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• 
  

• 
  Detroit
  Detroit ( /diˈtrɔɪt/) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan, and the seat of Wayne County. It is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people, and serves as a major port on the Detroit River connecting the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It was founded on July 24, 1701, by the French explorer, adventurer, and nobleman Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.
  In 2010, the city had a population of 713,777 and ranked as the 18th most populous city in the United States. The name Detroit sometimes refers to the Metro Detroit area with a population of 4,296,250 for the six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, the United States' eleventh-largest, and a population of 5,218,852 for the nine-county Combined Statistical Area as of the 2010 Census. The Detroit–Windsor area, a critical commercial link straddling the Canada–U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,700,000.
  Known as the world's traditional automotive center, "Detroit" is a metonym for the American automobile industry and an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, the Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames arose in the 20th century, including City of Champions beginning in the 1930s for its successes in individual and team sport,The D, D-Town, Hockeytown (a trademark owned by the city's NHL club, the Red Wings), Rock City (after the Kiss song "Detroit Rock City"), and The 313 (its telephone area code) Detroit became known as the "great arsenal of democracy" for its support of the U.S. role among the Allied powers during World War II.
  
  wn.com/Detroit
• 
  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States of America, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in four buildings in Washington, D.C., as well as the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.
  The Library of Congress was instituted for Congress in 1800, and was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. After much of the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to the library in 1815. After a period of decline during the mid-19th century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate library building and the transference of all copyright deposit holdings to the Library. During the rapid expansion of the 20th century the Library of Congress assumed a preeminent public role, becoming a "library of last resort" and expanding its mission for the benefit of scholars and the American people.
  
  wn.com/Library_of_Congress
• 
  Philadelphia
  Philadelphia ( /ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,526,006 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Philadelphia is also the commercial, cultural, and educational center of the Delaware Valley, home to 6 million people and the country's fifth-largest metropolitan area. The Philadelphia metropolitan division consists of five counties in Pennsylvania and has a population of 4,008,994. Popular nicknames for Philadelphia are Philly and The City of Brotherly Love, the latter of which comes from the literal meaning of the city's name in Greek (Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια ([pʰilaˈdelpʰeːa], Modern Greek: [filaˈðelfia]) "brotherly love", compounded from philos (φίλος) "loving", and adelphos (ἀδελφός) "brother").
  
  wn.com/Philadelphia
• 
  Richfield, Ohio
  Richfield is a village in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,286 at the 2000 census. The village and the adjacent Richfield Township are approximately equidistant between the downtown areas of Akron and Cleveland. It is part of the Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area.
  Richfield was founded in 1809 and incorporated in 1967.
  Four of John Brown's children are buried in Fairview Cemetery. The children, Austin, Charles, Peter and Sarah, all died in 1843 due to a smallpox epidemic when he was living in Richfield [1]. In 1970, Mayor Kenneth Swan signed an ordinance declaring Richfield Village the first “world city” in the United States. [2].
  Richfield is located at 41°14′1″N 81°37′56″W / 41.23361°N 81.63222°W / 41.23361; -81.63222 (41.233722, -81.632228).
  According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 8.5 square miles (22 km²), all of it land.
  As of the census of 2000, there were 3,286 people, 1,227 households, and 952 families residing in the village. The population density was 387.1 people per square mile (149.4/km²). There were 1,272 housing units at an average density of 149.8 per square mile (57.8/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 97.35% White, 0.49% African American, 0.30% Native American, 1.31% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.06% from other races, and 0.46% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.24% of the population.
  
  wn.com/Richfield,_Ohio
• 
  Rocky Steps
  The 72 stone steps before the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have become known as the "Rocky Steps" as a result of their appearance in the triple-Oscar-winning film Rocky and four of its sequels, Rocky II, III, V and Rocky Balboa, in which the eponymous character runs up the steps to the song "Gonna Fly Now". Tourists often mimic Rocky's famous climb, a metaphor for an underdog or an everyman rising to a challenge. A bronze statue of Rocky was briefly situated at the top of the steps for the filming of Rocky III. This statue, now located at the bottom right of the steps, is a popular photo opportunity for visitors. The top of the steps offers a commanding view of Eakins Oval, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and Philadelphia City Hall.
  In 2006, Rocky creator Sylvester Stallone recounted the genesis of the iconic scene: (while filming the 1976 movie) the film crew, bound by a tight budget, identified the steps one night while searching for filming locations around the city. Stallone first thought Rocky should carry his dog Butkus up the steps, but the big bull mastiff proved too heavy for the scene to work. Still, the view from the top of the stairs inspired him to reshoot the scene without the dog. In Rocky Balboa, Rocky lifts his dog Punchy when he reaches the top of the steps.
  
  wn.com/Rocky_Steps
• 
  Wachovia Spectrum
  The Spectrum, known also as the CoreStates Spectrum (1994–1998), First Union Spectrum (1998–2003), and Wachovia Spectrum (2003–2009) was an indoor arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Opened in the fall of 1967 as part of what is now known as the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, after several expansions of its seating capacity it eventually accommodated 18,168 for basketball and 17,380 for ice hockey, arena football, indoor soccer, and indoor lacrosse.
  The Spectrum was demolished between November 2010 and May 2011, a little more than a year after the arena's final event (a Pearl Jam concert) took place on October 31, 2009.
  Opened as "The Spectrum" in fall 1967, Philadelphia's first modern indoor sports arena was built to be the home of the expansion Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL, and also to accommodate the existing Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA. The building was the second major sports facility built at the south end of Broad Street in an area previously known as "East League Island Park" and now referred to simply as the "South Philadelphia Sports Complex."
  
  wn.com/Wachovia_Spectrum

• Albert S. Ruddy
  Albert S. Ruddy is a Canadian-born producer. Ruddy was born March 28, 1930 in Montreal and raised in New York City with his mother. Ruddy attended Brooklyn Technical High School before earning a scholarship to allow him to study chemical engineering at City College of New York. He graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California and then he worked in the construction industry on the East Coast.
  After a short stint at Warner Brothers, brought about by a chance meeting with Jack Warner, Ruddy moved on to become a programmer trainee at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Returning to entertainment, Ruddy was a television writer at Universal Studios, but left when Marlon Brando Sr., father of the legendary actor, hired him to produce Wild Seed in 1965.
  With this one film completed, Ruddy co-created Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971), and when the show's five-year run was over, Ruddy produced his second film, Making It (1970), about a sexually triumphant high school student who beds the gerontophobic wife of his gym teacher. In 1972, he produced The Godfather and won his first of two Oscars for Best Picture. In 1974, Ruddy produced The Longest Yard, which was also successful.
  
  wn.com/Albert_S._Ruddy
• Andrew Sarris
  Andrew Sarris (born 31 October 1928, Brooklyn, New York City) is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.
  Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S. and coining the term itself in his 1962 essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," which was inspired by critics writing in Cahiers du Cinéma.
  Sarris wrote the highly influential book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968), an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book was to influence many other critics and helped raise an awareness of the role of the film director and, in particular, of the auteur theory. In The American Cinema, Sarris lists what he terms the 'pantheon' of the fourteen greatest film directors who had worked in the United States. The list includes the Americans Robert Flaherty, John Ford, D. W. Griffith, Howard Hawks, Buster Keaton, and Orson Welles; the Germans Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Max Ophuls, and Josef von Sternberg; the British Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock; and the French Jean Renoir. He also created second and third tiers of directors, downplaying the work of some such as Billy Wilder, David Lean, and Stanley Kubrick. In his 1998 book You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927-1949, Sarris upgraded the status of Billy Wilder to pantheon level and apologized for his earlier harsh opinion of the director in The American Cinema.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Sarris
• Apollo Creed
  Apollo Creed is a fictional character from the Rocky films, initially portrayed as the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World. He was played by Carl Weathers. Many believe his character was modeled after Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali while Rocky Balboa was based on relatively unknown fighter named Chuck Wepner. Wepner knocked Ali down in the 9th round of their 1975 title bout in Richfield, Ohio. Ali ultimately scored a Technical Knockout of Wepner in the 15th round, breaking Wepner's nose. Rocky ended up with a broken nose in his first bout with Apollo Creed.
  Creed had multiple nicknames, including The Master of Disaster, The King of Sting, The Dancing Destroyer, The Prince of Punch, The One and Only and The Count of Monte Fisto. Urban legend states that Apollo Creed's name is a wordplay on the Apostles' Creed, a statement of belief used in Christian churches. All of Apollo's championship fights were scheduled for the 15 round distance. Championship fights did not convert from 15 rounds to 12 rounds until 1987. Rocky Balboa is often wrongly credited with popularizing the red, white, and blue trunks; Creed was the first man to wear them (latterly worn by Rocky Balboa in the 3rd and 4th Installments and finally by Tommy "The Machine" Gunn (Tommy Morrison) in the 5th installment) although normally he wore red and white, as seen in Rocky II. Balboa's signature colors were black and gold—colors he used in the latest movie.
  
  wn.com/Apollo_Creed
• Arthur Laurents
  Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.
  After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.
  His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973) and The Turning Point (1977).
  Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.
  His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Laurents
• Ayn Robbins
  Ayn Robbins is a lyricist, poet, and painter. She is best known for co-writing with Carol Connors the lyrics for two Academy Award and Grammy nominated songs, "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky (1976; music by Bill Conti) and "Someone's Waiting for You" from The Rescuers (1977; music by Sammy Fain).
  
  
  
  wn.com/Ayn_Robbins
• 
  Benjamin Franklin
  Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.
  Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical and democratic values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
  
  wn.com/Benjamin_Franklin
• 
  Bill Conti
  William "Bill" Conti (born April 13, 1942) is an American film music composer who is frequently the conductor at the Academy Awards ceremony.
  Conti, an Italian American, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Lucetta and William Conti. He graduated from North Miami High School in 1959. He is a past winner of the Silver Knight Award presented by the Miami Herald. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University, and also studied at the Juilliard School of Music.
  His big break into celebrity came in 1976, when he was hired to compose the music for a small United Artists film called Rocky. The film became a phenomenon, and Conti's training montage tune, "Gonna Fly Now" topped the Billboard singles chart in 1977. He also composed music for the sequels Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006).
  Conti also worked for some other films and, eventually, for television series. In 1981, he wrote the music for the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, when John Barry was unwilling to return to the United Kingdom for tax reasons, and provided the score for playwright Jason Miller's film version of his Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season the following year.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Conti
• 
  Burgess Meredith
  Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997), known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" who was "one of the most accomplished actors of the century." Meredith won several Emmys, was the first man to win two times the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, and was nominated for Academy Awards.
  Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ida Beth (née Burgess) and Canadian-born William George Meredith, M.D.
  He graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and then attended Amherst College as a member of the Class of 1931. Meredith served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1944 to work on the movie The Story of G.I. Joe, in which he starred as the popular war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
  In 1933, he became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City. Although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage. He made his Broadway debut as Peter in Le Gallienne's production of Romeo and Juliet (1930) and became a star in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935), which became his film debut the following year. His early life and theatre work were the subject of a New Yorker profile.
  
  wn.com/Burgess_Meredith
• Burt Young
  Gerald Tommaso DeLouise (born April 30, 1940) better known as Burt Young, is an American actor, painter and author. He is best known for his Academy Award-nominated role as Sylvester Stallone's brother-in-law and friend Paulie in the Rocky film series.
  Young was born in Queens, New York, the son of Josephine and Michael. He was trained by Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio. Young is widowed and has one daughter, Anne Morea.
  Young made his name playing rough-edged working class Italian-American characters, the best-known example being his signature role as Sylvester Stallone's brother-in-law Paulie in Rocky (1976), for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He is one of three actors (the other two being Stallone and Tony Burton) who have appeared in every Rocky film.
  He has played similar roles in Chinatown, Convoy, Back to School, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Once Upon a Time in America, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Downtown: A Street Tale, and even a brutal and darker role in Amityville II: The Possession. Young has also appeared in many television programs, including The Rockford Files, Baretta, Law & Order, Walker, Texas Ranger, M*A*S*H, guest-starred in a Miami Vice episode, and made an appearance on The Sopranos ("Another Toothpick") as Bobby Baccalieri's father, who is dying of cancer and comes out of retirement to execute a hit on his godson.
  
  wn.com/Burt_Young
• Carl Weathers
  Carl Weathers (born January 14, 1948) is an American actor, as well as former professional football player in the United States and Canada. He is best known for playing Apollo Creed in the Rocky series of films. He also played Dillon in Predator, Chubbs Peterson in Happy Gilmore and Little Nicky, and a very frugal fictionalized version of himself in the television series Arrested Development.
  Weathers was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 1966 and then went to Long Beach City College and San Diego State University. Outside of acting, he is a member of both Big Brothers and the United States Olympic Committee. In February 1973 he married Mary Ann Castle with whom he has two children. They were divorced in July 1983. In February 1984 he married Rhona Unsell. He married Jennifer Peterson, his third wife, in 2007. They divorced in 2009.
  Weathers played football both collegiately and professionally as a linebacker. He started his college career in 1966 at Long Beach City College, where he did not play in 1966 due to an ankle injury suffered when he tripped over a curb surrounding the running track while warming up for practice with another linebacker, Paul Snow. He then transferred and played for San Diego State University, becoming a letterman in 1968 and 1969. This led to a brief professional career with the Oakland Raiders, where he played 7 games in 1970 and one game in 1971. He joined the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League in 1971 and played until 1973, 18 games in total. He retired in 1974 and became an actor.
  
  wn.com/Carl_Weathers
• Carlo Ponti
  Carlo Ponti (11 December 1912 – 10 January 2007) was an Italian film producer with over 140 production credits, and the husband of Italian movie star Sophia Loren.
  Ponti was born in Magenta, Lombardy and studied law at the University of Milan. He joined his father's law firm in Milan and became involved in the film business through negotiating contracts. Ponti attempted to establish a film industry in Milan in 1940 and produced Mario Soldati's Piccolo Mondo Antico there, starring Alida Valli, in her first notable role. The film dealt with the Italian struggle against the Austrians for the inclusion of northeastern Italy into the Kingdom of Italy during the Risorgimento. The film was successful, because it was easy to see "the Austrians as Germans" during World War II. As a result, he was briefly jailed for undermining relations with Nazi Germany.
  Ponti accepted an offer from Lux Film in Rome in 1941, where he produced a series of commercially successful films featuring the comedian Totò. In 1954 he had his greatest artistic success with the production of Federico Fellini's La strada. However, Fellini denied Ponti's role in its success and said that "La Strada was made in spite of Ponti and De Laurentiis". He produced Visconti's Boccaccio '70 in 1962, Marriage Italian Style in 1964, and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in 1965. He produced his most popular and financially successful film, David Lean's Doctor Zhivago in 1965. He subsequently produced three notable films with Michelangelo Antonioni, Blowup in 1966, Zabriskie Point in 1970 and The Passenger in 1974.
  
  wn.com/Carlo_Ponti
• Carrie Snodgress
  Caroline "Carrie" Snodgress (October 27, 1945 – April 1, 2004) was an American actress.
  Snodgress was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. She attended Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge then Northern Illinois University before leaving to pursue acting. Snodgress trained for the stage at the Goodman Theatre, in Chicago. After a number of minor TV appearances, her film debut was an uncredited appearance in Easy Rider in 1969 and a credited appearance in 1970 in Rabbit, Run opposite James Caan.
  Her next film, Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), earned her a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress and two Golden Globe wins, as Best Actress in a Comedy or a Musical (an odd category, given the dramatic nature of the film) and New Star of the Year - Actress. She left acting soon after to live with rock musician Neil Young and care for their son Zeke, who was born with cerebral palsy. She returned to acting in 1978 in The Fury.
  According to Sylvester Stallone,
  The first choice for Adrian (in the movie Rocky) was a girl named Carrie Snodgress, who I wanted badly because, at the time, I wanted Adrian's family to be Irish and Harvey Keitel would be the brother. She said there wasn't enough money in it (we were getting paid $360 before taxes), so I said “I'll give you my share, I truly want you.” She passed to do a part in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, which never happened for her.
  
  wn.com/Carrie_Snodgress
• 
  Dawn Staley
  Dawn Michelle Staley (born May 4, 1970) is an American basketball player and coach. Staley is a three-time Olympian and was elected to carry the United States flag at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics. She was named the University of South Carolina women's head basketball coach on May 7, 2008. After winning the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics, she went to play professionally in the American Basketball League and the WNBA. In 2011, Staley was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in WNBA history.
  Staley was named the national high school player of the year during her final season at Dobbins Tech High School in Philadelphia.
  Staley attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. During her four seasons in college, she led her team to four NCAA Tournaments, three Final Fours and one National Championship game. She was named the ACC female athlete of the year and the national player of the year in 1991 and 1992. Staley finished her college career with 2,135 points and holds the NCAA record for career steals with 454. She finished her career at Virginia as the school's all-time scoring leader and as the ACC's all-time leader in assists at 729, but those records have since been broken by former UVA stars Monica Wright and Sharnee Zoll, respectively. Her number 24 is retired at UVA. Staley competed with USA Basketball as a member of the 1992 Jones Cup Team that won the Gold in Taipei.
  
  wn.com/Dawn_Staley
• 
  Eddie Murphy
  Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.
  Box office takes from Murphy's films make him the second-highest grossing actor in the United States. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He was ranked #10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
  He has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in 48 Hrs, Beverly Hills Cop series, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of soul singer James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls.
  Eddie Murphy's work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in the Shrek series and the dragon Mushu in Disney's Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, intended as a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers, who played multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove and elsewhere. Murphy has played multiple roles in Coming to America, Wes Craven's Vampire In Brooklyn, the Nutty Professor films (where he played the title role in two incarnations, plus his father, brother, mother, and grandmother), Bowfinger, Norbit, and Meet Dave.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Murphy
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  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.
  
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  Frank Stallone
  Frank P. Stallone, Jr. (born July 30, 1950) is an American actor, singer/guitarist and Golden Globe and Grammy Award-nominated songwriter. He has appeared in many Hollywood films and television. He is the younger brother of Sylvester Stallone.
  Stallone was born in New York City. He is the younger brother of Sylvester Stallone and the son of Jacqueline "Jackie" Stallone (née Labofish), an astrologer, former dancer, and promoter of women's wrestling, and Frank Stallone, Sr., a hairdresser and an immigrant from Castellammare del Golfo (province of Trapani, Sicilia, Italy).
  In his teen years he went to Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia.^{[citation needed]} Frank Started his career around the time of high school singing on street corners and making money with his guitar.
  Stallone has worked as a singer in the tradition of American big band jazz and popular music, in a vocal style reminiscent of his idol Frank Sinatra. He tours with his own orchestra under conductor Paul Vesco, and has also worked with conductors Sammy Nestico and Billy May. Stallone has released a number of albums, including Day In Day Out with Sammy Nestico (1991; A1 Records: FSTCD1) and "Close Your Eyes" with Billy May (1996; Coolnote).
  
  wn.com/Frank_Stallone
• Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann (29 April 1907 – 14 March 1997) was an Austrian-American film director. He won two Academy Awards for directing films (From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons) in many genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir, and play adaptations. Nineteen actors appearing in Zinnemann's films received Academy Award nominations for their performances: among that number are Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Glynis Johns, Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Gary Cooper and Maximilian Schell.
  Zinnemann was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. While growing up in Austria, he wanted to become a musician, but went on to study law. While studying at the University of Vienna, he became drawn to films and eventually became a cameraman. He worked in Germany with several other beginners (Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak also worked with him on the 1929 feature People on Sunday) before going to America to study film.
  Zinnemann's penchant for realism and authenticity is evident in his first feature The Wave (1935), shot on location in Mexico with mostly non-professional actors recruited among the locals, which is one of the earliest examples of realism in narrative film. Earlier in the decade, in fact, Zinnemann had worked with documentarian Robert Flaherty, an association he considered "the most important event of my professional life".
  
  wn.com/Fred_Zinnemann
• Garrett Brown
  Garrett Brown (born in April 6, 1942) is an American cinematographer, best known as the inventor of the Steadicam. Brown's invention allows cameramen to film while walking without the normal shaking and jostles of a handheld camera. The Steadicam was first used in the Hal Ashby film, Bound for Glory (1976), receiving an Academy Award (Best Cinematography) and since on such films as Rocky, filming Rocky's running and training sequences, and Return of the Jedi where Garrett walked with the Steadicam shooting film at 1 frame per second to achieve the illusion of high speed motion during the speeder bike chase.
  The sequence in Rocky that took the audience up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum for the triumphant moment at the top was first filmed during tests for the original Steadicam system. When shown the footage, Director John Avildsen thought it would fit well into the training sequence. In the subsequent decades, tens of thousands of visitors to Philadelphia have taken the time to visit that locale and run up the steps, alone or in groups, to enjoy that unique view and share in the energy and triumphant feeling evoked in that sequence.
  
  wn.com/Garrett_Brown
• Hal B. Wallis
  Hal B. Wallis (born Harold Brent Wallis; September 14, 1898 – October 5, 1986) was an American film producer. He is known for producing Casablanca, and other important films featuring actors such as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley, John Wayne, and many others.
  Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898, the son of Eva (née Blum) and Jacob Walinsky, Eastern European Jews. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros. in 1923.
  Within a few years, Wallis became involved in the production end of the business and would eventually become head of production at Warners. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, he was involved with the production of more than 400 feature-length movies.
  Among the many significant movies he produced was Casablanca, one of the most honored movies in Hollywood history. Others include: Dark Victory, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Now, Voyager, The Maltese Falcon and Sergeant York. Wallis left Warner Bros. in 1944, after a clash with Jack Warner over Warner's acceptance of the Best Picture Oscar to Casablanca, to work as an independent producer, enjoying considerable success both commercially and critically. The first screenwriters he hired for his new enterprise were Ayn Rand and Lillian Hellman. Among his financial hits were the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies, and several of Elvis Presley's movies. He produced True Grit, for which John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor of 1969, and its sequel. He also produced Mary, Queen of Scots, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, and Anne of the Thousand Days, starring Richard Burton and Genevieve Bujold.
  
  wn.com/Hal_B._Wallis
• Howard G. Minsky
  Howard G Minsky (21 January 1914 – 10 August 2008) was the producer of the blockbuster film Love Story that, when released in 1970, was widely thought to have saved Paramount Pictures during a financially strained time. He later produced Jory in 1973.
  Minsky was married to Sylvia for over 65 years until her death in 2002. Until his death in 2008, he lived in Palm Beach, Florida.
  
  
  
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• Irwin Winkler
  Irwin Winkler (born May 25, 1931) is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards. In 1976, he won an Oscar for Best Picture for Rocky. As a producer, he has been nominated for Best Picture for three other films: Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, and Goodfellas.
  Winkler was born in New York, New York, to father Sol Winkler and mother Anna Winkler. He received a BA from New York University in 1955, after serving in the U.S. Army.
  In partnership with Robert Chartoff from the late 1960s, Irwin Winkler produced an impressive array of modern American gems, beginning with their first effort (along with Judd Bernard), John Boorman's taut thriller Point Blank (1967), largely ignored in its day but now regarded as a top film of the time. Adding Sydney Pollack to their production team for a one-shot-deal, they garnered critical acclaim for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Their next film, The Strawberry Statement (1970), won the Jury Prize at Cannes but Chartoff and Winkler roared to the top with Rocky (1976), which earned the Academy Award as Best Picture. Subsequently, the producing duo picked up Best Picture Oscar nominations for Raging Bull (1980) and The Right Stuff (1983), their last project together before Winkler launched his solo career with the disappointing Revolution (1985).
  
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  James Caan
  James E. Caan (born March 26, 1940) is an American actor. He is best known for his starring roles in The Godfather, Thief, Misery, A Bridge Too Far, Brian's Song, Rollerball, Kiss Me Goodbye, Elf, and El Dorado. He also starred as "Big Ed" Deline in the television series Las Vegas.
  Caan was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of Sophie (née Falkenstein) and Arthur Caan, Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father was a meat dealer and butcher. Caan had a sister, Barbara, and has a brother, Ronald. He grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York City. He was educated at P.S. 150 40-01 43rd Avenue School in Queens, at the private Rhodes Preparatory School, also in New York City, and then attended Michigan State University. He later transferred to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, but did not graduate. While studying at Hofstra University, however, he became intrigued by acting and was interviewed for, accepted to, and graduated from, New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. There, one of his instructors was Sanford Meisner.
  
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  James Gleason
  James Austin Gleason (May 23, 1882 – April 12, 1959) was an American actor born in New York City. He was also a playwright and screenwriter.
  Coming from theatrical stock, as a schoolboy he made stage appearances while on holiday. He began earning his living at the age of thirteen, being a messenger boy, printer's devil, assistant in an electrical store and a lift boy. He enlisted in the army at age 16 and served 3 years in the Philippines.
  On discharge, he began his stage career, later taking it up professionally. He played in London for two years and following his return to the United States, he began in films by writing dialogue for "comedies". He also wrote several plays. His first film acting was in the film The Count of Ten (1927) by Universal.
  Balding and slender with a craggy voice and a master of the double-take, Gleason portrayed tough but warm-hearted characters, usually with a New York background. He appeared in several movies with his wife Lucille.
  Gleason co-wrote The Broadway Melody, the second film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and had a small uncredited role in it. Gleason also co-wrote and briefly appeared as a hot dog vendor in the 1934 Janet Gaynor vehicle Change of Heart. He played a milk cart driver who gives lessons in marriage to Judy Garland and Robert Walker in the 1945 film The Clock, while Lucille played his wife. In the same year, he played the bartender in the film adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
  
  wn.com/James_Gleason
• Jerry Maguire
  Jerry Maguire is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding, Jr and Renée Zellweger. It was written, co-produced, and directed by Cameron Crowe. The film released in North American theaters on December 13, 1996, distributed by Gracie Films and TriStar Pictures.
  The film received mostly positive reviews and, on a $50 million budget, was a financial success, bringing in more than $270 million worldwide.
  Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a glossy 35-year-old sports agent working for Sports Management International (SMI). After suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of stress and a guilty conscience, he writes a mission statement about perceived dishonesty in the sports management business and how he believes that it should be operated. He distributes copies of it, entitled "The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business". His co-workers are touched by his honesty and greet him with applause, but the management sends Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr), Maguire's protégé, to fire him. Jerry and Sugar call all of Jerry's clients to try to convince them not to hire the services of the other. Jerry speaks to Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), one of his clients who is disgruntled with his contract. Rod tests Jerry's resolve through a very long telephone conversation, which culminates in the famed "Show Me the Money!" scene. Meanwhile, Sugar secures most of Jerry's previous clients. Frank "Cush" Cushman (Jerry O'Connell), a superstar football prospect from Southern Methodist University expected to be #1 in the NFL Draft, also stays with Jerry after he makes a visit to the Cushman home. Leaving the office, Jerry announces he will start his own agency and asks if anyone is willing to join him, to which only 26-year-old single mother Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) agrees. The two had previously bumped into each other in the airport and Boyd had told Maguire personally how inspiring she found his "memo".
  
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  Joe Frazier
  Joseph William "Joe" Frazier (January 12, 1944 – November 7, 2011), also known as Smokin' Joe, was an American professional boxer and Olympic and Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a one-fight comeback in 1981.
  Frazier emerged as the top contender in the late 1960s, defeating opponents that included Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Buster Mathis, Eddie Machen, Doug Jones, George Chuvalo and Jimmy Ellis en route to becoming Undisputed Heavyweight Champion in 1970, and followed up by defeating Muhammad Ali on points in the highly-anticipated "Fight of the Century" in 1971. Two years later Frazier lost his title when he was knocked out by George Foreman. He fought on, beating Joe Bugner, losing a rematch to Ali and beating Quarry and Ellis again.
  Frazier's last world title challenge came in 1975, but he was beaten by Ali in their brutal rubbermatch. He retired in 1976 following a second loss to Foreman. He made a comeback in 1981, fighting just once, before retiring for good. The International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO) rates Frazier among the ten greatest heavyweights of all time. He was an inductee of both the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Frazier
• Joe Spinell
  Joe Spinell born Joseph J. Spagnuolo (October 28, 1936 – January 13, 1989) was an American character actor, who appeared in numerous films in the 1970s and 1980s.
  Joe Spinell was born Joseph J. Spagnuolo in Manhattan, New York of Italian immigrant parents, and the last of six children. His father, Pelegrino Spagnuolo (b. 1892, d. 1950), died from liver and kidney disease. His mother Filomena Spagnuolo (b. 1903, d. 1987) was a bit-part actress who acted in a few movies, some of them alongside her son. Spinell stood 5 foot and 11 inches. He was born at his family's apartment in Manhattan's Little Italy on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. A few years after the death of his father, he moved with his mother and older siblings to Woodside, Queens, New York where he lived off-and-on for the remainder of his life. He was known to abuse drugs and alcohol heavily on and off throughout his career, especially during periods of unemployment. Spinell also suffered most of his life from hemophilia as well as chronic asthma.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Spinell
• John G. Avildsen
  John Guilbert Avildsen (born December 21, 1935) is an American film director.
  Avildsen was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Ivy (née Guilbert) and Clarence John Avildsen. After starting out as an assistant director on films by Arthur Penn and Otto Preminger, John Avildsen received his first success with the low budget feature Joe (1970) which received critical acclaim for star Peter Boyle and moderate box office business.
  This was followed by another critical success, Save the Tiger (1973), that was nominated for three Oscars, winning Best Actor for star Jack Lemmon.
  Avildsen's greatest success was Rocky (1976), garnering ten Academy Award nominations and winning three, including Best Picture and Best Director. He later directed what was expected to be the series' final installment, Rocky V (1990). His other films include Cry Uncle! (1970), Neighbors (1981), The Karate Kid (1984) The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), The Karate Kid, Part III (1989), Lean on Me (1989), and 8 Seconds (1994).
  
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  John Kerry
  John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.
  The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".
  
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  Ken Norton
  Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. (born August 9, 1943, Jacksonville, Illinois) is a former heavyweight boxer and former WBC Heavyweight Champion. He is best known for his 12-round victory over a peak Muhammad Ali where he famously broke Ali's jaw, on March 31, 1973, becoming only the second man to defeat a peak Ali as a professional (after Joe Frazier, who won a 15-round unanimous decision against Ali on March 8, 1971).
  He and Ali would fight twice more in their trilogy, with Ali officially winning narrowly both returns, although many felt Norton truly deserved their 3rd fight. Norton was awarded the WBC title (by virtue of his win over Jimmy Young in a 1977 title elimination bout) when Leon Spinks declined a mandated title defense against Norton, the No. 1 contender. But Ken lost it in his first defense on a split-decision by 1 point to Larry Holmes in a great contest. (Holmes-Norton is ranked as the 10th greatest heavyweight fight of all time by Monte D. Cox, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization.)
  
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  Lloyd Kaufman
  Lloyd Kaufman (born December 30, 1945) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves on the board of the Independent Film & Television Alliance of which he is the former President.
  Kaufman was born Stanley Lloyd Kaufman, Jr. in New York City, New York, the son of Ruth (née Fried) and Stanley Lloyd Kaufman, Sr. a lawyer.
  Kaufman graduated from Yale University with the class of 1968, where he majored in Chinese studies. His Yale classmates included Oliver Stone and George W. Bush. Originally intending to become a social worker, he became fast friends with student filmmaker Robert Edelstein and Eric Sherman (son of filmmaker Vincent Sherman), who introduced him to his future lifelong obsession, cinema. Some of Lloyd's favorite filmmakers include John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, Stan Brakhage and Franklin Schaffner. Like the members of Monty Python troupe, who were a big influence on him, Kaufman read Punch magazine and enjoyed the theatrical performances of Beyond the Fringe, Flanders & Swann, etc.
  
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  Marlon Brando
  Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Brando was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Persons of the Century in 1999.
  Brando had a significant impact on film acting, and was the foremost example of the "method" acting style. While he became notorious for his "mumbling" diction and exuding a raw animal magnetism, his mercurial performances were nonetheless highly regarded, and he is widely considered as one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, "He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'." Actor Jack Nicholson once said, "When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one." He was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest screen legend among male movie stars.
  
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  Michael Dorn
  Michael Dorn (born December 9, 1952) is an American actor, and voice artist who is best known for his role as the Klingon Worf from the Star Trek franchise.
  Dorn was born in Luling, Texas, the son of Allie Lee (née Nauls) and Fentress Dorn, Jr. He grew up in Pasadena, California. He studied radio and television production at the Pasadena City College. From there he pursued a career in music as a performer with several different rock music bands, travelling to San Francisco and then back to Los Angeles.
  The first movie Dorn had a role in was Rocky (1976) as Apollo Creed's bodyguard, though he was not credited. He first appeared as a guest on the television show W.E.B. in 1978. The producer was impressed with his work, so he introduced Michael to an agent who introduced him to acting teacher Charles Conrad to study acting for six months. He then landed a regular role on the television series CHiPs.
  Dorn's most famous role to date is that of the Klingon Starfleet officer Lieutenant J.G. (later Lieutenant and then Lt. Commander) Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He said he got the role by showing up at the interview with several people. He did not smile or speak or sit, but stood in a corner in rigid attention posture, like the stereotypical Klingon warrior. When called, he marched into the room, scowled, and shook the interviewer's hand sharply. After reading, he gruffly thanked the director, and walked out. He attributes this reading in character as a Klingon warrior to getting the part.
  
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  Michael Douglas
  Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.
  Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian-born actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda; Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens.
  
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  Muhammad Ali
  Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.; January 17, 1942) is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist. Considered a cultural icon, Ali was both idolized and vilified.
  Originally known as Cassius Clay, Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975, and more recently practicing Sufism.^{[clarification needed]} In 1967, three years after Ali had won the World Heavyweight Championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. Ali stated, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" – one of the more telling remarks of the era.
  Widespread protests against the Vietnam War had not yet begun, but with that one phrase, Ali articulated the reason to oppose the war for a generation of young Americans, and his words served as a touchstone for the racial and antiwar upheavals that would rock the 1960s. Ali's example inspired Martin Luther King Jr. – who had been reluctant to alienate the Johnson Administration and its support of the civil rights agenda – to voice his own opposition to the war for the first time.
  
  wn.com/Muhammad_Ali
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  Otto Preminger
  Otto Ludwig Preminger (5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.
  After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945). In the 1950s and 1960s, he directed a number of high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with topics which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) and homosexuality (Advise & Consent, 1962). He was twice nominated for the Best Director Academy Award. He also had a few acting roles.
  Preminger was born in 1905 in Wiznitz (Vyzhnytsia), a town west of Czernowitz, northern Bukovyna, in today's Ukraine, then part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, into the Jewish family of Markus and Josefa Preminger. Preminger's father was born in 1877 in Galicia, at a time when it was part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire. As an Attorney General of Austria–Hungary, Markus was a proud public prosecutor on the cusp of an extraordinary career defending the interests of the Emperor Franz Josef. The couple provided a stable home life for Preminger and his brother Ingo.
  
  wn.com/Otto_Preminger
• Philip D'Antoni
  Philip D’Antoni (Born February 19, 1929 in New York, NY), is a film producer, known for the groundbreaking, memorable car chases in his dramatic police thrillers Bullitt (1968), The French Connection (1971), and The Seven-Ups (1973).
  D'Antoni won the Academy Award in 1972 for Best Picture, for The French Connection. He also won the Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture Drama for The French Connection.
  He began his career on TV with the glamorous productions, "Sophia Loren in Rome," "Elizabeth Taylor in London," and "Melina Mecuri in Greece."
  He produced Bullitt in 1968. In 1973 he was the Director/Producer of The Seven-Ups. After The Seven-Ups, D'Antoni, who held the rights to French Connection II and Gerald Walker's novel, Cruising, eschewed feature filmmaking and turned his attention to television production where he enjoyed a lucrative contract with NBC.
  D'Antoni's crime dramas are characterized by a cold, gritty, "street" perspective with documentary style, often filmed during the bleak New York winter months, and offer the viewer a realistic and often dangerous sense of being an insider, as opposed to using glamorous locations or produced sets.
  
  wn.com/Philip_D'Antoni
• Richard Eder
  Richard Eder was for 20 years variously a foreign correspondent, a film reviewer and the drama critic for the New York Times. Subsequently he was book critic for the Los Angeles Times, winning a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and the National Book Critics Circle annual citation. For the past few years he has regularly written book reviews for both Times's and the Boston Globe.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Eder
• Richard Halsey
  Richard Halsey is an American film editor with more than 60 credits from 1970 onwards. An alumnus of Hollywood High School, he won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing at the 49th Academy Awards for editing Rocky with Scott Conrad and has been nominated for one BAFTA and one Emmy Award. He often works with his wife Colleen and they are credited together. Both have been elected to membership in American Cinema Editors (A.C.E.); Halsey has been a member since 1988. He is now living in the Hollywood Hills.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Richard_Halsey
• Robert Chartoff
  Robert Chartoff (born August 26, 1933) is an American film producer. He and fellow producer Irwin Winkler won an Academy Award for Best Picture for the 1976 film Rocky.
  Chartoff graduated from Union College in 1955. He has three daughters (Jennifer, Julie, and Miranda) and two sons (William and Charley). Chartoff established the RC Charitable Foundation in 1990 to award grants to international schools and other child agencies. He continues to serve as its President. The RC Charitable Foundation gives less than $100,000 per year. Several grants awarded to the Buddha Educational Trust.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Chartoff
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  Robert Redford
  Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (born August 18, 1936), better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993),The Last Castle and Spy Game (2001). As a filmmaker, his notable films include Ordinary People (1980), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000).
  
  wn.com/Robert_Redford
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  Rocky Balboa
  Robert "Rocky" Balboa, Sr. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Rocky series from 1976 to 2006. During the series, he wins the Heavyweight Championship of the World twice. He was portrayed by Sylvester Stallone.
  Robert Balboa was born on April 6, 1946. He was the only child to a Roman Catholic Italian-American family. It was revealed in Rocky II that Rocky's black trunks with gold trim were the colors of his high school that he never graduated from. During the scene in which Rocky takes Adrianna "Adrian" Pennino skating on Thanksgiving, he tells her "Yeah -- My ol' man who was never the sharpest told me -- I weren't born with much brain so I better use my body." This encouraged him to take up boxing. He trained very hard so he could grow up to be like his idol Rocky Marciano. Unable to live on the small pay of club fights, and being unable to find work anywhere else, Rocky got a job as a collector for Tony Gazzo, the local loan shark, just to make ends meet. By late 1975, Rocky had fought in 64 fights, winning 44 (38 KO'S) and losing 20. Rocky was proud that he never had his nose broken in a professional fight. His nickname is "The Italian Stallion," spawning from his Italian-American heritage.
  
  wn.com/Rocky_Balboa
• 
  Rocky Marciano
  Rocky Marciano (born Rocco Francis Marchegiano; September 1, 1923 – August 31, 1969) was an American professional boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from September 23, 1952, to April 27, 1956. Marciano is the only champion to hold the heavyweight title and go untied and undefeated throughout his career. Marciano defended his title six times.
  Marciano was born and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts to Pierino Marchegiano and Pasqualina Picciuto. Both of his parents were immigrants from Italy: his father was from Ripa Teatina, Abruzzo, while his mother was from San Bartolomeo in Galdo, Campania. Rocky had three sisters—Alice, Concetta and Elizabeth—and two brothers—Sonny and Peter. When he was about eighteen months old, he got pneumonia, from which he almost died.
  In his youth, he played baseball, worked out on homemade weightlifting equipment (later in his life, Marciano was also a client of Charles Atlas) and used a stuffed mail bag that hung from a tree in his back yard as a heavy bag. He attended Brockton High School, where he played both baseball and football. However, he was cut from the school baseball team because he had joined a church league, violating a school rule forbidding players from joining other teams. He dropped out of school after finishing tenth grade.
  
  wn.com/Rocky_Marciano
• 
  Roger Ebert
  Roger Joseph Ebert ( /ˈiːbərt/; born June 18, 1942) is an American journalist, film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
  Ebert is known for his film review column (appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and later online) and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The Movies, all of which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel. After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert teamed with Richard Roeper for the television series Ebert & Roeper & the Movies, which began airing in 2000. Although his name remained in the title, Ebert did not appear on the show after mid-2006 after he suffered post-surgical complications related to thyroid cancer, leaving him unable to speak. Ebert ended his association with the show in July 2008, but in February 2009 he stated that he and Roeper would continue their work on a new show. Ebert's current show, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by someone else in a brief segment called "Roger's Office".
  
  wn.com/Roger_Ebert
• Rosalyn Drexler
  Rosalyn Drexler (born 1926) is a Pop artist, novelist, Obie Award-winning playwright, and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter. She is represented by Pace Gallery.
  Rosalyn Drexler (née Bronznick) was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City where she majored in voice. She attended Hunter College for one semester only before leaving school to marry figure painter Sherman Drexler in 1946. She is the subject of many of her husband's paintings. They have a daughter and a son.
  In 1951 Drexler pursued a brief career as a professional wrestler under the name "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire."Andy Warhol made a series of silkscreen paintings based on a Polaroid he took of Drexler dressed as a lady wrestler. Drexler's experience as Rosa Carlo later formed the basis of her 1972 critically acclaimed novel To Smithereens. The novel inspired the 1980 film Below the Belt.
  Drexler began making found-object sculptures while living in Berkeley, California where her husband was finishing his art degree. Made as amusements for display in her home, Drexler exhibited her work once she moved back to New York City at the urging of dealer Ivan Karp. One critic called these early works "ridiculous and nutty" sculptures that revealed a "real beauty beneath their I-don't-care attitudes."
  
  wn.com/Rosalyn_Drexler
• Sam Spiegel
  Sam Spiegel (November 11, 1901 – December 31, 1985) was an Austrian-born American independent film producer.
  Spiegel was born in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now in Poland) as Samuel P. Spiegel to a German-Jewish father and Polish mother^{[citation needed]} and educated at the University of Vienna. His brother was Shalom Spiegel, a professor of medieval Hebrew poetry. Spiegel worked briefly in Hollywood in 1927 following a stint serving with Hashomer Hatzair in Palestine. He then went to Berlin to produce German and French adaptations of Universal films until 1933 when he fled Germany. As an independent producer, Spiegel was behind a number of European films. In 1938, he immigrated to Mexico and subsequently the United States. Between 1935 and 1954, Spiegel billed himself as S.P. Eagle. After that he used his real name. "...Spiegel a decidedly flawed protagonist, as well as the wit, sophistication, and Old World charm that make him a titanic figure the likes of which the movie industry will not see again."
  
  wn.com/Sam_Spiegel
• Stanley R. Jaffe
  Stanley Richard Jaffe (born 31 July 1940) is an American film producer, responsible for blockbusters such as Fatal Attraction, The Accused, and Kramer vs. Kramer.
  Jaffe was born in New Rochelle, New York. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1962. He is the son of Leo Jaffe, film executive and "Hollywood Deal Maker." Leo Jaffe was a close friend of independent producer Sam Spiegel; Stanley Jaffe described how he would find his father and Siegel at his father's office at Columbia Pictures: "The lights were turned low and there they were, at the end of the table, playing gin."
  In 1962 Jaffe joined Seven Arts Associates, and in 1964 was named executive assistant to the president of Seven Arts. After Warner Brothers purchased Seven Arts in 1967, Jaffe left to join CBS for two years.
  After producing Goodbye Columbus, he was in 1970 appointed executive vice president and chief operations officer of Paramount Pictures, and within three months was named president of Paramount Television, which post he resigned in 1971 to form an independent production company, Jaffilms, which was "associated" with Columbia Pictures. Jaffilms produced Bad Company (1972) and The Bad News Bears (1976). In 1977 he became executive vice president of worldwide production at Columbia Pictures.
  
  wn.com/Stanley_R._Jaffe
• Stu Nahan
  Stu Nahan (June 23, 1926 – December 26, 2007) was an American sportscaster best known for his television broadcasting career in Los Angeles from the 1950s through the 1990s. He is also remembered for his role as a boxing commentator in most of the Rocky films. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6549 Hollywood Blvd. on May 25, 2007.
  A native of Los Angeles, Nahan moved at age 2 with his mother to Canada, where he grew up playing ice hockey.
  A star goalie at McGill University in Montreal, he signed a contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League in 1946. He was assigned to the minor-league Los Angeles Monarchs, who through the early 1950s played at the Pan Pacific Auditorium.
  Nahan originally began working on a children's television program, appearing as "Skipper Stu" in Sacramento in the 1950s. He worked for KCRA in Sacramento as a sportscaster. Nahan later moved to Haddonfield, NJ (near Philadelphia) where he hosted his own children's show as Captain Philadelphia, dressed in an astronaut outfit, on the now defunct WKBS-TV. During this stint, Nahan also provided the play-by-play commentary for the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers at WTAF, working alongside Gene Hart.
  
  wn.com/Stu_Nahan
• 
  Susan Sarandon
  Susan Sarandon (born Susan Abigail Tomalin; October 4, 1946) is an American actress. She has worked in movies and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her work. She is also noted for her social and political activism for a variety of liberal causes.
  Sarandon was born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City to a Roman Catholic family. She is the eldest of nine children of Lenora Marie (née Criscione) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, who worked as an advertising executive, television producer, and nightclub singer during the big band era. Her father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry, his English ancestors being from Hackney in London. On her mother's side, she is of Italian descent, with ancestors from the regions of Tuscany and Sicily. Sarandon attended Roman Catholic schools.^{[citation needed]} She grew up in Edison, New Jersey, where she graduated from Edison High School in 1964. She then attended The Catholic University of America, from 1964 to 1968, where she began dating actor Chris Sarandon whom she married in 1967.
  
  wn.com/Susan_Sarandon
• 
  Sylvester Stallone
  Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (/stəˈloʊn/; born July 6, 1946), commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed are boxer Rocky Balboa and soldier John Rambo. The Rocky and Rambo franchises, along with several other films, strengthened his reputation as an actor and his box office earnings.
  Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum, on the right side before the steps. It was announced on December 7, 2010 that Stallone was voted into boxing's Hall of Fame.
  Sylvester Stallone was born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone in New York City, the elder son of Frank Stallone, Sr., a hairdresser, and Jackie Stallone (born Jacqueline Labofish), an astrologer, former dancer, and promoter of women's wrestling. His younger brother is actor and musician Frank Stallone. Stallone's father was born in Gioia del Colle, Apulia, Italy, and emigrated to the United States as a child. Stallone's mother is of half Russian Jewish and half French descent.
  
  wn.com/Sylvester_Stallone
• Talia Shire
  Talia Shire (born April 25, 1946) is an American actress most known for her roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrianna Balboa (née Pennino) in the Rocky series.
  Shire was born Talia Rose Coppola in Lake Success, New York, the daughter of Italia (née Pennino) and arranger/composer Carmine Coppola. Talia is the sister of director and producer Francis Ford Coppola and academic August Coppola, the aunt of actor Nicolas Cage and director Sofia Coppola, and the niece of composer and conductor Anton Coppola. She was married to composer David Shire, with whom she had a son, Matthew Orlando Shire. She has two other sons, actors/musicians Robert Schwartzman and Jason Schwartzman, from her second marriage to the late producer Jack Schwartzman.
  Shire first became famous for her role of Connie Corleone in The Godfather and its sequels. Later, she portrayed Adrianna Pennino Balboa, the girlfriend (and later wife) of Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movies. She also starred in such films as I ♥ Huckabees, Kiss the Bride and 2007's Homo Erectus.
  
  wn.com/Talia_Shire
• Thayer David
  Thayer David (born David Thayer Hersey, March 4, 1927 – July 17, 1978) was a film, stage and television actor. He was best known for his work on the cult ABC serial Dark Shadows (1966–1971) and as the fight promoter George Jergens in the Oscar-winning movie Rocky (1976). He also appeared as Count Arne Saknussemm in the film Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1959. His raspy distinctive voice narrated many voice-overs in commercials and narrations of instructional films and commercials.
  Thayer David was born March 4, 1927, in Medford, Massachusetts. His father, Thayer Frye Hersey, was an executive in the paper pulp industry. David attended Harvard University in the 1940s but did not graduate, concentrating instead upon a career on the stage. With financial support from his father, he co-founded the Brattle Theater Company (1948–1952) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and established himself in the professional theatre.
  He went on to act in The Relapse 1950 (Sir Tunbelly Clumsey);The Taming of the Shrew 1951 (Grumio); The Way of the World 1954 (Petulant); The Carefree Tree 1955 (The Sixth Son); King Lear 1956 (Duke of Cornwall); Mister Johnson 1956 (Gollup); Saint Joan 1956 (The Inquisitor); Protective Custody 1956 (Dr. Steidl); Oscar Wilde 1957 (Oscar Wilde); The Golden Six 1958 (Tiberius); A Man for All Seasons 1961 (Cardinal Wolsey); Andorra 1963 (pub keeper); The Seagull 1964 (Sorin); The Crucible 1964 (Danforth); Baker Street 1965 (Moriarty); The Royal Hunt of the Sun 1965 (Miguel Estete); Ring Round the Moon 1966 (Messerchann); Those That Play the Clowns 1966 (Henning); Breakfast at Tiffany's 1966 (Rusty Trawler); The Sorrows of Frederick 1967; The Bench 1968 (Phillipi); Uncle Vanya 1971 (Serebryakov); The Jockey Club Stakes 1973 (Sir Dymock Blackburn); The Dogs of Pavlov 1974.
  
  wn.com/Thayer_David
• Tony "Duke" Evers
  Tony "Duke" Evers is a fictional character from the Rocky films, initially portrayed as the manager/trainer to Apollo Creed before eventually becoming the manager to Rocky Balboa, the film series' title character. He was portrayed by Tony Burton and is one of only three characters (with Rocky and Paulie Pennino the others) to have appeared in all six Rocky movies.
  
  wn.com/Tony_"Duke"_Evers
• Tony Burton
  Anthony "Tony" Burton (born March 23, 1937) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Tony "Duke" Evers in the Rocky series, and is one of three actors (along with Sylvester Stallone and Burt Young) who have appeared in all six Rocky films.
  Burton was born in Flint, Michigan. A Flint Northern High School graduate, he was a Michigan Golden Gloves heavyweight boxing champion and two-time all-state football player.
  At Northern he played halfback. In 1954 he scored 13 touchdowns and led his team in scoring. Many of the scoring runs were of 50 yards or more. He gained 820 yards rushing that year and one of his runs was for 95 yards. In 1954, he was selected to the first teams of the All City and All Valley teams as a halfback. He was also chosen as an All State honorable mention. He was the team's co-captain and Most Valuable Player. Tony led his team in yards gained and receiving yards. In one game against Grand Rapids Catholic, he gained 213 total yards.
  At Northern, Tony was also the leading baseball pitcher, pitching the team to the city championship title.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Burton
• Vincent Canby
  Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.
  Canby was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Katharine Anne (née Vincent) and Lloyd Canby. He attended a boarding school with the novelist William Styron, and the two became friends. He introduced Styron to the works of E.B. White and Ernest Hemingway, and the pair hitchhiked from their Christ Church, Virginia boarding school to Richmond, Virginia to buy Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. After war service in the Pacific he attended the Dartmouth College and then was employed as a film critic by Variety for six years.
  Canby was an enthusiastic supporter of many filmmakers, notably Woody Allen, who credited Canby's rave review of Take The Money and Run as a crucial point in his career. He was also heavily critical of some otherwise acclaimed films, such as Rocky, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Jaws, Patton, Night of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time in America, Chinatown, After Hours, Blazing Saddles, A Christmas Story, Witness, Mask, The Natural, Rain Man, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,Deliverance, The Godfather Part II and Alien. In the early 1990s, Canby switched his attention from film to theatre; he was named the chief theatre critic in 1994.
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Canby
• Walter Mirisch
  Walter Mortimer Mirisch (born 8 November 1921) is an American film producer. In his long and successful motion picture career, Walter Mirisch has produced some of the industry’s finest and most memorable films. He is President and Executive Head of Production of The Mirisch Corporation, an independent filmmaking organization, which he formed in 1957 with his brothers, Marvin and Harold.
  A native of New York, Mirisch graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and entered the movie business as a summer vacation usher in Jersey City’s State Theater, soon moving up to higher positions at other theaters. In 1942, he received a BA degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the following year graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration. In 1947, he produced his first film, Fall Guy, for Monogram Pictures Corporation.
  At the age of 29, Mirisch became production head at Allied Artists Studio with some 30 films to oversee. During his tenure, he found time to personally produce Flat Top, Wichita, which received a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as Best Outdoor Drama of 1955, The First Texan, and An Annapolis Story. He supervised the productions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Friendly Persuasion, and Love in the Afternoon, among many others.
  
  wn.com/Walter_Mirisch

Rocky (1976)

Actors

• Sylvester Stallone
• Talia Shire
• Burt Young
• Carl Weathers
• Burgess Meredith
• Thayer David
• Joe Spinell
• Jimmy Gambina
• Bill Baldwin Sr.
• Al Silvani
• George Memmoli
• Jodi Letizia
• Diana Lewis
• George O'hanlon
• Larry Carroll

Director

• John G. Avildsen

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