Pythia
The Pythia was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi who served as the oracle known as the Oracle of Delphi. The name Pythia is derived from Pytho. In etymology, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb, πύθειν "to rot", which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo; the Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BC, was credited for her prophecies inspired by being filled by the spirit of the god, in this case Apollo. The Pythian priestess emerged pre-eminent by the end of 7th century BC and would continue to be consulted until the 4th century AD. During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, she was without doubt the most powerful woman of the classical world; the oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Clement of Alexandria, Diogenes, Herodotus, Justin, Lucan, Ovid, Pindar, Plutarch, Strabo and Xenophon.
Details of how the Pythia operated are missing as authors from the classical period treat the process as common knowledge with no need to explain. Those who discussed the oracle in any detail are from 1st century BC to 4th century AD and give conflicting stories. One of the main stories claimed that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies and turned them into poetic dactylic hexameters preserved in Greek literature; this idea, has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, giving prophecies in her own voice. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC describes the Pythia speaking in dactylic hexameters; the Delphic oracle may have been present in some form from 1400 BC, in the middle period of Mycenaean Greece. There is evidence that Apollo took over the shrine with the arrival of priests from Delos in the 8th century, from an earlier dedication to Gaia.
The 8th-century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinth and the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf. The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. 580–570 BC. It describes in detail how Apollo chose his first priests, whom he selected in their "swift ship", but Apollo, who had Delphinios as one of his cult epithets, leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin. Dolphin-Apollo revealed himself to the terrified Cretans, bade them follow him up to the "place where you will have rich offerings"; the Cretans "danced in time and followed, singing Iē Paiēon, like the paeans of the Cretans in whose breasts the divine Muse has placed "honey-voiced singing". "Paean" seems to have been the name. G. L. Huxley observes, "If the hymn to Apollo conveys a historical message, it is above all that there were once Cretan priests at Delphi."
Robin Lane Fox notes that Cretan bronzes are found at Delphi from the eighth century onwards, Cretan sculptures are dedicated as late as ca 620–600 BC: "Dedications at the site cannot establish the identity of its priesthood," he observes, "but for once we have an explicit text to set beside the archaeological evidence." An early visitor to these "dells of Parnassus", at the end of the eighth century, was Hesiod, shown the omphalos. There are many stories of the origins of the Delphic Oracle. One late explanation, first related by the 1st century BC writer, Diodorus Siculus, tells of a goat herder named Coretas, who noticed one day that one of his goats, who fell into a crack in the earth, was behaving strangely. On entering the chasm, he found himself filled with a divine presence and could see outside of the present into the past and the future. Excited by his discovery he shared it with nearby villagers. Many started visiting the site to experience the convulsions and inspirational trances, though some were said to disappear into the cleft due to their frenzied state.
A shrine was erected at the site, where people began worshiping in the late Bronze Age, by 1600 BC. After the deaths of a number of men, the villagers chose a single young woman as the liaison for the divine inspirations, she spoke on behalf of gods. According to earlier myths, the office of the oracle was possessed by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, the site was sacred to Gaia. Subsequently, it was believed to be sacred to the "Earth-shaker" god of earthquakes. During the Greek Dark Age, from the 11th to the 9th century BC, a new god of prophecy, Apollo seized the temple and expelled the twin guardian serpents of Gaia, whose bodies he wrapped around the caduceus. Myths stated that Phoebe or Themis had "given" the site to Apollo, rationalizing its seizure by priests of the new god, but having to retain the priestesses of the original oracle because of the long tradition. Poseidon was mollified by the gift of a new site in Troizen. Diodorus explained how the Pythia was an appropriately clad young virgin, for great
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent is a televised American talent show competition, is part of the global Got Talent franchise created by Simon Cowell. The program is produced by Fremantle USA and Syco Entertainment, distributed by the former, broadcast on the NBC television network, premiering on June 21, 2006, after plans for a British edition in 2005 were suspended following a dispute within the British broadcaster ITV; each season is run during the network's summer schedule, has featured various hosts over the course of the program's history - its current host is Terry Crews. The program attracts a variety of participants, from across the United States and abroad, to take part and who possess some form of talents, with acts ranging from singing, comedy, stunts and other genres; each participant who auditions attempts to secure a place in the live episodes of a season by impressing a panel of judges - the current line-up consists of Cowell, Howie Mandel, Julianne Hough, Gabrielle Union. Those that make it into the live episodes compete against each other for both the judges' and public's vote in order to reach the live final, where the winner receives a large cash prize paid over a period of time, since the third season, a chance to headline a show on the Las Vegas Strip.
Since its premiere, America's Got Talent has helped to unearth new talent and kickstart/boost the careers of various performers who took part in the competition, while the show itself has been a rating success for NBC, drawing in on average around 10 million viewers per season. In 2013, a book was entitled Inside AGT: The Untold Stories of America's Got Talent, was released, providing a description of the seasons, contestants and production techniques of the show, along with detailed interviews with contestants from all seasons, up to the date of the book's publication; the program has run for a total of thirteen seasons, spawned a spin-off competition entitled America's Got Talent: The Champions, consisting of notable contestants from the U. S. and other international versions of the franchise, which premiered on NBC on January 7, 2019. The general selection process of each season is begun by the production team with open auditions held in various cities across the United States. Dubbed "Producers' Auditions", they are held months.
Those that make it through the initial stage, become participants in the "Judges' Auditions", which are held in select cities across the country, attended by the judges. Each participant is held offstage and awaits their turn to perform before the judges, whereupon they are given 90 seconds to demonstrate their act, with a live audience present for all performances. At the end of a performance, the judges give constructive criticism and feedback about what they saw, whereupon they each give a vote - a participant who receives a majority vote approving their performance, moves on to the next stage, otherwise they are eliminated from the program at that stage; each judge is given a buzzer, may use it during a performance if they are unimpressed, hate what is being performed, or feel the act is a waste of their time. Many acts that move on may be cut by producers and may forfeit due to the limited slots available for the second performance. Filming for each season always takes place when the Judges' Auditions are taking place, with the show's presenter standing in the wings of each venue's stage to interview and give personal commentary on a participant's performance.
From the fifth to seventh seasons, acts who did not attend live auditions could instead submit a taped audition online via YouTube. Acts from the online auditions were selected to compete in front of the judges and a live audience during the "live shows" part of the season, prior to the semi-finals. Before the inclusion of this round, the show had a separate audition episode in Seasons 3 and 4 for contestants who posted videos on MySpace. In the ninth season, the show added a new format to the auditions in the form of the "Golden Buzzer", which began to make appearances within the Got Talent franchise, since it was first introduced on Germany's Got Talent. During auditions, each judge is allowed to use the Golden Buzzer to send an act automatically into the live shows, regardless of the opinion of the other judges; the only rule to the buzzer was. Starting from the second season, auditions undergo a second stage to secure a place in the live rounds of the competition, though the format for this changed over the course of the program's history.
When the stage was first created it was designed with a "bootcamp" format, under the title of "Las Vegas Callbacks" - under the format, participants who made it through the preliminary auditions could undergo training to perfect their act, whereupon they would be set into a specific group of participants before performing a second time before the judges, who could use their buzzers to terminate a performance at any time. Those that fail to secure a place in this stage would be eliminated from that season's competition. Between the fourth and ninth season, the format was changed to match that used in Britain's Got Talent - participants who made it through the preliminary auditions had their audition footage reviewed by the judges, who set each one into a specific group, were not required to perform again, unless the judges requested this. Acts which they liked would be allocated spaces in the live roun
Y. K. Padhye
Yeshwant Keshav Padhye was the pioneering Indian Ventriloquist who started ventriloquism in India in 1920's. He was a puppeteer and maker; as a magician he performed magic shows in India. He brought puppets from England and slowly started performing ventriloquism. Padhye started by performing magic shows at small functions when the entertainment industry was in its infancy; however he created a niche for himself when he started combining puppetry. He brought the puppets from England to include in his shows gradually introducing ventriloquism, teaching himself from a book which he ordered from U. S. A; this excited audiences as they had never seen a lively ventriloquial puppet talk. Once the art of ventriloquism gained popularity, he received offers from film makers, his puppets were featured in one Hindi film called Akeli Mat Jaiyo. His famous puppet "Ardhavatrao" appeared along with actor Rajendra Kumar; the puppet was operated by Padhye himself. The music of the film was composed by Madan Mohan with lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri.
Y. K. Padhye's son Ramdas Padhye, his daughter-in-law Aparna, his grandsons Satyajit and Parikshit are ventriloquists and puppeteers in the entertainment field. Y. K. Padhye's Website Ramdas Padhye Satyajit Padhye
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, England, 128 miles north of London, 45 miles northeast of Birmingham and 56 miles southeast of Manchester, in the East Midlands. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robin Hood and to the lace-making and tobacco industries, it was granted its city charter in 1897 as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Nottingham is a tourist destination. In 2017, Nottingham had an estimated population of 329,200; the population of the city proper, compared to its regional counterparts, has been attributed to its historical and tightly-drawn city boundaries. The wider conurbation, which includes many of the city's suburbs, has a population of 768,638, it is the second-largest in The Midlands. Its Functional Urban Area the largest in the East Midlands, has a population of 912,482; the population of the Nottingham/Derby metropolitan area is estimated to be 1,610,000. Its metropolitan economy is the seventh largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $50.9bn.
The city was the first in the East Midlands to be ranked as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Nottingham has an award-winning public transport system, including the largest publicly owned bus network in England and is served by Nottingham railway station and the modern Nottingham Express Transit tram system, it is a major sporting centre, in October 2015 was named'Home of English Sport'. The National Ice Centre, Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, Trent Bridge international cricket ground are all based in or around the city, the home of two professional league football teams; the city has professional rugby, ice hockey and cricket teams, the Aegon Nottingham Open, an international tennis tournament on the ATP and WTA tours. This accolade came just over a year. On 11 December 2015, Nottingham was named a "City of Literature" by UNESCO, joining Dublin, Edinburgh and Prague as one of only a handful in the world; the title reflects Nottingham's literary heritage, with Lord Byron, D. H. Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe having links to the city, as well as a contemporary literary community, a publishing industry and a poetry scene.
The city has two universities—Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham—both of which are spread over several campuses in the city, with a total university student population of over 61,000. The city predates Anglo-Saxon times and was known in Brythonic as Tigguo Cobauc, meaning Place of Caves. In modern Welsh it is known poetically as Y Ty Ogofog and Irish as Na Tithe Uaimh "The Cavey Dwelling"; when it fell under the rule of a Saxon chieftain named Snot it became known as "Snotingaham". Some authors derive "Nottingham" from Snottenga and ham, but "this has nothing to do with the English form". Nottingham Castle was constructed in 1068 on a sandstone outcrop by the River Leen; the Anglo-Saxon settlement was confined to the area today known as the Lace Market and was surrounded by a substantial defensive ditch and rampart, which fell out of use following the Norman Conquest and was filled by the time of the Domesday Survey. Following the Norman Conquest the Saxon settlement developed into the English Borough of Nottingham and housed a Town Hall and Law Courts.
A settlement developed around the castle on the hill opposite and was the French borough supporting the Normans in the castle. The space between was built on as the town grew and the Old Market Square became the focus of Nottingham several centuries later. Defences, consisted of a ditch and bank in the early 12th century; the ditch was widened, in the mid-13th century, a stone wall built around much of the perimeter of the town. A short length of the wall survives, is visible at the northern end of Maid Marian Way, is protected as a Scheduled Monument. On the return of Richard the Lionheart from the Crusades, the castle was occupied by supporters of Prince John, including the Sheriff of Nottingham, it was besieged by Richard and, after a sharp conflict, was captured. In the legends of Robin Hood, Nottingham Castle is the scene of the final showdown between the Sheriff and the hero outlaw. By the 15th century Nottingham had established itself as a centre of a thriving export trade in religious sculpture made from Nottingham alabaster.
The town became a county corporate in 1449 giving it effective self-government, in the words of the charter, "for eternity". The Castle and Shire Hall were expressly excluded and remained as detached Parishes of Nottinghamshire. One of those impressed by Nottingham in the late 18th century was the German traveller C. P. Moritz, who wrote in 1782, "Of all the towns I have seen outside London, Nottingham is the loveliest and neatest. Everything had a modern look, a large space in the centre was hardly less handsome than a London square. A charming footpath leads over the fields to the highway. … Nottingham … with its high houses, red roofs and church steeples, looks excellent from a distance."During the Industrial Revolution, much of Nottingham's prosperity was founded on the textile industry.
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Stage Door Canteen (film)
Stage Door Canteen is a 1943 American World War II film with some musical numbers and other entertainment interspersed with dramatic scenes by a unknown cast. The film was directed by Frank Borzage; the film features many celebrity cameo appearances but relates a simple drama set in the famed New York City restaurant and nightclub for American and Allied servicemen. Six bands are featured; the score and the original song, were nominated for Academy Awards. Stage Door Canteen is in the public domain in North America and for this reason is available in many DVD and VHS releases of varying quality; the film, made in wartime, celebrates the work of the Stage Door Canteen, created in New York City as a recreational center for both American and Allied servicemen on leave to socialize with, be entertained or served by Broadway celebrities. The storyline follows several women who volunteer for the Canteen and must adhere to strict rules of conduct, the most important of, that their job is to provide friendly companionship to and be dance partners for the men who are soon to be sent into combat.
No romantic fraternization is allowed. Eileen is a volunteer who confesses to only becoming involved in the Canteen in order to be discovered by one of the Hollywood stars in attendance, she finds herself falling in love with one of the soldiers. Stage Door Canteen was made under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing; the actual Stage Door Canteen in New York City was a basement club located in the 44th Street Theatre, it could not be used for the filming as it was too busy receiving servicemen. The settings were recreated at the Fox Movietone Studio in New York and at RKO Pathé Studios in Los Angeles. Stage Door Canteen was in production from November 30, 1942, to late January 1943. Star appearances range from momentary cameos, such as Johnny Weissmuller working in the Canteen's kitchen, to more substantial roles. In a June 1943 feature story titled "Show Business at War", Life magazine counted a total of 82 performers in Stage Door Canteen, provided total screen time for some of them: Ray Bolger, dancing Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd Gypsy Rose Lee, performing a "strip" on stage Gracie Fields, singing the "Machine Gun Song" and "The Lord's Prayer" Katharine Cornell, serving food with Aline MacMahon and Dorothy Fields and reciting from Romeo and Juliet Ed Wynn, various scenes Katharine Hepburn, appears at the close with Selena Royle and in a scene with Cheryl Walker, written by Robert Sherwood Ethel Merman, singing "Marching Through Berlin" Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne working in the kitchen Tallulah Bankhead, working as a senior hostess Ina Claire, mediating a dispute between sailors who want to dance with her Helen Hayes, working as a senior hostess Stage Door Canteen represents the only film appearance of Katharine Cornell.
It features a performance of "Why Don't You Do Right?" by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, which became the first major hit for singer Peggy Lee. African-American producer Leonard Harper was hired to do the African-American casting in New York City; these featured cast members either have extended dialogue in the story. These featured players make brief appearances in the film. Other stage and radio artists making cameo appearances include the following: Distributed by United Artists, Stage Door Canteen was released June 24, 1943, with a run time of 132 minutes; some modern prints have been trimmed to 93 minutes. Stage Door Canteen was named one of the ten best motion pictures of 1943 in a Film Daily poll of 439 newspaper and radio reviewers; the film received two Academy Award nominations—for the original score by Fred Rich, for the original song, "We Mustn't Say Goodbye", by James V. Monaco and Al Dubin. Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, prefaced his remarks on the film by stating his aversion to the contemporary trend toward all-star spectacles, which he called "cheap showmanship": But for once, we've got to make a frank concession.
As done in Stage Door Canteen this parading of show-world notables has some real dramatic point. It shapes a glamorous, atmospheric setting within which a slight story is played—a setting as real as is the Canteen for a story, old as the hills. … And, some of the acts are pretty good. Crowther praised producer Sol Lesser for creating an illusion of authenticity by casting newcomers to the screen—"anybody's boys and girls … just so many nice kids at the Canteen." He credited the film for catching the generous spirit of show people wishing to do their part to help win the war. "As a general rule," he concluded, "this writer is depressed by a bandwagon of stars. But this is one time when the spectacle brings a lump of pride to the throat."All proceeds, after Lesser's 8.5 percent, were donated to the American Theatre Wing and its allied charities. The film was such a success at the boxoffice that Lesser was able to turn over $1.5 million—the equivalent of more than $20.5 million today."Patriotism and romance mix badly", wrote modern critic Pauline Kael, who looked back on the film for The New Yorker.
"Many famous performers make fools of themselves … Katharine Cornell, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Muni fare a shade worse than most of the other 50-odd famous performers. Kael termed the film "depressing" and criticized Delmer Daves's "horribly elaborate narrative". Dave Kehr of The New York Times called the film "an interesting docu
