1.
Mario Bava
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Mario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, special effects artist, and cinematographer from the golden age of Italian horror films. His work kick-started the giallo genre and the modern slasher film. His son Lamberto Bava later went on to become a horror film director in his own right. Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria on 31 July 1914 and he was the son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who also worked as a special effects photographer and cameraman in the Italian silent movie industry. Mario Bavas first ambition was to become a painter, unable to turn out paintings at a profitable rate, he went into his fathers business, working as an assistant to other Italian cinematographers like Massimo Terzano. He also helped his father at the effects department at Benito Mussolinis film factory. Bava became a cinematographer in his own right in 1939, shooting two films with Roberto Rossellini. He made his debut in the early 1940s. Bavas camerawork was a factor in developing the screen personas of such stars of the period as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves. Bava completed filming I vampiri for director Riccardo Freda in 1956, Bava co-directed The Day the Sky Exploded in 1958, the first Italian science fiction film, predating even the sci-fi films of Antonio Margheriti. Because he had no earlier credited experience as a director, the film was credited solely to Paolo Heusch, in 1960, Bava directed the gothic horror classic Black Sunday, his first solo directorial effort, which made a genre star out of Barbara Steele. His use of light and dark in black-and-white films is widely acclaimed along with his use of color in films such as Black Sabbath, Kill. Blood and Black Lace and The Whip and the Body and his work has proved very influential. Bava directed what is now regarded as the earliest of the Italian giallo films, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and his 1965 sci-fi/ horror film Planet of the Vampires was a thematic precursor to Alien. Although comic books had served as the basis for countless serials and childrens films in Hollywood, Bavas Danger, many elements of his 1966 film Kill, Baby. Regarded by Martin Scorsese as Bavas masterpiece, also appear in the Asian strain of terror film known as J-horror, 1971s A Bay of Blood is considered one of the earliest slasher films, and was explicitly imitated in Friday the 13th Part 2. Mario Bava was very disappointed with the distribution of some of his later films. His Lisa and the Devil was never picked up by a distributor, in 1977, Bava directed his last horror film, Shock, which was co-directed with his son Lamberto Bava who did the work uncredited
2.
Dino De Laurentiis
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Agostino Dino De Laurentiis was an Italian film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards and he also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples and he started his studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the years 1937–1938 then interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. Following his first movie, Lultimo Combattimento, Laurentiis produced nearly 150 films during the seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production, in the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as Bitter Rice and the Fellini classics La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s, Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s, De Laurentiis relocated to the US in 1976, and became an American citizen in 1986. In the 1980s he had his own studio, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, based in Wilmington, the building of the studio made Wilmington a center of film and television production. De Laurentiis also made several adaptations of Stephen Kings works, including The Dead Zone, Cats Eye, Silver Bullet, De Laurentiiss company was involved with the horror sequels Halloween II, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter and he passed on adapting the novels sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal and Red Dragon, a re-adaptation of the novel. He also produced the prequel Hannibal Rising, which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer, in the 1980s, de Laurentiis owned and operated DDL Foodshow, a specialty retailer with two gourmet Italian markets in New York City and Los Angeles. His brief first marriage in Italy was annulled, De Laurentiis and Mangano divorced in 1988, she died in 1989. In 1990, he married Martha Schumacher, who produced many of his films since 1985, one of his grandchildren is Giada De Laurentiis, host of Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada at Home, and Giadas Weekend Getaways on Food Network. He was the brother of Luigi De Laurentiis, who became a film producer after Dino did, and uncle of Aurelio De Laurentiis, also a producer. In 1958, he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for producing La Strada, in 2001, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2012, he received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation, De Laurentiis died on 10 November 2010 at his residence in Beverly Hills at the age of 91. Dino De Laurentiis Company Official site Dino De Laurentiis at Find a Grave Dino De Laurentiis at the Internet Movie Database Who Was Dino De Laurentiis, – image slideshow by Life magazine
3.
Franco Brusati
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Franco Brusati was an Italian screenwriter and director. He directed international awarded film hit Bread and Chocolate, one of the finest examples of Commedia allitaliana films in the 1970s and he was an Academy Award nominee as Best Foreign Film for his 1979 film To Forget Venice. It also won the David di Donatello for Best Film, in 1983, he was a member of the jury at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival
4.
Ben Hecht
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Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and early 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, in the 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters calls him one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures, Hecht received the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, for Underworld. Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics and he also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach. Film historian Richard Corliss called him the Hollywood screenwriter, someone who personified Hollywood itself, in 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay. In total, six of his movie screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards, of his seventy to ninety screenplays, he wrote many anonymously to avoid the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to his autobiography, he never spent more than eight weeks on a script, in 1983,19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Hecht was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and his father, Joseph Hecht, worked in the garment industry. His father and mother, Sarah Swernofsky Hecht, had immigrated to New York from Minsk, the family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. When Hecht was in his teens he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. On the road much of the time, his father did not have effect on Hecht’s childhood. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, He was considered a prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist. After graduating from school in 1910, at age sixteen Hecht moved to Chicago. He lived with relatives, and started a career in journalism and he found work as a reporter, first for the Chicago Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. He was an excellent reporter who worked on several Chicago papers, after World War I, Hecht was sent to cover Berlin for the Chicago Daily News. There he wrote his first and most successful novel, Erik Dorn and it was a sensational debut for Hecht as a serious writer. The 1969 movie, Gaily, Gaily, directed by Norman Jewison, the film was nominated for three Oscars
5.
Irwin Shaw
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Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. Though Shaws work received critical acclaim, the success of his commercial fiction ultimately diminished his literary reputation. Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in the South Bronx, New York City and his parents were Rose and Will. His younger brother, David Shaw, became a noted Hollywood producer and writer, shortly after Irwins birth, the Shamforoffs moved to Brooklyn. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college and he spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934. Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16,1984, aged 71, Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows, including Dick Tracy, The Gumps and Studio One. His play Quiet City, directed by Elia Kazan and with music by Aaron Copland. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including The Talk of the Town, The Commandos Strike at Dawn and they had one son, Adam Shaw, born in 1950, himself a writer of magazine articles and non-fiction. Shaw enlisted in the U. S. Army and was a warrant officer during World War II, the Young Lions, Shaws first novel, was published in 1948. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was successful and was adapted into a 1958 film. Shaw was not happy with the film, Shaws second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. Accused of being a communist by the Red Channels publication, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe and he later claimed that the blacklist only glancingly bruised his career. During the 1950s he wrote several screenplays, including Desire Under the Elms. While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown, Two Weeks in Another Town, Rich Man, Poor Man, Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries in 1976. His novel The Top of the Hill was made into a TV movie about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau and his last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters and Acceptable Losses. Among his noted short stories are, Sailor Off The Bremen, The Eighty-Yard Run, three of his stories were dramatized for the PBS series Great Performances. This production was released on DVD in 2002 by Kultur Video, in 1950, Shaw wrote a book on Israel with photos by Robert Capa named Report on Israel
6.
Kirk Douglas
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Kirk Douglas is an American actor, producer, director, and author. He is one of the last living people of the film industrys Golden Age, after an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he had his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known for dramas, including westerns. During a 64-year acting career, he has appeared in more than 90 movies, other early films include Young Man with a Horn, playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling, and Detective Story. He received a second Oscar nomination for his role in The Bad and the Beautiful, opposite Lana Turner. In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory, in those two films, he starred and collaborated with the then relatively unknown director, Stanley Kubrick. Douglas helped break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit and he produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave, considered a cult classic, and Seven Days in May, opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, a story he purchased, which he gave to his son Michael Douglas. As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas has received three Academy Award nominations, an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as an author, he has written ten novels and memoirs. Currently, he is No.17 on the American Film Institutes list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema, after barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he has focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lives with his wife, Anne, a producer. He turned 100 on December 9,2016, Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna Bertha and Herschel Harry Danielovitch. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mogilev Region, in the Russian Empire, and his fathers brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglass family adopted in the United States. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the United States Navy during World War II. Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, and I was the ragmans son. Growing up, Douglas sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk, later, he delivered newspapers and during his youth worked at more than forty different jobs before getting a job acting. He found living in a family with six sisters to be stifling, in a sense, it lit a fire under me. In high school, after acting in plays, he knew he wanted to become a professional actor
