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.
David O. Selznick
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David O. Selznick was an American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive. He is best known for producing Gone with the Wind and Rebecca, David Selznick was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence Anna and silent movie producer and distributor Lewis J. Selznick. His parents were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants and he had four siblings and his dad was born in Kyiv in 1870. Selznick added the O to distinguish himself from an uncle with the same name and he studied at Columbia University in New York City and worked as an apprentice for his father until the elders bankruptcy in 1923. In 1926, Selznick moved to Hollywood, and with the help of his fathers connections and he left MGM for Paramount Pictures in 1928, where he worked until 1931, when he joined RKO as Head of Production. David Selznicks years at RKO were fruitful, and he worked on films, including A Bill of Divorcement. Rockabye, Bird of Paradise, Our Betters, and King Kong, while at RKO, he also gave George Cukor his directing break. In 1933 he returned to MGM where his father-in-law, Louis B, mayer established a second prestige production unit for David, parallel to that of powerful Irving Thalberg, who was in poor health. Selznicks unit output included the all star cast movie Dinner at Eight, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, despite his output of successful movies at MGM, Paramount Pictures, and RKO Pictures, Selznick longed to be an independent producer with his own studio. In 1935 he realized that goal by leasing RKO Culver City Studios & back lot, formed Selznick International Pictures, Gone with the Wind won eight Oscars and two special awards. Selznick also won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award that same year, in 1940 he produced his second Best Picture Oscar winner in a row, Rebecca, the first Hollywood production for British director Alfred Hitchcock. Selznick had brought Hitchcock over from England, launching the directors American career, Rebecca was Hitchcocks only film to win Best Picture. After Rebecca, Selznick closed Selznick International Pictures and took time off. His business activities included the loan of his artists to other studios, including Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh. In 1944, he formed The Selznick Studio and returned to producing pictures with the huge success Since You Went Away and he followed that with the Hitchcock films Spellbound and The Paradine Case, as well as Portrait of Jennie, a vehicle for Jennifer Jones. He also developed projects and sold the packages to other producers. Among the movies that he developed but then sold was Hitchcocks Notorious, in 1949 he co-produced the Carol Reed picture The Third Man with Alexander Korda. Gone with the Wind overshadowed the rest of Selznicks career, later, he was convinced that he had wasted his life trying to out do it
3.
Alma Reville
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Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock, was an English-American screenwriter and editor, best known for her work with Alfred Hitchcock, whom she married in December 1926. She was born in Nottinghamshire, the daughter of Matthew Edward. The family moved to London when Reville was young, as her father got a job at Twickenham Film Studios, Reville often visited her father at work, at 16, she was promoted to the position of cutter, which involved assisting directors in editing the motion pictures. She continued to work there as a writer and a directors assistant. These roles enabled her to contribute and become involved with a part of film-making that very few women had access to at the time. The studio closed in 1919, but Alma Reville was given a job at Paramounts Famous Players-Lasky, an American motion picture company in Islington, the same company gave him a job as a graphic designer before he became an art editor. She worked on British films with directors as Berthold Viertel. The first film Reville worked on with Hitchcock was in 1923 when Hitchcock received the role of assistant director for the film Woman to Woman, Reville had just lost her job from the studios, so Hitchcock hired her as an editor. Reville converted to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism before their marriage, Reville was just one day younger than Hitchcock. The couple married on 2 December 1926 at Brompton Oratory in London and their only child, a daughter, Patricia, was born on 7 July 1928. It was Reville who noticed Janet Leigh inadvertently breathing after her characters fatal encounter in Psycho and she produced many film treatments as well as working on many of Hitchcocks scripts, including Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion and Saboteur. Reville co-wrote The Ring in 1927, that was the first screenwriting credit she shared with Hitchcock. Her ambition made her want to become a director herself but the birth of her daughter, Patricia Alma Hitchcock, on 7 July 1928, Hitchcock hired Joan Harrison in 1935 as his assistant, and she took over many of Revilles jobs within the production. Therefore, Reville focused primarily on preparing and adapting her husbands scripts, there were many scripts on which Reville worked with her husband in Hollywood. She collaborated with Joan Harrison to create the script for Suspicion and they worked on the script in the Hitchcocks home in Bel Air as Hitchcock preferred writing within a comfortable and intimate environment rather than an office. Alma, Lady Hitchcock, a breast cancer survivor, died at the age of 82 and she was cremated, and her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. She was portrayed by actresses Imelda Staunton in The Girl, Staunton was nominated for a BAFTA and a Primetime Emmy for her performance, while Mirren was nominated for BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG awards for her performance. Screenwriter The Ring The Constant Nymph The First Born A South Sea Bubble A Romance of Seville After the Verdict Juno, the Passing of the Third Floor Back,1935
4.
James Bridie
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James Bridie was the pseudonym of the Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor. He took his pen-name from his grandfathers first name and his grandmothers maiden name. Mavor studied medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating in 1913, then served as a doctor during World War I, seeing service in France. His comedic plays saw success in London, and he became a writer in 1938. Despite this, he returned to the army during World War II and he was the main founder of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, with his cousin, the author Guy McCrone and was also instrumental in the establishment of the Edinburgh Festival. Bridie worked with the director Alfred Hitchcock in the late 1940s and they worked together on, The Paradine Case. Bridie originally wrote the screenplay, and Ben Hecht contributed some additional dialogue, but due to casting, the characters had to be changed. So David O. Selznick had to write another script, under Capricorn Stage Fright In 1923, he married Rona Locke Bremner. Their son was killed in World War II and his other son Ronald was also both a physician and playwright. Ronald became drama critic of The Scotsman after retiring from medicine, Director of the Scottish Arts Council and he was Professor of Drama and Head of the Drama Department at the University of Saskatchewan and was appointed C. B. E. in 1971. James Bridie died in Edinburgh of a stroke and is buried in Glasgow Western Necropolis, the Bridie Library at the Glasgow University Union is named after him, as is the annual Bridie Dinner that takes place in the Union each December. James Bridie at the Internet Movie Database Play performances listed in Theatre Archive university of Bristol James Bridie at the Internet Broadway Database
5.
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
6.
Robert Smythe Hichens
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Robert Hichens was an English journalist, novelist, music lyricist, short story writer, music critic and collaborated on successful plays. He is best remembered as a satirist of the Naughty Nineties, Hichens was born in Speldhurst in Kent, the eldest son of a clergyman. He was educated at Clifton College, the Royal College of Music, later in life he would be a music critic on the World, taking the place of George Bernard Shaw. He studied at the London School of Journalism, egypt was one of his favourite destinations – he first went there in the early 1890s for his health. For most of his life he lived outside England, in Switzerland. Hichens was a homosexual, he never married, Hichens first novel, The Coastguards Secret, was written when he was only seventeen. Hichens was also friends with other writers, including E. F. Benson and Reggie Turner. How Love Came to Professor Guildea was not initially well-received, with Frederic Taber Cooper calling the story a bit of morbidity. Later reviews of the story were more positive, J. A. Cuddon called it outstanding and compared it with The Horla by Guy de Maupassant and The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions. Brian Stableford described the story as a masterpiece of horror fiction. Hichens Felix, is a fictional treatment of hypodermic morphine addiction, while the The Garden of Allah sold well internationally. Hichens published his memoirs in 1947, Yesterday, volume 153, Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists
7.
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
8.
Ann Todd
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Dorothy Anne Todd was an English actress and producer. Todd was born in Hartford, Cheshire, England and educated at St. Winifrids School, Eastbourne and she went onto study speech training and drama under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then based at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Todd became an actress by appearing in such films as Perfect Strangers. She is perhaps best known to American audiences as Gregory Pecks long-suffering wife in Alfred Hitchcocks The Paradine Case. In 1946, Todd was said to be the holder of the most lucrative contract ever signed by an English cinema actress, Todd starred in two episodes of Playhouse 90, Not the Glory and The Grey Nurse Said Nothing. In 1957, Todd starred in the Broadway production of Four Winds and she later produced a series of travel films. Her autobiography is entitled The Eighth Veil, an allusion to the film made her a star in Britain. Todd was known as the pocket Garbo for her diminutive, blonde beauty, Todd said of herself, Im really very shy, and I get over that playing an actress. Her first husband, Victor N. Malcolm, was a grandson of Lillie Langtry and Prince Louis of Battenberg and her second and third husbands were first cousins. She had a daughter with Nigel Tangye called Ann Francesca Tangye and she was divorced from Tangye 12 March 1949. Todd married film director Lean on 21 May 1949 and starred in a number of his films, including The Passionate Friends, Madeleine, Lean and Todd divorced 15 July 1957. Todd died on 6 May 1993 from a stroke, aged 84
9.
Alida Valli
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Valli was born in Pola, Istria, Italy. Vallis mother, Silvia Oberecker della Martina, born in Pola, was the daughter of Felix Oberecker from Laibach, Austria, her mother was Virginia della Martina from Pola, Vallis maternal granduncle, Rodolfo, was a close friend of Gabriele DAnnunzio. Valli was christened Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg, during her lifetime she also gained the titles Dr. h. c. of the III. University of Rome, Chevalier of Arts of France and Cavaliere of the Italian Republic, at fifteen, she went to Rome, where she attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a school for film actors and directors. At that time, she lived with her uncle Ettore Tolomei, Valli started her movie career in 1934, in Il cappello a tre punte during the so-called Telefoni Bianchi cinema era. Her first big success came with the movie Mille lire al mese, during the Second World War, she starred in many movies including Stasera niente di nuovo and the diptych Noi Vivi / Addio Kira. These latter two movies were censored by the Italian government under Benito Mussolini, but they were finally permitted because the novel upon which they were based was anti-Soviet. The films were successful, and the public realized that they were as much against Fascism as Communism. After several weeks, however, the films were pulled from theaters as the German and Italian governments, but her foreign experience was not a great success, owing to the financial problems of Selznicks production company. She returned to Europe in the early 1950s, and starred in many French, in 1954, she had great success in the melodrama Senso, directed by Luchino Visconti. In 1956, Valli decided to stop making movies, concentrating instead on the stage and she was in charge of a company that produced Broadway plays in Italy. In 1959, she appeared in Georges Franjus horror masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage and her final movie role was in Semana Santa, with Mira Sorvino. At the 54th Venice International Film Festival in 1997 Alida Valli obtained the Golden Lion award for her career, when Valli came to the United States, she was billed by only her last name to make her sound even more exotic. In 1951, she complained that she disliked the single-name reference, I feel silly going around with only one name, she said. People get me mixed up with Rudy Vallée and her teenage love, Carlo Cugnasca, was a famous Italian aerobatic pilot. He served as a pilot with the Regia Aeronautica and was killed during a mission over British-held Tobruk on 14 April 1941. Among the accused – all of whom were acquitted, leaving the case unsolved – was Vallis lover, Valli married Oscar de Mejo in 1943 and filed for divorce from him in 1949, but they reconciled. She had two sons with him, another official statement by the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi read, La scomparsa di Alida Valli è una grave perdita per il cinema, il teatro e la cultura italiana
10.
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
11.
Franz Waxman
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Franz Waxman – born Franz Wachsmann – was a German and American composer of Jewish descent, known primarily for his work in the film music genre. His film scores include Bride of Frankenstein, Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, Stalag 17, Rear Window, Peyton Place, The Nuns Story and he received twelve Academy Award nominations, and won two Oscars in consecutive years. He also received a Golden Globe Award for the former film, bernard Herrmann said that the score for Taras Bulba was the most wonderful thing. Waxman also founded the Los Angeles Music Festival in 1947 with which he conducted a number of West Coast premieres by fellow film composers, Waxman was born Franz Wachsmann in Königshütte to Jewish parents in the German Empires Prussian Province of Silesia. At the age of three Waxman suffered an eye injury involving boiling water tipped from a stove, which left his vision permanently impaired. In 1923, at age 16, Waxman enrolled in the Dresden Music Academy and studied composition, Waxman lived from the money he made playing popular music and managed to put himself through school. While working as a pianist with the Weintraub Syncopators, a band, Waxman met Frederick Hollander. Waxman worked as an orchestrator for the German film industry, including on Hollander’s score for The Blue Angel, Waxman’s first dramatic score was for the film Liliom. That year Waxman suffered a beating by Nazi sympathizers in Berlin that led him to leave Germany and move with his wife first to Paris. In Hollywood, Waxman met James Whale, who had been impressed by Waxmans score for Liliom. The success of his score for Whales Bride of Frankenstein led to the young composer’s appointment as Head of Music at Universal Studios, Waxman, however, was more interested in composition than musical direction for film, and in 1936 he left Universal to become a composer at MGM. Waxman scored a number of pictures during the few years. Waxman was frequently called to work on scores of horror or suspense films, Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film as part of his contract with David O. Selznick, and thus it was the first time he was allowed a full symphonic score. Selznick financed the film at the time as he was making Gone With the Wind. Waxman’s score for Rebecca is eerie and ethereal, often setting the mood and as Jack Sullivan put it, becoming a “soundboard for the subconscious. ”In 1943 Waxman left MGM and moved to Warner Bros. where he worked alongside such great film composers as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. A period of extended composition followed, including such films as Mr. Skeffington and Objective, a climactic scene in Objective, Burma. was scored fugally, and this would become one of Waxmans trademarks, returning in The Spirit of St. Louis and Taras Bulba. In 1947 Waxman formed the Los Angeles Music Festival, for which he served as director and conductor for the rest of his life. Waxmans goal with the LA Music Festival was to bring the town to “European cultural standards”
12.
Paul Dessau
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Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor. Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family, from 1909 he majored in violin, studying under Florian Zajic at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin. In 1912 he became répétiteur at the City Theatre in Hamburg, there he studied the work of the conductors Felix Weingartner and Arthur Nikisch and took classes in composition from Max Julius Loewengard. He was second Kapellmeister at the Tivoli Theatre in Bremen in 1914 before being drafted for service in 1915. After World War I he became conductor at the Intimate Theatre, Hamburg, in 1923 he became Kapellmeister in Mainz and from 1925 Principal Kapellmeister at the Städtische Oper Berlin under Bruno Walter. In 1933 Dessau emigrated to France, and 1939 moved further to the United States, Dessau returned to Germany with his second wife, the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann, and settled in East Berlin in 1948. Starting in 1952, he taught at the Public Drama School in Berlin-Oberschöneweide where he was appointed to a professorship in 1959 and he became a member of the DDR Academy of Arts, Berlin in 1952 and was vice-president of this institution between 1957 and 1962. He taught many master classes, his pupils including Friedrich Goldmann, Reiner Bredemeyer, Jörg Herchet, Hans-Karsten Raecke, Friedrich Schenker, Luca Lombardi, from 1954 he was married to the choreographer and director Ruth Berghaus. Their son Maxim Dessau is a film director, Dessau died on 28 June 1979 at the age of 84, in the then East German city of Königs Wusterhausen, on the outskirts of Berlin. Dessau composed operas, scenic plays, incidental music, ballets, symphonies and other works for orchestra, from the 1920s on, he was fascinated by film music. He composed music for early movies of Walt Disney, as well as music for silent pictures. While in exile in Paris he wrote the oratorio Hagadah shel Pessach after a libretto by Max Brod, in the 1950s in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht he focused on the musical theatre. During that time several of his operas were produced and he also wrote Gebrauchsmusik for the propaganda of the German Democratic Republic. At the same time he lobbied for the musical avant-garde, la Forêt enchanté and LHorloge Magique. With melodies by Franz Lehár and Bronislaw Kaper 400 cm^3 documentary Stürme über dem Montblanc, Der weiße Rausch, eisberg by Arnold Fanck White Cargo, Yoshiwara, The Novel of Werther See also the extensive filmography in the IMD Movie Database, at http, //www. imdb. Category 1965 Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Gold 1965 Karl-Marx-Orden 1969 National Prize I, notizen zu Noten, ed. Fritz Henneberg. Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Das Verhör in der Oper, Die Debatte um die Aufführung Das Verhör des Lukullus von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau. Paul Dessau in the German National Library catalogue Biography
13.
Lee Garmes
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Lee Garmes, A. S. C. was an American cinematographer. He also co-directed two films with legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, Angels Over Broadway and Actors and Sin, born in Peoria, Illinois, Garmes first came to Hollywood in 1916. His first job was as an assistant in the paint department at Thomas H. Ince Studios and his earliest films were comedy shorts, and his career did not fully take off until the introduction of sound. Garmes was married to film actress Ruth Hall from 1933 until his death in 1978 and he is interred in the Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Garmes was one of the earliest proponents of video technology, which he advocated as early as 1972 and that year, he had been hired by Technicolor to photograph the short film Why, which was intended to test whether video was a viable technology for shooting feature films. According to American Cinematographer magazine, Although officially unaccredited, Lee Garmes photographed a considerable portion of Gone with the Wind, many consider the famous railroad yard sequence among his finest cinematic efforts. Garmes was one of many Hollywood veterans from the silent era interviewed by Kevin Brownlow for the television series Hollywood, wins Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Shanghai Express,1933. Twice received the Eastman Kodak Award, nominations Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Morocco,1931. Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, for Since You Went Away,1945, Academy Awards, Oscar, Best Cinematography, for The Big Fisherman,1960
14.
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
15.
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
16.
Screenplay
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A screenplay or script is a written work by screenwriters for a film, video game, or television program. These screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing, in them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated. A screenplay written for television is also known as a teleplay, the format is structured in a way that one page usually equates to one minute of screen time. In a shooting script, each scene is numbered, and technical direction may be given, in a spec or a draft in various stages of development, the scenes are not numbered, and technical direction is at a minimum. The standard font for a screenplay is 12 point,10 pitch Courier Typeface, the major components are action and dialogue. The action is written in the present tense, the dialogue are the lines the characters speak. Unique to the screenplay is the use of slug lines, a slug line, also called a master scene heading, occurs at the start of every scene, and is usually made up of three parts. Part one states whether the scene is set inside outside, or both, Part two states location of the scene. Part three, separated from Part two by a hyphen, refers to the time of the scene, each slug line begins a new scene. In a shooting script, the lines are numbered consecutively. These scene numbers serve as mile-post markers in a script and this allows any part of the script to be referred to by scene number. In the United States letter size paper and Courier 12 point are mandatory, the tab settings of the scene elements, which constitute the screenplays layout. The dialogue must be centered and the names must be capitalized, a script usually begins with FADE IN, followed by the first scene description. It might get more specific, e. g. FADE IN ON AN ECU of Ricky as he explains the divorce to Bob, a script will usually end with FADE TO BLACK, though there are variables, like CUT TO BLACK for abrupt endings. The style consists of a grammar that is specific to screenplays and this grammar also consists of two aspects, A prose that is manifestation-oriented, i. e. focuses largely on what is audible and what is visible on screen. This prose may only supply interpretations and explanation if clarity would otherwise be adversely affected, American screenplays are printed single-sided on three-hole-punched paper using the standard American letter size. They are then together with two brass brads in the top and bottom hole. The middle hole is left empty as it would make it harder to quickly read the script
17.
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
18.
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
19.
Louis Jourdan
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Louis Jourdan was a French film and television actor. He was known for his roles in several Hollywood films, including The Paradine Case, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Gigi, The Best of Everything, The V. I. P. s. He played Dracula in the 1977 BBC television production Count Dracula, Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France, in 1921, one of three sons of Yvonne and Henry Gendre, a hotel owner. He was educated in France, Turkey, and the UK, while there, he began acting on the professional stage, where he was brought to the attention of director Marc Allegret, who hired him to work as an assistant camera operator on Entrée des Artistes. Allegret then cast Jourdan in what should have been his first movie, filming was interrupted by the Second World War and was never resumed. Jourdan was too young for service and was hired by Julien Duvivier along with his brother Pierre to appear in Untel Père et Fils in Rome. This was interrupted by the declaration of war between France and Italy, he returned to France, made films and spent a year on a work gang. Jourdan was ordered to make German propaganda films which he refused to do, there he started making movies again, ten films in two years. His father was arrested by the Gestapo, months later he escaped, I was given work to do and I did it, said Jourdan later of his time in the resistance. I worked on illegal leaflets, helping to print and distribute them, after the liberation of France in 1945, he returned to Paris with his childhood sweetheart, Berthe Frederique. Cited by author James McKay as the epitome of the suave Continental, Jourdan was spotted in a French film by a talent scout working for David O. Selznick and his first American film was The Paradine Case starring Gregory Peck. The movie is a directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who did not want Jourdan cast as the valet in the film. Jourdan frequently argued with Selznick, who put him on suspension a number of times for refusing roles, with Joan Fontaine, Jourdan starred in the Max Ophüls film Letter from an Unknown Woman. David Thomson in 2010 observed how his performance as Stefan Brand altered as the character aged over the period of the films narrative. The younger Stefan was boyish, eager and open, ten years later, the man is filled with self-loathing and fake ironies. It was a performance from Jourdan, Thomson wrote in Have You Seen. He was handsome yet an empty, romantic yet not entirely there. John Houseman, the producer, felt he lacked sex appeal, but that shortcoming serves very well as his defect of memory
20.
Barrister
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A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation and their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching the philosophy, hypothesis and history of law, and giving expert legal opinions. Often, barristers are also recognised as legal scholars, Barristers are distinguished from solicitors, who have more direct access to clients, and may do transactional-type legal work. It is mainly barristers who are appointed as judges, and they are hired by clients directly. In England and Wales, barristers may seek authorisation from the Bar Standards Board to conduct litigation and this allows a barrister to practise in a dual capacity, fulfilling the role of both barrister and solicitor. A barrister, who can be considered as a jurist, is a lawyer who represents a litigant as advocate before a court of appropriate jurisdiction, a barrister speaks in court and presents the case before a judge or jury. In some jurisdictions, a barrister receives additional training in law, ethics. In contrast, a solicitor generally meets with clients, does preparatory and administrative work, in this role, he or she may draft and review legal documents, interact with the client as necessary, prepare evidence, and generally manage the day-to-day administration of a lawsuit. Barristers usually have particular knowledge of law, precedent. When a solicitor in general practice is confronted with a point of law. In most countries, barristers operate as sole practitioners, and are prohibited from forming partnerships or from working as a barrister as part of a corporation, however, barristers normally band together into chambers to share clerks and operating expenses. Some chambers grow to be large and sophisticated, and have a corporate feel. In some jurisdictions, they may be employed by firms of solicitors, banks, in contrast, solicitors and attorneys work directly with the clients and are responsible for engaging a barrister with the appropriate expertise for the case. Barristers generally have little or no contact with their lay clients. All correspondence, inquiries, invoices, and so on, will be addressed to the solicitor, in court, barristers are often visibly distinguished from solicitors by their apparel. For example, in Ireland, England, and Wales, a barrister usually wears a wig, stiff collar, bands. Since January 2008, solicitor advocates have also been entitled to wear wigs, in many countries the traditional divisions between barristers and solicitors are breaking down. Barristers once enjoyed a monopoly on appearances before the courts, but in Great Britain this has now been abolished
21.
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
22.
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
23.
Femme fatale
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A femme fatale is a stock character of a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art, in American early 20th century film, femme fatale characters were referred to as vamps, an allusion to their role as sexual vampires. The phrase is French for fatal woman, a femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. In some situations, she uses lies or coercion rather than charm and she may also make use of some subduing weapon such as sleeping gas, a modern analog of magical powers in older tales. She may also be a victim, caught in a situation from which she cannot escape, a younger version of a femme fatale is called a fille fatale, or fatal girl. Femmes fatale are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, the femme fatale archetype exists in the culture, folklore and myth of many cultures. Ancient mythical or legendary examples include Mohini, Lilith, the Sirens, historical examples from Classical times include Cleopatra and Messalina, as well as the Biblical figures Delilah, Jezebel and Salome. An example from Chinese literature and traditional history is Daji, the femme fatale was a common figure in the European Middle Ages, often portraying the dangers of unbridled female sexuality. The pre-medieval inherited Biblical figure of Eve offers an example, as does the wicked, along with them, there rose the gothic novel, The Monk featuring Matilda, a very powerful femme fatale. This led to her appearing in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, pre-Raphaelite painters frequently used the classic personifications of the femme fatale as a subject. Later, Salome was the subject of an opera by Strauss, and was popularized on stage, screen, another enduring icon of glamour, seduction, and moral turpitude is Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, 1876–1917. While working as a dancer, she took the stage name Mata Hari. Although she may have been innocent, she was accused of German espionage and was put to death by a French firing squad, after her death she became the subject of many sensational films and books. Other considerably famous femmes fatales are Isabella of France, Hedda Gabler of Kristiania, Marie Antoinette of Austria, one traditional view portrays the femme fatale as a sexual vampire, her charms leech the virility and independence of lovers, leaving them shells of themselves. Rudyard Kipling took inspiration from a vampire painted by Philip Burne-Jones, the poem inspired the 1913 eponymous film The Vampire by Robert Vignola, sometimes cited as the first vamp movie. Like much of Kiplings verse it became popular, and its refrain. Describing a seduced man, became the title of the popular 1915 film A Fool There Was that made Theda Bara a star, the poem was used in the publicity for the film. On this account, in the American slang of the era the femme fatale was called a vamp, from the American film-audience perspective, the femme fatale often appeared foreign, usually either of indeterminate Eastern European or Asian ancestry
24.
Solicitor
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A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor, for example, in England and Wales a solicitor is admitted to practise under the provisions of the Solicitors Act 1974. With some exceptions, practising solicitors must possess a practising certificate, there are many more solicitors than barristers in England, they undertake the general aspects of giving legal advice and conducting legal proceedings. Some legal graduates will start off as one and then qualify as the other. Since the replacement of the aspect of the House of Lords with the Supreme Court the full title of a solicitor is Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England. The term attorney is still used under English law to refer to someone legally appointed or empowered to act for another person. Currently, the term is most commonly used to refer to someone so appointed under a power of attorney, practitioners in specialist professions, notably intellectual property, are also referred to as attorneys, for example Registered Patent Attorney or Registered Trade Mark Attorney. Minor criminal cases are tried in Magistrates Courts, which constitute by far the majority of courts, more serious criminal cases still start in the Magistrates Court and may then be transferred to a higher court. The majority of cases are tried in county courts and are almost always handled by solicitors. In the past, barristers did not deal with the public directly and this rigid separation no longer applies. Solicitor advocates with extended rights of audience may now act as advocates at all levels of the courts, conversely, the public may now hire and interact with a barrister directly in certain types of work without having to go to a solicitor first. Registered Patent Attorneys and Registered Trade Mark Attorneys also have rights of audience in intellectual property matters, Solicitors in England and Wales who wish to practise must pay an annual fee to obtain a Practising Certificate. This fee is paid to the Law Society of England and Wales, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, though funded by these fees, acts independently of the Law Society. Together, the two make up the complete system of professional regulation for solicitors. Complaints about solicitors if not satisfactorily resolved by the firm may be made to the Legal Ombudsman. The training and qualification required to enter the profession by being admitted as a solicitor is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, there are two graduate routes of entry into the profession. Prospective solicitors holding a law degree proceed to enroll with the Law Society as a student member. Those holding a degree but one which is a qualifying degree must in addition have completed a conversion course prior to enrolling on the Legal Practice Course
25.
Joan Tetzel
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Joan Margaret Tetzel was an American actress. Tetzel played in When a Girl Marries and Woman of Courage, Tetzel is noted for her performance in Alfred Hitchcocks The Paradine Case, where she played Judy Flaquer, the daughter of the solicitor played by Charles Coburn in the film. Her other film appearances included Duel in the Sun, The File on Thelma Jordon, Hell Below Zero and she worked with Alfred Hitchcock in his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She played Eve Ross in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Guest for Breakfast and she appeared as Marian Stuart, wife of the title character, in the 1963 Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Decadent Dean. She also made appearances on Thriller and Gunsmoke, aside from her movie career, Tetzel was a well-known stage actress. She appeared in the 1940 revival of Liliom, the stage production of I Remember Mama. As a noted actress, her photo appeared on the front cover of Life Magazine on February 16,1948. Her first husband was radio producer John E. Mosman and her second husband was Oscar Homolka, whom she married in 1949. Tetzel died October 31,1977, at her home Beri-Be-Dahn, Fairwarp, Sussex, England, aged 56, from cancer
26.
Valet
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Valet and varlet are terms for male servants who serve as personal attendants to their employer. In the United States, the term most often refers to a parking valet, in English, valet as personal man-servant is recorded since 1567, though use of the term in the French-speaking English medieval court is older, and the variant form varlet is cited from 1456. See yeoman, possibly derived from man, a related term. The modern use is usually short for the valet de chambre, since the 16th century, the word has traditionally been pronounced as rhyming with pallet, though an alternative pronunciation, rhyming with chalet, as in French, is now common. The Oxford English Dictionary lists both pronunciations as valid, a valet or gentlemans gentleman is a gentlemans male servant, the closest female equivalent is a ladys maid. The valet performs personal services such as maintaining his employers clothes, running his bath and perhaps shaving his employer. In a great house, the master of the house had his own valet, in a bachelors household the valet might perform light housekeeping duties as well. Valets learned the skills for their role in various ways, others started out as soldier-servants to army officers or stewards to naval officers. Traditionally, a valet did much more than lay out clothes. He was also responsible for making travel arrangements, dealing with any bills, Alexandre Bontemps, the most senior of the thirty-six valets to Louis XIV of France, was a powerful figure, who ran the Château de Versailles. In courts, valet de chambre was a position of status, often given to artists, musicians, poets and others. The role was also, at least during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, valets, like butlers and most specialized domestic staff, have become relatively rare. A more common, though infrequent, arrangement is the general servant performing combined roles. Alfred Pennyworth, valet to Bruce Wayne, created by Bob Kane, hobson, from the comedy film Arthur. Kato, Inspector Clouseaus valet and martial arts partner in the Pink Panther movies, passepartout, in the 1872 novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. George, created by Agatha Christie in the Hercule Poirot novels, edward Henry Masterman, the victims valet and a suspect in Agatha Christies Murder on the Orient Express. Figaro, the Count of Almavivas valet from Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro, as well as the Mozart, leporello, valet of Don Giovanni in the opera by Mozart. Giles French in the sitcom Family Affair, probert, valet to Sir William McCordle, and Robert Parks, valet to Lord Stockbridge, in the 2001 film Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman
27.
Leo G. Carroll
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Leo Gratten Carroll was an English actor. He was best known for his roles in several Hitchcock films, Carroll was born in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, to William and Catherine Carroll. His Roman Catholic parents named him after then-Pope Leo XIII, in 1897, his family lived in York, where his Irish-born father was a foreman in an ordnance store. In the 1901 Census for West Ham, London, his occupation is listed as wine trade clerk, in the 1911 census, he is living at the same address and described as a dramatic agent. Carroll made his debut in 1912. His acting career was on hold during the First World War and he then performed in London and on Broadway in New York City. In 1933, he was a member of the Manhattan Theatre Repertory Company in the season of the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit. After the production closed, he starred in the role in J. P. Marquands The Late George Apley. Carroll, who had moved to Hollywood, made his debut in Sadie McKee. He often played doctors or butlers, but he made appearances as Marleys ghost in A Christmas Carol, in the original version of Father of the Bride, he played an unctuous wedding caterer. In the 1951 film The Desert Fox, The Story of Rommel he played a sympathetic German Fieldmarshal Gerd von Rundstedt, presenting him as a tragic, resigned figure completely disillusioned with Hitler. Carroll is perhaps best known for his roles in six Alfred Hitchcock films, Rebecca, Suspicion, Spellbound, The Paradine Case, Strangers on a Train and he appeared in more Hitchcock films than anyone other than Clare Greet and Hitchcock himself, whose cameos were a trademark. As with earlier roles, he was often cast as doctors or other authority figures, in addition to appearing as Rev. He appeared as the older Father Fitzgibbon from 1962 to 1963 in ABCs Going My Way, gene Kelly held the lead as Father Chuck OMalley, with Dick York as Tom Colwell, who operates a neighborhood youth center. Carroll subsequently starred as spymaster Alexander Waverly on The Man from U. N. C. L. E, films were derived from the series, and a spin-off television series, The Girl from U. N. C. L. E. in 1966. He was one of the first actors to appear in two different television series as the same character, in 1972, Carroll died in Hollywood of cancer-induced pneumonia. He is interred at the Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
28.
Isobel Elsom
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Isobel Elsom was an English screen, stage and television actress. Born Isabelle Reed in Chesterton, Cambridge, Elsom usually was cast as a lady of the upper class. She attended Howard College, Bedford England, over the course of three decades she appeared in 17 Broadway productions, beginning with The Ghost Train in 1926. Her best-known stage role was the murder victim in Ladies in Retirement. Her other theatre credits included The Innocents and Romeo and Juliet, Elsom made her first screen appearance during the silent film era and appeared in nearly 100 films throughout her career. She met her first husband, director Maurice Elvey, when he cast her in his 1919 film Quinneys and he went on to direct her in eight more films before they divorced. She appeared opposite Jerry Lewis in four of his late 1950s/early 1960s films, elsoms television credits included Armstrong Circle Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Lux Video Theatre, My Three Sons, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, Hawaiian Eye, and Dr. Kildare. Elsoms second husband was actor Carl Harbord, from 1942 until his death in 1958 and she died in Woodland Hills, California, aged 87. Five portraits of Elsom are included in the Photographs Collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London
29.
John Williams (actor)
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John Williams was an English stage, film and television actor. He is remembered for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Alfred Hitchcocks Dial M For Murder, as the chauffeur in Sabrina, born in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, England, he was educated at Lancing College and began acting on the Broadway stage in 1924. He then went on to appear in thirty Broadway plays over the four decades. He first acted in Hollywood films in 1930, debuting in director Mack Sennetts The Chumps, in his career he appeared in more than forty films and also made more than forty guest appearances on television shows. He was part of the regular cast for the 1967 season of the family comedy Family Affair, Williams gained fame as the star of a television commercial for 120 Music Masterpieces, a four-LP set of classical music excerpts from Columbia House. This became the longest-running nationally seen commercial in U. S. television history and it began, Im sure you recognise this lovely melody as Stranger in Paradise. But did you know that the theme is from the Polovetsian Dance No.2 by Borodin. So many of the tunes of our well-known popular songs were written by the great masters—like these familiar themes. In 1953, Williams won a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder on Broadway, when Alfred Hitchcock adapted the play to film in 1954, he cast Williams in the same role. He also appeared in Hitchcocks The Paradine Case with Gregory Peck as a barrister, Three of these episodes, Back for Christmas, Wet Saturday, and Banquo’s Chair, were directed by Hitchcock himself. In 1963, Williams played William Shakespeare in the The Twilight Zone episode The Bard, Williams also appeared in the TV series Night Gallery, notably in the episode titled The Doll. One of his last appearances was in Battlestar Galactica, War of the Gods alongside Lorne Greene, Williams died on Thursday,5 May 1983, in La Jolla, California, at the age of 80. It was reported that at the time of his death that he had been suffering from a heart condition, Williams was survived by his wife Helen, and his sister Joyce Hornsted, who lived in Devon, England. His body was cremated, and its ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean off the La Jolla coast. Alfred Hitchcock Presents The Long Shot Back for Christmas Whodunit Wet Saturday The Rose Garden I Killed the Count The Three Dreams of Mr. Findlater Family Affair, replaced Sebastian Cabot while he was recovering from an injury to his wrist
30.
Greta Garbo
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Greta Garbo, was a Swedish-born American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her luminous, Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B, Mayer, chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She immediately stirred interest with her first silent film, Torrent, released in 1926, a later, her performance in Flesh. Garbos first talking film was Anna Christie, MGM marketers enticed the public with the catch-phrase Garbo talks. That same year she starred in Romance, for her performances in these films she received the first of three Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. In 1932, her popularity allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract and her success continued in films such as Mata Hari and Grand Hotel. Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille to be her finest, the role gained her a second Academy Award nomination. Garbos career soon declined, however, and she was one of the many stars labeled Box Office Poison in 1938, from then on, Garbo declined all opportunities to return to the screen. Shunning publicity, she began a life, and neither married nor had children. Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden and she was the third and youngest child of Anna Lovisa —a housewife who later worked at a jam factory—and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. Garbo had a brother, Sven Alfred, and an older sister. Her parents met in Stockholm where her father visited from Frinnaryd and he moved to Stockholm to become independent and worked in various odd jobs—street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butchers assistant. He married Anna, who had moved from Högsby. The Gustafssons were impoverished and lived in a three-bedroom cold-water flat at Blekingegatan No.32 and they brought up their three children in a working class district regarded as the citys slum. Garbo would later recall, It was eternally grey—those long winters nights and my father would be sitting in a corner, scribbling figures on a newspaper. On the other side of the room my mother is repairing ragged old clothes and we children would be talking in very low voices, or just sitting silently. We were filled with anxiety, as if there were danger in the air, such evenings are unforgettable for a sensitive girl
31.
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
32.
I Remember Mama (film)
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The film starred Irene Dunne in the titular role, as well as Barbara Bel Geddes, Philip Dorn, Ellen Corby and Oscar Homolka who reprised the role of Uncle Chris, which he had created on Broadway. The film was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, the film begins with eldest daughter Katrin completing the last lines of her autobiographical novel. Each family member makes a sacrifice to contribute to the boys education. Martas sister Trina arrives, announces she is marrying undertaker Peter Thorkelson, when Marta threatens to reveal embarrassing anecdotes about them, the women accept their sisters decision. When Jonathan Hyde, the Hansons impoverished lodger, reads A Tale of Two Cities aloud for the family, later, the family is visited by Martas gruff but soft-hearted Uncle Chris and his housekeeper Jessie Brown, who is secretly his wife. When Chris discovers Dagmar is ill with mastoiditis, he insists on taking her to the hospital, Dagmars operation is a success, but Marta is prohibited from seeing her. Disguised as a member of the staff, she sneaks into Dagmars ward. When Dagmar returns home, she learns her cat, Uncle Elizabeth, is ill, despite Dagmars belief in her mothers powers, Marta feels helpless to save the cat and sends Nels to buy chloroform so she can euthanize it. The following morning, she is astonished when Dagmar walks in with an apparently cured cat, mr. Hyde moves out, leaving his classic books and a check for his rent. The familys joy vanishes when they discover the check has no value, Sigrid and Jenny are furious, but Marta declares his gift of literature is payment enough. Katrin brags to Christine that their mother is going to buy her the dresser set she has long admired as a graduation present. As she is about to leave to perform in the production of The Merchant of Venice. Distraught, the girl performs badly in the play and later retrieves the brooch after trading back the dresser set, Marta then gives the brooch to Katrin as a graduation present. Katrins father presents her with her first cup of coffee, which she had been told she could drink once she was a grown-up, Marta learns Uncle Chris is near death, and she takes Katrin to say goodbye. He reveals he has no money to leave his niece because he has been donating his income to help children with leg or foot problems walk again, after enjoying a final drink with his niece and Jessie, Uncle Chris dies. Katrin is dejected when she receives her tenth literary rejection letter, Marta then takes some of her stories to famed author and gourmand Florence Dana Moorhead and convinces her to read them. Marta returns home and advises her daughter that Moorhead feels the girl should write about what she knows best, Marta urges Katrin to write about Papa. When Katrins story is accepted for publication, she is paid $500, after announcing some of the money will go towards the purchase of the winter coat Marta wants, Katrin confesses her story is titled Mama and the Hospital
33.
John Barrymore
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John Barrymore was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. After a success as Hamlet in London in 1925, Barrymore left the stage for 14 years, in the silent film era, he was well received in such pictures as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Sherlock Holmes and The Sea Beast. During this period, he gained his nickname, the Great Profile and his stage-trained voice proved an asset when sound films were introduced, and three of his works, Grand Hotel, Twentieth Century and Midnight have been inducted into the National Film Registry. Barrymores personal life has been the subject of attention before. He struggled with alcohol abuse from the age of 14, was married and divorced four times, Much of his later work involved self-parody and the portrayal of drunken has-beens. His obituary in The Washington Post observed that with the passing of the years – and as his life became more public – he became, despite his genius in the theater. Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth in Philadelphia, and was known by family, although the Barrymore family bible puts his date of birth as February 15,1882, his birth certificate shows February 14. He was the youngest of three children and his siblings were Lionel, and Ethel. Barrymores mother, Georgie Drew Barrymore, was born into a prominent theatrical family, Barrymores maternal grandparents were Louisa Lane Drew, a well-known 19th-century American actress and the manager of the Arch Street Theatre, and John Drew, also an actor whose specialty was comedy. Barrymores maternal uncles were two more thespians, John Drew, Jr. and Sidney, Much of Barrymores early life was unsettled. In October 1882, the family toured in the US for a season with Polish actress Helena Modjeska, the following year his parents toured again with Modjeska but left the children behind. Modjeska was influential in the family, and she insisted that all three children be baptized into the Catholic Church, in 1884 the family traveled to London as part of Augustin Dalys theatrical company, returning to the US two years later. As a child, Barrymore was sometimes badly behaved, and he was sent away to schools in an attempt to instill discipline, the strategy was not always successful, and he attended elementary schools in four states. He was sent first to the annex of the Convent of Notre Dame in Philadelphia. I wanted to be an artist and he was expelled from the school in 1891 and was sent to Seton Hall Preparatory School in New Jersey, where Lionel was already studying. Barrymore was unhappy at Seton and was withdrawn, after which he attended several public schools in New York. In 1892, his grandmother Louisa Drews business began to suffer, the loss of their mothers income prompted both Ethel and Lionel to seek work as professional actors. Barrymores father was absent from the family home while on tour, and when he returned he would spend time at The Lambs
34.
Lionel Barrymore
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Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He is also remembered as Ebenezer Scrooge in annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol during his last two decades. He was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family, Lionel Barrymore was born Lionel Herbert Blythe in Philadelphia, the son of actors Georgiana Drew Barrymore and Maurice Barrymore. He was the brother of Ethel and John Barrymore, the uncle of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore. He attended private schools as a child, including the Art Students League of New York, while raised a Roman Catholic, Barrymore attended the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. Barrymore graduated from Seton Hall Preparatory School, the Roman Catholic college prep school and he was married twice, to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick, a one-time lover of his brother, John. Doriss sister Gladys was married to Lionels uncle Sidney Drew, which made Gladys both his aunt and sister-in-law, Doris Rankin bore Lionel two daughters, Ethel Barrymore II and Mary Barrymore. Barrymore never truly recovered from the deaths of his girls, and their loss undoubtedly strained his marriage to Doris Rankin, Years later, Barrymore developed a fatherly affection for Jean Harlow, who was born about the same time as his daughters. When Harlow died in 1937, Barrymore and Clark Gable mourned her as though she had been family. Although reluctant to follow his parents career, Barrymore appeared together with his formidable grandmother Louisa Lane Drew on tour and he later recounted that I didnt want to act. I wanted to paint or draw, the theater was not in my blood, I was related to the theater by marriage only, it was merely a kind of in-law of mine I had to live with. Nevertheless, he found success on stage in character roles and continued to act, although he still wanted to become a painter. He appeared on Broadway in his twenties with his uncle John Drew Jr. in such plays as The Second in Command and The Mummy and the Hummingbird. Both were produced by Charles Frohman, who produced plays for Barrymore and his siblings, John. The Other Girl in 1903–04 was a success for Barrymore. In 1905, he appeared with John and Ethel in a pantomime, starring as the character in Pantaloon and playing another character in the other half of the bill. In 1906, after a series of disappointing appearances in plays, Barrymore and his first wife, the actress Doris Rankin, left their careers and travelled to Paris. He did not achieve success as a painter, and in 1909 he returned to the US, the producers gave appendicitis as the reason for his sudden departure
35.
Diana Wynyard
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Diana Wynyard, CBE, whose birth name was Dorothy Isobel Cox, was an English stage and film actress. Born in Lewisham, South London, Wynyard began her career on the stage, after success in Liverpool and London, she performed on Broadway, appearing first in Rasputin and the Empress in 1932, with Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore. She appeared in the version, beginning her brief Hollywood career. Fox Film Corporation then borrowed her for their film version of Noël Cowards stage spectacle Cavalcade. As the noble wife and mother she aged gracefully against a background of the Boer War, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, with this performance, she became the first British actress to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was tempted to return to the screen to play opposite Ralph Richardson in On the Night of the Fire and her best remembered success was as the frightened heroine of Gaslight, the first film version of Patrick Hamiltons play Gas Light. This was followed by roles opposite Clive Brook in Freedom Radio, John Gielgud in The Prime Minister and Michael Redgrave in Kipps, directed by Carol Reed, later her first husband. Her stage career flourished after the war, and as a Shakespearean leading lady at Stratford, in Londons West End and on tour in Australia, in this production, she succeeded her friend Peggy Ashcroft. Wynyard stumbled off the rostrum during the scene in Macbeth in 1948. She fell 15 feet, but was able to continue, throughout the 1940s and 1950s she also had success in the works of several contemporary writers, including the British production of Tennessee Williamss Camino Real. She appeared in Alexander Kordas version An Ideal Husband, based on the Oscar Wilde play, usually maternal, these included Tom Browns Schooldays and the secretive mother in Island in the Sun. She played Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Mayerling, an early American television film which starred Audrey Hepburn and she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1953. She was married to the English film director Carol Reed from 3 February 1943 until August 1947, and subsequently to a Hungarian physician, Tibor Csato. She died from disease in Holborn, Central London in 1964, aged 58, while rehearsing The Master Builder with Michael Redgrave. Her last television performance was in the play The Man in the Panama Hat recorded in March 1964 and her death occurred before the intended broadcast in May 1964 and it was eventually shown posthumously on 21 September 1964
36.
Motion Picture Production Code
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The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays. Under Hays leadership, the MPPDA, later known as the Motion Picture Association of America, adopted the Production Code in 1930, the Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. From 1934 to 1954, the code was identified with Joseph Breen. In 1968, after years of minimal enforcement, the Production Code was replaced by the MPAA film rating system. In 1922, after several films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars. Many felt the industry had always been morally questionable. Political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred movie censorship bills in 1921, Hays was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year. Hays, Postmaster General under Warren G, Virginia followed suit the following year, with eight individual states having a board by the advent of sound film, but many of these were ineffectual. By the 1920s, the New York stage—a frequent source of subsequent screen material—had topless shows, performances filled with words, mature subject matters. Early in the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas. Moviemakers were looking at the possibility that many states and cities would adopt their own codes of censorship, in 1927, Hays suggested to studio executives that they form a committee to discuss film censorship. This list consisted of eleven subjects best avoided and twenty-six to be handled very carefully, the list was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, and Hays created the Studio Relations Committee to oversee its implementation, however, there was still no way to enforce tenets. The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929, the Code enumerated a number of key points known as the Donts and Be Carefuls, In 1929, a Catholic layman, Martin Quigley and the Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord created a code of standards and submitted it to the studios, Lord was particularly concerned with the effects of sound film on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to their allure. In February 1930, several studio heads—including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer —met with Lord, after some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It was the responsibility of the SRC to supervise film production, on March 31, the MPPDA agreed it would abide by the Code
37.
Laurence Olivier
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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM, was an English actor who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles, late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no connections, but Oliviers father, a clergyman. After attending a school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Cowards Private Lives, in 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, there his most celebrated roles included Shakespeares Richard III and Sophocless Oedipus. From 1963 to 1973 he was the director of Britains National Theatre. His own parts there included the role in Othello and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Among Oliviers films are Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor-director, Henry V, Hamlet and his later films included Sleuth, Marathon Man, and The Boys from Brazil. His television appearances included an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence, Long Days Journey into Night, Love Among the Ruins, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brideshead Revisited, Oliviers honours included a knighthood, a life peerage and the Order of Merit. For his on-screen work he received four Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The National Theatres largest auditorium is named in his honour, and he is commemorated in the Laurence Olivier Awards, given annually by the Society of London Theatre. He was married three times, to the actresses Jill Esmond from 1930 to 1940, Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960, Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest of the three children of the Revd Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes Louise, née Crookenden. Their elder children were Sybille and Gerard Dacres Dickie and his great-great-grandfather was of French Huguenot descent, and Olivier came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Gerard Olivier had begun a career as a schoolmaster, but in his thirties he discovered a strong religious vocation and was ordained as a priest of the Church of England and he practised extremely high church, ritualist Anglicanism and liked to be addressed as Father Olivier. This made him unacceptable to most Anglican congregations, and the church posts he was offered were temporary. This meant a nomadic existence, and for Laurences first few years, in 1912, when Olivier was five, his father secured a permanent appointment as assistant priest at St Saviours, Pimlico. He held the post for six years, and a family life was at last possible
38.
Hamlet (1948 film)
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Hamlet is a 1948 British film adaptation of William Shakespeares play Hamlet, adapted and directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Hamlet was Oliviers second film as director, and also the second of the three Shakespeare films that he directed, Hamlet was the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is also the first sound film of the play in English, a 1935 sound film adaptation, Khoon Ka Khoon, had been made in India and filmed in the Urdu language. Oliviers Hamlet is the Shakespeare film that has received the most prestigious accolades, winning the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. However, it proved controversial among Shakespearean purists, who felt that Olivier had made too many alterations and excisions to the play by cutting nearly two hours worth of content. Milton Shulman wrote in The Evening Standard To some it will be one of the greatest films ever made, Laurence Olivier leaves no doubt that he is one of our greatest living actors. his liberties with the text, however, are sure to disturb many. The film follows the story of the play, but cuts nearly half the dialogue. Marcellus then arrives with the sceptical Horatio, Prince Hamlets friend, suddenly, all three see the Ghost, and Horatio demands that the ghost speak. The ghost vanishes then, without a word, Prince Hamlet sits alone, refusing to join in the celebration, despite the protests of the new King. When the court has left the Great Hall, Hamlet fumes over the hasty marriage, muttering to himself the words and yet, soon, Horatio and the sentries enter telling Hamlet of the ghostly apparition of his father. Hamlet proceeds to investigate, and upon arriving on the battlements, noting that the ghost beckons him forward, Hamlet follows it up onto a tower, wherein it reveals its identity as the Ghost of Hamlets father. He tells Hamlet that he was murdered, who did it, the audience then sees the murder re-enacted in a flashback as the ghost describes the deed – Claudius is seen pouring poison into the late King Hamlets ear, thereby killing him. Hamlet does not at first accept this as the truth, and then prepares to feign madness, so as to test Claudius conscience and this feigned insanity attracts the attention of Polonius who is completely convinced that Hamlet has gone mad. Polonius pushes this point with the King, claiming that it is derived from Hamlets love for Ophelia, Claudius, however, is not fully convinced, and has Polonius set up a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlets madness is constant even in exchange, and Claudius is convinced. Hamlet then hires a group of wandering stage performers, requesting that they enact the play The Murder of Gonzago for the king, however, Hamlet makes a few alterations to the play, so as to make it mirror the circumstances of the late Kings murder. Claudius, unable to endure the play, calls out for light, Hamlet is now convinced of Claudius treachery. He finds Claudius alone, and has ample opportunity to kill the villain, however, at this time, Claudius is praying, and Hamlet does not seek to send him to heaven, so, he waits, and bides his time
39.
Ronald Colman
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Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor, popular during the 1930s and 1940s. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for A Double Life and received nominations for Random Harvest, Bulldog Drummond, Colman starred in several classic films, including A Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon and The Prisoner of Zenda. He also played the role in the Technicolor classic Kismet, with Marlene Dietrich. He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, as Ronald Charles Colman and his siblings included Eric, Edith and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered that he enjoyed acting and he intended to study engineering at Cambridge, but his fathers sudden death from pneumonia in 1907 made it financially impossible. He became an amateur actor and was a member of the West Middlesex Dramatic Society in 1908–09. He made his first appearance on the stage in 1914. On 31 October 1914, at the Battle of Messines, Colman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his ankle, as a consequence, he was invalided out of the British Army in 1915. His fellow Hollywood actors Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke, at the same theatre the following year he appeared in Eugène Brieuxs Damaged Goods. At the Ambassadors Theatre in February 1918 he played George Lubin in The Little Brother, during 1918, he toured as David Goldsmith in The Bubble. In 1920, Colman went to America and toured with Robert Warwick in The Dauntless Three, at the Booth Theatre in New York in January 1921 he played the Temple Priest in William Archers play The Green Goddess. With George Arliss at the 39th Street Theatre in August 1921 he appeared as Charles in The Nightcap, in September 1922 he had great success as Alain Sergyll at the Empire Theatre in La Tendresse. Ronald Colman had first appeared in films in Britain in 1917 and 1919 for director Cecil Hepworth, thereafter Colman virtually abandoned the stage for film. He became a popular silent film star in both romantic and adventure films, among them The Dark Angel, Stella Dallas, Beau Geste. His dark hair and eyes and his athletic and riding ability led reviewers to describe him as a Valentino type and he was often cast in similar, exotic roles. Towards the end of the silent era, Colman was teamed with Hungarian actress Vilma Bánky under Samuel Goldwyn and the two were a popular film team rivalling Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Although he was a success in silent films, he was unable to capitalise on one of his chief assets until the advent of the talking picture. Also described as a bewitching, finely-modulated, resonant voice, Colman was often viewed as a suave English gentleman, whose voice embodied chivalry and mirrored the image of a Stereotypical English gentleman
40.
Ingrid Bergman
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Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is best remembered for her roles as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca and as Alicia Huberman in Notorious, before becoming a star in American films, Bergman had been a leading actress in Swedish films. Her introduction to American audiences came with her role in the English-language remake of Intermezzo. Selznicks financial problems meant that Bergman was often loaned to other studios, apart from Casablanca, her performances from this period include Victor Flemings remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gaslight, and The Bells of St. Marys. Her last films for Selznick were Alfred Hitchcocks Spellbound and Notorious and her final film for Hitchcock was Under Capricorn. After a decade in American films, she starred in Roberto Rossellinis Stromboli, many of her personal and film documents can be seen in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives. According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Bergman quickly became the ideal of American womanhood, in 2007, the American Film Institute ranked Bergman as the fourth-greatest female screen legend of classic American cinema. Bergman, named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden, was born on 29 August 1915 in Stockholm, to a Swedish father, Justus Bergman, when she was two years old, her mother died. Her father, who was an artist and photographer, died when she was 13, in the years before he died, he wanted her to become an opera star, and had her take voice lessons for three years. But she always knew from the beginning that she wanted to be an actress, sometimes wearing her mothers clothes and her father documented all her birthdays with a borrowed camera. After his death, she was sent to live with an aunt and she then moved in with her Aunt Hulda and Uncle Otto, who had five children. Another aunt she visited, Elsa Adler, first told Ingrid, when she was 11, that her mother may have had some Jewish blood, but her aunt also cautioned her about telling others about her possible ancestry as there might be some difficult times coming. Biographer Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, however, notes that the claim of Jewish blood was likely an embellishment, after being forced to do an in-depth genealogical investigation, Bergmans maternal cousin found there to be no Jewish ancestry on Bergmans mothers side. Later, she received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Theatre School, after several months she was given a part in a new play, Ett Brott, written by Sigfrid Siwertz. Chandler notes that this was totally against procedure at the school, during her first summer break, she was also hired by a Swedish film studio, which led to her leaving the Royal Dramatic Theatre after just one year, to work in films full-time. Her first film role after leaving the Royal Dramatic Theatre was a part in 1935s Munkbrogreven. She went on to act in a films in Sweden, including En kvinnas ansikte, which was later remade as A Womans Face with Joan Crawford
41.
Maurice Evans (actor)
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Maurice Herbert Evans was a British actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. However, his screen roles are probably Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes. Hardy lived in Dorchester and thought highly of Evanss adaptations and productions, Young Maurice made his first stage appearance as a small boy in Far from the Madding Crowd. He first appeared on the stage in 1926 at the Cambridge Festival Theatre and joined the Old Vic Company in 1934, playing Hamlet, Richard II and Iago. This was followed by Lord Belvoir in The Man Who Ate the Popomack by W. J. Turner, then in 1927 Evans played a poet in The Pleasure Garden by Beatrice Mayor followed by Young Man in On Bailes Strand by W. B. Yeats, Midir in The Immortal Hour by Fiona Macleod, the Hon. Algernon Moodie in The Rumour by C. K, both Yeats and Shaw attended performances of their own plays. In 1927, he was one of a group of actors including Laurence Olivier. Sherriffs Journeys End directed by James Whale at the Apollo Theatre in London and it was a huge success, running for two years and making Maurices name. He played the young officer Raleigh, who dies at the end of the play, in 1934, he went to the Old Vic Theatre where his interpretation of Shakespeares Richard II was highly praised. It was as a result of this that he was invited to join Katharine Cornell in the U. S and he also starred opposite Cornell in the 1935 production of George Bernard Shaws St. Joan. Evans rose to the rank of Major by the end of the war and he then shifted his attention to the works of Shaw, notably as John Tanner in Man and Superman and as King Magnus in The Apple Cart. In 1952, he starred as the husband in the original stage-play version of Dial M for Murder. He was also a successful Broadway producer of productions in which he did not appear, in 1956, Evans recorded an LP of stories from Winnie-the-Pooh. American television audiences of the 1960s will remember Evans as Samanthas father, Maurice and his real-life insistence that his first name was pronounced the same as the name Morris was ironically at odds with his Bewitched characters contrasting stance that it be pronounced Maw-REESE. Evans also appeared in the season of Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker playing a French impresario Beaumarchais. He also played The Puzzler on Batman in a double episode storyline in December 1966. Continuing his American TV appearances, he guest starred in The Big Valley from the part of the fourth and final season of that western series in April 1969. Evans had great impact onscreen as well and he played a diabolical villain in 1951s Kind Lady, co-starring Ethel Barrymore and Angela Lansbury
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Joseph Cotten
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Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Jr. was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the stage productions of The Philadelphia Story. He first gained fame in the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons. He went on to one of the leading Hollywood actors of the 1940s, appearing in films such as Shadow of a Doubt, Love Letters, Duel in the Sun, Portrait of Jennie, The Third Man. One of his films was Michael Ciminos Heavens Gate. Joseph Cotten was born in 1905 in Petersburg, Virginia, the first of three born to Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr. an assistant postmaster, and Sally Willson Cotten. He grew up in the Tidewater region and showed an aptitude for drama, in 1923, when Cotten was 18, his family arranged for him to receive private lessons at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington, D. C. and underwrote his expenses. He earned spending money playing professional football on Sundays, for $25 a quarter, after graduation, he earned enough money as a lifeguard at Wilcox Lake to pay back his familys loan, with interest. He worked as an agent, and his work as a theatre critic inspired him to become involved in theatre productions, first in Virginia. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1930, in 1934 Cotten met and became friends with Orson Welles, a fellow cast member on CBS Radios The American School of the Air. Welles regarded Cotten as a brilliant comic actor, and gave him the role in his Federal Theatre Project farce. Cotten was sure that Horse Eats Hat won him the notice of his future Broadway costar, Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short, Too Much Johnson, a comedy that was intended to complement the aborted 1938 Mercury stage production of William Gillettes 1890 play. The film was never screened in public and was lost until 2013, Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, creating the role of C. K. Dexter Haven opposite Katharine Hepburns Tracy Lord in the original production of Philip Barrys The Philadelphia Story. The play ran for a year at the Shubert Theatre, Hayward suggested that they call Cottens good pal, Orson Welles. Hes been making big waves out here, Hayward said, maybe nobody in Hollywood ever heard of the Shubert Theatre in New York, but everybody certainly knows about the Mercury Theatre in New York. After the success of Welless War of the Worlds 1938 Halloween radio broadcast, the two-picture deal promised full creative control for the young director below an agreed budget limit, and Welless intention was to feature the Mercury Players in his productions. Shooting had still not begun on a Welles film after a year, in mid-1940 filming began on Citizen Kane, portraying the life of a press magnate who starts out as an idealist but eventually turns into a corrupt, lonely old man. The film featured Cotten prominently in the role of Kanes best friend Jedediah Leland, nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942, the film won only for Best Screenplay, for Mankiewicz and Welles
43.
Alan Marshal (actor)
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For people named Alan Marshall, see Alan Marshall. Alan Marshal was an actor who performed on stage in the United States, born Alan M Willey in Sydney, Australia, he was the son of popular Queensland stage actress Irby Marshall and English actor-producer Leonard Willey. The family left Australia in mid 1914, when he was four years old, Irby and Leonard continued their successful careers on the stage in the United States and Alan reportedly first appeared on Broadway in The Swan, at age 15. According to his son, Kit, Marshal was spotted by a scout while performing in a play in New York and was asked to do a screen test for Selznick International Studios. During his film career he co-starred with Marlene Dietrich, Irene Dunne, Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Marshal eloped with socialite Mary Grace Borel in 1938. Their son, Kit Marshal, was born on 2 December 1939 and he died from a heart attack while appearing in Chicago with Mae West in a production of her play Sextette. His interment was at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
44.
James Mason
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James Neville Mason was an English actor. He was nominated for three Academy Awards and three Golden Globes, Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Mabel Hattersley and John Mason. His father was a textile merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in architecture at Peterhouse, Mason had no formal training in acting and initially embarked upon it for fun. After Cambridge he made his debut in Aldershot in The Rascal in 1931. He joined The Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie, in 1933 Alexander Korda gave Mason a small role in The Private Life of Don Juan but sacked him three days into shooting. From 1935-38, he starred in many British quota quickies, Mason became hugely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady. He also starred with Deborah Kerr and Robert Newton in Hatters Castle and he then took the lead role in the popular The Seventh Veil, which set box office records in post-war Britain and raised him to international stardom. He followed it with a role as a mortally wounded IRA bank robber on the run in Odd Man Out and his first Hollywood film, exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in each year between 1944 and 1947. They also thought he was the most popular star in 1946. He was the most popular star in Canada in 1948. Masons languid but impassioned vocal talent enabled him to play a villain as easily as his good looks assisted him as a leading man. His roles include Brutus in Julius Caesar, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in The Desert Fox, The Story of Rommel and The Desert Rats, in the 1950s, Mason was host of Lux Video Theatre on CBS television. In 1963 he settled in Switzerland, and embarked on a transatlantic career, one of his last roles, that of corrupt lawyer Ed Concannon in The Verdict, earned him his third and final Oscar nomination. Mason had been a neighbour and friend of the comedian. Having completed playing the role in Dr. This was to be Masons final screen performance, in the late 1970s, Mason became a mentor to up-and-coming actor Sam Neill. Mason was a lover of animals, particularly cats
45.
Hedy Lamarr
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Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian and American film actress and inventor. After an early and brief film career in Germany that included the controversial film Ecstasy, she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, there, she met MGM head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a contract in Hollywood, where she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s. Lamarr appeared in numerous feature films, including Algiers, I Take This Woman, Comrade X, Come Live With Me, H. M. Pulham, Esq. and Samson. Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary and her father was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg and was a successful bank director. Lamarr helped get her out of Austria and to the United States. Her mother later became a United States citizen, Gertrud Kiesler put Hebrew as her race on her petition for naturalization as a United States citizen. In the late 1920s, Lamarr was discovered as an actress, following her training in the theater, she returned to Vienna, where she began to work in the film industry, first as a script girl, and soon as an actress. In early 1933, at age 18, she starred in Gustav Machatýs film, Ecstasy and her role was that of a neglected young wife married to an indifferent older man. The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarrs face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up, on 10 August 1933, Lamarr married Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She was 18 years old and he was 33 and she claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist government of Italy, selling munitions to Mussolini, Lamarr wrote that Mussolini and Hitler attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and these conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science. Lamarrs marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to herself from both him and her country. After arriving in Paris in 1937, she met Louis B, mayer, who was scouting for talent in Europe. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to the silent film star. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the worlds most beautiful woman, Lamarr made her American film debut in Algiers, opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a sensation, says Shearer
46.
Claude Rains
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William Claude Rains was an English film and stage actor whose career spanned 46 years. He was a Tony Award winning actor and was a nominee for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Rains was considered to be one of the great character stars with an extraordinary voice who was, according to the All-Movie Guide. During his lengthy career he was admired by many of his contemporaries such as Bette Davis, Vincent Sherman, Ronald Neame. Rains also inspired many younger actors such as John Gielgud, Charles Laughton, William Claude Rains was born on 10 November 1889 in Camberwell, London. His parents were Emily Eliza and the stage actor Frederick William Rains and he lived in the slums of London and in his own words on the wrong side of the river Thames Rains was one of twelve children, all but three dying of malnutrition when still infants. His mother took in boarders in order to support the family, according to his daughter, he grew up with a very serious Cockney accent and a speech impediment which took the form of a stutter, which caused him to call himself Willie Wains. His native accent was so strong that his daughter couldnt understand a word he said when he used it to sing old Cockney songs to her or purposely use it to annoy her. Rains left school after the grade to sell papers so that he could bring the pennies and halfpennies home for his mother. He sang in the Palm Street Church choir which also him a few pence to take home. Due to his father being an actor the young Rains would spend time in theatres and surrounded by actors and it was here where he could watch actors up close as well as the day to day running of a theatre. Rains made his debut at the age of 10 in the play Sweet Nell of Old Drury at the Haymarket Theatre. At one time, he was involved in a gas attack which resulted in his losing 90 percent of the vision in his eye for the rest of his life. By the end of the war, he had risen from the rank of Private to that of Captain, after the war had ended Rains remained in England, where he continued to develop his acting talents. These talents were recognised by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and his daughter, Jessica, when describing her fathers voice said The interesting thing to me was that he became a different person. He became an elegant man, with a really extraordinary Mid-Atlantic accent. It was his voice, nobody else spoke like that, half American, half English, soon after he became recognised as one of the leading stage actors in London. Aged 29, he played the role of Clarkis in his one silent film which was a British film titled, during his early years, Rains also taught at RADA, where John Gielgud and Charles Laughton were some of his students
47.
Robert Newton
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Robert Newton was an English stage and film actor. Along with Errol Flynn, Newton was one of the most popular actors among the juvenile audience of the 1940s and early 1950s. Known for his hard drinking lifestyle, he was cited as a model by the actor Oliver Reed. He would continue to portray Blackbeard in 1952 and Long John Silver again in the 1954 film of the same name, hailing from Dorset in the West Country of southern England, his exaggeration of his West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical pirate voice. Newton has become the saint of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Robert Guy Newton was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, a son of the landscape painter Algernon Newton and he was educated in Lamorna near Penzance, Cornwall, then at Exeter School and St Bartholomews School in Newbury, Berkshire. His acting career began at the age of 16 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1921 and he followed this by performing in plays in the West End of London. He also appeared in Private Lives on Broadway, taking over the role from his friend Laurence Olivier, from 1932 to 1934, he was the manager of the Shilling Theatre in Fulham, London. In 1939, he played Horatio to Laurence Oliviers Hamlet at the Old Vic, in a production also included Alec Guinness. During the war he starred in the West End in No Orchids for Miss Blandish and his final performance on stage was in the 1950 production of Gaslight with Rosamund John at the Vaudeville Theatre. During World War II, Newton served in the Royal Navy on board HMS Britomart and he also starred in a number of notable films. There were also roles that displayed his versatility, in Alfred Hitchcocks film Jamaica Inn, he played a virtuous law officer. Newton appeared in roles in two films based on the novella The Vessel of Wrath by W. Somerset Maugham. He played the Dutch contrôleur in the 1938 version, and the role of Edward Ginger Ted Wilson in The Beachcomber. He starred as the Scottish hatter, James Brodie, in Hatters Castle and he also played Ancient Pistol in Laurence Oliviers 1944 film of Henry V and Lukey in Carol Reeds Odd Man Out, this performance was later immortalised in Harold Pinters play Old Times. A good example of Newton playing a lead role is Noël Cowards This Happy Breed directed by David Lean in 1944. He again played Long John Silver in a 1954 Australian-made film and it was shot at Pagewood Studios, Sydney and directed by Byron Haskin, who had directed Treasure Island. The company went on to make a 26-episode 1955 TV series, The Adventures of Long John Silver, while filming in Australia in 1954, Newton was declared bankrupt with debts in the UK of £47,000
