert pianist, the years in England were the happiest of her childhood years due to the fact the Barrymores were more of a nuclear family in London than at any other time when in the United States. Georgie did not recover and died in July 1893 a week before her 37th birthday, essentially Ethel and Lionels childhood ended when Georgie died. They were forced to go to work in their teens, John, a few years younger, stayed with their grandmother and other relatives. Barrymores first appearance on Broadway was in 1895, in a play called The Imprudent Young Couple which starred her uncle John Drew, Jr. and she appeared with Drew and Adams again in 1896 in Rosemary. In 1897 Ethel went with William Gillette to London to play Miss Kittridge in Gillettes Secret Service and she was about to return to the States with Gillettes troupe when Henry Irving and Ellen Terry offered her the role of Annette in The Bells. A full London tour was on and, before it was over, Ethel created, on New Years Day 1898, Euphrosine in Peter the Great at the Lyceum, men everywhere were smitten with Ethel, most notably Winston Churchill, who asked her to marry him. Not wishing to be a wife, she refused. Winston, years later, married Clementine Hozier, a beauty who looked very much like Ethel. Winston and Ethel remained friends until the end of her life and their “romance” was their own little secret until his son let the cat out of the bag 63 years after it happened. After her season in London, Ethel returned to the United States, charles Frohman cast her first in Catherine and then as Stella de Grex in His Excellency the Governor. After that, Frohman finally gave Ethel the role that would make her a star, Madame Trentoni in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, which opened at the Garrick Theatre on February 4,1901
9.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
10.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
