1.
The Yankee Doodle Boy
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The Yankee Doodle Boy, also well known as Yankee Doodle Dandy is a patriotic song from the Broadway musical Little Johnny Jones written by George M. Cohan. The play opened at the Liberty Theater on November 7,1904, the play concerns the trials and tribulations of a fictional American jockey, Johnny Jones, who rides a horse named Yankee Doodle in the English Derby. Cohan incorporates snippets of several popular traditional American songs into his lyrics of this song, the song was performed by James Cagney in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which he played Cohan. In 2004, the American Film Institute placed the song at No.71 on its AFIs 100 Years.100 Songs, a version of the song was recorded by Cohans contemporary and fellow Irish-American Billy Murray, who sang it as indicated in the lyrics. Also a shortened lyric disco version of the song was sung by Paul Jabara on the 1977 album Shut Out, verse 1 Im the kid thats all the candy,1 Im a Yankee Doodle Dandy, Im glad I am, Sos Uncle Sam. Im a real live Yankee Doodle, Made my name and fame and boodle, Just like Mister Doodle did, by riding on a pony. I love to listen to the Dixie strain, I long to see the girl I left behind me, That aint a josh, Shes a Yankee, oh, say can you see, Anything about a Yankee thats a phony. Verse 2 Fathers name was Hezikiah, Mothers name was Ann Maria,2 Yanks through and through, red, White and Blue Father was so Yankee-hearted, When the Spanish war was started, He slipped on a uniform and hopped upon a pony. My mothers mother was a Yankee true, My fathers father was a Yankee too, Thats going some, For the Yankees, oh, say can you see Anything about my pedigree thats phony. Chorus Im a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle, do or die, A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, ive got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart, Shes my Yankee Doodle joy. Yankee Doodle came to London, just to ride the ponies, footnotes,1 All the candy was late nineteenth century slang equivalent to hot stuff. The tune for this song is used by the Hawthorn Football Club for their theme song, Yankee Doodle The Yankee Doodle boy performed by Billy Murray Billy Murrays disc recording Cagneys rendition on YouTube Library of Congress
2.
Bill Gold
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Bill Gold is an American former graphic designer best known for thousands of film poster designs. His first film poster was for Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his most recent work was for J. Edgar, among his most famous film posters are those for Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange. Bill Gold was born on January 3,1921, in New York City and he studied illustration and design at Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career in 1941, in the advertising department of Warner Bros. Bill Gold became head of design in 1947. In 1959 his brother Charlie joined him in the business and they formed BG Charles to do the film trailers, Charlie operated BG Charles in Los Angeles, while Bill operated in New York City. In 1987 Charlie left the business and retired to Vermont, Charlie Gold died on December 25,2003 at the age of 75. Bill Gold lives in Greenwich, CT, in 1962, Bill Gold created Bill Gold Advertising in New York City. In 1997 Bill moved the company to Stamford, Connecticut and continued his business, producing posters for every film Clint Eastwood produced, directed, and/or acted in, in 1994 Bill was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Hollywood Reporter. Richard Benjamin was the MC for the ceremony at the Directors Guild, in 2011, Bill ended an unsuccessful retirement when he agreed to create posters for Clint Eastwoods film, J. Edgar. Bill Gold is currently a member of the Society of Illustrators, the Art Directors Club. A limited-edition, oversized one-volume retrospective was published in January,2011 in coordination with Golds 90th birthday, after his first film project, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Gold collaborated with the American film industrys top film directors and film producers. Especially fruitful was Golds relationship with the illustrator Bob Peak, Golds work has spanned eight decades and has inspired numerous other designers. Secrets Behind Hollywoods Greatest Movie Posters and this feature article about Golds career has a link to fourteen images of his posters. Poster Master With a Cool Hand, article on Gold on the occasion of a book about his art. The Gold Standard, Roundtable Pictures Interviews Legendary Movie Poster Designer Bill Gold, meet Bill Gold, The Man Behind the Most Iconic Movie Posters Ever. Bill Gold reflects on his art and his career,1994 Hollywood Reporter Lifetime Achievement Award video
3.
Michael Curtiz
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Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-born American film director, recognized as one of the most prolific directors in history. He directed classic films from the silent era and numerous others during Hollywoods Golden Age, Curtiz was already a well-known director in Europe when Warner Bros. invited him to Hollywood in 1926, when he was 38 years of age. He had already directed 64 films in Europe, and soon helped Warner Bros. become the movie studio. He directed 102 films during his Hollywood career, mostly at Warners, James Cagney and Joan Crawford won their only Academy Awards under Curtizs direction. He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for the first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis. He himself was nominated five times and won twice, once for Best Short Subject for Sons of Liberty and he introduced to Hollywood a unique visual style using artistic lighting, extensive and fluid camera movement, high crane shots, and unusual camera angles. He was versatile and could handle any kind of picture, melodrama, comedy, love story, film noir, musical, war story, Western, or historical epic. He always paid attention to the human interest aspect of story, stating that the human. Curtiz helped popularize the swashbuckler with films such as Captain Blood. He directed many dramas which today are considered classics, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Sea Wolf, Casablanca. He directed leading musicals, including Yankee Doodle Dandy, This Is the Army and White Christmas, Curtiz was born Mihaly Kertesz to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1886, where his father was a carpenter and his mother an opera singer. Curtiz had a lower to middle-class upbringing and he recalled during an interview that his familys home was a cramped apartment, where he had to share a small room with his two brothers and a sister. Many times we are hungry, he added, after graduating high school, he studied at Markoszy University, followed by the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, in Budapest, before beginning his career. Curtiz became attracted to the theater when he was a child in Hungary and he built a little theater in the cellar of his house when he was 8 years old, where he and five of his friends reenacted plays. They set up the stage, with scenery and props, after he graduated college at age 19, he took a job as an actor with a traveling theater company where he began working as one their traveling players. From that job, he became a pantomimist with a circus for a while and they played Ibsen and Shakespeare in various languages, depending on what country they were in. They performed throughout Europe, including France, Hungary, Italy and Germany and he had various responsibilities, We had to do everything—make bill posters, print programs, set scenery, mend wardrobe, sometimes even arrange chairs in the auditoriums. Sometimes we traveled in trains, sometimes in stage coaches, sometimes on horseback, sometimes we played in town halls, sometimes in little restaurants with no scenery at all
4.
Hal B. Wallis
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Harold Brent Hal Wallis was an American film producer. He is best remembered for producing Casablanca and True Grit, along many other major films for Warner Bros. featuring such film stars as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis. Later on, for a period, he was connected with Paramount Pictures and oversaw films featuring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley. Aaron Blum Wolowicz was born October 19,1898 in Chicago, Illinois and his family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros. in 1923. Within a few years, Wallis became involved in the end of the business. In a career spanned more than 50 years, he was involved with the production of more than 400 feature-length movies. Among the more significant movies he produced were Casablanca, Dark Victory, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York and he left Warner Bros. in 1944, after a clash with Jack L. Warner over Warners acceptance of the Best Picture Oscar for Casablanca, to work as an independent producer, the first screenwriters he hired for his new enterprise were Ayn Rand and Lillian Hellman. Among his financial hits were the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies and he produced True Grit, for which John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor of 1969, and its sequel. After moving to Universal Pictures, he produced Mary, Queen of Scots and he received 16 Academy Award producer nominations for Best Picture, winning for Casablanca in 1943. For his consistently high quality of motion picture production, he was honored with the Academy Awards Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He was also nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, twice winning awards for Best Picture, in 1975, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures, in 1980, he published his autobiography, Starmaker, cowritten with Charles Higham. In the 1930s Mr. Wallis used his investment dollars to develop real estate in Sherman Oaks. He named one of the streets after himself using his nickname Hal, halbrent Avenue, Sherman Oaks, CA is the street and most of the original homes are still standing today. Its very close to Ventura and Sepulveda Boulevards near the infamous Sherman Oaks Galleria used extensively in the 1982 movie romp Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Wallis was married twice, to actress Louise Fazenda from 1927 until her death in 1962 and he had one son with Fazenda, Brent Harris. Wallis died in 1986 of complications of diabetes in Rancho Mirage, California, news of his passing was not released until after his private memorial service was completed
5.
Jack L. Warner
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Jack Leonard J. L. Warner, born Jacob Warner, in London, Ontario, was a Canadian-American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Warners career spanned some forty-five years, its duration surpassing that of any other of the seminal Hollywood studio moguls, as co-head of production at Warner Bros. Studios, he worked with his brother, Sam Warner, to procure the technology for the industrys first talking picture. After Sams death, Jack clashed with his older brothers, Harry. Although Warner was feared by many of his employees and inspired ridicule with his attempts at humor, he earned respect for his shrewd instincts. He recruited many of Warner Bros. top stars and promoted the social dramas for which the studio became known. Given to decisiveness, Warner once commented, If Im right fifty-one percent of the time, Throughout his career, he was viewed as a contradictory and enigmatic figure. Although he was a staunch Republican, Warner encouraged film projects that promoted the agenda of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and he opposed European fascism and criticized Nazi Germany well before Americas involvement in World War II. Despite his controversial image, Warner remained a force in the motion picture industry until his retirement in the early 1970s. Jack Warner was born in London, Ontario, in 1892 and his parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland who spoke mainly Yiddish. Jack was the surviving son of Benjamin Warner a cobbler from Krasnosielc, Poland, and his wife. Following their marriage in 1876, the couple had three children in Poland, one of whom died at a young age, one of the surviving children was Jacks eldest brother, Hirsch. The Warner family had occupied a hostile world, where the night-riding of cossacks, the burning of houses, and the raping of women were part of lifes burden for the Jews of the shtetl. In 1888, in search of a future for his family and himself, Benjamin made his way to Hamburg, Germany. Pearl Warner and the two children joined him in Baltimore, Maryland, less than a year later. In Baltimore, the couple had five children, including Abraham and Sam Warner. Benjamin Warners decision to move to Canada in the early 1890s was inspired by a friends advice that he could make an excellent living bartering tin wares with trappers in exchange for furs and their sons Jack and David were born in Ontario. After two arduous years in Canada, Benjamin and Pearl Warner returned to Baltimore, bringing along their growing family, two more children, Sadie and Milton, were added to the household there
6.
Julius J. Epstein
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It was adapted from an unpublished play, Everybody Comes to Ricks, written by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison. His identical twin died in 1952, a loss that he felt for the rest of his life and he continued writing, receiving two more Oscar nominations. In 1998, he received a Los Angeles Film Critics Association career achievement award and his credits included Four Daughters for which he received his first Oscar nomination, The Bride Came C. O. D. The Man Who Came to Dinner, Mr. Skeffington, The Tender Trap, Light in the Piazza, Send Me No Flowers, Pete n Tillie, and Reuben, Reuben. Epstein was born Julius Epstein as a twin to his brother Philip on August 22,1909 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City and their parents owned a livery stable at a time when horses were widely used in the city. He and Philip both graduated from The Pennsylvania State University in 1931, where they were champions in boxing and he graduated with a BA in Arts and Letters. He maintained close ties with Penn State throughout his life, at his request, he was buried in a Penn State polo shirt. After college, the Epsteins went to Hollywood, hoping to work in the movies and they became successful screenwriters and began collaborating in 1939. They were noted for their Academy Award-winning Casablanca, written together with Howard Koch, jack L. Warner, head of Warner Brothers, had a tortuous relationship with the Epstein twins. While he could not argue with their commercial acumen, he deplored their pranks, their work habits, in 1952, Warner gave their names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. They never testified before the committee, but on a HUAC questionnaire, Epstein married the actress Frances Sage and they had two children, James and Elizabeth. Epstein married Ann and they had a son Philip, who died in 2000 and he died on December 30,2000 in Los Angeles, California. Epstein shared an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Four Daughters, written with Thyra Samter Winslow as an adaptation from Frances Hursts novel, in 1944, the Epstein brothers attempted their first film in the capacity of both writers and producers with Mr. Skeffington. The picture was a success and won both Bette Davis and Claude Rains Oscar nominations. About writing under the system of the 1930s and 40s, Epstein said in a 1984 interview. Movies in those days were prevented from reality, every leading man had to be a great sexual athlete. Every boy and girl had to meet cute, and the girl had to dislike the hero when they met, if a woman committed adultery, she had to die. Now the woman who commits adultery is your heroine, Four Daughters, for which he received his first Oscar nomination for an adapted screenplay
7.
James Cagney
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James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film. Known for his energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and White Heat, and was typecast or limited by this view earlier in his career. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Orson Welles said of Cagney, maybe the greatest actor who appeared in front of a camera. In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the line of the revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian and he secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role, Cagneys seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clarkes face. He became one of Hollywoods biggest stars and one of Warner Bros. biggest contracts, in 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces, for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan. In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me, Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family. He exited retirement,20 years later, for a part in the movie Ragtime, Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. several times over the course of his career, each time returning on much improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935, he sued Warner for breach of contract and won and this was one of the first times an actor prevailed over a studio on a contract issue. In reference to Cagneys refusal to be pushed around, Jack L, Warner called him the Professional Againster. Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II and was president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years, Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His biographers disagree as to the location, either on the corner of Avenue D. His father, James Francis Cagney, Sr. was of Irish descent, at the time of his sons birth, he was a bartender and amateur boxer, though on Cagneys birth certificate, he is listed as a telegraphist
8.
Joan Leslie
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Joan Leslie was an American actress, dancer, and vaudevillian who, during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as High Sierra, Sergeant York, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26,1925, in Highland Park, Michigan, John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist. Joans two older sisters, Betty and Mary Brodel, shared their mothers musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments, such as the saxophone and they began performing in front of audiences in acts that included singing and dancing. Leslie joined the duo at two and a years of age. She was soon able to play the accordion, with her father losing his job in the mid 1930s, the Great Depression caused financial difficulties for the family. As a result, the three sisters entered show business as vaudeville performers to support the family and they began touring in Canada and the United States. Collectively, they were known as The Three Brodels, as an attempt to bypass child labor laws at the time, both Mary and Joan pretended to be older than they were. When Leslie was nine, she told child labor investigators that she was 16 years old, Joan proved to be the scene stealer of the three sisters because of her impersonations of figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. Coming from a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, in 1936, Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a contract with the studio, earning $200 per week. While working at the studio, she attended MGMs Little Red Schoolhouse with other actors like Mickey Rooney. Her first film role was in Camille, a drama starring Greta Garbo. She played Taylors younger sister Marie Jeanette, but her scenes were deleted. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with Deanna Durbin, Leslie returned to New York, working on the radio and as a model. During this time, her older sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios, Leslie returned to Hollywood with the rest of her family, working for different studios as a freelancer. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures, Leslie was selected to play a small role in Men with Wings. While shooting the film, director William A, Wellman discovered that Leslies mother had lied about her daughters age and that she was only thirteen years old. For the remainder of the schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary
9.
Walter Huston
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Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Huston was born in Toronto, Ontario, where he attended Winchester Street Public School. He was the son of Elizabeth and Robert Moore Houghston, a farmer who founded a construction company. He was of Scottish and Irish descent and he had a brother and two sisters, one of whom was the theatrical voice coach Margaret Carrington. His family moved, before his birth, from Orangeville, Ontario where they were farmers, as a young man, he worked in construction and in his spare time attended the Shaw School of Acting. He made his debut in 1902. He went on to tour in In Convict Stripes, a play by Hal Reid, father of Wallace Reid and he again toured in another play The Sign of the Cross. In 1904, he married Rhea Gore and gave up acting to work as a manager of power stations in Nevada. He maintained these jobs until 1909, in 1909, his marriage foundering, he appeared with an older actress named Bayonne Whipple. They were billed as Whipple and Huston and, in 1915, vaudeville was their livelihood into the 1920s. Huston began his Broadway career on January 22,1924 and he appeared in a play, Mr. Pitt. Several more Broadway plays solidified his fame, e. g. Desire Under the Elms, Kongo, The Barker, Elmer the Great, once talkies began in Hollywood, he achieved fame in both character roles and as a leading man. His first major role was portraying the villainous Trampas in the western The Virginian with Gary Cooper and he starred as the title character in the Broadway theatrical adaptation of Sinclair Lewiss novel Dodsworth in 1934 and the plays film version two years later. For his role as Sam Dodsworth, Huston won the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award, Huston remained busy throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both on stage and screen. He performed September Song in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938, in 1941, Walter Huston portrayed the part of the ships captain, who is shot while delivering the black bird to Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon. Walters son, John Huston, directed the picture, John Huston, as a practical joke, had his father enter the scene and die over 10 different takes. In 1948, he played Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, travens novel, which told the story of three gold diggers in 1920s post-revolution Mexico. In the 1950 release of the entitled, September Affair, starring Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten
10.
George M. Cohan
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George Michael Cohan, known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents, beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway, The Yankee Doodle Boy, as a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s, known in the decade before World War I as the man who owned Broadway, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy, a statue of Cohan in Times Square in New York City commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been born on the Fourth of July. Georges parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance, Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans. In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Pecks Bad Boy and then joined the family act and he and his sister made their Broadway debut in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous speech, My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you. The family generally gave a performance at the hall there each summer. Cohans memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, as Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, in 1934, he told a reporter, Ive knocked around everywhere, but theres no place like North Brookfield. Cohan began writing original skits and songs for the act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governors Son and his first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes Give My Regards to Broadway and The Yankee Doodle Boy
11.
James Wong Howe
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James Wong Howe, A. S. C. was a Chinese American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films. He was a master at the use of shadow and was one of the first to use deep-focus cinematography, during the 1930s and 1940s, Howe was one of the most sought after cinematographers in Hollywood. He was nominated for ten Academy Awards for cinematography, winning twice for The Rose Tattoo, Howe was judged to be one of historys ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. Howe was born Wong Tung Jim in Taishan, Canton Province and his father Wong Howe moved to America that year to work on the Northern Pacific Railway and in 1904 sent for his family. The Howes settled in Pasco, Washington, where they owned a general store, a Brownie camera, said to have been bought at Pasco Drug when he was a child, sparked an early interest in photography. After his fathers death, the teenaged Howe moved to Oregon to live with his uncle and briefly considered a career as a bantamweight boxer. After compiling a record of 5 wins,2 losses and a draw, Howe moved to the San Francisco Bay area in hopes of attending school but ran out of money and went south to Los Angeles. Once there, Howe took several odd jobs, including work as a commercial photographers delivery boy, soon thereafter he was called to the set of The Little American to act as an extra clapper boy, which brought him into contact with silent film director Cecil B. Amused by the sight of the diminutive Asian holding the slate with a cigar in his mouth, DeMille kept Howe on. To earn additional money, Howe took publicity stills for Hollywood stars, Howe worked steadily as a cinematographer from 1923 until the end of the era of silent film. In 1928, Howe was in China shooting backgrounds for a movie he hoped to direct, the project he was working on was never completed, and when he returned to Hollywood, he discovered that the talkies had largely supplanted silent productions. With no experience in that medium, Howe could not find work, to reestablish himself, Howe first co-financed a Japanese-language feature shot in Southern California entitled Chijiku wo mawasuru chikara, which he also photographed and co-directed. When that film failed to find an audience in Californias nisei communities or Japan, Howe gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be difficult to work with, often overruling and even berating other members of the film crew. In the early 1930s, while at MGM, Howe, who had generally been billed as James Howe, over the course of his career, he was also credited as James How, Jimmie Howe, and James Wong How. Often publicized as a Chinese cameraman, Howe was prevented from becoming a U. S. citizen until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Prior to World War II, Howe met his wife, novelist Sanora Babb. Due to anti-miscegenation laws, the marriage would not be recognized in the United States until 1949. Babb died in 2005, aged 98, after the end of World War II, Howes long-term contract with Warner Bros. lapsed, and he went to China to work on a documentary about rickshaw boys
12.
Warner Bros.
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Entertainment Inc. – colloquially known as Warner Bros. or Warner Bros. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios, Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. The companys name originated from the four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, the owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, in 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, in 1918 they opened the first Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, on April 4,1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. The first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwoods 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, however, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins, the movie was so successful that Jack signed the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week. Rin Tin Tin became the top star. Jack nicknamed him The Mortgage Lifter and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanucks career, Zanuck eventually became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jacks right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director, lubitschs film The Marriage Circle was the studios most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners remained a lesser studio, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel. The film was so successful that Harry signed Barrymore to a contract, like The Marriage Circle. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywoods most successful independent studio, as the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan
13.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located 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, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
14.
Irene Manning
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Irene Manning was an American actress and singer. Manning was born Inez Harvuot on July 17,1912 in Cincinnati, Ohio, both of her parents were singers. Her family loved to go on outdoor picnics where the activity was group singing. This family environment helped Irene to develop a keen interest in singing at an early age. Her sisters later complained that little Irene would sing in her sleep, Manning trained as an opera singer at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. While performing with an all-girl USO show in England, Irene was asked to perform with bandleader Glenn Miller shortly before his death in 1944, Miller was involved in making swing records to be broadcast into Nazi Germany as part of the American Broadcasting System in Europe. Because she had been an opera star prior to World War II and was fluent in singing in German. Her sides were some of the last records made by Glenn Miller and she was briefly credited as Hope Manning in her first films, as she broke in with the Republic Studios system in 1936. Her first film placed her as the actress in a western, The Old Corral. Irene once said in jest that she had left light opera for a horse opera, by the early 1940s, Irene was employed in the Warner Bros. studio system as a contract actress and singer. She is probably best remembered as diva Fay Templeton in Yankee Doodle Dandy, in this film, she had a scene in which she had to simultaneously act, sing the song Mary, and play the piano. She starred with Humphrey Bogart in The Big Shot and with Dennis Morgan in both The Desert Song and Shine On, Harvest Moon. Her contract was picked up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to place her singing skills as a threat to Jeanette MacDonald, in private, Manning claimed that she was a better singer. The problem between MacDonald and MGM subsided, and Mannings contract was dropped without any appearances in an MGM film, in all, Irene Manning made a dozen films. The musical stage took priority in the half of the 1940s with The Day Before Spring on Broadway. She remained in England and appeared on her own BBC TV show, An American in England until 1951, eventually she retired to teach acting and voice. Manning died on May 28,2004, from heart failure at her home in San Carlos, California. Sylvia Cadman Hollywood Canteen - Irene Manning Escape in the Desert - Lora Tedder I Live in Grosvenor Square - Herself - U. S. O
15.
George Tobias
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George Tobias was an American film and television actor. He was best known for his role as Abner Kravitz on the television sitcom, born to a Jewish family in New York, he began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. He then spent several years in groups before moving on to Broadway and, eventually. From 1959-61, Tobias played Penrose in eight episodes of the ABC television series, Adventures in Paradise, from 1964 to 1971, he played Abner Kravitz, the long-suffering neighbor on the ABC sitcom, Bewitched. Tobias often appeared in a role as a courtroom spectator on CBSs Perry Mason and played Sidney Falconer in the episode. Tobias was charged in the death of 9-year-old Joel Watnick of Los Angeles in July 1954, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge awarded damages to four other boys who were passengers in a station wagon struck by Tobiass car. He had loaned his car to actress Lynne Baggett, who was charged with felony hit-and-run after Watnick died, watnicks mother sued Baggett in separate court proceedings. Baggett and Tobias shared responsibility for damages which amounted to $2,599, Tobias never married and retired from acting in 1977 after a guest role in the Bewitched sequel Tabitha. On February 27,1980, Tobias died of Bladder cancer at the age of 78 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and he is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, Queens, New York City. George Tobias at the Internet Movie Database George Tobias at the TCM Movie Database George Tobias at the Internet Broadway Database George Tobias at Find a Grave
16.
Rosemary DeCamp
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Rosemary DeCamp was an American radio, film, and television actress. DeCamp was the elder of two born to William Valentine and Margaret Elizabeth DeCamp, both natives of Iowa. She was 14 years older than her brother Jerry, DeCamp first came to fame in November 1937, when she took the role of Judy Price, the secretary/nurse of Dr. Christian in the long-running radio series of the same name. She also played in The Career of Alice Blair, a transcribed syndicated soap opera that ran in 1939-1940 and she made her film debut in Cheers for Miss Bishop and appeared in many Warner Bros. She played the mother of the character played by Sabu Dastagir in Jungle Book. In 1951 and 1953, respectively, she starred in the musical films On Moonlight Bay and its sequel, By The Light Of The Silvery Moon, as Alice Winfield, Doris Days mother. She appeared in the 1961 Rawhide episode, Incident Near Gloomy River, in 1962, she played a dishonest Southern belle in the NBC sitcom Ensign OToole with Dean Jones. She appeared in the role of Gertrude Komack on ABCs medical drama Breaking Point in the episode entitled A Little Anger is a Good Thing, DeCamp made several appearances on Death Valley Days, each time playing a different role. In 1965, she played the newspaper editor Caroline Romney of Durango, Colorado, in the episode Mrs. Romney, in the story, Romney sounds the alarm for citizens to fight the Kimball/Sykes gang. She delivered a short but memorable performance as Hannah Bailey, wife of the hardy, in the story line, the Baileys make their final settlement in southeastern Texas after having overcome many obstacles over the years. Now they face the order of Stephen F. Austin that they vacate their land, but Austin soon has a change of heart and asks them to stay. Bailey dies with his wish of interment standing upright facing west, hence his grave marker. During the 1960s, she appeared in commercials for the laundry product 20 Mule Team Borax, DeCamp had a recurring role as Helen Marie, the mother of Marlo Thomass character on the ABC sitcom That Girl from 1966–1970. DeCamp made several appearances as the mother of Shirley Partridge in The Partridge Family from 1970–73 and she also played The Fairy Godmother in the 1980s TV show, The Memoirs of a Fairy Godmother. DeCamp played Buck Rogers mother in flashback scenes of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode The Guardians, on July 7,1946, her Beverly Hills home was damaged when struck by a wing after the experimental XF-11 piloted by Howard Hughes crashed nearby. A piece of the wing and a part of the roof landed in DeCamps bedroom. DeCamp was married to Inglewood Municipal Judge John Ashton Shidler from 1941 until his death in 1998, the Shidlers raised four daughters, Margaret, Martha, Valerie, and Nita. Outliving most of her contemporaries, DeCamp died of pneumonia in 2001 and she was ninety years of age
17.
Jeanne Cagney
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Jeanne Carolyn Cagney was an American film, stage, and television actress. Born in New York City, Jeanne Cagney and her four brothers were raised by her widowed mother. Two of the brothers were film actor James Cagney and actor/producer William Cagney and she attended Hunter College High School. Majoring in French and German, she was a cum laude graduate of Hunter College of City College of New York and she also starred in plays produced by the colleges dramatic society. Following her college graduation, she studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Cagney performed in the original stage production of The Iceman Cometh, which premiered on Broadway on October 9,1946. The plays author, Eugene ONeill, cast her in the role of Margie, after being heard by a scout while appearing on Bing Crosbys radio program, Cagney had a film test with RKO Pictures. However, she signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. She appeared in 19 films between 1939 and 1965, including four films with James Cagney, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Time of Your Life, A Lion Is in the Streets, Cagney gave a noted performance opposite Mickey Rooney in the film noir crime film Quicksand. Cagney briefly played the role in the radio soap opera The Romance of Helen Trent. Later, she served as the commentator of Queen for a Day. This daytime game show is regarded as a forerunner of todays reality shows, Cagney hosted segments that provided viewers with tips on style and introduced to them the latest fashions. Cagney married actor Ross Latimer in 1944 and she was divorced from him March 9,1951. She married Jack Morrison, a faculty member in theater arts at UCLA, on June 6,1953, Jeanne Cagney, at age 65, died of lung cancer in Newport Beach, California, on December 7,1984. Survivors included brothers William and James Cagney, daughters Theresa Cagney and Mary Anne Roberts, and her grave is at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, California. Her brother William, who died in 1988, is buried next to her, Jeanne Cagney at the Internet Movie Database Jeanne Cagney at the Internet Broadway Database Jeanne Cagney at AllMovie Jeanne Cagney at Find a Grave
18.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
19.
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
20.
I'd Rather Be Right
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Id Rather Be Right is a musical with a book by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and music by Richard Rodgers. The story is a Depression-era political satire set in New York City, about Washington politics and political figures, the plot centers on Peggy Jones and her boyfriend Phil, who needs a raise in order for them to get married. The President steps in and solves their dilemma and it premiered on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on November 2,1937, produced by Sam H. Harris, and transferred to the Music Box Theatre, and ran for 290 performances. It starred George M. Cohan as Franklin Roosevelt, Cohan, playing FDR, danced in such pieces as Off the Record, not possible in real life for the disabled President. The musical is prominently featured in the 1942 Cohan biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy, james Cagney, playing Cohan, after meeting FDR in the Oval Office, performs a joyous tap dance as he walks back down the stairs of the White House. In the film, we also see Cagney as Cohan performing Off the Record during the shows run
21.
White House
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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U. S. president since John Adams in 1800, the term White House is often used to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in The White House announced that. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style, construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior, reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semi-circular South portico in 1824, because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, in the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as an area for social events. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space, by 1948, the houses load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the rooms were completely dismantled. Once this work was completed, the rooms were rebuilt. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, the property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Presidents Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of Americas Favorite Architecture, in May 1790, New York began construction of Government House for his official residence, but he never occupied it. The national capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790, the July 1790 Residence Act named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the temporary national capital for a 10-year period while the Federal City was under construction. The City of Philadelphia rented Robert Morriss city house at 190 High Street for Washingtons presidential residence, the first president occupied the Market Street mansion from November 1790 to March 1797, and altered it in ways that may have influenced the design of the White House. As part of an effort to have Philadelphia named the permanent national capital, Pennsylvania built a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away. President John Adams also occupied the Market Street mansion from March 1797 to May 1800, on Saturday, November 1,1800, he became the first president to occupy the White House. The Presidents House in Philadelphia became a hotel and was demolished in 1832, the Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre Charles LEnfants plan for the newly established federal city, Washington, D. C
22.
Congressional Gold Medal
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A Congressional Gold Medal is an award bestowed by the United States Congress, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom are the highest civilian awards in the United States. However, There are no permanent statutory provisions relating to the creation of Congressional Gold Medals. When a Congressional Gold Medal has been deemed appropriate, Congress has, by legislative action, American citizenship is not a requirement. Since the American Revolution, Congress has commissioned gold medals as its highest expression of appreciation for distinguished achievements. The medal was first awarded in 1776 by the Second Continental Congress to General George Washington, the medal normally is awarded to persons, but in 1979 the American Red Cross became the first organization to be honored with a gold medal. In 2014 the Civil Air Patrol was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for the service in World War II. As of 2013 four people had been awarded more than one medal, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln Ellsworth. The Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom are generally considered to carry the same level of prestige. The chief difference between the two is that the Freedom Medal is personally awarded by the President of the United States, a Congressional Gold Medal is designed by the United States Mint to specifically commemorate the person and achievement for which the medal is awarded. Medals are therefore different in appearance, and there is no standard design, Congressional Gold Medals are considered non-portable, meaning that they are not meant to be worn on a uniform or other clothing, but rather displayed. This was authorized in 1935 by Pub. L, 74–43 allowing the Secretary of the Navy to authorize—at his discretion—the wearing of commemorative or other special awards on Navy or Marine Corps uniforms, in military sized form. The rules have broadened since its beginning and now includes different people groups such as actors, authors, entertainers, often, bronze versions of the medals are struck for sale by the U. S. Mint, and may be available in both larger and smaller sizes. In at least one case, the John Wayne medal, private dealers bought large numbers of the bronze version and they were then gold plated and resold to the public for a significant profit. List of Congressional Gold Medal recipients Awards and decorations of the United States government Congressional Silver Medal Congressional Bronze Medal Thanks of Congress Snowden, a Description of the Medals of Washington, and of Other Objects of Interest in the Museum of the Mint. Illustrated, to Which Are Added Biographical Notices of the Directors of the Mint from 1792 to the year 1851, list of recipients Loubat, J. F. and Jacquemart, Jules, Illustrator, The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776–1876
23.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
24.
Sam H. Harris
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Sam H. Harris was a Broadway producer and theater owner. After a stint as a cough drop salesman and boxing manager, Harriss first production was Theodore Kremers The Evil That Men Do, which he co-produced with Al Woods in 1903. Harris found success in 1904 as the partner of George M. Cohan, with whom he produced eighteen Broadway musicals. From 1916 to 1919, most of these productions were in the Chandler Theater on 42nd street, renamed the Cohan, Harris separated from Cohan after a 1919 actors strike, and renamed the theater the Sam H. Harris Theatre. He sold it in 1926 to the Shubert Organization, but it continued to operate under the Harris name until 1933 when it was converted to a movie house. He proposed a musical revue to his friend Irving Berlin in 1919 and his estate held an interest in the theater through 1960. On Harriss death, most shares in the theater were sold to Berlin, Harris produced over 130 shows, including several of the biggest hits of the 1920s and 1930s. He was known for fairness to actors and writers amid the harsh treatment prevailing in the industry. Harris was portrayed by Richard Whorf in the Academy Award winning biopic, weakened by an appendectomy Harris died of pneumonia on July 3,1941. He was buried next to Cohan in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Harris at the Internet Broadway Database
25.
Over There
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Over There is a 1917 hit song written by George M. Cohan that was popular with United States military and public during both world wars. It was a song designed to galvanize American young men to enlist in the army. The song is best remembered for a line in its chorus, Cohan wrote the song in 1917, when the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies and began sending troops to Europe. The song reflected Americans expectations that the war would be short, Cohan wrote Over There on April 7,1917, just one day after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany. Cohan wrote the song in two hours and was inspired by the song Johnny Get Your Gun. The song went unpublished until June 1,1917 when publisher William Jerome registered it with the Library of Congress, the song was introduced to the public in the fall of 1917 when it was sung at a Red Cross benefit in New York City. It would later become the most popular song during the war with two million copies sold. Notable early recordings include versions by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, Billy Murray, Arthur Fields, the sheet music was heavily reprinted and has variant covers. One of those editions was a Popular edition and this song, as well as Its a Long Way to Tipperary, was a popular patriotic song during the First World War. On June 29,1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Cohan the Congressional Gold Medal for this and it has been revived on various occasions during and after World War II. It was not heavily used during Vietnam, but has used since September 11. As the specific country over there is not named, the words can serve as an exhortation for any sending of American troops to any military intervention. The slogan The Yanks are Coming is derived from this song, as sung by early 20th century recording artist Billy Murray, Verse 1 Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Take it on the run, on the run, on the run, hear them calling you and me, Every Sons of Liberty. Hurry right away, no delay, go today, make your Daddy glad to have had such a lad. Tell your sweetheart not to pine, To be proud her boys in line, Verse 2 Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Johnny, show the Hun youre a son-of-a-gun, hoist the flag and let her fly Yankee Doodle do or die. Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit, Yankee to the ranks from the towns and the tanks
26.
Fay Templeton
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Fay Templeton was an American actress, singer and comedian. Her parents were actors/vaudevillians and she followed in their footsteps, making her Broadway debut in 1900, Templeton excelled on the legitimate and vaudeville stages for more than half a century. She was a headliner and heroine of popular theater, appearing until 1934. For a time she dated Sam Shubert, of the Shubert family of theatre owners, some of her notable performances were in H. M. S. In an age of buxom beauties, she was particularly buxom, Templeton was born on December 25,1865, in Little Rock, Arkansas, where her parents were starring with the Templeton Opera Company. Her father, John Templeton, was a well-known Southern theatre manager, comedian and her mother, Helen Alice Vane, starred with her husband. At age three, Templeton, dressed as Cupid, sang fairy tale songs between the acts of her father’s plays, gradually, she was incorporated into the productions as a bit player and then, at five, had actual lines to recite. At eight, she played Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at fifteen, Templeton joined a light opera company, playing in a juvenile version of Gilbert and Sullivans H. M. S. She also played in The Mascot and Billee Taylor, the same year, she eloped with Billy West, a blackface minstrel performer, but they separated after a honeymoon of six weeks. On October 7,1885, Templeton had her debut in a revival of Evangeline. The play ran for 201 performances, in this show, she displayed talent as both a comedian and mimic. After several years on the playing in various melodramas and musical farces, Templeton was given the title role in Hendrik Hudson. It was a role, ” one in which an actress appears in male clothing. Her role was of a faithless husband and she won accolades singing “The Same Old Thing, ” but the show itself lasted only sixteen performances. She starred in the London premiere of Monte Cristo, Jr. an 1886 hit, between shows, in 1887, Templeton began living with Howell Osborne, a wealthy broker for Jay Gould, there is no record that they ever married, and the two had no children. The two lived in England and toured the continent for several years, by 1890, Templeton had formed her own opera company and starred in various operettas, none of which fared well financially. In 1895, she starred in another role in E. E. Rice’s Excelsior. In 1896, the comic duo Joe Weber and Lew Fields bought a Broadway theater and formed a company made up of headliners
27.
Eddie Foy, Sr.
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Edwin Fitzgerald, known professionally as Eddie Foy and Eddie Foy Sr. was an American actor, comedian, dancer and vaudevillian. Six-year-old Eddie began performing in the streets and local saloons to support his family, at 15 he changed his name to Foy, and with a partner began dancing in bars, traveling throughout the western United States. He worked for a time as a supernumerary in theatrical productions, sharing a stage at times with such leading men of the time as Edwin Booth, with another partner, Jim Thompson, Foy went west again and gained his first professional recognition in mining camps and cow towns. In one such town, Dodge City, Kansas, Foy and his partner lingered for some time and Foy became acquainted with notable citizens Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday. In later years, Foy told of an altercation over a girl with fellow actor Charles Chaplin, the gunfire awakened Wyatt Earp, who disarmed the actor and sent both the players home to sleep it off. Foy is also rumored to have been in Tombstone, Arizona, in October 1881, in 1879, Foy married Rose Howland, one of the singing Howland Sisters, who were traveling the same circuit. Three years later, Foy and troupe relocated to Philadelphia and joined the Carncross Minstrels and that same year, however, Rose Foy died in childbirth, as did the child she was delivering. Foy lingered with the troupe for two seasons and then returned to the road and he joined David Hendersons troupe and traveled all around the U. S. dancing, doing comedy, and acting in farces. Foy returned to Chicago in 1888 as the comedian in variety shows and revues. He played the variety circuits for years in a series of song and dance acts, eventually rising to musical comedy stardom in such Broadway hits as The Strollers, Foy specialized in eccentric routines and costumes, often appearing in drag to hilarious effect. In 1896, Foy married his wife, Madeline Morando. Eddie Jr. s son, Eddie III, was a director with Columbia Pictures for over 40 years. Between 1901 and 1912, Foy Sr. played the comic roles in a series of musical comedies in New York City and on tour, including The Strollers, The Wild Rose, Mr. Bluebeard. The Earl and the Girl, The Orchid, Mr Hamlet of Broadway, Up and Down Broadway and it was while on tour with Mr. Bluebeard that he became a hero of Chicago’s infamous Iroquois Theatre Fire, December 30,1903. A malfunctioning spotlight set fire to the backstage, and Foy stayed onstage until the last minute. Unfortunately the theater’s safety features were woefully inadequate, the theater personnel untrained, and some of the exits locked from the outside, Foy escaped by crawling through a sewer. Between 1910 and 1913, he formed a vaudeville act, Eddie Foy and The Seven Little Foys. While Foy was a stern disciplinarian backstage, he portrayed an indulgent father onstage, and his wife Madeline died in 1918
28.
Frances Langford
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Julia Frances Langford was an American singer and entertainer who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and also made film appearances over two decades. Born in Hernando, Florida, a town in Citrus County, Florida, she was the daughter of Anna Rhea Newbern and her husband. The Langford family later moved to Lakeland, Florida, where Frances grew up and she graduated from Lakeland High School and studied music at Florida Southern College, also in Lakeland. Frances grew up in the Mulberry, Florida area, a community near Lakeland. Langford originally trained as an opera singer, while a young girl she required a tonsillectomy that changed her soprano range to a contralto. As a result, she was forced to change her style to a more contemporary big band. At age 17, she was singing for local dances, cigar manufacturer Eli Witt heard her sing at an American Legion party and hired her to sing on his local radio show. After a brief stint in the Broadway musical Here Goes the Bride in 1931, while singing for radio during the early 1930s, she was heard by Rudy Vallee, who invited her to become a regular on his radio show. From 1935 until 1938 she was a performer on Dick Powells radio show. From 1946 to 1951, she performed with Don Ameche as the wife, Blanche. With her film debut in Every Night at Eight the diminutive five-foot-one-inch star introduced what became her signature song, in the Western Deputy Marshal, she co-starred with her first husband, matinee idol Jon Hall. From 1941, Langford was a singer on Bob Hopes The Pepsodent Show when he held his first military entertainment program at March Field in Riverside. The show was so positive, he continued broadcasting from training bases around the country, during World War II, she joined Hope, Jerry Colonna, guitarist Tony Romano, and other performers on U. S. O. Tours through Europe, North Africa, and the South Pacific, during a USO tour in the Pacific theater she was invited to take a ride in a P-38 fighter plane. During the flight, a Japanese ship was spotted and the joy ride was postponed until the pilot finished strafing the ship, Bob Hope recalled how Frances Langford got the biggest laugh he had ever heard. At a U. S. O. show in the South Pacific, when Langford sang the first line of her signature song, Im in the Mood for Love, a soldier in the audience stood up and shouted, Youve come to the right place, honey. Also, during the war, Langford wrote the weekly Purple Heart Diary column for Hearst Newspapers and her association with Hope continued into the 1980s. In 1989 she joined him for a USO tour to entertain troops in the Persian Gulf and she worked for several years in the late 1940s on The Spike Jones Show and starred in a short-lived DuMont variety show Star Time
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Nora Bayes
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Nora Bayes was a popular American singer, comedian and actress of the early 20th century. Born Eleanora Sarah Goldberg to Elias and Rachel Goldberg, with Dora being a pet or nickname, to a Jewish family in Joliet, Illinois, she had a brother, Harry, Bayes was performing professionally in vaudeville in Chicago by age 18. She toured from San Francisco, California to New York City, in 1908, she married singer-songwriter Jack Norworth. Bayes and Norworth divorced in 1913, after America entered World War I Bayes became involved with morale boosting activities. George M. Cohan asked that she be the first to record a performance of his patriotic song Over There and her recording was released in 1917 and became an international hit. She also performed shows for the soldiers, in 1919, she recorded How Ya Gonna Keep em Down on the Farm. for Columbia which became a hit for that year. Bayes made many records for the Victor and Columbia labels. From 1924–28, her accompanist was pianist Louis Alter, who composed the popular songs Manhattan Serenade, Nina Never Knew. Bayes established her own theater, The Nora Bayes Theater, on West 44th Street in New York and her first husband was Otto Gressing, a Chicago businessman, and Norworth was her second. Husband number three was a dancer named Harry Clarke who also performed with her in vaudeville, husband number four was New York business man Arthur Gordoni. Her fifth and last husband was Benjamin Friedland, a New York City businessman, Bayes bore no biological children in any of her marriages. The oldest was Norman Bayes, adopted by Bayes and Gordoni in March 1918, Bayes second adopted child was a daughter named Lea Nora, adoption date July 25,1919. Her third adopted child was Peter Oxley Bayes, born March 9,1921 in London, in 1928, Nora Bayes was diagnosed with cancer and died following surgery. She was buried 18 years later with her husband, Ben Friedland, in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, although inexplicably. On April 11,2006, under the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the citation stated that she was Inextricably associated in popular imagination with World War I. Bayes was portrayed by Ann Sheridan in the 1944 musical biopic Shine On, Harvest Moon and she was also portrayed by Frances Langford in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, where she and James Cagney perform Over There. In the 1941 play, Arsenic and Old Lace, drama critic Mortimer Brewster arrives home from reviewing a play and he then says, My God – Im still there. The 1980 Garson Kanin novel Smash is about an attempt to make a Broadway musical out of Nora Bayes life, the novel serves as the inspiration for the 2012 television series Smash, although the subject of the shows fictional musical is not Bayes but Marilyn Monroe
30.
George Barbier (actor)
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George W. Barbier was an American film and stage actor. Barbier entered Crozier Seminary to study for the ministry but gave it up to go on the stage and he began his career in light opera and spent several years in repertory and stock companies. He eventually played on Broadway, where he appeared in seven productions between 1922 and 1930, among them The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Man Who Came Back. He signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1929 and later worked as an actor for most of the major studios. His first film was The Big Pond, the weighty, white-haired Barbier often played pompous, but mostly kind-hearted businessmen or patriarchs in supporting roles. George Barbier appeared in 88 films until his death in 1945, George Barbier at the Internet Movie Database George Barbier at the Internet Broadway Database George Barbier at Find a Grave
31.
A. L. Erlanger
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Abraham Lincoln Erlanger was an American theatrical producer, director, designer, theatre owner, and a leading figure of the Theatrical Syndicate. Born in Buffalo, New York, Erlanger and his partner, Kentucky lawyer Marc Klaw, immensely successful, together they built a large chain of theatres and vaudeville playhouses. In 1896 they joined with theatre operators Al Hayman, Charles Frohman, Samuel F. Nixon, the operations of Klaw & Erlanger produced dozens of Broadway shows during the first three decades of the 20th century, including Dracula, Ben-Hur, and The Jazz Singer. They produced the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907 at the rooftop Jardin de Paris in New York City and they also built several of Broadways most outstanding theaters such as the art nouveau New Amsterdam Theatre in 1903 and in 1927 Erlangers Theatre plus the new Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia. Also in 1927, he leased a newly built theatre in Buffalo, New York, in addition to playhouses, he and his partner owned the Klaw & Erlanger Opera Company and Klaw and Erlangers Costume Company. Erlangers cold disdain and ruthless tactics helped bring about his own downfall and he made a bitter enemy of the Shubert brothers after Sam Shubert died in a train wreck in 1905, when he is said to have refused to abide by any legal agreements with a dead man. The enraged Shubert brothers Lee and Jacob began an all out campaign to wrestle power in the industry away from the Theatrical Syndicate. In 1910, he drew the ire of New York mayor William Jay Gaynor when one of his theaters hosted The Girl with the Whooping Cough, in the end, Erlanger suffered large financial losses and had no choice but to accede to union demands. The strike spelled the demise of his once powerful organization and the partnership of Klaw & Erlanger produced their last Broadway show in 1919, Erlanger continued to produce on Broadway. He died on March 7,1930 and he is interred at Beth El Cemetery in Ridgewood, New York. According to Groucho Marx, when Erlanger approached Gen. Lew Wallace about acquiring the rights to his epic novel Ben-Hur, Wallace asked him fiercely, Do you believe in our lord. My partner Klaw does—but hes up in Boston
32.
S. Z. Sakall
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Szőke Szakáll, known as S. Z. Sakall, was a Hungarian stage and film character actor. The name he went by, Szőke Szakáll, is Hungarian for blonde beard and he appeared in many films including In the Good Old Summertime, Lullaby of Broadway, Christmas in Connecticut, and Casablanca, in which he played Carl, the head waiter. Chubby-jowled Sakall played numerous supporting roles in Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1940s and 1950s and his rotund cuteness caused studio head Jack Warner to bestow on Sakall the nickname Cuddles. Warner asked that he be billed as S. Z. Cuddles Sakall in his later films and he became well known for using the phrase everything is hunky dunky. Szőke Szakáll was born Gärtner Sándor in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family, the actor became a star of the Hungarian stage and screen in the 1910s and 1920s. At the beginning of the 1920s, he moved to Vienna, in the 1930s, he was, next to Hans Moser, the most significant representative of the Wiener Film, the Viennese light romantic comedy genre. He appeared in Familientag im Hause Prellstein, Ihre Majestät die Liebe, for a brief period during this time, he ran his own production company. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Sakall was forced to return to Hungary and he was involved in over 40 movies in his native land. When Hungary joined the Axis in 1940, he left for Hollywood with his wife, many of Sakalls close relatives later died in Nazi concentration camps, including all three of his sisters and his niece, as well as his wifes brother and sister. Sakall began a career that included a succession of excitable theatrical impresarios, lovable European uncles. His first Hollywood role was in the comedy Its a Date with Deanna Durbin, the first big hit of his American career was Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Later, he signed a contract with Warner Bros. where he had a number of small roles. Later the same year, at the age of 59, he portrayed his best remembered character, wallis signed Sakall for the role three weeks after filming had begun. When he was first offered the part, Sakall hated it, Sakall finally agreed to take the role provided they gave him four weeks of work. The two sides agreed on three weeks. He received $1,750 per week for a total of $5,250 and he actually had more screen time than either Peter Lorre or Sydney Greenstreet. Sakall appeared in 30 more movies after this, including Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck, Sakall appeared in four films released in 1948, the drama Embraceable You, followed by April Showers, Michael Curtizs Romance on the High Seas, and Whiplash. He was in four top movies in 1949, first Sakall played Felix Hofer in Doris Days second film, My Dream Is Yours
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Walter Catlett
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Walter Catlett was an American actor. He made a career of playing excitable, officious blowhards, Catlett was born in San Francisco, California. He started out in vaudeville, teaming up with Hobart Cavanaugh at some point, with a detour for a while in opera and he started on stage in 1906 and made his Broadway debut in either The Prince of Pilsen or So Long Letty. His first film appearance was in 1912, but then he went back to stage and he performed in operettas and musicals, including The Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, the original production of the Jerome Kern musical Sally and the Gershwins Lady Be Good. In the last, he introduced the song Oh, Lady Be Good, Catlett made a handful of silent film appearances, but his film career did not catch on until the advent of talking pictures allowed moviegoers to experience his full comic repertoire. The New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall wrote that This clever comedian runs away with the laurels in Big City Blues. He played John Barsad in the 1935 David O. Selznick production of A Tale of Two Cities and he also provided the uncredited voice of J. Worthington Foulfellow the Fox in the 1940 Disney animated film Pinocchio. In the 1950s, he appeared in films like Here Comes the Groom, Friendly Persuasion and Beau James, Walter Catlett died of a stroke on November 14,1960 in Woodland Hills, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the 1700 block of Vine Street, Walter Catlett at the Internet Movie Database Walter Catlett at the Internet Broadway Database Walter Catlett at Find a Grave
34.
Minor Watson
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Minor Watson was a prominent character actor. He appeared in 111 movies made between 1913 and 1956 and his credits included Boys Town, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Kings Row, Guadalcanal Diary, Bewitched, The Virginian, and The Jackie Robinson Story Watson was the son of Mrs. Alice Rodgers. He attended St. Johns Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, at Shurtleff, he was a member of Sigma Phi, in which he said he was encouraged to pursue a career in drama. Watson began his career with Essanay Studios in 1913. He was described as the new recruit that plays lover parts, Watson married Elinor Hewitt December 7,1919, in Boston, Massachusetts. Watson is buried in Alton Cemetery in Alton, Illinois, Minor Watson at the Internet Movie Database Minor Watson at the Internet Broadway Database Minor Watson at AllMovie Minor Watson at Find a Grave
35.
Edward Franklin Albee II
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Edward Franklin Albee was a vaudeville impresario, and the adoptive grandfather of Edward Franklin Albee, the playwright. Albee was born on October 8,1857 in Machias, Maine to Nathaniel Smith Albee and he toured with P. T. Barnum as a roustabout, then in 1885 he partnered with Benjamin Franklin Keith in operating the Bijou Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. With the success of their business, it grew into the Keith-Albee theatre circuit of vaudeville theatres, Albee gradually took managerial control of Keiths theatrical circuit. They were the first to introduce moving pictures in the United States, in 1900, Pat Shea of Buffalo proposed to Keith and Albee that they should set up a shared booking arrangement for vaudeville similar to the Theatrical Syndicate. They did not invite Frederick Freeman Proctor, Keiths main competitor, the Vaudeville Managers Association was founded at the New York meeting. Keith and Albee dominated the new organization, Albee was president of the VMAs United Bookings Office from its formation in 1906. Albee had most of the vaudeville circuits give him control of their theatrical bookings where he charged acts a 5% commission. When performers tried to form a union, he set up National Vaudeville Artists and his partner Keith died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1914. He formed the Keith-Albee-Orpheum corporation on January 28,1928 with Joseph P. Kennedy, radio Corporation of America bought his company and formed RKO Pictures and turned the Orpheum vaudeville circuit into a chain of movie theaters. Many entertainers considered Albees tactics tyrannical, groucho Marx referred to the United Bookings Office as Albees Gestapo. They divorced in 1925 and in the year, he married Frances Cotter. Ethel Keith Albee, who married Edwin George Lauder, Jr. in 1914, on March 11,1930, Albee died at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. He was buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York and his grandson was Edward Albee, the playwright, who was adopted by his son, Reed. 1900 US census with Albees in Manhattan USS Beaumere II New York Times, but the club has always run an annual deficit. For years Edward Franklin Albee variety tycoon, footed the losses until his death in 1930
36.
Odette Myrtil
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Odette Myrtil was an American actress, singer, and violinist of French birth. She began her career as a violinist on the stage in Paris at the age of 14. She expanded out into acting and singing, and had her first major success at the age of 18 on the London stage in the 1916 musical revue The Bing Boys Are Here. She was a staple in Broadway musical theatre productions from 1924 to 1932 and she also appeared on the stages of Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and Paris several times during her career. From 1923 to 1972, Myrtil appeared as an actress in a total of 28 feature films, not a leading lady on camera, she specialized in character roles and was often utilized for her gifts as a singer. She made only one appearance during her career, in the Studio One in Hollywood 1953 episode The Paris Feeling. She also worked as a designer for 9 motion pictures from 1944 to 1950. Born Odette Belza in Paris, she was the daughter of two stage actors and she studied the violin at a boarding school in Brussels and began performing the violin professionally at the age of 13. In 1915, at the age of 16, she came to the United States to join the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway as one of the Ziegfeld Girls. The following year she came to London where she was a success in the West End show The Bing Boys Are Here. She spent the several years appearing successfully on the London stage. In 1923 Myrtil returned to New York City as an entertainer at the Palace Theatre where she had her first major success in America. She became a staple of the scene in New York City up into the early 1930s. She had a triumph as Odette in Jerome Kerns 1931 musical The Cat. Thereafter she only made a handful of appearances on Broadway, with her last show being the production of Harold Arlen. She spent a couple years in the early 1950s portraying Bloody Mary in the run of Rodgers and Hammersteins South Pacific. After 1935, Myrtils career decidedly shifted towards film, although she never left her live theatre roots and she had a fairly prolific career as a film actress, appearing in mainly mid-sized roles in a total of 25 films from 1936 to 1952. She had previously appeared as a dancer in the 1923 film Squibs M. P
37.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and he is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U. S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County and he attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and he entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt was presidential candidate James M. Coxs running mate and he was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting the enactment of programs to combat the depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency, Roosevelt took office while in the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. Energized by his victory over polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to labor union growth while more closely regulating business. His support for the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, the economy improved rapidly from 1933–37, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, when the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business, along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. His goal was to make America the Arsenal of Democracy, which would supply munitions to the Allies, in March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. He supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort, as an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and initiate the development of the worlds first atomic bomb. His work also influenced the creation of the United Nations. Roosevelts physical health declined during the war years, and he died 11 weeks into his fourth term. One of the oldest Dutch families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in other than politics. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York militia during the American Revolution, Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was president
