1.
Richard Attenborough
–
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, Kt, CBE was an English actor, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and politician. He was the President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, as a film director and producer, Attenborough won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983. He also won four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards, as an actor, he is perhaps best known for his roles in Brighton Rock, The Great Escape,10 Rillington Place, Miracle on 34th Street and Jurassic Park. He was the brother of David Attenborough, a naturalist and broadcaster, and John Attenborough. He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 until his death, Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at RADA. The sisters moved to the United States in the 1950s and lived with an uncle, during the Second World War, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training he was seconded to the newly formed R. A. F, Film Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together. Attenboroughs acting career started on stage and he appeared in shows at Leicesters Little Theatre, Dover Street, prior to his going to RADA, in 1949, exhibitors voted him the sixth most popular British actor at the box office. Early in his career, Attenborough starred in the West End production of Agatha Christies The Mousetrap. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production and it was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film thus far. His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place garnered excellent reviews, in 1977, he played the ruthless General Outram, again to great acclaim, in the Indian director Satyajit Rays period piece The Chess Players. He starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street as Kris Kringle and he made his only appearance in a film adaptation of Shakespeare when he played the English ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet. His performance in The Angry Silence earned him his first nomination for a BAFTA, seance On A Wet Afternoon won him his first BAFTA award. His feature film debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh. What a Lovely War, after which his acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. He later directed two epic films, Young Winston, based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far. He had been attempting to get the project made for 18 years and he directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films and his later films as director and producer include Chaplin starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands, based on the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham
2.
Carl Foreman
–
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the award-winning films The Bridge on the River Kwai and High Noon among others. He was one of the screenwriters that were blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of their suspected Communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party, Born in Chicago, Illinois, to a working-class Jewish family, he was the son of Fanny and Isidore Foreman. He studied at the University of Illinois, as a student in the 1930s, he became an advocate of revolutionary socialism and joined the American Communist Party. After graduating from university, Carl Foreman moved to Hollywood where he used his writing talents, from 1941 to 1942, he was involved with writing three films but his career was interrupted by service in the United States military during World War II. In 1951, during production of the film High Noon, Carl Foreman was summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He testified that he had been a member of the American Communist Party more than ten years earlier while still a man but had become disillusioned with the Party. As a result of his refusal to give the names of fellow Party members, Foreman was labeled as an uncooperative witness, Carl Foreman was the screenwriter of High Noon, a film released in 1952 that is seen by some as an allegory for McCarthyism. The Western film is considered an American classic and was No.27 on American Film Institutes 100 Years,100 Movies and this would be the last film he would be allowed to work on by a Hollywood studio for the next six years. Unemployed, Foreman and some others who had also been blacklisted such as Ring Lardner, in 1956 he co-wrote the screenplay for the equally acclaimed The Bridge on the River Kwai with fellow blacklisted writer Michael Wilson. Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle, the two were not given screen credit and the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boulle and this was only rectified posthumously in 1984 and his name was added to the award. In addition to his writing of screenplays, Carl Foreman produced ten films and he also produced and scripted the 1961 smash hit World War II blockbuster The Guns of Navarone, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn, it remains one of his most popular pictures. He is credited as presenter on the smash hit 1966 film Born Free, in 1965, he was made a governor of the British Film Institute, serving until 1971. In 1970, Foreman was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Such is his influence on the British film industry, that from 1998 to 2009 there was a British Academy Film Award named in his honor, the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer. Nearing the end of his life, Carl Foreman returned to the United States and his first marriage resulted in the birth of a daughter, Katie, to Estelle, his second marriage brought him two children, Amanda and Jonathan, born in London to Evelyn. Foremans daughter, Amanda Foreman, graduated from Columbia University and Oxford University, in 2008, he became one of the founders of the monthly British centre-right current affairs magazine Standpoint. High Noons production and release intersected with the second Red Scare. Foreman was called before HUAC while he was writing the film, Foreman had not been in the Communist Party for almost ten years, but declined to name names and was considered an un-cooperative witness by HUAC
3.
Robert Shaw (actor)
–
Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor, novelist, and playwright. With his menacing mutter and intimidating demeanour, he was often cast as a villain or stern military types. He is best remembered for his performances in Jaws, in which he portrayed a shark hunter named Quint, and The Sting, where he played the conned mobster, Doyle Lonnegan. Shaw also appeared in From Russia with Love, Battle of the Bulge, A Man for All Seasons, Battle of Britain, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Black Sunday, The Deep, Robert Shaw was born in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, in 1927. His mother, Doreen, was a former nurse born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland and he had three sisters, Elisabeth, Joanna and Wendy, and one brother, Alexander. When he was 7, the moved to Stromness, Orkney. When he was 12, his father, an alcoholic, took his own life, the family then moved to Cornwall, where he went to the independent Truro School. For a brief period, he was a teacher in Saltburn-by-the-Sea in the North Riding of Yorkshire and he served in the Royal Air Force. Shaw began his career in theatre, appearing in regional theatre throughout England. In 1952, he made his London debut in the West End at the Embassy Theatre and he developed his formidable, piercing shouting technique. Shaw starred in a British TV series which appeared on American television as The Buccaneers. Shaw was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Man for All Seasons, Shaw was also an accomplished writer of novels, plays and screenplays. His first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 1960 and his next, The Sun Doctor, published the following year, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1962. Shaw then embarked on a trilogy of novels – The Flag, The Man in the Glass Booth and his adaptation for the stage of The Man in the Glass Booth gained him the most attention for his writing. The Man in the Glass Booth was further developed for the screen, however, Shaw viewed the completed film before its release and asked to have his name reinstated. And Robert Shaw became very disturbed and he just didn’t like the idea until he saw the film. Then he phoned Eddie Anhalt, the screenwriter, and congratulated him because he thought it was—just kept the tone he wanted, and he phoned Mort Abrahams the Executive Producer to see if he could get his name put on the final credits. But it was too late to restore his name, all the prints were all made, Shaw also adapted The Hiding Place into a screenplay for the film Situation Hopeless
4.
Anne Bancroft
–
Anna Maria Louisa Italiano, known professionally as Anne Bancroft, was an American actress associated with the method acting school, having studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and she won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations. She won both an Oscar for her work in the film, and a Tony for the role in the play. On Broadway in 1965, she played a medieval nun obsessed with a priest in John Whitings play The Devils and she was perhaps best known as the seductress, Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate, a role that she later stated had come to overshadow her other work. Bancroft received several other Oscar nominations and continued in lead roles until the late 1980s, in 1987, she starred with Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road. In the 1990s she returned to supporting roles in films, and she received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, as well as an Emmy nomination for 2001s Haven. Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in the Bronx, New York, Bancrofts parents were both children of Italian immigrants. In an interview, she stated her family was originally from Muro Lucano and she was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, later moving to 1580 Zerega Ave. and graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in 1948. She later attended HB Studio, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Actors Studio, after appearing in a number of live television dramas under the name Anne Marno, she was told to change her surname for her film debut in Dont Bother to Knock. In 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda in William Gibsons two-character play Two for the Seesaw, for Gittel, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. She took the role to Hollywood, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She had returned to Broadway to star in Mother Courage and Her Children, so Joan Crawford accepted Bancrofts Oscar on her behalf, Bancroft is one of the few actors to have won an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role. Bancroft co-starred as a medieval nun obsessed with a priest in the 1965 Broadway production of John Whitings play The Devils, produced by Alexander H. Cohen and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, it ran for 63 performances. Bancroft received a second Academy Award nomination in 1965 for her performance in The Pumpkin Eater and her best-known role during this period was Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, for which she received a third Academy Award nomination. In the film, she played a married woman who seduces a family friend. In the movie, Hoffmans character later dates and falls in love with her daughter, Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate, she stated in several interviews that the role overshadowed all of her other work. Despite her character becoming an archetype of the older woman role, a CBS television special, Annie, the Women in the Life of a Man, won Bancroft an Emmy Award for her singing and acting. Bancroft is one of few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy
5.
Anthony Hopkins
–
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE, is a Welsh actor of film, stage, and television. In 1968, he got his break in film in The Lion in Winter, since 2016, he has starred in the critically acclaimed HBO television series Westworld. Along with his Academy Award, Hopkins has won three BAFTA Awards, two Emmys, and the Cecil B, in 1993, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, Hopkins was born on New Years Eve 1937, in Margam, a suburb of Port Talbot, Glamorgan. His parents were Annie Muriel and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker and his school days were unproductive, he would rather immerse himself in art, such as painting and drawing, or playing the piano, than attend to his studies. In 1949, to discipline, his parents insisted he attend Jones West Monmouth Boys School in Pontypool. He remained there for five terms and was educated at Cowbridge Grammar School in the Vale of Glamorgan. Hopkins was influenced and encouraged by Welsh compatriot Richard Burton, whom he met at the age of 15, Hopkins promptly enrolled at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, from which he graduated in 1957. After two years in the British Army doing his national service, he moved to London, where he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Hopkins made his first professional appearance in the Palace Theatre, Swansea. In 1965, after years in repertory, he was spotted by Laurence Olivier. Hopkins became Oliviers understudy, and filled in when Olivier was struck with appendicitis during a production of August Strindbergs The Dance of Death, despite his success at the National, Hopkins tired of repeating the same roles nightly and yearned to be in films. He made his debut in a 1967 BBC broadcast of A Flea in Her Ear. His first starring role in a film came in 1964 in Changes, in 1968, he got his break in The Lion in Winter playing Richard I. Although Hopkins continued in theatre he gradually moved away from it to more established as a television. He portrayed Charles Dickens in the BBC television film The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens in 1970, and Pierre Bezukhov in the BBCs mini series War and Peace. In 1972 he starred as British politician David Lloyd George in Young Winston, in 1980, he starred in The Elephant Man as the English doctor Sir Frederick Treves, who attends to Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man in 19th century London. That year he starred opposite Shirley MacLaine in A Change of Seasons
6.
John Mills
–
Sir John Mills, CBE was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. On screen, he often played people who are not at all exceptional and he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Ryans Daughter. Mills was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills in Norfolk but grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk, the son of Edith, a box office manager, and Lewis Mills. His spent his years in the village of Belton where his father was the headmaster of the village school. He first felt the thrill of performing at a concert in the hall when six years old. He lived in a modest house in Gainsborough Road Felixstowe until 1929 and his older sister was Annette Mills, remembered as presenter of BBC Televisions Muffin the Mule. Upon leaving school he worked as a clerk at a corn merchants in Ipswich before finding employment in London as a traveller for the Sanitas Disinfectant Company. In September 1939, at the start of the Second World War and he was later commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, but in 1942 he received a medical discharge because of a stomach ulcer. Mills took an early interest in acting, making his professional début at the London Hippodrome in The Five OClock Girl in 1929 and he also starred in the Noël Coward revue Words and Music. He made his film début in The Midshipmaid, and appeared as Colley in the 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, in 1942, he starred in Noël Cowards In Which We Serve. Mills took the lead in Great Expectations in 1946, and subsequently made his career playing traditionally British heroes such as Captain Scott in Scott of the Antarctic. After Morning Departure he made a series of films but bounced back with war dramas, such as The Colditz Story, Above Us the Waves. From 1959 through the mid-1960s, Mills starred in films alongside his daughter Hayley. Their first film together was the 1959 crime drama Tiger Bay, as Colonel Barrow in Tunes of Glory, Mills won the best Actor Award at the 1960 Venice Film Festival. For his role as the village idiot in Ryans Daughter — a complete departure from his usual style – Mills won an Best Supporting Actor Oscar and his most famous television role was probably as the title character in Quatermass for ITV in 1979. Mills also starred as Gus, The Theatre Cat in the version of the musical Cats in 1998. The film was produced and written by Jonathan Mills, directed and edited by Marcus Dillistone, millss last cinema appearance was playing a tramp in Lights 2, the cinematographer was Jack Cardiff. They had last worked together on Scott of the Antarctic in 1948 and their combined age was 186 years, a cinema record
7.
Edward Elgar
–
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello and he also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the Kings Musick in 1924, although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically and he nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. His later full-length religious choral works were received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity, Elgars music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death and it began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of recordings of his works. Edward Elgar was born in the village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester. His father, William Henry Elgar, was raised in Dover and had apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music. In 1848 he married Ann Greening, daughter of a farm worker, Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edwards birth, William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St. Georges Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin, all the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. Elgars mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development and he inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H, Billy Reed wrote that Elgars early surroundings had an influence that permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality
8.
Columbia Pictures
–
The studio was founded in 1918 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Jacks best friend Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924, and went public two years later and its name is derived from Columbia, a national personification of the United States, which is used as the studios logo. In its early years, it was a player in Hollywood. With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbias major contract stars were Jean Arthur, in the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studios premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio, in 1982, the studio was purchased by The Coca-Cola Company, and launched TriStar Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola spun off Columbia, which was sold to Tri-Star, after a brief period of independence with Coca-Cola maintaining a financial interest, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989. It is one of the film studios in the world. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywoods Golden Age, Brandt was president of CBC Film Sales, handling sales, marketing and distribution from New York along with Jack Cohn, while Harry Cohn ran production in Hollywood. The studios early productions were short subjects, Screen Snapshots, the Hall Room Boys. The start-up CBC leased space in a Poverty Row studio on Hollywoods famously low-rent Gower Street, among Hollywoods elite, the studios small-time reputation led some to joke that CBC stood for Corned Beef and Cabbage. Brandt eventually tired of dealing with the Cohn brothers, and sold his stake to Harry Cohn. In an effort to improve its image, the Cohn brothers renamed the company Columbia Pictures Corporation on January 10,1924, Cohn remained head of production as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. He would run Columbia for the next 34 years, the second-longest tenure of any studio chief, even in an industry rife with nepotism, Columbia was particularly notorious for having a number of Harry and Jacks relatives in high positions. Humorist Robert Benchley called it the Pine Tree Studio, because it has so many Cohns, Columbias product line consisted mostly of moderately budgeted features and short subjects including comedies, sports films, various serials, and cartoons. Columbia gradually moved into the production of higher-budget fare, eventually joining the tier of Hollywood studios along with United Artists. Like United Artists and Universal, Columbia was an integrated company. It controlled production and distribution, it did not own any theaters, helping Columbias climb was the arrival of an ambitious director, Frank Capra
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}
