Coordinates	21°55′28″N159°31′46″N
name	JPEG
screenshot
extension	.jpg, .jpeg, .jpe.jif, .jfif, .jfi
mime	image/jpeg
typecode	JPEG
uniform type	public.jpeg
owner	Joint Photographic Experts Group
genre	lossy image format
magic	ff d8
standard	ISO/IEC 10918, ITU-T T.81, ITU-T T.83, ITU-T T.84, ITU-T T.86 }}

In computing, JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital photography (image). The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality.

JPEG compression is used in a number of image file formats. JPEG/Exif is the most common image format used by digital cameras and other photographic image capture devices; along with JPEG/JFIF, it is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the World Wide Web. These format variations are often not distinguished, and are simply called JPEG.

The term "JPEG" is an acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group which created the standard. The MIME media type for JPEG is ''image/jpeg'' (defined in RFC 1341), except in Internet Explorer, which provides a MIME type of ''image/pjpeg'' when uploading JPEG images.

It supports a maximum image size of 65535×65535.

The JPEG standard

The name "JPEG" stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created the JPEG standard and also other standards. It is one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) – titled as ''Coding of still pictures''. The group was organized in 1986, issuing the first JPEG standard in 1992, which was approved in September 1992 as ITU-T Recommendation T.81 and in 1994 as ISO/IEC 10918-1.

The JPEG standard specifies the codec, which defines how an image is compressed into a stream of bytes and decompressed back into an image, but not the file format used to contain that stream. The Exif and JFIF standards define the commonly used formats for interchange of JPEG-compressed images.

JPEG standards are formally named as ''Information technology—Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images''. ISO/IEC 10918 consists of the following parts:

+JPEG standard – Parts
Part	ISO/IEC standard	ITU-T Rec.	First public release date	Latest amendment	Title	! Description
Part 1	ISO/IEC 10918-1:1994	T.81 (09/92)	1992		Requirements and guidelines
Part 2	ISO/IEC 10918-2:1995	T.83 (11/94)	1994		Compliance testing	rules and checks for software conformance (to Part 1)
Part 3	ISO/IEC 10918-3:1997	T.84 (07/96)	1996	1999	Extensions	set of extensions to improve the Part 1, including the SPIFF file format
Part 4	ISO/IEC 10918-4:1999	T.86 (06/98)	1998		Registration of JPEG profiles, SPIFF profiles, SPIFF tags, SPIFF colour spaces, APPn markers, SPIFF compression types and Registration Authorities (REGAUT)	methods for registering some of the parameters used to extend JPEG
Part 5	ISO/IEC FDIS 10918-5		(under development since 2009)		JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF)	A popular format which has been the de-facto file format for images encoded by the JPEG standard. In 2009, the JPEG Committee formally established an Ad Hoc Group to standardize JFIF as JPEG Part 5.

Ecma International TR/98 specifies the JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF); the first edition was published in June 2009.

Typical usage

The JPEG compression algorithm is at its best on photographs and paintings of realistic scenes with smooth variations of tone and color. For web usage, where the amount of data used for an image is important, JPEG is very popular. JPEG/Exif is also the most common format saved by digital cameras.

On the other hand, JPEG may not be as well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels can cause noticeable artifacts. Such images may be better saved in a lossless graphics format such as TIFF, GIF, PNG, or a raw image format. The JPEG standard actually includes a lossless coding mode, but that mode is not supported in most products.

As the typical use of JPEG is a lossy compression method, which somewhat reduces the image fidelity, it should not be used in scenarios where the exact reproduction of the data is required (such as some scientific and medical imaging applications and certain technical image processing work).

JPEG is also not well suited to files that will undergo multiple edits, as some image quality will usually be lost each time the image is decompressed and recompressed, particularly if the image is cropped or shifted, or if encoding parameters are changed – see digital generation loss for details. To avoid this, an image that is being modified or may be modified in the future can be saved in a lossless format, with a copy exported as JPEG for distribution.

JPEG compression

The compression method is usually lossy, meaning that some original image information is lost and cannot be restored, possibly affecting image quality. There is an optional lossless mode defined in the JPEG standard; however, that mode is not widely supported in products.

There is also an interlaced "Progressive JPEG" format, in which data is compressed in multiple passes of progressively higher detail. This is ideal for large images that will be displayed while downloading over a slow connection, allowing a reasonable preview after receiving only a portion of the data. However, progressive JPEGs are not as widely supported, and even some software which does support them (such as some versions of Internet Explorer) only displays the image once it has been completely downloaded.

There are also many medical imaging and traffic systems that create and process 12-bit JPEG images, normally grayscale images. The 12-bit JPEG format has been part of the JPEG specification for some time, but again, this format is not as widely supported.

Lossless editing

A number of alterations to a JPEG image can be performed losslessly (that is, without recompression and the associated quality loss) as long as the image size is a multiple of 1 MCU block (Minimum Coded Unit) (usually 16 pixels in both directions, for 4:2:0 chroma subsampling). Utilities that implement this include jpegtran, with user interface Jpegcrop, and the JPG_TRANSFORM plugin to IrfanView.

Blocks can be rotated in 90 degree increments, flipped in the horizontal, vertical and diagonal axes and moved about in the image. Not all blocks from the original image need to be used in the modified one.

The top and left edge of a JPEG image must lie on a block boundary, but the bottom and right edge need not do so. This limits the possible lossless crop operations, and also prevents flips and rotations of an image whose bottom or right edge does not lie on a block boundary for all channels (because the edge would end up on top or left, where - as aforementioned - a block boundary is obligatory).

When using lossless cropping, if the bottom or right side of the crop region is not on a block boundary then the rest of the data from the partially used blocks will still be present in the cropped file and can be recovered.

It is also possible to transform between baseline and progressive formats without any loss of quality, since the only difference is the order in which the coefficients are placed in the file.

JPEG files

The file format known as "JPEG Interchange Format" (JIF) is specified in Annex B of the standard. However, this "pure" file format is rarely used, primarily because of the difficulty of programming encoders and decoders that fully implement all aspects of the standard and because of certain shortcomings of the standard:

Color space definition

Component sub-sampling registration

Pixel aspect ratio definition.

Several additional standards have evolved to address these issues. The first of these, released in 1992, was JPEG File Interchange Format (or JFIF), followed in recent years by Exchangeable image file format (Exif) and ICC color profiles. Both of these formats use the actual JIF byte layout, consisting of different ''markers'', but in addition employ one of the JIF standard's extension points, namely the ''application markers'': JFIF use APP0, while Exif use APP1. Within these segments of the file, that were left for future use in the JIF standard and aren't read by it, these standards add specific metadata.

Thus, in some ways JFIF is a cutdown version of the JIF standard in that it specifies certain constraints (such as not allowing all the different encoding modes), while in other ways it is an extension of JIF due to the added metadata. The documentation for the original JFIF standard states:

:''JPEG File Interchange Format is a minimal file format which enables JPEG bitstreams to be exchanged between a wide variety of platforms and applications. This minimal format does not include any of the advanced features found in the TIFF JPEG specification or any application specific file format. Nor should it, for the only purpose of this simplified format is to allow the exchange of JPEG compressed images.''

Image files that employ JPEG compression are commonly called "JPEG files", and are stored in variants of the JIF image format. Most image capture devices (such as digital cameras) that output JPEG are actually creating files in the Exif format, the format that the camera industry has standardized on for metadata interchange. On the other hand, since the Exif standard does not allow color profiles, most image editing software stores JPEG in JFIF format, and also include the APP1 segment from the Exif file to include the metadata in an almost-compliant way; the JFIF standard is interpreted somewhat flexibly.

Strictly speaking, the JFIF and Exif standards are incompatible because they each specify that their marker segment (APP0 or APP1, respectively) appears first. In practice, most JPEG files contain a JFIF marker segment that precedes the Exif header. This allows older readers to correctly handle the older format JFIF segment, while newer readers also decode the following Exif segment, being less strict about requiring it to appear first.

JPEG filename extensions

The most common filename extensions for files employing JPEG compression are .jpg and .jpeg, though .jpe, .jfif and .jif are also used. It is also possible for JPEG data to be embedded in other file types – TIFF encoded files often embed a JPEG image as a thumbnail of the main image; and MP3 files can contain a JPEG of cover art, in the ID3v2 tag.

Color profile

Many JPEG files embed an ICC color profile (color space). Commonly used color profiles include sRGB and Adobe RGB. Because these color spaces use a non-linear transformation, the dynamic range of an 8-bit JPEG file is about 11 stops; see gamma curve. However, many applications are not able to deal with JPEG color profiles and simply ignore them.

Syntax and structure

A JPEG image consists of a sequence of ''segments,'' each beginning with a ''marker'', each of which begins with a 0xFF byte followed by a byte indicating what kind of marker it is. Some markers consist of just those two bytes; others are followed by two bytes indicating the length of marker-specific payload data that follows. (The length includes the two bytes for the length, but not the two bytes for the marker.) Some markers are followed by entropy-coded data; the length of such a marker does not include the entropy-coded data. Note that consecutive 0xFF bytes are used as fill bytes for padding purposes (see JPEG specification section B.1.1.2 for details).

Within the entropy-coded data, after any 0xFF byte, a 0x00 byte is inserted by the encoder before the next byte, so that there does not appear to be a marker where none is intended, preventing framing errors. Decoders must skip this 0x00 byte. This technique, called ''byte stuffing'' (see JPEG specification section F.1.2.3), is only applied to the entropy-coded data, not to marker payload data.

+ Common JPEG markers	Short name	! Bytes	! Payload	! Name	! Comments
! SOI	0xFF, 0xD8	''none''	Start Of Image
SOF0	0xFF, 0xC0	''variable size''	Discrete cosine transform > DCT)	Indicates that this is a baseline DCT-based JPEG, and specifies the width, height, number of components, and component subsampling (e.g., 4:2:0).
SOF2	0xFF, 0xC2	''variable size''	Start Of Frame (Progressive DCT)	Indicates that this is a progressive DCT-based JPEG, and specifies the width, height, number of components, and component subsampling (e.g., 4:2:0).
DHT	0xFF, 0xC4	''variable size''	Define Huffman Table(s)	Specifies one or more Huffman tables.
DQT	0xFF, 0xDB	''variable size''	Define Quantization Table(s)	Specifies one or more quantization tables.
DRI	0xFF, 0xDD	2 bytes	Define Restart Interval	Specifies the interval between RST''n'' markers, in macroblocks. This marker is followed by two bytes indicating the fixed size so it can be treated like any other variable size segment.
SOS	0xFF, 0xDA	''variable size''	Start Of Scan	Begins a top-to-bottom scan of the image. In baseline DCT JPEG images, there is generally a single scan. Progressive DCT JPEG images usually contain multiple scans. This marker specifies which slice of data it will contain, and is immediately followed by entropy-coded data.
RST''n''	0xFF, 0xD0 … 0xD7	''none''	Restart	Inserted every ''r'' macroblocks, where ''r'' is the restart interval set by a DRI marker. Not used if there was no DRI marker. The low 3 bits of the marker code cycle in value from 0 to 7.
APP''n''	0xFF, 0xE''n''	''variable size''	Application-specific	For example, an Exif JPEG file uses an APP1 marker to store metadata, laid out in a structure based closely on TIFF.
COM	0xFF, 0xFE	''variable size''	Comment	Contains a text comment.
EOI	0xFF, 0xD9	''none''	End Of Image

There are other ''Start Of Frame'' markers that introduce other kinds of JPEG encodings.

Since several vendors might use the same APP''n'' marker type, application-specific markers often begin with a standard or vendor name (e.g., "Exif" or "Adobe") or some other identifying string.

At a restart marker, block-to-block predictor variables are reset, and the bitstream is synchronized to a byte boundary. Restart markers provide means for recovery after bitstream error, such as transmission over an unreliable network or file corruption. Since the runs of macroblocks between restart markers may be independently decoded, these runs may be decoded in parallel.

JPEG codec example

Although a JPEG file can be encoded in various ways, most commonly it is done with JFIF encoding. The encoding process consists of several steps: # The representation of the colors in the image is converted from RGB to , consisting of one luma component (Y'), representing brightness, and two chroma components, (C_B and C_R), representing color. This step is sometimes skipped. # The resolution of the chroma data is reduced, usually by a factor of 2. This reflects the fact that the eye is less sensitive to fine color details than to fine brightness details. # The image is split into blocks of 8×8 pixels, and for each block, each of the Y, C_B, and C_R data undergoes a discrete cosine transform (DCT). A DCT is similar to a Fourier transform in the sense that it produces a kind of spatial frequency spectrum. # The amplitudes of the frequency components are quantized. Human vision is much more sensitive to small variations in color or brightness over large areas than to the strength of high-frequency brightness variations. Therefore, the magnitudes of the high-frequency components are stored with a lower accuracy than the low-frequency components. The quality setting of the encoder (for example 50 or 95 on a scale of 0–100 in the Independent JPEG Group's library) affects to what extent the resolution of each frequency component is reduced. If an excessively low quality setting is used, the high-frequency components are discarded altogether. # The resulting data for all 8×8 blocks is further compressed with a lossless algorithm, a variant of Huffman encoding. The decoding process reverses these steps, except the ''quantization'' because it is irreversible. In the remainder of this section, the encoding and decoding processes are described in more detail.

Encoding

Many of the options in the JPEG standard are not commonly used, and as mentioned above, most image software uses the simpler JFIF format when creating a JPEG file, which among other things specifies the encoding method. Here is a brief description of one of the more common methods of encoding when applied to an input that has 24 bits per pixel (eight each of red, green, and blue). This particular option is a lossy data compression method.

Color space transformation

First, the image should be converted from RGB into a different color space called (or, informally, YCbCr). It has three components Y', C_B and C_R: the Y' component represents the brightness of a pixel, and the C_B and C_R components represent the chrominance (split into blue and red components). This is basically the same color space as used by digital color television as well as digital video including video DVDs, and is similar to the way color is represented in analog PAL video and MAC (but not by analog NTSC, which uses the YIQ color space). The color space conversion allows greater compression without a significant effect on perceptual image quality (or greater perceptual image quality for the same compression). The compression is more efficient because the brightness information, which is more important to the eventual perceptual quality of the image, is confined to a single channel. This more closely corresponds to the perception of color in the human visual system. The color transformation also improves compression by statistical decorrelation.

A particular conversion to is specified in the JFIF standard, and should be performed for the resulting JPEG file to have maximum compatibility. However, some JPEG implementations in "highest quality" mode do not apply this step and instead keep the color information in the RGB color model, where the image is stored in separate channels for red, green and blue brightness components. This results in less efficient compression, and would not likely be used when file size is especially important.

Downsampling

Due to the densities of color- and brightness-sensitive receptors in the human eye, humans can see considerably more fine detail in the brightness of an image (the Y' component) than in the hue and color saturation of an image (the Cb and Cr components). Using this knowledge, encoders can be designed to compress images more efficiently.

The transformation into the color model enables the next usual step, which is to reduce the spatial resolution of the Cb and Cr components (called "downsampling" or "chroma subsampling"). The ratios at which the downsampling is ordinarily done for JPEG images are 4:4:4 (no downsampling), 4:2:2 (reduction by a factor of 2 in the horizontal direction), or (most commonly) 4:2:0 (reduction by a factor of 2 in both the horizontal and vertical directions). For the rest of the compression process, Y', Cb and Cr are processed separately and in a very similar manner.

Block splitting

After subsampling, each channel must be split into 8×8 blocks. Depending on chroma subsampling, this yields (Minimum Coded Unit) MCU blocks of size 8×8 (4:4:4 – no subsampling), 16×8 (4:2:2), or most commonly 16×16 (4:2:0). In video compression MCUs are called macroblocks.

If the data for a channel does not represent an integer number of blocks then the encoder must fill the remaining area of the incomplete blocks with some form of dummy data. Filling the edges with a fixed color (for example, black) can create ringing artifacts along the visible part of the border; repeating the edge pixels is a common technique that reduces (but does not necessarily completely eliminate) such artifacts, and more sophisticated border filling techniques can also be applied.

Discrete cosine transform

Next, each 8×8 block of each component (Y, Cb, Cr) is converted to a frequency-domain representation, using a normalized, two-dimensional type-II discrete cosine transform (DCT).

As an example, one such 8×8 8-bit subimage might be:

:

Before computing the DCT of the 8×8 block, its values are shifted from a positive range to one centered around zero. For an 8-bit image, each entry in the original block falls in the range $[0,\; 255]$. The mid-point of the range (in this case, the value 128) is subtracted from each entry to produce a data range that is centered around zero, so that the modified range is $[-128,\; 127]$. This step reduces the dynamic range requirements in the DCT processing stage that follows. (Aside from the difference in dynamic range within the DCT stage, this step is mathematically equivalent to subtracting 1024 from the DC coefficient after performing the transform – which may be a better way to perform the operation on some architectures since it involves performing only one subtraction rather than 64 of them.)

This step results in the following values:

:

The next step is to take the two-dimensional DCT, which is given by:

:$\backslash \; G\_\{u,v\}\; =\; \backslash sum\_\{x=0\}^7\; \backslash sum\_\{y=0\}^7\; \backslash alpha(u)\; \backslash alpha(v)\; g\_\{x,y\}\; \backslash cos\; \backslash left[\backslash frac\{\backslash pi\}\{8\}\; \backslash left(x+\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\backslash right)\; u\; \backslash right]\; \backslash cos\; \backslash left[\backslash frac\{\backslash pi\}\{8\}\; \backslash left(y+\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\backslash right)\; v\; \backslash right]$

where

$\backslash \; u$ is the horizontal spatial frequency, for the integers .

$\backslash \; v$ is the vertical spatial frequency, for the integers .

$$

\alpha(u) = \begin{cases} \sqrt{ \frac{1}{8} }, & \mbox{if }u=0 \\ \sqrt{ \frac{2}{8} }, & \mbox{otherwise} \end{cases} is a normalizing scale factor to make the transformation orthonormal

$\backslash \; g\_\{x,y\}$ is the pixel value at coordinates $\backslash \; (x,y)$

$\backslash \; G\_\{u,v\}$ is the DCT coefficient at coordinates $\backslash \; (u,v).$

If we perform this transformation on our matrix above, we get the following (rounded to the nearest two digits beyond the decimal point):

:

Note the top-left corner entry with the rather large magnitude. This is the DC coefficient. The remaining 63 coefficients are called the AC coefficients. The advantage of the DCT is its tendency to aggregate most of the signal in one corner of the result, as may be seen above. The quantization step to follow accentuates this effect while simultaneously reducing the overall size of the DCT coefficients, resulting in a signal that is easy to compress efficiently in the entropy stage.

The DCT temporarily increases the bit-depth of the data, since the DCT coefficients of an 8-bit/component image take up to 11 or more bits (depending on fidelity of the DCT calculation) to store. This may force the codec to temporarily use 16-bit bins to hold these coefficients, doubling the size of the image representation at this point; they are typically reduced back to 8-bit values by the quantization step. The temporary increase in size at this stage is not a performance concern for most JPEG implementations, because typically only a very small part of the image is stored in full DCT form at any given time during the image encoding or decoding process.

Quantization

The human eye is good at seeing small differences in brightness over a relatively large area, but not so good at distinguishing the exact strength of a high frequency brightness variation. This allows one to greatly reduce the amount of information in the high frequency components. This is done by simply dividing each component in the frequency domain by a constant for that component, and then rounding to the nearest integer. This rounding operation is the only lossy operation in the whole process if the DCT computation is performed with sufficiently high precision. As a result of this, it is typically the case that many of the higher frequency components are rounded to zero, and many of the rest become small positive or negative numbers, which take many fewer bits to represent.

A typical quantization matrix, as specified in the original JPEG Standard, is as follows:

:

The quantized DCT coefficients are computed with

:$B\_\{j,k\}\; =\; \backslash mathrm\{round\}\; \backslash left(\; \backslash frac\{G\_\{j,k\}\}\{Q\_\{j,k\}\}\; \backslash right)\; \backslash mbox\{\; for\; \}\; j=0,1,2,\backslash ldots,7;\; k=0,1,2,\backslash ldots,7$

where $G$ is the unquantized DCT coefficients; $Q$ is the quantization matrix above; and $B$ is the quantized DCT coefficients.

Using this quantization matrix with the DCT coefficient matrix from above results in:

:

For example, using −415 (the DC coefficient) and rounding to the nearest integer

:$\backslash mathrm\{round\}\; \backslash left(\; \backslash frac\{-415.38\}\{16\}\; \backslash right)\; =\; \backslash mathrm\{round\}\; \backslash left(\; -25.96\; \backslash right)\; =\; -26.$

Entropy coding

Entropy coding is a special form of lossless data compression. It involves arranging the image components in a "zigzag" order employing run-length encoding (RLE) algorithm that groups similar frequencies together, inserting length coding zeros, and then using Huffman coding on what is left.

The JPEG standard also allows, but does not require decoders to support, the use of arithmetic coding, which is mathematically superior to Huffman coding. However, this feature has rarely been used as it was historically covered by patents requiring royalty-bearing licenses, and because it is slower to encode and decode compared to Huffman coding. Arithmetic coding typically makes files about 5–7% smaller.

The previous quantized DC coefficient is used to predict the current quantized DC coefficient. The difference between the two is encoded rather than the actual value. The encoding of the 63 quantized AC coefficients does not use such prediction differencing.

The zigzag sequence for the above quantized coefficients are shown below. (The format shown is just for ease of understanding/viewing.)

{| style="text-align: right" |- |style="width: 2em"| −26 || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| |- | −3 || 0 |- | −3 || −2 || −6 |- | 2 || −4 || 1 || −3 |- | 1 || 1 || 5 || 1 || 2 |- | −1 || 1 || −1 || 2 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || −1 || −1 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 |- | 0 |}

If the i-th block is represented by Bi and positions within each block are represented by (p,q) where p = 0, 1, ..., 7 and q = 0, 1, ..., 7, then any coefficient in the DCT image can be represented as Bi(p,q). Thus, in the above scheme, the order of encoding pixels (for the i-th block) is Bi(0,0), Bi(0,1), Bi(1,0), Bi(2,0), Bi(1,1), Bi(0,2), Bi(0,3), Bi(1,2) and so on.

This encoding mode is called baseline ''sequential'' encoding. Baseline JPEG also supports ''progressive'' encoding. While sequential encoding encodes coefficients of a single block at a time (in a zigzag manner), progressive encoding encodes similar-positioned coefficients of all blocks in one go, followed by the next positioned coefficients of all blocks, and so on. So, if the image is divided into N 8×8 blocks {B0,B1,B2, ..., Bn-1}, then progressive encoding encodes Bi(0,0) for all blocks, i.e., for all i = 0, 1, 2, ..., N-1. This is followed by encoding Bi(0,1) coefficient of all blocks, followed by Bi(1,0)-th coefficient of all blocks, then Bi(2,0)-th coefficient of all blocks, and so on. It should be noted here that once all similar-positioned coefficients have been encoded, the next position to be encoded is the one occurring next in the zigzag traversal as indicated in the figure above. It has been found that Baseline Progressive JPEG encoding usually gives better compression as compared to Baseline Sequential JPEG due to the ability to use different Huffman tables (see below) tailored for different frequencies on each "scan" or "pass" (which includes similar-positioned coefficients), though the difference is not too large.

In the rest of the article, it is assumed that the coefficient pattern generated is due to sequential mode.

In order to encode the above generated coefficient pattern, JPEG uses Huffman encoding. JPEG has a special Huffman code word for ending the sequence prematurely when the remaining coefficients are zero.

Using this special code word: "EOB", the sequence becomes:

{| style="text-align: right" |- |style="width: 2em"| −26 || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| || style="width: 2em"| |- | −3 || 0 |- | −3 || −2 || −6 |- | 2 || −4 || 1 || −3 |- | 1 || 1 || 5 || 1 || 2 |- | −1 || 1 || −1 || 2 || 0 || 0 |- | 0 || 0 || 0 || −1 || −1 || EOB |}

JPEG's other code words represent combinations of (a) the number of significant bits of a coefficient, including sign, and (b) the number of consecutive zero coefficients that precede it. (Once you know how many bits to expect, it takes 1 bit to represent the choices {-1, +1}, 2 bits to represent the choices {-3, −2, +2, +3}, and so forth.) In our example block, most of the quantized coefficients are small numbers that are not preceded immediately by a zero coefficient. These more-frequent cases will be represented by shorter code words.

The JPEG standard provides general-purpose Huffman tables; encoders may also choose to generate Huffman tables optimized for the actual frequency distributions in images being encoded.

Compression ratio and artifacts

The resulting compression ratio can be varied according to need by being more or less aggressive in the divisors used in the quantization phase. Ten to one compression usually results in an image that cannot be distinguished by eye from the original. 100 to one compression is usually possible, but will look distinctly artifacted compared to the original. The appropriate level of compression depends on the use to which the image will be put.

{{external media |image1=Illustration of edge busyness. }} Those who use the World Wide Web may be familiar with the irregularities known as compression artifacts that appear in JPEG images, which may take the form of noise around contrasting edges (especially curves and corners), or blocky images, commonly known as 'jaggies'. These are due to the quantization step of the JPEG algorithm. They are especially noticeable around sharp corners between contrasting colors (text is a good example as it contains many such corners). The analogous artifacts in MPEG video are referred to as ''mosquito noise,'' as the resulting "edge busyness" and spurious dots, which change over time, resemble mosquitoes swarming around the object.

These artifacts can be reduced by choosing a lower level of compression; they may be eliminated by saving an image using a lossless file format, though for photographic images this will usually result in a larger file size. The images created with ray-tracing programs have noticeable blocky shapes on the terrain. Certain low-intensity compression artifacts might be acceptable when simply viewing the images, but can be emphasized if the image is subsequently processed, usually resulting in unacceptable quality. Consider the example below, demonstrating the effect of lossy compression on an edge detection processing step.

!Image !! Lossless compression !! Lossy compression
! Original
! Processed byCanny edge detector

Some programs allow the user to vary the amount by which individual blocks are compressed. Stronger compression is applied to areas of the image that show fewer artifacts. This way it is possible to manually reduce JPEG file size with less loss of quality.

JPEG artifacts, like pixelation, are occasionally intentionally exploited for artistic purposes, as in ''Jpegs,'' by German photographer Thomas Ruff.

Since the quantization stage ''always'' results in a loss of information, JPEG standard is always a lossy compression codec. (Information is lost both in quantizing and rounding of the floating-point numbers.) Even if the quantization matrix is a matrix of ones, information will still be lost in the rounding step.

Decoding

Decoding to display the image consists of doing all the above in reverse.

Taking the DCT coefficient matrix (after adding the difference of the DC coefficient back in)

:

and taking the entry-for-entry product with the quantization matrix from above results in

:

which closely resembles the original DCT coefficient matrix for the top-left portion.

The next step is to take the two-dimensional inverse DCT (a 2D type-III DCT), which is given by:

$f\_\{x,y\}\; =\; \backslash sum\_\{u=0\}^7\; \backslash sum\_\{v=0\}^7\; \backslash alpha(u)\; \backslash alpha(v)\; F\_\{u,v\}\; \backslash cos\; \backslash left[\backslash frac\{\backslash pi\}\{8\}\; \backslash left(x+\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\backslash right)\; u\; \backslash right]\; \backslash cos\; \backslash left[\backslash frac\{\backslash pi\}\{8\}\; \backslash left(y+\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\backslash right)\; v\; \backslash right]$

where

$\backslash \; x$ is the pixel row, for the integers .

$\backslash \; y$ is the pixel column, for the integers .

$\backslash \; \backslash alpha(u)$ is defined as above, for the integers .

$\backslash \; F\_\{u,v\}$ is the reconstructed approximate coefficient at coordinates $\backslash \; (u,v).$

$\backslash \; f\_\{x,y\}$ is the reconstructed pixel value at coordinates $\backslash \; (x,y)$

Rounding the output to integer values (since the original had integer values) results in an image with values (still shifted down by 128)

:

and adding 128 to each entry

:

This is the decompressed subimage. In general, the decompression process may produce values outside of the original input range of $[0,\; 255]$. If this occurs, the decoder needs to clip the output values keep them within that range to prevent overflow when storing the decompressed image with the original bit depth.

The decompressed subimage can be compared to the original subimage (also see images to the right) by taking the difference (original − uncompressed) results in the following error values:

:

with an average absolute error of about 5 values per pixels (i.e., $\backslash frac\{1\}\{64\}\; \backslash sum\_\{x=0\}^7\; \backslash sum\_\{y=0\}^7\; |e(x,y)|\; =\; 4.875$).

The error is most noticeable in the bottom-left corner where the bottom-left pixel becomes darker than the pixel to its immediate right.

Required precision

The encoding description in the JPEG standard does not fix the precision needed for the output compressed image. However, the JPEG standard (and the similar MPEG standards) includes some precision requirements for the ''de''coding, including all parts of the decoding process (variable length decoding, inverse DCT, dequantization, renormalization of outputs); the output from the reference algorithm must not exceed:

a maximum 1 bit of difference for each pixel component

low mean square error over each 8×8-pixel block

very low mean error over each 8×8-pixel block

very low mean square error over the whole image

extremely low mean error over the whole image

These assertions are tested on a large set of randomized input images, to handle the worst cases. The former IEEE 1180–1990 standard contained some similar precision requirements. The precision has a consequence on the implementation of decoders, and it is critical because some encoding processes (notably used for encoding sequences of images like MPEG) need to be able to construct, on the encoder side, a reference decoded image. In order to support 8-bit precision per pixel component output, dequantization and inverse DCT transforms are typically implemented with at least 14-bit precision in optimized decoders.

Effects of JPEG compression

JPEG compression artifacts blend well into photographs with detailed non-uniform textures, allowing higher compression ratios. Notice how a higher compression ratio first affects the high-frequency textures in the upper-left corner of the image, and how the contrasting lines become more fuzzy. The very high compression ratio severely affects the quality of the image, although the overall colors and image form are still recognizable. However, the precision of colors suffer less (for a human eye) than the precision of contours (based on luminance). This justifies the fact that images should be first transformed in a color model separating the luminance from the chromatic information, before subsampling the chromatic planes (which may also use lower quality quantization) in order to preserve the precision of the luminance plane with more information bits.

Sample photographs

For information, the uncompressed 24-bit RGB bitmap image below (73,242 pixels) would require 219,726 bytes (excluding all other information headers). The filesizes indicated below include the internal JPEG information headers and some meta-data. For full quality images (Q=100), about 8.25 bits per color pixel is required. On grayscale images, a minimum of 6.5 bits per pixel is enough (a comparable Q=100 quality color information requires about 25% more encoded bits). The full quality image below (Q=100) is encoded at 9 bits per color pixel, the medium quality image (Q=25) uses 1 bit per color pixel. For most applications, the quality factor should not go below 0.75 bit per pixel (Q=12.5), as demonstrated by the low quality image. The image at lowest quality uses only 0.13 bit per pixel, and displays very poor color, it could only be usable after subsampling to a much lower display size.

::{| class="wikitable" |+ align="bottom"| Note: The above images are not IEEE / CCIR / EBU test images, and the encoder settings are not specified or available. |- ! Image !! Quality !! Size (bytes) !! Compression ratio !! Comment |- | | Higher quality (Q = 100) | 83,261 | 2.6:1 | Extremely minor artifacts |- | | High quality (Q = 50) | 15,138 | 15:1 | Initial signs of subimage artifacts |- | | Medium quality (Q = 25) | 9,553 | 23:1 | Stronger artifacts; loss of high frequency information |- | | Low quality (Q = 10) | 4,787 | 46:1 | Severe high frequency loss; artifacts on subimage boundaries ("macroblocking") are obvious |- | | Lowest quality (Q = 1) | 1,523 | 144:1 | Extreme loss of color and detail; the leaves are nearly unrecognizable |}

The medium quality photo uses only 4.3% of the storage space but has little noticeable loss of detail or visible artifacts. However, once a certain threshold of compression is passed, compressed images show increasingly visible defects. See the article on rate distortion theory for a mathematical explanation of this threshold effect. A particular limitation of JPEG in this regard is its non-overlapped 8×8 block transform structure. More modern designs such as JPEG 2000 and JPEG XR exhibit a more graceful degradation of quality as the bit usage decreases — by using transforms with a larger spatial extent for the lower frequency coefficients and by using overlapping transform basis functions.

Lossless further compression

From 2004 to 2008, new research has emerged on ways to further compress the data contained in JPEG images without modifying the represented image. This has applications in scenarios where the original image is only available in JPEG format, and its size needs to be reduced for archival or transmission. Standard general-purpose compression tools cannot significantly compress JPEG files.

Typically, such schemes take advantage of improvements to the naive scheme for coding DCT coefficients, which fails to take into account:

Correlations between magnitudes of adjacent coefficients in the same block;

Correlations between magnitudes of the same coefficient in adjacent blocks;

Correlations between magnitudes of the same coefficient/block in different channels;

The DC coefficients when taken together resemble a downscale version of the original image multiplied by a scaling factor. Well-known schemes for lossless coding of continuous-tone images can be applied, achieving somewhat better compression than the Huffman coded DPCM used in JPEG.

Some standard but rarely-used options already exist in JPEG to improve the efficiency of coding DCT coefficients: the arithmetic coding option, and the progressive coding option (which produces lower bitrates because values for each coefficient are coded independently, and each coefficient has a significantly different distribution). Modern methods have improved on these techniques by reordering coefficients to group coefficients of larger magnitude together; using adjacent coefficients and blocks to predict new coefficient values; dividing blocks or coefficients up among a small number of independently coded models based on their statistics and adjacent values; and most recently, by decoding blocks, predicting subsequent blocks in the spatial domain, and then encoding these to generate predictions for DCT coefficients.

Typically, such methods can compress existing JPEG files between 15 and 25 percent, and for JPEGs compressed at low-quality settings, can produce improvements of up to 65%.

A freely-available tool called packJPG is based on the 2007 paper "Improved Redundancy Reduction for JPEG Files." There are also at least two companies selling proprietary tools with similar capabilities, Infima's JPACK and Smith Micro Software's StuffIt, both of which claim to have pending patents on their respective technologies.

Derived formats for stereoscopic 3D

JPEG Stereoscopic

JPEG Stereoscopic (JPS, extension .jps) is a JPEG-based format for stereoscopic images. It has a range of configurations stored in the JPEG APP3 marker field, but usually contains one image of double width, representing two images of identical size in cross-eyed side by side arrangement. This file format can be viewed as a JPEG without any special software, or can be processed for rendering in other modes.

JPEG Multi-Picture Format

JPEG Multi-Picture Format (MPO, extension .mpo) is a JPEG-based format for multi-view images. It contains two or more JPEG files concatenated together. There are also special EXIF fields describing its purpose. This is used by the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W1 camera, Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ20, Sony DSC-HX7V, HTC Evo 3D, the JVC GY-HMZ1U AVCHD/MVC extension camcorder and by the Nintendo 3DS for its 3D Camera.

Patent issues

In 2002, Forgent Networks asserted that it owned and would enforce patent rights on the JPEG technology, arising from a patent that had been filed on October 27, 1986, and granted on October 6, 1987 (). The announcement created a furor reminiscent of Unisys' attempts to assert its rights over the GIF image compression standard.

The JPEG committee investigated the patent claims in 2002 and were of the opinion that they were invalidated by prior art. Others also concluded that Forgent did not have a patent that covered JPEG. Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2004 Forgent was able to obtain about US$105 million by licensing their patent to some 30 companies. In April 2004, Forgent sued 31 other companies to enforce further license payments. In July of the same year, a consortium of 21 large computer companies filed a countersuit, with the goal of invalidating the patent. In addition, Microsoft launched a separate lawsuit against Forgent in April 2005. In February 2006, the United States Patent and Trademark Office agreed to re-examine Forgent's JPEG patent at the request of the Public Patent Foundation. On May 26, 2006 the USPTO found the patent invalid based on prior art. The USPTO also found that Forgent knew about the prior art, and did not tell the Patent Office, making any appeal to reinstate the patent highly unlikely to succeed.

Forgent also possesses a similar patent granted by the European Patent Office in 1994, though it is unclear how enforceable it is.

As of October 27, 2006, the U.S. patent's 20-year term appears to have expired, and in November 2006, Forgent agreed to abandon enforcement of patent claims against use of the JPEG standard.

The JPEG committee has as one of its explicit goals that their standards (in particular their baseline methods) be implementable without payment of license fees, and they have secured appropriate license rights for their upcoming JPEG 2000 standard from over 20 large organizations.

Beginning in August 2007, another company, Global Patent Holdings, LLC claimed that its patent () issued in 1993, is infringed by the downloading of JPEG images on either a website or through e-mail. If not invalidated, this patent could apply to any website that displays JPEG images. The patent emerged in July 2007 following a seven-year reexamination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in which all of the original claims of the patent were revoked, but an additional claim (claim 17) was confirmed.

In its first two lawsuits following the reexamination, both filed in Chicago, Illinois, Global Patent Holdings sued the Green Bay Packers, CDW, Motorola, Apple, Orbitz, Officemax, Caterpillar, Kraft and Peapod as defendants. A third lawsuit was filed on December 5, 2007 in South Florida against ADT Security Services, AutoNation, Florida Crystals Corp., HearUSA, MovieTickets.com, Ocwen Financial Corp. and Tire Kingdom, and a fourth lawsuit on January 8, 2008 in South Florida against the Boca Raton Resort & Club. A fifth lawsuit was filed against Global Patent Holdings in Nevada. That lawsuit was filed by Zappos.com, Inc., which was allegedly threatened by Global Patent Holdings, and seeks a judicial declaration that the '341 patent is invalid and not infringed.

Global Patent Holdings had also used the '341 patent to sue or threaten outspoken critics of broad software patents, including Gregory Aharonian and the anonymous operator of a website blog known as the "Patent Troll Tracker." On December 21, 2007, patent lawyer Vernon Francissen of Chicago asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reexamine the sole remaining claim of the '341 patent on the basis of new prior art.

On March 5, 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed to reexamine the '341 patent, finding that the new prior art raised substantial new questions regarding the patent's validity. In light of the reexamination, the accused infringers in four of the five pending lawsuits have filed motions to suspend (stay) their cases until completion of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's review of the '341 patent. On April 23, 2008, a judge presiding over the two lawsuits in Chicago, Illinois granted the motions in those cases. On July 22, 2008, the Patent Office issued the first "Office Action" of the second reexamination, finding the claim invalid based on nineteen separate grounds.

Standards

Here are some examples of standards created by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 Working Group 1 (WG 1), which includes the Joint Photographic Experts Group and Joint Bi-level Image experts Group:

JPEG (lossy and lossless): ITU-T T.81, ISO/IEC 10918-1

JPEG extensions: ITU-T T.84

JPEG-LS (lossless, improved): ITU-T T.87, ISO/IEC 14495-1

JBIG (lossless, bi-level pictures, fax): ITU-T T.82, ISO/IEC 11544

JBIG2 (bi-level pictures): ITU-T T.88, ISO/IEC 14492

JPEG 2000: ITU-T T.800, ISO/IEC 15444-1

JPEG 2000 extensions: ITU-T T.801

JPEG XR (formerly called HD Photo prior to standardization) : ITU-T T.832, ISO/IEC 29199-2

See also

C-Cube an early implementer of JPEG in chip form

Comparison of graphics file formats

Comparison of layout engines (graphics)

Deblocking filter (video), the similar deblocking methods could be applied to JPEG

Design rule for Camera File system (DCF)

Exchangeable image file format (Exif)

Generation loss

Graphics editing program

JPEG 2000

JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF)

JPEG XR

Lenna, the traditional standard image used to test image processing algorithms

Libjpeg of Independent JPEG Group

Lossless Image Codec FELICS

Motion JPEG

PGF

PNG

References

External links

JPEG Standard (JPEG ISO/IEC 10918-1 ITU-T Recommendation T.81) at W3.org

Official Joint Photographic Experts Group site

JFIF File Format at W3.org

Wotsit.org's entry on the JPEG format

Example images over the full range of quantization levels from 1 to 100 at visengi.com

Public domain JPEG compressor in a single C++ source file, along with a matching decompressor at code.google.com

Category:Graphics file formats Category:IEC standards Category:ISO standards Category:ITU-T recommendations Category:Lossy compression algorithms Category:Computer file formats

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Coordinates	21°55′28″N159°31′46″N
name	F.T. Island
background	group_or_band
alias	Five Treasure Island
origin	South Korea
genre	Rock, pop
years active	2007–present
label	FNC Music, Mnet Media (Korea)AI Entertainment, Warner Music Group (Japan)
associated acts	F.T. Triple, A.N.Jell
website
current members	Choi Jong HunLee HongkiLee Jae JinChoi Min HwanSong Seung Hyun
past members	Oh Won Bin }}

F.T. Island ( Japanese: エフティー・アイランド; stylized as FTISLAND), short for Five Treasured Island, is a five-member South Korean band. The members are consist of Choi Jong Hun (leader, guitar and keyboard), Lee Hongki (lead vocals), Lee Jae Jin (bass and vocals), Song Seung Hyun (guitar and vocals), and Choi Min Hwan (drums). Their debut album, titled "Cheerful Sensibility", was the sixth best-selling album in 2007. Their debut song "Lovesick" topped the K-Pop charts for eight consecutive weeks. Oh Won Bin had been a member of the band up until the beginning of 2009.

Career

2007: Debut and ''Cheerful Sensibility''

Although F.T. Island's first album, ''Cheerful Sensibility'', was scheduled to be released commercially in May 2007, the members appeared on the show "Wanna be my girlfriend?" () on the Korean television channel MNet. The band also performed on stage live at Rolling Hall and held their first official showcase at Live House Melon-AX, Gwangjang-dong in Seoul on May 27, 2007.

On June 7, 2007 the group performed their debut song ''Love Sick'' on the music television program M!Countdown; their debut album, ''Cheerful Sensibility,'' was released on the same day.

''Cheerful Sensibility'' combined 13 songs that were loosely divided into two parts, “Emotional Chapter” and “F.T. Island Chapter”, according to the genre of the songs. The “Emotional Chapter” consists of rock ballads. The "F.T. Island Chapter" was produced by the Japanese composers who worked with the Japanese band, SMAP and is composed of a variety of pop rock songs.

Selling over 79,000 copies in 2007, it was the sixth best-selling album of the year. The album was re-released on December 3, 2007, titled ''The Refreshment'', with three extra songs, a photobook, a stack of photocards, and a mixing program called Music 2.0 which allows one to adjust the levels of the instruments and vocals. This edition sold 25,724 copies in December 2007.

2008: Japanese Debut, ''Colorful Sensibility'', and other activities

After debuting in Korea, FNC Music moved F.T. Island's activities overseas. On March 31, 2008, an autograph session in Malaysia at the Damansara Cineleisure was held, which was to be follow the next day by the group's first concert at the Sunway Lagoon Amphitheater. The performance was cancelled, and their first concert was held in Thailand instead, at the Royal Paragon Hall on April 12, 2008. The band performed songs from their album and showcased their individual talents in their solo performances.

F.T. Island's Japanese debut album, entitled ''Prologue of F.T. Island'', was released on June 7, 2008, with the first single released being ''Soyogi'' . The album consists of 8 songs, 2 of which are newer versions of the original songs ''F.T. Island'' and ''Primadonna''. The last track, ''Always Be Mine'', is an English version of ''First Kiss'' from their debut album (though the lyrics are original). Music videos were also released for ''Soyogi'' and ''Friendship'', displaying the band's professional and youthful sides, respectively.

After their promotional activities in Japan ended, the band returned to Korea to release their second Korean album ''Colorful Sensibility'' on August 27, 2008. A follow-up EP, ''Colorful Sensibility Part 2'', was released on October 17, 2008.

Later that year, F.T. Island released ''The One'', their first Japanese commercial single, under an indie label AI Entertainment. The single hit #9 on the Oricon daily charts. F&C; Music stated that although other Korean bands utilized the assistance of large Japanese record labels to gain popularity, F.T. Island was able to make it onto the charts without any true marketing efforts. The single also was the last official release with member Oh Won Bin before his departure.

2009: New lineup, ''Jump Up'', ''Cross & Change'', and Japanese singles

On January 28, 2009, it was announced that Oh Won Bin would indeed be leaving the group, with FNC trainee Song Seung Hyun joining as a guitarist and backup vocalist. With the new lineup change, F.T. Island released the music video for their mini-album title song "Bad Woman." They also promoted it on SBS Inkigayo, and two days later, released the band's first Korean mini-album ''Jump Up''.

On April 22, F.T. Island released their second Japanese single, ''I believe Myself''. For the first time, members participated with lyrics and composition. For the song ''Moonlight Angel'', member Lee Jae Jin co-wrote it and leader Choi Jong Hoon co-composed the song. ''I Believe Myself'' is the first Japanese single with member Song Seung Hyun. They held their 2009 F.T. Island Tour-I Believe Myself in cities all over Japan during the summer of 2009.

F.T. Island toured parts of Asia which include Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, etc. to promote themselves in the summer of 2009. The showcases kicked off in Singapore during June 25 to 27.

While preparing for overseas promotions, the members were in the midst of recording their third album. On July 9, FNC Music released a jacket photo for the upcoming third album called ''Cross & Change''. On the following day, a musc video teaser was released online, featuring kids watching their idols (played by the members themselves) on TV. The title song, called “I Hope/Barae”, was released on July 16. F.T. Island tried out a variety of music styles for ''Cross & Change''; it includes a total of 12 songs, ranging from moving ballads to addictive songs with a bright melody. F.T. Island adopted a new fashion style and concept for the album, using a "retro" and the so-called “Bokgo” approach, which was inspired during the “jeans jeans look” from the 80s in Korea.

F.T. Island released their 3rd Japanese single, ''Raining'', on October 21, 2009. A music video of the single's title track was released. Leader Choi Jong Hoon played the piano for the title song instead of the guitar.

F.T. Island's sub-group: F.T. Triple

The three members Choi Jong Hun, Choi Min Hwan, and Lee Jae Jin formed a sub-group called F.T. Triple. Some of the reasons behind this move were to showcase more of the members' skills and to prevent lead singer, Lee Hongki, from overstraining his voice again (refer to Gayo Daejun Incident under 'Headlines' below). Another reason was to continue promoting F.T. Island while Lee Hongki was busy filming the South Korean drama "You're Beautiful" and while Song Seunghyun was busy with variety shows. At first, this trio was unofficially announced at the Dream Concert in Japan as "A3". They almost named themselves A3 because they all are blood A type. They wanted to keep the F.T. name so they added Triple at the end of it to represent that it is a trio. In F.T. triple, Lee Jaejin, originally in charge of bass for F.T. Island, becomes a guitarist and the lead vocalist; leader Choi Jonghun plays the piano and Choi Min Hwan continues to play the drums. Their first single was titled "Love Letter" and was released with F.T. Island's 2CD Repackaged Album ''Double Date'' as a second CD named ''Two Date'' that features all F.T. Triple songs.

F.T. Island held a national tour titled, "Men's Stories".The national tour began on November 14, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. Their hit single from the album, ''I Hope'', was very well received by their fans and the five members planned on showing their life behind the stage along with strong visuals and sounds on a more personal level for the fans. For their concert, F.T. Island emphasized their growth as a band as they begin to shed their boyish charms for a more mature and masculine appeal.

2010: Major Debut in Japan, ''Beautiful Journey'', and Success in Taiwan

In the months January and February, the boys started touring in Asia. The tour visited Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Singapore. Tickets were sold out quickly; representatives of the band believe it was due to the popularity of Lee Hong Ki starring in the drama, "You're Beautiful".

After celebrating their 1000th day in the music industry, they flew to Japan and stayed there until the end of August for their major debut in Japan under the combination of new Japanese label company, Warner Music Japan and their official label company, FNC Music. They also began a new Japanese show which began airing starting 7 April 2010. On May 19, 2010, F.T. Island released their new single "Flower Rock" under Warner Music. "Flower Rock" entered the Oricon daily charts at 3rd position on May 19, 2010, the day of its release, and held the fourth position of that week. On July 14, 2010, F.T. Island released another single named "Brand-new days," which included songs written and composed by the F.T. Island members Song Seung Hyun and Choi Jong Hun. F.T. Island performed a five-city concert tour in Japan after releasing both singles. They also performed at the international rock festival "Summer Sonic 2010" in Maishima Arena, Osaka, Japan.

After promotions in Japan, F.T. Island focused on their comeback in Korea in mid-August 2010. Their new mini album "Beautiful Journey" and the music video for their main title song "Love Love Love" were released on August 25, 2010. F.T. Island held their comeback performance in Korean on August 27, 2010. The title song topped many popular music charts in South Korea and also gained international notice, especially in Taiwan. Choi Jong Hoon co-wrote and co-composed one of the songs, titled ''Don Quixote's Song'', making it the first Korean song that includes the composition from F.T. Island itself. During November and December, F.T. Island balanced two separate concerts, the Beautiful Journey Concert and So Today... Concert, in both Korea and Japan. F.T. Island were voted first for Mnet Asian Music Awards 2010, but did not receive the award as they were not present for the ceremony; the award was given to another band.

While promoting their second Korean mini-album, F.T. Island recorded another Japanese single titled ''So today...'' to be released in November. All three songs were co-written by Lee Jae Jin; the song, ''Boom Boom Boom'', was composed by Choi Jong Hoon. The single ranked 6th on the Oricon Daily Chart. With F.T. Island’s 3rd single taking the 6th position, they now have a record of all their singles ranking top 10 in the Oricon charts. About 10,000 fans turned up at their promotional events in Osaka and Tokyo on 20 and 21 November.

Due to their immense popularity in Taiwan, F.T. Island held a concert on December 25, celebrating Christmas together with 9000 fans. F.T. Island is Korea’s first rock band to hold a big scale concert in Taiwan and they had no other special request besides asking for the best sound systems and hardware. Former vocalist and guitarist, honoured guest Oh Wonbin, performed his first single as a solo artist and a brand new song, which has yet not been released, at the concert. F.T. Island performed songs in three languages, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. Though they have only entered the Taiwan music industry for a short period of 10 months, with an album sales record over 100,000, FT Island won favorable comments in the Chinese media. Just for the concert tickets and merchandises alone, the revenue for FTIsland’s [Beautiful Journey] concert have exceeded a total of NT$20Million. They have been named the Korean artistes who earned the most money for the end of 2010 and FTIsland also wished to visit Taiwan again soon. Four main news agencies namely, China Times, Yonhap News, Apple Daily and Liberty Times, covered news on the concert, showing the band’s high popularity. FT Island also broke several records in Taiwan with 500,000 hits on mobile downloads and 10,000,000 hits on music downloads.

2011–present: ''Five Treasure Island'' and ''Return''

On April 20, FTIsland released their 4th major Japanese single ''Satisfaction'' with accompanying tracks, ''I want'' and ''Friends'', in which Choi Jonghun participated in the composition of both songs. The single topped the Oricon Weekly Charts at 2nd place. They were positioned right after Johnny’s Kanjani8. Their title song “Satisfaction” was also selected to be the ending theme song of the current airing anime “Toriko”, generating high expectation from the public.

On May 18, FTIsland released their first major debut album in Japan, titled ''Five Treasure Island''. The album features songs from singles, ''Flower Rock'', ''Brand New Days'', ''So Today...'', and ''Satisfaction''; it also contains several new tracks, including the OSTs for Japanese drama, "Muscle Girl", in which member Lee Hongki plays lead male role. FTIsland set a record by being the first Korean band to top the Oricon album daily chart at 1st position. Their first Japanese regular album sold 20,410 copies on the first day, attaining the 1st position on the Oricon album daily chart. FTIsland held an album release commemorative event yesterday at Yomiuri Land and shared the joy of their result together with some 5,000 fans. FTIsland started their performance with songs from their past singles and also new album songs like “mirai”, “yume”, “Rock’n'roll”, as well as theme songs “itsuka” and “haruka” from Lee Hongki’s drama, TBS “Muscle Girl”. FTIsland expressed their happiness of attaining the 1st position on the Oricon chart, “It’s unbelievable that we’ve got the 1st position. We will work harder in future to bring even better music. Please give us lots of love and support.”

FTIsland returns to South Korea with mini-album ''Return''. The album was released on May 24 with title track, ''Hello Hello''. The album features five songs, one being ''I Confess'', which leader Choi Jonghun said he wrote with their fans in mind.

Incidents

F.T. Island stranded in Cebu

On September 25, 2009, F.T. Island was in Cebu in the Philippines to film the music video for their Japanese single, "Raining". Due to a sudden typhoon (Typhoon Ketsana), the members were left stranded in the province. Their record company, FNC Music, attempted to communicate with the members, but were unable to reach the band. The typhoon knocked out radio contact and cut off any connection with the crew. The record company was eventually able contact with the crew later in the afternoon and confirmed that F.T. Island was safe. The filming was shortened by a few days and the band flew back to Korea two days later.

Oh Won Bin's project with Lee Hongki

Former member Oh Won Bin took part in the soundtrack of drama ''You're Beautiful'' (Hangul: 미남이시네요), in which Lee Hongki costarred in. Along with Miss $, Oh Won Bin sung the cheerful second track titled "하늘에서 내려와 (Coming Down from the Sky)". Even before the album was released, this particular song has received lots of attention. Won Bin's participation created many speculations among netizens: he might return to the band, he has projects together with F.T. Island members, a new start of his solo career, or he just wants to support his old band mate. No official comment has been made yet, but Wonbin has been referenced to in FTI's members' tweets and photos.

Dorm fire

On the May 3, 2011, a fire broke out at F.T. Island's dorm near Munrae-dong, Youngdeungpo-gu, Seoul. The members evacuated immediately and no one was injured. The members had finished their new album recording works and returned home to take a rest when the fire broke out. Representatives of their agency explained, "The members were able to escape to a safe location and call for help. It was not anything major or severe. Rest assured, the members are not injured and do not require a visit to the hospital." Despite it being a scary situation, the agency thought positively of the fire by calling it a sign of good luck. "The members were up late preparing for their new mini-album's music video and album jacket photoshoot before returning to their dorms to sleep. As they’ve just released their new album, ''Satisfaction'', we consider this 'fire' a sign of good luck."

Minhwan fainted

On March 23, 2009, youngest member Minhwan fainted from overwork while waiting to film his drama, "The Way Home." He was rushed to the hospital and treated. His company said that he had become increasingly tired due to band activities and his drama. Minhwan had also caught a severe cold, and had been overworking himself. Luckily, it wasn't serious and he was discharged on the 24th.

Members

;Current Choi Jong Hun (최종훈), born March 07, 1990, is the leader, as well as the lead guitarist, pianist and vocalist of the band. Lee Hongki (이홍기), born March 02, 1990, is the lead vocalist of the band. Lee Jae Jin (이재진), born December 17, 1991, is the bassist and vocalist of the band. Choi Min Hwan (최민환), born November 11, 1992, is the drummer and vocalist of the band. Song Seung Hyun (송승현), born August 21, 1992, is the rhythm guitarist and vocalist of the band.

;Former members Oh Won Bin (오원빈), born March 26, 1990, was the rhythm guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the band.

Discography

;Korean studio albums

''Cheerful Sensibility'' (2007)

''The Refreshment'' (2007)

''The One'' (2008)

''Colorful Sensibility Part 1'' (2008)

''Colorful Sensibility Part 2'' (2008)

''Jump Up'' (2009), EP

''Cross & Change vol.3'' (2009)

''Double Date'' (2009)

''Beautiful Journey'' (2010)  – EP

''Return'' (2011)  – EP

;Japanese studio albums

''Prologue of F.T. Island: Soyogi'' (2008)  – EP

''So Long, Au Revoir'' (2009)

''I Believe Myself'' (2009)

''Raining'' (2009)

''Flower Rock'' (2010)  – EP

''Brand New Days'' (2010)  – EP

''So Today'' (2010)  – EP

''Satisfaction'' (2011)  – EP

''Let It Go'' (2011)  – EP

Awards

!Years	!Awards
!2007		*2007 M.net KM Music Festival: Best New Male Group (Lovesick)	*2007 M.net KM Music Festival: MNet.com Award (Lovesick)	*Asia Song Festival: Best New Group	*22nd Golden Disk Awards: Popularity Award	*22nd Golden Disk Awards: Newcomer Award
!2008		*17th Seoul Music Awards: Newcomer Award (Love Sick)	*2008 SEED Awards : Asia’s Most Popular Artist Award (Thailand)	*23rd Golden Disk Awards : YEPP Popularity Award
!2010		*16th Korea Entertainment Arts Awards: Male Singer Award	*25th Golden Disk Awards: Cosmopolitan Rock Music Award
!2011		*20th Seoul Music Awards: Bonsang Award	*MBC Idol Star 7080: King Singer Award

References

External links

Category:Japanese-language singers Category:Korean-language singers Category:Musical groups established in 2007 Category:Musical quintets Category:South Korean boy bands Category:South Korean pop rock music groups Category:Warner Music Group artists

de:F.T. Island es:F.T. Island ko:F.T.아일랜드 ms:F.T. Island ja:FTISLAND pl:F.T. Island fi:F.T. Island th:เอฟ.ที. ไอส์แลนด์ vi:FT Island zh:FTIsland

The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950. Five of Marx Brothers’ thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them (''Duck Soup'' and ''A Night at the Opera'') in the top twelve.

The core of the act was the three elder brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho; each developed a highly distinctive stage persona. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their stage characters to the same extent, and eventually left the act to pursue other careers. Gummo was not in any of the movies; Zeppo appeared only in the first five.

Early life

Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia; and their father, Simon Marx (whose name was changed to Samuel Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian quarters.

Brothers

The brothers were:

Stage name	Actual name	Born	Died	Age
	Leonard	March 22, 1887	October 11, 1961	74
	Adolph (after 1911: Arthur)	November 23, 1888	September 28, 1964	75
	Julius Henry	October 2, 1890	August 19, 1977	86
	Milton	October 23, 1892	April 21, 1977	84
	Herbert	February 25, 1901	November 30, 1979	78

A sixth brother, Manfred ("Mannie"), was actually the first child of Samuel and Minnie, born in 1886, though an online family tree states that he was born in 1885: "Family lore told privately of the firstborn son, Manny, born in 1886 but surviving for only three months, and carried off by tuberculosis. Even some members of the Marx family wondered if he was pure myth. But Manfred can be verified. A death certificate of the Borough of Manhattan reveals that he died, aged seven months, on 17 July 1886, of 'entero-colitis,' with 'asthenia' contributing, i.e. probably a victim of influenza. He is buried at New York's Washington Cemetery, beside his grandmother, Fanny Sophie Schönberg (née Salomons), who died on 10 April 1901."

Stage beginnings

The brothers were from a family of artists, and their musical talent was encouraged from an early age. Harpo was amazingly talented, learning to play an estimated six different instruments throughout his career. He became a dedicated harpist, which gave him his nickname. Chico was an excellent pianist, Groucho a guitarist and singer, and Zeppo a vocalist. They got their start in vaudeville, where their uncle Albert Schönberg performed as Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean. Groucho's debut was in 1905, mainly as a singer. By 1907, he and Gummo were singing together as "The Three Nightingales" with Mabel O'Donnell. The next year, Harpo became the fourth Nightingale and by 1910, the group was expanded to include their mother Minnie and their Aunt Hannah. The troupe was renamed "The Six Mascots". A cousin of the Marx brothers was Mary Livingstone (b. Sadye Marks 1905-1983), who married comedian Jack Benny.

Comedy

One evening in 1912, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. The audience hurried outside to see what was happening. When they returned, Groucho, angered by the interruption, made snide comments about the audience, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass". Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed. The family then realized they had potential as a comic troupe. However, in Harpo Marx's autobiography, ''Harpo Speaks'', he states that the runaway mule incident occurred in Ada, Oklahoma.

The act slowly evolved from singing with comedy to comedy with music. Their sketch "Fun in Hi Skule" featured Groucho as a German-accented teacher presiding over a classroom that included students Harpo, Gummo and Chico. The last version of the school act, titled ''Home Again'', was written by their uncle, Al Shean, of the famous vaudeville act Gallagher and Shean. At about this time, Gummo left to serve in World War I, reasoning that "anything is better than being an actor!" Zeppo replaced him in their final vaudeville years and in the jump to Broadway, and then to Paramount films.

During World War I, anti-German sentiments were common, and the family tried to conceal their German origin. After learning that farmers were excluded from the draft rolls, mother Minnie purchased a poultry farm near Countryside, Illinois, but the brothers soon found that chicken ranching was not in their blood. During this time, Groucho discontinued his "German" stage personality.

By this time, "The Four Marx Brothers" had begun to incorporate their unique style of comedy into their act and to develop their characters. Both Groucho and Harpo's memoirs say their now famous on-stage personae were created by Al Shean. Groucho began to wear his trademark greasepaint moustache and to use a stooped walk. Harpo stopped speaking onstage and began to wear a red fright wig and carry a taxi-cab horn. Chico spoke with a fake Italian accent, developed off-stage to deal with neighborhood toughs, while Zeppo adopted the role of the romantic (and "peerlessly cheesy", according to James Agee) straight man.

The on-stage personalities of Groucho, Chico and Harpo were said to have been based on their actual traits. Zeppo, on the other hand, was considered the funniest brother offstage, despite his straight stage roles. As the youngest, and having grown up watching his brothers, he could fill in for and imitate any of the others when illness kept them from performing. "He was so good as Captain Spaulding [in ''Animal Crackers''] that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience", Groucho recalled. (Zeppo did impersonate Groucho in the film version of ''Animal Crackers''. Groucho was unavailable to film the scene in which the Beaugard painting is stolen, so the script was contrived to include a power failure which allowed Zeppo to play the Spaulding part in near-darkness.)

By the 1920s, the Marx Brothers had become one of America's favorite theatrical acts. With their sharp and bizarre sense of humor, they satirized high society and human hypocrisy. They also became famous for their improvisational comedy in free-form scenarios. A famous early instance was when Harpo arranged to chase a fleeing chorus girl across the stage during the middle of a Groucho monologue to see if Groucho would be thrown off. However, to the audience's delight, Groucho merely reacted by calmly checking his watch and commenting, "First time I ever saw a taxi hail a passenger". When Harpo chased the girl back the other direction, Groucho ad-libbed, "The 9:20's right on time. You can set your watch by the Lehigh Valley."

Under Chico's management, and with Groucho's creative direction, the brothers' vaudeville act had led to them becoming stars on Broadway, first with a musical revue, ''I'll Say She Is'' (1924–1925) and then with two musical comedies, ''The Cocoanuts'' (1925–1926) and ''Animal Crackers'' (1928–1929). Playwright George S. Kaufman worked on the last two and helped sharpen the Brothers' characterizations.

Out of their distinctive costumes the brothers looked alike, even down to their receding hairlines. Zeppo could pass for a younger Groucho, and played the role of his son in ''Horse Feathers''. A scene in ''Duck Soup'' finds Groucho, Harpo and Chico all appearing in the famous greasepaint eyebrows, mustache and round glasses, while wearing nightcaps. The three are indistinguishable, enabling them to carry off the "mirror scene" perfectly.

Origin of the stage names

The stage names for four of the five brothers were coined by monologist Art Fisher during a poker game in Galesburg, Illinois, based both on the brothers' personalities and Gus Mager's ''Sherlocko the Monk'', a popular comic strip of the day which included a supporting character named "Groucho the Monk". The reasons behind Chico's and Harpo's stage names are undisputed, and Gummo's is fairly well established. Groucho's and Zeppo's are far less clear. Arthur was named Harpo because he played the harp, and Leonard became Chico (pronounced "Chick-o") because of his tendency to chase women ("chicks", as a slang term for women. "In England now, they were called birds").

In his autobiography, Harpo explains that Milton became Gummo because he crept about the theater like a gumshoe detective. Other sources report that Gummo was the family's hypochondriac, having been the sickliest of the brothers in childhood, and therefore wore rubber overshoes, also called gumshoes, in all kinds of weather. Groucho stated that the source of the name was Gummo wearing galoshes. Either way, the name relates to rubber-soled shoes.

The reason Julius was named Groucho is perhaps the most disputed. There are three explanations:

Julius' temperament: Maxine, Chico's daughter and Groucho's niece, said in the documentary ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' that Julius was named "Groucho" simply because he was grouchy most or all of the time. Robert B. Weide, a director known for his knowledge of Marx Brothers history, said in ''Remarks On Marx,'' a documentary short included with the DVD of ''A Night at the Opera,'' that among the competing explanations he found this one the most believable. Steve Allen, in ''Funny People'', said that the name made no sense; Groucho might have been impudent and impertinent, but not grouchy — at least not around Allen. However, at the very end of his life, Groucho finally admitted that Fisher had named him Groucho because he was the "moody one".

The grouch bag: This explanation appears in Harpo's biography, was voiced by Chico in a TV appearance included on ''The Unknown Marx Brothers,'' and was also offered by George Fenneman, Groucho's sidekick on his TV game show, ''You Bet Your Life.'' A grouch bag was a small drawstring bag worn around the neck in which a traveler could keep money and other valuables so that it would be very difficult for anyone to steal them. Most of Groucho's friends and associates stated that Groucho was extremely stingy, especially after losing all his money in the 1929 stock market crash, so naming him for the grouch bag may have been a comment on this trait. Groucho, in chapter six of his first autobiography, insisted that this was not the case:

I kept my money in a 'grouch bag.' This was a small chamois bag that actors used to wear around their neck to keep other hungry actors from pinching their dough. Naturally, you're going to think that's where I got my name from. But that's not so. Grouch bags were worn on manly chests long before there was a Groucho.

Groucho's explanation: Groucho himself insisted that he was named for a character in the comic strip, ''Knocko the Monk'', which inspired the craze for nicknames ending in "o"; in fact, there was a character in that strip named "Groucho the Monk". However, he is the ''only'' Marx or Marx associate who defended this theory, and as he is not an unbiased witness, few biographers take the claim seriously.

:Groucho himself was no help on this point; during his Carnegie Hall concert, when he was discussing the Brothers' names and when it came to his own, he said, "My name, of course, I never did understand." He goes on to mention the possibility that he was named after his unemployed uncle, Julius, who lived with his family. The family believed he was actually a rich uncle hiding a fortune. Groucho claims that he may have been named after him (perhaps by the family trying to get into the will). "And he finally died, and he left us his will, and in that will he left three razor blades, an 8-ball, a celluloid dicky, and he owed my father $85 beside."

Herbert was not nicknamed by Art Fisher, since he did not join the act until Gummo had departed. As with Groucho, three explanations exist for Herbert's name, "Zeppo":

Harpo's explanation: Harpo said in ''Harpo Speaks!'' the brothers had named Herbert for Mr. Zippo, a chimpanzee that was part of another performer's act. Herbert found the nickname very unflattering, and when it came time for him to join the act, he put his foot down and refused to be called "Zippo." The brothers compromised on ''Zeppo.''

Chico's explanation: Chico never wrote an autobiography, and gave fewer interviews than his brothers, but his daughter, Maxine, in ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' said that when the Marx Brothers lived in Chicago, a popular style of humor was the "Zeke and Zeb" joke, which made fun of slow-witted Midwesterners in much the same way Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes mock Cajuns and Ole and Lena jokes mock Minnesotans. One day, as Chico returned home, he found Herbert sitting on the fence. Herbert greeted him by saying "Hi, Zeke!" Chico responded with "Hi, Zeb!" and the name stuck. The brothers thereafter called him "Zeb," and when he joined the act, they floated the idea of "Zebbo," eventually preferring "Zeppo."

Groucho's explanation: In a tape-recorded interview excerpted on ''The Unknown Marx Brothers,'' Groucho said Zeppo was so named because he was born when the first zeppelins started crossing the ocean. He also stated this in his Carnegie Hall concert, ca. 1972. The first zeppelin flew in July 1900, and Herbert was born seven months later in February 1901. However, the first transatlantic zeppelin flight was not until 1924, long after Herbert's birth.

Maxine Marx reported in ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' that the brothers listed their ''real'' names (Julius, Leonard, Adolph, Milton and Herbert) on playbills and in programs, and only used the nicknames behind the scenes, until Alexander Woollcott overheard them calling one another by the nicknames; he asked them why they used their own ordinary real names publicly when they had such wonderful nicknames. They replied, "That wouldn't be dignified." Woollcott answered with a belly laugh. Since Woollcott did not meet the Marx Brothers until the premiere of ''I'll Say She Is,'' which was their first Broadway show, this would mean they used their real names throughout their vaudeville days, and that the name "Gummo" never appeared in print during his time in the act. Other sources report that the Marx Brothers did go by their nicknames during their vaudeville era, but briefly listed themselves by their given names when ''I'll Say She Is'' opened because they were worried that a Broadway audience would reject a vaudeville act if they were perceived as low class.

Hollywood

Paramount

thumb|Top to bottom: Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo (1931).The Marx Brothers' stage shows became popular just as Hollywood was changing to "talkies". They signed a contract with Paramount and embarked on their film career. Their first two released films (they had previously made — but not released — one short silent film titled ''Humor Risk'') were adaptations of Broadway shows: ''The Cocoanuts'' (1929) and ''Animal Crackers'' (1930). Both were written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. Following these two feature-length films, they made a short film that was included in Paramount's twentieth anniversary documentary, ''The House That Shadows Built'' (1931), in which they adapted a scene from ''I'll Say She Is''. Their third feature-length film, ''Monkey Business'' (1931), was their first that was not based on a stage production, and the only movie in which Harpo's voice is heard (he sings tenor from inside a barrel in the opening scene). ''Horse Feathers'' (1932), in which the brothers satirized the American college system and Prohibition, was their most popular film yet, and won them the cover of ''Time''. It included a running gag from their stage work, where Harpo revealed having nearly everything in his coat. At various points in ''Horse Feathers'' Harpo pulls out of his coat: a wooden mallet, a fish, a coiled rope, a tie, a poster of a woman in her underwear, a cup of hot coffee, a sword; and, just after Groucho warns him that he "can't burn the candle at both ends," a candle burning at both ends. In another famous sketch, shown in ''Animal Crackers'', Harpo drops a full banquet's worth of pilfered silverware out of his sleeve, followed by a coffeepot.

During this time, Chico and Groucho Marx starred in a radio comedy series, ''Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel''. Although the series was short lived, much of the story material developed for it was used for subsequent films starring the Brothers. Furthermore, the scripts and recordings were believed lost for decades until copies of the scripts were found in the 1980s in the Library of Congress and both published in a book and performed with Marx Brother impersonators for BBC Radio.

Their last Paramount film, ''Duck Soup'' (1933) — directed by the most highly regarded director they ever worked with, Leo McCarey — is the higher rated of two Marx Brothers films to make the American Film Institute's "100 years ... 100 Movies" list (the other film being ''A Night at the Opera''). It did not do as well as ''Horse Feathers'', but was the sixth-highest grosser of 1933. The film also led to a feud between the Marxes and the village of Fredonia, New York. Freedonia, of course, was the name of the fictional country in ''Duck Soup'', and the city fathers wrote to Paramount and asked the studio to remove all references in the film to Freedonia because "it is hurting our town's image". Groucho fired back a sarcastic reply asking them to change the name of their town because "it's hurting our picture".

The Marx Brothers left Paramount because of disagreements over creative decisions and financial issues.

MGM, RKO, and United Artists

Zeppo left the act to become an agent and went on to build with his brother Gummo one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood, helping the likes of Jack Benny and Lana Turner get their starts. Groucho and Chico did radio, and there was talk of returning to Broadway. At a bridge game with Chico, Irving Thalberg began discussing the possibility of the Marxes coming to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and they signed, now known as "The Three Marx Brothers," or simply "The Marx Bros."

Unlike the free-for-all scripts at Paramount, Thalberg insisted on a strong story structure, making them into more sympathetic characters, interweaving their comedy with romantic plots and non-comic musical numbers, while the targets of their mischief were largely confined to clear villains. Thalberg was adamant that these scripts had to include a "low point" where all seems lost for both the Marxes and the romantic leads. In a June 13, 1969, interview with Dick Cavett, Groucho said that the two movies made with Thalberg (''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'') were the best that they ever produced.

Another idea of Thalberg's was that before filming would commence on an upcoming picture, the Marx Brothers would try out its material on the vaudeville stage, working on comic timing and learning what earned a laugh and what did not.

The first film that the brothers shot with Thalberg was ''A Night at the Opera'' (1935), a satire on the world of opera, where the brothers help two young singers in love by throwing a production of ''Il Trovatore'' into chaos. The film (which includes a scene where they cram an absurd number of people into a tiny stateroom on a ship) was a great success, and was followed two years later by the even bigger hit ''A Day at the Races'' (1937), where the brothers cause mayhem in a sanitarium and at a horse race (this sequence includes Groucho and Chico's famous "Tootsie Frootsie Ice Cream" sketch). However, during shooting in 1936, Thalberg died suddenly, and without him, the brothers did not have an advocate at MGM.

After a short experience at RKO (''Room Service'', 1938), the Marx Brothers made three more films before leaving MGM, ''At the Circus'' (1939), ''Go West'' (1940) and ''The Big Store'' (1941). Prior to the release of ''The Big Store'', the team announced their retirement from the screen, but Chico was in dire financial straits; to help settle his gambling debts, the Marx Brothers made another two films together, ''A Night in Casablanca'' (1946) and ''Love Happy'' (1949), both of them released by United Artists.

Later years

From the 1940s onward, Chico and Harpo appeared separately and together in nightclubs and casinos. Chico also fronted a big band, the Chico Marx Orchestra (with 17-year-old Mel Tormé as a vocalist). Groucho began his solo career with ''You Bet Your Life'', which ran from 1947 to 1961 on NBC radio and television. He also authored several books, including ''Groucho and Me'' (1959), ''Memoirs of a Mangy Lover'' (1964) and ''The Groucho Letters'' (1967).

Groucho and Chico briefly appeared together in a 1957 short film promoting the Saturday Evening Post entitled "Showdown at Ulcer Gulch," directed by animator Shamus Culhane, Chico's son-in-law. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo worked together (in separate scenes) in ''The Story of Mankind'' (1957). In 1959, the three began production of ''Deputy Seraph,'' a TV series starring Harpo and Chico as blundering angels, and Groucho (in every third episode) as their boss, the "Deputy Seraph." The project was abandoned when Chico was found to be uninsurable (and incapable of memorizing his lines) due to severe arteriosclerosis. On March 8 of that year, Chico and Harpo starred as bumbling thieves in ''The Incredible Jewel Robbery'', a half-hour pantomimed episode of the ''General Electric Theater'' on CBS. Groucho made a cameo appearance—uncredited, because of constraints in his NBC contract—in the last scene, and delivered the only line of dialog ("We won't talk until we see our lawyer!").

According to a September 1947 article in ''Newsweek'', Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo all signed to appear as themselves in a biopic entitled ''The Life and Times of the Marx Brothers''. In addition to being a non-fiction biography of the Marxes, the film would have also featured the brothers reenacting much of their previously unfilmed material from both their vaudeville and Broadway eras. The film, had it been made, would have been the first performance by the Brothers as a quartet since 1933.

The five brothers made only one television appearance together, in 1957, on an early incarnation of ''The Tonight Show'' called ''Tonight! America After Dark'', hosted by Jack Lescoulie. Five years later (October 1, 1962) after Jack Paar's tenure, Groucho made a guest appearance to introduce the ''Tonight Show's'' new host, Johnny Carson.

Around 1960, the acclaimed director Billy Wilder considered writing and directing a new Marx Brothers film. Tentatively titled "A Day at the U.N.," it was to be a comedy of international intrigue set around the United Nations building in New York. Wilder had discussions with Groucho and Gummo, but the project was put on hold because of Harpo's ill-health and abandoned when Chico died in 1961.

In 1970, the four Marx Brothers had a brief reunion (of sorts) in the animated ABC television special ''The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians'', produced by Rankin-Bass animation (of ''Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' fame). The special featured animated reworkings of various famous comedians' acts, including W. C. Fields, Jack Benny, George Burns, Henny Youngman, The Smothers Brothers, Flip Wilson, Phyllis Diller, Jack E. Leonard, George Jessel and the Marx Brothers. Most of the comedians provided their own voices for their animated counterparts, except for Fields and Chico Marx (both had died), and Zeppo Marx (who had left show business in 1933). Voice actor Paul Frees filled in for all three (no voice was needed for Harpo, who was also deceased). The Marx Brothers' segment was a reworking of a scene from their Broadway play ''I'll Say She Is'', a parody of Napoleon which Groucho considered among the Brothers' funniest routines. The sketch featured animated representations, if not the voices, of all four brothers. Romeo Muller is credited as having written special material for the show, but the script for the classic "Napoleon Scene" was probably supplied by Groucho.

On January 16, 1977, the Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

Many television shows and movies have used Marx Brothers references. ''Animaniacs'' and ''Tiny Toons'', for example, have featured Marx Brothers jokes and skits. Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) on ''M*A*S*H'' occasionally put on a fake nose and glasses, and, holding a cigar, did a Groucho impersonation to amuse patients recovering from surgery. Bugs Bunny also impersonated Groucho Marx in 1947 cartoon ''Slick Hare''. In the ''Airwolf'' episode 'Condemned', four anti-virus formulae for a deadly plague were named after the four Marx Brothers.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Harpo Marx appeared as himself in a sketch on ''I Love Lucy'' in which he and Lucille Ball reprised the mirror routine from ''Duck Soup'', with Lucy dressed up as Harpo. Lucy had met the Marxes when she appeared in a supporting role in an earlier Marx Brothers film, ''Room Service''. Chico once appeared on ''I've Got a Secret'' dressed up as Harpo; his secret was shown in a caption reading "I'm actually Chico Marx."

Filmography

Films with the Four Marx Brothers:

''Humor Risk'' (1921), previewed once and never released; thought to be lost

''The Cocoanuts'' (1929), released by Paramount Pictures

''Animal Crackers'' (1930), released by Paramount

''The House That Shadows Built'' (1931), released by Paramount (short subject)

''Monkey Business'' (1931), released by Paramount

''Horse Feathers'' (1932), released by Paramount

''Duck Soup'' (1933), released by Paramount

Films with the three Marx Brothers (post-Zeppo):

''A Night at the Opera'' (1935), released by MGM

''A Day at the Races'' (1937), released by MGM

''Room Service'' (1938), released by RKO Radio Pictures

''At the Circus'' (1939), released by MGM

''Go West'' (1940), released by MGM

''The Big Store'' (1941), released by MGM

''A Night in Casablanca'' (1946), released by United Artists

''Love Happy'' (1949), released by United Artists

''The Story of Mankind'' (1957), released by Warner Brothers (not a Marx Brothers film, but the three brothers perform separate cameos)

Solo endeavors:

Groucho:

*''Copacabana'' (1947), released by United Artists

*''Mr. Music'' (1951), released by Paramount

*''Double Dynamite'' (1951), released by RKO

*''A Girl in Every Port'' (1952), released by RKO

*''Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?'' (1957), released by 20th Century Fox (uncredited)

*''The Mikado'' (1960), made for television

*''Skidoo'' (1968), released by Paramount.

Harpo:

*''Too Many Kisses'' (1925), released by Paramount

*''Stage Door Canteen'' (1943), released by United Artists (cameo)

Chico:

*''Papa Romani'' (1950), television pilot

Zeppo:

*''A Kiss in the Dark'' (1925), released by Paramount (cameo)

Characters

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Film || Year || Groucho || Chico || Harpo || Zeppo |- | ''Humor Risk'' || 1921 || The Villain || The Italian || Watson, Detective || The Love Interest |- | ''Too Many Kisses'' || 1925 || || || The Village Peter Pan || |- | ''The Cocoanuts'' || 1929 || Mr. Hammer || Chico || Harpo || Jamison |- | ''Animal Crackers'' || 1930 || Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding || Signor Emmanuel Ravelli || The Professor || Horatio Jamison |- | ''The House That Shadows Built'' || 1931 || Caesar's Ghost || Tomalio || The Merchant of Weiners || Sammy Brown |- | ''Monkey Business'' || 1931 || Groucho || Chico || Harpo || Zeppo |- | ''Horse Feathers'' || 1932 || Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff || Baravelli || Pinky || Frank Wagstaff |- | ''Duck Soup'' || 1933 || Rufus T. Firefly || Chicolini || Pinky || Lt. Bob Roland |- | ''A Night at the Opera'' || 1935 || Otis B. Driftwood || Fiorello || Tomasso || |- | ''A Day at the Races'' || 1937 || Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush* || Tony || Stuffy || |- | ''Room Service'' || 1938 || Gordon Miller || Harry Binelli || Faker Englund || |- | ''At the Circus'' || 1939 || J. Cheever Loophole || Antonio Pirelli || Punchy || |- | ''Go West'' || 1940 || S. Quentin Quale || Joe Panello || Rusty Panello || |- | ''The Big Store'' || 1941 || Wolf J. Flywheel || Ravelli || Wacky || |- | ''A Night in Casablanca'' || 1946 || Ronald Kornblow || Corbaccio || Rusty || |- | ''Love Happy'' || 1949 || Sam Grunion || Faustino the Great || Harpo || |- | ''The Story of Mankind'' || 1957 || Peter Minuit || Monk || Sir Isaac Newton || |- |}

* (To avoid a possible lawsuit, this name was chosen instead of the intended "Quackenbush" after it was discovered that there were around 30 real doctors by this name.)

Ownership status of films

All the films that were released still exist, though not always in the form they were originally released, ''Horse Feathers'' being the most obvious example. However, due to certain studios selling many of their films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the rights to many of the Marx Brothers' films have changed hands over the years.

Paramount films

In 1957, Paramount sold many of its pre-1950 sound features to EMKA, Ltd. - a subsidiary of the Music Corporation of America. After MCA merged with Universal Pictures in 1962, the rights to these films went to Universal (now a part of NBC Universal).

MGM films

MGM held on to their Marx Brothers films longer than Paramount did. In 1986, media mogul Ted Turner bought MGM outright. But after amassing huge debts, Turner sold the studio, but kept the pre-1986 MGM library for his own company, Turner Entertainment. Today, Turner Entertainment is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with Warner Bros. handling sales and distribution.

''Room Service''

Due to being an RKO film, the transfer of this film's rights has been more complicated than most other Marx Brothers films. In 1955, RKO sold television rights to many of their films to C&C; Television for most markets, and General Tire for markets in which they owned TV stations. General's rights ended up being auctioned as successor RKO General was in the midst of a licensing scandal. Meanwhile, C&C; sold its rights to United Artists in 1971. UA was in turn sold to MGM in 1981. Turner inherited UA's rights as part of his acquisition of MGM's library. Turner then acquired television rights in the markets where RKO had owned stations. All US and Canadian and Region 4 rights are now with WB/Turner.

On the other hand, distribution rights in the rest of the world have been sold on a country-by-country basis. For example, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment purchased the underlying UK rights in later years, and passed on to Universal following the sale of PolyGram to Universal.

''A Night in Casablanca''

Warners now owns this film as part of the Castle Hill Productions library.

''Love Happy''

This and many other UA films released before 1952 were sold to National Telefilm Associates in 1955. In 1984, NTA changed its name to Republic Pictures, which itself became part of the Spelling Entertainment Group in the mid-1990s. Spelling was sold to Paramount's current parent Viacom in 1999.

In the mid-1990s, Republic licensed US video rights to Artisan Entertainment. Artisan was sold to Lions Gate Entertainment in 2003. Then, in 2006, US video rights to certain Republic properties - including ''Love Happy'' - reverted to Paramount, who also owns video rights in Region 4 and in France.

Television distribution is now in the hands of Trifecta Entertainment & Media, having inherited the rights from NTA, Republic, Worldvision Enterprises, Paramount Domestic Television, CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and CBS Television Distribution. Video rights in much of the world are also divided by country, with Universal owning the UK video rights.

Awards and honors

The Marx Brothers were collectively named #20 on AFI's list of the Top 25 American male screen legends. They are the only group to be so honored.

See also

Margaret Dumont

Thelma Todd

References

Notes

Further reading

Marx, Groucho, ''Beds'' (1930) Farrar & Rinehart, (1976) Bobbs-Merrill

Marx, Groucho, ''Many Happy Returns'' (1942) Simon & Schuster

Crichton, Kyle, ''The Marx Brothers'' (1950) Doubleday & Co.

Marx, Arthur, ''Life with Groucho'' (1954) Simon & Schuster, (revised as ''My Life with Groucho: A Son's Eye View'', 1988) ISBN 0-330-31132-8

Marx, Groucho, ''Groucho and Me'' (1959) Random House, (1989) Fireside Books ISBN 0-306-80666-5

Marx, Harpo (with Barber, Rowland), ''Harpo Speaks!'' (1961) Bernard Geis Associates, (1985) Limelight Editions ISBN 0-87910-036-2

Marx, Groucho, ''Memoirs of a Mangy Lover'' (1963) Bernard Geis Associates, (2002) Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-81104-9

Marx, Groucho, ''The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx'' (1967, 2007) Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-306-80607-X

Zimmerman, Paul D., ''The Marx Brothers at the Movies'' (1968) G.P. Putnam's Sons

Eyles, Allen, ''The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy'' (1969) A.S. Barnes

Robinson, David, ''The Great Funnies: A History of Film Comedy'' (1969) E.P. Dutton

Durgnat, Raymond, "Four Against Alienation" from ''The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image'' (1970) Dell

Maltin, Leonard, ''Movie Comedy Teams'' (1970, revised 1985) New American Library

Anobile, Richard J. (ed.), ''Why a Duck?: Visual and Verbal Gems from the Marx Brothers Movies'' (1971) Avon Books

Bergman, Andrew, "Some Anarcho-Nihilist Laff Riots" from ''We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films'' (1971) New York University Press

Marx, Arthur, ''Son of Groucho'' (1972) David McKay Co. ISBN 0-679-50355-2

Adamson, Joe, ''Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo'' (1973, 1983) Simon & Schuster

Kalmar, Bert, and Perelman, S. J., ''The Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Duck Soup'' (Classic Film Scripts) (1973) Simon & Schuster

Mast, Gerald, ''The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies'' (1973, 2nd ed. 1979) University of Chicago Press

McCaffrey, Donald W., "Zanies in a Stage-Movieland" from ''The Golden Age of Sound Comedy'' (1973) A. S. Barnes

Anobile, Richard J. (ed.), ''Hooray for Captain Spaulding!: Verbal and Visual Gems from Animal Crackers'' (1974) Avon Books

Anobile, Richard J., ''The Marx Bros. Scrapbook'' (1974) Grosset & Dunlap, (1975) Warner Books

Wolf, William, ''The Marx Brothers'' (1975) Pyramid Library

Marx, Groucho, ''The Groucho Phile'' (1976) Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Marx, Groucho (with Arce, Hector), ''The Secret Word Is GROUCHO'' (1976) G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Byron, Stuart and Weis, Elizabeth (eds.), ''The National Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy'' (1977) Grossman/Viking

Maltin, Leonard, ''The Great Movie Comedians'' (1978) Crown Publishers

Arce, Hector, ''Groucho'' (1979) G. P. Putnam's Sons

Chandler, Charlotte, ''Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho & His Friends'' (1978) Doubleday & Co., (2007) Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-14-005222-4

Marx, Maxine, ''Growing Up with Chico'' (1980) Prentice-Hall, (1984) Simon & Schuster

Weales, Gerald, ''Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedy of the 1930s'' (1985) University of Chicago Press

Gehring, Wes D., ''The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography'' (1987) Greenwood Press

Barson, Michael (ed.), ''Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel: The Marx Brothers Lost Radio Show'' (1988) Pantheon Books

Allen, Miriam Marx, ''Love, Groucho: Letters from Groucho Marx to His Daughter Miriam'' (1992) Faber & Faber ISBN 0-571-12915-3

Eyles, Allen, ''The Complete Films of the Marx Brothers'' (1992) Carol Publishing Group

Gehring, Wes D., ''Groucho and W.C. Fields: Huckster Comedians'' (1994) University Press of Mississippi

Mitchell, Glenn, ''The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia'' (1996) B.T. Batsford Ltd., (revised 2003) Reynolds & Hearn ( ISBN 0-7134-7838-1)

Stoliar, Steve, ''Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House'' (1996) General Publishing Group ISBN 1-881649-73-3

Dwan, Robert, ''As Long As They're Laughing!: Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life'' (2000) Midnight Marquee Press, Inc.

Kanfer, Stefan, ''Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx'' (2000) Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 0-375-70207-5

Bego, Mark, ''The Marx Brothers'' (2001) Pocket Essentials

Louvish, Simon, ''Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers'' (2001) Thomas Dunne Books ISBN 0-312-25292-7)

Gehring, Wes D., ''Film Clowns of the Depression'' (2007) McFarland & Co.

Keesey, Douglas, with Duncan, Paul (ed.), ''Marx Bros.'' (2007) Movie Icons series, Taschen

Marx, Bill, ''Son of Harpo Speaks!'' (2007) BearManor Media ISBN 1-59393-062-3

External links

www.marx-brothers.org

List of Radio Appearances by the Marx Brothers

Marxology

The Marx Brothers Museum

Marx Brothers Night at the Opera Treasury

Marx Brothers tribute page

Category:Show business families Category:Jewish families Category:Jewish comedy and humor * Category:People from New York City Category:Vaudeville performers Category:American comedy troupes Category:Articles about multiple people Category:Sibling groups

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Coordinates	21°55′28″N159°31′46″N
name	Nana Mouskouri
background	solo_singer
birth name	Ιωάννα Μούσχουρη (Ioánna Moúschouri)
birth date	October 13, 1934
origin	Chania, Crete, Greece
genre	Jazz, Pop, folk, Greek folk, world music, Classical
occupation	Singer
years active	1958–2008
label	Fontana, Polydor, Mercury, Verve, Philips, PolyGram, Universal Music France
website	Universal Music France
notable instruments	}}

Nana Mouskouri (), born Ioánna Moúschouri () on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, Greece, is a Greek singer who has sold nearly 400 million records worldwide in a career spanning over five decades, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She was known as Nána to her friends and family as a child. (Note that in Greek her surname is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable - MOOS-hoo-ree - rather than the second.) She has recorded songs in many languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Maori.

The early years

Nana Mouskouri's family lived in Chania, Crete, where her father, Constantine, worked as a film projectionist in a local cinema. Her mother, Alice also worked in the same local cinema as an usherette. When Mouskouri was three, her family moved to Athens.

Mouskouri's family sent her and her elder sister, Eugenia or "Jenny", to the Athens Conservatoire. Mouskouri had displayed exceptional musical talent from the age of six. Jenny initially appeared to be the more gifted of the two sisters. Financially unable to support both girls' studies, the parents asked their tutor which one should continue. The tutor conceded that Jenny had the better voice, but Nana was the one with the true inner need to sing. Mouskouri has said that a medical examination revealed a difference in her two vocal cords and this could well account for her remarkable singing voice (in her younger years ranging from a husky, dark alto, which she later dropped, to a ringing coloratura mezzo), as opposed to her breathy, raspy speaking voice.

Mouskouri's childhood was marked by the German Nazi occupation of Greece. Her father became part of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Athens. Mouskouri began singing lessons at age 12. As a child, she listened to radio broadcasts of singers such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Édith Piaf.

In 1950, she was accepted at the Conservatoire. She studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera. After eight years at the Conservatoire, Mouskouri was encouraged by her friends to experiment with jazz music. She began singing with her friends' jazz group at night. However, when Mouskouri's Conservatory professor found out about Mouskouri's involvement with a genre of music that was not in keeping with her classical studies, he prevented her from sitting for her end-of-year exams. Mouskouri left the Conservatoire and began performing at the Zaki club in Athens.

She began singing jazz in nightclubs with a bias towards Ella Fitzgerald repertoire. In 1957, she recorded her first song, ''Fascination'', in both Greek and English for Odeon/EMI Greece. By 1958 while still performing at the Zaki, she met Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis. Hadjidakis was impressed by Nana’s voice and offered to write songs for her. In 1959 Mouskouri performed Hadjidakis' ''Kapou Iparchi I Agapi Mou'' (co-written with poet Nikos Gatsos) at the inaugural Greek Song Festival. The song won first prize, and Mouskouri began to be noticed.

At the 1960 Greek Song Festival, she performed two more Hadjidakis compositions, ''Timoria'' and ''Kiparissaki''. Both these songs tied for first prize. Mouskouri performed Kostas Yannidis' composition, ''Xypna Agapi Mou'', at the Mediterranean Song Festival, held in Barcelona that year. The song won first prize, and she went on to sign a recording contract with Paris-based Philips-Fontana.

In 1961, Mouskouri performed the soundtrack of a German documentary about Greece. This resulted in the German-language single ''Weiße Rosen aus Athen'' ("White Roses from Athens"). The song was originally adapted from a folk melody by Hadjidakis. It became a success, selling over a million copies in Germany. The song was later translated into several languages and it went on to become one of Mouskouri's signature tunes.

Family life

Mouskouri has been married twice. When she was 25, she married her first husband, a guitarist in her backing band and the first man she'd kissed. They had two children (Nicolas Petsilas and Lenou Petsilas (singer)) but divorced when Mouskouri was 39. Not long after that, she met her second husband, André Chapelle, then her sound technician, but they did not marry then because she 'didn't want to bring another father into the family' and divorce was against her traditional Greek upbringing. They eventually married on 13 January 2003 and live primarily in Switzerland.

Life outside Greece

In 1962, she met Quincy Jones, who persuaded her to travel to New York City to record an album of American jazz titled ''The Girl From Greece Sings''. Following that she scored another hit in the United Kingdom with ''My Colouring Book''.

In 1963 she left Greece to live in Paris. Mouskouri performed Luxembourg's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1963 that year, ''À Force de Prier''. The song achieved success, and helped win her the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque in France. Mouskouri soon attracted the attention of French composer Michel Legrand, who composed for her two major French hits ''Les Parapluies de Cherbourg'' (1964) and an arrangement of Katherine K. Davis' ''Carol of the Drum'', ''L'Enfant au Tambour'' (1965).

In 1965 she recorded her second English-language album to be released in the United States, entitled ''Nana Sings''. American calypso musician Harry Belafonte heard and liked the album. Belafonte brought Mouskouri on tour with him through 1966. They teamed for a live duo album entitled ''An Evening With Belafonte/Mouskouri''. During this tour, Belafonte suggested that Mouskouri remove her signature black-rimmed glasses when on stage. She was so unhappy with the request that she wanted to quit the show after only two days. Finally, Belafonte relented and respected her wishes to perform while wearing glasses.

Mouskouri's 1967 French album ''Le Jour Où la Colombe'' raised her to super-stardom in France. This album featured many of her French songs, ''Au Cœur de Septembre'', ''Adieu Angélina'', ''Robe Bleue, Robe Blanche'' and the French pop classic ''Le Temps des Cerises''. Mouskouri made her first appearance at Paris' legendary Olympia concert theatre the same year, singing French pop, Greek folk, and Hadjidakis numbers.

In 1968, Mouskouri was invited to host a BBC TV series called ''Presenting Nana Mouskouri''. The next year she released a full-length British LP, ''Over and Over''. The LP spent almost two years in the UK charts. She expanded her concert tour to Australia (where she met Frank Hardy, who followed her to the south of France in 1976), New Zealand and Japan. She recorded several Japanese songs for the Japanese market.

In France, she released a series of top-selling albums that included ''Comme un Soleil'', ''Une Voix Qui Vient du Cœur'', ''Vieilles Chansons de France'', and ''Quand Tu Chantes!''.

Middle years

In 1979, Mouskouri released another English-language album named ''Roses and Sunshine''. This album consisting largely of folk and country material, and included work from sources as Neil Young, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan and John Denver. It was well received in Canada, and one of the album's tracks, "Even Now" (not the same song as the 1978 Barry Manilow hit), became a staple on beautiful music radio stations in the United States. She scored a worldwide hit in 1981 with ''Je Chante Avec Toi, Liberté'', which was translated into several languages after its success in France. The momentum from this album also helped boost her following German album, ''Meine Lieder sind mein Leben''. In 1984, Mouskouri returned to Greece for her first live performance in her homeland since 1962.

In 1985, Mouskouri recorded ''Only Love'', the theme song to the BBC TV series ''Mistral's Daughter'' — based upon the novel by Judith Krantz — that reached #2 in the UK charts. The song was also a hit in its foreign language versions: ''L'Amour en Héritage'' (French), ''Come un'eredità'' (Italian), ''La dicha del amor'' (Spanish), and ''Aber die Liebe bleibt'' (German). The German version was also recorded with an alternate set of lyrics under the title ''Der wilde Wein'' but was withdrawn in favour of ''Aber die Liebe bleibt''.

That same year, Mouskouri made a play for the Spanish-language market with the hit single ''Con Todo el Alma''. The song was a major success in Spain, Argentina and Chile.

She released five albums in different languages in 1987, and the following year returned to her classical conservatory roots with the double LP ''The Classical Nana'' (aka ''Nana Classique''), which featured adaptations of classical songs and excerpts from opera. By the end of 1987, she had performed a series of concerts in Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand.

Autobiography

A French language autobiography appeared in 1989 titled ''"Chanter ma vie"'' (Singing my life), which is also the title of her French version of ABBA's "I Have a Dream".

In 2006, Greek publisher A.A. Livanis published a biography in Greek titled "To onoma mou ine Nana" (My name is Nana). In autumn 2007, the French and English versions of this biography appeared under the titles "Nana Mouskouri — Memoires — La fille de la Chauve-souris" (XO publishers) and "Nana Mouskouri — Memoirs" (Orion Publishing Group).

The later years

Mouskouri's 1991 English album, ''Only Love: The Best of Nana Mouskouri'' became her best-selling release in the United States. She spent much of the 1990s touring the globe. Among her early 1990s albums were spiritual music, ''Gospel'' (1990), the Spanish-language ''Nuestras Canciones'', the multilingual, Mediterranean-themed ''Côté Sud, Côté Coeur'' (1992), ''Dix Mille Ans Encore'', ''Falling in Love Again: Great Songs From the Movies''. ''Falling in Love'' featured two duets with Harry Belafonte.

She recorded several more albums over 1996 and 1997, including the Spanish ''Nana Latina'' (which featured duets with Julio Iglesias and Mercedes Sosa), the English-language ''Return to Love'', and the French pop classics, ''Hommages''. In 1997, she staged a high-profile ''Concert for Peace'' at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. This concert was later released as an album, and aired as a TV special on PBS in the U.S.

In 1993, Mouskouri recorded the album, ''Hollywood''. Produced by Michel Legrand it was a collection of famous songs from films, and served not only as a tribute to the world of cinema, but also as a personal reference to childhood memories of sitting with her father in his projection room in Crete.

UNICEF/Politics

Mouskouri was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in October 1993. She took over from the previous ambassador, the recently deceased actress Audrey Hepburn. Mouskouri's first U.N. mission took her to Bosnia to draw attention to the plight of children affected by Bosnian war. She went on to give a series of fund-raising concerts in Sweden and Belgium.

She was elected a Member of the European Parliament from 1994 until 1999, when she resigned from her position as an MEP. Several reasons have been given for this, one being her pacifism, and another being that she felt ill-equipped for the day-to-day work of a politician.

21st century and retirement

Mouskouri lives in Switzerland with Chapelle, and, until her final performance in 2008, performed hundreds of concerts every year throughout her career. In 2004, her French record company released a 34-CD box set of more than 600 of Mouskouri's mostly-French songs. In 2006 she made a guest appearance at that year's Eurovision Song Contest which was held, for the first time ever, in her native Greece.

In the same year, she announced her plans to retire. From 2005 until 2008, she conducted a farewell concert tour of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South America, the United States, and Canada. On July 23 and 24, 2008, Mouskouri gave her two final 'Farewell Concert' performances at the ancient Herodes Atticus Theatre, in Athens, Greece, before a packed stadium, including Greece's Prime Minister and Athens mayor, plus the mayors of Berlin, Paris and Luxembourg, along with fans from around the world and thousands of her Athenian admirers.

In 2010, in response to the financial situation in Greece caused by excessive deficit, Mouskouri announced that she would forgo her pension to contribute to the country's recovery. She commented: "Everywhere I see stories about my country going bankrupt. And people are aggressive about it. It's frightening. And it's painful for me. Nobody wants their country to be treated badly. It's frustrating and very sad."

Record sales

Universal Music Group, which has over the decades come to acquire virtually all the labels under which Mouskouri recorded, claims that Nana Mouskouri has sold nearly 400 million discs worldwide, recording about 1,500 songs in 15 languages on 450 albums. She has more than 230 gold and platinum albums worldwide, making her a candidate for the best-selling female recording artist of all time.

Impersonators

The British comedian Benny Hill impersonated Mouskouri on The Benny Hill Show. He wore long dresses and long black hair, that he stroked back, and talked and sang with a slow and quiet voice. He described the songs with long and verbose introductions before singing them.

Partial discography

''Epitaphios'' (1960)

''Nana Mouskouri Canta canciones populares griegas'' (1960)

''I megales epitichies tis Nana Mouskouri'' (1961)

''Ta prota mas tragoudia'' (1961)

''The White Rose of Athens'' (1961)

''Greece, Land of Dreams'' (1962)

''The Girl From Greece Sings'' (1962)

''Roses Blanches de Corfu'' (1962)

''Ce Soir A Luna Park'' (1962)

''Crois-Moi ça durera'' (1962)

''Un homme est venu'' (1963)

''Sings Greek Songs-Never On Sunday'' (1963)

''Celui Que j'aime'' (1964)

''The Voice of Greece'' (1964)

''Chante en Grec'' (1965)

''Nana Mouskouri et Michael Legrand'' (1965)

''Griechische Gitarren mit Nana Mouskouri'' (1965)

''Nana Mouskouri in Italia'' (1965)

''Nana's Choice'' (1965)

''Nana Sings'' (1965)

''An Evening with Belafonte/Mouskouri'' (1966)

''Le Cœur trop tendre'' (1966)

''Strasse der hunderttausend Lichter'' (1966)

''Nana Mouskouri in Paris'' (1966)

''Moje Najlepse grčke pesme -Yugoslavia-'' (1966)

''Pesme Moje zemlje -Yugoslavia-'' (1966)

''Un Canadien Errant'' (1967)

''Un souvenir du congres'' (1967)

''Nana Mouskouri à'lOlympia'' (1967)

''Showboat'' (1967)

''Chants de mon pays'' (1967)

''Singt Ihre Grossen Erfolge'' (1967)

''Le Jour où la Colombe'' (1967)

''Nana'' (1968)

''What now my love'' (1968)

''Une soirée avec Nana Mouskouri'' (1969)

''Dans le soleil et dans le vent'' (1969)

''Over and Over'' (1969)

''The exquisite Nana Mouskouri'' (1969)

''Mouskouri International'' (1969)

''Grand Gala'' (1969)

''Verzoekprogramma'' (1969)

''Le Tournesol'' (1970)

''Nana Recital 70'' (1970)

''Sings Hadjidakis'' (1970)

''Turn On the sun'' (1970)

''Bridge Over troubled water'' (1970)

''My favorite Greek songs'' (1970)*

''After Midnight'' (1971)

''A Touch of French'' (1971)

''Love story'' (1971)

''Pour les enfants'' (1971)

''Comme un soleil'' (1971)

''A place in my heart'' (1971)

''Chante la Grèce'' (1972)

''Lieder meiner Heimat'' (1972)

''Xypna Agapi mou'' (1972)

''Christmas with Nana Mouskouri'' (1972)

''British concert'' (1972)

''Une voix... qui vivent du coeur'' (1972)

''Spiti mou spitaki mou'' (1972)

''Presenting...Songs from her TV series'' (1973)

''Vieilles Chansons de France'' (1973)

''Chante Noël'' (1973)

''Day is Done'' (1973)

''An American album'' (1973)

''Spotlight on Nana Mouskouri'' (1973)

''Nana Mouskouri au théatre des champs-Elysées'' (1974)

''Que je sois un ange...'' (1974)

''Nana's Book of Songs'' (1974)

''The most beautiful songs'' (1974)

''Adieu mes amis'' (1974)

''Le temps des cerises'' (1974)

''If You Love me'' (1974)

''The magic of Nana Mouskouri'' (1974)

''Sieben Schwarze Rosen'' (1975)

''Toi qui t'en vas'' (1975)

''Träume sind Sterne'' (1975)

''At The Albert Hall'' (1975)

''Quand tu chantes'' (1976)

''Die Welt ist voll Licht'' (1976)

''Lieder die mann nie vergisst'' (1976)

''Nana in Holland'' (1976)

''Songs of the British isles'' (1976)

''Love goes on'' (1976)

''Quand Tu Chantes''(1976)

''An Evening with Nana Mouskouri'' (1976)

''Ein Portrait'' (1976)

''La récréation'' (1976)

''Passport'' (1976)

''Une voix'' (1976)

''Alleluia'' (1977)

''Glück ist wie ein Schmetterling'' (1977)

''Star für Millionen'' (1977)

''Geliebt und bewundert'' (1977)

''Lieder, die die Liebe schreibt'' (1978)*

''Nouvelles chansons de la Vieille France'' (1978)

''Les enfants du Pirée'' (1978)

''A Paris'' (1979)

''Roses and Sunshine'' (1979)

''Vivre au Soleil'' (1979)

''Sing dein Lied'' (1979)

''Kinderlieder'' (1979)

''Come with me'' (1980)

''Vivre avec toi'' (1980)

''Die stimme in concert'' (1980)

''Wenn ich träum'' (1980)

''Alles Liebe'' (1981)

''Je Chante Avec Toi, Liberté'' (1981)

''Ballades'' (1982)

''Song for liberty'' (1982)

''Farben'' (1983)

''Quand on revient'' (1983)

''When I Dream'' (1983)

''La dame de cœur'' (1984)

''Athina'' (1984)

''Nana'' (1984)

''I endekati entoli'' (1985)

''Ma vérité'' (1985)

''Alone'' (1985)

''Libertad'' (1986)

''Kleine Wahrheiten'' (1986)

''Tu m'oublies'' (1986)

''Why Worry?'' (1986)

''Only Love'' (1986)

''Love Me Tender'' (1987)

''Tierra Viva'' (1987)

''Du und Ich'' (1987)

''Par amour'' (1987)

''Classique'' (1988)

''A voice from the heart'' (1988)

''The magic of Nana Mouskouri'' (1988)

''Concierto en Aranjuez'' (1989)

''Tout Simplement 1&2'' (1989)

''Weinachts Lieder'' (1989)

''Taxidotis'' (1990)

''Gospel'' (1990)

''Only Love: The Best of Nana Mouskouri'' (1991)

''Nuestras canciones 1 & 2'' (1991)

''Am Ziel meiner Reise'' (1991)

''Côté Sud - Côté Cœur'' (1992)

''Hollywood'' (1993)

''Falling in Love again'' (1993)

''Dix mille ans encore'' (1994)

''Agapi in'i zoi'' (1994)

''Nur ein Lied'' (1995)

''Nana Latina'' (1996)

''Hommages'' (1997)

''Return to Love'' (1997)

''The Romance of Nana Mouskouri'' (1997)

''Concert for peace'' (1998)

''Chanter la vie'' (1998)

''As time goes by'' (1999)

''The Christmas Album'' (2000)

''At Her Very Best'' (2001)

''Erinnerungen'' (2001)

''Songs the whole world loves'' (2001)

''Fille du soleil'' (2002)

''Un bolero Por Favor'' (2002)

''Ode to Joy'' (2002)

''Nana Swings'' (2003)

''Ich hab'gelacht, ich hab'geweint'' (2004)

''L'Integrale'' Collection (34 CD Box Set) (2004)

''A Canadian Tribute'' (2004)

''I'll Remember You'' (2005)

''Complete English Works'' Collection (17 CD Box Set) (2005)

''Moni Perpato'' (2006)

''Nana Mouskouri (Gold)'' (2 CD) (2006)

''Le Ciel est Noir - les 50 plus belles chansons'' (3 CD) (2007)

''The Ultimate Collection'' (2007)

''Les 100 plus belles chansons'' (5 CD) (2007)

''50 Hronia Tragoudia (50 Years Of Songs)'' (2007)

''Alma Latina Todas sus grabaciones en español'' (5CD) (2008)

''The Best Of (Green Series)'' (2008)

''The Very Best Of'' (Readers Digest 4 CD-Box) (2008)

''The Ultimate Collection'' (Taiwan) (2CD) (2008)

''The Greatest Hits: Korea Tour Edition'' (2 CD-Box) (2008)

''The Singer'' (2008)

''Nana Mouskouri - Best Selection'' (2009)

''Nana sings'' (reissue) (2009)

''Nana Mouskouri: Les hits'' (2009)

''Meine Schönsten Welterfolge vol. 2'' (2CD) (2009)

''Les n°1 de Nana Mouskouri (Edition Limitée)'' (2CD) (2009)

''La mas completa coleccion'' (2009)

''Nana Mouskouri I'' (2009)

''Nana Mouskouri: Highlights 娜娜穆斯库莉:精选'' (2010)

''As time goes by (Nana Mouskouri sings the Great Movie Themes)'' (reissue) (2010)

''The Danish Collection'' (reissue) (2010)

''Nana Jazz'' (2010)

''My 60's Favourites'' (2010)

''Mes chansons de France'' (2010)

''Nana around the world'' (2010)

''Ballads and Love songs'' (2010)

''Nana Country'' (2010)

See also

Best selling music artists

References

Site québécois de Nana Mouskouri Biography, discography by language, list of 1 800 recordings, covers magazines, TV in Quebec, drawings, memories et topicalities.

External links

YouTube video of Mouskouri in 1960 (without her glasses) singing a song by Hadjidakis

Category:1934 births Category:Living people Category:People from Chania Prefecture Category:Luxembourgian Eurovision Song Contest entrants Category:Greek female singers Category:Greek entehno singers Category:Greek women in politics Category:People from Athens Category:French-language singers Category:German-language singers Category:Spanish-language singers Category:Latin-language singers Category:Hebrew-language singers Category:Italian-language singers Category:Japanese-language singers Category:Modern Greek-language singers Category:Greek pacifists Category:Thessaloniki Song Festival entrants Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants of 1963 Category:MEPs for Greece 1994–1999 Category:UNICEF people Category:Singers from Crete

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