1.
Busby Berkeley
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Busby Berkeley was a Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeleys works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances, Berkeley was born in Los Angeles, California, to stage actress Gertrude Berkeley. Whether he was actually christened Busby Berkeley William Enos, or Berkeley William Enos, in addition to her stage work, Gertrude played mother roles in silent films while Berkeley was still a child. Berkeley made his stage début at five, acting in the company of his performing family, during World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant. Watching soldiers drill may have inspired his later complex choreography, during the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway, berkeleys top shot technique appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 Universal drama film Night World. As choreographer, Berkeley was allowed a degree of independence in his direction of musical numbers. Berkeleys popularity with an entertainment-hungry Great Depression audience was secured when he choreographed four musicals back-to-back for Warner Bros. 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, the aforementioned Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, berkeleys innovative and often sexually charged dance numbers have been analyzed at length by cinema scholars. In particular, the numbers have been critiqued for their display of the form as seen through the male gaze. Berkeley always denied any deep significance to his work, arguing that his professional goals were to constantly top himself. As the outsized musicals in which Berkeley specialized became passé, he turned to straight directing, the result was 1939s They Made Me a Criminal, one of John Garfields best films. Berkeley had several well-publicized run-ins with MGM stars such as Judy Garland, in 1943, he was removed as director of Girl Crazy because of disagreements with Garland, although the lavish musical number I Got Rhythm, which he directed, remained in the picture. His next stop was at 20th Century-Fox for 1943s The Gangs All Here, the film made money, but Berkeley and the Fox brass disagreed over budget matters. Berkeley returned to MGM in the late 1940s, where many other accomplishments he conceived the Technicolor finales for the studios Esther Williams films. Berkeleys final film as choreographer was MGMs Billy Roses Jumbo, in the late 1960s, the camp craze brought the Berkeley musicals back to the forefront
2.
Henry Koster
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Henry Koster was born Hermann Kosterlitz to Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany. He became a director and later moved to Hollywood. He was the husband of actress Peggy Moran, Koster was introduced to cinema about 1910 when his uncle opened a very early movie theater in Berlin. Kosters mother played the piano to accompany the films, leaving the boy to occupy himself by watching the films. After working initially as a story writer, Kosterlitz was subsequently hired by a Berlin movie company as scenarist. Bernhardt became sick one day and asked Kosterlitz to take over as director, in 1932, Koster directed his first film in Berlin, the comedy Thea Roland. Koster, who was in the midst of directing his second film Das häßliche Mädchen, had already been the subject of antisemitism and he lost his temper at an SA officer at his bank during lunch hour, and knocked the officer out. When the film, written by Koster with Felix Joachimson, had its premiere in autumn 1933 their names were deleted, Koster left Germany for France, where he was rehired by Bernhardt. Eventually Koster went to Budapest and met and married Kató Király in 1934, in Budapest he met Joe Pasternak again, who represented Universal in Europe, and directed three films for him. One of those films was Catherine the Last after a script by Joachimson, in 1936 Koster got a contract to work with Universal Pictures in Hollywood, and he travelled to the United States to work with Pasternak, other refugees and his wife. Although Koster did not speak English, he convinced the studio to let him make Three Smart Girls and this picture, a big success, pulled Universal out of bankruptcy. Kosters second Universal film, One Hundred Men and a Girl, with Durbin and Leopold Stokowski put the studio, Durbin, Pasternak, Koster discovered Abbott and Costello working at a nightclub in New York. He returned to Hollywood and convinced Universal to hire them and their first picture, which featured the Whos On First. Routine, was One Night in the Tropics, the female lead, Peggy Moran, would become Kosters second wife in 1942. When he married Moran, Koster promised her he would put her in every movie he made from then on and he did, but it was her statue. Usually it is a head on a mantelpiece or a piano or desk. For The Robe he commissioned a Grecian bust which appears prominently in a Roman villa, Henry Koster went on to do numerous musicals and family comedies during the late 1930s and early 1940s, with Durbin, Betty Grable, and other musical stars of the era. Ironically, despite Kosters escape from Nazi Germany, when the United States entered World War II Koster was considered an alien and had to stay in his house in the evening
3.
Vincente Minnelli
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Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made many comedies and he was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951, they were the parents of Liza Minnelli. His father was conductor of Minnelli Brothers Tent Theater. His Chicago-born mother was of French Canadian descent with a probability of Native American lineage included via her Mackinac Island. The family toured small towns primarily in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before settling permanently in Delaware, domenico Minnelli had been Vice-Chancellor of the Gran Corte Civile in Palermo at the time he helped organize the January 12,1848 uprising there. After the Bourbon return to power Vincenzo reportedly hid in the catacombs of Palermo for 18 months before being successfully smuggled onto a New York-bound fruit steamer. While traveling as a demonstrator for Knabe Pianos, Vincenzo met his future wife Nina Picket during a stop in Delaware. Although there is no confirmation of Vincenzo working at Ohio Wesleyan University, Library of Congress and the Newberry Library in Chicago have Vincenzo Minnelli compositions in their collections. Albert Picket, reportedly once a student of Noah Websters, conducted a school in 1810s Manhattan and was an early member of the New York Historical Society. In 1811 he was an incorporator of The Society of Teachers of the City of New York, with his son John W. Picket he published an educational journal, The Academician, and a number of school books, including The Juvenile Expositor in 1816. In his later years he retired to Delaware, Ohio and died there in 1850, following his high school graduation, Minnelli moved to Chicago, where he lived briefly with his maternal grandmother and an aunt. His first job was at Marshall Fields department store as a window dresser and he later worked as a photographer for Paul Stone, who specialized in photographing actors from Chicagos theater district. His interest in the theater grew and he was interested in art. Minnellis first job in the theater was at the Chicago Theatre where he worked as a costume, owned by Balaban and Katz, the theater chain soon merged with a bigger national chain of Paramount-Publix and Minnelli sometimes found himself assigned to work on shows in New York City. He soon left Chicago and rented a tiny Greenwich Village apartment, the revue was well received and enjoyed a two-year run. Minnelli later worked on The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, Hooray for What, very Warm for May, and The Show is On. Minnellis reputation grew and he was offered a job at MGM in 1940 by producer Arthur Freed, with his background in theatre, Minnelli was known as an auteur who always brought his stage experience to his films. The first film that he directed, Cabin in the Sky, was influenced by the theater
4.
Myles Connolly
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Myles Connolly was an author and a Hollywood screenwriter/producer. Myles Connolly was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, after receiving his education at Boston Latin School, he graduated from Boston College in 1918. After serving one year in the U. S. Navy during World War I, as a reporter, he was able to lay claim to being one of the few journalists ever granted the opportunity to interview President Calvin Coolidge. For many years, Connolly was a frequent contributor of verse and short stories to national magazines, both he and his Nashville socialite wife, Agnes, were devout Roman Catholics and each had a sister who was a nun. Their daughter, Mary, also became a nun and Mrs. Connolly had a nephew who was a priest, Connolly had a fan in fellow Bostonian Joseph P. Kennedy. Kennedy convinced Connolly to leave Boston to work at the Hollywood movie studio that Kennedy financed and he began his work at FBO as a film producer in the 1929 Frank Craven and Richard Rosson comedy The Very Idea. FBO was purchased by RCA to become RKO studios in 1930, at RKO, Connolly served as associate producer for that studios earliest Wheeler & Woolsey vehicles. In 1933, his work as a screenwriter-producer of dramatic films was introduced with The Right to Romance, Connolly eventually befriended director Frank Capra at a cast and crew party for Ladies of Leisure after actor Alan Roscoe invited Connolly to tag along with him to the event. Capra followed Roscoes lead in describing the writer/producer from Boston as a hulking, 230-pound, six-three, writer Sam Fuller described Connolly as a wonderful man. Though Connolly chided Capra for turning out frivolities when he thought Capra could produce thought provoking pieces and he produced numerous pieces of escapist entertainment such as the Tarzan pictures of the 1940s. Myles Connolly helped write and produce over forty films and his last screenwriting credit was MGMs musical biography of Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye. Connolly wrote and published several Roman Catholic parable novels, including Mr. Blue, although, Connolly wrote additional novels nothing came as close in popularity as Mr. Blue, which he wrote at the age of 27 years. The book remained in print for 60 years and, in spite of his steady and respectable film career, screenwriting credits include the The Right to Romance, Palm Springs, Youth Takes a Fling, and the Charles Vidor film Hans Christian Andersen. Connolly co-wrote the Ann Sothern-Lew Ayres film Maisie Was a Lady with Elizabeth Reinhardt, in addition, he worked with Sam Fuller to create It Happened in Hollywood. Myles Connolly was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for Music for Millions, 1n 1951, he shared the nomination for a Hugo award for the screenplay of Harvey. In 1952, he was nominated for the Best Written American Musical award by the Writers Guild of America for Here Comes the Groom. Mr. Blue,1928 The Bump on Brannigans Head,1950 Dan England and the Noonday Devil,1951 The Reason for Ann,1953 Three Who Ventured,1958 Myles Connolly at IMDB
5.
Guy Bolton
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Guy Reginald Bolton was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U. S. he trained as an architect, among his other collaborators in Britain were George Grossmith Jr. Ian Hay and Weston and Lee. In the U. S. he worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Kalmar and Ruby, Bolton is best known for his early work on the Princess Theatre musicals during the First World War with Wodehouse and the composer Jerome Kern. Among his 50 plays and musicals, most of which were considered frothy confections, additional hits included Primrose, Bolton also wrote stage adaptations of novels by Henry James and Somerset Maugham, and wrote three novels on his own and a fourth in collaboration with Bernard Newman. He worked on screenplays for films as Ambassador Bill and Easter Parade. With Wodehouse, he wrote a joint memoir of their Broadway years, Bolton was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, the elder son of an American engineer, Reginald Pelham Bolton, and his wife Kate. His younger brother, Jamie, died young, leaving Guy, the family moved to the U. S. settling in New York Citys Washington Heights. Bolton studied to be an architect, attending the Pratt Institute School of Architecture and Atelier Masqueray and he also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. While Bolton was still a student, his stories had been published in magazines, at the age of 26, he wrote his first stage play, The Drone, in collaboration with Douglas J. Wood. Smith and book by Bolton, first produced at the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York, the same year, he wrote Hit-the-Trail-Holiday with George M. Cohan. That same year he collaborated with Kern and others on the musicals Nobody Home and the more successful Very Good Eddie. The latter of the two was also a hit in London, nevertheless, he collaborated with one of operettas last practitioners, Emmerich Kálmán, in an adaptation of Kálmáns 1915 piece Zsuzsi Kisassony. Miss Springtime, as the American version was called, was produced at the New Amsterdam Theatre in 1916. Bolton wrote the book, the lyrics were by Herbert Reynolds and P. G. Wodehouse, Kern, who already knew Wodehouse, introduced him to Bolton at the premiere of Very Good Eddie. Wodehouse admired Boltons stagecraft, but thought his lyrics weak, and at Kerns urging they decided to write jointly, Wodehouse concentrating on the lyrics and Bolton on the book. For the Princess Theatre, Bolton and Wodehouse wrote the book and lyrics for Have a Heart, Oh, Boy. which ran for 463 performances, Leave It to Jane, Oh, Lady. They also collaborated on Miss 1917 at the Century Theatre, on Boltons second Kálmán show, The Riviera Girl, and on Kissing Time, during these years, Bolton also wrote successful plays with George Middleton and others. But it was the Princess Theatre shows with Kern that made the most impression, an anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins, This is the trio of musical fame, Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern
6.
June Allyson
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June Allyson was an American stage, film, and television actress, dancer, and singer. Allyson began her career in 1937 as a dancer in short subject films and she signed with MGM in 1943, and rose to fame the following year in Two Girls and a Sailor. Allysons girl next door image was solidified during the mid-1940s when she was paired with actor Van Johnson in five films, in 1951, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss. From 1959 to 1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson. In the 1970s, she returned to the starring in Forty Carats and No, No. In 1982, Allyson released her autobiography June Allyson by June Allyson and she later established the June Allyson Foundation for Public Awareness and Medical Research and worked to raise money for research for urological and gynecological diseases affecting senior citizens. During the 1980s, Allyson also became a spokesperson for Depend undergarments and she made her final onscreen appearance in 2001. Allyson was married four times and had two children with her first husband, Dick Powell and she died of respiratory failure and bronchitis in July 2006 at the age of 88. Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman, nicknamed Ella, in the Bronx and she was the daughter of Clara and Robert Geisman. She had a brother, Henry, who was two years older and she said she had been raised as a Roman Catholic, but a discrepancy exists relating to her early life, and her studio biography was often the source of the confusion. Her paternal grandparents, Harry Geisman and Anna Hafner, were immigrants from Germany although Allyson claimed her last name was originally Van Geisman, studio biographies listed her as Jan Allyson born to French-English parents. Upon her death, her daughter said Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman to a French mother, in April 1918, her alcoholic father, who had worked as a janitor, abandoned the family. Allyson was brought up in poverty, living with her maternal grandparents. To make ends meet, her mother worked as a telephone operator, when she had enough funds, she would occasionally reunite with her daughter, but more often Allyson was farmed out to her grandparents or other relatives. In 1925, a branch fell on her while she was riding on her tricycle with her pet terrier in tow. Allyson sustained a skull and broken back, and her dog was killed. In her later memoirs, Allyson does describe a program of swimming that did help her recovery. As a teen, Allyson memorized the trademark Ginger Rogers dance routines and she also tried to emulate the singing styles of movie stars although she never mastered reading music
7.
Lucille Bremer
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Lucille Bremer was an American film actress and dancer. Lucille Bremer was born in Amsterdam, New York, but soon moved to Philadelphia Pennsylvania, at age 12, she danced with the Philadelphia Opera Company. Once in New York, she danced in various specialty acts and she auditioned and began her career as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, at age 16. She was voted as most likely to succeed by her Rockette peers and she was also known as 5th from the right in the Rockettes line up. Her screen test with Warner Bros. was unsuccessful, It was so bad I realized why nothing had happened, she said later. She returned to dancing, performing at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City and the Club Versailles, where she was spotted by Arthur Freed and she was taken to Hollywood, where her screen test impressed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mogul Louis B. An accomplished dancer, she was considered to display potential as a dramatic actress. She also screen tested and was offered a contract with Goldwyn Studios and she studied acting at MGM with the great acting coach Lillian Burns. Bremer made her debut in Meet Me in St. Louis as Judy Garlands sister, and followed this with a starring role opposite Fred Astaire in Yolanda. Despite being an excellent film, it was a failure because of its fantasy theme. Unfortunately, Bremer, a newcomer in her first starring role, following was a featured dance performance, once again with Astaire, in two memorable sequences in Ziegfeld Follies. Her last major film was Till the Clouds Roll By, but after this, after a few minor films, she played her last starring role in Behind Locked Doors. Her final three films, in 1948, were all Eagle-Lion, reportedly disappointed with her Hollywood career, she elected not to renew her contract and left the film industry. She had also met and fallen in love with the son of the president of Mexico, Abelardo Luis Rodriguez. She and Rod Rodriguez were married at Catalina Island in August 1948, with her contacts in Hollywood, and her husband Rod Rodriguezs influence, they drew people from Hollywood who sought to enjoy this newly found paradise. She and her husband were also partners with Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball. After her divorce, Bremer settled in La Jolla, California and she continued to travel between La Jolla, California, and Baja California Mexico. She died in 1996 from an attack at age 79
8.
Judy Garland
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Judy Garland was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two sisters and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two films with MGM, including nine with Mickey Rooney. Garlands most famous role was as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and her other roles at MGM included Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls and Easter Parade. After 15 years, she was released from the studio and made record-breaking concert appearances, a recording career. Film appearances became fewer in her years, but included two Academy Award nominated performances in A Star Is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg. Garland received a Golden Globe Award, a Juvenile Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. She was the first woman to win a Grammy for Album of the Year for her recording of Judy at Carnegie Hall. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema, from an early age Garland struggled in her personal life. The pressures of adolescent stardom sent her to a psychiatrist at age eighteen and her self-image was influenced by film executives who said she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. She was plagued by instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce and she also had a long battle with drugs and alcohol, which ultimately led to her death from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47. Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10,1922, in Grand Rapids and she was the youngest child of Ethel Marion and Francis Avent Frank Gumm. Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a theater that featured vaudeville acts. She was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church, baby shared her familys flair for song and dance. The Gumm Sisters performed there for the few years, accompanied by their mother on piano. The family relocated to Lancaster, California, in June 1926, Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel began managing her daughters and working to get them into motion pictures
9.
Kathryn Grayson
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Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and soprano. From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer and she was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a performer in such films as Thousands Cheer, Anchors Aweigh with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in Camelot, later in the decade she performed in several operas, including La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata. She was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Lillian was of Russian-Mongolian, Native American and English descent, and Charles was of German, Russian-Mongolian and Sicilian descent. Graysons sister, Frances Raeburn was also an actress and singer and she also had two brothers, Clarence Bud E. Hedrick, and Harold. In 1940, an MGM talent scout saw Grayson performing at a music festival, metro hoped to find a replacement for Deanna Durbin, who left the studio for Universal Pictures. For the next 18 months, Grayson went through voice lessons, drama coaching, diction, diets, within a year, Grayson had her first screen test. In the film, she takes part in three musical numbers, ann Sothern was also slated to appear, however, this fell through as well. The film eventually was made in 1944 as Broadway Rhythm and she appeared in three films in 1942, The Vanishing Virginian, Rio Rita and Seven Sweethearts. In the first, Grayson plays the daughter, Rebecca, of the eccentric Yancey family from Lynchburg. Set in 1913, the film was based on Rebecca Yancey Williamss own family, Grayson co-starred in Rio Rita with Abbott and Costello. Grayson portrayed the character, Rita Winslow. In 1943, Grayson appeared in the film Thousands Cheer, along with Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Eleanor Powell, June Allyson, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families. Grayson starred as the daughter of an Army commander. It was announced in 1942 that Grayson would appear in An American Symphony with Judy Garland, Garland was replaced by June Allyson, and the film was retitled as Two Sisters from Boston and released in 1946. Grayson did not appear in any films for two years, but instead worked at entertaining troops during the war and performing on radio programs. Notably, it is reported that she would perform under the condition that the audience was integrated
10.
Van Heflin
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Van Heflin was an American theatre, radio and film actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Johnny Eager. Heflin was born Emmett Evan Heflin, Jr. in Walters, Oklahoma, the son of Fanny Bleecker and Dr. Emmett Evan Heflin and he was of Irish and French ancestry. Heflins sister was Daytime Emmy-nominated actress Frances Heflin, Heflin attended Classen High School in Oklahoma City and the University of Oklahoma, where he received a bachelors degree in 1932 and was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He earned a degree in theater at Yale University. Heflin began his career on Broadway in the early 1930s before being signed to a contract by RKO Radio Pictures. He made his debut in A Woman Rebels, opposite Katharine Hepburn. MGM began to groom him as a man in B movies. Heflin continued to hone his skills throughout the early 1940s. Heflin served during World War II in the United States Army Air Corps as a cameraman in the Ninth Air Force in Europe. Heflin also performed on stage throughout his acting career, playing a huge variety of roles in both films and on stage, probably his best-known film became the 1953 classic western Shane, in which he co-starred with Alan Ladd. As Joe Starrett, the plain, honest farmer who tries to unite a small community of sodbusters his performance is a bedrock of the film, although it was not recognised among the awards of 1953. The Adventures of Philip Marlowe was a detective drama that aired from June 17,1947, through September 15,1951. He also acted on the Lux Radio Theatre, Suspense, Cavalcade of America and his film Cry of Battle was playing at the Texas Theatre in Dallas on November 22,1963. His name and the title appear on the marquee. It was that theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended in the aftermath of President Kennedys assassination, Heflin appeared in a short but dramatic role as an eyewitness of Jesus raising of Lazarus from death in the 1965 Bible film, The Greatest Story Ever Told. After seeing the miracle he ran from Bethany to the walls of Jerusalem and he played D. O. Guerrero, a failure who schemes to blow himself up on an airliner so that his wife can collect on a life insurance policy. After a six-month marriage to actress Eleanor Shaw, he married RKO contract player Frances Neal and they had two daughters, actresses Vana OBrien and Cathleen Heflin, and a son, Tracy
11.
Lena Horne
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Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American jazz and pop music singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Hornes career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television, because of the Red Scare and her political activism, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne, The Lady and Her Music. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards, Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of heart failure on May 9,2010. Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was a granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, she was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Ednas maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave, Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia, for several years, she traveled with her mother. From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother and she then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn that has since become Boys and Girls High School, she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved in with her father in Pittsburgh, staying in the citys Little Harlem for almost five years and learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others. In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall. A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissles Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41 and she replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBCs popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The shows resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor, Hornes songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Youngs Little Troc on the Sunset Strip in January 1942, a few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an episode of the radio series Suspense, as a fictional nightclub singer. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstines Orchestra, as a result, most of Hornes film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline
12.
Van Johnson
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Charles Van Dell Johnson was an American film and television actor and dancer who was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson made occasional World War II movies through the end of the 1960s, at the time of his death in December 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee idols of Hollywoods golden age. Charles Van Dell Johnson was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the child of Loretta, a housewife, and Charles E. Johnson. His father was born in Sweden and came to the United States as a young child and his mother, an alcoholic, left the family when her son was a child, Johnsons relationship with his father was chilly. Johnson performed at clubs in Newport while in high school. He moved to New York City after graduating high school in 1935 and joined an off-Broadway revue. After touring New England in a troupe as a substitute dancer. Johnson returned to the chorus after that, and worked in summer resorts near New York City, in 1939, director and playwright George Abbott cast him in Rodgers and Harts Too Many Girls in the role of a college boy and as understudy for all three male leads. After an uncredited role in the adaptation of Too Many Girls, Abbott hired him as a chorus boy. Johnson was about to back to New York when Lucille Ball took him to Chasens Restaurant, where she introduced him to MGM casting director Billy Grady. This led to tests by Hollywood studios. His test at Columbia Pictures was unsuccessful, but Warner Brothers put him on contract at $300 a week and his all-American good looks and easy demeanor were ill-suited to the gritty movies Warner made at the time, and the studio dropped him at the expiration of his six-month contract. Shortly before leaving Warner, he was cast as a cub reporter opposite Faye Emerson in the 1942 film Murder in the Big House and his eyebrows and hair were dyed black for the role. As with other players at MGM, Johnson was provided with classes in acting, speech. Johnson subsequently appeared in Pilot No.5 and in William Saroyans The Human Comedy, which was produced in 1943, and in the role in Two Girls. Johnsons big break was in A Guy Named Joe, starring Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne, when the crash happened, Johnsons scalp was nearly sheared off. The closest rescue units responded, but because the accident happened just over the county line. Johnson had to slap his scalp into place and literally crawl nearly 50 yards to get to the workers for aid
13.
Angela Lansbury
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Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury, DBE is a British-American-Irish actress who has appeared in theatre, television and film, as well as a producer, singer and songwriter. Her career has spanned seven decades, much of it in the United States, Lansbury was born to a middle-class family in central London, the daughter of actress Moyna Macgill and politician Edgar Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States with her mother and two younger brothers, and studied acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the role in the Broadway musical Mame. Amid difficulties in her life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland, in 1970. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films such as Disneys Beauty, since then, she has toured in a variety of international theatrical productions and continued to make occasional film appearances. In 2014, Lansbury was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Windsor Castle for services to drama, charitable work, Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, an Olivier Award, and one Grammy Award. She has also nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions. She has been the subject of three biographies, Lansbury was born to an upper middle class family on October 16,1925. Although her birthplace has often given as Poplar, East London, she has rejected this, asserting that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regents Park. Her mother was Belfast-born actress Moyna Macgill, who appeared on stage in the West End. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury and her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader and anti-war activist George Lansbury, a man whom she felt awed by and considered a giant in my youth. Angela had a half sister, Isolde, who was the offspring of Moynas previous marriage to writer. When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer, in 2014, Lansbury described this event as the defining moment of my life. Nothing before or since has affected me so deeply and she nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theatre and cinema
14.
Tony Martin (American singer)
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Tony Martin was an American actor and singer. His career spanned seven decades, and he scored dozens of hits between the late-1930s and mid-1950s with songs such as Walk Hand in Hand and Stranger in Paradise. He was married to actress and dancer Cyd Charisse for 60 years until her death in 2008, alvin Morris was born on December 25,1913, in San Francisco, the son of Hattie and Edward Clarence Morris. His family was Jewish, and all of his grandparents had emigrated from Eastern Europe and he was raised in Oakland, California. At the age of ten, he received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother and he went to Oakland High School and St Mary’s College. In his grammar school glee club, he became an instrumentalist and he attended Saint Marys College of California during the mid-1930s. After college, he left Geruns band to go to Hollywood to try his luck in films and it was at that time that he adopted the stage name of Tony Martin. Martin sang and was master of ceremonies on Tune-Up Time, with Andre Kostelanetz and his The Tony Martin Show, a 15-minute variety program, aired on NBC from 1954 to 1956 prior to the evening newscast. One of his guests was Dinah Shore, soon cast in her own hour-long NBC variety program and he was a featured vocalist on the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio program. On the show Allen playfully flirted with Tony, often threatening to fire him, shed say things like, Oh, Tony, you look so tired, why dont you rest your lips on mine. In films, he was first cast in a number of bit parts, including a role as a sailor in the movie Follow the Fleet, starring Fred Astaire and he eventually signed with 20th Century-Fox and then Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in which he starred in a number of musicals. Between 1938 and 1942, he made a number of hit records for Decca, Martin was the last surviving actor to co-star with the Marx Brothers. He eventually signed with Mercury Records, then an independent run out of Chicago. He cut 25 records in 1946 and 1947 for Mercury, including a 1946 recording of To Each His Own and it was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. This prompted RCA Victor records to him a contract, which he signed in 1947 after satisfying his contract obligations to Mercury. He appeared in musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. His rendition of Lover Come Back To Me with Joan Weldon in Deep in My Heart – based on the music of Sigmund Romberg and he also starred as Gaylord Ravenal in the Show Boat segment from the 1946 film Till the Clouds Roll By. In a seemingly unlikely pairing, Martin recorded for the Motown Records label in the mid-1960s and he was one of a number of more traditional vocalists signed to the label during the decade
15.
Virginia O'Brien
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Virginia Lee OBrien was a popular American actress, singer, and radio personality known for her comedic roles in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals of the 1940s. OBrien primarily performed in comedic roles during the height of her film career. She made her Broadway debut in the short-lived musical Keep Off The Grass with Jimmy Durante and she also recorded several sides for Decca Records, including two of her signature songs – The Wild, Wild West and Say Were Sweethearts Again. She made two appearances after this, Francis in the Navy and a brief appearance in the 1976 Walt Disney Studios comedy. In 1984 she created an act, Virginia OBrien Salutes the Great MGM Musicals, which was recorded at the Masquers Club in Hollywood. She performed several times at clubs as Hollywoods Roosevelt Hotel Cinegrill. Bar and Grill and the Gardenia, as well as the Plush Room in San Francisco and she continued to perform well into the 1990s with both her one-woman show and a production of Show Boat co-starring Alan Young, and also headlined The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies. She died aged 81 in Woodland Hills, California from natural causes and she is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Virginia OBrien, The Diva of Deadpan
16.
Dinah Shore
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Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, television personality, and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1940s. After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman, TV Guide magazine ranked her at #16 on their list of the top fifty television stars of all time. Stylistically, Shore was compared to two singers who followed her in the mid-to-late 1940s and early 1950s, Doris Day and Patti Page, Fannye Rose Shore was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant shopkeepers, Anna and Solomon Shore, in Winchester, Tennessee. She had a sister,8 years her senior, Elizabeth. When Fannye was two old, she was stricken with polio, a disease that was not preventable at the time. Her parents provided intensive care for her, suggesting rigorous exercising and she recovered, but she sustained a deformed foot and limp. She loved to sing as a child, her mother. Her father would take her to his store where she would perform impromptu songs for the customers. In 1924, the Shore family moved to McMinnville, Tennessee, by her fifth-grade year, the family had moved to Nashville, where she completed elementary school. Although shy because of her limp, she became involved in sports, was a cheerleader at Nashvilles Hume-Fogg High School. At some point, Fannye became known as Frances, when Shore was 16, her mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Pursuing her education, she enrolled at Vanderbilt University, where she participated in events and activities. She graduated from the university in 1938 with a degree in sociology and she visited the Grand Ole Opry and made her radio debut on Nashvilles WSM radio station. In many of her auditions, she sang the popular song Dinah, when disc jockey Martin Block could not remember her name, he called her the Dinah girl, and soon after the name stuck, becoming her stage name. She eventually was hired as a vocalist at radio station WNEW and she recorded and performed with the Xavier Cugat orchestra, and signed a recording contract with RCA Victor Records in 1940. In March 1939, Shore debuted on radio on the Sunday afternoon CBS radio program. In February 1940, she became a featured vocalist on the NBC Radio program The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, a showcase for traditional Dixieland and Blues songs. With Shore, the program became so popular that it was moved from 4,30 Sunday afternoon to a 9,00 Monday night time slot in September
17.
Frank Sinatra
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Francis Albert Sinatra was an American singer, actor, and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the music artists of all time. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants, Sinatra began his career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943 and he released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946. Sinatras professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas and his career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice n Easy. Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own label, Reprise Records. It was followed by 1968s collaboration with Duke Ellington, using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until a short time before his death in 1998. Sinatra forged a successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm and he appeared in various musicals such as On the Town, Guys and Dolls, High Society, and Pal Joey, winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he associated with playing detectives. Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B, on television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. While Sinatra never formally learned how to read music, he had a natural, intuitive understanding of it, a perfectionist, renowned for his impeccable dress sense and cleanliness, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname Ol Blue Eyes, Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He went on to marry Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976, Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements. He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him the greatest singer of the 20th century, Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12,1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was the child of Italian immigrants Antonino Martino Marty Sinatra
18.
Robert Walker (actor, born 1918)
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Robert Hudson Walker was an American actor, best known for his starring role in Alfred Hitchcocks 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train, which was released shortly before his death. He started in youthful boy-next-door roles, often as a World War II soldier, One of these roles was opposite his first wife, Jennifer Jones, in Since You Went Away. He also played Jerome Kern in Till the Clouds Roll By, twice divorced by 30, he suffered from alcoholism and mental illness, which were exacerbated by his painful separation and divorce from Jones. Walker was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the youngest of four sons of Zella and he was of English and Scottish descent. Walker lived in her home during his first year in the city, while attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Walker met fellow aspiring actress Phylis Isley, who later took the stage name Jennifer Jones. After a brief courtship, the couple were married in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Walker found work in radio while Phylis stayed home and gave birth to two sons in quick succession - actor Robert Walker, Jr. and Michael Walker. Walker co-starred in the weekly show Maudies Diary from August 1941 to September 1942, Phylis then returned to auditioning where her luck changed when she was discovered in 1941 by producer David O. Selznick, who changed her name to Jennifer Jones and groomed her for stardom. The couple returned to Hollywood, and Selznicks connections helped Walker secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and he also appeared in Selznicks Since You Went Away in which he and his wife portrayed doomed young lovers during World War II. By that time, Jones affair with Selznick was common knowledge, the filming of their love scenes was torturous as Selznick insisted that Walker perform take after take of each love scene with Jones. She filed for divorce in April 1945 and that same year, Walker starred as a GI preparing for overseas deployment in The Clock, with Judy Garland playing his love interest in her first straight dramatic film. In 1946, Walker starred in the musical Till the Clouds Roll By and he starred as another composer, Johannes Brahms, in Song of Love, which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henreid. In 1948 Walker starred with Ava Gardner in the film One Touch of Venus, the film was a non-musical comedy adapted from a Broadway show with music by Kurt Weill. He married Barbara Ford, the daughter of director John Ford, in July 1948 and he spent time at the Menninger Clinic in 1949 where he was treated for a psychiatric disorder. Following his discharge, he was cast by director Alfred Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train, in his final film, he played the title role of Leo McCareys My Son John, made at the height of the Red Scare. Despite the films anti-Communist themes, Walker was allegedly neither liberal nor conservative and took the job to work with McCarey, Walker died before production finished, and so angles from his death scene in Strangers were spliced into a similar melodramatic death scene near the end of the film. On the night of August 28,1951, Walkers housekeeper allegedly found the actor in an emotional state and she called Walkers psychiatrist who arrived and administered amobarbital for sedation. Walker had allegedly been drinking prior to the outburst, and it is believed the combination of amobarbital and alcohol caused him to lose consciousness, Henaghan stated that he stopped by Walkers house, where they played cards, and Walker was behaving normally. Walkers psychiatrist arrived and insisted that he receive an injection, when Walker refused, Henaghan held him down in order for the physician to administer it
19.
Jerome Kern
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Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and his musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the musicals of his day. Although dozens of Kerns musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived, songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kerns songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes, Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was then the citys brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern, a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles, at the time of Kerns birth, his father ran a stable, later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, where he attended public schools and he showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher. In 1897, the moved to Newark, New Jersey. He wrote songs for the schools first musical, a show, in 1901. Kern left high school graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. In response, Kerns father insisted that his son work with him in business, Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks, he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico and his first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his training under private tutors in Heidelberg, Germany. For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres, while in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, in 1905, Kern contributed the song Howd you like to spoon with me. To Ivan Carylls hit musical The Earl and the Girl when the transferred to Chicago. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season, The Little Cherub and The Orchid, Kern was much taken with the proprietors daughter, Eva Leale, who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Marys in Walton on October 25,1910, the couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England
20.
Otto Harbach
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Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies. He was Oscar Hammerstein IIs mentor and believed that librettists should integrate songs into the plot and he is considered one of the first great lyricists, and helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age concerned more with music, costumes, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are for Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Indian Love Call and Cuddle up a Little Closer, Harbach was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Danish immigrant parents Adolph Christiansen and his wife Sena Olsen. His parents changed their name when they immigrated to the United States, and took the name of the farm they worked on, and their new last name was Hauerbach. He attended the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, transferring to Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, where he was a friend of Carl Sandburg, joined Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, Knox has since named its 599-seat Harbach Theatre in his honor. He obtained his masters degree in English from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in the early 1900s, complaining of eye difficulties making prolonged reading uncomfortable, he became a newspaper reporter. He also worked at advertising agencies. He also worked at a firm, as a copywriter in advertising. He would have to pull out of Columbia when he could not financially support himself, in 1902, he spotted an advertisement with a picture of Fay Templeton for a new Joe Weber and Lew Fields musical. He had not been interested in theatre but more in literary classics, in the same year, he met Karl Hoschna. They wrote an opera together, but no producer would pick it up. Isidore Witmark then contacted Hoschna, his employee, and told him he wanted to turn Mary Pachecos play Incog into a musical, Hoschna then contacted Harbach, and so began the partnership. The result, with Whitmark and Charles Dickson writing the libretto, was Three Twins and their next collaboration was Madame Sherry in 1910, adapting a 1902 German operetta with Jack Gardner in the lead role. The show featured a song that was not theirs, the Albert von Tilzer and Junie McCree song Put Your Arms Around Me and they would collaborate for four more shows until Hoschna died in 1911, at the age of thirty-four. After working with Hoschna, his works had given somewhat of a name for himself, arthur Hammerstein asked Harbach in 1912 to write the lyrics to an operetta with Rudolf Friml, called The Firefly. Hammerstein could not find anyone as talented as Herbert, but settled on the unknown Friml because of his classical training, the result was a huge success, and it would spell eleven more musicals, including High Jinks and Katinka. Most of the shows they wrote together ran for over 200 performances, in 1914, he contributed the libretto only to the Percy Wenrich musical The Crinoline Girl. In 1917, he shortened his name from Hauerbach to Harbach to avoid anti-German sentiment caused by World War I and he would also work with composer Louis Hirsch during this time, and would score his biggest success so far in 1917 with Going Up
21.
Ira Gershwin
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Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century. With George he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You, The Man I Love and he was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to Georges opera Porgy and Bess. The success the brothers had with their works has often overshadowed the creative role that Ira played. However, his mastery of songwriting continued after the death of George. He wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, Gershwin was born Israel Gershowitz in New York City, the oldest of four children of Morris and Rose Gershovitz. He was followed by George in 1898, Arthur in 1900, Morris changed the family name to Gershwine, or alternatively Gershvin well before their children rose to fame. Shy in his youth, he spent much of his time at home reading and he graduated from Townsend Harris High School in 1914, where he met Yip Harburg, with whom he enjoyed a lifelong friendship, and a love of Gilbert and Sullivan. He attended the City College of New York but dropped out, the childhood home of Ira and George Gershwin was in the center of the Yiddish Theater District, on the second floor at 91 Second Avenue, between East 5th Street and East 6th Street. They frequented the local Yiddish theaters, while his younger brother began composing and plugging in Tin Pan Alley from the age of eighteen, Ira worked as a cashier in his fathers Turkish baths. It was not until 1921 that Ira became involved in the music business, alex Aarons signed Ira to write the songs for his next show, Two Little Girls in Blue, ultimately produced by Abraham Erlanger, along with co-composers Vincent Youmans and Paul Lannin. So as not to appear to trade off his brothers growing reputation, he wrote under the pseudonym Arthur Francis, Gershwins lyrics were well received, and allowed him to successfully enter the show-business world with just one show. Later the same year, the Gershwins collaborated for the first time on a score, for A Dangerous Maid and it was not until 1924 that Ira and George Gershwin teamed up to write the music for their first Broadway hit Lady, Be Good. Once the brothers joined forces, their combined talents became one of the most influential forces in the history of American Musical Theatre, when the Gershwins teamed up to write songs for Lady, Be Good, the American musical found its native idiom. Together, they wrote the music for more than twelve shows, some of their more famous works include The Man I Love, Fascinating Rhythm, Someone to Watch Over Me, I Got Rhythm and They Cant Take That Away from Me. Their partnership continued until Georges sudden death from a tumor in 1937. Following his brothers death, Ira waited nearly three years before writing again, after this temporary retirement, he teamed up with such accomplished composers as Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, and Harold Arlen. Over the next fourteen years, Gershwin continued to write the lyrics for film scores. But the failure of Park Avenue in 1946, a show about divorce
22.
P. G. Wodehouse
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Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse KBE was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. Born in Guildford, the son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy years at Dulwich College. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and his early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. Although most of Wodehouses fiction is set in England, he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. During and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern and he began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his revelations of incompetence and extravagance at Hollywood studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his career reached a new peak. In 1934 Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons, in 1940 he was prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, the talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955 and he was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, Wodehouse worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words, after the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career he would produce a novel in three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers, the Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a collateral branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry and she was visiting one of her sisters in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely. The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, Wodehouse wrote in 1957, If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not. I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it, the first name was rapidly elided to Plum, the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends. Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah, alongside his elder brothers Peveril and Armine
23.
Jimmy McHugh
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James Francis Jimmy McHugh was an American composer. One of the most prolific songwriters from the 1920s to the 1950s, McHugh began his career in Boston, where he published about a dozen songs with local publishers. This songwriting partnership marked another of McHugh’s many collaborations, among them Ted Koehler, Al Dubin, as impressive as these master lyricists were, perhaps McHugh’s best symbiotic musical relationship was with the school teacher and poet Dorothy Fields. In the artistically fruitful years after they first collaborated in 1930, McHugh, Fields and McHugh finally parted company in 1935. McHughs longest songwriting partner was Harold Adamson, Adamson provided lyrics to McHughs compositions. Such hits as Coming in on A Wing and A Prayer found its way into Bartletts Familiar Quotations, below are several of their many hits listed. For the 1948 film A Date with Judy, he composed Its a Most Unusual Day for Jane Powell, it became the young singer, Jimmy McHugh was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. The songs included were I Cant Give You Anything but Love, Im Shooting High, Roll Your Blues Away, other well-known songs of his include Im in the Mood for Love, A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening and Cuban Love Song. – Johnny Mathis Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre by Stanley Green, published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York 1976. The Oxford Companion to Popular Music by Peter Gammond, published by Oxford University Press 1991. The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950, jamaica Plain Historical Society - People Editor - - Jimmy McHughs Musical Legacy. MetroWest Daily News. The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall by Iain Cameron Williams
24.
Oscar Hammerstein II
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Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song, many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships, his collaborators wrote the music, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was born in New York City and his grandfather was the German theatre impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. His father was from a Jewish family, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents, although Hammersteins father managed the Victoria Theatre for his father and was a producer of vaudeville shows, he was opposed to his sons desire to participate in the arts. Hammerstein attended Columbia University and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917, as a student, he maintained high grades and engaged in numerous extracurricular activities. These included playing first base on the team, performing in the Varsity Show and becoming an active member of Pi Lambda Phi. When he was 19, and still a student at Columbia, his father died of Brights disease, June 10,1914, symptoms of which doctors originally attributed to scarlet fever. On the train trip to the funeral with his brother, he read the headlines in the New York Herald, the New York Times wrote, Hammerstein, the Barnum of Vaudeville, Dead at Forty. Two hours later, taps was sounded over Broadway, writes biographer Hugh Fordin, after his fathers death, he participated in his first play with the Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way. Throughout the rest of his career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Varsity Shows. After quitting law school to pursue theatre, Hammerstein began his first professional collaboration, with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and he began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book. It opened on Broadway in 1920, in 1927, Kern and Hammerstein had their biggest hit, Show Boat, which is often revived and is still considered one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre. Here we come to a new genre — the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. The play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play, came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity. Many years later, Hammersteins wife Dorothy bristled when she heard a remark that Jerome Kern had written Ol Man River, Jerome Kern wrote dum, dum, dum-dum. My husband wrote Ol Man River, other Kern-Hammerstein musicals include Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, Three Sisters, and Very Warm for May
25.
Dorothy Fields
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Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films, along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters. Fields was born in Allenhurst, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City, Fields went to and graduated in 1923 from the Benjamin Franklin School for Girls in New York City. At school, she was outstanding in the subjects of English, drama and her poems were even published in the school’s literary magazine. Her family, was involved in show business. Her father, Lew Fields, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland and they were known as the Weber and Fields vaudeville act. When the duo separated in 1904, Lew Fields went on to further his career in another direction, from 1904 till 1916, he produced about 40 Broadway shows, and was even nicknamed “The King of Musical Comedy” because of his achievements. She had two brothers, Joseph and Herbert, who also became successful on Broadway, Joseph as a writer and producer. Despite her natural familial connections to the theatre via her father, he disapproved of her choice to pursue acting and this began when he refused to let her take a job with a stock company in Yonkers. Hence Dorothy began working as a teacher and a laboratory assistant, in 1926, Fields met the popular song composer J. Fred Coots, who proposed that the two begin writing songs together. Nothing actually came out of interaction and introduction, however Coots introduced Fields to another composer and song-plugger. Fieldss career as a professional songwriter took off in 1928 when Jimmy McHugh, Fields and McHugh teamed up until 1935. Songs from this period include I Cant Give You Anything But Love, Exactly Like You, during the later 1920s, she and McHugh wrote specialty numbers for the various Cotton Club revues, many of which were recorded by Duke Ellington. In the mid 1930s, Fields started to write lyrics for films and collaborated with other composers, with Kern, she worked on the movie version of Roberta, and also on their greatest success, Swing Time. The song The Way You Look Tonight earned the Fields/Kern team an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936 and she wrote the lyrics for the 1936 movie The King Steps Out by directed by Josef von Sternberg based on the early years of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Fields returned to New York and worked again on Broadway shows, in the 1940s, she teamed up with her brother Herbert Fields, with whom she wrote the books for three Cole Porter shows, Lets Face It. Something for the Boys, and Mexican Hayride, in 1946, Fields approached Oscar Hammerstein II with her idea for a new musical based on the life of famous female sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Hammerstein liked the idea and agreed to produce the show, Kern and Fields were signed on to write the songs in the show
26.
Buddy DeSylva
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George Gard Buddy DeSylva was an American songwriter, film producer and record executive. He wrote or co-wrote many popular songs and along with Johnny Mercer and Glenn Wallichs, DeSylva was born in New York City, but grew up in California and attended the University of Southern California, where he joined the Theta Xi Fraternity. His father, Aloysius J. De Sylva, was known to American audiences as the Portuguese-born actor. His mother, Georgetta Miles Gard, was the daughter of Los Angeles police chief, deSylvas first successful songs were those used by Al Jolson on Broadway in the 1918 Sinbad production, which included Ill Say She Does. Soon thereafter he met Jolson and in 1918 the pair went to New York, in the early 1920s, DeSylva frequently worked with composer George Gershwin. Together they created the experimental one-act jazz opera Blue Monday set in Harlem, in April 1924, DeSylva married Marie Wallace, a Ziegfeld Follies dancer. In 1925, DeSylva became one third of the team with lyricist Lew Brown and composer Ray Henderson. The team was responsible for the song Magnolia which was popularized by Lou Golds orchestra, the writing and publishing partnership continued until 1930, producing a string of feel-good hits and the perennial Broadway favorite Good News. The popularity of team was so great that Gershwins mother supposedly chided her sons for not being able to write the sort of hits turned out by the trio. DeSylva joined ASCAP in 1920 and served on the ASCAP board of directors between 1922 and 1930 and he became a producer of stage and screen musicals. DeSylva relocated to Hollywood and went under contract to Fox Studios, during this tenure, he produced movies such as The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Captain January, Poor Little Rich Girl and Stowaway. In 1941, he became the Executive Producer at Paramount Pictures, at Paramount, he was also an uncredited executive producer for Double Indemnity, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Story of Dr. Wassell and The Glass Key. The Paramount all-star extravaganza Star Spangled Rhythm, which place at the Paramount film studio in Hollywood. DeSoto who is a parody of DeSylva, in 1942, Johnny Mercer, Glenn Wallichs and DeSylva together founded Capitol Records, which continues to this day. He also founded the Cowboy label and he is sometimes credited as, Buddy De Sylva, Buddy DeSylva, Bud De Sylva, Buddy G. DeSylva and B. G. Buddy DeSylva died in Hollywood, aged 55, and is buried at Glendales Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, desylva, Buddy, B. G. De Sylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson. OCLC495863850 Henderson, Ray, B. G. De Sylva, New York, Shapiro, Bernstein & Co,1925. OCLC645628000 De Sylva, B. G. Lew Brown, great Men of American Popular Song ASIN, B000OKLHXU Green, Stanley
27.
Harry Stradling
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Harry Stradling, Sr. A. S. C. was an American cinematographer with over 130 films to his credit. His uncle Walter Stradling and son Harry Stradling, Jr. were also cinematographers, Stradling was born Henry A. Stradling in Newark, New Jersey, the nephew of cameraman Walter Stradling who had worked with Mary Pickford. Confined to two-reelers in Hollywood, he left for France and Germany in the early 1930s and he made contributions to several Jacques Feyder films, Le Grand Jeu, La Kermesse héroïque, Die Klugen Frauen and Knight Without Armour, his first under producer Alexander Korda in England. Other English films include Action for Slander, The Divorce of Lady X, South Riding, The Citadel, Pygmalion, The Lion Has Wings, Jamaica Inn, Stradling moved to the United States at the beginning of World War II. Alfred Hitchcock engaged him for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, stradlings last four films starred Barbra Streisand, including her Oscar-winning debut Funny Girl. Stradling died halfway through production of The Owl and the Pussycat in Hollywood, Harry Stradling at the Internet Movie Database 1920 passport photo of Henry A. Stradling aged 19
28.
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
29.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
30.
Biographical film
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A biographical film, or biopic, is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a person and the central characters real name is used. Because the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteristics are known to the public, biopic roles are considered some of the most demanding of actors and actresses. Biopic scholars include George F. Custen of the College of Staten Island, Custen, in Bio/Pics, How Hollywood Constructed Public History, regards the genre as having died with the Hollywood studio era, and in particular, Darryl F. Zanuck. On the other hand, Binghams 2010 study Whose Lives Are They Anyway, ellen Cheshires Bio-Pics, a life in pictures examines UK/US films from the 1990s and 2000s. Each chapter reviews key films linked by profession and concludes with further viewing list, christopher Robé has also written on the gender norms that underlie the biopic in his article, Taking Hollywood Back in the 2009 issue of Cinema Journal. The Hurricane is not a documentary but a parable, some biopics purposely stretch the truth. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based on game show host Chuck Barris widely debunked yet popular memoir of the same name, Kafka incorporated both the life of author Franz Kafka and the surreal aspects of his fiction. The Errol Flynn film They Died with Their Boots On tells the story of Custer but is highly romanticized, casting can be controversial for biographical films. Casting is often a balance between similarity in looks and ability to portray the characteristics of the person, anthony Hopkins felt that he should not have played Richard Nixon in Nixon because of a lack of resemblance between the two. The casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror was objected to because of the American Wayne being cast as the Mongol warlord. Egyptian critics criticized the casting of Louis Gossett, Jr. an African American actor, also, some objected to the casting of Jennifer Lopez in Selena because she is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent while Selena was Mexican-American. Biographical novel Biography in literature List of biographical films
31.
Words and Music (1948 film)
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Words and Music is a 1948 film loosely based on the creative partnership of the composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart. The film stars Mickey Rooney as Hart and Tom Drake as Rodgers, along with Janet Leigh, Betty Garrett, Ann Sothern and numerous musical stars. It was the second in a series of MGM biopics about Broadway composers, it was preceded by Till the Clouds Roll By and followed by Three Little Words and Deep in My Heart. The movie is best remembered for featuring the final pairing between Rooney and Judy Garland, and for the lavish showcasing of the Rodgers and Hart catalogue of songs. The script, as in such films, was heavily fictionalized. It sanitized Harts complex psychological problems and self-destructive behavior, which led to the break-up of the writing partnership, in keeping with media taboos of the time, the film also completely avoided any mention of Harts homosexuality. The introduction to the film is staged as if composer Richard Rodgers were actually playing himself, actor Tom Drake appears alone in character, identifies himself as Rodgers and tells the audience it is about to see the story of his collaboration with Lorenz Hart. Though the film performed well at the box office, it proved to be quite an expensive production and, as a result. The film was budgeted at $2,659,065. The film earned $3,453,000 in the US and Canada and $1,099,000 overseas but because of its high cost recorded a loss of $371,000
32.
Rodgers and Hart
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Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Lorenz Hart. They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Harts death in 1943, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were introduced in 1919, when both attended Columbia University, when asked to write an amateur club show. They quickly became among the most popular songwriters in America, in the early 1930s they moved to Hollywood, where they created several popular songs for film, such as Isnt It Romantic. and Lover, before returning to Broadway in 1935 with Billy Roses Jumbo. From 1935 to Harts death in 1943, they wrote a string of highly regarded Broadway musicals, many of their stage musicals from the late 1930s were made into films, such as On Your Toes and Babes in Arms, though rarely with their scores intact. Pal Joey, termed their masterpiece, has a book by The New Yorker writer John OHara, OHara adapted his own short stories for the show, which featured a title character who is a heel. So unflinching was the portrait that critic Brooks Atkinson famously asked in his review Although it is expertly done, when the show was revived in 1952, audiences had learned to accept darker material. The new production had a longer run than the original and was now considered a classic by critics. Atkinson, reviewing the revival, wrote that it renews confidence in the professionalism of the theatre, time Magazine devoted a cover story to Rodgers and Hart. They wrote that their success rests on a commercial instinct that most of their rivals have apparently ignored, the article also noted the spirit of adventure. As Rodgers and Hart see it, what was killing musicomedy was its sameness, its tameness and their songs have long been favorites of cabaret singers and jazz artists. For example, Ella Fitzgerald recorded their songbook, andrea Marcovicci based one of her cabaret acts entirely on Rodgers and Hart songs. Harts lyrics, facile, vernacular, dazzling, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholic, Rodgers, as a creator of melodies, ranks with Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. Their shows belong to the era when musicals were revue-like and librettos were not much more than excuses for comic turns, Still, just as their songs were a cut above, so did the team try to raise the standard of the musical form in general. Thus, A Connecticut Yankee was based on Mark Twains novel and they had always considered the integration of story and music a crucial factor in a successful show. They used dance significantly in their work, using the ballets of George Balanchine, comparisons between Rodgers and Hart and the successor team of Rodgers and Hammerstein are inevitable. Hammersteins lyrics project warmth, sincere optimism, and occasional corniness, Harts lyrics showed greater sophistication in subject matter, more use of overt verbal cleverness, and more of a New York or Broadway sensibility. Many of the songs are wistful or sad, and emotional ambivalence seems to be perceptible in the background of even the sunnier songs. For example, You Took Advantage of Me appears to be an evocation of amorous joy, according to Chuck Denison, My Heart Stood Still is one of Rodgers and Harts most enduring hits
33.
Three Little Words (film)
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The film, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was written by Academy Award winning screenwriter George Wells, directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Jack Cummings. Harry Ruby served as a consultant on the project, and appears in a role as a baseball-catcher. It was the third in a series of MGM biopics about Broadway composers, it was preceded by Till the Clouds Roll By and Words and Music and followed by Deep in My Heart. Fred Astaire as Bert Kalmar Red Skelton as Harry Ruby Vera-Ellen as Jessie Brown Arlene Dahl as Eileen Percy Keenan Wynn as Charlie Kope Gale Robbins as Terry Lordel Gloria DeHaven as Mrs. S. charts. In recognition of his performance, Fred Astaire was awarded the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in 1951. These routines are contrasted with some choreographically primitive numbers typical of vaudeville c, the spirit of the partnered dances expands on the theme of marital contentment previously explored in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and the prior years The Barkleys of Broadway. Vera-Ellens singing voice was dubbed by Anita Ellis, where Did You Get That Girl. Astaire and Vera-Ellen, dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, impersonate the vaudeville partnership of Kalmar and Brown with this genial song, incidentally Ruby, working as a song plugger, had once played tunes for the Astaire siblings. My Sunny Tennessee, Astaire and Skelton deliver a version of this 1921 hit, so Long, OO-Long, Kalmar and Rubys 1920 oriental-themed ditty is performed by Astaire and Skelton. This 1923 Kalmar and Ruby standard was sung by Gloria DeHaven, test Solo, Danced by Astaire, initially to a spare piano accompaniment by André Previn and then to the music of Where Did You Get That Girl. In the beginning of the solo, Astaire places his hat on top of a light stand, One year later, in Sunday Jumps from Royal Wedding he would take a clotheshorse into his arms and dance with it. Come On Papa, Another high-kicking song and dance routine, this time for Vera-Ellen and chorus of sailors, to a 1918 song by Ruby, nevertheless, Kalmar and Rubys 1931 song is performed on stage by Astaire and Vera-Ellen to Skeltons piano accompaniment. All Alone Monday, Gale Robbins delivers a performance of Kalmar, thinking of You, One of the dance highlights of the film is this romantic partnered routine for Astaire and Vera-Ellen, which follows after Ellens performance of this 1927 standard. After this departure - which illustrates the passion than can continue to long after the married nuptials - the dance subsides into a tender coda. I Love You So Much, Arlene Dahl, accompanied by a chorus of top-hatted men, sings, the New York Times, August 10,1950, There is a special quality about the new picture. which deserves immediate mention in detail. That is the performance of Fred Astaire as Bert Kalmar. Mr. Astaire has been wearing out thin-soled dancing shoes at a great pace over the years while most of us have grown a little heavier, variety, July 12,1950, Stal. For Astaire, its unquestionably his best picture in sometime. She matches Astaire tap for tap. and looks to be the best partner hes ever had
34.
Deep in My Heart (1954 film)
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Leonard Spigelgass adapted the film from Elliott Arnolds 1949 biography of the same name. Roger Edens produced, Stanley Donen directed and Eugene Loring choreographed, josé Ferrer played Romberg, with support from soprano Helen Traubel as a fictional character and Merle Oberon as lyricist Dorothy Donnelly. Robert Easton, Russ Tamblyn, Susan Luckey, and Ludwig Stössel make uncredited appearances. Deep in My Heart was the film in a series of four MGM biopics based on the lives of composers, which included Till the Clouds Roll By, Words and Music. The film was not a critical success, according to the reviewer for the New York Times, Deep in My Heart calls for a strong digestive system and a considerable tolerance for clichés. Although the film is out of print in VHS and laserdisc formats, it has released on DVD. The soundtrack, earlier released on LP, was available on iTunes in 2006. The film has shown on Turner Classic Movies. Silverman, Stephen M. Dancing on the Ceiling, Stanley Donen, composers in the Movies, Studies in Musical Biography. New Haven, Yale University Press,2005, Deep in My Heart at the Internet Movie Database Deep in My Heart at AllMovie Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell in Deep in My Heart
35.
Sigmund Romberg
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Sigmund Romberg was an Austro-Hungarian composer who spent most of his adult life in the United States. He is best known for his musicals and operettas, particularly The Student Prince, The Desert Song, early in his career, Romberg was employed by the Shubert brothers to write music for their musicals and revues, including several vehicles for Al Jolson. For the Shuberts, he adapted several European operettas for American audiences, including the successful Maytime. His three hit operettas of the mid-1920s, named above, are in the style of Viennese operetta, Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family, Adam and Clara Rosenberg, in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period. In 1889 Romberg and his moved to Belišće, which was then in Hungary. Influenced by his father, Romberg learned to play the violin at six and he enrolled at Osijek gymnasium in 1897, where he was a member of the high school orchestra. He went to Vienna to study engineering, but he took composition lessons while living there. He moved to the United States in 1909 and, after a stint working in a pencil factory, was employed as a pianist in cafés. That year he wrote his first successful Broadway revue, The Whirl of the World and he then contributed songs to several American musical adaptations of Viennese operettas, including the successful The Blue Paradise. Even more successful was the musical Maytime, in, both involved love across generations and included nostalgic waltzes, along with more modern American dance music. Romberg wrote another Jolson vehicle in 1921, Bombo and he wrote the music for the musical comedy Poor Little Ritz Girl, which also had songs by Richard Rodgers. Rombergs adaptation of melodies by Franz Schubert for Blossom Time was a great success and he subsequently wrote his best-known operettas, The Student Prince, The Desert Song and The New Moon, which are in a style similar to the Viennese operettas of Franz Lehár. He also wrote Princess Flavia, a based on The Prisoner of Zenda. Romberg also wrote a number of scores and adapted his own work for film. Columbia Records asked Romberg to conduct orchestral arrangements of his music for a series of recordings from 1945 to 1950 that were issued both on 78-rpm and 33-1/3 rpm discs and these performances are now prized by record collectors. Naxos Records digitally remastered the recordings and issued them in the U. K, much of Rombergs music, including extensive excerpts from his operettas, was released on LP during the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Columbia, Capitol, and RCA Victor. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, who appeared in an MGM adaptation of The New Moon in 1940, there have also been periodic revivals of the operettas. Romberg died in 1951, aged 64, of a stroke at his Ritz Towers Hotel suite in New York City and was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York
36.
Public domain
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The term public domain has two senses of meaning. Anything published is out in the domain in the sense that it is available to the public. Once published, news and information in books is in the public domain, in the sense of intellectual property, works in the public domain are those whose exclusive intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable. Examples for works not covered by copyright which are therefore in the domain, are the formulae of Newtonian physics, cooking recipes. Examples for works actively dedicated into public domain by their authors are reference implementations of algorithms, NIHs ImageJ. The term is not normally applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, as rights are country-based and vary, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required. Although the term public domain did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the Romans had a large proprietary rights system where they defined many things that cannot be privately owned as res nullius, res communes, res publicae and res universitatis. The term res nullius was defined as not yet appropriated. The term res communes was defined as things that could be enjoyed by mankind, such as air, sunlight. The term res publicae referred to things that were shared by all citizens, when the first early copyright law was first established in Britain with the Statute of Anne in 1710, public domain did not appear. However, similar concepts were developed by British and French jurists in the eighteenth century, instead of public domain they used terms such as publici juris or propriété publique to describe works that were not covered by copyright law. The phrase fall in the domain can be traced to mid-nineteenth century France to describe the end of copyright term. In this historical context Paul Torremans describes copyright as a coral reef of private right jutting up from the ocean of the public domain. Because copyright law is different from country to country, Pamela Samuelson has described the public domain as being different sizes at different times in different countries. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the public domain and equates the public domain to public property. However, the usage of the public domain can be more granular. Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair use rights, the materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all living to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival
37.
Leave It to Jane
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Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a Midwestern U. S. town. A star halfback, Billy, forsakes his fathers alma mater, Bingham, to play at Atwater, to be near the seductive Jane, the daughter of Atwaters president. Some of the songs are A Peach of a Life, Leave It to Jane, The Crickets Are Calling, The Siren’s Song, Sir Galahad. But as Cohans and Herberts creative output waned, new talent was being nurtured on Broadway, including Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin. Kern began by revising British musicals to suit American audiences, adding songs that have a timeless, Kern and Boltons first Princess Theatre musical was Nobody Home, an adaptation of a London show called Mr. Popple of Ippleton. Their second was a musical called Very Good Eddie. The little show ran for 314 performances on a modest budget, British humorist and lyricist/playwright P. G. Wodehouse had supplied some lyrics for Very Good Eddie and joined the team at the Princess for Oh, Boy. which opened in February 1917, becoming a hit. In their collaborations, Bolton wrote most of the book, with Wodehouse writing the lyrics, according to Bloom and Vlastnik, Oh, Boy. Represents the transition from the musicals of the past to the newer. Charm was uppermost in the creators minds, the audience could relax, have a few laughs, feel slightly superior to the silly undertakings on stage, and smile along with the simple, melodic, lyrically witty but undemanding songs. Playing at the Princess, Leave It to Jane had to open at another Broadway house, like the Princess Theatre shows, it featured modern American settings, eschewing operetta traditions of foreign locales and elaborate scenery. The authors sought to have the flow from the plot situations. In 1918, Dorothy Parker described in Vanity Fair how the shows integrated story and music, Bolton and Wodehouse. I like the way they go about a musical comedy, I like the way the action slides casually into the songs. I like the deft rhyming of the song that is sung in the last act by two comedians and a comedienne. And oh, how I do like Jerome Kerns music, Leave It to Jane ran for a modestly successful 167 performances, directed by Edward Royce and choreographed by David Bennett. Though the critics liked the music and lyrics, as well as the cast generally, they were most impressed by Georgia ORamey in the comedy role of Flora
38.
Marilyn Miller
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Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was a tap dancer, singer and actress. On stage she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after, Miller was born Mary Ellen Reynolds in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson. They were renamed the Five Columbians after Marilyn and her mother joined the routine, Miller appeared for the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show, a Broadway revue at the Winter Garden Theatre, as well as in The Show of Wonders and Fancy Free. But it was Florenz Ziegfeld who made her a star after she performed in his Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, at the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street, sharing billing with Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, she brought the house down with her impersonation of Ziegfelds wife, Billie Burke and she followed as a headliner in the Follies of 1919, dancing to Berlins Mandy, and reputedly became Ziegfelds mistress, though this was never proven. Miller attained legendary status in the Ziegfeld production Sally with music by Jerome Kern, the musical, about a dishwasher who joins the Follies and marries a millionaire, ran 570 performances at the New Amsterdam. In 1921, the still-obscure Dorothy Parker memorialized her performance in verse, From the alleys gloom, / Which was nice for her, but still / Rough upon the alley. / How it must regret her wiles, / All her ways and glances. / Now the theatre owns her smiles, / Sallies, songs, a box-office smash, it featured the classic Who. and made her the highest paid star on Broadway. In 1928, after reuniting with Ziegfeld, she starred in his production of the successful George Gershwin musical Rosalie, then in Smiles with Fred Astaire, Millers movie career was short-lived and less successful than her stage career. She made only three films, adaptations of Sally, and Sunny, and Her Majesty Love, with W. C. Her last Broadway show, marking a comeback, was the innovative 1933-34 Irving Berlin/Moss Hart musical, As Thousands Cheer. Her appearance in As Thousands Cheer was her last professional outing, after Millers death, this incident gave Irving Berlin the inspiration for a film musical, On the Avenue, for which he received a script credit in addition to writing the songs. At the time of her death, Miller was described as being in retirement, Millers last name was taken from her step-father, Oscar Caro Miller, while her first name was a combination and adaptation of her birth name, Mary, and her mothers middle name, Lynn. Initially calling herself Marilynn, she would one of the ns. Census records reveal perhaps a half a dozen Marilyns in the United States in 1900, by the 1930s, following Millers stardom, Marilyn Monroe would become Marilyn Miller herself when she married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956. Miller was married to, Frank Carter, an actor and acrobatic dancer and he was killed in a car accident in Cumberland, Maryland, on May 9,1920
39.
Show Boat
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Show Boat is a 1927 musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love, the musical contributed such classic songs as Ol Man River, Make Believe and Cant Help Lovin Dat Man. The premiere of Show Boat on Broadway was a moment in the history of American musical theatre. According to The Complete Book of Light Opera, Here we come to a new genre – the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. The play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play, came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity. The quality of the musical was recognized immediately by the critics, awards for Broadway shows did not exist in 1927 when the original production of the show premiered, nor in 1932, when its first revival was staged. Late 20th-century revivals of Show Boat have won both the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival, in a few weeks, she gained what she called a treasure trove of show-boat material, human, touching, true. Jerome Kern was impressed by the novel and, hoping to adapt it as a musical, Woollcott introduced them that evening during the intermission of Kerns latest musical, Criss Cross. Impatient with Kern and Hammerstein and worried about their keeping too serious tone, Ziegfeld decided to open his theatre in February 1927 with Rio Rita, when Rio Rita proved to be a success, Show Boats Broadway opening was delayed until Rita could be moved to another theatre. Note, Although the basic plot of Show Boat has always remained the same, over the years revisions and alterations were made by the creators, and over time by subsequent producers and directors. Some of these revisions were for length and some for convenience, some have been made to reflect contemporary sensitivities toward race, gender and other social issues. Act I In 1887, the show boat Cotton Blossom arrives at the dock in Natchez. The Reconstruction era had ended an earlier, and white-dominated Southern legislatures have imposed racial segregation. The boats owner, Capn Andy Hawks, introduces his actors to the crowd on the levee, Steve knocks Pete down, and Pete swears revenge, suggesting he knows a dark secret about Julie. Capn Andy pretends to the crowd that the fight was a preview of one of the melodramas to be performed. The troupe exits with the band, and the crowd follows. A handsome riverboat gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, appears on the levee and is taken with eighteen-year-old Magnolia Hawks, an aspiring performer, Magnolia is likewise smitten with Ravenal. She seeks advice from Joe, a dock worker aboard the boat, who has returned from buying flour for his wife Queenie
40.
Dorothy Patrick
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Dorothy Patrick was a Canadian-American film actress and a John Robert Powers model. Dorothy Patrick was born Dorothea Davis on June 3,1921, in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Canada of Scot-English heritage from a family of farmers, ranchers and Canadian National Railway workers. Thanks to an uncle who was a uniform manufacturer and tailor to W. W. I Canadian Army officers, she early on became sensitive to fashion. After growing up in Winnipeg, in 1938 at age 17, she and her mother, Eva. Settling in New York City at tony Tudor City in Manhattan and she was seen on the runways of the Citys haute couture salons and as the wholesome face on popular fashion and entertainment magazines of the day. During her early career she was billed under her name, Dorothea Davis, until she married a New York Rangers hockey star, Lynn Patrick. Though she had one son in the marriage, the actress remained career-bound. While appearing at dinner-club showcases in Jersey City, New Jersey, Patrick won Samuel Goldwyns talent-search contest, with a movie contract in hand, she moved to Hollywood with her mother and young son to live in Culver City, California and work at nearby MGM studios. The Star System cultivated in the era saw Dorothy training at the studios repertory workshop along with stars like Judy Garland as one of the students, Dorothy first appeared as a Goldwyn Girl in Up in Arms starring Danny Kaye. Her most noted MGM appearance was opposite Robert Walker in the Jerome Kern musical showcase and Technicolor dazzler, apart from her film career, during the 1940s, she played several roles on Lux Radio Theatre. In the early days of television, she made guest appearances on the locally produced TV game show, the Korean War-era saw her at celebrity appearances for USO and she was Miss Naval Air Force Recruiting 1951. Dorothy co-starred or was supporting actress in a series of Republic programmers, the studio was best known releasing Saturday matinee serials, westerns, mysteries and crime dramas. In the world of Hollywood actress-survivors, Dorothy was a trouper in her career, besides film and television, for several summer seasons Dorothy was also seen on stage at the La Jolla Playhouse. One summer she co-starred opposite Howard Duff in Anniversary Waltz, another season playing Mrs. Miniver, there were also decorative walk-ons in noted film productions like The Bad and the Beautiful and Singin in the Rain. Her last movies were in 1955 as Dorothy Davis Patrick at 20th Century Fox, Violent Saturday as the wife of Victor Mature and The View from Pompeys Head with Richard Egan and Dana Wynter. That same year, Dorothy took a hiatus from Hollywood to raise her two adolescent sons back East in Short Hills, a New Jersey suburb of New York City. There she was able to keep abreast of the Broadway scene as well as the local off-Broadway venue. A working, lifelong SAG actress, Dorothy appeared in more than 35 motion picture films and her first husband was Lynn Patrick who became one of the most prominent and successful figures in American Ice hockey
