- published: 24 Jun 2009
- views: 156590
- author: glamourdaze
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
MORE VIDEOS
Loading...
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- 1920s
- 1930s
- 1930–1945 in fashion
- 1940
- 1940s
- 1940s in film
- 1940s in music
- 1940s in television
- 1941
- 1941 in film
- 1942
- 1943
- 1944
- 1945
- 1945–1960 in fashion
- 1946
- 1946 in film
- 1947
- 1947 in film
- 1948
- 1948 in film
- 1949
- 1949 in film
- 1950s
- 1960s
- 1970s
- 19th century
- 20th century
- 21st century
- 2nd millennium
- Abbott and Costello
- Action T4
- Adolf Hitler
- African American
- Akira Kurosawa
- Al Jolson
- Alan Ladd
- Albert Camus
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Alice Faye
- All the King's Men
- Anne Baxter
- Anne Frank
- Anthony Quinn
- Anti-Semite and Jew
- Archaeology
- Argentina
- Arthur Miller
- Artie Shaw
- Asia
- Astrid Lindgren
- Aung San
- Australia
- Ava Gardner
- Axis powers
- Ayn Rand
- B-17
- Ballistic missiles
- Bambi
- Barbara Stanwyck
- Basil Rathbone
- Battle of Britain
- Battle of France
- Battle of Kursk
- Battle of Midway
- Battle of Stalingrad
- Behic Erkin
- Benelux
- Benito Mussolini
- Benny Carter
- Benny Goodman
- Bernard Montgomery
- Bert Lancaster
- Bessarabia
- Bette Davis
- Betty Grable
- Betty Hutton
- Bill Dickey
- Billie Holiday
- Billy Conn
- Billy Eckstine
- Billy Graham
- Billy Strayhorn
- Billy Wilder
- Bing Crosby
- Bitter Rice
- Black Narcissus
- Bob Feller
- Bob Hope
- Bob Wills
- Branch Rickey
- Brazil
- Bretton Woods system
- British Raj
- Brooklyn Dodgers
- Buck Leonard
- Bud Powell
- Buddy Baer
- Burma
- Cab Calloway
- Canada
- Carl Barks
- Carl Stuart Hamblen
- Carlos Prío Socarrás
- Carmen Miranda
- Carole Lombard
- Cary Grant
- Casablanca (film)
- Cesar Romero
- Charles Boyer
- Charles Chaplin
- Charles de Gaulle
- Charles Laughton
- Charles Mingus
- Charlie Barnet
- Charlie Chaplin
- Charlie Parker
- Chester W. Nimitz
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Children of Paradise
- Chinese Civil War
- Chiune Sugihara
- Cinema of France
- Cinema of Italy
- Cinema of Japan
- Citizen Kane
- Clark Gable
- Claude Rains
- Claudette Colbert
- Clement Attlee
- Clifford Berry
- Cole Porter
- Colombia
- Colossus computer
- Computer
- Cornel Wilde
- Count Basie
- Cryptography
- Cuba
- D-Day
- Dana Andrews
- Danny Kaye
- Darío Echandía Olaya
- David Ben-Gurion
- David Lean
- Death of a Salesman
- Decolonialization
- Denmark
- Dick Haymes
- Dick Powell
- Dinah Shore
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Django Reinhardt
- Doll Face
- Dominion of Pakistan
- Doris Day
- Dorothy Dandridge
- Dorothy Lamour
- Douglas MacArthur
- Drunken Angel
- Duke Ellington
- Dumbo
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Eduardo Santos
- Edward G. Robinson
- Eighth Air Force
- Eleanor Powell
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Emperor Shōwa
- Empire of Japan
- ENIAC
- Erich von Manstein
- Ernest Hemingway
- Ernest J. King
- Ernest Tubb
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Errol Flynn
- Erwin Rommel
- Estonia
- Europe
- European cinema
- European Jews
- Ezzard Charles
- Fantasia (film)
- Federico Laredo Brú
- Film Noir
- Finland
- Fleet Admiral
- France
- Francisco Franco
- Frank Capra
- Frank Sinatra
- Fred Astaire
- Fred MacMurray
- Fredric March
- Frisbee
- Fulgencio Batista
- Game theory
- Gandhi
- Gary Cooper
- Gene Autry
- Gene Kelly
- Gene Krupa
- Gene Lockhart
- Gene Tierney
- Generalplan Ost
- Genocide
- George C. Marshall
- George Orwell
- George S. Patton
- Georgy Zhukov
- Gerd von Rundstedt
- Getúlio Vargas
- Ginger Rogers
- Giuseppe De Santis
- Glenn Miller
- Going My Way
- Greek Civil War
- Greer Garson
- Gregory Peck
- Hajime Sugiyama
- Hamlet (1948 film)
- Hank Greenberg
- Hank Williams
- Harold Alexander
- Harry James
- Harry S. Truman
- Hebrew language
- Hedy Lamarr
- Henri Winkelman
- Henry Fonda
- Hermann Göring
- Hideki Tōjō
- Hirohito
- Holocaust victims
- Howard Hawks
- Humphrey Bogart
- Hồ Chí Minh
- Iceland
- Ida Lupino
- India
- Indonesia
- Ingrid Bergman
- Ink Spots
- Ion Victor Antonescu
- Ira Gershwin
- Iran
- Irene Dunne
- Irving Berlin
- İsmet İnönü
- Isoroku Yamamoto
- Israel
- Italian neorealism
- Ivan Konev
- Jack Benny
- Jackie Robinson
- James Cagney
- Jane Wyman
- Japan
- Jean Arthur
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Jeep
- Jennifer Jones
- Jersey Joe Walcott
- Jet aircraft
- Jet engine
- Jews
- Jimmy Dorsey
- Joan Crawford
- Joan Fontaine
- Joe DiMaggio
- Joe Louis
- Joel Brand
- John Curtin
- John Huston
- John Wayne
- Johnny Mercer
- Johnny Mize
- Joseph Barbera
- Joseph Cotten
- Joseph Schildkraut
- Joseph Stalin
- Josephine Baker
- Josh Gibson
- Juan Perón
- Judy Garland
- June Lockhart
- Kate Smith
- Katharine Hepburn
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Kirk Douglas
- Kon-Tiki
- Kuniaki Koiso
- La terra trema
- Lana Turner
- Latvia
- Laurel and Hardy
- Lauren Bacall
- Laurence Olivier
- Lebanon
- Lena Horne
- Les Paul
- Liaquat Ali Khan
- Life magazine
- List of centuries
- List of decades
- Lithuania
- Lizabeth Scott
- Lon Chaney Jr.
- London
- Loretta Young
- Louis Armstrong
- Luchino Visconti
- Lucille Ball
- Mahalia Jackson
- Mamoru Shigemitsu
- Manhattan Project
- Mao Zedong
- Marcel Carné
- Margaret O'Brien
- Marian Anderson
- Mariano Ospina Pérez
- Marilyn Monroe
- Mario Lanza
- Marlene Dietrich
- Marshall Plan
- Martha Sharp
- Martin Gilbert
- Mary Astor
- Maureen O'Hara
- Max Roach
- Max Schmelling
- Meet Me in St. Louis
- Michael Berenbaum
- Michael Curtiz
- Mickey Rooney
- Microwave oven
- Millennium
- Mills Brothers
- Moe Berg
- Mohandas Gandhi
- Monte Irvin
- Montgomery Clift
- Mrs. Miniver
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah
- Muhammed Ali Jinnah
- Myrna Loy
- Nat King Cole
- NATO
- Nazi Germany
- Necdet Kent
- Netherlands
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- No Exit
- Normandy
- Normandy Landings
- Norway
- Nuclear physics
- Nuclear power
- Nuclear weapons
- Nuremberg Trials
- Odd Man Out
- Ol' Man River
- Olivia de Havilland
- Olympic Games
- Omaha Beach
- Omar Bradley
- Operation Barbarossa
- Orson Welles
- Osami Nagano
- Pacific Ocean
- Pacific War
- Paisà
- Pakistan
- Paris
- Paul Robeson
- Paulette Goddard
- Pearl Bailey
- Pearl Harbor
- Peggy Lee
- Perry Como
- Peter Lawford
- Peter Lorre
- Pin-up girl
- Poland
- Polynesia
- Pope Pius XII
- Porajmos
- Pre-Columbian era
- Preston Sturges
- Quantum mechanics
- Racial integration
- Radar
- Radiocarbon dating
- Ramón Grau
- Raoul Wallenberg
- Raoul Walsh
- Ray Milland
- Rebecca
- Rezā Shāh
- Richard Rodgers
- Richard Widmark
- Rita Hayworth
- Robert Hamer
- Robert Walker
- Roberto Rossellini
- Rocky Graziano
- Roma, città aperta
- Romania
- Romulo Betancourt
- Ronald Colman
- Ronald Reagan
- Rosalind Russell
- Roy Rogers
- Royal Observer Corps
- Sammy Cahn
- Sammy Kaye
- Sarah Vaughan
- Satchel Paige
- Sciuscià
- Sidney Greenstreet
- Slinky
- South America
- Soviet Union
- Spain
- Spencer Tracy
- St. Moritz
- Stage Door Canteen
- Stan Musial
- Stray Dog (film)
- Stéphane Grappelli
- Sugar Ray Robinson
- Surrender of Japan
- Swing music
- Switzerland
- Syria
- Taiwan
- Ted Williams
- Teddy Wilson
- Television
- The 47 Ronin
- The Andrews Sisters
- The Bicycle Thief
- The Big Sleep
- The Fountainhead
- The Great Dictator
- The Holocaust
- The Lady Eve
- The Little Prince
- The Myth of Sisyphus
- The Stranger (novel)
- The Third Man
- Thor Heyerdahl
- Times Square
- Tommy Dorsey
- Tony Zale
- Toshirō Mifune
- Total war
- Tupperware
- Turkey
- Tyrone Power
- U.S. Army
- Union of India
- United Kingdom
- United Nations
- United States
- USS Missouri (BB-63)
- Varian Fry
- Vaughn Monroe
- Velcro
- Venezuela
- Vera Lynn
- Veronica Lake
- Vietnam
- Vincente Minnelli
- Vittorio De Sica
- Vivien Leigh
- Waitstill Sharp
- Walt Disney
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Walter Brennan
- Walter Huston
- Walter Pidgeon
- Warren Spahn
- Welfare state
- Western Allies
- Western world
- White Heat
- Willard Libby
- William Bendix
- William Hanna
- William Powell
- Winston Churchill
- World War II
- Yalta Conference
- Yankee Doodle Dandy
- Yiddish language
- Z3 (computer)
- Édith Piaf
-
Argentina
Argentina
i/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
wn.com/Argentina -
Australia
Australia (
/əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.
wn.com/Australia -
Battle of Stalingrad
Coordinates: 48°42′N 44°31′E / 48.7°N 44.517°E / 48.7; 44.517
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major and decisive battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943 and was the largest battle on the Eastern Front, marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties. It is among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with the higher estimates of combined casualties amounting to nearly two million. The heavy losses inflicted on the German army made it a significant turning point in the whole war. After the Battle of Stalingrad, German forces never recovered their earlier strength, and attained no further strategic victories in the East.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad commenced in late summer 1942, and was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing which reduced much of the city to rubble. The German offensive eventually became mired in building-to-building fighting; and despite controlling nearly all of the city at times, the Wehrmacht was unable to dislodge the last Soviet defenders clinging tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River.
wn.com/Battle_of_Stalingrad -
Bessarabia
Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; Russian: Бессарабия Bessarabiya, Ukrainian: Бессарабія Bessarabiya) is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west.
In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812, and ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern portion of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, was ceded to Imperial Russia and designated "Bessarabia". While this eastern part became the Governorate of Bessarabia, the western part of Moldavia united, in 1859, with Wallachia in what would become the Kingdom of Romania. For a short period between 1856 and 1878, two of the nine traditional counties of Bessarabia were also part of Moldavia and then Romania.
Three months after declaring its independence from Russia, in 1918, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic (shortly before the end of World War I); it united with the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis Powers and recaptured it in 1941 and lost again in 1944. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border set along the Prut River was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. The core part of Bessarabia was joined with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (Transnistria) to form the Moldavian SSR. At the same time, smaller parts of Bessarabia, in the south (two traditional counties; Budjak) and north (half of one county), were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR.
wn.com/Bessarabia -
Brazil
Brazili/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.
wn.com/Brazil -
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid-20th century. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states.
Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated upon and signed the Bretton Woods Agreements during the first three weeks of July 1944.
Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, the planners at Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement.
wn.com/Bretton_Woods_system -
Burma
Burma
i/ˈbɜrmə/ BUR-mə, also known as Myanmar i/ˌmjɑːnˈmɑr/ MYAHN--MAR, is a country in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. One-third of Burma's total perimeter of 1,930 kilometres (1,200 mi) forms an uninterrupted coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. At 676,578 km2 (261,227 sq mi), it is the 40th largest country in the world and the second largest country in Southeast Asia. Burma is also the 24th most populous country in the world with over 60.28 million people.
Burma is home to some of the early civilizations of Southeast Asia including the Pyu and the Mon. In the 9th century, the Burmans of the Kingdom of Nanzhao, entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Empire in the 1050s, the Burmese language and culture slowly became dominant in the country. During this period, Theravada Buddhism gradually became the predominant religion of the country. The Pagan Empire fell due to the Mongol invasions (1277–1301), and several warring states emerged. In the second half of the 16th century, the country was reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty which for a brief period was the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Burma as well as Manipur and Assam. The country was colonized by Britain following three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885).
wn.com/Burma -
Canada
Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km2 (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
wn.com/Canada -
Colombia
Colombia (
/kəˈlʌmbiə/ kə-LUM-biə, or /kəˈlɒmbiə/ kə-LOM-biə), officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia [reˈpuβlika ðe koˈlombja]), is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the northwest by Panama; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia has maritime borders with Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Colombia is the 26th largest country by area and the fourth largest in South America after Brazil, Argentina and Peru. With over 46 million people, Colombia is the 27th largest country in the world by population and has the second largest population of any Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. Colombia is a middle power, with the fourth largest economy in Latin America, and the third largest in South America. Colombia is famous for the production of coffee, flowers, emeralds, coal, and oil. All of these products make up the primary sector of economy.
wn.com/Colombia -
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, (i/ˈkjuːbə/; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced: [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] (
listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (140 km or 90 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was definitely quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, and an authoritarian regime was set up, intensifying and catalyzing already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.
wn.com/Cuba -
Denmark
The Kingdom of Denmark (Danish: Kongeriget Danmark, pronounced [ˈkɔŋəʁiːəð ˈdanmɑɡ̊] ( listen)) is a constitutional monarchy and sovereign state consisting the country of Denmark in northern Europe and two autonomous constituent countries, the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and Greenland in North America. The kingdom is a unitary state with some power being devolved from Denmark proper to Greenland and the Faroe Islands; this polity is referred to as the Danish Realm. Denmark proper is the hegemonial area, where judicial, executive, and legislative power resides. The Faroe Islands are defined to be a community of people within the kingdom, and the Greenlandic people are defined as a separate people with the right to self-determination.
Denmark is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, located southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland and many islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, as well as hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago.
wn.com/Denmark -
ENIAC
ENIAC ( /ˈɛni.æk/; Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a "Giant Brain". It boasted speeds one thousand times faster than electro-mechanical machines, a leap in computing power that no single machine has since matched. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by conducting a series of lectures on computer architecture.
ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. The construction contract was signed on June 5, 1943, and work on the computer began in secret by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering starting the following month under the code name "Project PX". The completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000 (nearly $6 million in 2010, adjusted for inflation). It was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.
wn.com/ENIAC -
Finland
Coordinates: 65°N 27°E / 65°N 027°E / 65; 027
Finlandi/ˈfɪnlənd/ ( Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.
Around 5.4 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern region. It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in Helsinki and local governments in 336 municipalities, and an autonomous region of the Åland Islands. About one million residents live in the Greater Helsinki area, which consists of Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa, and a third of the country's GDP is produced there. Other larger cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio.
wn.com/Finland -
France
France (Englishi/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).
Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
wn.com/France -
Iceland
Icelandi/ˈaɪslənd/ (Icelandic: Ísland, IPA: [ˈislant]) is a Nordic European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The country has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km2 (40,000 sq mi). The capital and largest city is Reykjavík, with the surrounding areas in the southwestern region of the country being home to two-thirds of the country's population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior mainly consists of a plateau characterised by sand fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle.
According to Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in AD 874 when the chieftain Ingólfur Arnarson became the first permanent Norse settler on the island. Others had visited the island earlier and stayed over winter. Over the following centuries, Norsemen settled Iceland, bringing with them thralls (slaves) of Gaelic origin. From 1262 to 1918 Iceland was part of the Norwegian and later the Danish monarchies. Until the 20th century, the Icelandic population relied largely on fisheries and agriculture, and the country was one of the poorest and least developed in the world. Industrialisation of the fisheries and aid from the Marshall Plan brought prosperity in the years after World War II, and by the 1990s it was one of the world's wealthiest countries. In 1994, Iceland became party to the European Economic Area, which made it possible for the economy to diversify into economic and financial services.
wn.com/Iceland -
India
India (i/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.
wn.com/India -
Indonesia
Indonesia (i/ˌɪndəˈniːʒə/ IN-də-NEE-zhə or /ˌɪndoʊˈniːziə/ IN-doh-NEE-zee-ə), officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia Indonesian pronunciation: [rɛpʊblɪk ɪndɔnɛsɪa]), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president. The nation's capital city is Jakarta. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Malaysia. Other neighboring countries include Singapore, Philippines, Australia, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Indonesia is a founding member of ASEAN and a member of the G-20 major economies. The Indonesian economy is the world's 17th largest economy by nominal GDP.
The Indonesian archipelago has been an important trade region since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, and Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished. Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Muslim traders brought Islam, and European powers brought Christianity and fought one another to monopolize trade in the Spice Islands of Maluku during the Age of Discovery. Following three and a half centuries of Dutch colonialism, Indonesia secured its independence after World War II. Indonesia's history has since been turbulent, with challenges posed by natural disasters, corruption, separatism, a democratization process, and periods of rapid economic change.
wn.com/Indonesia -
Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
wn.com/Iran -
Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[neutrality is disputed] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
wn.com/Israel -
Japan
Japani/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
wn.com/Japan -
Latvia
Latviai/ˈlætviə/ (Latvian: Latvija), officially the Republic of Latvia (Latvian: Latvijas Republika), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia (border length 343 km), to the south by Lithuania (588 km), to the east by the Russian Federation (276 km), to the southeast by Belarus (141 km), and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden. With 2,067,887 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2 (24,938 sq mi) it is one of the least populous and least densely populated countries of the European Union. The capital of Latvia is Riga. The official language is Latvian and the currency is called Lats (Ls). The country has a temperate seasonal climate.
The Latvians are a Baltic people, culturally related to the Lithuanians. Together with the Finno-Ugric Livs (or Livonians), the Latvians are the indigenous people of Latvia.Latvian is an Indo-European language and along with Lithuanian the only two surviving members of the Baltic branch. Indigenous minority languages are Latgalian and the nearly extinct Finno-Ugric Livonian language. In terms of geography, territory and population Latvia is the middle of three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Latvia and Estonia share a long common history: historical Livonia, times of German (Teutonic Order), Polish-Lithuanian, Swedish, Russian, Nazi German and Soviet rule, 13th century Christianization and 16th century Protestant Reformation. Both countries are home to a large number of ethnic Russians (26.9% in Latvia and 25.5% in Estonia) of whom some are non-citizens. Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant, except for the region of Latgalia in the southeast which is historically predominantly Roman Catholic.
wn.com/Latvia -
Lebanon
Lebanon (i/ˈlɛbənɒn/ or /ˈlɛbənən/; Arabic: لبنان Libnān or Lubnān, Lebanese Arabic: [lɪbˈneːn]), officially the Lebanese Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية اللبنانية al-Jumhūrīyah al-Libnānīyah, Lebanese Arabic: [elˈʒʊmhuːɾɪjje l.ˈlɪbneːnɪjje]), is a country in the East Mediterranean. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland has dictated its rich history, and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity.
The earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than 7,000 years—predating recorded history. Lebanon was the home of the Phoenicians, a maritime culture that flourished for nearly 2,500 years (3000–539 BC). Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the five provinces that comprise modern Lebanon were mandated to France. The French expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon, which was mostly populated by Maronite Catholics and Druze, to include more Muslims. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, and established a unique political system, known as confessionalism, a power-sharing mechanism based on religious communities – Bechara El Khoury who became independent Lebanon's first President and Riad El-Solh, who became Lebanon's first prime minister, are considered the founders of the modern Republic of Lebanon and are national heroes for having led the country's independence. French troops withdrew from Lebanon in 1946.
wn.com/Lebanon -
Lithuania
Lithuania (i/ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ or /ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 3.2 million as of 2011, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The Lithuanians are a Baltic people, and the official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages (together with Latvian) in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
For centuries, the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the first Lithuanian state, on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
wn.com/Lithuania -
London
Londoni/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
wn.com/London -
NATO
Coordinates: 50°52′34.16″N 4°25′19.24″E / 50.8761556°N 4.4220111°E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.
For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.
wn.com/NATO -
Nazi Germany
The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.
wn.com/Nazi_Germany -
Netherlands
The Netherlands (i/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] (
listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
wn.com/Netherlands -
Norway
Norwayi/ˈnɔrweɪ/ (Norwegian: Norge (Bokmål) or Noreg (Nynorsk)), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the subantarctic Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres (148,747 sq mi) and a population of about 5 million. It is the second least densely populated country in Europe. The majority of the country shares a border to the east with Sweden; its northernmost region is bordered by Finland to the south and Russia to the east; in its south Norway borders the Skagerrak Strait across from Denmark. The capital city of Norway is Oslo. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is home to its famous fjords.
wn.com/Norway -
Nuremberg Trials
Coordinates: 49°27.2603′N 11°02.9103′E / 49.4543383°N 11.048505°E / 49.4543383; 11.048505 The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945–46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 25 of the most important captured leaders of the Third Reich, though several key architects of the war (such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels) had committed suicide before the trials began.
The initial trials were held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on those trials.
wn.com/Nuremberg_Trials -
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach is the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II. The beach is located on the coast of Normandy, France, facing the English Channel, and is 5 miles (8 km) long, from east of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to west of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the Douve River estuary. Landings here were necessary in order to link up the British landings to the east at Gold Beach with the American landing to the west at Utah Beach, thus providing a continuous lodgement on the Normandy coast of the Bay of the Seine. Taking Omaha was to be the responsibility of United States Army troops, with sea transport provided by the U.S. Navy and elements of the Royal Navy.
On D-Day, the untested 29th Infantry Division, joined by nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc, were to assault the western half of the beach. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half. The initial assault waves, consisting of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces, were carefully planned to reduce the coastal defenses and allow the larger ships of the follow-up waves to land.
wn.com/Omaha_Beach -
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.
At 165.2 million square kilometres (64.1 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,797 ft).
The eastern Pacific Ocean was first sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century. Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and named it Mar del Sur (South Sea). The ocean's current name was given by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation in 1521, who encountered favourable winds as he reached the ocean and called it Mar Pacifico in Portuguese, meaning "peaceful sea".
wn.com/Pacific_Ocean -
Pakistan
Pakistan (i/ˈpækɨstæn/ or i/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.
The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.
wn.com/Pakistan -
Poland
Polandi/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.
wn.com/Poland -
Romania
Romania (i/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
wn.com/Romania -
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
wn.com/Soviet_Union -
Spain
Spain (i/ˈspeɪn/ SPAYN; Spanish: España, pronounced: [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state and a member of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; to the north and north east by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal.
Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. Furthermore, the town of Llívia is a Spanish exclave situated inside French territory. With an area of 504,030 square kilometres (194,610 sq mi), it is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France, and the fourth largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and France.
wn.com/Spain -
Switzerland
Switzerland (German: die Schweiz[ˈʃvaɪts]; French: Suisse [sɥis(ə)]; Italian: Svizzera [ˈzvit͡sːɛra]; Romansh: Svizra [ˈʒviːtsrɐ] or [ˈʒviːtsʁːɐ]), in its full name the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western Europe, where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2 (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found. Among them are the two global cities and economic centres of Zurich and Geneva.
The Swiss Confederation has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. It pursues, however, an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. Switzerland is also the birthplace of the Red Cross and home to a large number of international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association and is part of the Schengen Area – although it is notably not a member of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area.
wn.com/Switzerland -
Syria
Syria (/ˈsɪriə/ ( listen) SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘Arabīyah as-Sūriyyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.
In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, 87% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians. Major ethnic minorities in Syria include Kurds (9%), Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens and Circassians. The majority of the population is Arab (90%).
wn.com/Syria -
Taiwan
Taiwan (i/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN; Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China now governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa), which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the capital city and economic and cultural centre of the country, and New Taipei is the most populous city.
The earliest evidence of inhabitation of Taiwan dates back to the late Paleolithic era. The island of Taiwan was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before being colonized in the 17th century by the Dutch and the Spanish Empire. The first Han Chinese polity on Taiwan began when Koxinga's troops defeated Dutch forces and established the Kingdom of Tungning. The island was subsequently ruled by the Qing Dynasty after the kingdom's defeat in the Battle of Penghu in 1683, a period that lasted for over 200 years. Following Japan's victory over the Qing Dynasty in the first Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
wn.com/Taiwan -
Times Square
Coordinates: 40°45′28″N 73°59′09″W / 40.75773°N 73.985708°W / 40.75773; -73.985708
"The Crossroads of the World"
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Times Square, iconified as "The Crossroads of the World" and the "The Great White Way", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway theater district, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. According to Travel + Leisure magazine's October 2011 survey, Times Square is the world's most visited tourist attraction, bringing in over 39 million visitors annually.
Formerly named Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in April 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, which is now called One Times Square and is the site of the annual ball drop on New Year's Eve.
The northern triangle of Times Square is technically Duffy Square, dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's "Fighting 69th" Infantry Regiment; a memorial to Duffy is located there, along with a statue of George M. Cohan, and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth. The stepped red roof of the TKTS booth also provides seating for various events. The Duffy Statue and the square were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
wn.com/Times_Square -
Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
wn.com/Turkey -
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
wn.com/United_Kingdom -
United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
wn.com/United_States -
USS Missouri (BB-63)
USS Missouri (BB-63) ("Mighty Mo" or "Big Mo") is a United States Navy Iowa-class battleship, and was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to be named in honour of the US state of Missouri. Missouri was the last battleship built by the United States, and was the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan which ended World War II.
Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944. In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991.
Missouri received a total of 11 battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, and was finally decommissioned on 31 March 1992, but remained on the Naval Vessel Register until her name was struck in January 1995. In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
wn.com/USS_Missouri_(BB-63) -
Venezuela
Venezuela (i/ˌvɛnɨˈzweɪlə/ VEN-ə-ZWAY-lə), officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela [repuˈβlika βoliβaˈɾjana ðe βeneˈswela]), is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly 2,800 kilometres (1,700 mi) includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around 916,445 square kilometres (353,841 sq mi) with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a state with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.
wn.com/Venezuela -
Vietnam
Vietnam ( listen), formally the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam; listen), is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 91.5 million inhabitants as of 2012, it is the world's 13th-most-populous country, and the eighth-most-populous Asian country. The name Vietnam translates as "South Viet", and was officially adopted in 1945. The country is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east.
The Vietnamese became independent from Imperial China in 938 AD, following the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive Vietnamese royal dynasties flourished as the nation expanded geographically and politically into Southeast Asia, until the Indochina Peninsula was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. The First Indochina War eventually led to the expulsion of the French in 1954, leaving Vietnam divided politically into two states, North and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified, with heavy foreign intervention, during the Vietnam War, which ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
wn.com/Vietnam -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945 , was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta, in the Crimea.
The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy. To some extent, it has remained controversial.
Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin). It had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943, and it was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, which was attended by Harry S Truman, who replaced the late Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, who was replaced mid-point by the newly elected British Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
wn.com/Yalta_Conference
-
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
wn.com/Adolf_Hitler -
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States that have ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.
African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States. However, some immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations, or their descendants, may be identified or self-identify with the term.
African-American history starts in the 16th century with African slaves who quickly rose up against the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón and progresses to the present day, with Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there have been events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, including slavery, racism, Reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.
wn.com/African_American -
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明, Kurosawa Akira?, March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for Kagemusha, though more often abroad than in Japan.
wn.com/Akira_Kurosawa -
Al Jolson
Al Jolson (May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was an American singer, comedian, and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer".
His performing style was brash and extroverted, and he popularized a large number of songs that benefited from his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach". Numerous well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing CrosbyJudy Garland, rock and country entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bob Dylan, who once referred to him as "somebody whose life I can feel". Broadway critic Gilbert Seldes compared him to "the Greek God Pan", claiming that Jolson represented "the concentration of our national health and gaiety."
In the 1930s, he was America's most famous and highest paid entertainer. Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international tours. Although he's best remembered today as the star in the first (full length) talking movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927, he later starred in a series of successful musical films throughout the 1930s. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with the 1946 Oscar-winning biographical film, The Jolson Story. Larry Parks played Jolson with the songs dubbed in with Jolson’s real voice. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was released in 1949, and was nominated for three Oscars. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jolson became the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II, and again in 1950 became the first star to perform for G.I.s in Korea, doing 42 shows in 16 days. He died just weeks after returning to the U.S., partly due to the physical exertion of performing. Defense Secretary George Marshall afterward awarded the Medal of Merit to Jolson's family.
wn.com/Al_Jolson -
Alan Ladd
Alan Walbridge Ladd (September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964) was an American film actor.
Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter. The family then moved again to North Hollywood, California where Ladd became a high-school swimming and diving champion and participated in high school dramatics at North Hollywood High School, graduating on February 1, 1934. He opened his own hamburger and malt shop, which he called Tiny's Patio. He worked briefly as a studio carpenter (as did his stepfather) and for a short time was part of the Universal Pictures studio school for actors. But Universal decided he was too blond and too short and dropped him. Intent on acting, he found work in radio.
Ladd began by appearing in dozens of films in small roles, including Citizen Kane in which he played one of the "faceless" reporters who are always shown in silhouette. He first gained some recognition with a featured role in the wartime thriller Joan of Paris, 1942. For his next role, his manager, Sue Carol, found a vehicle which made Ladd's career, Graham Greene's This Gun for Hire in which he played "Raven," a hitman with a conscience. "Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd's calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel." - David Thomson (A Biographical Dictionary of Film, 1975)
wn.com/Alan_Ladd -
Albert Camus
Albert Camus (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ kamy] ( listen); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay "The Rebel" that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.
Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."
In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award. He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
wn.com/Albert_Camus -
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. On 19 April 1955, he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.
Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon. Hitchocks reputation as a filmmaker is offset by claims that he engaged in obsessive and controlling behaviour towards many of his leading ladies, and that in some cases this extended to physical abuse and sexual harrassment.
wn.com/Alfred_Hitchcock -
Alice Faye
Alice Faye (May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, called by The New York Times "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career." She is remembered first for her stardom at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her husband, bandleader and comedian Phil Harris. She is also often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard "You'll Never Know", which she introduced in the 1943 musical film Hello, Frisco, Hello.
Born Alice Jeanne Leppert in New York City, she was the daughter of a New York police officer of German descent and his Irish-American wife, Charles and Alice Moffit Leppert. Faye's entertainment career began in vaudeville as a chorus girl (she failed an audition for the Ziegfeld Follies when it was revealed she was too young), before she moved to Broadway and a featured role in the 1931 edition of George White's Scandals. By this time, she had adopted her stage name and first reached a radio audience on Rudy Vallée's The Fleischmann Hour (1932–1934), where she may have met her future husband and comedy partner, Phil Harris.
wn.com/Alice_Faye -
Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress known for her performances in films such as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Razor's Edge (1946), All About Eve (1950) and The Ten Commandments (1956).
Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana to Kenneth Stuart Baxter and Catherine Wright; her maternal grandfather was the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Baxter's father was a prominent executive with the Seagrams Distillery Co. and she was raised in New York City in a well-to-do home, and attended the prestigious Brearley School. At age 10, Baxter attended a Broadway play starring Helen Hayes, and was so impressed that she declared to her family that she wanted to become an actress. By the age of 13, she had appeared on Broadway. During this period, Baxter learned her acting craft as a student of the famed teacher Maria Ouspenskaya.
At 16 Baxter screen-tested for the role of Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca, losing to Joan Fontaine because director Alfred Hitchcock considered her too young for the role, but she soon secured a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first movie role was in 20 Mule Team in 1940. She was chosen by director Orson Welles to appear in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Baxter co-starred with Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney in 1946's The Razor's Edge, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Baxter later recounted that The Razor's Edge contained her only great performance which was a hospital scene where the character, Sophie, "loses her husband, child and everything else". She said she relived the death of her brother, who had died at age three. She played Mike in the 1948 Western film Yellow Sky with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark.
wn.com/Anne_Baxter -
Anne Frank
Annelies "Anne" Marie Frank ( pronunciation (help·info); 12 June 1929 – early March 1945) was one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary, has been the basis for several plays and films. Born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Born a German national, Frank lost her citizenship in 1941 when Nazi Germany passed the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. She gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published. It documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained control over Germany. By the beginning of 1940, they were trapped in Amsterdam by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of Anne's father, Otto Frank's, office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945.
wn.com/Anne_Frank -
Anthony Quinn
Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican and American actor, as well as a painter and writer. He starred in numerous critically acclaimed and commercially successful films, including Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone, The Message, Guns for San Sebastian, Lion of the Desert and Federico Fellini's La Strada. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice; for Viva Zapata! in 1952 and Lust for Life in 1956.
Quinn was born Antonio Reyes in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. His mother, Manuela "Nellie" Oaxaca, was of Aztec Indian ancestry. His father, Francisco Quinn, was also born in Mexico, to an Irish immigrant father from County Cork and a Mexican mother. Frank Quinn rode with Pancho Villa, then later moved to Los Angeles and became an assistant cameraman at a movie studio. In Quinn's autobiography The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait by Anthony Quinn he denied being the son of an "Irish adventurer" and attributed that tale to Hollywood publicists.
wn.com/Anthony_Quinn -
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing some 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community. (BBC TV Interview; Miller and Yentob; 'Finishing the Picture,' 2004) The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on East 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
wn.com/Arthur_Miller -
Artie Shaw
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky (May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004), better known as Artie Shaw, was an American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings.
Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of America's most popular big bands of the late 1930s and early '40s. Their signature song, a 1938 version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine", was a wildly successful single and one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of Third Stream, which blended classical and jazz, and recorded some small-group sessions that flirted with be-bop before retiring from music in 1954.
Born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky in New York City, Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where, according to his autobiography his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. Shaw began learning the saxophone when he was 13 years old, and by the age of 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band. Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 until 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras, including those of Johnny Caverello and Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930 he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements.
wn.com/Artie_Shaw -
Astrid Lindgren
Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren (née Ericsson) (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈastrɪd ˈlɪŋɡreːn] ( listen)), 14 November 1907 – 28 January 2002) was a Swedish author and screenwriter. She is the world's 18th most translated author and has sold roughly 145 million copies worldwide. She is best known for the Pippi Longstocking, Karlsson-on-the-Roof and the Six Bullerby Children book series.
Astrid Lindgren grew up in Näs, near Vimmerby, Småland and many of her books are based on her family and childhood memories and landscapes. However, Pippi Longstocking, one of her most famous books, was set in Gotland.
Lindgren was the daughter of Samuel August Ericsson and Hanna Johnsson. She had two sisters and a brother, Gunnar Ericsson, who eventually became a member of the Swedish parliament.
Upon finishing school, Lindgren took a job with the a local newspaper in Vimmerby. When she became pregnant with the chief editor's child[clarification needed] in 1926, he proposed marriage. She declined and moved to Stockholm, learning to become a typist and stenographer (she would later write most of her drafts in stenography). In due time, she gave birth to her son, Lars, in Copenhagen and left him in the care of a foster family.
wn.com/Astrid_Lindgren -
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress.
She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953).
She appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death from pneumonia, at age 67, in 1990.
She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's Greatest female stars.
wn.com/Ava_Gardner -
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand ( /ˈaɪn ˈrænd/; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.
Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of the philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her besides Aristotle.
wn.com/Ayn_Rand -
Barbara Stanwyck
Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood, before turning to television.
Stanwyck was nominated for the Academy Award four times, and won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. She was the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1981, the American Film Institute in 1987, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Golden Globes, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the Screen Actors Guild. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is ranked as the eleventh greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.
Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in Brooklyn, New York on July 16, 1907. She was the fifth and youngest child of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens; the couple were working-class, her father a native of Massachusetts and her mother an immigrant from Nova Scotia, Canada. Stanwyck had English and Scottish ancestry. When she was four, her mother was killed when a drunken stranger pushed her off a moving streetcar. Two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama canal and was never seen again. Ruby and her brother Byron were raised by their elder sister Mildred, five years Ruby's senior. When Mildred got a job as a John Cort showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which Ruby often ran away.
wn.com/Barbara_Stanwyck -
Basil Rathbone
Sir Philip St. John Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was a South African-born British actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films. He frequently portrayed suave villains or morally ambiguous characters, such as Murdstone in David Copperfield (1935) and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). His most famous role, however, was heroic—that of Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood films made between 1939 and 1946 and in a radio series. His later career included Broadway and television work; he received a Tony Award in 1948 as Best Actor in a Play.
He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South African Republic, to English parents Edgar Philip Rathbone, a mining engineer and scion of the Liverpool Rathbone family, and Anna Barbara née George, a violinist. He had two older half brothers Harold and Horace as well as two younger siblings, Beatrice and John. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years old after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War at the end of the 1890s.
wn.com/Basil_Rathbone -
Behic Erkin
Behiç Erkin (1876 in Constantinople,Ottoman Empire-November 11, 1961 in Istanbul, Turkey) was a career Army officer; first director (1920–1926) of the Turkish State Railways, nationalized under his auspices; and statesman with the Turkish government who helped save almost 20,000 of ethnic Turkish Jews in France during World War II. He was Minister of Public Works, 1926–1928, and deputy for three terms; and an ambassador. He served as Turkey's ambassador to Budapest between 1928–1939, and to Paris and Vichy between August 1939-August 1943. As Turkish ambassador in France under the German Occupation after June 1940, Erkin used the power of his office and nation's neutrality to save Turkish Jews who could document a Turkish connection, however slight, from the Holocaust.
Other Turkish diplomats in France and elsewhere, were also active in this rescue effort. The consulate staff under Necdet Kent in Marseille was particularly involved.
Starting in the early 1910s, Erkin was a close friend and early collaborator of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Mustafa Kemal and Colonel Behiç Bey (Erkin) played crucial roles in the success of the battles at the Dardanelles front, where both men commanded during World War I. Erkin earned a high reputation and the German Iron Cross 1st Class military decoration, which served him when he needed to impress Germans during the Occupation. He also played a foremost part in the Turkish War of Independence. He took the family name "Erkin" after Turkey's 1934 Law on Family Names was passed. His surname "Erkin" means a person, who can take decision objectively without being impressed by an outside influence in any circumstances. He was one of 37 assigned personally by Atatürk.[citation needed]
wn.com/Behic_Erkin -
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Italian pronunciation: [beˈniːto musːoˈliːni]; 29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party, ruling the country from 1922 to his ousting in 1943, and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of fascism.
Originally a member of the Italian Socialist Party and editor of the Avanti! from 1912 to 1914, Mussolini fought in World War I as an ardent nationalist and created the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, catalyzing his nationalist and socialist beliefs in the Fascist Manifesto, published in 1921. Following the March on Rome in October 1922 he became the 27th Prime Minister of Italy and began using the title Il Duce by 1925, about which time he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a totalitarian state. After 1936, his official title was Sua Eccellenza Benito Mussolini, Capo del Governo, Duce del Fascismo e Fondatore dell'Impero ("His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire") Mussolini also created and held the supreme military rank of First Marshal of the Empire along with King Victor Emmanuel III, which gave him and the King joint supreme control over the military of Italy. Mussolini remained in power until he was replaced in 1943; for a short period after this until his death, he was the leader of the Italian Social Republic.
wn.com/Benito_Mussolini -
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.
Born in New York in 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy, received his first music lessons on piano from his mother. Largely self-taught, by age fifteen, Carter was already sitting in at Harlem night spots. From 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York's top bands. As a youth, Carter lived in Harlem around the corner from Bubber Miley who was Duke Ellington's star trumpeter, Carter was inspired by Miley and bought a trumpet, but when he found he couldn't play like Miley he traded the trumpet in for a saxophone. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.
wn.com/Benny_Carter -
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".
In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.
Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
wn.com/Benny_Goodman -
Bert Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile (which he called "The Grin"). After initially building his career on "tough guy" roles Lancaster abandoned his "all-American" image in the late 1950s in favor of more complex and challenging roles, and came to be regarded as one of the best actors of his generation as a result.
Lancaster was nominated four times for Academy Awards and won once — for his work in Elmer Gantry in 1960. He also won a Golden Globe for that performance and BAFTA Awards for The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1980). His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was the most successful and innovative star-driven independent production company in Hollywood of the 1950s, making movies such as Marty (1955), Trapeze (1956), and Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Lancaster 19th among the greatest male stars of all time.
wn.com/Bert_Lancaster -
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
wn.com/Bette_Davis -
Betty Grable
Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable (December 18, 1916 – July 2, 1973) was an American actress, dancer, and singer.
Grable was celebrated for having the most beautiful legs in Hollywood and studio publicity widely dispersed photos featuring them. Her iconic bathing suit poster made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the Life magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World". Hosiery specialists of the era often noted the ideal proportions of her legs as thigh (18.5"), calf (12"), and ankle (7.5"). Grable's legs were famously insured by her studio for $1,000,000 with Lloyds of London.
Grable appeared in several smash-hit musical films in the 1940s, most notable: Mother Wore Tights in 1947, with frequent co-star Dan Dailey. She came to prominence in 1939 when she signed with Twentieth Century-Fox and signed on to appear opposite Ethel Merman in the Broadway musical Du Barry Was a Lady. But it was not until she was called back to Hollywood to replace Fox's musical queen, Alice Faye, in Down Argentine Way, that she became a household name. Throughout her career, Grable was typecast in her stereotype-musical film roles, and when her career faltered in the 1950s, she found it hard to reinvent herself as a serious-trained actress.
wn.com/Betty_Grable -
Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton (February 26, 1921 – March 11, 2007) was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedienne and singer.
Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg, daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg (1896–1939) and his wife, Mabel Lum (1901–1967). While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for another woman. They did not hear of him again until they received a telegram in 1939, informing them of his suicide. Along with her older sister Marion, Betty was raised by her mother, who took the surname Hutton and was later billed as the actress Sissy Jones.
The three started singing in the family's speakeasy when Betty was 3 years old. Troubles with the police kept the family on the move. They eventually landed in Detroit, Michigan. (On one occasion, when Betty, preceded by a police escort, arrived at the premiere of Let's Dance (1950), her mother, arriving with her, quipped, "At least this time the police are in front of us!") Hutton sang in several local bands as a teenager, and at one point visited New York City hoping to perform on Broadway, where she was rejected.
wn.com/Betty_Hutton -
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Harris April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.
Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording.
Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan (née Harris). Her father, Clarence Halliday (Holiday), a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia when thirteen, after being ejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant. With no support from her own parents, Holiday's mother arranged for the young Holiday to stay with her older married half sister, Eva Miller, who lived in Baltimore.
wn.com/Billie_Holiday -
Billy Conn
William David Conn (October 8, 1917–May 29, 1993), better known as Billy Conn, was an American professional boxer and Light Heavyweight Champion famed for his fights with Joe Louis. He had a professional boxing record of 63 wins, 11 losses and 1 draw, with 14 wins by knockout. His nickname, throughout most of his career, was "The Pittsburgh Kid."
Conn debuted as a professional boxer on June 28, 1934, losing to Dick Woodward (Frank Colwin Woodward, known as Woody later in his life in California) by a decision in four rounds. His first win came almost a month later, on July 20, against Johnny Lewis, via a knockout in round three.
Conn built a record of 47 wins, 9 losses and 1 draw (tie), with 7 knockout wins, before challenging for the World Light Heavyweight title. Along the way, he beat former or future world champions Fritzie Zivic, Solly Krieger and Fred Apostoli, as well as Teddy Yarosz and Young Corbett III.
On July 13, 1939, he met World Light Heavyweight Champion Melio Bettina in New York, outpointing him in 15 rounds and winning the World LightHeavyweight Championship. Conn defended his title against Bettina and twice against another World Light Heavyweight Champion, Gus Lesnevich, each of those three bouts resulting in 15 round decision wins for Conn. Conn also beat former World Middleweight Champion Al McCoy and heavyweights Bob Pastor, Lee Savold, Gunnar Barlund and Buddy Knox in non-title bouts during his run as World Light Heavyweight Champion.
wn.com/Billy_Conn -
Billy Eckstine
William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American singer of ballads and a bandleader of the swing era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music. Eckstine's recording of "I Apologize," MGM Pop Single, (1948) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
Eckstine's grandparents were William F. Eckstein and Nannie Eckstein, a mixed-race, lawfully married couple who lived in Washington D.C.; both were born in the year 1863. William F. was born in Prussia and Nannie in Virginia. His parents were William Eckstein, a chauffeur and Charlotte Eckstein. He was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania a State Historical Marker is placed at 5913 Bryant St, Highland Park, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to mark the house where he grew up. Later moving to Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He attended Armstrong High School, St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, and Howard University. He left Howard in 1933, after winning first place in an amateur talent contest. He married his first wife, June, in 1942; she too was a vocalist. After their divorce he married actress and model Carolle Drake in 1953, and remained married until his death. He was the father of five children and two step children, including Ed Eckstine, who was a president of Mercury Records, Guy Eckstine, who was a Columbia and Verve Records A&R executive and record producer, and singer Gina Eckstine.
wn.com/Billy_Eckstine -
Billy Graham
William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. (born November 7, 1918) is an American evangelical Christian evangelist, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who rose to celebrity status with national media backing of William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce in 1949. His sermons were broadcast on radio and television, with some still re-broadcast today.
Graham is notable for having been a spiritual adviser to several United States Presidents; he was particularly close to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. During the civil rights movement, he began to support integrated seating for his revivals and crusades; in 1957 he invited Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to jointly preach at a huge revival in New York City, where they appeared together at Madison Square Garden, and bailed the minister out of jail in the 1960s when he was arrested in demonstrations.
Having built an evangelical empire and organized huge events worldwide, Graham has personally preached the Gospel to more people than any other person in history. His institutions include a variety of media and publishing outlets. According to his staff, more than 3.2 million people have responded to the invitation at Billy Graham Crusades to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. As of 2008, Graham's estimated lifetime audience, including radio and television broadcasts, topped 2.2 billion.
wn.com/Billy_Graham -
Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the "A" Train" and "Lush Life".
Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family was from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He first became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player.
Strayhorn returned to Pittsburgh, and attended Westinghouse High School, later attended by Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal. In Pittsburgh, he began his musical career, studying classical music for a time at the Pittsburgh Music Institute, writing a high school musical, forming a musical trio that played daily on a local radio station, and, while still in his teens, composing (with lyrics) the songs "Life Is Lonely" (later renamed "Lush Life"), "My Little Brown Book", and "Something to Live For". While still in grade school, he worked odd jobs to earn enough money to buy his first piano. While in high school, he played in the school band, and studied under the same teacher who had also instructed jazz pianists Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams. By age 19, he was writing for a professional musical, Fantastic Rhythm.
wn.com/Billy_Strayhorn -
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay to the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard.
wn.com/Billy_Wilder -
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artistes of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation.
A multimedia star, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations; this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como,Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for American G.I. morale during World War II and, during his peak years, around 1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
wn.com/Bing_Crosby -
Bob Feller
Robert William Andrew "Bob" Feller (November 3, 1918 – December 15, 2010), nicknamed "The Heater from Van Meter," "Bullet Bob," and "Rapid Robert," was an American Major League Baseball pitcher. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
One of the best right-handed pitchers in baseball history, Feller was a prodigy who entered the major leagues when he was 17. Feller played 18 seasons, all with the Cleveland Indians, from 1936 to 1956, his career interrupted by four years of military service during World War II. He became the first pitcher to win at least 20 games in a season before the age of 21, threw three no-hitters and 12 one-hitters (both records at the time of his retirement), led the American League in strikeouts in seven seasons, and pitched 279 complete games. Feller was renowned for his fastball, which was officially clocked at 98 miles per hour by the U.S. Army (a record at the time, later bettered by Nolan Ryan), he was also officially recorded with the second fastest pitch in major league history at 107.6, albeit, with older equipment that made the ball appear slower then it was.Ted Williams called Feller "the fastest and best pitcher I ever saw during my career", and Stan Musial believed he was "probably the greatest pitcher of our era."
wn.com/Bob_Feller -
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975), better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western swing, he was universally known as the King of Western Swing.
Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around the South and West until he formed the Texas Playboys in 1934 with Wills on fiddle, Tommy Duncan on piano and vocals, rhythm guitarist June Whalin, tenor banjoist Johnnie Lee Wills, and Kermit Whalin, who played steel guitar and bass. The band played regularly on a Tulsa, Oklahoma radio station, and added Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar, pianist Al Stricklin, drummer Smokey Dacus, and a horn section that expanded the band's sound. Wills favored jazz-like arrangements and the band found national popularity into the 1940s with such hits as "Steel Guitar Rag", "New San Antonio Rose", "Smoke on the Water", "Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima", and "New Spanish Two Step".
Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded with several publishers and companies, including Vocalion, Okeh, Columbia, and MGM, frequently moving. In 1950, he had two top ten hits, "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and "Faded Love", which were his last hits for a decade. Throughout the 1950s, he struggled with poor health and tenuous finances, but continued to perform frequently despite the decline in popularity of his earlier music as rock and roll took over. Wills had a heart attack in 1962 and a second one the next year, which forced him to disband the Playboys although Wills continued to perform solo.
wn.com/Bob_Wills -
Branch Rickey
Wesley Branch Rickey (December 20, 1881 – December 9, 1965) was an innovative Major League Baseball executive elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967. He was known for breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing African American player Jackie Robinson, for drafting the first Hispanic superstar, Roberto Clemente, for creating the framework for the modern minor league farm system, for encouraging the Major Leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League, and for introducing the batting helmet.
Rickey's many achievements and deep Christian faith earned him the nickname "the Mahātmā."
Rickey was born in Stockdale, Ohio, USA, the son of Jacob Frank Rickey and Emily Brown Rickey. He was a catcher on the baseball team at Ohio Wesleyan University and, in 1903, signed a contract with Terre Haute, Indiana of the Class B Central League, making his professional debut on June 20. Rickey was assigned to Le Mars, Iowa of the Class D Iowa-South Dakota League. Later, he spent two seasons in the major leagues, debuting as a St. Louis Brown in 1905. Sold to the New York Highlanders in 1907, Rickey could neither hit nor field while with the club, and his batting average dropped below .200. One opposing team stole 13 bases while Rickey was behind the plate, setting a record which still stands a century later. Rickey also injured his throwing arm and retired as a player after just one year. (During this period, Rickey also spent two seasons—1904 and 1905—coaching baseball and football and teaching at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.)
wn.com/Branch_Rickey -
Buck Leonard
Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard (September 8, 1907 – November 27, 1997) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 along with his long-time teammate Josh Gibson.
Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Leonard left school at the age of 14 because no high school education was available for blacks in his hometown. He worked in a textile mill and as a shoeshine boy at a railroad station, the latter being typical of the economic situation for many African Americans at that time.
He began his Negro league career in 1933 with the Brooklyn Royal Giants, then moved to the legendary Homestead Grays in 1934, the team he played for until his retirement in 1950. The Grays of the late 1930s through the mid-1940s are considered one of the greatest teams of any race ever assembled. Leonard batted fourth in their lineup behind Josh Gibson. Since Gibson was known as the "Black Babe Ruth" and Leonard was a first baseman, Buck Leonard was inevitably called the "Black Lou Gehrig." Together, the pair was colloquially known as the "Thunder Twins" or "Dynamite Twins". From 1937 to 1945 the Grays won 9 consecutive Negro National League championships. Leonard led the Negro leagues in batting average in 1948 with a mark of .395, and usually either led the league in home runs or finished second in homers to teammate Gibson.
wn.com/Buck_Leonard -
Bud Powell
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was a jazz pianist who was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. His greatest influences on his instrument were Thelonious Monk, who became his close friend, and Art Tatum. Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a key player in the development of bebop, and his virtuosity as a pianist led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano.
Powell's father was a stride pianist. Powell took to his father's instrument and started to learn classical piano, at age five, from a teacher whom his father hired; but by age ten, he had also showed interest in the jazz that could be heard all over the neighborhood. When he first appeared in public, it was at a rent party , where he mimicked Fats Waller's playing style. The first jazz composition that he mastered was James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout" .
Bud's older brother, William, played the trumpet; by age fifteen, Bud was playing in his band. By this time, he had already had exposure to Art Tatum, whose overwhelmingly virtuosic technique Powell then set out to equal .
wn.com/Bud_Powell -
Buddy Baer
Jacob Henry "Buddy" Baer (June 11, 1915 – July 18, 1986) was an American boxer. In 2003, Baer was chosen for the Ring Magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. He is the younger brother of heavyweight champion Max Baer, and the uncle of Max Baer, Jr., best known as "Jethro" on the 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Baer, like his nephew, also pursued acting.
Standing at 6' 6½" (1.99 m), Baer fought from 1934 to 1942 and was one of the best punchers of his time. He knocked out colorful contender Tony Galento (Galento quit in the 7th round claiming to have broken his left hand). The highlight of his boxing career occurred in his unsuccessful attempts to win the heavyweight boxing championship from Joe Louis. In their first fight, Baer caught Louis with a big left hook in the first round and knocked the champion out of the ring. Louis, however, climbed back in before the count of ten, and eventually won the fight on a disqualification. Baer claimed that he had been hit, and knocked down, after the bell in the seventh round, and refused to come out for the next round. The referee therefore disqualified him. In their rematch, Louis knocked Baer out in the first. Baer later remarked "The only way I could have beaten Louis that night was with a baseball bat." His record was 52-7 with 46 knockouts.
wn.com/Buddy_Baer -
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer.
Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s. Calloway's band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.
Cab Calloway was born in a middle-class family in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907. He lived there until moving to Baltimore, Maryland in 1918. His father, Cabell Calloway II, was a lawyer and his mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a teacher and church organist. When Cab was young, he enjoyed singing in church. His parents recognized their son's musical talent and he began private voice lessons in 1922. He continued to study music and voice throughout his formal schooling. Despite his parents' and vocal teachers' disapproval of jazz, Calloway began frequenting and eventually performing in many of Baltimore's jazz clubs, where he was mentored by drummer Chick Webb and pianist Johnny Jones.
wn.com/Cab_Calloway -
Carl Barks
Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), The Junior Woodchucks (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Cornelius Coot (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961) and Magica De Spell (1961). The quality of his scripts and drawings earned him the nicknames The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. Writer-artist Will Eisner called him "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books."
In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon to William Barks and his wife Arminta Johnson. He had an older brother named Clyde. Barks once stated that his paternal ancestors were Dutch and his maternal ancestors were Scottish. His paternal grandparents were David Barks and his wife Ruth Shrum. His maternal grandparents were Carl Johnson and his wife Suzanna Massey, but little else is known about his ancestors. Barks was the descendant of Jacob Barks who came to Missouri from North Carolina around 1800. They lived in Marble Hill in Bollinger County. Jacob Barks' son Isaac was the father of the David Barks noted above. Source 1850 census, Goodspeed's History of Southeast Missouri, 1888. Find a Grave.
wn.com/Carl_Barks -
Carl Stuart Hamblen
Stuart Hamblen (October 20, 1908–March 8, 1989), born Stuart Carl Hamblen, was one of American radio's first singing cowboys in 1926, and later became a Christian songwriter, temperance supporter and recurring candidate for political office.
Hamblen was born to the family of an itinerant Methodist preacher on 20 October 1908, in Kellyville, Texas, USA. He was married to Suzy Daniels and fathered two children with her. Hamblen's father was Dr. J. H. Hamblen, a minister in the Methodist Church in Texas, who in 1946 founded the Evangelical Methodist Church denomination in Abilene, Texas.
From 1931-52, Hamblen had a series of highly popular radio programs on the West Coast of the United States. He composed music and acted in motion pictures with such other stars as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and John Wayne. He was the first artist signed by Decca Records in 1934.
Hamblen didn't cope well with the pressures of his high profile career and sought relief in alcohol. Many times, his drinking landed him in jail for public brawling and other destructive behavior. The Texas State Historical Association reports that Hamblen identified himself as the "original juvenile delinquent." Hamblen was hugely popular, and his radio sponsors regularly bailed him out of jail. For a while, he ventured into horse-racing as an owner. Inevitably, Hamblen's drinking and gambling problems severely affected his life and career. After years of struggle with alcohol, Hamblen, in 1949, underwent a religious conversion at a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. He was fired from his radio career after he declined to continue with his radio sponsor's beer commercials. Hamblen subsequently gave up gambling and horse racing, and entered Christian broadcasting with his radio show, The Cowboy Church of the Air, which ran until 1952.
wn.com/Carl_Stuart_Hamblen -
Carlos Prío Socarrás
Carlos Prío Socarrás (July 14, 1903 – April 5, 1977) was the President of Cuba from 1948 until he was deposed by a military coup led by Fulgencio Batista on March 10, 1952, three months before new elections were to be held.
In 1940 he was elected senator of Pinar del Río Province when fellow Partido Auténtico member Ramón Grau became president. During the Grau administration he served turns as Minister of Public Works, Minister of Labor and Prime Minister. On July 1, 1948 he was elected president of Cuba as a member of the Partido Auténtico. In 1948, Carlos Prio was assisted by Chief of the Armed Forces General Genobebo Pérez Dámera and Colonel José Luis Chinea, who had previously been in charge of the Province of Santa Clara.
The eight years under Grau and Prío, were, according to Charles Ameringer,
[...] unique in Cuban history. They were a time of constitutional order and political freedom. They were not 'golden years' by any means, but in two elections (1944 and 1948), Cubans has the opportunity to express their desire for a rule of civil liberties, primacy of Cuban culture, and achievement of economic independence. If there were sharp contradictions in Cuban society under the Autenticos, the circumstances differed only in degree from the complexities and dynamics encountered in free societies everywhere (how often did Cubans compare Havana with Chicago?).
wn.com/Carlos_Prío_Socarrás -
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda, GCIH (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaɾmẽȷ̃ miˈɾɐ̃dɐ], 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Braziliansamba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's All Here. Though hailed as a talented performer, her movie roles in the United States soon became cartoonish and she grew to resent them. She is considered the precursor of Brazil's Tropicalismo.
Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, a village in the northern Portuguese municipality of Marco de Canaveses. She was the second daughter of José Maria Pinto da Cunha (17 February 1887 – 21 June 1938) and Maria Emília Miranda (10 March 1886 – Rio de Janeiro, 9 November 1971). In 1909 when she was 10-months old, her father emigrated alone to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he opened a barber shop. Her mother followed in 1910 with their daughters Olinda and Maria do Carmo. Maria do Carmo, later Carmen, never returned to Portugal, but retained her Portuguese nationality. In Brazil, her parents had four more children: Amaro (1911), Cecília (1913), Aurora (1915–2005) and Óscar (1916).
wn.com/Carmen_Miranda -
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard (October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress. She is particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. She is listed as one of the American Film Institute's greatest stars of all time and was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s, earning around US$500,000 per year[citation needed] (more than five times the salary of the US President). Lombard's career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 in a plane crash while returning from a World War II Bond tour.
Queen of the 1930s screwball comedies, she personified the anxiety of a nervous age. Graham Greene praised the "heartbreaking and nostalgic melodies" of her faster-than-thought delivery. "Platinum blonde, with a heart-shaped face, delicate, impish features and a figure made to be swathed in silver lamé, she wriggled expressively through such classics of hysteria as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey."
wn.com/Carole_Lombard -
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English-American actor. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.
Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Noted particularly for his work in comedy but also for drama, Grant's best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).
Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over, and in 1970 was given an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards. Frank Sinatra presented Grant with the award, "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".
wn.com/Cary_Grant -
Cesar Romero
Cesar Julio Romero, Jr. (February 15, 1907 – January 1, 1994) was an American film and television actor who was active in film, radio, and television for almost sixty years. His wide range of screen roles included Latin lovers, historical figures in costume dramas, characters in light domestic comedies, and as The Joker in television's Batman series.
Romero was born in New York to a Spanish father who was an importer-exporter of sugar refining machinery and a Cuban mother who was a concert singer. That lifestyle, however, changed dramatically when his parents lost their sugar import business and suffered losses in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Fortunately, Romero's Hollywood earnings allowed him to support his large family, all of whom followed him to the West Coast, years later. Romero lived on and off with various family members, especially his sister, for the rest of his life.
In October 1942, he voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and served in the Pacific Theater. He reported aboard the Coast Guard-manned assault transport USS Cavalier in November, 1943. According to a press release from the period he saw action during the invasions of Tinian and Saipan. The same article mentioned that he preferred to be a regular part of the crew and was eventually promoted to the rank of Chief Boatswain's Mate.
wn.com/Cesar_Romero -
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer (28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer became a star of 1920s French theater, but he found his greatest success in American movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised in romantic dramas such as Conquest (1937), Algiers (1938), and Love Affair (1939). Another famous role was in the 1944 mystery-thriller Gaslight. He received four Academy Award nominations for Best Actor.
Boyer was born in Figeac, Lot, Midi-Pyrénées, France, the son of Augustine Louise Durand and Maurice Boyer, a merchant. Boyer was a shy, small-town boy who discovered the movies and theatre at the age of eleven. Boyer performed comic sketches for soldiers while working as a hospital orderly during World War I. He began studies briefly at the Sorbonne, and was waiting for a chance to study acting at the Paris Conservatory. He went to the capital city to finish his education, but spent most of his time pursuing a theatrical career. In 1920, his quick memory won him a chance to replace the leading man in a stage production, and he scored an immediate hit. In the 1920s, he not only played a suave and sophisticated ladies' man on the stage but also appeared in several silent films.
wn.com/Charles_Boyer -
Charles Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.
Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin was identified with left-wing politics during the McCarthy era and he was ultimately forced to resettle in Europe from 1952.
wn.com/Charles_Chaplin -
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (/ˈtʃɑrlz/ or /ˈʃɑrl dəˈɡɔːl/; French: [ʃaʁl də ɡol] ( listen); 22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
A veteran of World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of mobile armoured divisions, which he considered would become central in modern warfare. During World War II, he earned the rank of brigadier general (retained throughout his life), leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Battle of France in May in Montcornet, and then briefly served in the French government as France was falling. De Gaulle was the most senior French military officer to reject the June 1940 armistice to Nazi Germany right from the outset.
He escaped to Britain and gave a famous radio address, broadcast by the BBC on 18 June 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in Britain. As the war progressed de Gaulle gradually gained control of all French colonies except Indochina most of which had at first been controlled by the pro-German Vichy regime. Despite earning a reputation for being a difficult man to do business with, by the time of the Allied invasion of France in 1944 he was heading what amounted to a French government in exile, but although he insisted that France be treated as a great independent power by the other Allies, the Americans in particular remained deeply suspicious of his motives. De Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government, resigning in 1946 because of political conflicts.
wn.com/Charles_de_Gaulle -
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was an English-born American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.
Laughton was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the son of Robert Laughton and his wife Elizabeth (née Conlon), Yorkshire hotel keepers. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent. He attended Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire. He served during World War I (in which he was gassed) first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.
wn.com/Charles_Laughton -
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.
Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz.
Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities. Many musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. He recruited talented and sometimes little-known artists whom he assembled into unconventional and revealing configurations. As a performer, Mingus was a pioneer in double bass technique, widely recognized as one of the instrument's most proficient players.
wn.com/Charles_Mingus -
Charlie Barnet
Charles Daly Barnet (October 26, 1913 – September 4, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.
His major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", "In a Mizz", and "Southland Shuffle".
Charlie Barnet was born in New York City. His parents divorced when he was two, and he was raised by his mother and her grandparents. His grandfather was Charles Frederick Daly, a vice-president for the New York Central Railroad, banker, and businessman.
Barnet attended various boarding schools, both in the New York and Chicago areas. He learned to play piano and saxophone as a child. He often left school to listen to music and to try to gain work as a musician.
Although he began his recording career in October 1933, Charlie Barnet was at the height of his popularity between 1939 and 1941, a period that began with his hit version of "Cherokee", written by Ray Noble and arranged by Billy May. In 1944, Barnet had another big hit with "Skyliner". In 1947, he started to switch from swing music to bebop. During his swing period his band included Buddy DeFranco, Roy Eldridge, Neal Hefti, Lena Horne, Barney Kessel, Dodo Marmorosa, Oscar Pettiford, and Art House, while later versions of the band included Maynard Ferguson, Doc Severinsen, and Clark Terry. Trumpeter Billy May was an arranger in the Charlie Barnet Orchestra before joining Glenn Miller in 1940.
wn.com/Charlie_Barnet -
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.
Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin was identified with left-wing politics during the McCarthy era and he was ultimately forced to resettle in Europe from 1952.
wn.com/Charlie_Chaplin -
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as Yardbird and Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.
Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career and the shortened form, "Bird", which continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise."
Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and improvisation. Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas, including rapidly passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Many Parker recordings demonstrate virtuosic technique and complex melodic lines, combining jazz with other musical genres, including blues, Latin, and classical.
Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than an entertainer.
wn.com/Charlie_Parker -
Chester W. Nimitz
Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, GCB, USN (February 24, 1885 – February 20, 1966) was a five-star admiral of the United States Navy. He held the dual command of Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet (CinCPac), for U.S. naval forces and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas (CinCPOA), for U.S. and Allied air, land, and sea forces during World War II. He was the leading U.S. Navy authority on submarines, as well as Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation in 1939. He served as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 1945 until 1947. He was the United States' last surviving Fleet Admiral.
Chester W. Nimitz, a German Texan, was the son of Anna Josephine (Henke) and Chester Bernhard Nimitz. He was born 24 February 1885 in Fredericksburg, Texas, where his house is now the Admiral Nimitz State Historic Site. His frail, rheumatic father died before he was born. He was significantly influenced by his grandfather, Charles Henry Nimitz, a former seaman in the German Merchant Marine, who taught him, "the sea - like life itself - is a stern taskmaster. The best way to get along with either is to learn all you can, then do your best and don't worry - especially about things over which you have no control."
wn.com/Chester_W._Nimitz -
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (October 31, 1887 – April 5, 1975) was a political and military leader of 20th-century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí (蔣介石) or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng (蔣中正) in Mandarin.
Chiang was an influential member of the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and was a close ally of Sun Yat-sen. He became the Commandant of the Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy, and took Sun's place as leader of the KMT when Sun died in 1925. In 1926, Chiang led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's nominal leader. He served as Chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 to 1948. Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Nationalist government's power severely weakened, but his prominence grew. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek was socially conservative, promoting traditional Chinese culture in the New Life Movement and rejecting western democracy and the nationalist democratic socialism that Sun Yat-sen and some other members of the KMT embraced in favor of a nationalist authoritarian government.
wn.com/Chiang_Kai-shek -
Chiune Sugihara
Chiune Sugihara (杉原 千畝, Sugihara Chiune?, 1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986) was a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Poland and residents of Lithuania. Sugihara wrote travel visas that facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family's lives. Sugihara had told the refugees to call him "Sempo", the Chinese reading of the characters in his first name, discovering it was much easier for Western people to pronounce. In 1985, Israel honored him as Righteous Among the Nations for his actions.
Chiune Sugihara was born 1 January 1900, in Yaotsu, a rural area in Gifu Prefecture of the Chubu region to a middle-class father, Yoshimi Sugihara (杉原好水 Sugihara Yoshimi), and Yatsu Sugihara (杉原やつ Sugihara Yatsu), an upper-middle class mother. He was the second son among five boys and one girl.
wn.com/Chiune_Sugihara -
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960), known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later movies included Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time. He was nicknamed 'The King of Hollywood.'
Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. In the mid-1930s, Gable was often named the top male movie star, and second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
wn.com/Clark_Gable -
Claude Rains
Claude Rains (10 November 1889 – 30 May 1967) was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 46 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man (1933), a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Mr. Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and, perhaps his most notable performance, as Captain Renault in Casablanca (1942).
Rains was born William Claude Rains in Camberwell, London. He grew up, according to his daughter, with "a very serious cockney accent and a speech impediment". His parents were Emily Eliza (Cox) and English stage and film actor Frederick William Rains. The young Rains made his stage debut at 11 in Nell of Old Drury.
His acting talents were recognised by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Tree paid for the elocution lessons Rains needed in order to succeed as an actor. Later, Rains taught at the institution, teaching John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, among others. Many years later, after he had gone to Hollywood and become a film star, Gielgud was to quip: "He was a great influence on me. I don`t know what happened to him. I think he failed and went to America."
wn.com/Claude_Rains -
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert (/koʊlˈbɛər/; 13 September 1903 – 30 July 1996) was an American actress of stage and film.
Born in Paris, France, and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures, and was recognized as one of the leading female exponents of screwball comedy. Colbert was the highest paid actress in American cinema during late 1930s, and later became a freelance performer. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her comedic performance in It Happened One Night (1934), and also received Academy Award nominations for her dramatic roles in Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944).
Colbert's film career declined in the 1950s, and finished in 1961. Later in life, she returned to theater, except brief appearances in television. Her intermittent career lasted more than six decades. She moved in later life to Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of strokes.
wn.com/Claudette_Colbert -
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was also the first person to hold the office of Deputy Prime Minister, under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill's Conservative Party in 1945. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term, and the first to command a Labour majority in Parliament.
The government he led put in place the post-war settlement, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created – aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. After initial Conservative opposition to Keynesian fiscal policy, this settlement was broadly accepted by all parties until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979.
wn.com/Clement_Attlee -
Clifford Berry
Clifford Edward Berry (April 19, 1918 – October 30, 1963) was an American inventor.
Clifford Berry was born in Gladbrook, Iowa to Fred Gordon Berry and Grace Strohm. He was the oldest of four children born to the couple: Clifford, Keith, Frederick, and Barbara. When Clifford Berry was a small child, his father Fred had an electrical appliance and repair store in Gladbrook, where he had several electrical projects. By far the greatest of his projects was a radio—the first radio in Gladbrook.
This prompted a stream of town visitors to get a glimpse at the machine. Fred taught his son about the construction of the radio and it was here that Clifford started tinkering with electricity and radio. When he was eleven, he built his first ham radio, under his father's supervision.
From an early age, Clifford Berry was a precocious child. His second grade teacher and the school principal suggested to his parents that he be moved a grade ahead. Fred and Grace Berry resisted for two years, until the principal argued again that Clifford needed to be challenged. He was allowed to skip the fourth grade.
wn.com/Clifford_Berry -
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.
After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.
Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms.
wn.com/Cole_Porter -
Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde (October 13, 1912 – October 16, 1989) was an American actor and film director.
Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now Slovakia), although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City. His Hungarian Jewish parents were Vojtech Weisz (Americanized to Louis Bela Wilde) and Renée Mary Vid. He was named for his paternal grandfather, and upon arrival in the U.S. at age 7 in 1920, his name was Americanized to Cornelius Louis Wilde.
A talented linguist and an astute mimic, he had an ear for languages which became apparent later in his acting career. Wilde attended the City College of New York as a pre-med student, completing the four-year course in three years and winning a scholarship to the Physicians and Surgeons College at Columbia University.
He qualified for the United States fencing team prior to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, but quit the team just prior to the games in order to take a role in the theater. In preparation for an acting career, he and his new wife Marjory Heinzen (later to be known as Patricia Knight) shaved years off their ages, three for him and five for her. As a result, most publicity records and subsequent sources wrongly indicate a 1915 birth for Wilde.
wn.com/Cornel_Wilde -
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".
wn.com/Count_Basie -
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminski; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.
Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.
David Daniel Kaminski was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminski and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.
wn.com/Danny_Kaye -
David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion (help·info) (Hebrew: דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן, Arabic: دافيد بن غوريون Dafeed Bin Ghuriyyun, born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the main founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel.
Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he became the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led the provisional government of Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father".
wn.com/David_Ben-Gurion -
David Lean
Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984); for bringing Charles Dickens' novels to the silver screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick,, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002. Lean has four films in the top eleven of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films.
David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and young David would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.
wn.com/David_Lean -
Dick Haymes
Richard Benjamin "Dick" Haymes (September 13, 1918 – March 28, 1980) was an actor and singer. He was one of the most popular male vocalists of the 1940s and early 1950s. He was the older brother of Bob Haymes, who was an actor, television host, and songwriter.
Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1918. His mother, whom Haymes predeceased, was Irish-born Marguerite Haymes (1894–1987), a well-known vocal coach and instructor. Dick Haymes became a vocalist in a number of big bands, worked in Hollywood, on radio, and in films throughout the 1940s/1950s.
wn.com/Dick_Haymes -
Dick Powell
Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss. Though he came to stardom as a musical comedy performer, he successfully transformed into a hardbitten leading man of darker projects.
Born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas, Powell attended the former Little Rock College in the state capital, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in the midwest. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s.
Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought Brunswick Records, which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. He went on to star as a boyish crooner in movie musicals such as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Flirtation Walk, and On the Avenue, often appearing opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell.
wn.com/Dick_Powell -
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality. She reached the height of her popularity as a recording artist during the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s, but achieved even greater success a decade later, in television, mainly as hostess of a series of variety programs for Chevrolet.
After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman and both Jimmy Dorsey and his brother Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own to become the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of 80 charted popular hits, lasting from 1940 into the late '50s, and after appearing in a handful of films went on to a four-decade career in American television, starring in her own music and variety shows in the '50s and '60s and hosting two talk shows in the '70s. TV Guide magazine ranked her at #16 on their list of the top fifty television stars of all time. Stylistically, Dinah Shore was compared to two singers who followed her in the mid-to-late '40s and early '50s, Doris Day and Patti Page.
wn.com/Dinah_Shore -
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.
Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."
Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.
wn.com/Dizzy_Gillespie -
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt (French pronunciation: [dʒɑ̃ɡo ʁenɑʁt]; 23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953) was a pioneering virtuoso Belgian jazz guitarist and composer.
Often regarded as the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the idiom, he is also revered by guitarists worldwide as among the foremost exponents of the instrument. Reinhardt invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called 'hot' jazz guitar) that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, he co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz." Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing", "Daphne", "Belleville", "Djangology", "Swing '42", and "Nuages".
Jean "Django" Reinhardt was born 23 January 1910 in Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium, into a family of Manouche gypsies. Reinhardt's nickname "Django" is Romani for "I awake." Reinhardt spent most of his youth in Romani (Gypsy) encampments close to Paris, playing banjo, guitar and violin from an early age. His family made cane furniture for a living, but included several keen amateur musicians.
wn.com/Django_Reinhardt -
Doris Day
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff, April 3, 1924) is an American actress, singer, and animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording, "Sentimental Journey", in 1945. After leaving the Les Brown & His Band of Renown to try a solo career, she started her long-lasting partnership with Columbia Records, which would remain her only recording label. The contract lasted from 1947 to 1967, and included more than 650 recordings, making Day one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century. In 1948, after being persuaded by Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne and her agent at the time, Al Levy, she auditioned for Michael Curtiz, which led to her being cast in the female lead role in Romance on the High Seas.
With a legendary Hollywood "girl next door" image, and capable of delivering comedy and romance as well as heavy drama, she appeared in 39 films, released 29 albums, spent 460 weeks in the Top 40 charts and eventually became one of America's most beloved entertainers. She received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Pillow Talk, won three Henrietta Awards (World Film Favorite), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Legend Award from the Society of Singers, Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Career Achievement Award and, in 1989, received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures.
wn.com/Doris_Day -
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater.
After several minor bit parts in films, Dandridge landed her first noted film role in Tarzan's Peril (starring Lex Barker), in 1951. Dandridge won her first starring role in 1953, playing a teacher in a low-budget film with a nearly all-black cast, Bright Road, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
In 1954, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Carmen Jones, and in 1959 she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Porgy and Bess. In 1999, she was the subject of the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, starring Halle Berry as Dandridge. She has been recognized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
wn.com/Dorothy_Dandridge -
Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour (December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American film actress. She is best remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Carmen Louise (née LaPorte) and John Watson Slaton, both of whom were waiters. Lamour was of French Louisianan, Spanish and Irish descent. Her parents' marriage lasted only a few years, with her mother re-marrying to Clarence Lambour, and Dorothy took his last name. That marriage also ended in divorce when Dorothy was a teenager.
In 1935, she had her own fifteen-minute weekly musical program on NBC Radio. She also sang on the popular Rudy Vallee radio show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour.
Early in her career, Lamour met J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to Hoover's biographer Richard Hack, Hoover pursued Lamour romantically, but she was initially interested only in friendship with him. Hoover and Lamour remained close friends to the end of Hoover's life, and after his 1972 death, Lamour did not deny rumors that she'd had an affair with him in the years after she divorced Herbie Kay. However, this appears nowhere in her memoirs My Side of the Road (Prentice-Hall, 1980) ISBN 0-13-218594-6.
wn.com/Dorothy_Lamour -
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (26 January 1880 – 5 April 1964) was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign. Arthur MacArthur, Jr., and Douglas MacArthur were the first father and son to each be awarded the medal. He was one of only five men ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army in the U.S. Army, and the only man ever to become a field marshal in the Philippine Army.
Douglas MacArthur was raised in a military family in the American Old West. He attended the West Texas Military Academy, where he was valedictorian, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was First Captain and graduated top of the class of 1903. During the 1914 United States occupation of Veracruz, he conducted a reconnaissance mission, for which he was nominated for the Medal of Honor. In 1917, he was promoted from major to colonel and became chief of staff of the 42nd (Rainbow) Division. In the fighting on the Western Front during World War I, he rose to the rank of brigadier general, was again nominated for a Medal of Honor, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross twice and the Silver Star seven times.
wn.com/Douglas_MacArthur -
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington." A major figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.
wn.com/Duke_Ellington -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (pronounced /ˈaɪzənhaʊər/, EYE-zən-how-ər; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II, and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45, from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and was reared in a large family in Kansas, by parents with a robust work ethic and religious background. As one of five sons, he was conditioned by a competitive atmosphere which instilled self-reliance. He attended and graduated from West Point, and later was married with two sons. After World War II Eisenhower served as Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman, then assumed the post of President at Columbia University.
wn.com/Dwight_D._Eisenhower -
Eduardo Santos
Eduardo Santos Montejo (Bogotá, August 28, 1888 - Bogotá, March 27, 1974) was a leading Colombian publisher and politician, active in the Colombian Liberal Party. He owned the prominent Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, and served as the President of Colombia from August 1938 to August 1942.
Santos was close friends with the Venezuelan Ambassador in Colombia Juan Oropeza.
wn.com/Eduardo_Santos -
Eleanor Powell
Eleanor Torrey Powell (November 21, 1912 – February 11, 1982) was an American film actress and dancer of the 1930s and 1940s, known for her exuberant solo tap dancing.
Powell was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. A dancer since childhood, she was discovered at the age of 11 by the head of the Vaudeville Kiddie revue, Gus Edwards. When she was 17, she brought her graceful, athletic style to Broadway, where she starred in various revues and musicals. During this time, she was dubbed "the world's greatest tap dancer" due to her machine-gun footwork, and in the early 1930s appeared as a chorus girl in a couple of early, inconsequential musical films.
In 1935, the leggy, fresh-faced Powell made the move to Hollywood and did a specialty number in her first major film, George White's 1935 Scandals which she later described as a disaster because she was accidentally made up to look like an Egyptian. The experience left her unimpressed with Hollywood and when she was courted by MGM, she initially refused their offers of a contract. Reportedly, Powell attempted to dissuade the studio by making what she felt were unreasonable salary demands, but MGM agreed to them and she finally accepted. The studio groomed her for stardom, making minimal changes in her makeup and conduct.
wn.com/Eleanor_Powell -
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty and distinctive violet eyes.
National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theatre.
Her much publicized personal life included eight marriages and several life-threatening illnesses. From the mid-1980s, Taylor championed HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. She received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Legion of Honour, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends". Taylor died of congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.
wn.com/Elizabeth_Taylor -
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.
wn.com/Ella_Fitzgerald -
Emperor Shōwa
Hirohito (裕仁?), posthumously in Japan officially called Emperor Shōwa or the Shōwa Emperor (昭和天皇, Shōwa tennō?), (April 29, 1901 – January 7, 1989) was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order, reigning from December 25, 1926, until his death in 1989. Although better known outside of Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan he is now referred to exclusively by his posthumous name Emperor Shōwa. The word Shōwa is the name of the era that corresponded with the Emperor's reign, and was made the Emperor's own name upon his death.
At the start of his reign, Japan was already one of the great powers—the ninth largest economy in the world after Italy, the third largest naval country, and one of the five permanent members of the council of the League of Nations. He was the head of state under the limitation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan during Japan's imperial expansion, militarization, and involvement in World War II. After the war, he was not prosecuted for war crimes as many other leading government figures were. During the postwar period, he became the symbol of the new state.
wn.com/Emperor_Shōwa -
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.
wn.com/Ernest_Hemingway -
Ernest J. King
Fleet Admiral Ernest Joseph King (23 November 1878 – 25 June 1956) was Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (COMINCH-CNO) during World War II. As COMINCH, he directed the United States Navy's operations, planning, and administration and was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the U.S. Navy's second most senior officer after Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, and the second admiral to be promoted to five star rank. As COMINCH, he served under Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and later under James Forrestal.
King was born in Lorain, Ohio, on 23 November 1878, the son of James Clydesdale King and Elizabath Keam King. He attended the United States Naval Academy from 1897 until 1901, graduating fourth in his class. During his senior year at the Academy, he attained the rank of Midshipman Lieutenant Commander, the highest midshipman ranking at that time.
While still at the Academy, he served on the USS San Francisco during the Spanish American War. After graduation, he served as a junior officer on the survey ship USS Eagle, the battleships USS Illinois, USS Alabama and USS New Hampshire, and the cruiser USS Cincinnati.
wn.com/Ernest_J._King -
Ernest Tubb
Ernest Dale Tubb (February 9, 1914 – September 6, 1984), nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" (1941), marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music. In 1948, he was the first singer to record a hit version of "Blue Christmas", a song more commonly associated with Elvis Presley and his mid-1950s version. Another well-known Tubb hit was "Waltz Across Texas" (1965), which became one of his most requested songs and is often used in dance halls throughout Texas during waltz lessons. Tubb recorded duets with the then up-and-coming Loretta Lynn in the early 1960s, including their hit "Sweet Thang". Tubb is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Tubb was born on a cotton farm near Crisp, in Ellis County, Texas (now a ghost town). His father was a sharecropper, so Tubb spent his youth working on farms throughout the state. He was inspired by Jimmie Rodgers and spent his spare time learning to sing, yodel, and play the guitar. At age 19 he took a job as a singer on San Antonio radio station KONO-AM. The pay was low so Tubb also dug ditches for the Works Progress Administration and then clerked at a drug store. In 1939 he moved to San Angelo, Texas and was hired to do a 15-minute afternoon live show on radio station KGKL-AM. He drove a beer delivery truck in order to support himself during this time, and during World War II he wrote and recorded a song titled "Beautiful San Angelo".
wn.com/Ernest_Tubb -
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (January 28, 1892 – November 30, 1947) was a German Americanfilm director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."
In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture, and he was nominated three times for Best Director.
Lubitsch was born in Berlin, the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch (Russian: Любич), a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen-on-the-Oder, outside Berlin. He turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. He made his film debut the following year as an actor, but he gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing.
In 1918, he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry (retitled Passion, 1919) and Anna Boleyn (Deception, 1920). Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921. They, along with Lubitsch's Carmen (released as Gypsy Blood in the U.S. in 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921.
wn.com/Ernst_Lubitsch -
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-born American actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.
Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, where his father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania. Flynn was born at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Battery Point. His mother was born Lily Mary Young, but dropped the first names Lily Mary shortly after she was married and changed her name to Marelle. Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his life-long interest in boats and the sea originated. Despite Flynn's claims, the evidence indicates that he was not descended from any of the Bounty mutineers. Married at St John's Church of England, Balmain North, Sydney, New South Wales, on 23 January 1909, both of his parents were native-born Australians of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, with convict links to Tasmania long before Flynn's birth. Flynn, living at Mclean Avenue Chatswood, Sydney in 1926, attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School) where he was the classmate of future Australian Prime Minister, John Gorton. He was expelled for fighting and, allegedly, having sex with a school laundress. He was also expelled from several other schools he had attended in Tasmania. At the age of 20 he moved to New Guinea where he bought a tobacco plantation, a business which failed. A copper mining venture in the hills near the Laloki Valley, behind the present national capital, Port Moresby, also failed.
wn.com/Errol_Flynn -
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), popularly known as the Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs, listen (help·info)), was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought.
He was a highly decorated officer in World War I, and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his exploits on the Italian front. In World War II, he further distinguished himself as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. However, it was his leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign that established the legend of the Desert Fox. He is considered to have been one of the most skilled commanders of desert warfare in the conflict.[page needed] He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion in Normandy.
As one of the few generals who consistently fought the Western Allies (he was never assigned to the Eastern Front), Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer. His Afrikakorps was never accused of war crimes. Soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely. Furthermore, he ignored orders to kill captured commandos, Jewish soldiers and civilians in all theaters of his command.
wn.com/Erwin_Rommel -
Ezzard Charles
Ezzard Mack Charles (July 7, 1921 – May 28, 1975) was an American professional boxer and former World Heavyweight Champion. He holds wins over numerous Hall of Fame fighters in three different weight classes. Charles retired with a record of 93 wins, 25 losses and 1 draw.
He was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, but is commonly thought of as a Cincinnatian. Charles graduated from Woodward High School in Cincinnati where he was already becoming a well-known fighter. Known as "The Cincinnati Cobra," Charles fought many notable opponents in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, eventually winning a championship in the latter. Although he never won the Light Heavyweight title, The Ring Magazine has rated him as the greatest light heavyweight of all time.
Ezzard Charles started his career as a featherweight in the amateurs, where he had a record of 42-0. In 1938, he won the Diamond Belt Middleweight Championship. He followed this up in 1939 by winning the Chicago Golden Gloves tournament of champions. He won the national AAU Middleweight Championship in 1939. He turned pro in 1940, knocking out Melody Johnson in the 4th round. Charles won all of his first 15 fights before being defeated by veteran Ken Overlin. Victories over future Hall of Famers Teddy Yarosz and the much avoided Charley Burley had started to solidify Charles as a top contender in the middleweight division. However, he served in the U.S. military during World War II and was unable to fight professionally in 1945.
wn.com/Ezzard_Charles -
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, better known under the name of Franco, (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko]; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general, dictator and the leader of the Nationalist military rebellion in the Spanish Civil War, and totalitarian head of state of Spain, from October 1936 (as a unified nation from 1939 onwards) until his death in November 1975. He came to power while recognizing the principles of the far-right Falange movement, although this was for propaganda reasons, as he belonged to no political party before becoming Head of State. As head of state, Franco used the titles Caudillo de España and Generalísimo, but also was called formally as His Excellency, The Head of State.
Franco was from a military family, and although originally intent on entering the Spanish Navy, he instead became a soldier. He participated in the Rif War in Morocco, becoming the youngest general in Europe by 1926. After returning to the Spanish mainland, he saw service suppressing an anarchist-led strike in 1934, defending the stability of Alcalá-Zamora's conservative government. Following the formation of a Popular Front government, made up of various left-wing factions, instability heightened. Violence between militant groups rose sharply with assassination of conservative parliamentary leader José Calvo Sotelo, in retaliation for the killing of José Castillo. Franco and his co-conspirators used Calvo's death as their pretext for war, as they had already initiated the plan for their rebellion.
wn.com/Francisco_Franco -
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s. His rags-to-riches story, having worked his way through college, has led film historians like Ian Freer to consider Capra the "American dream personified."
Capra became one of America's most powerful directors during the 1930s, winning three Oscars as Best Director. Among his leading films was It Happened One Night (1934), which became the first film to win all five top Oscars, including Best Picture. Other leading films included Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and State of the Union (1948). Because of his early fame as a director, his name was listed "above the title" of his films when they were publicized. People "flocked to the theaters" during the 1930s and 1940s to see films directed by Frank Capra.
wn.com/Frank_Capra -
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra, /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
wn.com/Frank_Sinatra -
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire". Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.
Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.
wn.com/Fred_Astaire -
Fred MacMurray
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s.
MacMurray is well known for his role in the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder, which he starred in with Barbara Stanwyck. Later in his career, he became better known worldwide as the paternal Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960–1965 and then on CBS from 1965–1972.
MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois to Frederick MacMurray and Maleta Martin, both natives of Wisconsin. When MacMurray was two[citation needed] years old the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin and several[vague] years later settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where his mother had been born in 1880. He earned a full scholarship to attend Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In college, MacMurray participated in numerous local bands, playing the saxophone.
wn.com/Fred_MacMurray -
Fredric March
Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives.
March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown (née Marcher), a schoolteacher, and John F. Bickel, a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business. March attended the Winslow Elementary School (established in 1855), Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi. He began a career as a banker, but an emergency appendectomy caused him to reevaluate his life, and in 1920 he began working as an extra in movies made in New York City, using a shortened form of his mother's maiden name, Marcher. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures.
March received an Oscar nomination in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway, in which he played a role based upon John Barrymore (which he had first played on stage in Los Angeles). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ although March accrued one more vote than Beery), leading to a series of classic films based on stage hits and classic novels like Design for Living (1933) with Gary Cooper, Death Takes a Holiday (1934), Les Misérables (1935) with Charles Laughton, Anthony Adverse (1936) with Olivia de Havilland, and as the original Norman Maine in A Star is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor, for which he received his third Oscar nomination.
wn.com/Fredric_March -
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (Spanish: [fulˈxensjo βaˈtista i salˈdiβar]; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution.
Batista initially rose to power after being under "peer-Pressure" by long time mentor Nicholas C. Sumners, as part of the 1933 "Revolt of the Sergeants" that overthrew the authoritarian rule of Gerardo Machado. Batista then appointed himself chief of the armed forces with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member Presidency. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba, deemed progressive for its time, and served until 1944. After finishing his term he lived in the United States, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup that preempted the election.
wn.com/Fulgencio_Batista -
Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced: [ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi]; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world.
Son of a senior government official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London. Gandhi became famous by fighting for the civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using the new techniques of non-violent civil disobedience that he developed. Returning to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants to protest excessive land-taxes. A lifelong opponent of "communalism" (i.e. basing politics on religion) he reached out widely to all religious groups. He became a leader of Muslims protesting the declining status of the Caliphate. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, and above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from British domination.
wn.com/Gandhi -
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, (May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made. He also excelled in sophisticated, screwball romantic comedies. His career spanned from 1925 until shortly before his death in 1961, and comprised more than one hundred films.
Cooper received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning twice for Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Honorary Award in 1961 from the Academy.
Decades later, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars, ranking 11th among males from the Classical Hollywood cinema period. In 2003, his performances as Will Kane in High Noon, Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees, and Alvin York in Sergeant York made the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list, all of them as heroes.
wn.com/Gary_Cooper -
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912 - February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer. Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.
Although he is known today for his performances in Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until this art form fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute; in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered him 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list.
wn.com/Gene_Kelly -
Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.
Eugene Bertram Krupa was born in Chicago, the youngest of Anna (Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa's nine children. Krupa's father, Bartłomiej, was an immigrant from Poland, and his mother, Anna, was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. His parents were very religious and had groomed Gene for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at various parochial schools and upon graduation, attended St Joseph's College for a year, but later decided it was not his vocation. He studied with Sanford A. Moeller and began playing professionally in the mid 1920s with bands in Wisconsin. He broke into the Chicago scene in 1927, when he was picked by MCA to become a member of "Thelma Terry and Her Playboys," the first notable American Jazz band (outside of all-girl bands) to be led by a female musician. The Playboys were the house band at The Golden Pumpkin nightclub in Chicago and also toured extensively throughout the eastern and central United States.[citation needed]
wn.com/Gene_Krupa -
Gene Lockhart
Eugene "Gene" Lockhart (July 18, 1891 – March 31, 1957) was a Canadian character actor, singer, and playwright. He also wrote the lyrics to a number of popular songs.
Born in London, Ontario, Lockhart made his professional debut at the age of six when he appeared with the Kilties Band of Canada. At the age of 15, he was appearing in sketches with actress Beatrice Lillie. Lockhart was educated in various Canadian schools and at the Brompton Oratory School in London, England. He also played football for the Toronto Argonauts.
Lockhart had a long stage career; he also wrote professionally and taught acting and stage technique at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. He had also written theatrical sketches, radio shows, special stage material, song lyrics and articles for stage and radio magazines.
He made his Broadway debut in 1916, in the musical The Riviera Girl. He was a member of the travelling play The Pierrot Players (for which he wrote the book and lyrics). This play introduced the song, The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise, for which Lockhart wrote the lyrics along with Canadian composer Ernest Seitz. (The song was subsequently made popular by Les Paul and Mary Ford in the 1950s.) He also wrote and directed the Broadway musical revue Bunk of 1926. He also sang in Die Fledermaus for the San Francisco Opera Association.
wn.com/Gene_Lockhart -
George C. Marshall
George Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II, Marshall served as the United States Army Chief of Staff during the war and as the chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Secretary of State, his name was given to the Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
George Catlett Marshall was born into a middle-class family in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the son of George Catlett Marshall, Sr. and Laura Emily (Bradford) Marshall. Marshall was a scion of an old Virginia family, as well as a distant relative of former Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where he was initiated into the Kappa Alpha Order, in 1901.
Following graduation from VMI, Marshall was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Until World War I, he was posted to various positions in the US and the Philippines. He served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander in the Phillipines during the Phillipine-American War and several other guerilla uprisings. He was schooled and trained in modern warfare. His pre-war service included a tour at Fort Leavenworth, KS from 1906 to 1910 as both a student and an instructor.
wn.com/George_C._Marshall -
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's influence on popular and political culture endures, and several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian—a byword for totalitarian or manipulative social practices—have entered the vernacular.
wn.com/George_Orwell -
George S. Patton
George Smith Patton, Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was an officer in the United States Army best known for his leadership as a general during World War II. He also developed a reputation for eccentricity and for sometimes-controversial gruff outspokenness—such as during his profanity-laced speech to his expeditionary troops.
He was on the U.S. 1912 Olympic pentathlon team and also designed the U.S. Cavalry's last combat saber: the "Patton Saber" (the M-1913). In 1916 he led the first-ever U.S. motorized-vehicle attack during the Mexican Border Campaign. In World War I, he was the first officer assigned to the new United States Tank Corps and saw action in France.
In World War II, he commanded corps and armies in North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater of Operations. In 1944, Patton assumed command of the U.S. Third Army, which under his leadership advanced farther, captured more enemy prisoners, and liberated more territory in less time than any other army in history. A German field marshal speaking to American reporters called Patton "your best" (general).
wn.com/George_S._Patton -
Georgy Zhukov
Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (Russian: Гео́ргий Константи́нович Жу́ков; 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1896 – 18 June 1974), was a Soviet career officer in the Red Army who, in the course of World War II, played a pivotal role in leading the Red Army drive through much of Eastern Europe to liberate the Soviet Union and other nations from the brutal occupation of the Axis Powers, and ultimately, to conquer the capital of Germany itself, Berlin. He is the most decorated general officer in the history of the Soviet Union and Russia.
Born into a poverty-stricken peasant family in Strelkovka, Maloyaroslavsky Uyezd, Kaluga Governorate (now merged into the town of Zhukov in Zhukovsky District of Kaluga Oblast in modern-day Russia), Zhukov was apprenticed to work as a furrier in Moscow. In 1915, he was conscripted into the Army of the Russian Empire, where he served first in the 106th Reserve Cavalry Regiment (then called the 10th Dragoon Novgorod Regiment). During World War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St. George twice, and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer, for his bravery in battle. He joined the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution, where his background of poverty became a significant asset. After recovering from a serious case of typhus, he fought in the Russian Civil War over the period 1918 to 1921, serving with the 1st Cavalry Army, among other formations. He received the decoration of the Order of the Red Banner for subduing the Tambov rebellion in 1921.
wn.com/Georgy_Zhukov -
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒeˈtuliu doɾˈnɛlis ˈvaɾɡɐs]; 19 April 1882 – 24 August 1954) served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history only to Emperor Pedro II among heads of government. He favored nationalism, industrialization, centralization, social welfare and populism – for the latter, Vargas won the nickname "O Pai dos Pobres" (Portuguese for "The Father of the Poor"). Despite his promotion of workers' rights, Vargas was a staunch anti-communist.
Vargas was brought to power by political outsiders and the rank and file of the Armed Forces in the Revolution of 1930, a reaction to his loss in rigged elections earlier that year. His ascent marked the end of the Brazilian oligarchic Old Republic and states' dominated café com leite politics. He successfully influenced the outcome of the Brazilian presidential election of 1934, and instituted an authoritarian corporatist regime in 1937 known as the Estado Novo ("New State"), prolonging his hold onto power. Vargas went on to appease and eventually dominate his supporters, and pushed his political agenda as he built a propaganda machine around his figure.
wn.com/Getúlio_Vargas -
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century.
During her long career, she made a total of 73 films, and was best known as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre. She achieved great success on her own in a variety of film roles and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940). She ranks #14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of actress screen legends.
Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, the only child of William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Lela Emogene (née Owens; 1891–1977). Ginger's parents separated soon after her birth, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents, Walter and Saphrona (née Ball) Owens, in nearby Kansas City. Rogers' parents fought over her custody. After her mother denied him visitation, her father reportedly absconded with his daughter twice. After her parents divorced, Rogers stayed with her grandparents while her mother wrote scripts for two years in Hollywood. Rogers was to remain close to her grandfather (much later, when she was a star in 1939, she bought him a home at 5115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California so that he could be close to her while she was filming at the studios).[citation needed]
wn.com/Ginger_Rogers -
Giuseppe De Santis
Giuseppe De Santis (11 February 1917 – 16 May 1997) was an Italian film director. One of the most idealistic neorealist filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s, he wrote and directed films punctuated by ardent cries for social reform.
He was the brother of Italian cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis. His wife is Gordana Miletic, actress (former ballet dancer) from the former Yugoslavia
De Santis was born in Fondi, Lazio. He was a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and fought with the anti-German Resistance in Rome during World War II.
He was first a student of philosophy and literature before entering Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While working as a journalist for Cinema magazine, De Santis became, under the influence of Cesare Zavattini, a major proponent of the early neorealist filmmakers who were trying to make films that mirrored the simple and tragic realities of proletarian life using location shooting and nonprofessional actors.
In 1942, De Santis collaborated on the script for Ossessione, Luchino Visconti's debut film, which is usually considered one of the first neo-realist films.
wn.com/Giuseppe_De_Santis -
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – missing in action December 15, 1944) was an American jazz musician (trombone), arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known Big Bands. Miller's notable recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", and "Little Brown Jug". While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Glenn Miller disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was re-formed after the war and continues to record and perform to this day.
Miller was born on a farm in Clarinda, Iowa, to Lewis Elmer Miller and Mattie Lou (née Cavender). He went to grade school in North Platte in western Nebraska. In 1915, Miller's family moved to Grant City, Missouri. Around this time, Miller had finally made enough money from milking cows to buy his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. In 1918, the Miller family moved again, this time to Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Miller went to high school. During his senior year, Miller became very interested in a new style of music called "dance band music." He was so taken with it that he formed his own band with some classmates. By the time Miller graduated from high school in 1921, he had decided he wanted to become a professional musician.
wn.com/Glenn_Miller -
Greer Garson
Greer Garson, CBE (29 September 1904 – 6 April 1996) was a British actress who was very popular during World War II, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top ten box office draws in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, and 1946. As one of MGM's major stars of the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Actress award for Mrs. Miniver (1942).
Greer Garson was born Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson in Manor Park, Essex (now Greater London), England in 1904, the only child of George Garson (1865–1906), a clerk born in London, but with Scottish lineage, and his wife, Nina (née Nancy Sophia Greer; died 1958). Her maternal grandfather was David Greer, a RIC sergeant in Castlewellan, County Down, Ireland in the 1880s and who later became a land steward to the Annesley family (wealthy landlords who built the town of Castlewellan). He lived in a large detached house built on the lower part of what was known as Pig Street or known locally as the Back Way near Shilliday's builder's yard. The house was called ‘Claremount’ and today the street is named Claremount Avenue. It was often reported that Garson was born in this house. She was, in fact, born in London, but spent much of her childhood in Castlewellan.
wn.com/Greer_Garson -
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor.
One of the world's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an Academy Award. President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at #12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, California, the son of Missouri-born Bernice Mae "Bunny" (née Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, who was a chemist and pharmacist. Peck's father was of Irish (maternal) heritage and English (paternal) heritage, and his mother was of Scots (paternal) and English (maternal) ancestry. Peck's father was a Catholic and his mother converted upon marrying his father. Peck's Irish-born paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe, was related to Thomas Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising fewer than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while on hunger strike in 1917. Peck's parents divorced by the time he was six years old and he spent the next few years being raised by his maternal grandmother.
wn.com/Gregory_Peck -
Hajime Sugiyama
Hajime Sugiyama (杉山 元, Sugiyama Hajime / Sugiyama Gen?, 1 January 1880 – 12 September 1945) was a field marshal who served as successively as chief of the Army General Staff, and minister of war in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II between 1937 and 1944. As War Minister in 1937, he was one of the principal architects of the China Incident or second Sino-Japanese War. Later, as Army Chief of Staff in 1940 and 1941, he was a leading advocate of expansion into Southeast Asia and later preventive war against the United States.
Born to a former samurai family from Kokura (now part of Kitakyushu City), Fukuoka Prefecture, Sugiyama was commissioned as a lieutenant in the infantry in 1901 after graduation from the 12th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, and served in the Russo-Japanese War.
After graduating from the 22nd class of the Army Staff College in 1910 and serving on the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, Sugiyama was posted as military attaché to the Philippines and Singapore in 1912. Promoted to major in 1913, he was posted again as military attaché to British India in 1915. During this time, he also visited Germany, and became acquainted with the use of aircraft in combat in World War I.
wn.com/Hajime_Sugiyama -
Hank Greenberg
Henry Benjamin "Hank" Greenberg (January 1, 1911 – September 4, 1986), nicknamed "Hammerin' Hank" or "The Hebrew Hammer," was an American professional baseball player in the 1930s and 1940s. A first baseman primarily for the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg was one of the premier power hitters of his generation. He hit 58 home runs in 1938, equaling Jimmie Foxx's 1932 mark for the most home runs in one season by any player between 1927 (when Babe Ruth set a record of 60) and 1961 (when Roger Maris surpassed it).
Greenberg was a five-time All-Star, was twice named the American League's Most Valuable Player, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1956. Greenberg became the first major league player to hit 25 or more home runs in a season in each league. Greenberg is still the American League record holder for most RBIs in a single season by a right-handed batter—183 RBI in 1937 (a 154-game schedule.) Only left-handed batter Lou Gehrig's 184 RBI in 1931 surpasses Greenberg in the American League record books. Greenberg was sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1947, became the very first baseball player to earn over $80,000/year in salary (he was paid $100,000, ($1,041,000 today) plus $25,000 that his contract with Detroit called for in the event they sold or traded him), and was one of the few opposing players publicly to welcome Jackie Robinson to the majors.[1]
wn.com/Hank_Greenberg -
Harold Alexander
Field Marshal Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis KG PC GCB OM GCMG CSI DSO MC CD PC (10 December 1891 – 16 June 1969) was a British military commander and field marshal who served with distinction in both world wars and, afterwards, as Governor General of Canada, the 17th since Canadian Confederation.
Alexander was born in London, England, to parents of noble heritage, and was educated at English public schools before moving on to Sandhurst for training as an army officer. He rose to prominence through his service in the First World War, receiving numerous honours and decorations, and continued his military career through various British campaigns across Europe and Asia. In the Second World War, Alexander acted as a high ranking commander in North Africa and Italy. He commanded 15th Army Group in Sicily and again in Italy before being made Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean. He was in 1946 appointed as governor general by King George VI on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to replace the Earl of Athlone as viceroy, and he occupied the post until succeeded by Vincent Massey in 1952. Alexander proved to be enthusiastic about the Canadian wilderness, as well as a popular governor general with the Canadian people, and he would be the last non-Canadian-born governor general before the appointment of Adrienne Clarkson in 1999.
wn.com/Harold_Alexander -
Harry James
Henry Haag “Harry” James (March 15, 1916 - July 5, 1983) was an actor and musician best known as a trumpeter who led a swing band during the Big Band Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.
Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a traveling circus. By the age of 10 he was taking trumpet lessons from his father, who placed him on a strict daily practice schedule. Each day, James was given one page to learn from the Arban's book and was not allowed to pursue any other pastime until he had learned that particular page.
In 1931 his family settled in Beaumont, Texas, where James began playing with local dance bands.
In 1935 he joined the nationally popular Ben Pollack but at the start of 1937 left Pollack to join Benny Goodman's orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed "The Hawk" early in his career for his ability to "sight-read." A common joke was that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James would play it. His low range had a warmth associated with the cornet and even the flugelhorn, but he achieved this on the trumpet. This was emulated by Jack Sheldon, but this sound was underrecorded in favor of James' brilliant high register.
wn.com/Harry_James -
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States (1945), he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his unprecedented fourth term.
During World War I, Truman served in combat in France as an artillery officer in his National Guard unit. After the war, he joined the Democratic Party political machine of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected a county official and in 1934 United States senator. After he had gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.
Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his election, he passed only one of the proposals in his liberal Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office.
wn.com/Harry_S._Truman -
Henri Winkelman
Henri Gerard Winkelman (17 August 1876 - 27 December 1952) was a Dutch General best known for his command of the Dutch troops during the German invasion of the Netherlands.
Winkelman was born in Maastricht as the son of Julius Hendrik Winkelman and Charlotte Henriëtte Braams. After he completed his secondary education he attended the Royal Military Academy (KMA) in Breda. His goal was to become an officer in the KNIL, the Dutch colonial army for the Dutch East Indies. During his training he adjusted his goal and became an infantry officer. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1896. He married Arendin Jacomina Coert in 1902 who would give birth to two sons and two daughters. Having completed his military education, he began to climb up the ranks of the Dutch army. In 1913 he was promoted to Captain, in 1923 he became a Major and in 1931 he was given the rank of General and became the commander of the Dutch 4th division. In 1934 he became a Lieutenant General, but left the military only shortly thereafter. Winkelman had been running for the position of Chief of Staff of the Dutch Army, but had lost out to General I.H. Reijnders. Winkelman then decided to retire and was granted honorary discharge. As a retired officer, he remained active in a number of ways, mostly by giving advice.
wn.com/Henri_Winkelman -
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American film and stage actor.
Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins. He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball.
Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity. His family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
wn.com/Henry_Fonda -
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, (or Goering;German pronunciation: [ˈɡøːʁɪŋ] ( listen); 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader, and leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). A veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, he was a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "the Blue Max". He was the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen, "the Red Baron".
A member of the NSDAP from its early days, Göring was wounded in 1923 during the failed coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch. He suffered from a lifelong addiction to morphine after being treated with the drug for his injuries. He founded the Gestapo in 1933. Göring was appointed commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (air force) in 1935, a position he held until the final days of World War II. By 1940 he was at the peak of his power and influence; as minister in charge of the Four Year Plan, he was responsible for much of the functioning of the German economy in the build-up to World War II. Adolf Hitler promoted him to the rank of Reichsmarschall, a rank senior to all other Wehrmacht commanders, and in 1941 Hitler designated him as his successor and deputy in all his offices.
wn.com/Hermann_Göring -
Hideki Tōjō
Hideki Tōjō (Kyūjitai: 東條 英機; Shinjitai: 東条 英機; Tōjō Hideki (help·info)) (30 December 1884 – 23 December 1948) was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), the leader of the Taisei Yokusankai, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War II, from 17 October 1941 to 22 July 1944. As Prime Minister, he was directly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to the war between Japan and the United States, although planning for it had begun before he entered office. After the end of the war, Tōjō was arrested, sentenced to death for Japanese war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and was hanged on 23 December 1948.
Hideki Tōjō was born in the Kōjimachi district of Tokyo on 30 December 1884 as the third son of Hidenori Tōjō, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. He would later change his given name from the Chinese-inspired "Eiki" to the traditionally more Japanese "Hideki" (see on'yomi). In 1899, Tōjō entered the Army Cadet School. When he graduated from the Japanese Military Academy (ranked 10th of 363 cadets[citation needed]) in March 1905 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry of the IJA. In 1909, he married Katsuko Ito, with whom he would have three sons and four daughters. By 1928, he had become the bureau chief of the Japanese Army, and was shortly thereafter promoted to colonel. He began to take an interest in militarist politics during his command of the 1st Infantry Regiment.
wn.com/Hideki_Tōjō -
Hirohito
Hirohito (裕仁?), posthumously in Japan officially called Emperor Shōwa or the Shōwa Emperor (昭和天皇, Shōwa tennō?), (April 29, 1901 – January 7, 1989) was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order, reigning from December 25, 1926, until his death in 1989. Although better known outside of Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan he is now referred to exclusively by his posthumous name Emperor Shōwa. The word Shōwa is the name of the era that corresponded with the Emperor's reign, and was made the Emperor's own name upon his death.
At the start of his reign, Japan was already one of the great powers—the ninth largest economy in the world after Italy, the third largest naval country, and one of the five permanent members of the council of the League of Nations. He was the head of state under the limitation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan during Japan's imperial expansion, militarization, and involvement in World War II. After the war, he was not prosecuted for war crimes as many other leading government figures were. During the postwar period, he became the symbol of the new state.
wn.com/Hirohito -
Holocaust victims
While the term Holocaust victims generally refers to Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior (Untermenschen), undesirable or dangerous.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) states: “The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II."
In addition to Jews, the targeted groups included Poles (of whom 2.5 million gentile Poles were killed) and some other Slavic peoples; Soviets (particularly prisoners of war); Romanies (also known as Gypsies) and others who did not belong to the "Aryan race"; the mentally ill, the deaf, the physically disabled and mentally retarded; homosexual and transsexual people; political opponents such as social democrats and socialists; and religious dissidents, i.e. members of Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics. Taking into account all of the victims of Nazi persecution, they systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and mass murdered an additional eleven million people during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths would produce a death toll of 17 million.
wn.com/Holocaust_victims -
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896–December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. He is popular for his films from a wide range of genres such as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing from Another World (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).
In 1975, Hawks was awarded the Honorary Academy Award as "a master American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema," and in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York.
Howard Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana on May 30, 1896. Hawks was the first-born child of Frank W. Hawks (1865–1950), a wealthy paper manufacturer, and the former Helen Howard (1872–1952), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Hawks's family on his father's side were American pioneers and his ancestor John Hawks had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1630. The family eventually settled in Goshen and by the 1890s was one of the wealthiest families in the Mid-West, due mostly to the highly profitable Goshen Milling Company. Hawk's maternal grandfather C. W. Howard (1845–1916) had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1862 at age 17 and within 15 years had earned a fortune in the town's Paper mill and other industrial endeavors. Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895. Hawks was the oldest of five children and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks (August 12, 1899- January 2, 1930), William Bellinger Hawks (1902- January 10, 1969), Grace Louise Hawks (October 17, 1903- December 23, 1927) and Helen Bernice Hawks (1906- May 4, 1911). In 1898 the family moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where Franks Hawks began working for his father-in-law's Howard Paper Company.
wn.com/Howard_Hawks -
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon. The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema.
After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
Bogart's breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944); The Big Sleep (1946); Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); In a Lonely Place (1950); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award; Sabrina (1954); and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His last movie was The Harder They Fall (1956). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.
wn.com/Humphrey_Bogart -
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes. Additionally, she contributed as a writer to five films and four TV episodes.
Lupino was born in 1918 into an English family of performers. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was a music hall comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald (1892–1959), was an actress. As a girl, Ida Lupino was encouraged to enter show business by both her parents and her uncle, Lupino Lane. She trained at RADA and made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931), the next year making Her First Affaire. She played leading roles in five British films in 1933 at Warner Bros.' Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including in The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello. She moved to Hollywood at the end of that year.
wn.com/Ida_Lupino -
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman (29 August 1915 – 29 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute. She is best remembered for her roles as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942), a World War II drama co-starring Humphrey Bogart and as Alicia Huberman in Notorious (1946), an Alfred Hitchcock thriller co-starring Cary Grant.
Before becoming a star in American films, she had already been a leading actress in Swedish films. Her first introduction to American audiences came with her starring role in the English remake of Intermezzo in 1939. In America, she brought to the screen a "Nordic freshness and vitality", along with exceptional beauty and intelligence, and according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, she quickly became "the ideal of American womanhood" and one of Hollywood's greatest leading actresses.
wn.com/Ingrid_Bergman -
Ion Victor Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon antoˈnesku]; June 15, 1882 – June 1, 1946) was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships. A Romanian Army career officer who made his name during the 1907 peasants' revolt and the World War I Romanian Campaign, the antisemitic Antonescu sympathized with the far right and fascist National Christian and Iron Guard groups for much of the interwar period. He was a military attaché to France and later Chief of the General Staff, briefly serving as Defense Minister in the National Christian cabinet of Octavian Goga. During the late 1930s, his political stance brought him into conflict with King Carol II and led to his detainment. Antonescu nevertheless rose to political prominence during the political crisis of 1940, and established the National Legionary State, an uneasy partnership with the Iron Guard's leader Horia Sima. After entering Romania into an alliance with Nazi Germany and the Axis and ensuring Adolf Hitler's confidence, he eliminated the Guard during the Legionary Rebellion of 1941. In addition to leadership of the executive, he assumed the offices of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister. Soon after Romania joined the Axis in Operation Barbarossa, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Antonescu also became Marshal of Romania.
wn.com/Ion_Victor_Antonescu -
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin (December 6, 1896 – August 17, 1983) was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century.
With George he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", "The Man I Love" and "Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera Porgy and Bess.
The success the brothers had with their collaborative works has often overshadowed the creative role that Ira played. However, his mastery of songwriting continued after the early death of George. He wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern ("Long Ago (and Far Away)"), Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen.
His critically acclaimed book Lyrics on Several Occasions of 1959, an amalgam of autobiography and annotated anthology, is an important source for studying the art of the lyricist in the golden age of American popular song.
wn.com/Ira_Gershwin -
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911.
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania." Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom he saw as the "real soul of the country."
He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a legend" before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "This is the Army, Mr. Jones", and "There's No Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television series, The Kate Smith Show. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.
wn.com/Irving_Berlin -
İsmet İnönü
Mustafa İsmet İnönü (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈmet ˈinøny]; 24 September 1884 – 25 December 1973) was a Turkish Army General,Prime Minister and the second President of Turkey. In 1938, the Republican People's Party gave him the title of "Milli Şef" (National Chief).
İsmet İnönü was born in Smyrna (present day İzmir) to Reshid (Hacı Reşit Bey) and Djevriye (Cevrye Temelli Hanım), and was of Kurdish descent on his father's side and of Turkish descent through his mother. Reshid was retired from the First Examinant Department of Legal Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry (Harbiye Nezareti Muhakemat Dairesi Birinci Mümeyyizliği), who was born in Malatya and a member of Kümüroğulları family of Bitlis. Djevriye was a daughter of Müderris (professor) Hasan Efendi who was ulema and a member of Turkish family of Razgrad. Due to his father's assignments, the family moved from one city to another. Thus, Ismet completed his primary education in Sivas and graduated Sivas Military Junior High School (Sivas Askerî Rüştiyesi) in 1894. And then he studied at Sivas School for Civil Servants (Sivas Mülkiye İdadisi) for a year.
wn.com/İsmet_İnönü -
Isoroku Yamamoto
Isoroku Yamamoto (山本 五十六, Yamamoto Isoroku?, 24 April 1884 – 18 April 1943) was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student at Harvard University (1919–1921).
Yamamoto held several important posts in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and undertook many of its changes and reorganizations, especially its development of naval aviation. He was the commander-in-chief during the decisive early years of the Pacific War and so was responsible for major battles such as Pearl Harbor and Midway. He died during an inspection tour of forward positions in the Solomon Islands when his aircraft (a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber) was shot down during an ambush by American P-38 Lightning fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.
Yamamoto was born as Isoroku Takano (高野 五十六, Takano Isoroku?) in Nagaoka, Niigata. His father was Takano Sadayoshi (高野 貞吉, Takano Sadayoshi?), an intermediate samurai of the Nagaoka Domain. "Isoroku" is an old Japanese term meaning "56"; the name referred to his father's age at Isoroku's birth.
wn.com/Isoroku_Yamamoto -
Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev (Russian: Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев; 28 December [O.S. 16 December] 1897 – 21 May 1973), was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, retook much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin.
In 1956, as the Commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet armoured divisions.
Konev was born into a peasant family near Podosinovets in Vologda Governorate (now - Kirov Oblast). He had little formal education, and worked as a lumberjack before being conscripted into the Russian Army in 1916.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 he was demobilised and returned home, but in 1919 he joined the Bolshevik party and the Red Army, serving as an artilleryman. During the Russian Civil War he served with the Red Army in the Russian Far Eastern Republic. His commander at this time was Kliment Voroshilov, later a close colleague of Joseph Stalin and Commissar for defense. This alliance was the key to Konev's subsequent career.
wn.com/Ivan_Konev -
Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and also a notable violinist. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.
Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, tremendously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, were a foundational influence on the situation comedy genre. Dean Martin, on the celebrity roast for Johnny Carson in November 1973, introduced Benny as "the Satchel Paige of the world of comedy".
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky. Meyer was a Jewish saloon owner, later to become a haberdasher, who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin, but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit. They became life-long friends and Miller eventually joined the cast of The Jack Benny Program in the 1960s.
wn.com/Jack_Benny -
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first black Major League Baseball (MLB) player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As the first black man to play in the major leagues since the 1880s, he was instrumental in bringing an end to racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades. The example of his character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.
In addition to his cultural impact, Robinson had an exceptional baseball career. Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954, was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949—the first black player so honored. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.
wn.com/Jackie_Robinson -
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing tough guys. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its 50 Greatest American Screen Legends.
In his first professional acting performance, he danced dressed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
wn.com/James_Cagney -
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (/ˈsɑːtrə/; French pronunciation: [saʁtʁ]; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, and one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Marxism. His work, in addition to being influential to existentialism and Marxism, has also influenced sociology, critical theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre has also been noted for his relationship with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir.
He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours and that, "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer. His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer. (Her father, Charles Schweitzer, was the older brother of Albert Schweitzer's father, Louis Théophile.) When Sartre was only a year old, his father died of a fever. Anne-Marie moved back to her parents' house in Meudon, where she raised Sartre with help from her father, a professor of German, who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age. When he was twelve, Satre's mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle, where he was frequently bullied.
wn.com/Jean-Paul_Sartre -
Jennifer Jones
Jennifer Jones (March 2, 1919 - December 17, 2009) was an American Oscar-winning actress during the Hollywood golden years. Jones, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1943 The Song of Bernadette, was also nominated four-times for Academy Awards. She married three times; most notably to film producer David O. Selznick.
Jones, who starred in more than 20 films over a thirty year career, semi-retired from acting following the death of her husband, David O. Selznick, in 1965. In 1980, she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation For Mental Health And Education after her daughter's suicide. In later life, Jones withdrew from public life to live in quiet retirement with her son and his family in Malibu, California.
Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Flora Mae (née Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley. An only child, she was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic school. Her parents toured the Midwest in a traveling tent show that they owned and operated. Jones attended Monte Cassino, a girls' school and junior college in Tulsa and then Northwestern University in Illinois, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1938. It was there that she met and fell in love with fellow acting student Robert Walker. The couple married on January 2, 1939.
wn.com/Jennifer_Jones -
Jersey Joe Walcott
Arnold Raymond Cream (January 31, 1914 – February 25, 1994), better known as Jersey Joe Walcott, was a world heavyweight boxing champion. He broke the world's record for the oldest man to win the world's Heavyweight title when he earned it at the age of &1000000000000003700000037 years, &10000000000000168000000168 days, a record that would be broken on November 5, 1994, by George Foreman, who defeated the 26 year old Heavyweight champion of the world Michael Moorer at the age of 45, to win the WBA and IBF heavyweight titles.
Walcott was born in Merchantville, New Jersey, the son of immigrants from St. Thomas. Walcott's father died when he was 13 years old, so he quit school and took a job working in a soup factory to support his mother and 11 siblings. He also began training as a boxer. He took the name of his boxing idol, Joe Walcott, the welterweight champion from Barbados, hence his nickname, "Jersey Joe".
He debuted as a professional boxer on September 9, 1930, fighting Cowboy Wallace and winning by a knockout in round one. After five straight knockout wins, in 1933, he lost for the first time, beaten on points by Henry Wilson in Philadelphia.
wn.com/Jersey_Joe_Walcott -
Jews
The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.
In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora. A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.
wn.com/Jews -
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD". He composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's The Dreamer In Me".
Jimmy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the son of a music teacher and older brother of Tommy Dorsey who also became a prominent musician. He played trumpet in his youth, appearing on stage with J. Carson McGee's King Trumpeters in 1913. He switched to alto saxophone in 1915, and then learned to double on clarinet. Jimmy Dorsey played on a clarinet outfitted with the Albert system of fingering, as opposed to the more common Boehm system used by most of his contemporaries including Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.
With his brother Tommy playing trombone, he formed Dorsey’s Novelty Six, one of the first jazz bands to broadcast. In 1924 he joined the California Ramblers (who were based in New York City). He did much free lance radio and recording work throughout the 1920s. The brothers also appeared as session musicians on many jazz recordings. He joined Ted Lewis's band in 1930, with whom he toured Europe.
wn.com/Jimmy_Dorsey -
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977), born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre.
Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled "box office poison".
After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.
wn.com/Joan_Crawford -
Joe DiMaggio
Giuseppe Paulo "Joe" DiMaggio (/dɨˈmɑːʒioʊ/ or /dɨˈmædʒioʊ/; November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper", was an American Major League Baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record that still stands. DiMaggio was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.
A three-time MVP winner and 13-time All-Star, DiMaggio is the only player to be selected for the All-Star Game in every season he played. During his thirteen years with the Yankees, the club won ten American League pennants and nine World Series championships.
At the time of his retirement, he ranked fifth in career home runs (361) and sixth in career slugging percentage (.579). He was voted the sport's greatest living player in a poll taken in the baseball centennial year of 1969.
His brothers Vince and Dom also became major league center fielders.
DiMaggio was born in Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children born to immigrants from Italy, Giuseppe (1872–1949) and Rosalia (Mercurio) DiMaggio (1878–1951). He was delivered by a midwife identified on his birth certificate as Mrs. J. Pico. He was named after his father; "Paolo" was in honor of Giuseppe's favorite saint, Saint Paul. The family moved to San Francisco, California, when Joe was a year old.
wn.com/Joe_DiMaggio -
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981), better known as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis helped elevate boxing from a nadir in popularity in the post-Jack Dempsey era by establishing a reputation as an honest, hardworking fighter at a time when the sport was dominated by gambling interests. Louis' championship reign lasted 140 consecutive months, during which he participated in 27 championship fights, 26 championship fights during his reign; the 27th, against Ezzard Charles, was a challenge to Charles' Heavyweight title and so is not included in Louis' reign. All in all, Joe was victorious in 25 successful title defenses, a record for the heavyweight division. In 2005, Louis was ranked as the #1 heavyweight of all-time by the International Boxing Research Organization, and was ranked #1 on The Ring's list of the 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time.
wn.com/Joe_Louis -
Joel Brand
Joel Brand (25 April 1906 – 13 July 1964) was a sailor and odd-job man, originally from Transylvania but raised in Germany, who became known for his efforts during the Holocaust to save the Hungarian-Jewish community from deportation to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. He is remembered, in particular, for his negotiations with the German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer, Adolf Eichmann, to barter one million Jews for 10,000 trucks and other goods, a deal the Nazis called "Blut gegen Waren" ("blood for goods").
Described by historian Yehuda Bauer as a brave adventurer at home in underground conspiracies and card-playing circles, Brand was a key member of the Aid and Rescue Committee, an organization of Zionists who helped Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe escape to the relative safety of Hungary, before the German invasion of that country on 19 March 1944.
Shortly after the invasion, Brand was summoned to a meeting with Eichmann, who had arrived in Hungary to oversee the deportation of its Jews. Eichmann asked Brand to help broker a deal between the SS and the United States or Britain, in which the Nazis would release up to one million Jews, if the Western Allies would supply Germany with 10,000 trucks, to be used on the Eastern front, and large quantities of soap, tea, and coffee. Nothing came of the proposal, described by The Times as one of the most loathsome stories of the war. Historians now believe it was intended to serve as a cover for high-ranking Nazi officers, including Heinrich Himmler, to negotiate a peace deal with the Western Allies that would exclude the Soviet Union and perhaps Adolf Hitler himself.
wn.com/Joel_Brand -
John Curtin
John Joseph Curtin (8 January 1885 – 5 July 1945), Australian politician, served as the 14th Prime Minister of Australia. Labor under Curtin formed a minority government in 1941 after the crossbench consisting of two independent MPs crossed the floor in the House of Representatives, bringing down the Coalition minority government of Robert Menzies which resulted from the 1940 election – aside from the formulative early parliaments, the only other hung parliament has resulted from the 2010 election. Curtin led federal Labor to its greatest win with two thirds of seats in the lower house and over 58 percent of the two-party preferred vote, and 55 percent of the primary vote and a majority of seats in the Senate at the 1943 election. Curtin died in 1945 and was succeeded by Ben Chifley, who retained government at the 1946 election with over 54 percent of the two-party vote and a continued Senate majority.
Curtin led Australia when the Australian mainland came under direct military threat during the Japanese advance in World War II. He is widely regarded as one of the country's greatest Prime Ministers. General Douglas MacArthur said that Curtin was "one of the greatest of the wartime statesmen". His Prime Ministerial predecessor and 1943 election Coalition leader, Arthur Fadden of the Country Party wrote: "I do not care who knows it but in my opinion there was no greater figure in Australian public life in my lifetime than Curtin."
wn.com/John_Curtin -
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplay for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice, and directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins in different films.
Huston was known to direct with the vision of an artist, having studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris in his early years. He continued to explore the visual aspects of his films throughout his career: sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. In addition, while most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, making his films both more economical and more cerebral, with little editing needed.
wn.com/John_Huston -
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. An Academy Award-winner, Wayne was among the top box office draws for three decades, and was named the all-time top money-making star. An enduring American icon, he epitomized rugged masculinity and is famous for his demeanor, including his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height.
Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa but his family relocated to the greater Los Angeles area when he was four years old. He found work at local film studios when he lost his football scholarship to USC as a result of a bodysurfing accident. Initially working for the Fox Film Corporation, he mostly appeared in small bit parts. His acting breakthrough came in 1939 with John Ford's Stagecoach, making him an instant star. Wayne would go on to star in 142 pictures, primarily typecast in Western films.
Among his best known films are The Quiet Man (1952), which follows him as an Irish-American boxer and his love affair with a fiery spinster played by Maureen O'Hara; The Searchers (1956), in which he plays a Civil War veteran who seeks out his abducted niece; Rio Bravo (1959), playing a Sheriff with Dean Martin; True Grit (1969), playing a humorous U.S. Marshal who sets out to avenge a man's death in the role that won Wayne an Academy Award; and The Shootist (1976), his final screen performance in which he plays an aging gunslinger battling cancer.
wn.com/John_Wayne -
Johnny Mize
John Robert "Johnny" Mize (January 7, 1913 – June 2, 1993) was a baseball player who was a first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, and New York Yankees. He played in the Major Leagues for 15 seasons between 1936 and 1953, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.
Mize was born in Demorest, Georgia, where he later played baseball for Piedmont College. Mize was known as both "Big Jawn" and "The Big Cat" for his smooth fielding at first base. He had a fine batting eye, and in his early career hit for high averages, leading the National League with a .349 batting average in 1939. In 1938 he batted .363, but Cardinals teammate Joe Medwick took the title with a .374 average. Mize then changed targets and went for power instead of batting average. He led the National League in home runs in 1939 with 28, and in 1940 with 43, also leading the league in runs batted in twice, in 1940 and 1942. At the end of the 1941 season, however, he was traded to the New York Giants by Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey, who famously believed in trading players before their skills began to decline.
wn.com/Johnny_Mize -
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera ( /bɑrˈbɛrə/ bar-BERR-ə; March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century.
Through his young adult years, Barbera lived, attended college, and began his career in New York City. After working odd jobs and as a banker, Barbera joined Van Beuren Studios in 1932 and subsequently Terrytoons in 1936. In 1937, he moved to California and while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Barbera met William Hanna. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry and live action films. In 1957, after MGM dissolved their animation department, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, Top Cat, Scooby-Doo, The Quick Draw McGraw Show, Yogi Bear, The Smurfs, Wacky Races, and The Jetsons. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained head of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.
wn.com/Joseph_Barbera -
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair. He first gained worldwide fame as the star of the Orson Welles films Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Journey into Fear (1943), for which Cotten was also credited with the screenplay. He went on to star in such popular films as Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Duel in the Sun (which remains one of the top 100 highest grossing films of all time when adjusted for inflation), Love Letters (1945), Portrait of Jennie (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
Joseph Cotten was born in the year 1905 in Petersburg, Virginia, son of Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster, and his wife Sally Willson Cotten. He worked as an advertising agent after studying acting at the Hickman School of Speech and Expression in Washington, D.C. His work as a theatre critic inspired him to become involved in theatre productions, first in Virginia, and then in New York. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1930, and soon became friends with Orson Welles.
wn.com/Joseph_Cotten -
Joseph Schildkraut
Joseph Schildkraut (March 22, 1896 – January 21, 1964) was an Austrian stage and film actor.
Born in Vienna, Austria, Schildkraut was the son of stage (and later motion picture) actor Rudolph Schildkraut. The younger Schildkraut moved to the United States in the early 1900s. He appeared in many Broadway productions. Among the plays that he starred in was a notable production of Peer Gynt.
In 1921, Schildkraut played the title role in the first American stage production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, the play that would eventually become the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.
He then began working in silent movies, although he did return to the stage occasionally. He had early success in film as the Chevalier de Vaudrey in D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm with Lillian Gish. Later, he was featured in Cecil B. DeMille's epic 1927 film The King of Kings, as Judas Iscariot. Schildraut's father Rudolf also appeared in the film. Joseph Schildkraut also played a Viennese-accented, non-singing Gaylord Ravenal in the 1929 part-talkie film version of Edna Ferber's "Show Boat". The character as written in the 1929 film was much closer to Ferber's original than to the depiction of him in the classic Kern and Hammerstein musical play based on the novel as well as the 1936 and 1951 film versions of the musical, but the 1929 film was not a critical or box-office success.
wn.com/Joseph_Schildkraut -
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин; born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and later held the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While the office of the General Secretary was officially elective and not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, Stalin managed to use it to consolidate more and more power in his hands after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and gradually put down all opposition groups within the Communist Party. This included Leon Trotsky, a socialist theorist and the principal critic of Stalin among the early Soviet leaders, who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Whereas Trotsky was an exponent of permanent revolution, it was Stalin's concept of socialism in one country that became the primary focus of Soviet politics.
wn.com/Joseph_Stalin -
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, she became a citizen of France in 1937. Fluent in both English and French, Baker became an international musical and political icon. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess".
Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture,[which?] to integrate an American concert hall,[citation needed] and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II, and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.
Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Carrie McDonald. Her estate identifies vaudeville drummer Eddie Carson as her natural father. A biography written by her foster son Jean-Claude Baker stated:
wn.com/Josephine_Baker -
Josh Gibson
Joshua Gibson (December 21, 1911 – January 20, 1947) was an American catcher in baseball's Negro leagues. He played for the Homestead Grays from 1930 to 1931, moved to the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 to 1936, and returned to the Grays from 1937 to 1939 and 1942 to 1946. In 1937 he played for Ciudad Trujillo in Trujillo's Dominican League and from 1940 to 1941 he played in the Mexican League for Rojos del Aguila de Veracruz. Gibson served as the first manager of the Santurce Crabbers, one of the most historic franchises of the Puerto Rico Baseball League. He stood 6-foot-1 (185 cm) and weighed 210 pounds (95 kg) at the peak of his career.
Baseball historians consider Gibson to be among the very best catchers and power hitters in the history of any league, including the Major Leagues, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Gibson was known as the "black Babe Ruth." (In fact, some fans at the time who saw both Gibson and Ruth play called Ruth "the white Josh Gibson.") He never played in Major League Baseball because, under their unwritten "gentleman's agreement" policy, they excluded non-whites during his lifetime.
wn.com/Josh_Gibson -
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwan doˈmiŋɡo peˈɾon]; October 8, 1895 – July 1, 1974) was an Argentine military officer and politician. After serving in several government positions, including those of Minister of Labor and Vice President of the Republic, he was three times elected as President of Argentina although he managed to serve only one full term in this function. Perón's last term as President of the Republic began in 1973 and lasted for just nine months, until his death in 1974, whereupon he was succeeded by his third wife, the Vice President of the Republic, María Estela Martínez.
Perón and his second wife, Eva Duarte, were immensely popular among many Argentines. They are still considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labor, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which in present-day Argentina is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party.
wn.com/Juan_Perón -
Judy Garland
Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer and vaudevillian. Renowned for her contralto voice, she attained international stardom through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the remake of A Star is Born and for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg. At 39 years of age, she remains the youngest recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.
After appearing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, she was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting beginning with critically acclaimed performances.
wn.com/Judy_Garland -
June Lockhart
June Lockhart (born June 25, 1925) is an American actress, primarily in 1950s and 1960s television, but with memorable performances on stage and in film too. She is remembered as the mother in two TV series, Lassie and Lost in Space. She also portrayed Dr. Janet Craig on the CBS television sitcom Petticoat Junction (1968–70).
Born in New York City, Lockhart is the daughter of Canadian-born actor Gene Lockhart, who came to prominence on Broadway in 1933 in Ah, Wilderness!, and English-born actress Kathleen Arthur Lockhart. She made her acting debut opposite her parents in a film version of A Christmas Carol, in 1938. She also played supporting parts in films including Meet Me in St. Louis, Sergeant York, All This, and Heaven Too and The Yearling. Lockhart played the title role in She-Wolf of London (1946).
In 1948, Lockhart won a Tony Award for Outstanding Performance by a Newcomer (a category that no longer exists) for her role on Broadway in For Love or Money. And in 1951, she starred in Lawrence Riley's biographical play Kin Hubbard opposite Tom Ewell. In 1955, she appeared in an episode of CBS's Appointment with Adventure. About this time, she also made several appearances on NBC's legal drama Justice, based on case files of the Legal Aid Society of New York. In the late 1950s, she guest starred in several popular television Westerns including: Wagon Train and Cimarron City on NBC and Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, and Rawhide on CBS.
wn.com/June_Lockhart -
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. Her work came in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. Hepburn's characters were often strong, sophisticated women with a hidden vulnerability.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures. In 1938 she was labeled "box office poison". Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star. In the 1940s she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years, and produced nine movies.
wn.com/Katharine_Hepburn -
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Russian: И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past (1947), Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Lust for Life (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
He is No.17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time, making him the highest-ranked living person on the list. In 1996, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."
Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the Navy during World War II.
wn.com/Kirk_Douglas -
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema. Composed of thin Englishman Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and fat American Oliver Hardy (1892–1957), they became well known during the late 1920s to the mid-1940s for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy and childlike friend of the pompous Hardy. They made over 100 films together, initially two-reelers (short films) before expanding into feature length films in the 1930s. Their films include Sons of the Desert (1933), the Academy Award winning short film The Music Box (1932), Babes in Toyland (1934), and Way Out West (1937). Hardy's catchphrase "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" is still widely recognized.
Prior to the double act both were established actors with Laurel appearing in over 50 films and Hardy in over 250 films. Although the two comedians first worked together on the film The Lucky Dog (1921), this was a chance pairing and it was not until 1926, when both separately signed contracts with the Hal Roach film studio, that they began appearing in movie shorts together. Laurel and Hardy officially became a team the following year in the silent short film Putting Pants on Philip (1927). The pair remained with the Roach studio until 1940, then appeared in eight "B" comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1941 to 1945. After finishing their movie commitments at the end of 1944, they concentrated on stage shows, embarking on a music hall tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland. In 1950 they made their last film, a French/Italian co-production called Atoll K, before retiring from the screen. In total they appeared together in 107 films. They starred in 40 short sound films, 32 short silent films and 23 full-length feature films, and made 12 guest or cameo appearances, including the recently discovered Galaxy of Stars promotional film (1936).
wn.com/Laurel_and_Hardy -
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall ( /ˌlɔrən bəˈkɔːl/; born Betty Joan Perske, September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not (1944) and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in Bogart movies The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck. Bacall has also worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
In 1999, Bacall was ranked #20 of the 25 actresses on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list by the American Film Institute. In 2009, she was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
wn.com/Lauren_Bacall -
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.
Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.
wn.com/Laurence_Olivier -
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.
Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.
wn.com/Lena_Horne -
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009)—known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was the inventor of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound),delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.
His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.
Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an "architect" and a "key inductee" along with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed.
wn.com/Les_Paul -
Liaquat Ali Khan
For other people with the same or similar name, see Liaqat Ali (disambiguation)
Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan (English IPA: Næʍābzādāh Liāqat Alī Khān ( listen (help·info)), Urdu: لیاقت علی خان, Hindi: लियाक़त अली ख़ान; October 1, 1895 – October 16, 1951), often simply referred as Liaquat, was one of the leading Founding Fathers of modern Pakistan, statesman, lawyer, and political theorist who became and served as the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, in addition, was also the first Defence minister and minister of Commonwealth and Kashmir Affairs, from 1947 until his assassination in 1951.
Born and hail from Muzaffarnagar, West UP, Ali Khan was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University in India, and the Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Prior to his return to India, Ali Khan rose to prominence and was also the influential member of the Muslim League led under Mohammad Ali Jinnah, advocating and determining to eradicate the injustices and ill treatment meted out to the Indian Muslims by the British government, and rose as the influential and later was one of the principle Founding Fathers of Pakistan. Ali Khan was invited first to join the Congress Party, but allied himself with the Muslim League, playing a vital role in the independence of India and Pakistan, while served as the Finance minister in the interim government of British Indian Empire, prior to partition. Significantly, Ali Khan and his wife are credited with persuading Jinnah to return to India— an event which marked the beginning of the Muslim League's ascendancy and paved the way for the Pakistan movement— following the passage of the Pakistan Resolution in 1940, Ali Khan assisted Jinnah in campaigning for the creation of a separate state for Indian Muslims. His influential role led the British Indian Empire to disintegrate into modern-day state of India and Pakistan.
wn.com/Liaquat_Ali_Khan -
Lizabeth Scott
Lizabeth Scott (born September 29, 1922) is an American actress and singer widely known for her film noir roles.
She was born Emma Matzo (some sources mistakenly give her family name as "Motzas") in the Pine Brook section of Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of six children, to Ruthenian parents who had emigrated from Uzhgorod, in what is now Ukraine. She attended Central High School and Marywood College (now Marywood University).
She later went to New York City and attended the Alvienne School of Drama. In late 1942, she was eking out a precarious living with a small Midtown Manhattan summer stock company when she got a job as understudy for Tallulah Bankhead in Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of Our Teeth. However, Scott never had an opportunity to substitute for Bankhead.
When Miriam Hopkins was signed to replace Bankhead, Scott quit and returned to her drama studies and some fashion modeling. She then received a call that Gladys George, who was signed to replace Hopkins, was ill, and Scott was needed back at the theatre. She went on in the leading role of "Sabina", receiving a nod of approval from critics at the age of 20. The following night, George was out again and Scott went on in her place.
wn.com/Lizabeth_Scott -
Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney, Jr. (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973), born Creighton Tull Chaney, was an American character actor. He was best known for his roles in monster films and as the son of famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney. He is notable for portraying Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men and Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man.
Originally credited in films as Creighton Chaney, he was first credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." in 1935. Chaney had English, French and Irish ancestry.
Creighton was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of silent film star Lon Chaney and Frances Cleveland Creighton Chaney, a singing stage performer who traveled in road shows across the country with Creighton. His parents' troubled marriage ended in divorce in 1913 following his mother's scandalous public suicide attempt in Los Angeles. Young Creighton lived in various homes and boarding schools until 1916, when his father (now employed in films) married Hazel Hastings and could provide a stable home. Many articles and biographies over the years report that Creighton was led to believe his mother had died while he was a boy, and was only made aware she lived after his father's death in 1930. Lon always maintained he had a tough childhood.
wn.com/Lon_Chaney_Jr. -
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).
Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.[citation needed]
wn.com/Louis_Armstrong -
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (2 November 1906 - 17 March 1976), was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice (1971).
One of seven children, Visconti was born in Milan into a noble and wealthy family, one of the region's richest. His father Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone was the Duke of Grazzano and Count of Lonate Pozzolo. In his early years he was exposed to art, music and theatre, and met the composer Giacomo Puccini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and the writer Gabriele d'Annunzio.
During World War II Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party.
Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality. His last partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in Visconti's film The Damned. Berger also appeared in Visconti's Ludwig in 1972 and Conversation Piece in 1974 along with Burt Lancaster. Other lovers included Franco Zeffirelli, who also worked as part of the crew in production design, as assistant director, and other roles in a number of Visconti's films and theatrical productions.
wn.com/Luchino_Visconti -
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.
Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
wn.com/Lucille_Ball -
Mamoru Shigemitsu
Mamoru Shigemitsu (重光 葵, Shigemitsu Mamoru?, July 29, 1887 – January 26, 1957) was a Japanese diplomat and politician in the Empire of Japan, who served as the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs at the end of World War II and later, as the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan.
Shigemitsu was born in what is now part of the city of Bungo-ōno Ōita Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Law School of Tokyo Imperial University in 1907. After World War I, He served in numerous overseas diplomatic assignments, including Germany, the United Kingdom, briefly as consul at the Japanese consulate in Seattle, Washington in the United States. Following the Mukden Incident, Shigemitsu was active at various European capitals attempting to reduce alarm at Japanese military activities in Manchuria. During the First Shanghai Incident of 1932, he was successful in enlisting the aid of western nations in brokering a cease-fire between the Kuomintang Army and the Imperial Japanese Army. However, on April 29, 1932, while attending a celebration for the birthday of Emperor Hirohito at Lu Xun Park in Shanghai, a Korean independence activist, Yoon Bong-Gil threw a bomb at a reviewing stand killing General Yoshinori Shirakawa and wounding several others, including Shigemitsu. Shigemitsu lost his right leg in the attack, and walked with an artificial leg and cane for the rest of his life.
wn.com/Mamoru_Shigemitsu -
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung listen (help·info), and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949, and held authoritarian control over the nation until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism–Leninism, along with his military strategies and brand of policies, are collectively known as Maoism.
Mao rose to power by commanding the Long March, forming a Second United Front with Kuomintang (KMT) during the Second Sino-Japanese War to repel a Japanese invasion, and leading the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, by using violence and terror to overthrow the feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. During the years when Mao was China’s 'Great Helmsman', a range of positive changes came to China. These included promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, doubling the school population, providing universal housing, abolishing unemployment and inflation, increasing health care access, and dramatically raising life expectancy. In addition, China's population almost doubled during the period of Mao's leadership (from around 550 to over 900 million). As a result, Mao is still officially held in high regard by many in China as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Maoists further promote his role as a theorist, statesman, poet, and visionary, while anti-revisionists continue to defend most of his policies.
wn.com/Mao_Zedong -
Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné (August 18, 1906 – October 31, 1996) was a French film director. He is best known for the films Port of Shadows (1938), Le Jour Se Lève (1939) and Children of Paradise (1945), the latter of which is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time.
Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in silent film as a camera assistant with director Jacques Feyder. By age 25, Carné had already directed his first short film, Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (1929). He assisted Feyder (and René Clair) on several films through to La kermesse héroïque (1935).
Feyder accepted an invitation to work in England for Alexander Korda, for whom he made Knight Without Armour (1937), but made it possible for Carné to take over his project, Jenny (1936), as its director. The film marked the beginning of a successful collaboration with surrealist poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. This collaborative relationship lasted for more than a dozen years, during which Carné and Prévert created their best remembered films. Together, they were involved in the poetic realism film movement of fatalistic tragedies.
wn.com/Marcel_Carné -
Margaret O'Brien
Margaret O'Brien (born January 15, 1937) is an American film, television and stage actress. Beginning a prolific career as a child actress in feature films at the age of four, O'Brien became one of the most popular child stars in cinema history, and was honored with a Juvenile Academy Award as the outstanding child actress of 1944. In her later career, she appeared on television, on stage, and in supporting film roles.
She was born Angela Maxine O'Brien; her name was later changed to Margaret following the success of the film Journey for Margaret, in which she played the title role. Her father Lawrence O'Brien, a circus performer, died before she was born. O'Brien's mother, Gladys Flores, was a well-known flamenco dancer who often performed with her sister Marissa, also a dancer. O'Brien is of half-Irish and half-Spanish ancestry.
She made her first film appearance in Babes on Broadway (1941) at the age of four, but it was the following year that her first major role brought her widespread attention. As a five-year-old in Journey for Margaret (1942), O'Brien won wide praise for her convincing acting style. By 1943, she was considered a big enough star to have a cameo appearance in the all-star military show finale of Thousands Cheer.
wn.com/Margaret_O'Brien -
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993) was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. Music critic Alan Blyth said "Her voice was a rich, vibrant contralto of intrinsic beauty." Most of her singing career was spent performing in concert and recital in major music venues and with famous orchestras throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. Although offered roles with many important European opera companies, Anderson declined, as she had no training in acting. She preferred to perform in concert and recital only. She did, however, perform opera arias within her concerts and recitals. She made many recordings that reflected her broad performance repertoire of everything from concert literature to lieder to opera to traditional American songs and spirituals.
Anderson became an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. She sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions. Anderson continued to break barriers for black artists in the United States, becoming the first black person, American or otherwise, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955. Her performance as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Met was the only time she sang an opera role on stage.
wn.com/Marian_Anderson -
Mariano Ospina Pérez
Luis Mariano Ospina Pérez (November 24, 1891- April 14, 1976) was a Colombian engineer and political figure, member of the Colombian Conservative Party. He served as President of Colombia between 1946 and 1950.
Ospina was born in Medellín, Antioquia on November 24, 1891. He died in Bogotá, Cundinamarca, on April 14, 1976, at the age of 84.
Ospina was son of Tulio Ospina Vasquez and Ana Rosa Pérez, who were members of the traditional Colombian political families. He was the grandson of former president of Colombia Mariano Ospina Rodríguez and nephew of president Pedro Nel Ospina.
Ospina studied in the Colegio San Ignacio in Medellín, Antioquia the city were he grew up and also studied engineering in the Escuela de Minas de Antioquia (Mining School of Antioquia) where he graduated as mining engineer. After graduating Ospina travelled for two years in which he toured and studied in Louisiana, London and Paris. He took some courses on gold mining, sugar cane production, economy, labor relations, cooperativism, civil engineering and railways systems.
wn.com/Mariano_Ospina_Pérez -
Marilyn Monroe
Norma Jeane Mortensen Baker (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), professionally recognized as Marilyn Monroe, was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.
After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946 with Twentieth Century-Fox. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) drew attention to her. By 1953, Monroe had progressed to a leading role in Niagara (1953), a melodramatic film noir that dwelt on her seductiveness. Her "dumb blonde" persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959). Monroe's last completed film was The Misfits, co-starring Clark Gable with screenplay by her then-husband, Arthur Miller.
wn.com/Marilyn_Monroe -
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich (German pronunciation: [maɐˈleːnə ˈdiːtʁɪç]; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German-American actress and singer.
Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as "Lola-Lola" in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and provided her a contract with Paramount Pictures in the US. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire capitalised on her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom and making her one of the highest-paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a US citizen in 1939, and throughout World War II she was a high-profile frontline entertainer. Although she still made occasional films in the post-war years, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a successful show performer.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of all time.
wn.com/Marlene_Dietrich -
Martha Sharp
Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp-Cogan (1905–1999) was an American philanthropist who, along with her husband Waitstill Sharp, helped hundreds of Jews to escape Nazi persecution by sending them off through Czechoslovakia.
She attended Pembroke College, the women's college of Brown University, and later studied in the field of Social Work at Northwestern University’s Recreation Training School centered in Hull House, a Chicago settlement. When her training was complete, she earned the position Director of Girls’ Work where she acted as social worker to over 500 girls. Her devotion to service and helping others is often cited as the reason she entered the field.
In 1927, she married Waitstill Hastings Sharp taking temporary leave, although she would never return to the profession. The two lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
When Waitstill was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1933, he was assigned to a small church in Meadville, Pennsylvania where his wife followed. She acted almost as a second minister, organizing most of the youth work, education activities, and women's meetings, as well as church suppers. As her husband was often difficult to talk to, church members would go to Martha, who was always happy to lend an ear.
wn.com/Martha_Sharp -
Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE, PC (born 25 October 1936) is a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. Gilbert is a leading historian of the modern world, and is known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.
Gilbert was born in London to Peter and Miriam Gilbert. Nine months after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated to Canada as part of the British efforts to safeguard children. Vivid memories of the transatlantic crossing from Liverpool to Quebec sparked his curiosity about the war in later years. After the war he attended Highgate School, and then completed two years of National Service in the Intelligence Corps before going on to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1960 with a first-class BA in modern history. One of his tutors at Oxford was A.J.P. Taylor. After his graduation, Gilbert undertook postgraduate research at St Antony's College, Oxford. In 1963, he married Helen Constance Robinson, with whom he had a daughter. He had two sons with his second wife, Susan Sacher, whom he married in 1974. Since 2005, he has been married to the Holocaust historian Esther Gilbert, née Goldberg. Gilbert describes himself as a proud practising Jew and a Zionist.
wn.com/Martin_Gilbert -
Maureen O'Hara
Maureen O'Hara (born 17 August 1920) is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne. Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and was a New York Times Bestseller.
O'Hara was born as Maureen FitzSimons on Beechwood Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. She was the second oldest of the six children of Charles Stewart Parnell FitzSimons and Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons. Her father was in the clothing business and also bought into Shamrock Rovers Football Club, a team O'Hara has supported since childhood. Her mother, a former operatic contralto, was a successful women's clothier. O'Hara was raised as, and still is, a Roman Catholic. Her siblings were Peggy, the oldest, and younger Charles, Florrie, Margot and Jimmy. Peggy dedicated her life to a religious order, the Sisters of Charity, and the younger children all went on to receive training at the Abbey Theatre and the Ena Mary Burke School of Drama and Elocution in Dublin. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. She was first educated at the John Street West Girls' School near Thomas Street in Dublin's Liberties Area. From the age of 6–17 she trained in drama, music and dance, and at the age of 10 joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and worked in amateur theatre in the evenings, after her lessons.
wn.com/Maureen_O'Hara -
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.
A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy and Booker Little.
Roach also led his own groups, and made numerous musical statements relating to the civil rights movement of African Americans.
Roach was born in the Township of Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, which borders the southern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, to Alphonse and Cressie Roach. Many confuse this with Newland Town in Avery County. Although Roach's birth certificate lists his date of birth as January 10, 1924, Roach has been quoted by Phil Schaap as having stated that his family believed he was born on January 8, 1925. Roach's family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old. He grew up in a musical home, his mother being a gospel singer. He started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was already playing drums in some gospel bands. As an eighteen year-old fresh out of Boys High School in Brooklyn, (1942) he was called to fill in for Sonny Greer, and play with the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing at the Paramount Theater.
wn.com/Max_Roach -
Max Schmelling
Maximillian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling (September 28, 1905 – February 2, 2005) was a German boxer who was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. His two fights with Joe Louis in the 1936 and 1938 were worldwide social events because of their national associations. He was born in the Pomeranian town of Klein Luckow.
Starting his professional career in 1924, Schmeling came to the United States in 1928 and, after a ninth-round technical knockout of Johnny Risko, became a sensation. He became the first to win the heavyweight championship (at that time vacant) by disqualification in 1930, after opponent Jack Sharkey knocked him down with a low blow in the fourth round. A rematch in 1932 saw Sharkey gaining the title from Schmeling by a controversial fifteen-round split decision. In 1933, Schmeling lost to Max Baer by a tenth-round TKO. The loss left people believing that Schmeling was past his prime. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took over control in Germany, and Schmeling came to be viewed as a 'Nazi puppet.'
wn.com/Max_Schmelling -
Michael Berenbaum
Michael Berenbaum (born 1945) is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. He is perhaps best known for his work as Deputy Director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1979–1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988–1993), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997); as such, Berenbaum played a major role in the creation of the USHMM and the content of its permanent exhibition. From 1997 - 1999, Berenbaum served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and subsequently (and currently) as Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, located at the American Jewish University (formerly known as the University of Judaism), in Los Angeles, CA.
Berenbaum, who is Jewish, graduated from Queens College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 and received his doctorate from Florida State University in 1975. He also attended The Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Boston University. Berenbaum received Rabbinic ordination (Orthodox) by Rabbi Yaakov Rabin at the age of 23.
wn.com/Michael_Berenbaum -
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early credits as Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States, many of them cinema classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday of the Warner Bros. studio in the 1930s and '40s.
He was less successful from the late 1940s onwards, when he attempted to move from studio direction into production and freelance work, but he continued working until shortly before his death.
Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary). He claimed to have been born December 24, 1886. Both the date and the year are open to doubt: he was fond of telling tall stories about his early years, including that he had run away from home to join the circus and that he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games, but he seems to have had a conventional middle-class upbringing. He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.
wn.com/Michael_Curtiz -
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr.; (September 23, 1920) is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has received multiple awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. Working as a performer since he was a child, he was a superstar as a teenager for the films in which he played Andy Hardy, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor, to date spanning 90 years actively making films in ten decades, from 1920s to 2010s. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel's The Adventures of the Black Stallion, as well as the film itself.
Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Joseph Yule, was from Scotland, and his mother, Nellie W. (née Carter), was from Kansas City, Missouri. Both of his parents were in vaudeville, appearing in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl when Joseph, Jr. was born. He began performing at the age of 17 months as part of his parents' routine, wearing a specially tailored tuxedo.
wn.com/Mickey_Rooney -
Moe Berg
Morris "Moe" Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player, usually used as a backup catcher, and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball" than for anything he accomplished in the game. Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball".
A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read 10 newspapers a day. His reputation was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information, Please! in which he answered questions about the derivation of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.
As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was then sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, but, by the mid-1950s, was unemployed. He spent the last two decades of his life without work, living with various siblings.
wn.com/Moe_Berg -
Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced: [ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi]; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world.
Son of a senior government official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London. Gandhi became famous by fighting for the civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using the new techniques of non-violent civil disobedience that he developed. Returning to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants to protest excessive land-taxes. A lifelong opponent of "communalism" (i.e. basing politics on religion) he reached out widely to all religious groups. He became a leader of Muslims protesting the declining status of the Caliphate. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, and above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from British domination.
wn.com/Mohandas_Gandhi -
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) was an American film and stage actor.The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men".
He often played outsiders, often "victim-heroes," - examples include the social climber in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun, the anguished Catholic priest in Hitchcock's I Confess, the doomed regular soldier Robert E. Lee Prewitt in Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity, and the Jewish GI bullied by antisemites in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions. Later, after a disfiguring car crash in 1956, and alcohol and prescription drug abuse, he became erratic. Nevertheless important roles were still his, including "the reckless, alcoholic, mother-fixated rodeo performer in Huston's The Misfits, the title role in Huston's Freud, and the concentration camp victim in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg."
Clift received four Academy Award nominations during his career, three for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor.
wn.com/Montgomery_Clift -
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Urdu: محمد علی جناح, Audio (help·info); 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician and statesman who is known as being the founder of Pakistan. He is popularly and officially known in Pakistan as 'Quaid-e-Azam' (lit. Great Leader) and 'Baba-e-Qaum' (lit. Father of the Nation).
Jinnah served as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan's independence on 14 August 1947, and as Pakistan's first Governor-General from 15 August 1947 until his death on 11 September 1948. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress initially expounding ideas of Hindu-Muslim unity and helping shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress; he also became a key leader in the All India Home Rule League. He proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in a self-governing India.
wn.com/Muhammad_Ali_Jinnah -
Muhammed Ali Jinnah
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Urdu: محمد علی جناح, Audio (help·info); 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician and statesman who is known as being the founder of Pakistan. He is popularly and officially known in Pakistan as 'Quaid-e-Azam' (lit. Great Leader) and 'Baba-e-Qaum' (lit. Father of the Nation).
Jinnah served as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan's independence on 14 August 1947, and as Pakistan's first Governor-General from 15 August 1947 until his death on 11 September 1948. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress initially expounding ideas of Hindu-Muslim unity and helping shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress; he also became a key leader in the All India Home Rule League. He proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in a self-governing India.
wn.com/Muhammed_Ali_Jinnah -
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy (August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Her successful pairing with William Powell resulted in 14 films together, including five subsequent Thin Man films. In 1937, she was crowned the "Queen of Hollywood" by a nationwide poll.
Loy was born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana, to Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams, in nearby Radersburg. Her paternal grandparents were natives of Wales, and her maternal grandparents were Swedish and Scottish. Her first name came from a train station whose name her father liked. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man ever elected to the Montana state legislature. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.
wn.com/Myrna_Loy -
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia Mary de Havilland (born 1 July 1916) is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.
Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan, to parents from the United Kingdom. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland (31 August 1872 – 20 May 1968, aged 95), was a patent attorney with a practice in Japan, and her mother, Lilian Augusta (née Ruse; 11 June 1886 – 20 February 1975, aged 88) was a stage actress who had left her career after going to Tokyo with her husband – she would return to work after her daughters had already won fame in the 40s, with the stage name of Lillian Fontaine. Her parents married in 1914 and they separated in 1919, when Lilian decided to end the marriage after discovering that her husband used the sexual services of geisha girls, but divorce was not signed until February 1925.
wn.com/Olivia_de_Havilland -
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.
After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
wn.com/Orson_Welles -
Osami Nagano
Osami Nagano (永野 修身, Nagano Osami?, June 15, 1880 – January 5, 1947) was a Japanese career naval officer and fleet admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1934. More of an administrative officer than a sea commander, he was Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff for the majority of World War II, from April 1941 to February 1944.
Nagano was born in Kōchi to an ex-samurai family. He graduated from the 28th class of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1900, ranked second of his class of 105 cadets. After midshipman service in the cruiser Hashidate and battleship Asahi, he was commissioned as an ensign and assigned to the cruiser Asama. He served in a number of staff positions during the Russo-Japanese War, the closest he came to combat was as commander of a land-based heavy naval gun unit during the siege of Port Arthur.
After his promotion to lieutenant in 1905, he served on the battleship Shikishima. He took coursework in naval artillery and navigation from 1905–1906, and later served as chief gunnery officer on the cruiser Itsukushima from 1906-1908. Nagano graduated from the Japanese Naval War College in 1909.
wn.com/Osami_Nagano -
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson ( /ˈroʊbsən/ ROHB-sən April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American singer and actor who was a political activist for the Civil Rights Movement. His disaffection with the policies of the United States (US) government, post-World War II and during McCarthyism, and his simultaneous advocation of the policies of the Soviet Union, brought retribution from the executive branch of the US government and scrutiny from the United States Congress. Though internationally acclaimed, he was subsequently blacklisted in the US from performing artistically and was not permitted to travel overseas. His right to travel was restored in 1958, but his health had broken down under controversial circumstances. Thereafter, he remained defiant and refused to admit any of his denunciations of US policy, or his support of the Soviet Union, was incorrect.
Early in his life, he won a scholarship to Rutgers University, where he was an football All-American and the class valedictorian. He subsequently graduated from Columbia Law School while playing professionally in the National Football League (NFL) and singing and acting in off-campus productions. After graduation, he worked briefly as a lawyer before focusing on the arts and becoming a popular figure on the acting stage.
wn.com/Paul_Robeson -
Paulette Goddard
Paulette Goddard (June 3, 1910 – April 23, 1990) was an American film actress. A child fashion model and a performer in several Broadway productions as a Ziegfeld Girl, she became a major star of the Paramount Studio in the 1940s. Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).
Paulette Goddard was born Marion Pauline Levy in Whitestone Landing, Queens, New York. She was the only child of Joseph Russell Levy, who was Jewish, and Alta Mae Goddard, who was Episcopalian and of English heritage. Her parents divorced while she was young, and she was raised by her mother. Her father virtually vanished from her life, only to resurface later in the 1930s after she became a star.[citation needed] At first, their newfound relationship seemed genial and they attended film premières together, but later he sued her over a magazine article in which she purportedly claimed he abandoned her when she was young. They never reconciled. On his death, he left her one dollar in his will. She remained very close to her mother, however, as both had struggled through those early years, with her great uncle, Charles Goddard (her grandfather's brother) lending a hand.[citation needed]
wn.com/Paulette_Goddard -
Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special, Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale.
Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
Bailey was born in Southampton County in southeastern Virginia, to the Reverend Joseph and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. She was reared in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia.
She made her stage-singing debut when she was 15 years old. Her brother Bill Bailey was beginning his own career as a tap dancer, and suggested she enter an amateur contest at Philadelphia’s Pearl Theater. She entered, won first prize, later won a similar contest at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater, and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.
wn.com/Pearl_Bailey -
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. She wrote music for films, acted, and created conceptual record albums—encompassing poetry, jazz, chamber pop, and art songs.
Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children of Marvin Olof Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad, and his wife Selma Amelia (Anderson) Egstrom. Her mother died when Lee was just four years old. Her father was Swedish American and her mother was Norwegian American.
Lee first sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for paltry sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee.[citation needed] Thereafter, Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.
wn.com/Peggy_Lee -
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records for Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history. Como was seen weekly on television from 1949 to 1963, then continued hosting the Kraft Music Hall variety program on a monthly basis until 1967. His television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. Also a popular recording artist, Perry Como produced numerous hit records with record sales so high the label literally stopped counting at Como's behest. His combined success on television and popular recordings was not matched by any other artist of the time. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him, "... [o]ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."
wn.com/Perry_Como -
Peter Lawford
Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen (7 September 1923 – 24 December 1984), better known as Peter Lawford, was an English-American actor.
He was a member of the "Rat Pack" and brother-in-law to US President John F. Kennedy, perhaps more noted in later years for his off-screen activities as a celebrity than for his acting. In his earlier professional years (late 1930s through the 1950s) he had a strong presence in popular culture and starred in a number of highly acclaimed films.
Born in London in 1923, he was the only child of Lieutenant-General Sir Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford KBE (1865-1953) and May Aylen (née May Sommerville Bunny, 1883-1972). At the time of Lawford's birth, however, his mother was married to her second husband, Dr. Capt. Ernest Vaughn Aylen, one of Sir Sidney's officers, while his father was married to the former Muriel Williams. After Peter's birth, his mother confessed to Aylen that the child was not his, a revelation that resulted in a double divorce. Sir Sydney and May Aylen then wed in September 1924, after their divorces were finalized and when their son was one year old.
wn.com/Peter_Lawford -
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (26 June 1904 – 23 March 1964) was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.
He caused an international sensation with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M (1931). Later he became a popular featured player in Hollywood crime films and mysteries, in particular with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and as the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.
Lorre was born László Löwenstein on 26 June 1904, as the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger, in the Austrian-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in present-day Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. His parents had recently moved there, following his father's appointment as chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Beside working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres. When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got on, and this coloured his childhood memories.
wn.com/Peter_Lorre -
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII; Italian: Pio XII), born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958), reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958.
Before election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with European and Latin American nations, most notably the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany. The concordat of 1933 which saw the self-destruction of the Centre (Catholic) Party, on the orders of the Holy See, and Pius' leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II, including his "decision to stay silent in public about the fate of the Jews", remain the subject of controversy.
After the war Pius XII advocated peace and reconciliation, including lenient policies towards Axis and Axis-satellite nations. The Church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the Eastern Bloc. In light of his overt involvement in Italian politics – anyone who voted for a Communist candidate in the 1948 elections was threatened with automatic excommunication – Pius XII became known as a staunch opponent of the Italian Communist Party. Pius XII explicitly invoked ex cathedra papal infallibility with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his 1950 Apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus. His magisterium includes almost 1,000 addresses and radio broadcasts. His forty-one encyclicals include Mystici Corporis, the Church as the Body of Christ; Mediator Dei on liturgy reform; and Humani generis on the Church's positions on theology and evolution. He eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals in 1946.
wn.com/Pope_Pius_XII -
Pre-Columbian era
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during the Early Modern period.
While the phrase "pre-Columbian era" literally refers only to the time preceding Christopher Columbus's voyages of 1492, in practice the phrase usually is used to denote the entire history of American indigenous cultures until those cultures were conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or centuries after Columbus's first landing. For this reason the alternative terms of Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas are also in use. In areas of Hispanic America the term usually used is Pre-Hispanic.
Many pre-Columbian civilizations established hallmarks which included permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European arrivals (c. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with the colonial period, and were described in historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, had their own written records. Because most Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as heretical, they destroyed many texts in pyres. Only a few hidden documents have survived, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.
wn.com/Pre-Columbian_era -
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges (29 August 1898 – 6 August 1959), originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois. In 1941 he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film The Great McGinty.
Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations.
In recent years, film scholars such as Alessandro Pirolini have also argued that Sturges' cinema anticipated more experimental narratives by contemporary directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Zemeckis, and Woody Allen, along with prolific The Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder: "Many of [Sturges'] movies and screenplays reveal a restless and impatient attempt to escape codified rules and narrative schemata, and to push the mechanisms and conventions of their genre to the extent of unveiling them to the spectator. See for example the disruption of standardized timelines in films such as The Power and the Glory and The Great McGinty or the way an apparently classical comedy such as Unfaithfully Yours (1948) shifts into the realm of multiple and hypothetical narratives.
wn.com/Preston_Sturges -
Ray Milland
Ray Milland (3 January 1907 – 10 March 1986) was a Welsh actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945), a sophisticated leading man opposite a corrupt John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind (1942), the murder-plotting husband in Dial M for Murder (1954), and as Oliver Barrett III in Love Story (1970).
Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones (not Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones as has often been stated). His birth was registered in the March Quarter of 1907 in Neath, Wales, and he was the son of Elizabeth Annie (née Truscott) and Alfred Jones. In the 1911 census the family were living at 66 Coronation Road, Mount Pleasant, Neath, Wales. Of his parents, Milland wrote in his 1974 autobiography Wide-Eyed in Babylon, "My father was not a cruel or harsh man. Just a very quiet one. I think he was an incurable romantic and consequently a little afraid of his emotions and perhaps ashamed of them... he had been a young hussar in the Boer War and had been present at the relief of Mafeking. He never held long conversations with anyone, except perhaps with me, possibly because I was the only other male in our family. The household consisted of my mother, a rather flighty and coquettish woman much concerned with propriety and what the neighbours thought.."
wn.com/Ray_Milland -
Rezā Shāh
Rezā Shāh Pahlavi (Persian: رضاشاه پهلوی; pronounced [reˈzɑː ˈʃɑːhe pæhlæˈviː] (March 15, 1878 – July 26, 1944), was the Shah of the Imperial State of Iran from December 15, 1925, until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran on September 16, 1941.
In 1925, Reza Shah overthrew Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty, and founded the Pahlavi dynasty. He established a system of government that revitalized the goals of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran where for the first time Iranians were seeking for rulers who do not remain in power for eternity. Known for being quite intelligent despite his lack of formal and academic education, Reza Shah introduced many socio-economic reforms, reorganizing the army, government administration and finances. To his supporters his reign brought "law and order, discipline, central authority, and modern amenities — schools, trains, buses, radios, cinemas, and telephones". However, his attempts at modernisation have been criticised for being "too fast".
wn.com/Rezā_Shāh -
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 31, 1979) was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top show business awards in television, recording, movies and Broadway—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony—now known collectively as an EGOT. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of two people (Marvin Hamlisch is the other) to receive each award.
Born into a prosperous ethnic German Jewish family in Arverne, Queens, New York City, Rodgers was the son of Mamie Levy and Dr. William Abrahams Rodgers, a prominent physician who had changed the family name from Abrahams. Richard began playing the piano at age six. He attended P.S. 10, Townsend Harris Hall and DeWitt Clinton High School. Rodgers spent his early teenage summers in Camp Wigwam (Waterford, Maine) where he composed some of his first songs.
wn.com/Richard_Rodgers -
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American dancer and film actress who garnered fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars. Appearing first as Rita Cansino, she agreed to change her name to Rita Hayworth and her hair color to dark red to attract a greater range in roles. Her appeal led to her being featured on the cover of Life magazine five times, beginning in 1940.
The first dancer featured on film as a partner of both the stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Hayworth appeared in a total of 61 films over 37 years. She is listed by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 Greatest Stars of All Time.
Hayworth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 as Margarita Carmen Cansino, the oldest child of two dancers, Eduardo Cansino, Sr., from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a little town near Seville, Spain, and Volga Hayworth, an American of Irish-English descent who had performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. The Catholic couple had married in 1917. They also had two sons: Eduardo, Jr. and Vernon.
wn.com/Rita_Hayworth -
Robert Hamer
Robert James Hamer (31 March 1911, Kidderminster, Worcestershire – 4 December 1963, London) was a British film director and screenwriter. He was the son of the actor Gerald Hamer (1886-1972).
Hamer won a scholarship to Cambridge University but was sent down (expelled) from Cambridge, and began his career in 1934 as a cutting room assistant and from 1935 worked as a film editor involved with such films as Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) co-produced by Charles Laughton. At the end of the 1930s, he worked on documentaries for the GPO Film Unit.
When his boss at the GPO Alberto Cavalcanti moved to Ealing Studios, Hamer was invited to join him there. He gained some experience as a director by substituting for colleagues and contributed the 'haunted mirror' sequence to Dead of Night (1945). He followed this with the three Ealing films under his own name for which he is best remembered: Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), both featuring Googie Withers, and the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), with Dennis Price and Alec Guinness.
wn.com/Robert_Hamer -
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini (8 May 1906 – 3 June 1977) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City 1945) to the movement.
Rossellini was born in Rome. His mother, Elettra (née Bellan), was a housewife, and his father, Angiolo Giuseppe "Beppino" Rossellini, owned a construction firm. His mother was of part French descent, from immigrants who had arrived in Italy during the Napoleonic Wars. He lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had his first Roman hotel in 1922 when Fascism obtained power in Italy.
Rossellini's father built the first cinema in Rome, granting his son an unlimited free pass; the young Rossellini started frequenting the cinema at an early age. When his father died, he worked as a soundmaker for films and for a certain time he experienced all the accessory jobs related to the creation of a film, gaining competence in each field. Rossellini had a brother, Renzo, who later scored many of his films.
wn.com/Roberto_Rossellini -
Rocky Graziano
Rocky Graziano, born Thomas Rocco Barbella in New York City (1 January 1919 – May 22, 1990), was an Italian American boxer. Graziano was considered one of the greatest knockout artists in boxing history, often displaying the capacity to take his opponent out with a single punch. He was ranked 23rd on Ring Magazine's list of the greatest punchers of all time.
Graziano's life story was the basis of the 1956 Oscar-winning drama film Somebody Up There Likes Me, based on his 1955 autobiography of the same title. The film starred Paul Newman and was directed by Robert Wise.
Rocky Graziano was the son of a boxer known as 'Fighting Nick Bob', and was born in Brooklyn. He later moved to Little Italy in New York's Lower East Side. Rocky grew up as a street fighter and learned to look after himself before he could read or write. He spent years in reform school, jail, and Catholic protectories.
When Rocky was as young as 3 years of age, his father would make him and his brother Joe (who was three years older) fight almost every night in boxing gloves. All the washed-up boxers from around the neighborhood would go to the Barbellas' house to drink and watch the two brothers fight. The fights usually ended badly for Rocco. As he would get hit more and more, he would become angrier and angrier. Usually he would fall asleep from getting punched or sheer tiredness. The only person in Rocco's life to feel any sort of sympathy for him was his mother. She believed Rocco was her lucky child, as he was born on the first day of the New Year. However, Rocky was in trouble for much of his childhood.
wn.com/Rocky_Graziano -
Romulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was President of Venezuela from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Accion Democratica, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century. He survived an assassination attempt ordered by Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Betancourt, one of Venezuela's most important political figures, led a tumultuous and highly controversial career in Latin American politics. Periods of exile brought Betancourt in contact with various Latin American countries as well as the United States, securing his legacy as one of the few real international leaders to emerge from 20th-century Latin America. Scholars credit Betancourt as the Founding Father of modern democratic Venezuela.
Rómulo Betancourt was born in Guatire, a town near Caracas, son of Luis Betancourt Bello (from Canary origins) and Venezuelan Virginia Bello Milano, being the middle brother between his older sister Teresa and younger sister Helena. Living along with his maternal grandmother Maria Milano Bello and his uncle Luis Bello Milano.
wn.com/Romulo_Betancourt -
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman (9 February 1891 – 19 May 1958) was an English actor.
He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, as Roland Charles Colman, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered he enjoyed acting. He intended to study engineering at Cambridge University, but his father's sudden death from pneumonia in 1907 made this financially impossible.
He became a well-known amateur actor and was a member of the West Middlesex Dramatic Society in 1908-09. He made his first appearance on the professional stage in 1914.
After working as a clerk at the British Steamship Company in the City of London, he joined the London Scottish Regiment in 1909 and was among the first of Territorial Army to fight in World War I. During the war, he served with fellow actors Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke and Basil Rathbone. On 31 October 1914, at the Battle of Messines, Colman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his ankle, which gave him a limp that he would attempt to hide throughout the rest of his acting career. He was invalided from the service in 1916.
wn.com/Ronald_Colman -
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( /ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.
Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
wn.com/Ronald_Reagan -
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain. He and his wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino, Trigger, and his German Shepherd dog, Bullet, were featured in more than 100 movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often either Pat Brady (who drove a Jeep called "Nellybelle"), Andy Devine, or the crotchety George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers's nickname was "King of the Cowboys". Evans's nickname was "Queen of the West."
Leonard Franklin Slye was born to Andrew ("Andy") and Mattie (Womack) Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his family lived in a tenement building on 2nd Street. (Riverfront Stadium was constructed at this location in 1970 and Leonard would later joke that he had been born at second base.) Dissatisfied with his job and city life, Andy Slye and his brother Will built a 12-by-50-foot houseboat from salvage lumber, and, in July 1912, the Slye family floated up the Ohio River towards Portsmouth, Ohio. Desiring a more stable existence in Portsmouth, the Slyes purchased land on which to build a home, but the flood of 1913 allowed them to move the houseboat to their property and continue living in it on dry land.
wn.com/Roy_Rogers -
Royal Observer Corps
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation operating in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December 1995, when the Corps' civilian volunteers were stood down. (ROC headquarters staff at RAF Bentley Priory stood down on 31 March 1996). Composed mainly of civilian spare-time volunteers, ROC personnel wore a Royal Air Force (RAF) style uniform and latterly came under the administrative control of RAF Strike Command and the operational control of the Home Office. Civilian volunteers were trained and administered by a small cadre of professional full-time officers under the command of the Commandant Royal Observer Corps; latterly a serving RAF Air Commodore.
In 1925, following a Defence Committee initiative undertaken the previous year, the formation of an RAF command concerning the Air Defence of Great Britain led to the provision of a Raid Reporting System, itself delegated to a sub-committee consisting of representatives from the Air Ministry, Home Office and the General Post Office. This Raid Reporting System was to provide for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain, and was eventually to become known as the Observer Corps. The Observer Corps was subsequently awarded the title Royal by His Majesty King George VI in April 1941, in recognition of service carried out by Observer Corps personnel during the Battle of Britain.
wn.com/Royal_Observer_Corps -
Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993) was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin. He won the Academy Award four times for his songs, including the popular song "Three Coins in the Fountain".
Cahn was born as Samuel Cohen in the Lower East Side of New York City, the only son (he had four sisters) of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen, who were Jewish immigrants from Galicia, Austria. His sisters, Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and Evelyn, all studied the piano. His mother did not approve of Sammy studying it though, for she thought the piano was a woman's instrument, so he took violin lessons. After three lessons and following his bar mitzvah, he joined a small dixieland band called Pals of Harmony, that would tour the Catskill Mountains in the summer and also did private parties. This new dream of Cahn's destroyed any hopes his parents had for him to be a professional man.
wn.com/Sammy_Cahn -
Sammy Kaye
Sammy Kaye (March 13, 1910–June 2, 1987), born Samuel Zarnocay, Jr., was an American bandleader and songwriter, whose tag line, "Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye", became one of the most famous of the Big Band Era.
Kaye, born in Lakewood, Ohio, graduated from Rocky River High School in Rocky River, Ohio in 1927. At Ohio University in Athens, Ohio he was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity. Kaye could play the saxophone and the clarinet, but he never featured himself as a soloist on either one.
A leader of one of the so-called "Sweet" bands of the Big Band Era, he made a large number of records for Vocalion Records, RCA Victor, Columbia Records, Bell Records, and the American Decca record label. He was also a hit on radio. Kaye was known for an audience participation gimmick called "So You Want To Lead A Band?" where audience members would be called onto stage in an attempt to conduct the orchestra, with the possibility of winning batons. Kaye was also known for his use of "singing of song titles", which was emulated by Kay Kyser and Blue Barron.
wn.com/Sammy_Kaye -
Satchel Paige
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be inducted from the Negro leagues.
Paige was a right-handed pitcher and was the oldest rookie to play Major League Baseball at the age of 42. He played with the St. Louis Browns until age 47, and represented them in the Major League All-Star Game in 1952 and 1953. He first played for the semi-professional Mobile Tigers from 1924 to 1926.
Paige began his professional career in 1926 with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts of the Negro Southern League, and played his last professional game on June 21, 1966, for the Peninsula Grays of the Carolina League.
While Satchel Paige was playing baseball, many ages and birthdates were reported, ranging from 1900 to 1908. Paige himself was the source of many of these dates. His actual birthdate, July 7, 1906, was determined in 1948 when Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck traveled to Mobile, Alabama and accompanied Paige's family to the County Health Department to obtain his birth certificate. Paige's birth certificate is displayed in his autobiography.
wn.com/Satchel_Paige -
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor. Respected for his natural style and versatility, Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. In a screen career that spanned 37 years, he was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor—a record he holds with Laurence Olivier—of which he won two.
Tracy discovered his talent for acting while a student at Ripon College, and subsequently gained a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. Tracy's breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in Up the River, Tracy was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox were unremarkable, and he remained largely unknown to audiences after 25 films. In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy was one of the studio's top stars. In 1942 he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a popular partnership that produced nine movies over 25 years.
wn.com/Spencer_Tracy -
Stan Musial
Stanley Frank "Stan" Musial ( /ˈmjuːziəl/ or /ˈmjuːʒəl/; born November 21, 1920) is a retired professional baseball player who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals (1941–1963). Nicknamed "Stan the Man", Musial was a record 24-time All-Star selection (tied with Willie Mays), and is widely considered to be one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. He compiled 3,630 hits (ranking fourth all-time and most in a career spent with only one team). With 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 on the road, he is also considered to be the most consistent hitter of his era. He also compiled 475 home runs during his career, was named the National League's (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times, and won three World Series championship titles. Musial was a first-ballot inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969 and is currently the longest tenured living Hall of Famer.
Musial was born in Donora, Pennsylvania, where he frequently played baseball in both informal and organized settings, eventually playing on the baseball team at Donora High School. Signed to a professional contract by the St. Louis Cardinals as a pitcher in 1938, Musial was converted into an outfielder prior to his major league debut in 1941. Noted for his unique batting stance, he quickly established himself as a consistent and productive hitter. In his first full season, 1942, the Cardinals won the World Series. The following year, he led the National League in six different offensive categories and earned his first MVP award. He was also named an All-Star for the first time; he would be selected to every All-Star Game in every subsequent season he played. Musial won his second World Series ring in 1944, then missed the entire 1945 season while serving with the United States Navy.
wn.com/Stan_Musial -
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli (26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his 80s.
For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, Grappelly, reverting to "Grappelli" in 1969. The "Grappelli" spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist – even on reissues of his early work.
Grappelli was born in Paris, France, to Italian/French parents: his Italian father, marquess Ernesto Grappelli, was born in Alatri, Lazio. His French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, from St-Omer, died when he was four, and his father left to fight in World War I. As a result, at six, he was accepted into Isadora Duncan's dance school, where he learnt to love French Impressionist music. Grappelli started his musical career busking on the streets of Paris and Montmartre with a violin. He began playing the violin at age 12 and attended the Conservatoire de Paris studying music theory (1924-28). He made a living busking on the side until he gained fame in Paris as a violin virtuoso. He also worked as a silent film pianist while at the conservatory and played the saxophone and accordion. Grappelli called his piano "My Other Love" and (many years later) released an album of solo piano of the same name.
wn.com/Stéphane_Grappelli -
Sugar Ray Robinson
Sugar Ray Robinson (born Walker Smith Jr., May 3, 1921 – April 12, 1989) was an American professional boxer. Frequently cited as the greatest boxer of all time, Robinson's performances in the welterweight and middleweight divisions prompted sportswriters to create "pound for pound" rankings, where they compared fighters regardless of weight. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.
Robinson was 85–0 as an amateur with 69 of those victories coming by way of knockout, 40 in the first round. He turned professional in 1940 at the age of 19 and by 1951 had a professional record of 128–1–2 with 84 knockouts. Robinson held the world welterweight title from 1946 to 1951, and won the world middleweight title in the latter year. He retired in 1952, only to come back two and a half years later and regain the middleweight title in 1955. He then became the first boxer in history to win a divisional world championship five times, a feat he accomplished by defeating Carmen Basilio in 1958 to regain the middleweight championship. Robinson was named "fighter of the year" twice: first for his performances in 1942, then nine years and over 90 fights later, for his efforts in 1951. He defeated other Hall of Fame fighters such as Jake LaMotta, Carmen Basilio, Gene Fullmer, Randy Turpin, Carl 'Bobo' Olson, Henry Armstrong, Rocky Graziano and Kid Gavilan. Robinson engaged in 200 pro bouts, and his professional career lasted nearly 26 years.
wn.com/Sugar_Ray_Robinson -
Taiwan
Taiwan (i/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN; Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China now governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa), which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the capital city and economic and cultural centre of the country, and New Taipei is the most populous city.
The earliest evidence of inhabitation of Taiwan dates back to the late Paleolithic era. The island of Taiwan was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before being colonized in the 17th century by the Dutch and the Spanish Empire. The first Han Chinese polity on Taiwan began when Koxinga's troops defeated Dutch forces and established the Kingdom of Tungning. The island was subsequently ruled by the Qing Dynasty after the kingdom's defeat in the Battle of Penghu in 1683, a period that lasted for over 200 years. Following Japan's victory over the Qing Dynasty in the first Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
wn.com/Taiwan -
Ted Williams
Theodore Samuel "Ted" Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 21-year Major League Baseball career as the left fielder for the Boston Red Sox (1939–1942 and 1946–1960). Williams was a two-time American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) winner, led the league in batting six times, and won the Triple Crown twice. A nineteen-time All-Star, he had a career batting average of .344, with 521 home runs, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. Williams recorded a hit 34 percent of the time; he reached base an astounding 48 percent of the time.
Williams was the last player in Major League Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941). Williams holds the highest career batting average of anyone with 500 or more home runs. His career year was 1941, when he hit .406 with 37 HR, 120 RBI, and 135 runs scored. His .551 on base percentage set a record that stood for 61 years. Nicknamed "The Kid", "The Splendid Splinter", "Teddy Ballgame", "The Thumper" and, because of his hitting prowess, "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived", Williams's career was twice interrupted by service as a U.S. Marine Corps fighter-bomber pilot. An avid sport fisherman, he hosted a television program about fishing, and he was inducted into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame.
wn.com/Ted_Williams -
Teddy Wilson
Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Described by critic Scott Yannow as "the definitive swing pianist", Wilson's sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. With Goodman, he was perhaps the first black musician to play in a racially integrated group. In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Wilson also led his own groups and recording sessions from the late 1920s to the '80s.
Wilson was born in Austin, Texas, on November 24, 1912. He studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. After working in the Lawrence "Speed" Webb band, with Louis Armstrong, and also understudying Earl Hines in Hines's Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra, Wilson joined Benny Carter's Chocolate Dandies in 1933. In 1935, he joined the Benny Goodman Trio (which consisted of Goodman, Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, later expanded to the Benny Goodman Quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton). The trio performed during the big band's intermissions. By joining the trio, Wilson became the first black musician to perform in public with a previously all-white jazz group.
wn.com/Teddy_Wilson -
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl (October 6, 1914, Larvik, Norway – April 18, 2002, Colla Micheri, Italy) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a background in zoology and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a self-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands in 1947.
In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Register. Currently, this list includes 238 collections from all over the world. The Heyerdahl Archives span the years 1937 to 2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters, expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, original book and article manuscripts. The Heyerdahl Archives are administered by the Kon-Tiki Museum and the National Library of Norway in Oslo.
Heyerdahl was born in Larvik, the son of master brewer Thor Heyerdahl and his wife Alison Lyng. As a young child, Heyerdahl showed a strong interest in zoology. He created a small museum in his childhood home, with a Vipera berus as the main attraction. He studied zoology and geography at the University of Oslo. At the same time, he privately studied Polynesian culture and history, consulting what was then the world's largest private collection of books and papers on Polynesia, owned by Bjarne Kropelien, a wealthy wine merchant in Oslo. This collection was later purchased by the University of Oslo Library from Kropelien's heirs and was attached to the Kon-Tiki Museum research department. After seven terms and consultations with experts in Berlin, a project was developed and sponsored by Heyerdahl's zoology professors, Kristine Bonnevie and Hjalmar Broch. He was to visit some isolated Pacific island groups and study how the local animals had found their way there.
wn.com/Thor_Heyerdahl -
Tony Zale
Anthony Florian Zaleski (May 29, 1913 – March 20, 1997) was an American boxer. Zale was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, a steel town, which gave him his nickname, "Man of Steel." In addition, he had the reputation of being able to take fearsome punishment and still rally to win, reinforcing that nickname. Zale was known as a strong body puncher, who punished his opponents and steadily wore them down before knocking them out.
Zale was a 2-time world middleweight champion and made the Ring Magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. Zale is best remembered for his three bouts over a 21-month period with Rocky Graziano for the middleweight crown. These three bouts were among the most brutal and exciting middleweight championship matches of all time. The first match took place in Yankee Stadium, New York. Zale had served in World War II, was thirty-three years old, and had been inactive for about four years. Graziano was on a winning knockout streak and seemed to be in his prime. In their first match (September 27, 1946), after flooring Graziano in the first round, Zale took a savage beating from Graziano, and was on the verge of losing the fight by TKO. However, he rallied and knocked out Graziano in the sixth round to retain his title. The rematch, a year later in Chicago (July] 16, 1947), was a mirror image of their first fight. Graziano was battered around the ring, suffered a closed eye and appeared ready to lose by a knockout, then rallied and knocked Zale out in the sixth round, becoming middleweight champion of the world.
wn.com/Tony_Zale -
Toshirō Mifune
Toshiro Mifune (三船 敏郎 Mifune Toshirō [miɸɯne toɕiɽoː]; April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo. He also portrayed Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy.
Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, China, to Japanese Methodist parents,[citation needed] and grew up in the Chinese city of Dalian with his parents and two siblings. In his youth, Mifune worked in the photography shop of his father Tokuzo, a commercial photographer and importer who had emigrated from northern Japan. After spending the first 19 years of his life in China, during which there is evidence that he worked as a Methodist missionary,[citation needed] as a Japanese citizen he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army Aviation, where he served in the Aerial Photography (Ko-type) unit during World War II. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.
wn.com/Toshirō_Mifune -
Varian Fry
Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Varian Fry was educated at Hotchkiss and Taft School and Harvard University. He founded Hound & Horn, an influential literary quarterly, in 1927 with Lincoln Kirstein while a Harvard undergraduate. He married Kirstein's sister, Eileen.[citation needed]
While working as a foreign correspondent for the American journal The Living Age, Fry visited Berlin in 1935 and personally witnessed Nazi abuse against Jews on more than one occasion and wanted to help.
Greatly disturbed by what he saw, he helped raise money to support European anti-Nazi movements. Following the occupation of France in August 1940, he went to Marseille as an agent of the newly formed Emergency Rescue Committee in an effort to help persons wishing to flee the Nazis. Fry had $3,000 and a short list of refugees under imminent threat of arrest by agents of the Gestapo. Clamoring at his door came anti-Nazi writers, avant-garde artists, musicians and hundreds of others desperately seeking any chance to escape France.
wn.com/Varian_Fry -
Vaughn Monroe
Vaughn Wilton Monroe (October 7, 1911 – May 21, 1973) was an American baritone singer, trumpeter and big band leader and actor, most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording and radio.
Monroe was born in Akron, Ohio on October 7, 1911. He graduated from Jeannette High School in Pennsylvania in 1929 where he was senior class president and voted "most likely to succeed." After graduation, he attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he was an active member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. Monroe attended New England Conservatory for one semester in 1935, studying voice with Clarence B. Shirley.
He formed his first orchestra in Boston in 1940 and became its principal vocalist. He began recording for Victor's low-priced Bluebird label. That same year, Monroe built The Meadows, a restaurant and nightclub on Route 9 in Framingham, Massachusetts, west of Boston. He hosted the Camel Caravan radio program from there starting in 1946. It burned to the ground in December 1980.
wn.com/Vaughn_Monroe -
Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born Vera Margaret Welch on 20 March 1917) is an English singer-songwriter and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II.
During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. She became known, and is still referred to, as "The Forces' Sweetheart"; the songs most associated with her are "We'll Meet Again", "The White Cliffs of Dover", A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and "There'll Always Be an England".
She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the UK and the United States and recording such hits as "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" and "My Son, My Son".
In 2009 she became the oldest living artist to make it to No. 1 on the British album chart, at the age of 92. She has devoted much time and energy to charity work connected with ex-servicemen, disabled children and breast cancer. She is still held in great affection by veterans of the Second World War and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the twentieth century.
wn.com/Vera_Lynn -
Veronica Lake
Veronica Lake (November 14, 1922 – July 7, 1973) was an American film actress and pin-up model. She received both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her role in Sullivan's Travels and for her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s. She was well-known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle. Lake had a string of broken marriages and, after her career declined, had long struggles with mental illness and alcoholism.
Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Harry E. Ockelman, of Danish-Irish descent, worked for an oil company aboard a ship. Her father died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932 when she was ten. Her mother, née Constance Charlotta Trimble (1902–1992; of Irish descent), married family friend Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, a year later, and Lake began using his last name.
Lake was sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Canada, from which she was expelled. The Keane family later moved to Miami, Florida. Lake attended Miami Senior High School in Miami, where she was known for her beauty. She had a troubled childhood and was diagnosed as schizophrenic, according to her mother.
wn.com/Veronica_Lake -
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli (February 28, 1903 – July 25, 1986) was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made many comedies and melodramas. He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951; they were the parents of Liza Minnelli.
Born as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago, he was the youngest of four known sons, only two of whom survived to adulthood, born to Marie Émilie Odile Lebeau (stage name: Mina Gennell) and Vincent Charles Minnelli. His father was musical conductor of Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Minnelli's Chicago-born mother was of French Canadian descent with a strong probability of Native American (Anishinaabe) lineage included via her Mackinac Island, Michigan born mother. The family toured small towns primarily in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before settling permanently in Delaware, Ohio.
wn.com/Vincente_Minnelli -
Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio De Sica (7 July 1901 or 1902 – 13 November 1974) was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: Sciuscià and Ladri di biciclette were awarded honorary Oscars, while ieri, oggi, domani and Il giardino dei Finzi Contini won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Indeed, the great critical success of Sciuscià (the first foreign film to be so recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Ladri di biciclette helped establish the permanent Best Foreign Film Oscar. These two films generally are considered part of the canon of classic cinema.Ladri di biciclette was cited by Turner Classic Movies as one of the 15 most influential films in cinema history.
Ironically, for an artist considered one of the Italian cinema's greatest and most influential directors, De Sica's sole Academy Award nomination was for acting, when he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for playing Major Rinaldi in American director Charles Vidor's 1957 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, a movie that was panned by critics and proved a box office flop. De Sica's acting was considered the highlight of the film.
wn.com/Vittorio_De_Sica -
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967) was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark Gable, in the epic American Civil War drama Gone with the Wind.
She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her then-husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her 30-year stage career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.
Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. However, ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. For much of her adult life Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, and her career suffered periods of inactivity. She also suffered recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. Leigh and Olivier divorced in 1960, and she worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis in 1967.
wn.com/Vivien_Leigh -
Waitstill Sharp
Waitstill Hastings Sharp (1902–1984) was a Harvard College graduate and Unitarian minister. He was the son of naturalist author and professor Dallas Lore Sharp and Grace Hastings and a descendant of Thomas Hastings (colonist) who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. The Sharps were recruited by members of the American Unitarian Association, including Robert Dexter to accept a posting in Czechoslovakia, as representatives of a new program to help endangered refugees. With his wife Martha Sharp, in 1939 he administered relief to hundreds of endangered Jews and other refugees in Prague. In the following year, Waitstill and Martha traveled to southern Europe to continue a relief and rescue program for endangered refugees as representatives of the newly formed Unitarian Service Committee. While visiting southern France, Waitstill worked closely with the World YMCA to help Czech servicemen to escape from Vichy France. Waitstill also forged a collaboration with Varian Fry to look after Fry's refugee clients in Lisbon. In this capacity, Waitstill personally escorted the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger from Marseille to America.
wn.com/Waitstill_Sharp -
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year.
Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.
wn.com/Walt_Disney -
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most Oscar wins by a male actor, tied with Jack Nicholson.
Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, less than two miles from his family's home in Swampscott, Walter Andrew Brennan was the second of three children born to Irish immigrants William John Brennan and Margaret Elizabeth Flanagan. The elder Brennan was an engineer and inventor, and young Walter studied engineering at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
While in school, Brennan became interested in acting, and began to perform in vaudeville. While working as a bank clerk, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a private with the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France during World War I. Following the war, he moved to Guatemala and raised pineapples, before settling in Los Angeles. During the 1920s, he became involved in the real estate market, where he made a fortune. Unfortunately, he lost most of his money when the market took a sudden downturn due to the Great Depression.[citation needed]
wn.com/Walter_Brennan -
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston ( /ˈwɔːltər ˈhjuːstən/; April 5, 1883 – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.
Huston was born in York County, Ontario, the son of Elizabeth (née McGibbon) and Robert Moore Huston, a provincial farmer who founded a construction company. He was of Scottish and Irish descent.
Huston began his Broadway career in 1924. Once talkies began in Hollywood, he achieved fame in character roles. His first major role was in 1929's The Virginian with Gary Cooper. He appeared in the Broadway theatrical adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Dodsworth in 1934 and the play's film version two years later.
Huston remained busy throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both on stage and screen (becoming one of America's most distinguished actors); he performed "September Song" in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 (his grandaughter Anjelica Huston sang it on the May 7, 2012 episode of the NBC TV series "Smash"). Among his films are Abraham Lincoln (1930), Rain (1932), Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Mission to Moscow (1943), a pro-Soviet World War II propaganda film as Ambassador Joseph E. Davies. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1948 for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was directed by his son, John Huston. His last film was The Furies in 1950 with Barbara Stanwyck.
wn.com/Walter_Huston -
Walter Pidgeon
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs. Miniver, The Bad and the Beautiful, Forbidden Planet, Advise & Consent, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Funny Girl and Harry in Your Pocket.
Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Pidgeon was the son of Hannah (née Sanborn), a homemaker, and Caleb Burpee Pidgeon, a merchant who owned a men's clothing store. Pidgeon attended local schools, followed by the University of New Brunswick, where he studied law and drama. His university education was interrupted by World War I, and he enlisted in the 65th Battery, Royal Canadian Field Artillery. Pidgeon never saw combat, however, as he was severely injured in an accident. He was crushed between two gun carriages and spent 17 months in a military hospital. Following the war, he moved to Boston, where he worked as a bank runner, at the same time studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was a classically trained baritone.
wn.com/Walter_Pidgeon -
Warren Spahn
Warren Edward Spahn (April 23, 1921 – November 24, 2003) was an American Major League Baseball left-handed pitcher. He played his entire 21-year baseball career in the National League. He won 20 games each in 13 seasons, including a 23-7 record when he was age 42. Spahn was the 1957 Cy Young Award winner, and was the runner-up three times, all during the period when just one award was given. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, with 83% of the total vote. (His eligibility was delayed, under the rules of the time, by 2 years of token minor league play.)
Spahn won 363 games, more than any other left-handed pitcher in history, and more than any other pitcher who played his entire career in the post-1920 live-ball era. He is acknowledged as one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball history. The Warren Spahn Award, given to the major leagues' best left-handed pitcher, is named after him.
Regarded as a "thinking man's" pitcher who liked to outwit batters, Spahn once described his approach on the mound: "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing."
wn.com/Warren_Spahn -
Willard Libby
Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology.
Libby was born in Grand Valley, Colorado. He received his B.S. in 1931 and Ph.D. in 1933 in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he then became a lecturer and later assistant professor. Libby spent the 1930s building sensitive geiger counters to measure weak natural and artificial radioactivity. In 1941 he joined Berkeley's chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma.
Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, he spent most of 1941 at Princeton University. After the start of World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University with Nobel laureate chemist Harold Urey. Libby was responsible for the gaseous diffusion separation and enrichment of the uranium-235 which was used in the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
In 1945 he became a professor at the University of Chicago. In 1954, he was appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1959, he became Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a position he held until his retirement in 1976. He taught honors freshman chemistry from 1959 to 1963 (in keeping with a University tradition that senior faculty teach this class). He was Director of the University of California statewide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) for many years including the lunar landing time. In 1966 he married his second wife Leona Woods Marshall, an original experimenter on the world's first nuclear reactor and a UCLA professor of environmental engineering. He also started the first Environmental Engineering program at UCLA in 1972.
wn.com/Willard_Libby -
William Bendix
William Bendix (January 14, 1906 – December 14, 1964) was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television's The Life of Riley. He also received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Wake Island (1942).
Bendix, named for his paternal grandfather, was born in Manhattan, New York City, the only son of Oscar Bendix and Hilda (née Carnell) Bendix. As a youth in the early 1920s, Bendix was a batboy for the New York Yankees and said he saw Babe Ruth hit more than a hundred home runs at Yankee Stadium. In 1927, he married Theresa Stefanotti. Bendix worked as a grocer until the Great Depression.
Bendix began his acting career at age 30, by way of the New Jersey Federal Theater Project, and made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films, usually as a warm-hearted Marine, gangster or detective. He started with appearances in film noir films including a performance in The Glass Key (1942), which also featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. He soon gained more attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor.
wn.com/William_Bendix -
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by 1919. There, Hanna became an Eagle Scout. Hanna graduated from Compton High School in 1928. He briefly attended Compton City College but dropped out at the onset of the Great Depression.
After working odd jobs in the first months of the Depression, Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930. During the 1930s, Hanna steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry and live action films. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna–Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner, owners of Hanna's first employer Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.
wn.com/William_Hanna -
William Powell
William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor.
A major star at MGM, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the popular Thin Man series based on the novels of Dashiell Hammett in which Powell and Loy played Nick and Nora Charles. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947). William Powell was not related to David Powell, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, or Jane Powell.
An only child, Powell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, on July 29, 1892. His father was born in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania (where William H. Powell spent his boyhood summers), to William S. and Harriet Powell. Powell showed an early aptitude for performing. In 1907, he moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated from Central High School in 1910. The Powells lived a few blocks away from the Carpenters, whose daughter Harlean evolved into Hollywood's Jean Harlow, although Powell would not meet her until both were established actors.
wn.com/William_Powell -
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, Hon. RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jenny Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.
wn.com/Winston_Churchill -
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf (US /piːˈɑːf/ or UK /ˈpiːæf/; French: [eˈdit pjaf]; 19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963), born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's national popular singer, as well as being one of France's greatest international stars. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads. Among her songs are "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "l'Accordéoniste" (1955), and "Padam... Padam..." (1951).
Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is shrouded in mystery. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, Paris. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate cites the Hôpital Tenon, the hospital for the 20th arrondissement of which Belleville is part.
She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf—an argot colloquialism for "sparrow"—was a nickname she would receive 20 years later.
wn.com/Édith_Piaf
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
1940's Fashion Film - Tutorial - How to Apply Makeup
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:46
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
vintagemakeupguide.com and glamourdaze.com Or Buy the exquisite Besame Cosmetics range here: vintagemakeupguide.com Part two of the classic Vintage 1940's Makeup Tutorial Film courtesy of the Prelinger Archive. Enjoy !
http://wn.com/1940's_Fashion_Film_Tutorial_How_to_Apply_Makeup
vintagemakeupguide.com and glamourdaze.com Or Buy the exquisite Besame Cosmetics range here: vintagemakeupguide.com Part two of the classic Vintage 1940's Makeup Tutorial Film courtesy of the Prelinger Archive. Enjoy !
1940's fashion - A Vintage Guide to Glamour
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:00
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
glamourdaze.com and vintagemakeupguide.com A womans 1940's fashion guide to being glamourous by Miss Ratherly Stern. Learn first hand from a womens etiquette expert, how to possess the glamour, poise and charm of a fashionable girl from the 1940's. This film was assembled courtesy of the Prelinger Archive. Quote's A little touch of seasoning that makes a dish just right.
http://wn.com/1940's_fashion_A_Vintage_Guide_to_Glamour
glamourdaze.com and vintagemakeupguide.com A womans 1940's fashion guide to being glamourous by Miss Ratherly Stern. Learn first hand from a womens etiquette expert, how to possess the glamour, poise and charm of a fashionable girl from the 1940's. This film was assembled courtesy of the Prelinger Archive. Quote's A little touch of seasoning that makes a dish just right.
- published: 26 Jul 2010
- views: 53883
- author: glamourdaze
1940's Music
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:07
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
A quick video I made for my American Studies project. EDIT: Apparently this version of 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' is by Bette Midler, not the Andrews Sisters (thanks aristiedis!) Sorry for the misinformation =)
http://wn.com/1940's_Music
A quick video I made for my American Studies project. EDIT: Apparently this version of 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' is by Bette Midler, not the Andrews Sisters (thanks aristiedis!) Sorry for the misinformation =)
- published: 07 Jun 2010
- views: 154860
- author: TimeyWimey0Detector
Movietone News - 1940s
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:59
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Newsreels that used to play in movie theatres.
http://wn.com/Movietone_News_1940s
Newsreels that used to play in movie theatres.
- published: 17 Nov 2007
- views: 76599
- author: miscvids818
Vintage TV Commercials from the 1940's & 50's (7+ ads)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:57
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
Collection of old television commercials from the 40's & 50's Band Aid Gillette Blue Blades Reach for the Remington - Electric Shaver Gillette Super Speed Razor Mum deodorant, now with M-3 Pepsodent tooth paste - You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent Dodge cars - Proud in Service, Swift and Mighty in Action
http://wn.com/Vintage_TV_Commercials_from_the_1940's_50's_7+_ads
Collection of old television commercials from the 40's & 50's Band Aid Gillette Blue Blades Reach for the Remington - Electric Shaver Gillette Super Speed Razor Mum deodorant, now with M-3 Pepsodent tooth paste - You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent Dodge cars - Proud in Service, Swift and Mighty in Action
- published: 30 May 2010
- views: 67864
- author: ubmx
Coney Island of the 1940's
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 13 Dec 2012
Coney Island, "the place where merriment is king!" Take a trip back in time 50 years before the Mermaid Parade. See masses of old school New Yorkers beat the heat by hitting the beach. See Side Shows! Carnies! Freaks! Thrill rides! Includes the original Coney Island Hot Dog, the Bathing Girl Review, and people getting sick on rides. Not to mention the Tiger Rag, if 1940's Coney Island existed today an insurance agent would have a field day. Still, 1940's Coney Island kicks the ass of most modern amusement parks any day. (This film is forever dedicated to artist and Coney Island mermaid Mary Karam. She is greatly loved and will be sorely missed. - Sept 19, 2009.) See more at: www.weirdovideo.com
http://wn.com/Coney_Island_of_the_1940's
Coney Island, "the place where merriment is king!" Take a trip back in time 50 years before the Mermaid Parade. See masses of old school New Yorkers beat the heat by hitting the beach. See Side Shows! Carnies! Freaks! Thrill rides! Includes the original Coney Island Hot Dog, the Bathing Girl Review, and people getting sick on rides. Not to mention the Tiger Rag, if 1940's Coney Island existed today an insurance agent would have a field day. Still, 1940's Coney Island kicks the ass of most modern amusement parks any day. (This film is forever dedicated to artist and Coney Island mermaid Mary Karam. She is greatly loved and will be sorely missed. - Sept 19, 2009.) See more at: www.weirdovideo.com
- published: 07 Nov 2006
- views: 159051
- author: weirdovideos
1940s Faux Bangs
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:52
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
My second ever vintage hair tutorial, this time it's 40s style faux / bumper bangs! Not quite as big as Dita von Teese's (or her icon Carmen Miranda) but better for those not quite as brave! It could also work for a 50s, Bettie Page style look and it's a perfect pinup girl style. Look out for the comedy fumble at the beginning! If you have any questions, please just ask. I'll be posting this on my blog, do check it out for more 40s fashion and style tips: www.diaryofavintagegirl.com
http://wn.com/1940s_Faux_Bangs
My second ever vintage hair tutorial, this time it's 40s style faux / bumper bangs! Not quite as big as Dita von Teese's (or her icon Carmen Miranda) but better for those not quite as brave! It could also work for a 50s, Bettie Page style look and it's a perfect pinup girl style. Look out for the comedy fumble at the beginning! If you have any questions, please just ask. I'll be posting this on my blog, do check it out for more 40s fashion and style tips: www.diaryofavintagegirl.com
- published: 03 Oct 2009
- views: 69658
- author: diaryofavintagegirl
The 1940's Bride
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:20
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
glamourdaze.blogspot.com and vintagemakeupguide.com Lingerie fit for a Bride.This charming film, narrated by Miss Ratherly Stern was originally a promo for Newform wedding lingerie, made from rayon silk - the synthetic fabric rage of the 1940's, and is a unique example of the vintage wedding trousseau on film. The traditional trousseau, included bridal accessories,lingerie, toiletries, jewelry, and makeup. Up until the 1940's even bed linens and bath towels were bought as part of her wedding regalia for her new home. Footage courtesy Prelinger Archive
http://wn.com/The_1940's_Bride
glamourdaze.blogspot.com and vintagemakeupguide.com Lingerie fit for a Bride.This charming film, narrated by Miss Ratherly Stern was originally a promo for Newform wedding lingerie, made from rayon silk - the synthetic fabric rage of the 1940's, and is a unique example of the vintage wedding trousseau on film. The traditional trousseau, included bridal accessories,lingerie, toiletries, jewelry, and makeup. Up until the 1940's even bed linens and bath towels were bought as part of her wedding regalia for her new home. Footage courtesy Prelinger Archive
- published: 15 Sep 2010
- views: 18149
- author: glamourdaze
Authentic Vintage Hair Techniques~The 1940's Pageboy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:04
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Maybe it's because I've been visiting the 70's and 80's and maybe it was that crazy rock n roll look I did last week, but I am really happy with this style. I'm getting back to my 1940's hairstyles, which are my favorites, of course. This style is based on the Pageboy technique I found in this book: www.amazon.com It's a time honored favorite, this one! Song:' The Beer Barrell Polka"-The Andrews Sisters Thanks for watching! Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe!
http://wn.com/Authentic_Vintage_Hair_Techniques~The_1940's_Pageboy
Maybe it's because I've been visiting the 70's and 80's and maybe it was that crazy rock n roll look I did last week, but I am really happy with this style. I'm getting back to my 1940's hairstyles, which are my favorites, of course. This style is based on the Pageboy technique I found in this book: www.amazon.com It's a time honored favorite, this one! Song:' The Beer Barrell Polka"-The Andrews Sisters Thanks for watching! Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe!
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 32718
- author: LisaFreemontStreet
1940s - Style and Fashion during the Wartime Era
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:19
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
Fashion, Art and Style during the 1940s. MUSIC FEATURED ON THIS VIDEO: 1) Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller 2) I'll Take Manhattan by Rosemary Clooney
http://wn.com/1940s_Style_and_Fashion_during_the_Wartime_Era
Fashion, Art and Style during the 1940s. MUSIC FEATURED ON THIS VIDEO: 1) Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller 2) I'll Take Manhattan by Rosemary Clooney
- published: 12 Jul 2007
- views: 139624
- author: SandraLondon63
A Drive Through Bunker Hill and Downtown Los Angeles, ca. 1940s
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:12
- Updated: 03 Dec 2012
Unfortunately, there is no audio. Original source: www.archive.org Thought I'd put it on YouTube...
http://wn.com/A_Drive_Through_Bunker_Hill_and_Downtown_Los_Angeles,_ca_1940s
Unfortunately, there is no audio. Original source: www.archive.org Thought I'd put it on YouTube...
- published: 08 Sep 2011
- views: 31015
- author: Eric S
Women's Fashion - 1940s
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:11
- Updated: 14 Dec 2012
Apart from a few clips where the original commentary is heard, this mainly newsreel footage is merely a backdrop to a recent voiceover TV documentary.
http://wn.com/Women's_Fashion_1940s
Apart from a few clips where the original commentary is heard, this mainly newsreel footage is merely a backdrop to a recent voiceover TV documentary.
- published: 12 Jun 2011
- views: 46895
- author: Lord Childe
Battle of the Bulges - 1940s style
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:49
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
Battle of the Bulges - 1940s style. Strange gym equipment are being used to help these 1940s women get in to shape. See our fashion archive: www.britishpathe.com Check out other videos on our Vintage Fashions YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Check out the British Pathe YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Follow us on Twitter: @britishpathe (www.twitter.com Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com All 90000 British Pathe reels can be viewed and enjoyed on:www.britishpathe.com
http://wn.com/Battle_of_the_Bulges_1940s_style
Battle of the Bulges - 1940s style. Strange gym equipment are being used to help these 1940s women get in to shape. See our fashion archive: www.britishpathe.com Check out other videos on our Vintage Fashions YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Check out the British Pathe YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Follow us on Twitter: @britishpathe (www.twitter.com Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com All 90000 British Pathe reels can be viewed and enjoyed on:www.britishpathe.com
- published: 22 Mar 2012
- views: 220340
- author: VintageFashions
Home Front: America in the 1940s
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 26:16
- Updated: 10 Nov 2012
Guided tour of 1995 exhibit at the Hoover Library about America in the 1940s.
http://wn.com/Home_Front_America_in_the_1940s
Guided tour of 1995 exhibit at the Hoover Library about America in the 1940s.
- published: 23 Jun 2010
- views: 8060
- author: HooverPresLib
Progressive Education in the 1940s
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:17
- Updated: 13 Dec 2012
This video presents a positive view of progressive education although it begins with a parent complaining that children are not learning the fundamentals. Various educators are seen including famed John Dewey. One skeptic asserts that ideas similar to progressive education caused a collapse of the ancient Greek civilization. Current debates about educational techniques in many respects seem similar to what was occurring in the 1940s.
http://wn.com/Progressive_Education_in_the_1940s
This video presents a positive view of progressive education although it begins with a parent complaining that children are not learning the fundamentals. Various educators are seen including famed John Dewey. One skeptic asserts that ideas similar to progressive education caused a collapse of the ancient Greek civilization. Current debates about educational techniques in many respects seem similar to what was occurring in the 1940s.
- published: 01 Aug 2007
- views: 125445
- author: danieljbmitchell
Journalism (1940)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:39
- Updated: 01 Dec 2012
Background and context: www.brainpickings.org Public domain footage courtesy of the Internet Archive: www.archive.org
http://wn.com/Journalism_1940
Background and context: www.brainpickings.org Public domain footage courtesy of the Internet Archive: www.archive.org
- published: 08 Nov 2011
- views: 23721
- author: brainpickings
EASY VERONICA LAKE MAKE-UP AND HAIRSTYLE TUTORIAL
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:57
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Facebook page www.facebook.com Blog: pixiwoo.blogspot.com PRODUCTS USED Estee Lauder Maximum coverage foundation MAC Studio Finish concealer Smashbox contour kit Smashbox creme liner palette Collection 2000 big fake lash mascara Urban Decay Lip liner in Gash Beaute weightless lip creme in Masochist
http://wn.com/EASY_VERONICA_LAKE_MAKE-UP_AND_HAIRSTYLE_TUTORIAL
Facebook page www.facebook.com Blog: pixiwoo.blogspot.com PRODUCTS USED Estee Lauder Maximum coverage foundation MAC Studio Finish concealer Smashbox contour kit Smashbox creme liner palette Collection 2000 big fake lash mascara Urban Decay Lip liner in Gash Beaute weightless lip creme in Masochist
- published: 16 Oct 2010
- views: 643783
- author: pixiwoo
1940s Victory Rolls!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:24
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
I've kept you waiting... and waiting... and waiting... but here it is! My all-singing, all-dancing (not really) victory rolls hair tutorial! This is for the scores of gals who has asked me for instructions on this most classic of vintage hairstyles. This is sadly not the best pair of rolls I've ever done... a bit 'pointy' at the top... but it's good enough for this! Victory rolls were hugely popular in the 1940s, seen on Betty Grable and other stars, as well as girls on the street. This is nothing more than the guide to how I do it on myself and others, it's a technique that works for me. Any questions, do leave them here (or comment on my blog, where it will be posted very soon). The link to my blog is thus: www.diaryofavintagegirl.com Hurrah!
http://wn.com/1940s_Victory_Rolls!
I've kept you waiting... and waiting... and waiting... but here it is! My all-singing, all-dancing (not really) victory rolls hair tutorial! This is for the scores of gals who has asked me for instructions on this most classic of vintage hairstyles. This is sadly not the best pair of rolls I've ever done... a bit 'pointy' at the top... but it's good enough for this! Victory rolls were hugely popular in the 1940s, seen on Betty Grable and other stars, as well as girls on the street. This is nothing more than the guide to how I do it on myself and others, it's a technique that works for me. Any questions, do leave them here (or comment on my blog, where it will be posted very soon). The link to my blog is thus: www.diaryofavintagegirl.com Hurrah!
- published: 24 Feb 2011
- views: 83055
- author: diaryofavintagegirl
Vintage Fashions 1940
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:59
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
Vintage fashions 1940
http://wn.com/Vintage_Fashions_1940
Lord of the Rings Movie of 1940
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:51
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
An ingenious Lord of the Rings parody by O. Sharp. With Humphrey Bogart as Frodo Baggins, Sydney Greenstreet as Gandalf and Marlene Dietrich as Galadriel. More info about this spoof is available on flyingmoose.org © O. Sharp, 2001.
http://wn.com/Lord_of_the_Rings_Movie_of_1940
An ingenious Lord of the Rings parody by O. Sharp. With Humphrey Bogart as Frodo Baggins, Sydney Greenstreet as Gandalf and Marlene Dietrich as Galadriel. More info about this spoof is available on flyingmoose.org © O. Sharp, 2001.
- published: 23 Jan 2007
- views: 132404
- author: TheHutt
1940's Fashion - Beach and Swimwear
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:36
- Updated: 12 Dec 2012
glamourdaze.blogspot.com and vintagemakeupguide.com Stripes, Parasols,tunics and snoods were summer favourites in the late 1940's. The playdress was just the thing for sports.Stocking caps were a pet !! Boleros and belts were common to the beach fashion ensemble. Wedge shoes were a must for the hot days. Cool, comfortable and extremely smart.They were the most popular sports shoe of the summer in the late 1940's Featured here is a black and white pair. Footgae courtesy of Prelinger Archive
http://wn.com/1940's_Fashion_Beach_and_Swimwear
glamourdaze.blogspot.com and vintagemakeupguide.com Stripes, Parasols,tunics and snoods were summer favourites in the late 1940's. The playdress was just the thing for sports.Stocking caps were a pet !! Boleros and belts were common to the beach fashion ensemble. Wedge shoes were a must for the hot days. Cool, comfortable and extremely smart.They were the most popular sports shoe of the summer in the late 1940's Featured here is a black and white pair. Footgae courtesy of Prelinger Archive
- published: 22 Sep 2010
- views: 8961
- author: glamourdaze
Vintage 1940's Makeup Tutorial
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:48
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
vintagemakeupguide.com and glamourdaze.com Vintage Fashion Film archive.A 1940's Makeup Film - Face contouring / Lipstick and Hairlines Archive Tutorial Film presented by Miss Ratherly Stern. The ideal facial contour is supposed to be the oval. But some of us have round faces,square faces or long faces. What can we do to make our faces appear more oval ? 1.Round Faces: Don't wear too high a neck line. It shortens the neck and increases the effect of roundness! Hair well off the forehead and flat against the temple ! Thin lipsticks, correctly applied to follow the natural mouthline ! AV neck completes the picture and gives the impression of a little more neck length to give the impression of an oval face! 2.Square Faces: Keep away from haircuts that hang in vertical lines near the side of the face and jawline in.This over empasisies the squareness of the jaw.Avoid straight horizontal lines near the face - like thin lips / round or high horizontal necks. Fill out the lower lip with your lipstick. Hair should fall in curves around the jawline. Wear a V neck line to pull the attention down from jaw. Pure logic when you think about it. 3.The Long / Narrow Face. Don't wear V necks - This adds to the impression of length. Avoid Piled up high hair on top of head as this also adds to the length of the face. Hair should be off the top if the head and fluffed out at the sides to give the thin face added width.Finally a high neck line or choke distracts from the long neck ! Voila ...
http://wn.com/Vintage_1940's_Makeup_Tutorial
vintagemakeupguide.com and glamourdaze.com Vintage Fashion Film archive.A 1940's Makeup Film - Face contouring / Lipstick and Hairlines Archive Tutorial Film presented by Miss Ratherly Stern. The ideal facial contour is supposed to be the oval. But some of us have round faces,square faces or long faces. What can we do to make our faces appear more oval ? 1.Round Faces: Don't wear too high a neck line. It shortens the neck and increases the effect of roundness! Hair well off the forehead and flat against the temple ! Thin lipsticks, correctly applied to follow the natural mouthline ! AV neck completes the picture and gives the impression of a little more neck length to give the impression of an oval face! 2.Square Faces: Keep away from haircuts that hang in vertical lines near the side of the face and jawline in.This over empasisies the squareness of the jaw.Avoid straight horizontal lines near the face - like thin lips / round or high horizontal necks. Fill out the lower lip with your lipstick. Hair should fall in curves around the jawline. Wear a V neck line to pull the attention down from jaw. Pure logic when you think about it. 3.The Long / Narrow Face. Don't wear V necks - This adds to the impression of length. Avoid Piled up high hair on top of head as this also adds to the length of the face. Hair should be off the top if the head and fluffed out at the sides to give the thin face added width.Finally a high neck line or choke distracts from the long neck ! Voila ...
- published: 10 Jun 2009
- views: 142464
- author: glamourdaze
1940s Hair Tutorial Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:37
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
please visit my blog: blog.caseybrowndesigns.com 1940s inspired hair tutorial, part 1 of 2.
http://wn.com/1940s_Hair_Tutorial_Part_1
please visit my blog: blog.caseybrowndesigns.com 1940s inspired hair tutorial, part 1 of 2.
- published: 17 Sep 2008
- views: 324656
- author: elegantlyamused
photo: AP / Guang Niu, Pool
16 Dec 2012
Retired Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin yesterday wrapped up a visit to the United States during which he met with officials at the Pentagon, State Department as well as members of Congress warning about underestimating China’s tactical nuclear weapons buildup ... Yesin warns that U.S. and Western arms specialists are dramatically underestimating China’s nuclear arsenal ... Somewhere between the higher and lower estimates is no doubt the truth ... Mr ... Mr ... ....(size: 4.0Kb)
photo: AP / Jason DeCrow
16 Dec 2012
NEWTOWN, Conn. — The gunman in the Connecticut shooting rampage committed suicide as first responders closed in, the governor said Sunday, raising the specter that Adam Lanza had planned an even more gruesome massacre and was stopped short. Lanza blasted his way into the building and used a high-power rifle to kill 20 children and six adults, including the principal who tried to stop him, authorities said ... Among the questions ... H ... The Rev....(size: 8.8Kb)
photo: AP / Jason DeCrow
18 Dec 2012
An increasing number of US congressmen have called for a national dialogue about measures to curb gun violence following the shooting last week at a primary school in Connecticut that killed 26 people, including 20 children and six adults. White House officials have said that President Barack Obama would make preventing gun-related violence a priority in his second term in office and stricter laws would be part of the effort. ... ....(size: 19.2Kb)
photo: AP / Khalil Hamra
16 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. "Fundamentalism is good for protest, good for revolution, and good for war, but not so good for development.". After a century of being persecuted and driven underground, mainly for their vibrant nationalism and their anti-imperialist and pro-Palestinian views, Egypt's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has finally taken center-state ... Such actions will have to be avoided....(size: 6.9Kb)
photo: AP / David Goldman
17 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON—Democrats say meaningful action in the wake of last week's elementary school shooting must include a ban on military-style assault weapons and a look at how the nation deals with individuals suffering from serious mental illness. Several Democratic lawmakers and Independent Sen ... Gun control was a hot topic in the early 1990s, when Congress enacted a 10-year ban on assault weapons ... He added ... Sen ... Rep ... ———....(size: 5.3Kb)
Yahoo Daily News
18 Dec 2012
China hasn’t started a military war with Taiwan – as has been feared since the 1940s – but a battle that began on paper last month has met with a fiery pulp-and-ink response that could burn a hole in goodwill between the two once-hostile governments ... China has claimed Taiwan as part of its turf since the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists ......(size: 4.2Kb)
Seattle Post
18 Dec 2012
San Francisco Chronicle
18 Dec 2012
Seattle Post
18 Dec 2012
IMDb
18 Dec 2012
The 1940s period picture “Gangster Squad” starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling landed at the center of the fallout for a sequence in the film's trailers that showed Mickey ......(size: 1.0Kb)
Knox News
18 Dec 2012
Ken Arnold, Knoxville. On Dec. 14, the people of Newtown, Conn., had their hearts broken by an evil, troubled young man who killed 20 innocent children and six adults in the Sandy Hook Elementary school ... Is all of this violence planted in some of their minds subliminally, telling them that this is an OK way of life? We didn't have this type of carnage in the 1940s '50s and '60s ... ....(size: 1.9Kb)
The Times of India
18 Dec 2012
LONDON. The southern portion of British Antarctic Territory has been named Queen Elizabeth Land in honour of the monarch's 60 years on the throne, London announced Tuesday ... The previously unnamed area now called Queen Elizabeth Land is around 169,000 square miles (437,000 square kilometres) ... Argentina and Chile made later overlapping claims to the area in the 1940s, though all claims are held in abeyance under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty....(size: 2.2Kb)
The Daily Telegraph Australia
18 Dec 2012
PARENTS and children affected by forced adoptions will receive an official national apology during a ceremony in March. Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the apology would be delivered by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, at Parliament House in Canberra ... The apology was one recommendation from a Senate committee that heard evidence of up to 150,000 children removed from unmarried parents between the 1940s and 1970s ... Picture. Sarah Keayes ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)
The Independent
18 Dec 2012
(Getty Images). The Irish government has taken a symbolic step to right a historic wrong today with the publication of an Amnesty and Immunity Bill which pardons 4,893 Irish soldiers who deserted during the last war to go and fight for the Allies against the Nazis ... “In 1940s Ireland if you were banned from employment and couldn’t get benefits then you could starve ... They were condemned without trial, representation or right of reply.” ... ....(size: 3.8Kb)
Sacramento Bee
18 Dec 2012
ISLAMABAD -- Five women working for Pakistan's anti-polio campaign were slain Tuesday by gunmen on motorcycles, police said, on the second day of a three-day national immunization campaign ... as part of its unmanned drone program ... "It's like a wolf in sheep's clothing.". At its peak in the 1940s and '50s, the polio virus paralyzed or killed half a million people a year, but effective vaccines have nearly eradicated the disease....(size: 2.9Kb)
Independent online (SA)
18 Dec 2012
Goodwill. Now there’s a word you don’t often hear in business these days. It has a technical meaning which an accountant will be able to explain better than me, but in general day-to-day dealings with companies, you seldom encounter goodwill when it comes to service ... I often buy on the basis that cheap can be nasty… and generally I am right ... How refreshing ... This is 21st century technology meets 1940s marketing ... ....(size: 3.4Kb)
Indiewire
18 Dec 2012
.. Shooting tragedies in this country are becoming a chillingly common occurrence of late. Responses are a tricky one ... The 1940s period picture “Gangster Squad” starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling landed at the center of the fallout for a sequence in the film's trailers that showed Mickey Cohen (Penn) and his men in the middle of a firefight in a movie theater ... the filmmaker revealed he was all for the cuts ... ....(size: 3.8Kb)
noodls
18 Dec 2012
(Source. Northwestern University). EVANSTON, Ill. --- "My Fair Lady," Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, will be presented at Northwestern University as the 71st Annual Dolphin Show. Top New York critics praised "My Fair Lady" when it opened in 1956 ... Friday, Jan. 25; 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan ... The Dolphin Show evolved from a 1940s swim team fundraiser to an annual professional-caliber musical production....(size: 3.8Kb)
"'40s" redirects here. For decades comprising years 40–49 of other centuries, see List of decades.
Below title bar: events after World War II: From left to right: The Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948; The Nuremberg Trials were held after the war, in which the prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany were prosecuted; After the war, the United States carried out the Marshall Plan, which aimed at rebuilding Western Europe; ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer.
| Millennium: | 2nd millennium |
| Centuries: | 19th century – 20th century – 21st century |
| Decades: | 1910s 1920s 1930s – 1940s – 1950s 1960s 1970s |
| Years: | 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 |
| Categories: | Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments |
The 1940s was the decade that started on January 1, 1940, and ended on December 31, 1949. This was the fifth decade of the 20th century.
The Second World War took place in the first half of the decade, which had a profound effect on most countries and people in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. The consequences of the war lingered well into the second half of the decade, with a war-weary Europe divided between the jostling spheres of influence of the West and the Soviet Union. To some degree internal and external tensions in the post-war era were managed by new institutions, including the United Nations, the welfare state and the Bretton Woods system, providing to the post–World War II boom, which lasted well into the 1970s. However the conditions of the post-war world encouraged decolonialization and emergence of new states and governments, with India, Pakistan, Israel, Vietnam and others declaring independence, rarely without bloodshed. The decade also witnessed the early beginnings of new technologies (including computers, nuclear power and jet propulsion), often first developed in tandem with the war effort, and later adapted and improved upon in the post-war era.
Contents |
Politics and wars[link]
Wars[link]
- World War II (1939–1945)
- Nazi Germany invades Poland, Denmark, Norway, Benelux, and the French Third Republic from 1939 to 1941.
- Soviet Union invades Poland, Finland, occupies Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Romanian region of Bessarabia from 1939 to 1941.
- Germany faces the United Kingdom in the Battle of Britain (1940). It was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces, and was the largest and most sustained aerial bombing campaign up until that date.
- Germany attacks the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941).
- The United States enter World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It would face the Empire of Japan in the Pacific War.
- Germany and Japan suffer defeats at Stalingrad, El Alamein, and Midway in 1942 and 1943.
- Normandy Landings. The forces of the Western Allies land on the beaches of Normandy in Northern France (June 6, 1944).
- Yalta Conference, wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively—for the purpose of discussing Europe's postwar reorganization, intended to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe.
- The Holocaust, also known as The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, Latinized ha'shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Latinized churben or hurban[1]) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, its allies, and collaborators.[2] Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, gay men, and political and religious opponents.[3] By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims is between 11 million and 17 million people.[4]
- The German Instrument of Surrender signed (May 7–8, 1945). Victory in Europe Day.
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and August 9, 1945); Surrender of Japan on August 15.
- World War II officially ends on September 2, 1945.
- Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)
- 1948 Arab–Israeli War (1948–1949) – The war was fought between the newly declared State of Israel and its Arab neighbours. The war commenced upon the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine in mid-May 1948. After the Arab rejection of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) that would have created an Arab state and a Jewish state side by side, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria attacked the state of Israel. In its conclusion, Israel managed to defeat the Arab armies.
Major political changes[link]
- Establishment of the United Nations Charter (June 26, 1945) effective (October 24, 1945).
- Establishment of the defence alliance NATO April 4, 1949.
Internal conflicts[link]
- 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine.
- Victory of Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War.
- Beginning of Greek Civil War, which extends from 1946 to 1949.
Decolonization and independence[link]
- 1944 - Iceland declares independence from Denmark.
- 1945 - Indonesia declares independence from the Netherlands (effective in 1949 after a bitter armed and diplomatic struggle).
- 1946 - The French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon dissolves to the independent states of Syria and Lebanon. The French settlers are forced to evacuate the French colony in Syria.
- 1947 - Partitioning of the British Raj into a secular Union of India and a Muslim Dominion of Pakistan. British rule in Burma ends in 1948.
- 1948 - Establishment of the State of Israel.
- 1949 - The People's Republic of China is officially proclaimed..
Economics[link]
- US Population is 132,122,000c.
- Unemployed in 1940- 8,120,000c.
- National Debt is $43 Billion
- Average Salary $1299
- Average Teacher Salary $1441
- Minimum Wage $.43 per hour
- 55% of US homes have indoor plumbing
- Life expectancy for women is 68.2
- Life expectancy for men is 60.8
- Auto Deaths 34,500c.
Science and technology[link]
Technology[link]
- The Atanasoff-Berry computer is considered the first electronic digital computing device built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937–1942.
- Construction of the Colossus computer, which was used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II.
- The Z3 as world's first working programmable, fully automatic computing machine was built.
- The first test of technology for an atomic weapon is made (Trinity test) as part of the Manhattan Project.
- The development of radar.
- The development of ballistic missiles.
- The development of jet aircraft.
- The Jeep.
- The development of commercial television.
- The Slinky.
- The microwave oven.
- The invention of Velcro.
- The invention of Tupperware.
- The invention of the Frisbee
Science[link]
- Physics: the development of quantum theory and nuclear physics.
- Mathematics: the development of game theory and cryptography.
- Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki crossed the Pacific Ocean proving the practical possibility that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.
- Willard Libby developed radiocarbon dating - a process that revolutionized archaeology.
- The development of modern evolutionary synthesis.
Popular culture[link]
Film[link]
Main article: 1940s in film
- Oscar winners: Rebecca (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Casablanca (1943), Going My Way (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Hamlet (1948), All the King's Men (1949).
- Some of Hollywood's most notable blockbuster films of the 1940s include: The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston (1941), It's a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra (1946), Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder (1944), Meet Me in St. Louis directed by Vincente Minnelli (1944), Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz (1942), Citizen Kane directed by Orson Welles (1941),"The Great Dictator directed by Charlie Chaplin (1940).",The Big Sleep directed by Howard Hawks (1946), The Lady Eve directed by Preston Sturges (1941), The Shop Around the Corner directed by Ernst Lubitsch (1940), White Heat directed by Raoul Walsh (1949), Yankee Doodle Dandy directed by Michael Curtiz (1942), and Notorious directed by Alfred Hitchcock, (1946). The Walt Disney Studios released the animated feature films Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Fantasia (1941), and Bambi (1942).
Although the 1940s was a decade dominated by World War II, important and noteworthy films about a wide variety of subjects were made during that era. Hollywood was instrumental in producing dozens of classic films during the 1940s, several of which were about the war and some are on most lists of all-time great films. European cinema survived although obviously curtailed during wartime and yet many films of high quality were made in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Europe. The cinema of Japan also survived. Akira Kurosawa and other directors managed to produce significant films during the 1940s.
Film Noir, a film style that incorporated crime dramas with dark images, became largely prevalent during the decade. Films such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are considered classics and helped launch the careers of legendary actors such as Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. The genre has been widely copied since its initial inception.
In France during the war the tour de force Children of Paradise directed by Marcel Carné (1945), was shot in Nazi occupied Paris.[5][6][7] Memorable films from post-war England include David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), and Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948), Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) directed by Robert Hamer. Italian neorealism of the 1940s produced poignant movies made in post-war Italy. Roma, città aperta directed by Roberto Rossellini (1945), Sciuscià directed by Vittorio De Sica (1946), Paisà directed by Roberto Rossellini (1946), La terra trema directed by Luchino Visconti (1948), The Bicycle Thief directed by Vittorio De Sica (1948), and Bitter Rice directed by Giuseppe De Santis (1949), are some well-known examples.
In Japanese cinema The 47 Ronin is a 1941 black and white two-part Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945), and the post-war Drunken Angel (1948), and Stray Dog (1949), directed by Akira Kurosawa are considered important early works leading to his first masterpieces of the 1950s. Drunken Angel (1948), marked the beginning of the successful collaboration between Kurosawa and actor Toshirō Mifune that lasted until 1965.
Music[link]
![[icon]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121218220516/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} |
This section requires expansion. |
Main article: 1940s in music
- The most popular music style during the 1940s was swing, which prevailed during World War II. In the later periods of the 1940s, less swing was prominent and crooners like Frank Sinatra, along with genres such as bebop and the earliest traces of rock and roll, were the prevalent genre.
Literature[link]
Main articles: List of years in literature and List of years in poetry
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway in 1940.
- The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus in 1942.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus in 1942.
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943.
- Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1943.
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand in 1943.
- No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944.
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren in 1945.
- The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank in 1947.
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller in 1949.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell in 1949.
Fashion[link]
Even with the challenges imposed by shortages in rayon, nylon, wool, leather, rubber, metal (for snaps, buckles, and embellishments) and even the amount of fabric that could be used in any one garment, the fashion industry's wheels kept chugging slowly along, producing what it could. After the fall of France in 1940, Hollywood drove fashion in the United States almost entirely, with the exception of a few trends coming from war torn London in 1944 and 1945, as America's own rationing hit full force, and the idea of function seemed to overtake fashion, if only for a few short months until the end of the war. Fabrics shifted dramatically as rationing and wartime shortages controlled import items such as silk and furs. Floral prints seem to dominate the early 1940s, with the mid-to-late 1940s also seeing what is sometimes referred to as "atomic prints" or geometric patterns and shapes. The color of fashion seemed to even go to war, with patriotic nautical themes and dark greens and khakis dominating the color palates, as trousers and wedges slowly replaced the dresses and more traditional heels due to shortages in stockings and gasoline.
See also: 1930–1945 in fashion and 1945–1960 in fashion
|
This section requires expansion. |
People[link]
World leaders[link]
-
Adolf Hitler during the 1940s
-
Hirohito, Emperor Shōwa c. late 1930s
-
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin in the Yalta Conference, February 1945
-
Mao Zedong proclaiming the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949
Chancellor Adolf Hitler
Prime Minister Ion Victor Antonescu
Emperor Hirohito
Prime Minister Benito Mussolini- 22x20px General Secretary Joseph Stalin
President Franklin D. Roosevelt- President Harry S. Truman
Prime Minister Winston Churchill- Prime Minister Clement Attlee
President Federico Laredo Brú - until late 1940- President Fulgencio Batista
- President Ramón Grau
- President Carlos Prío Socarrás
President Charles de Gaulle
Prime Minister John Curtin
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King
Governor-General Muhammad Ali Jinnah- Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan
Chairman Mao Zedong- Chairman Chiang Kai-shek
Reza Shah Pahlavi - until 1941- Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Prime Minister and President Hồ Chí Minh
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
Head of state Francisco Franco
President İsmet İnönü
Prime-Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
President Juan Perón
President Eduardo Santos- President Darío Echandía Olaya
- President Alberto Lleras Camargo
- President Mariano Ospina Pérez
General Aung San
President Getúlio Vargas
President Romulo Betancourt
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
Military leaders[link]
-
General Eisenhower speaks with troops prior to D-Day
-
Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese Imperial Navy Fleet Admiral responsible for attack on Pearl Harbor.
-
Erwin Rommel, German Field Marshal who led the North African Campaign.
-
The Supreme Commanders on 5 June 1945 in Berlin: Bernard Montgomery, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Georgy Zhukov and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.
- Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
- Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring
- Field Marshal Erich von Manstein
- Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt
- Marshal Ion Victor Antonescu
General Hideki Tōjō- General Kuniaki Koiso
- Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama
- Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
- Fleet Admiral Osami Nagano
Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov- Field Marshal Ivan Konev
General Dwight D. Eisenhower- General George Marshall
- General Douglas MacArthur
- General Omar Bradley
- General George S. Patton
- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
- Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
- Field Marshal Harold Alexander
- Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
- Général d'Armée Jean de Lattre de Tassigny
- Général d'Armée Charles de Gaulle
- General Henri Winkelman
Activists and religious leaders[link]
-
Mohandas Gandhi during the 1940s
-
Raoul Wallenberg, c. 1944
-
Muhammed Ali Jinnah with Gandhi, 1944.
-
Chiune Sugihara c.1940s
See also: List of individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust, List of Righteous among the Nations by country, Resistance during the Holocaust, and Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
- Joel Brand
- Behic Erkin
- Varian Fry
- Mohandas Gandhi
- Billy Graham
- Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah
- Necdet Kent
- Aristides de Sousa Mendes
- Pope Pius XII
- Martha Sharp
- Waitstill Sharp
- Chiune Sugihara
- Raoul Wallenberg
Entertainers[link]
-
Humphrey Bogart, 1946
-
Rita Hayworth as Doña Sol des Muire in Blood and Sand (1941)
-
Betty Grable, famous pin-up girl, 1943.
-
Clark Gable with 8th AF B-17 in Britain, 1943
.jpg)
Musicians[link]
Sports[link]
During the 1940s Sporting events were disrupted and changed by the events that engaged and shaped the entire world. The 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games were cancelled because of World War II. During World War II in the United States Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis and numerous stars and performers from American baseball and other sports served in the armed forces until the end of the war. Among the many baseball players (including well known stars) who served during World War II were Moe Berg, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial (in 1945), Warren Spahn, and Ted Williams. They like many others sacrificed their personal and valuable career time for the benefit and well being of the rest of society. The Summer Olympics were resumed in 1948 in London and the Winter games were held that year in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Baseball[link]
See also: History of baseball in the United States#The war years and All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
During the early 1940s World War II had an enormous impact on Major League Baseball as many players including many of the most successful stars joined the war effort. After the war many players returned to their teams, while the major event of the second half of the 1940s was the 1945 signing of Jackie Robinson to a players contract by Branch Rickey the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Signing Robinson opened the door to the integration of Major League Baseball finally putting an end to the professional discrimination that had characterized the sport since the 19th century.
- Joe DiMaggio
- Bill Dickey
- Bob Feller
- Josh Gibson
- Hank Greenberg
- Monte Irvin
- Buck Leonard
- Johnny Mize
- Stan Musial
- Satchel Paige
- Branch Rickey
- Jackie Robinson
- Ted Williams
Boxing[link]
During the mid-1930s and throughout the years leading up to the 1940s Joe Louis was an enormously popular Heavyweight boxer. In 1936 he lost an important 12 round fight (his first loss) to the German boxer Max Schmelling and he vowed to meet Schmelling once again in the ring. Louis's comeback bout against Schmelling became an international symbol of the struggle between the USA and democracy against Nazism and Fascism. When on June 22, 1938, Louis knocked Schmelling out in the first few seconds of the first round during their rematch at Yankee Stadium, his sensational comeback victory riveted the entire nation. Louis enlisted in the U.S. Army on January 10, 1942 in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Louis's cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. He is widely regarded as the first African American to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II.[9]
- Buddy Baer
- Ezzard Charles
- Billy Conn
- Rocky Graziano
- Joe Louis
- Sugar Ray Robinson
- Max Schmelling
- Jersey Joe Walcott
- Tony Zale
See also[link]
Timeline[link]
The following articles contain brief timelines listing the most prominent events of the decade.
1940 • 1941 • 1942 • 1943 • 1944 • 1945 • 1946 • 1947 • 1948 • 1949
References[link]
- ^ "Holocaust," Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question ..."
- ^ Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question".
- ^ Niewyk, Donald L. and Nicosia, Francis R. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 45–52.
- ^ Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a death toll of 17 million. [1] Estimates of the death toll of non-Jewish victims vary by millions, partly because the boundary between death by persecution and death by starvation and other means in a context of total war is unclear. Overall, about 5.7 million (78 percent) of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe perished (Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of the Holocaust 1988, pp. 242–244). Compared to five to 11 million (1.4 percent to 3.0 percent) of the 360 million non-Jews in German-dominated Europe. Small, Melvin and J. David Singer. Resort to Arms: International and civil Wars 1816-1980 and Berenbaum, Michael. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990
- ^ DeWitt Bodeen, Les Enfants du Paradis, filmreference.com
- ^ [2] Gio MacDonald, Edinburgh University Film Society program notes, 1994-95
- ^ Quoted by Roger Ebert, Children of Pardise, Chicago Sun-Times, 6 January 2002 review oif the Criterion DVD release
- ^ http://www.womeninwwii.com/fashion/1940sfashion.asp
- ^ Bloom, John; Willard, Michael Nevin (2002). John Bloom and Michael Nevin Willard. ed. Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture. New York: New York University Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN 978-0-8147-9882-9. http://books.google.com/?id=kC4qYeafQzMC&pg=PA64&dq=isbn=9780814798829.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1940s |
- Heroes of the 1940s - slideshow by Life magazine
- 1940s.org
http://wn.com/1940s
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Anni 1940
http://cs.wn.com/1940-1949
http://es.wn.com/Años 1940
http://ru.wn.com/1940-е годы
http://nl.wn.com/1940-1949
http://id.wn.com/1940-an
http://pl.wn.com/Lata 40. XX wieku
http://fr.wn.com/Années 1940
http://de.wn.com/1940er
http://pt.wn.com/Década de 1940
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940s
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Veronica Lake | |
|---|---|
 circa 1942 |
|
| Born | Constance Frances Marie Ockelman (1922-11-14)November 14, 1922 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | July 7, 1973(1973-07-07) (aged 50) Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Cause of death | hepatitis and acute renal failure |
| Other names | Constance Keane, Connie Keane |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1939–1970 |
| Spouse | John S. Detlie (1940–1943; 2 children) André De Toth (1944–1952; 2 children) Joseph A. McCarthy (1955–1959) Robert Carleton-Munro (1972–1973; her death) |
Veronica Lake (November 14, 1922[1] – July 7, 1973) was an American film actress and pin-up model.[2] She received both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her role in Sullivan's Travels and for her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s. She was well-known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle. Lake had a string of broken marriages and, after her career declined, had long struggles with mental illness and alcoholism.
Contents |
Early life and career[link]
Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Harry E. Ockelman, of Danish-Irish descent,[3] worked for an oil company aboard a ship. Her father died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932 when she was ten. Her mother, née Constance Charlotta Trimble (1902–1992; of Irish descent),[4] married family friend Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, a year later, and Lake began using his last name.[5]
Lake was sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Canada, from which she was expelled. The Keane family later moved to Miami, Florida. Lake attended Miami Senior High School in Miami, where she was known for her beauty. She had a troubled childhood and was diagnosed as schizophrenic, according to her mother.[6]
In 1938 Lake moved with her mother and stepfather to Beverly Hills, where her mother enrolled her in the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting. Her first appearance on screen was for RKO, playing a small role among several coeds in the 1939 film, Sorority House. Similar roles followed, including All Women Have Secrets and Dancing Co-Ed. During the making of Sorority House director John Farrow first noticed how her hair always covered her right eye, creating an air of mystery about her and enhancing her natural beauty. She was then introduced, while still a teenager, to the Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. He changed her name to Veronica Lake because the surname suited her blue eyes.
RKO subsequently dropped her contract. She married art director John S. Detlie, 14 years her senior, in 1940. A small role in the comedy, Forty Little Mothers, brought unexpected attention. In 1941 she was signed to a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. On August 21, 1941, she gave birth to her first child, Elaine Detlie.
1940s icon[link]
Her breakthrough film was I Wanted Wings in 1941, a major hit in which Lake played the second female lead and was said to have stolen scene after scene from the rest of the cast. This success was followed by Hold Back the Dawn later that year. She had starring roles in more popular movies, including Sullivan's Travels, This Gun for Hire, I Married a Witch, The Glass Key, and So Proudly We Hail!. René Clair, the director of I Married a Witch, said of Lake "She was a very gifted girl, but she didn't believe she was gifted."[7]
For a short time during the early 1940s Lake was considered one of the most reliable box office draws in Hollywood. She became known for onscreen pairings with actor Alan Ladd. At first, the couple was teamed together merely out of physical necessity: Ladd was just 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) tall and the only actress then on the Paramount lot short enough to pair with him was Lake, who stood just 4 feet 11½ inches (1.51 m). They made four films together.
A stray lock of her shoulder-length, blonde hair during a publicity photo shoot led to her iconic "peekaboo" hairstyle, which was widely imitated. During World War II, Lake changed her trademark image to encourage women working in war industry factories to adopt more practical, safer hairstyles,[8] although doing so may have damaged her career.[9]
Although popular with the public, Lake had a complex personality and acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with. Eddie Bracken, her co-star in Star Spangled Rhythm, was quoted as saying, "She was known as 'The Bitch' and she deserved the title."[10] In that movie, Lake took part in a song lampooning her hair style, "A Sweater, A Sarong and a Peekaboo Bang", performed with Paulette Goddard and Dorothy Lamour.[11] Joel McCrea, her co-star in Sullivan's Travels, reputedly turned down the co-starring role in I Married a Witch, saying, "Life's too short for two films with Veronica Lake." [12]
Lake's career stumbled with her unsympathetic role as Nazi spy Dora Bruckman in 1944's The Hour Before the Dawn. During filming, she tripped on a lighting cable while pregnant and began hemorrhaging. She recovered, but her second child, William, was born prematurely on July 8, 1943, dying a week later from uremic poisoning.[13] By the end of 1943 her first marriage ended in divorce. Meanwhile, scathing reviews of The Hour Before Dawn included criticism of her unconvincing German accent.
Nonetheless, Lake was earning $4,500 per week under her contract with Paramount. She had begun drinking more heavily during this period and people began refusing to work with her[citation needed]. Paramount cast Lake in a string of mostly forgotten films. A notable exception was The Blue Dahlia (1946), in which she again co-starred with Ladd. During filming, screenplay writer Raymond Chandler referred to her as "Moronica Lake".[14] Paramount decided not to renew her contract in 1948.
Looking back at her career years later, Lake remarked, "I never did cheesecake; I just used my hair." [15]
She married film director Andre De Toth in 1944 and had a son, Andre Anthony Michael De Toth, known as Michael De Toth (October 25, 1945 – February 24, 1991), and a daughter, Diana De Toth (born October 16, 1948). Lake was sued by her mother for support payments in 1948.
Lake earned her pilot's license in 1946 and was able to fly solo between Los Angeles and New York.[16]
Later years[link]
After a single film for 20th Century Fox, Slattery's Hurricane (1949), her career collapsed. By the end of 1951 she had appeared in one last film (Stronghold, which she later described as "a dog"), filed for bankruptcy, and divorced de Toth. The IRS seized the remainder of her assets for unpaid taxes. Lake turned to television and stage work and in 1955 married songwriter Joseph A. McCarthy.
After breaking her ankle in 1959, Lake was unable to continue working as an actress. She and McCarthy divorced, after which she drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post reporter found her working as a barmaid at the all-women's Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan. [17] At first, Veronica claimed that she was a guest at the hotel and covering for a friend. Soon afterward, she admitted that she was employed at the bar. The reporter's widely distributed story led to some television and stage appearances, most notably in the off-Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward. (Her contract overlapped with the departing Liza Minnelli and the two briefly co-starred together.) In 1966, she had a brief stint as a TV hostess in Baltimore, Maryland, along with a largely ignored film role in Footsteps in the Snow.
Her physical and mental health declined steadily. By the late 1960s Lake was in Hollywood, Florida, apparently immobilized by paranoia (which included claims she was being stalked by the FBI).[18]
She spent a brief period in England, where she appeared in the plays, Madame Chairman and A Streetcar Named Desire.
When Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake (Bantam, 1972) was published, she promoted the book with a memorable interview on The Dick Cavett Show, as well as an episode of To Tell the Truth, on which the panel had to guess which of three disguised women was the "real" Veronica Lake. Two of the panelists, Bill Cullen and Peggy Cass, quickly disqualified themselves because they knew her. With the proceeds, she co-produced and starred in her last film, Flesh Feast (1970), a very low budget horror movie with a Nazi-myth storyline. She then moved to the UK, where she had a short-lived marriage with an "English sea captain", Robert Carleton-Munro, before returning to the U.S. in 1973, having filed for divorce.[19]
Lake was immediately hospitalized. Although she had made a cheerful and positive impression on the nurses who cared for her, she apparently was estranged from her three surviving children, particularly her daughters. Elaine Detlie became known as Ani Sangge Lhamo after becoming a member of the Subud faith in New Zealand.[20] Diana became a secretary for the U.S. Embassy in Rome in the 1970s.[20] Michael De Toth stayed with his mother on and off through the 1960s and 1970s. He married Edwina Mae Niecke. When Lake died, he claimed her body.
Death[link]
Lake died on July 7, 1973, of hepatitis and acute renal failure (complications of her alcoholism) in Burlington, Vermont, where her death was certified by Dr. Wareen Beeken at the Fletcher Allen Hospital, and where she was seen by many staff members during her nearly two-week stay.[21] A rumor persists that she died in Montreal and was smuggled across the border to Vermont.[22] Vermont state death records, however, confirm that she died in Burlington, Vermont.[23]
As she requested, her ashes were scattered off the coast of the Virgin Islands. A memorial service was held in Manhattan, but only her son and a handful of strangers attended. In 2004 some of Lake's ashes were reportedly found in a New York antique store.[24] Her son, Michael, died on February 24, 1991, at age 45 in Olympia, Washington.
Lake has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6918 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the motion picture industry. She remains a legendary star today and her autographs and other memorabilia continue to draw high prices[citation needed] on eBay and other popular outlets.
In popular culture[link]
Lake's name was commonly reversed to become a comic geographic name. For example, in an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, Carol Kester tells how the girls in her summer camp swam across Lake Veronica to visit the boys.[citation needed]
Quotes[link]
- "I wasn't a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie."[25]
- "You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision."[26]
- "I've reached a point in my life where it's the little things that matter... I was always a rebel and probably could have got much further had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I'm happier with that." (1970)
Film and television credits[link]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1939 | Sorority House | Coed | Uncredited, alternative title: That Girl from College |
| 1939 | Wrong Room, TheThe Wrong Room | The Attorney's New Bride | Credited as Connie Keane |
| 1939 | Dancing Co-Ed | One of Couple on Motorcycle | Uncredited, alternative title: Every Other Inch a Lady |
| 1939 | All Women Have Secrets | Jane | Credited as Constance Keane |
| 1940 | Young As You Feel | Bit part | Credited as Constance Keane |
| 1940 | Forty Little Mothers | Granville girl | Uncredited |
| 1941 | I Wanted Wings | Sally Vaughn | First major film role |
| 1941 | Hold Back the Dawn | Movie Actress | Uncredited |
| 1941 | Sullivan's Travels | The Girl | First leading role |
| 1942 | This Gun for Hire | Ellen Graham | First of four films with Alan Ladd |
| 1942 | Glass Key, TheThe Glass Key | Janet Henry | Second of four films with Alan Ladd |
| 1942 | I Married a Witch | Jennifer | |
| 1942 | Star Spangled Rhythm | Herself | |
| 1943 | So Proudly We Hail! | Lt. Olivia D'Arcy | |
| 1944 | Hour Before the Dawn, TheThe Hour Before the Dawn | Dora Bruckmann | |
| 1945 | Bring on the Girls | Teddy Collins | |
| 1945 | Out of This World | Dorothy Dodge | |
| 1945 | Duffy's Tavern | Herself | |
| 1945 | Hold That Blonde | Sally Martin | |
| 1946 | Miss Susie Slagle's | Nan Rogers | |
| 1946 | Blue Dahlia, TheThe Blue Dahlia | Joyce Harwood | Third of four films with Alan Ladd |
| 1947 | Ramrod | Connie Dickason | |
| 1947 | Variety Girl | Herself | |
| 1948 | Saigon | Susan Cleaver | Fourth and final film with Alan Ladd |
| 1948 | Sainted Sisters, TheThe Sainted Sisters | Letty Stanton | |
| 1948 | Isn't It Romantic? | Candy Cameron | |
| 1949 | Slattery's Hurricane | Dolores Greaves | |
| 1951 | Stronghold | Mary Stevens | |
| 1966 | Footsteps in the Snow | ||
| 1970 | Flesh Feast | Dr. Elaine Frederick | Alternative title: Time is Terror |
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Your Show of Shows | 1 episode | |
| 1950 | Lights Out | 1 episode | |
| 1950–1953 | Lux Video Theatre | Various | 3 episodes |
| 1951 | Somerset Maugham TV Theatre | Valerie | 1 episode |
| 1952 | Celanese Theatre | 1 episode | |
| 1952 | Tales of Tomorrow | Paula | 1 episode |
| 1952 | Goodyear Television Playhouse | Judy "Leni" Howard | 1 episode |
| 1953 | Danger | 1 episode | |
| 1954 | Broadway Television Theatre | 1 episode |
References[link]
- ^ U.S. Census, April 1, 1930, State of Washington, County of Kings, enumeration district 1657, page 8-B, family 151, Constance Ockelman (sic), age 7 years, born in Seattle Her father, Harry Ockelman, Jr., is listed as unmarried in the 1920 U.S. Census of Pennsylvania.
- ^ Obituary Variety, July 11, 1973, page 63.
- ^ Veronica's paternal grandfather was born in Denmark as were his parents, and her paternal grandmother was born in Ireland as were her parents. U.S. Census, Jan. 1, 1920, State of Pennsylvania, County of Delaware, enumeration district 188, p. 9-B, family 186.
- ^ Veronica's maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were the children of Irish immigrants. U.S. Census, Jan. 1, 1920, State of New York, County of Kings, enumeration district 290, p. 8-A, family 189. U.S. Census, April 15, 1910, State of New York, County of Kings, enumeration district 655, p. 5-A, family 125.
- ^ Lenburg, Jeff. Peekaboo, iUniverse., 2001. http://books.google.com/books?id=nPcMRSAXP8gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22veronica+lake%22&num=100&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
- ^ Chierichetti, David (2004). Edith Head: The Life and Times of Hollywood's Celebrated Costume. HarperCollins. p. 70. ISBN 0-06-056740-6.
- ^ Terkel, Studs The Spectator. The New Press. ISBN 1-56584-633-8. p. 168.
- ^ "Veronica Lake's remains resurface". USA Today. 2004-10-12. http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-10-12-veronica-lake_x.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-02.
- ^ Starr, Kevin (2003). Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950. Oxford University Press. pp. 128–129. ISBN 0-19-516897-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=PKL4DQ4XLtUC&lpg=PA128&ots=bnrp59DSSN&pg=PA128#v=onepage&f=false.
- ^ Donnelley, Paul (2003). Fade to black: A Book of Movie Obituaries. Omnibus Press. p. 392. ISBN 0-7119-9512-5.
- ^ Parish, James Robert; Pitts, Michael R. (2003). Hollywood Songsters: Singers Who ACT and Actors Who Sing: A Biographical Dictionary. Taylor & Francis. p. 480. ISBN 0-415-94333-7.
- ^ Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies, October 6, 2010
- ^ Parish, Robert James (2001). The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols. Contemporary Books. p. 74. ISBN 0-8092-2227-2.
- ^ Hiney, Tom (1999). Raymond Chandler: A Biography. Grove Press. p. 154. ISBN 0-8021-3637-0.
- ^ Bloomfield, Gary L.; Shain, Stacie L. (2004). Duty, Honor, Applause: America's Entertainers in World War II. Davidson, Arlen C.. Globe Pequot. p. 409. ISBN 1-59228-550-3.
- ^ "Turner Classic Movies accessed Apr. 20, 2010". Tcmdb.com. http://www.tcmdb.com/participant.jsp?participantId=107416. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
- ^ "Veronica Lake is a Waitress Now", Milwaukee Journal, March 22, 1962, p11
- ^ Lenburg, Jeff (2007). Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake. iUniverse. p. 236. ISBN 0-595-19239-4.
- ^ Lenburg, Jeff (2007). Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake. iUniverse. pp. 238, 239. ISBN 0-595-19239-4.
- ^ a b Lake, Veronica. Veronica Lake. p. 257.
- ^ "Veronica Lake". BunksPlace. http://www.bunksplace.com/veronica.html.
- ^ Gravenor, Kristian (2001-05-17). "report on death of Veronica Lake". Montreal Mirror. http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2001/051701/news7.html.
- ^ Vermont Death Records, 1909–2003. Published by Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, Montpelier, Vermont
- ^ "Veronica Lake's Ashes For Sale?"
- ^ Porter, Darwin (2005). Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel. Blood Moon Productions Ltd.. p. 639. ISBN 0-9748118-1-5.
- ^ Halliwell, Leslie; Walker, John (2003). Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies. HarperCollins. p. 274. ISBN 0-06-053423-0.
Further reading[link]
- Lenburg, Jeff, Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake. iUniverse, 2001. ISBN 978-0-595-19239-7.
- Oderman, Stuart, Talking to the Piano Player 2. BearManor Media, 2009. ISBN 978-1-59393-320-3.
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Veronica Lake |
- Veronica Lake at the Internet Movie Database
- Veronica Lake at the TCM Movie Database
- Veronica Lake at AllRovi
- Photographs and literature
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Lake, Veronica |
| Alternative names | Ockelman, Constance Frances Marie |
| Short description | Actress |
| Date of birth | November 14, 1922 |
| Place of birth | Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Date of death | July 7, 1973 |
| Place of death | Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
http://wn.com/Veronica_Lake
Related pages:
http://fr.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://nl.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://pt.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://de.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://it.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://pl.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://ru.wn.com/Лейк, Вероника
http://id.wn.com/Veronica Lake
http://es.wn.com/Veronica Lake
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Lake
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
