1.
Walter Wanger
–
Walter Wanger was an American film producer active in filmmaking from the 1910s to the turbulent production of Cleopatra in 1963. Wanger developed a reputation as an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies, strongly influenced by European films, Wanger began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and eventually worked at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. Wanger served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1939 to October 1941, Wanger was born Walter Feuchtwanger in San Francisco, and pronounced Wanger to rhyme with danger. He was the son of Stella and Sigmund Feuchtwanger, who were from German Jewish families that had emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century, Wanger was from a non-observant Jewish family, and in later life attended Episcopalian services with his wife. In order to assimilate into American society, his mother altered the name simply to Wanger in 1908. The Wangers were well-connected and upper class, something which later differentiated Wanger from the other Jewish film moguls who came from more ordinary backgrounds. Wanger attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he developed an interest in Amateur theatre and it was during this period that Wanger first came into contact with filmmaking. In April 1918 Wanger was transferred to the Committee on Public Information and this was partly accomplished through a series of short propaganda films screened in Italian cinemas promoting democracy and Allied war aims. Wanger was very impressed with the potential of film to shape peoples minds towards achieving a better-educated, after the Allied victory, Wanger returned to the United States in 1919 and was discharged from the army. Wanger married silent film actress Justine Johnstone in 1919 and he initially returned to theatre production, before a chance meeting with Jesse Lasky drew him into the world of commercial filmmaking. Wangers job was to meet the studios large annual requirement for fresh stories. One of Wangers major successes in his years with the company was his identification of the British novel The Sheik as a story with potential. In 1921 it was turned into a successful film starring Rudolph Valentino. The film helped establish the popularity of the Orientalist genre, which Wanger returned to a number of times during his career, by 1921, Wanger was unhappy with the terms he was receiving and left his job with Paramount. He travelled to Britain where he worked as a prominent cinema, while on a visit to London, Jesse Lasky offered to appoint him as general manager of production on improved terms and Wanger accepted. Wangers second spell with Paramount lasted from 1924 to 1931, during which time his annual wage rose from $150,000 to $250,000 and he was tasked with overseeing the work of the studio heads, which meant he had little involvement with the production of individual films. Because he was based in New York, Wanger worked more closely with the companys Astoria Studios in Queens, a rivalry developed between Wanger-influenced Astoria productions and those of B. P. Schulberg who ran the Paramount productions in Hollywood. Wanger opposed this move and felt he was being squeezed out of the company, in 1926 Warner Brotherss premièred Don Juan a film with music and sound effects, and the following year released The Jazz Singer with dialogue and singing scenes
2.
Dorothy Parker
–
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist, dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a wisecracker. Nevertheless, her output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild to Jacob Henry and Eliza Annie Rothschild at 732 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey, dorothys mother was of Scottish descent, and her father was of German Jewish descent. Parker wrote in her essay My Hometown that her parents got her back to their Manhattan apartment shortly after Labor Day so she could be called a true New Yorker and her mother died in West End in July 1898, when Parker was a month shy of turning five. Her father remarried in 1900 to a woman named Eleanor Francis Lewis, Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of the Immaculate Conception as spontaneous combustion. Her stepmother died in 1903, when Parker was nine, Parker later went to Miss Danas School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey. She graduated from Miss Danas School in 1911, at the age of 18, following her fathers death in 1913, she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living while she worked on her verse. She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an assistant for another Condé Nast magazine. She moved to Vanity Fair as a writer after two years at Vogue. In 1917, she met and married a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II and she had ambivalent feelings about her Jewish heritage given the strong antisemitism of that era and joked that she married to escape her name. Her career took off while she was writing criticism for Vanity Fair. At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, the trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel on a near-daily basis and became founding members of the Algonquin Round Table. The Round Table numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin Pierce Adams, through their re-printing of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams column The Conning Tower, Dorothy began developing a national reputation as a wit. One of her most famous comments was made when the group was informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, How could they tell. Parkers caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was terminated by Vanity Fair in 1920 after her criticisms began to offend powerful producers too often. In solidarity, both Benchley and Sherwood resigned in protest, when Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors established by Ross to allay concerns of his investors
3.
Fredric March
–
Fredric March was a distinguished stage actor and one of Hollywoods most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 40s. March is the actor to have won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice. March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown Marcher, a schoolteacher, and John F. Bickel, March attended the Winslow Elementary School, Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade, March served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant. March received an Oscar nomination for the 4th Academy Awards in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway and he returned to Broadway after a ten-year absence in 1937 with a notable flop Yr. Obedient Husband, but after the success of Thornton Wilders The Skin of Our Teeth he focused as much on Broadway theatre as Hollywood. He also had successes in A Bell for Adano in 1944 and Gideon in 1961. He also starred in films as I Married a Witch and Another Part of the Forest during this period. On March 25,1954, March co-hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards ceremony from New York City, marchs neighbor in Connecticut, playwright Arthur Miller, was thought to favor March to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman. In 1957, March was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. March co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the 1960 Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind, in which he played a version of famous orator. Marchs Bible-thumping character provided a rival for Tracys Clarence Darrow-inspired character, the recordings were narrated by Charles Collingwood, with March and his wife Florence Eldridge performing dramatic readings from historical documents and literature. Following surgery for cancer in 1970, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last performance in The Iceman Cometh, as the complicated Irish saloon keeper. March was married to actress Florence Eldridge from 1927 until his death in 1975 and he died from prostate cancer, at age 77, in Los Angeles, California, he was buried at his estate in New Milford, Connecticut. Throughout his life, he and his wife were supporters of the Democratic Party, biographies of March include Fredric March, Craftsman First, Star Second by Deborah C. Peterson, and Fredric March, A Consummate Actor by Charles Tranberg, Fredric March at the Internet Movie Database Fredric March at the Internet Broadway Database Photographs of Fredric March
4.
Joan Bennett
–
Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film and television actress. Besides acting on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 motion pictures from the era of silent movies and she is possibly best-remembered for her film noir femme fatale roles in director Fritz Langs movies such as The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street. Bennett had three phases to her long and successful career, first as a winsome blonde ingenue, then as a sensuous brunette femme fatale. In 1951, Bennetts screen career was marred by scandal after her husband, film producer Walter Wanger, shot. Wanger suspected that Lang and Bennett were having an affair, a charge which she adamantly denied, in the 1960s, she achieved success for her portrayal of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard on TVs Dark Shadows, for which she received an Emmy nomination. For her final role, as Madame Blanc in Dario Argentos cult horror film Suspiria. In her New York Times obituary she was said to be, one of the most underrated actresses of her time. She was born in the Palisades section of Fort Lee, New Jersey and her older sisters were actress Constance Bennett and actress/dancer Barbara Bennett, who was the first wife of singer Morton Downey and the mother of Morton Downey, Jr. Part of a theatrical family, Bennetts maternal grandfather was Jamaica-born Shakespearean actor Lewis Morrison. He was of English, Spanish, Jewish, and African ancestry, on the side of her maternal grandmother, actress Rose Wood, the profession dated back to traveling minstrels in 18th century England. Bennett first appeared in a silent movie as a child with her parents and sisters in her fathers drama The Valley of Decision, which he adapted for the screen. She attended Miss Hopkins School for Girls in Manhattan, then St. Margarets, a school in Waterbury, Connecticut, and LHermitage. On September 15,1926,16 year old Bennett married John M. Fox in London and they were divorced on July 30,1928 in Los Angeles, on charges of his alcoholism. Bennetts stage debut was at age 18, acting with her father in Jarnegan and she moved quickly from movie to movie throughout the 1930s. Bennett appeared as a blonde for several years, under contract to Fox Film Corporation, she appeared in several movies. Receiving top billing, she played the role of Jane Miller opposite Spencer Tracy in She Wanted a Millionaire and she was billed second, after Tracy, for her role as Helen Riley, a personable waitress who trades wisecracks, in Me and My Gal. On March 16,1932, she married screenwriter/film producer Gene Markey in Los Angeles and they had one child, Melinda Markey. Bennett left Fox to play Amy, a pert sister competing with Katharine Hepburns Jo in Little Women and this movie brought Bennett to the attention of independent film producer Walter Wanger, who signed her to a contract and began managing her career
5.
Rudolph Mate
–
Not to be confused with cinematographer Russell Metty. Born in Kraków into a Jewish family, Maté started in the business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He went on to work as an assistant cameraman in Hungary and later throughout Europe, Maté worked on several of Carl Th. Dreyers films, including The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr, Maté worked as cinematographer on Hollywood films from the mid-1930s, including Dodsworth, the Laurel and Hardy feature Our Relations and Stella Dallas. In 1947, he turned to directing films, his credits include the film noir D. O. A, no Sad Songs for Me, When Worlds Collide, and the epic The 300 Spartans. He died from an attack in Hollywood on 27 October 1964. Rudolph Maté at Find a Grave Rudolph Maté at the Internet Movie Database Rudolph Maté in the AFI Catalog Rudolph Maté in the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers
6.
James B. Shackelford
–
James Blaine Shackelford was a cinematographer who photographed Frank Buck’s film, Jacaré Born James B. Shackelford in Wichita, Kansas, he was the son of Joel M. Shackelford, young James grew up in the home of a guardian, Jerome Brooks, a farmer, in Enid, Oklahoma. Shackelford died in Los Angeles, California, Shackelford was a cinematographer for Roy Chapman Andrews, an American explorer, adventurer, naturalist and director of the American Museum of Natural History. He accompanied Andrews on a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert, the expeditions made important discoveries and brought the first-known fossil dinosaur eggs to the museum. In 1933, Shackelford and George Dromgold traveled to the Great Barrier Reef and Papua, at Suva, they observed and analyzed fire-walking. Dromgold wrote a book, Two Lugs on a Lugger, with photographs by Shackelford, the film became Frank Bucks popular movie Jacaré. The group spent three and a half months at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, usually within a days journey of the city, the companys most primitive adventure occurred on Marajó Island, at the mouth of the Amazon, where they spent four weeks. They ran out of imported food and had to subsist for five days on moldy doughnuts filled with small worms, shackelfords later career included work in The Bells in Old Town
