- published: 24 Apr 2007
- views: 7617851
- author: kavehmoradi
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
More Videos
Loading...
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- De'an County
- Dean
- Dean (Christianity)
- Dean (education)
- Dean (given name)
- Dean (surname)
- Dean Foods
- Dean Guitars
- Dean number
- Dean Village
- Dean, California
- Dean, Cheshire
- Dean, Cumbria
- Dean, Devon
- Dean, Dorset
- Dean, Hampshire
- Dean, Lancashire
- Dean, Nova Scotia
- Dean, Oxfordshire
- Dean, Pennsylvania
- Dean, Somerset
- Dean, Texas
- Dean, Victoria
- Forest of Dean
- Help Disambiguation
- Hurricane Dean
- Lower Dean
- Upper Dean
- USS Dean II (SP-98)
-
Dean Village
Dean Village (from dene, meaning 'deep valley') is a former village immediately northwest of Edinburgh, Scotland city centre. It was known as the "Water of Leith Village" and was a successful grain milling hamlet for more than 800 years. At one time there were no fewer than eleven working mills there, driven by the strong currents of the Water of Leith. The mylnes of Dene were listed in the King David I Charters.
In 1833, the four-arched Dean Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford and 106 feet above the water level, was opened to carry the Queensferry Road over the Dean Gorge, almost at the sole expense of Mr John Learmonth Lord Provost of Edinburgh. The contractors were John Gibb & Son, from Aberdeen. Another intention of the new bridge was to open up the Dean estate to feuing. The side parapet of the bridge was raised in height at the beginning of the 20th century as a deterrent to suicides, which were very common here in the 19th century, being more or less guaranteed success. The change in stonework is still visible. Dean Bridge was featured in Ian Rankin's fictional book Strip Jack, in which a woman is found dead in the river underneath the bridge.
wn.com/Dean_Village -
Forest of Dean
The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. The forest is a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and north, the River Severn to the south, and the City of Gloucester to the east.
The area is characterised by over 110 square kilometres (42.5 sq mi) of mixed woodland, one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and remained as the second largest Crown forest in England, the largest being New Forest. Although the name is often used loosely to refer to that part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, the Forest of Dean proper has covered a much smaller area since mediaeval times. In 1327 it was defined to cover only the royal demesne and parts of parishes within the hundred of St Briavels, and after 1668 the Forest comprised the royal demesne only. This area is now within the civil parishes of West Dean, Lydbrook, Cinderford, Ruspidge, and Drybrook.
wn.com/Forest_of_Dean -
Lower Dean
Coordinates: 52°18′30″N 0°27′16″W / 52.30827°N 0.45439°W / 52.30827; -0.45439
Lower Dean is a village located in the Bedford Borough of Bedfordshire, England.
The village forms part of the Dean and Shelton civil parish, and is close to the county border with Northamptonshire and the district of Huntingdonshire in Cambridgeshire.
wn.com/Lower_Dean -
Upper Dean
Coordinates: 52°17′52″N 0°28′02″W / 52.29777°N 0.46726°W / 52.29777; -0.46726
Upper Dean is a village located in the Bedford Borough of Bedfordshire, England.
The village forms part of the Dean and Shelton civil parish, and is close to the settlements of Melchbourne and Swineshead. Upper Dean is the location of Eileen Wade Lower School.
wn.com/Upper_Dean
-
Aarnoud van Heemstra
Aarnoud Jan Anne Aleid baron van Heemstra (22 Jul 1871, Vreeland — 30 December 1957, Oosterbeek) was a Dutchs jurist en politician.
Van Heemstra was born the son of the mayor of Loenen. He studied at Utrecht University where he obtained his doctorate in law in 1896. He established himself in Arnhem where he was prosecuting lawyer and subsequently deputy judge at the district court. In 1902 he was appointed official at the district court in Roermond and in October 1909 deputy public prosecutor at the arrondissement court of Maastricht. In 1910 he became mayor of the city of Arnhem, following Antonie Röell and preceding Dirk Jan de Geer. In 1920 Wilhelmina of the Netherlands appointed him governor of Suriname, from which he retired in 1928. Living in the Arnhem region, he redacted a political economic magazine until 1940.
Refusing to collaborate with the NSB during the war, the German occupiers confiscated many of his possessions, including estates, bank accounts, and even jewelry. He was forced to move out of the estate Zijpendaal outside Arnhem to Oosterbeek and later Velp. In 1942 his son-in-law Otto graaf van Limburg Stirum was executed in retaliation for a sabotage by the resistance movement. During the war years his divorced daughter Ella van Heemstra (1900-1984) lived with him, together with her three children, among whom the future actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
wn.com/Aarnoud_van_Heemstra -
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (/pəˈtʃiːnɵ/; born April 25, 1940) is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy and Tony Montana in Scarface, though he has also appeared several times on the other side of the law — as a police officer, a detective and a lawyer. His role as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1993 after receiving seven previous Oscar nominations, one of them being in the same year.
He made his feature film debut in the 1969 film Me, Natalie in a minor supporting role, before playing the leading role in the 1971 drama The Panic in Needle Park. Pacino made his major breakthrough when he was given the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor were for Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross. Oscar nominations for Best Actor include The Godfather Part II, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, ...And Justice for All and Scent of a Woman.
wn.com/Al_Pacino -
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ dəlɔ̃]; born 8 November 1935) is a French-Swiss actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot. Over the course of his career, Delon has worked with many well-known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle.
Delon acquired Swiss citizenship on September 23, 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva. He is a citizen of the community of Chêne-Bougeries in the canton of Geneva.
Delon was born in Sceaux, Seine (now Hauts-de-Seine), Île-de-France, a suburb of Paris. His parents, Édith (née Arnold) and Fabien Delon, divorced when Delon was four. Both remarried, and Delon has a half-sister and two half-brothers. He attended a Roman Catholic boarding school, the first of several schools from which he was expelled because of unruly behavior. Teachers once tried to convince him to enter the priesthood because of his aptitude in religious studies.
wn.com/Alain_Delon -
Albert Finney
Albert Finney (born 9 May 1936) is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films in the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.
A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards, Finney has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984); and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich (2000).
Finney is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His career began in the theatre; he made his first appearance on the London stage in 1958 in Jane Arden's The Party, directed by Charles Laughton, who starred in the production along with his wife, Elsa Lanchester. Then in 1959 he appeared at Stratford in Coriolanus opposite Laurence Olivier (as Coriolanus), Edith Evans and Vanessa Redgrave.
His first film appearance was a role in Tony Richardson's The Entertainer (1960), with Laurence Olivier, but he made his breakthrough with his portrayal of a disillusioned factory worker in Karel Reisz's film version of Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. This led to a series of "Angry Young Man" roles in kitchen sink dramas, before he starred in the Academy Award-winning 1963 film Tom Jones. Prior to this, Finney had been chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's production of Lawrence of Arabia, but the actor quit after four days of shooting.
wn.com/Albert_Finney -
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage he was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. However, he was probably best known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Yevgraf in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In later years, he achieved fame with younger audiences for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s Star Wars films.
Guinness was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, London as Alec Guinness de Cuffe. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff. She was born 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield. On Guinness's birth certificate, the space for the mother's name shows Agnes de Cuffe. The space for the infant's name (where first names only are given) says Alec Guinness. The column for name and surname of father is blank.
wn.com/Alec_Guinness -
Alex Brummer
Alex Brummer (born in Brighton, England on 25 May 1949) is a veteran economic commentator, working as a British journalist, editor, and author. He has been the City Editor of the Daily Mail (London) since May 2000, where he writes a daily column on economics and finance.
He is a regular contributor to the Jewish Chronicle (London), writing the weekly Media Analysis column and extensively on the Holocaust, Israeli economy, technology, and Middle East policy.
Brummer also writes "The Money" article for the New Statesman.
Brummer started his media career at J Walter Thomson and Haymarket Publishing between 1970 and 1972. He then went to work for The Guardian as the Financial Correspondent. He was the main reporter on the fringe banking crisis of 1973/4 and the 1976 sterling crisis.
In 1979 he became the US Financial and Washington Correspondent for the Guardian. He covered the 1980, 1984, and 1988 U.S. presidential elections for The Guardian. His work in this area earned him the 1989 Overseas Press Club award for the best foreign correspondent in the US.
wn.com/Alex_Brummer -
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 -
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is an English-born US-naturalized actress and singer in theatre, television, and motion pictures. Her career has spanned eight decades and earned an unsurpassed number of performance Tony Awards (tied with Julie Harris), with five wins. Her first film appearance was in the film Gaslight (1944) as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).
She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her twelve-year run starring as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996). Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the film Nanny McPhee (2005), Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.
wn.com/Angela_Lansbury -
Anna Magnani
Anna Magnani (Italian pronunciation: [ˈanna maɲˈɲani]; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.
Born in Rome, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained crippled.
She was referred to as "La Lupa," the "perennial toast of Rome" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the cinema. Time magazine described her personality as "fiery", and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was "volcanic". In the realm of Italian cinema, she was "passionate, fearless, and exciting," an actress that film historian Barry Monush calls "the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema." Director Roberto Rossellini called her "the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse". Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received her first Oscar in 1955.
wn.com/Anna_Magnani -
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft (September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005) was an American actress associated with the method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was often acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.
She made her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and, following a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Miracle Worker (1962), receiving subsequent nominations for her roles in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985). Bancroft's other acclaimed movies as a lead actress include Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).
Later in her career, she made the transition back to supporting roles in theatrical films such as Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), Great Expectations (1998), Antz (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000), and Heartbreakers (2001). She also starred in seven television films, the last of which was The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003) for which she received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
wn.com/Anne_Bancroft -
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 Perkins
Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor. Perkins was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his second film, Friendly Persuasion. He is best known for playing Norman Bates in the Psycho films. His other films include The Trial, Fear Strikes Out, Tall Story, Pretty Poison, and The Black Hole.
Perkins was born in New York City, the son of Janet Esselstyn (née Rane) and stage and film actor Osgood Perkins. Anthony was five when his father died. He is a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, John Howland. He attended The Brooks School, The Browne & Nichols School, Columbia University and Rollins College, having moved to Boston in 1942.
Perkins made his film debut in The Actress (1953). He received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956). The tall (6'2") Perkins also portrayed the troubled former Boston Red Sox baseball player Jimmy Piersall in the 1957 true story Fear Strikes Out.
wn.com/Anthony_Perkins -
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 Hiller
Arthur Hiller, OC (born 22 November 1923) is a Canadian film director. His filmography includes 33 major studio releases, including the 1970 film Love Story. A film festival in Hiller's name was held each spring from 2006 until 2009 at his alma mater, Victoria School of Performing and Visual Arts, in tribute for his continued support of the school.
Hiller was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and graduated from University College, University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947, a Master of Arts degree in psychology in 1950 and received an honorary Doctor of Laws in 1995.
Hiller began his show business career in television for the CBC in Toronto in the 1950s, and was a successful television director before moving into films and Hollywood. In the 1950s Hiller directed an episode of the anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled "Disappearing Trick" which starred Betsy von Furstenberg and Robert Horton. He also directed a number of episodes of Thriller.
In an interview with journalist Robert K. Elder for The Film That Changed My Life, Hiller noted the film Rome, Open City to have had a strong influence on his career.
wn.com/Arthur_Hiller -
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time who was ranked as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema. Remembered as both a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century, Hepburn redefined glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Givenchy and earned her place in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.
Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War, where she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam before moving to London in 1948 to continue ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions.
After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award-winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age who received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and accrued a Tony Award for her theatrical performance in the 1954 Broadway play Ondine. Hepburn remains one of few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
wn.com/Audrey_Hepburn -
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 -
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 -
Barbara Walters
Barbara Jill Walters (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television news magazine (20/20), former co-anchor of the ABC World News, and current contributor to ABC News.
Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's news magazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News, and continuing as a contributor to the network news division and its flagship program, ABC World News.
In 1996, Walters was ranked #34 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Walters was born in 1929 in Boston, the daughter of Dena (née Seletsky) and Louis "Lou" Walters (born Louis Warmwater). Her parents were both Jewish and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe. Walters' paternal grandfather, Abraham Isaac, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name first to Warmwater and later to Abraham Walters (the original family surname was Waremwasser). Walters' father was born there c. 1894, and moved to the United States with his family in 1900. In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also worked as a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943). He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally disabled and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. She has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson, born to a different mother.[citation needed]
wn.com/Barbara_Walters -
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.
wn.com/Barbra_Streisand -
Barry Paris
Barry Paris (born February 6, 1948) is an author and journalist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His best-known works include acclaimed biographies of film stars Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn. He is a movie reviewer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and co-host of a weekly radio show on WQED-FM. Paris has won multiple awards for cultural and investigative reporting. He is currently engaged in writing a biography of Franklin Pierce (tentatively titled Pierce in Oblivion), the 14th President of the United States.
Louise Brooks (Knopf, 1989) is Paris’s ground breaking biography of the silent film star. A thoroughly researched and stylishly penned work, it will likely stand as the definitive book on this 20th century icon. Widely praised upon publication, Louise Brooks was named Film Book of the Year by Leonard Maltin. In reviewing the book, the Daily Express stated "Barry Paris has written the model of a movie biography". Similarly, the Irish Times added, "In a short review it is impossible to give even a taste of the splendor of Mr Paris's work. It is one of the best biographies I have ever read, erudite, literate and always in search of its subject." Other reviews echoed similar positive assessments. The book was published across Europe and South America and remains in print in the United States. Along with this biography, Paris has written articles on the actress and scripted the Emmy-nominated documentary Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998).
wn.com/Barry_Paris -
Ben Gazzara
Biagio Anthony Gazzarra (August 28, 1930 – February 3, 2012), known as Ben Gazzara, was an American film, stage, and Emmy Award winning television actor and director.
Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzarra, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up in New York's Kips Bay neighborhood; he lived on East 29th Street and participated in the drama program at Madison Square Boys and Girls Club located across the street. He attended New York City's Stuyvesant High School; but finally graduated from Saint Simon Stock in the Bronx. Years later, he said that the discovery of his love for acting saved him from a life of crime during his teen years. He went to City College of New York to study electrical engineering. After two years, he relented. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator and afterward joined the Actors Studio.
In 1954, Gazzara (having tweaked his original surname from "Gazzarra") made several appearances on NBC's legal drama Justice, based on case studies from the Legal Aid Society of New York. Gazzara starred in various Broadway productions around this time, including creating the role of Brick in Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1955) opposite Barbara BelGeddes, directed by Elia Kazan, although he lost out to Paul Newman when the film version was cast. He joined other Actors Studio members in the 1957 film The Strange One. Then came a high-profile performance as a soldier on trial for avenging his wife's rape in Otto Preminger's courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
wn.com/Ben_Gazzara -
Beryl Reid
Beryl Elizabeth Reid, OBE (17 June 1919 – 13 October 1996) was a British actress of stage and screen.
Born in Hereford, England in 1919, Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools.
Leaving school at 16, she made her debut in 1936 as a music hall performer at the Floral Hall, Bridlington. Before and during World War II, she took part in variety shows and pantomimes. She had no formal training but later appeared at the Royal National Theatre in London as a comedy actress. Her first big success came in the BBC radio show Educating Archie as naughty schoolgirl Monica and later as the Brummie, "Marlene".
Her many film and television roles as a character actor were usually well-received. She reprised her Tony Award-winning performance of a lesbian soap opera star in The Killing of Sister George for the screen version and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama. The former tour of the play was not a success, people in shops refused to serve her and other performers due to the gay characters in the play.
wn.com/Beryl_Reid -
Betsy Blair
Betsy Blair (December 11, 1923 – March 13, 2009) was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.
Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in 1940. There she met Gene Kelly; they were married the following year, when she was seventeen years old, they divorced sixteen years later in 1957.
After work in the theatre, Blair began her film career playing supporting roles in films such as A Double Life (1947) and Another Part of the Forest (1948). Her interest in Marxism led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Blair was blacklisted for some time, but resumed her career with a critically acclaimed performance in Marty (1955), winning a BAFTA Award and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
She continued her career with regular theatre, film and television work until the mid 1990s.
wn.com/Betsy_Blair -
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 -
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 -
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards (July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.
Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his most well-known films including Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he also directed drama films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, or thrillers.
In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.
Born William Blake Crump in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards, a director of silent movies, and his stepfather, Jack McEdwards, became a film production manager after moving his family to Los Angeles in 1925. In an interview with Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt alienated, estranged from my . . . father." After attending grammar and high school in Los Angeles, he began taking jobs as an actor during World War II. Edwards describes this period:
wn.com/Blake_Edwards -
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an English-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his long career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.
Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple set up home at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol, before eventually moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of 17. In a 1942 legal document, Hope's legal name is given as Lester Townes Hope. His name on the Social Security Index is also listed as Lester T. Hope. His name as registered at birth was Leslie Towns [sic] Hope.
wn.com/Bob_Hope -
Brock Peters
Brock Peters (July 2, 1927 – August 23, 2005) was an American actor, best known for playing the role of Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. He also gained recognition among Star Trek fans for his portrayals of Fleet Admiral Cartwright in two of the Star Trek feature films and Joseph Sisko, father of Benjamin Sisko, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He is also remembered for his role as Hatcher in Soylent Green.
Peters was born George Fisher in New York City, the son of Alma A. (née Norford) and Sonnie Fisher, a sailor. He was of African descent. Peters set his sights on a show business career early on, at age 10. A product of New York's famed High School of Music and Art, Peters initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs as he worked his way up from Harlem poverty. Landing a stage role in Porgy and Bess in 1949, he quit physical education studies at City College of New York and went on tour with the opera.
Peters made his film debut in Carmen Jones in 1954, but began to make a name for himself in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird and The L-Shaped Room. He received a Tony nomination for his starring stint in Broadway's Lost in the Stars.
wn.com/Brock_Peters -
Burt 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/Burt_Lancaster -
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
Buster Keaton (his lifelong stage name) was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies."
Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made."
A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
wn.com/Buster_Keaton -
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 -
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve (French pronunciation: [katʁin dəˈnœv], born 22 October 1943) is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion (1965) and Belle de jour (1967). Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that film and The Last Metro (1980). One of France's most renowned actresses, she has also appeared in seven English-language films, most notably the 1983 cult classic The Hunger. In 2008, she appeared in her 100th film, Un conte de Noël.
Deneuve was born Catherine Fabienne Dorléac in occupied Paris to French stage and screen actor Maurice Dorléac and actress Renée Deneuve (born 1912). Deneuve is the second of their three daughters. Her older sister was Françoise Dorléac (1942-1967) and her younger sister is Sylvie Dorléac (born 1946). They have a maternal half-sister, Danielle (born 1937). Deneuve attended Catholic schools.
As Catherine Dorléac, she made her film debut at age eleven in Les Collégiennes (1957), filmed in 1955 but not released until two years later. Deneuve subsequently began using her mother's surname professionally so she wouldn't be confused with her elder sister, Françoise Dorléac, who was using their father's name.
wn.com/Catherine_Deneuve -
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 -
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes. He also is well known for his roles in the films The Greatest Show on Earth and Touch of Evil.
Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Initially a moderate Democrat, he later supported conservative Republican policies and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter, the son of Lilla (née Charlton; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator. Most sources state that he was born in Evanston, Illinois. Heston's autobiography, however, and some other sources place his birth in No Man's Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy northern suburb of Chicago. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.
wn.com/Charlton_Heston -
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 Renoir
Claude Renoir (December 4, 1913 – September 5, 1993) was a French cinematographer. He was the son of actor Pierre Renoir and nephew of director Jean Renoir. He was also the grandson of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is the father of actress Sophie Renoir.
Renoir was born in Paris, son of actor Pierre Renoir and actress Véra Sergine. He apprenticed to Boris Kaufman. He worked on numerous critically acclaimed pictures such as Monsieur Vincent (1947), Jean Renoir's The River (1951), Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968), Cleopatra (1963) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). He also participated in the making of The Mystery of Picasso (1956), the famous documentary on painter Pablo Picasso. He was the cinematographer for The Crucible (1957) and lived in East Germany during filming. Renoir's career came to a close in late 1970s, as he was rapidly losing sight. In his final years he was largely blind.
He married twice and had two children, a son and a daughter, actress Sophie Renoir. He died at age 79 in Troyes, 55 miles east of Paris, near the village of Essoyes, where he had a home.
wn.com/Claude_Renoir -
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 -
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.
For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.
wn.com/Clint_Eastwood -
Colette
Colette (pronounced: [kɔ.lɛt]) was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954). She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.
Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph Colette and his wife Adèle Eugénie Sidonie "Sido" Colette (nėe Landoy) in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in the Burgundy Region of France. She studied piano as a child and received her primary school diploma with high marks in mathematics and dictation. In 1893, at age 20, she married Henry Gauthier-Villars, a famous wit known as "Willy", who was 15 years her senior. He was a writer, music critic, and described as a "literary charlatan and degenerate".
Her first books, the Claudine series, were published under her husband's pen name "Willy". Claudine still has the power to charm; in belle epoque France it was downright shocking, much to Willy's satisfaction and profit.
wn.com/Colette -
Colleen Dewhurst
Colleen Rose Dewhurst (June 3, 1924 — August 22, 1991) was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'. This title was not due to my brilliance but rather because most of the plays I was in closed after a run of anywhere from one night to two weeks. I would then move immediately into another." She was a renowned interpreter of the works of Eugene O’Neill on the stage, and her career also encompassed film, early dramas on live television, and Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. She was also renowned for her television work playing Marilla Cuthbert in the Kevin Sullivan TV movie adaptations of the Anne of Green Gables series and her reprisal of the role in the subsequent TV series Road to Avonlea (marketed as just Avonlea in the US).
Dewhurst was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Ferdinand Augustus "Fred" and Frances Marie (née Woods) Dewhurst, a businessman and homemaker, respectively. Her father had been a "well-known athlete in Canada, where he had played football with the Ottawa Rough Riders". Her mother was a practitioner of Christian Science, which her daughter would also adopt. Her family moved to Massachusetts in 1928 or 1929, staying in Boston, Dorchester, Auburndale, and West Newton. Later they moved to New York City. After her parents separated, she and her mother relocated to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where she graduated from Riverside High School in 1942. She went on to attend Milwaukee-Downer College.
wn.com/Colleen_Dewhurst -
Cornell Borchers
Cornell Borchers (born 16 March 1925) is a German actress, active in the late 1940s and 1950s, who starred along with Errol Flynn and Nat King Cole in the film Istanbul (1957).
Borchers was born Cornelia Bruch or Gerlind Borchers in Šilutė (German: Heydekrug), Klaipėda Region (German: Memelland), Lithuania in a German either Prussian Lithuanian or Memellander family. She appeared on the cover of East German magazine Neue Film Welt of 1949, Volume 3, Issue 4. She won a BAFTA Film Award it the category of Best Foreign Actress in 1955 for the movie The Divided Heart of 1954. She retired from acting to raise her child. She currently lives in Bavaria, Germany, as of July 2007.
She married twice, to Bruce Cunningham and to Dr. Anton Schelkopf (aka Dr. Toni Schelkopf, Toni Schelkopf or Schelkopf Toni), a Psychologist Doctor and Film Producer whom she met twice when she starred in his films Schule für Eheglück (1954) and Rot ist die Liebe (1957), later divorced, by whom she had at least one daughter, Julia Schelkopf, born in Munich, on 15 September 1962, who married at Aufkirchen on 30 May 1987 HSH Friedrich Wilhelm Philipp Georg Heinrich Jakob 7th Fürst von Hanau und zu Horowitz Graf von Schaumburg, born in Munich on 26 June 1959, and by whom she had three children: HSH Tassilo Hubertus Heinrich Antonius Erbprinz von Hanau und zu Horowitz Erbgraf von Schaumburg (born Starnberg, 8 November 1987), HSH Philippa Maria Theresia Prinzessin von Hanau und zu Horowitz Gräfin von Schaumburg (born Starnberg, 15 January 1989) and HSH Thaddäus Carl Heinrich Prinz von Hanau und zu Horowitz Graf von Schaumburg (born Starnberg, 16 June 1995).
wn.com/Cornell_Borchers -
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 -
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall; January 5, 1946) is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970. Her first major film role was as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but the films that shaped her early career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen beginning with Play It Again, Sam in 1972. Her next two films with Allen, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Keaton subsequently expanded her range to avoid becoming typecast as her Annie Hall persona. She became an accomplished dramatic performer, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and received Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981) and Marvin's Room (1996). Some of her popular later films include Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), The First Wives Club (1996), Something's Gotta Give (2003) and The Family Stone (2005). Keaton's films have earned a cumulative gross of over US$1.1 billion in North America. In addition to acting, she is also a photographer, real estate developer, author, and occasional singer.
wn.com/Diane_Keaton -
Donald Spoto
Donald Spoto (born June 28, 1941) is an American biographer and theologian. He is best known for his best-selling biographies of film and theatre celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Alan Bates. He has also written biographical accounts of the House of Windsor from the Victorian Era through to Diana, Princess of Wales and of religious figures such as Jesus, and Saint Francis of Assisi, which was made into a television program by Faith & Values Media.
A native of New Rochelle, New York, Spoto graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1959 and received his B.A. summa cum laude from Iona College in 1963 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology (New Testament studies) from Fordham University in 1966 and 1970, respectively. He taught (theology, Christian mysticism, and Biblical literature) at Fairfield University, at the College of New Rochelle and at the New School for Social Research from 1966 until 1986 and then at University of Southern California, beginning in 1987. In addition, he was a visiting lecturer at the British Film Institute and the National Film Theatre in London from 1980 until 1986.
wn.com/Donald_Spoto -
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 Kilgallen
Dorothy Mae Kilgallen (July 3, 1913 – November 8, 1965) was an American journalist and television game show panelist. She started her career early as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal after spending only two semesters at The College of New Rochelle in New Rochelle, New York. In 1936, she began her newspaper column, The Voice of Broadway, which was eventually syndicated to over 146 papers. She became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line? in 1950.
Kilgallen's columns featured mostly show business news and gossip, but also ventured into other topics like politics and organized crime. She wrote front-page articles on events such as the Sam Sheppard trial and later the John F. Kennedy assassination, becoming the only reporter to interview Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer, out of earshot of sheriffs' deputies. The circumstances of Kilgallen's death have been the subject of conspiracy theories. Because the cause of her death was officially ruled as "undetermined," and because she openly criticized U.S. government agencies as far back as 1959, some believe that Kilgallen was actually murdered in order to silence her.
wn.com/Dorothy_Kilgallen -
Dorothy Stratten
Dorothy Stratten (February 28, 1960 – August 14, 1980) was a Canadian model and actress. Stratten was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979, Playmate of the Year in 1980 and was the second Playmate (after Lee Ann Michelle) born in the 1960s. Stratten appeared in three comedy films and at least two episodes of shows broadcast on US network television. She was murdered at age twenty by her estranged husband/manager Paul Snider, who committed suicide the same day. Her death inspired two motion pictures.
Stratten was born Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten in a Salvation Army hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Simon and Nelly Hoogstraten, who were Dutch immigrants. In 1961 her brother John Arthur was born. Her sister Louise Stratten followed in May 1968.
In 1977 she was attending Centennial High School in Coquitlam when, while working part-time at a local Dairy Queen, she met twenty-six year old Vancouver-area club promoter and pimp, Paul Snider, who romanced her. Snider later had professional nude photos taken of her which were sent to Playboy magazine. She was under age 18 at the time, and when her mother refused to sign the model release, Nelly Hoogstraten's signature was forged.
wn.com/Dorothy_Stratten -
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters.
He first drew critical praise for the play Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This was soon followed by his breakthrough movie role as the good-looking but troubled Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Since then Hoffman's career has largely been focused on cinema, with only sporadic returns to television and the stage. Some of his most notable films are Papillon, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Lenny, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, and Meet the Fockers.
Hoffman has won two Academy Awards (for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man), five Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award, and an Emmy Award. Dustin Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999.
wn.com/Dustin_Hoffman -
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 -
Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn (born December 7, 1932) is an American actress. Her career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next decade included several films and television series.
Burstyn's performance in the acclaimed 1971 ensemble drama The Last Picture Show brought her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination, after which she moved from supporting to leading film and stage roles. Burstyn received a second Academy Award nomination for her lead performance in The Exorcist (1973), and won the Academy Award for Best Actress the following year for her work in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. In 1975, she won the Tony Award for her lead performance in the Broadway production of Same Time, Next Year, and received a Golden Globe Award and a fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1978 film version of the play. Burstyn has worked consistently in film, television and theatre since, receiving multiple awards and nominations along the way, including an Emmy Award and two more Academy Award nominations for her performances in the films Resurrection (1980) and Requiem for a Dream (2000).
wn.com/Ellen_Burstyn -
Emmy Rossum
Emmanuelle Grey "Emmy" Rossum (born September 12, 1986) is an American actress and singer-songwriter.
She first starred in a string of movies including Songcatcher (2000), An American Rhapsody, (2001) and Passionada (2002). However, it was her role in Mystic River (2003) that garnered her wider recognition. She then starred in the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and received critical acclaim for her performance in The Phantom of the Opera (2004). She has since starred in Poseidon (2006), Dragonball: Evolution, (2009) and Dare (2009).
In 2007, Rossum released her debut album, Inside Out. She also released a Christmas EP the same year titled Carol of the Bells.
She currently stars on the Showtime dramedy Shameless, as Fiona Gallagher.
Rossum was born in New York, New York, the only child of Cheryl, a single mother who worked as a corporate photographer and an investment banker. She was named after her grandfather, whose first name was Emanuel, using the feminine spelling Emmanuelle. She is the niece of Vera Wang, to whom she is related by marriage. Her mother is Jewish and her father is Protestant. Rossum's parents divorced before she was born and she only met her father twice while growing up.
wn.com/Emmy_Rossum -
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (Italian pronunciation: [fedeˈriːko felˈliːni]; January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993) was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, and is widely revered. He won five Academy Awards and was nominated for 12 in a career that spanned over forty years.
Fellini was born on January 20, 1920 to middle-class parents in Rimini, then a small town on the Adriatic Sea. His father, Urbano Fellini (1894–1956), born to a family of Romagnol peasants and small landholders from Gambettola, moved to Rome in 1915 as a baker apprenticed to the Pantanella pasta factory. His mother, Ida Barbiani (1896–1984), came from a bourgeois Catholic family of Roman merchants. Despite her family’s vehement disapproval, she eloped with Urbano in 1917 to live at his parents' home in Gambettola. A civil marriage followed in 1918 with the religious ceremony held at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome a year later. The couple settled in Rimini where Urbano became a traveling salesman and wholesale vendor. Fellini had two siblings: Riccardo (1921–1991), a documentary director for RAI Television, and Maria Maddalena (m. Fabbri; 1929–2002).
wn.com/Federico_Fellini -
Felix Aylmer
Sir Felix Edward Aylmer Jones, OBE (21 February 1889 – 2 September 1979) was an English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television.
Felix Aylmer was born in Corsham, Wiltshire, the son of Lilian (Cookworthy) and Thomas Edward Aylmer Jones. He was educated at King James's Grammar School, Almondbury near Huddersfield, where he was a boarder from 1897 to 1900,Magdalen College School, and Exeter College, Oxford, where he was a member of Oxford University Dramatic Society. He trained under the Victorian-era actress and director Rosina Filippi before securing his first professional engagement at the London Coliseum in 1911.
He acted with Sir Laurence Olivier in Shakespearean films, appearing as Polonius in Hamlet (1948), and often played wise old men, such as Merlin in Knights of the Round Table (1953). He played the Archbishop of Canterbury in the film adaptation of Becket (1964), with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole and gave elocution lessons to the young Audrey Hepburn.
His memorable style of delivery—dignified and learned—was frequently mimicked by comedians such as Peter Sellers and Kenneth Williams. Indeed, as dramatist and barrister John Mortimer noted, the mannerisms Aylmer brought to bear in his roles came to be imitated in the real-life performances of judges on the bench. Williams observed that an impersonation of Aylmer was a speciality of a colleague during his days with ENSA, the Armed Forces Entertainment Association, but he was certain that none of the troops knew who was being impersonated.
wn.com/Felix_Aylmer -
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola ( /ˈkoʊpələ/ KOH-pə-lə; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors. He epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, that includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary film-making.
He co-wrote the script for Patton (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay). His directorial fame escalated with the release of The Godfather (1972), a film which revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, earning praise from critics and public alike. It won three Academy Awards, including his second, for Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and was instrumental in cementing his position as a prominent American film director.
Coppola followed it with a critically successful sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was highly praised and won him three Academy Awards—for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed Apocalypse Now (1979); notorious for its overlong and strenuous production, but critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. To this day, Coppola is one of only seven filmmakers to win two Palme d'Or awards, and is the only filmmaker to win both in the same decade.
wn.com/Francis_Ford_Coppola -
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 -
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 -
George Burns
George Burns (January 20, 1896 – March 9, 1996), born Naftaly Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.
He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three quarters of a century. Beginning at the age of 79, Burns' career was resurrected as an amiable, beloved and unusually active old comedian, continuing to work until shortly before his death, in 1996, at the age of 100.
Naftaly (late called Nathan) Birnbaum was the ninth of 12 children born to Louis and Dorah (nèe Bluth) Birnbaum, Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States from Romania. Burns was an active member of the First Roumanian-American congregation. His father was a substitute cantor at the local synagogue but usually worked as a coat presser. During the influenza epidemic of 1903, Lippe Birnbaum contracted the flu and died at the age of 47. Nattie (as he was then called) went to work to help support the family, shining shoes, running errands, and selling newspapers.
wn.com/George_Burns -
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor ( /ˈkjuːkər/; July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Camille (1936).
He was replaced as the director of Gone with the Wind (1939), but he went on to direct The Philadelphia Story (1940), Adam's Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star Is Born (1954) and My Fair Lady (1964). He continued to work into the 1980s.
Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of New York City, the younger child and only son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants Victor, an assistant district attorney, and Helen Ilona (née Gross) Cukor. His parents selected his middle name in honor of Spanish–American War hero George Dewey. Unlike the Jews of Poland and Russia whose first language was Yiddish, Hungarian Jews did not adopt Yiddish as their primary language. Therefore, the Cukor family, subscribing to the norm of their country of origin, was not a Yiddish speaking household. The family was not particularly religious, pork was a staple on the dinner table, and when he started attending temple as a boy, Cukor learned Hebrew phonetically, with no real understanding of the meaning of the words or what they represented. As a result, he was ambivalent about his faith and dismissive of old world traditions from childhood, and as an adult he embraced Anglophilia to remove himself even further from his roots.
wn.com/George_Cukor -
George Seaton
George Seaton (April 17, 1911 – July 28, 1979) was an American screenwriter, playwright, film director and producer, and theatre director.
Born George Stenius in South Bend, Indiana, Seaton moved to Detroit after graduating from college to work as an actor on radio station WXYZ. John L. Barrett played The Lone Ranger on test broadcasts of the series in early January 1933, but when the program became part of the regular schedule Seaton was cast in the title role. In later years he claimed to have devised the cry "Hi-yo, Silver" because he couldn't whistle for his horse as the script required.
Seaton joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a contract writer in 1933. His first major screen credit was the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the Races in 1937. In the early 1940s he joined 20th Century Fox, where he remained for the rest of the decade, writing scripts for Moon Over Miami, Coney Island, Charley's Aunt, The Song of Bernadette, and others before making his directorial debut with Diamond Horseshoe in 1945. From this point on he was credited as both screenwriter and director for most of his films, including The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Miracle on 34th Street, Apartment for Peggy, Chicken Every Sunday, The Big Lift, For Heaven's Sake, Little Boy Lost, The Country Girl, and The Proud and Profane.
wn.com/George_Seaton -
Gertrude Berg
Gertrude Berg (October 3, 1898 – September 14, 1966) was an American actress and screenwriter. A pioneer of classic radio, she was one of the first women to create, write, produce and star in a long-running hit when she premiered her serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs (1929), later known as The Goldbergs.
Berg was born Tilly Edelstein in 1898 in Harlem, and attended public schools. She married Lewis Berg in 1918; they had two children, Cherney (1922–2003) and Harriet (1926–2003). She learned theater while producing skits at her father's Catskills Mountains resort in Fleischmanns, New York.
After the sugar factory her husband worked at burned down, she developed a semi-autobiographical skit, portraying a Jewish family in the New York tenements, into a radio show. Though the household had a typewriter, Berg wrote her script by hand, taking the pages this way to a long-awaited appointment at NBC. When the executive she was meeting with protested that he could not read what Berg had written, she read the script aloud to him. Her performance not only sold the idea for the radio program but also got Berg the job as the lead actress on the program she had written. Berg continued to write the show's scripts by hand in pencil for as long as the program was on the air. On November 20, 1929, a 15-minute episode of The Rise of the Goldbergs was first broadcast on the NBC radio network. She started at $75 a week. Less than two years later, in the heart of the Great Depression, she let the sponsor propose a salary and was told, "Mrs. Berg, we can't pay a cent over $2,000 a week." Berg's husband, Lewis, who became a successful consulting engineer after the loss of his job which prompted her to write the initial radio script, refused to be photographed with his wife for publicity purposes, as he felt this was infringing on her success.
wn.com/Gertrude_Berg -
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 -
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category. She had also produced her own films such as the controversial Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. In 1929, Swanson successfully transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser.
However, personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s when she moved into theater and television. Today she is best known for her role as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star, in the critically acclaimed film Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Gloria Josephine May Swanson was born in a small house in Chicago, Illinois in 1899 to Adelaide (née Klanowski) and Joseph Theodore Swanson, a soldier. She attended Hawthorne Scholastic Academy. Her father was from a strict Lutheran Swedish American family, and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry.
wn.com/Gloria_Swanson -
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.
After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of 20, Grace Kelly appeared in New York City theatrical productions as well as in more than forty episodes of live drama productions broadcast during the early 1950s Golden Age of Television. In October 1953, with the release of Mogambo, she became a movie star, a status confirmed in 1954 with a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award nomination as well as leading roles in five films, including The Country Girl, in which she gave a deglamorized, Academy Award-winning performance. She retired from acting at 26 to enter upon her duties in Monaco. She and Prince Rainier had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie. She also retained her American roots, maintaining dual US and Monégasque citizenships.
wn.com/Grace_Kelly -
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 -
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of her films were sensational hits, and all but three of her twenty-four Hollywood films were profitable. Garbo was nominated four times for an Academy Award and received an honorary one in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable screen performances". She also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for both Anna Karenina (1935) and Camille (1936). In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of greatest female stars of all time, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.
Garbo launched her career with a leading role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, chief executive of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She immediately stirred interest with her first silent film, Torrent, released in 1926; a year later, her performance in Flesh and the Devil, her third movie, made her an international star.
wn.com/Greta_Garbo -
Heather Sears
Heather Christine Sears: (28 September 1935 – 3 January 1994), was a British stage and screen actress.
Although not from an acting family (her father was a distinguished London doctor), she was already performing in plays at the age of five and even writing them at the age of eight. When she was sixteen she followed her elder sister Ann Sears (1933–1992) to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. During her last year she signed an unusual 7-year contract with Romulus Films which allowed her an annual six months to do stage and television work if she wished. This was made possible through the good offices of the film director Jack Clayton, her friend and mentor.
After graduating from drama school, she was active from 1955 onwards in the Windsor repertory theatre. A year later she made her film début with a minor role in Michael Truman's Touch and Go (1955) and followed this up with the part of naive Susan in Maurice Elvey's film version of comedy Dry Rot (1956).
Before she turned 22, Sears had made her début on the London stage, taking over the part of Alison (from Mary Ure) in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, playing alongside Richard Bates and Richard Pasco. Shortly afterwards she played Claire Bloom's role in the television production of Ring Round the Moon. Although her greatest contribution was in the area of repertory theatre (her preferred medium), her most enduring legacy is inevitably in films, mostly in the late fifties and early sixties, but also in her television work.
wn.com/Heather_Sears -
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown (October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The annual Helen Hayes Awards, which have recognized excellence in professional theatre in the greater Washington, D.C. area since 1984, are her namesake. In 1955 the former Fulton Theatre on 46th Street in New York City's Broadway theater district was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre. When that venue was torn down in 1982, the nearby Little Theatre was renamed in her honor.
Helen Hayes was born in Washington D.C. on October 10, 1900. Her mother, Catherine Estelle (née Hayes), or Essie, was an aspiring actress who worked in touring companies. Her father, Francis van Arnum Brown, worked at a number of jobs, including as a clerk at the Washington Patent Office and as a manager and salesman for a wholesale butcher. Hayes' Irish Catholic maternal grandparents immigrated from Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine; her mother was a great-niece of Irish singer Catherine Hayes.
wn.com/Helen_Hayes -
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 -
Hubert de Givenchy
Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy (pronounced [y.bɛʁ də ʒi.vã.ʃi], born 21st of February 1927) is a French aristocrat and fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He is famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, as well as clothing for clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970. .
The younger son of Lucien Taffin de Givenchy (1888–1930), marquis of Givenchy, and his wife, the former Béatrice ("Sissi") Badin (1888–1976), Givenchy was born in Beauvais, Oise.
The Taffin family, which traces its roots to Venice, Italy (the original surname was Taffini), was ennobled in 1713, at which time the head of the family became marquis of Givenchy.
After his father's death from influenza in 1930, the future fashion designer and his elder brother Jean-Claude de Givenchy (1925–2009), who inherited the family's marquessate and eventually became the president of Parfums Givenchy, were raised by their mother and maternal grandmother, Marguerite Dieterle Badin (1853–1940), the widow of Jules Badin (1843–1919), an artist who was the owner and director of the historic Gobelins Manufactory and Beauvais tapestry factories. Artistic professions ran in the extended Badin family. Givenchy's maternal great-grandfather, Jules Dieterle, was a set designer who also created designs for the Beauvais factory, including a set of 13 designs for the Elysée Palace. One of his great-great-grandfathers also designed sets for the Paris Opera.
wn.com/Hubert_de_Givenchy -
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 -
Ignatius Wolfington
Ignatius 'Iggie' Wolfington (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 14 October 1920 – September 30, 2004, Studio City, California) was an American stage actor. Iggie is the youngest of the Wolfington family of Philadelphia, operators of a carriage business (1900's) and brother of the founder of Wolfington Body Company in Exton, Pa. He married Lynn Wood, an actress, about 1972. Iggie is also the great-great uncle of Claire Cole.
Wolfington attended West Philadelphia Catholic High School, then studied at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Drama.
Lt. Wolfington served with distinction in the 102nd Infantry Division (United States) at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. He received a battlefield commission as a first lieutenant. He was awarded the Silver Star for his role in saving thirty men. He also received the Purple Heart for wounds he received in battle. Upon his death, with the assistance of his nephew (Steve Bennett) arrangements were facilitated in order that Wolfington was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery attended by a large group of relatives. Lt. Wolfington's headstone witnesses his duty to the service of his country and the deep love he held for his country and the men he served with during his military career.
wn.com/Ignatius_Wolfington -
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 -
Irene Worth
Irene Worth, CBE (June 23, 1916 – March 9, 2002) was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the English and American theatre. (She pronounced her given name with three syllables: "I-REE-nee".)
Harriet Elizabeth Abrams was born in Fairbury, Nebraska to a Mennonite family. Her parents, Agnes Thiessen and Henry Abrams, were educators. They moved from Nebraska to California in 1920. She was educated at Newport Harbor High School, Newport Beach, California, Santa Ana Junior College, Santa Ana, California and UCLA.
She joined the Old Vic company in 1951, worked with Tyrone Guthrie and there played Desdemona, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Portia in The Merchant of Venice and her first Lady Macbeth. The company went off to South Africa with Worth as one of the leading ladies.
In 1953, she joined the fledgling Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for its inaugural season. There she was the principal leading lady, performing under an enormous tent with Alec Guinness in All's Well That Ends Well and Richard III. "Binkie" Beaumont brought her back to London in N. C. Hunter's "Chekhovian" drama, A Day by the Sea, with a cast that included John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. She joined the Midland Theatre Company in Coventry for Ugo Betti's The Queen and the Rebels. Her transformation from "a rejected slut cowering at her lover's feet into a redemption of regal poise" ensured a transfer to London, where Kenneth Tynan wrote of her technique: "It is grandiose, heartfelt, marvellously controlled, clear as crystal and totally unmoving."
wn.com/Irene_Worth -
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
Lemmon was born in an elevator[citation needed] at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
wn.com/Jack_Lemmon -
Jack Nicholson
Not to be confused with Nicholas Jackson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, behind only Meryl Streep, and tied with Katharine Hepburn.
Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three). Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles such as Jack Torrance in The Shining, Frank Costello in The Departed, and the Joker in 1989's Batman, among many other roles.
Nicholson is one of only two actors who have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Terms of Endearment, Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, The Departed and Anger Management .
wn.com/Jack_Nicholson -
Jack Warner
Jack Leonard "J. L." Warner (August 2, 1892 – September 9, 1978), born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Warner’s career spanned some forty-five years, its duration surpassing that of any other of the seminal Hollywood studio moguls.
As co-head of production at Warner Bros. Studios, he worked with his brother, Sam Warner, to procure the technology for the film industry's first talking picture. After Sam's death, Jack clashed with his surviving older brothers, Harry and Albert Warner. He assumed exclusive control of the film production company in the 1950s, when he secretly purchased his brothers' shares in the business after convincing them to participate in a joint sale of stocks.
Although Warner was feared by many of his employees and inspired ridicule with his uneven attempts at humor, he earned respect for his shrewd instincts and toughmindedness. He recruited many of Warner Bros.'s top stars and promoted the hard-edged social dramas for which the studio became known. Given to decisiveness, Warner once commented, "If I'm right fifty-one percent of the time, I'm ahead of the game."
wn.com/Jack_Warner -
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 -
James Dean
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.
Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment house located at the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts young Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine years old.
wn.com/James_Dean -
James Garner
James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928) is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades. These included his roles as Bret Maverick, in the popular 1950s western-comedy series, Maverick; Jim Rockford, in the popular 1970s detective drama, The Rockford Files; and the father of Katey Sagal's character on 8 Simple Rules following the death of John Ritter. He has starred in more than fifty movies, including The Great Escape (1963), Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964), Blake Edwards' Victor Victoria (1982), Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and The Notebook (2004).
Garner, the youngest of three children, was born in Norman, Oklahoma, the son of Mildred Scott (née Meek) and Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a carpet layer. His two older brothers were actor Jack Garner (1926–2011) and Charles Bumgarner, a school administrator who died in 1984. His family was Methodist. His mother, who was said to be of part Cherokee descent, died when he was five years old. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.
wn.com/James_Garner -
James Mason
James Neville Mason (15 May 1909 - 27 July 1984) was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes (winning once).
Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge where he became involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time. Mason had no formal training as an actor and initially embarked upon it for fun. After Cambridge he joined the Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie and Alexander Korda. In 1933 Korda gave Mason a small role in The Private Life of Don Juan but fired him three days into shooting.
From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II (causing his family to break with him for many years), he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He also starred with Deborah Kerr and Robert Newton in Hatter's Castle (1942). He then took the lead role in the critically acclaimed and immensely popular The Seventh Veil (1945) that set box office records in postwar Britain and raised him to international stardom. He followed it with a role as a mortally wounded Irish bank robber in Odd Man Out (1947) and his first Hollywood film, Caught (1949). Exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in 1944 and 1945.
wn.com/James_Mason -
James Stewart
James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime Achievement award. He was a major MGM contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. Stewart's parents were of Scottish descent and Presbyterians. His maternal ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia and Mary), he was expected to continue his father's business, which had been in the family for three generations. His mother was an excellent pianist but his father discouraged Stewart's request for lessons. But when his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture off-stage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.
wn.com/James_Stewart -
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda (born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda; December 21, 1937) is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an actress. After 15 years of retirement, she returned to film in 2005 with Monster in Law, followed by Georgia Rule two years later. She also produced and starred in over 20 exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995, and once again in 2010.
Fonda has been an activist for many political causes; her opposition to the Vietnam War and associated activities were controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women. She describes herself as a liberal and a feminist. In 2005, Fonda worked alongside Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem to co-found the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization. Since 2001, Fonda has been a Christian. She published an autobiography in 2005, and in 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time.
wn.com/Jane_Fonda -
Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman, born Sarah Jane Mayfield, (January 5, 1917 - September 10, 2007) was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades. She received an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Johnny Belinda (1948), and later achieved success during the 1980s for her leading role in the television series Falcon Crest.
Wyman was the first wife of Ronald Reagan. They married in 1940 and divorced in 1949, before Reagan ran for public office.
Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in St. Joseph, Missouri. Although her birthdate has been widely reported for many years as January 4, 1914, research by biographers and genealogists indicates that she was born on January 5, 1917. The most likely reason for the 1914 date is that she added to her age when beginning her career as a minor, so that she could work. After Wyman's death, a release posted on her official website confirmed these details.
wn.com/Jane_Wyman -
Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow (March 3, 1911 - June 7, 1937) was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde" (owing to her platinum blonde hair), Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute. Harlow starred in several films, mainly designed to showcase her magnetic sex appeal and strong screen presence, before making the transition to more developed roles and achieving massive fame under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Harlow's enormous popularity and "laughing vamp" image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, and ultimately her sudden death from renal failure at the age of 26.
Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri. The name is sometimes incorrectly spelled Carpentier, which came from later studio press releases in an attempt to sound more aristocratic, and the inaccuracy has been frequently repeated. Her father, Mont Clair Carpenter (1877–1974), was a dentist who came from a working-class background and attended dental college in Kansas City. Her mother, Jean Poe Carpenter (née Harlow), was the daughter of a wealthy real estate broker, Skip Harlow, and his wife Ella Harlow (née Williams). The marriage was arranged by Skip Harlow in 1908 and Jean, an intelligent and strong-willed woman, was resentful and became very unhappy in the marriage. The couple lived in Kansas City in a house owned by Skip Harlow.
wn.com/Jean_Harlow -
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 -
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress, producer, television director and singer-songwriter. Hewitt began her acting career as a child by appearing in television commercials and the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated. She rose to fame in teenage popular culture in her roles in the Fox series Party of Five as Sarah Reeves Merrin, and films I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel as Julie James. She starred on the hit CBS television program Ghost Whisperer as Melinda Gordon, for which she won a Saturn Award in 2007 and 2008 for Best Actress on Television. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her television movie The Client List. Hewitt has served as a producer on some of her film and television projects. As a singer, Hewitt's most successful single on the Billboard Hot 100 is the 1999 release "How Do I Deal", which peaked at No. 59. She has contributed music to the promotion or soundtracks of acting projects. She was identified as the "#1 reader choice" on the November 1999 and May 2009 covers of Maxim.TV Guide named her the sexiest woman on television in 2008.
wn.com/Jennifer_Love_Hewitt -
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis.
In addition to the duo's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
wn.com/Jerry_Lewis -
Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange (born April 20, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in film, theatre and television. The recipient of multiple awards, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, one Emmy and one Screen Actors Guild Award, Lange is regarded as one of the première actors of her generation.
Lange was discovered by producer Dino De Laurentiis and made her professional film debut in 1976's King Kong. In 1982, she became the first actor in forty years to receive two Oscar nominations within the same year; she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a soap opera star in Tootsie and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the troubled actress Frances Farmer in Frances. Lange received three more nominations for Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985), and Music Box (1989) before being nominated a sixth time and winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a manic depressive in Blue Sky (1994).
In addition to acting, Lange is a photographer with two published works, and is a humanitarian, holding a position as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, specializing in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Congo and Russia.
wn.com/Jessica_Lange -
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 -
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (born 22 October 1917), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s, at ages 94 and 95 respectively.
Fontaine is the only actress to have won an Academy Award for a performance in a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Suspicion.
She was born in Tokyo, Fontaine is the younger daughter of Walter Augustus de Havilland, a British patent attorney with a practice in Japan, and Lillian Augusta Ruse, a British actress known by her stage name of Lillian Fontaine. Her parents married in 1914, and were divorced in April 1925.
Joan Fontaine is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland. Her paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, designer of the famous de Havilland Mosquito aeroplane. Fontaine became an American citizen in April 1943. Reportedly a sickly child who developed anaemia following a combined attack of the measles and a streptococcal infection,[dead link] her mother moved her and her sister to the United States upon the advice of a physician.
wn.com/Joan_Fontaine -
Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Plowright, Lady Olivier, DBE (born 28 October 1929), better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards. Joan Plowright is also one of only four actresses to have won two Golden Globes in the same year.
Plowright was born in Brigg, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Daisy Margaret (née Burton) and William Ernest Plowright, who was a journalist and newspaper editor. She attended Scunthorpe Grammar School and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Plowright made her stage debut at Croydon in 1948 and her London debut in 1954. In 1956 she joined the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre and was cast as Margery Pinchwife in The Country Wife. She appeared with George Devine in the Eugène Ionesco play, The Chairs, Shaw's Major Barbara and Saint Joan. In 1957 she co-starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in the original London production of John Osborne's The Entertainer, taking over the role of Jean Rice from Dorothy Tutin when the play transferred from the Royal Court to the Palace Theatre.
wn.com/Joan_Plowright -
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award winning role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle name, "Gignilliat", originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name "Joanne". Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's partner and future husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977, in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him and he told her he remembered her doing it.
wn.com/Joanne_Woodward -
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 -
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE (10 February 1897 – 3 January 1992) was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.
Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson-Anderson in Adelaide, South Australia to Jessie Margaret (née Saltmarsh; 19 October 1862 – 24 November 1950) and James Anderson-Anderson. She attended Norwood High School, and began acting in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. She established herself as a dramatic actress of note, making several appearances in the plays of William Shakespeare.
She made her professional debut (as Francee Anderson) in 1915, playing Stephanie at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in A Royal Divorce. Leading the company was the Scottish actor Julius Knight whom she later credited with laying the foundations of her acting skills. In the company were some American actors who convinced Anderson to try her luck in the United States. She traveled to California but was unsuccessful, then relocated to New York, with an equal lack of success. After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the 14th Street Theatre in 1918–19. She toured with other stock companies until 1922 when she made her Broadway debut in On the Stairs using the name Frances Anderson. Twelve months later, she had changed her name to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra co-starring Louis Calhern. She toured Australia in 1927 with three plays – Tea for Three, The Green Hat and Cobra.[citation needed]
wn.com/Judith_Anderson -
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 -
Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday (June 21, 1921 – June 7, 1965) was an American actress.
Holliday began her career as part of a night-club act, before working in Broadway plays and musicals. Her success in the 1946 stage production of Born Yesterday as "Billie Dawn" led to her being cast in the 1950 film version, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. She appeared regularly in film during the 1950s. She was noted for her performance on Broadway in the musical Bells Are Ringing, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and reprising her role in the 1960 film.
In 1952, Holliday was called to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to answer claims that she was associated with communism. Although not blacklisted from films, she was blacklisted from radio and television for almost three years.
Born Judith Tuvim ("Tuvim" approximates the Yiddish word [yontoyvim] for "holidays") in New York City, she was the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim, who were of Russian Jewish descent. She grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York and graduated from Julia Richman High School. Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre run by Orson Welles and John Houseman.
wn.com/Judy_Holliday -
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (née Wells; born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours.
Andrews is a former child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in a 1954 production of The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, both of which earned her Tony Award nominations. In 1957, she made her television debut with the title role in Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers.
Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her second Academy Award nomination for The Sound of Music (1965). Adjusted for inflation, these two films are the 25th and 3rd highest grossing films of all time, respectively. From 1964 to 1967, Andrews was the biggest film star in the world, with the additional box office successes of her films The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
wn.com/Julie_Andrews -
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
wn.com/Julie_Harris -
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 -
Katie Johnson
Katie Johnson (18 November 1878 in Clayton, Sussex, England – 4 May 1957, Elham, Kent), born Bessie Kate Johnson, was an English actress who appeared on stage from 1894 and on screen from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1908 she married the actor Frank Goodenough Bayly (1873 – 28 November 1923, Newcastle, England).
She first appeared in a film at age 53, in 1932, but never received critical acclaim for her performances until 1955, when she starred, aged 76, in the Ealing Studios comedy The Ladykillers as Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce. The role earned her a British Film Academy award for best British actress. She died less than two years afterwards having only appeared in a single further film.
She also appeared in the BBC science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment (1953) and played a spy in I See a Dark Stranger (1946).
wn.com/Katie_Johnson -
Kim Novak
Kim Novak (born Marilyn Pauline Novak, February 13, 1933) is an American film and television actress.
Her first film roles were in Pushover and Phffft! (both 1954), and her breakthrough role was in Picnic (1955). Over the next three years, she appeared in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), The Eddy Duchin Story (1956), Pal Joey (1957), and Bell, Book and Candle (1958). She is best known for her role as Judy Barton in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo. Novak's career went into decline afterwards, and she appeared in films sporadically until 1991. Now retired, she lives with her veterinarian husband on a ranch in Eagle Point, Oregon.
Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Joseph and Blanche (née Kral) Novak. Both her parents were of Czech descent. Her father worked as a dispatcher on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad and both her parents had been teachers.
While attending David Glasgow Farragut High School, she won a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. After leaving school, she began a career modeling teen fashions for a local department store. She later received a scholarship at a modeling academy and continued to model part-time. She worked as an elevator operator, a sales clerk and a dental assistant.
wn.com/Kim_Novak -
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 -
Lana Turner
Lana Turner (February 8, 1921 - June 29, 1995) was an American actress.
Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget (1937). She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). During the early 1940s she established herself as a leading actress in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and Somewhere I'll Find You (1942). She is known as one of the first Hollywood scream queens thanks to her role in the 1941 horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and her reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her performance in the film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Her popularity continued through the 1950s, in such films as The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Peyton Place (1957), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 1958, her daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed Turner's lover Johnny Stompanato to death. A coroner's inquest brought considerable media attention to Turner and concluded that Crane had acted in self defense. Turner's next film, Imitation of Life (1959), proved to be one of the greatest successes of her career, but from the early 1960s, her roles were fewer.
wn.com/Lana_Turner -
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 -
Leo Jaffe
Leo Jaffe (23 April 1909 in New York City, New York – 20 August 1997 in New York City, New York) was an American film executive. He was chairman of the board of Columbia Pictures from 1973 until his retirement in 1981. He is the father of film producer Stanley R. Jaffe and film agent Andrea Jaffe.
The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Jaffe began working in in a glue factory in the Bronx to put himself through college. After graduating, he began working in the mailroom at Columbia, eventually working his way to the top.
In 1968, Jaffe received the Bronze Medallion, New York City's highest civilian honor. In 1979, Jaffe received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Jean Hersholt Award.
wn.com/Leo_Jaffe -
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (French pronunciation: [lɛzli kaʁɔ̃]; born 1 July 1931) is a French film actress and dancer, who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. In 2006, her performance in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series. Her autobiography Thank Heaven, was published in 2010 in the UK and US, and in 2011 in a French version.
Caron is best known for the musical films An American in Paris (1951), Lili (1953), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Gigi (1958), and for the non-musical films Fanny (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962), and Father Goose (1964). She received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She speaks French, English, and Italian. She is one of the few dancers or actresses who has danced with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Rudolf Nureyev.
Caron was born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Seine (now Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), France, the daughter of Margaret (née Petit), an American dancer on Broadway, and Claude Caron, a French chemist. Caron was prepared for a performing career from childhood by her mother.
wn.com/Leslie_Caron -
Lew Wasserman
Lewis Robert "Lew" Wasserman (March 22, 1913 – June 3, 2002) was an American talent agent and studio executive, sometimes credited with creating and later taking apart the studio system[dubious – discuss] in a career spanning more than six decades. He was also the manager of MCA for the Martin and Lewis comedy team.
Wasserman was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Russian Jewish immigrants, Isaac Wasserman and Minnie Chernick. He began his show business career as an usher in a Cleveland theater in 1933. He later became a booking agent for the Music Corporation of America (MCA), founded by Jules Stein.
Under Wasserman, MCA branched out into representing actors and actresses in addition to musicians and in the process created the star system, which drove up prices for studios. MCA struggled to gain ground in Hollywood since major agencies like those belonging to Charles Feldman, Myron Selznick, and Leland Hayward had already grabbed up most of the major talent. However, in the mid-1940s, when it purchased Hayward's agency, MCA finally gained bargaining leverage with the studios. As an agency, Wasserman's MCA came to dominate Hollywood, representing such stars as Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan, whom Wasserman was instrumental in helping to become president of the Screen Actors Guild.
wn.com/Lew_Wasserman -
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987. She was called "The First Lady of American Cinema".
She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D.W. Griffith, including her leading role in Griffith's seminal Birth of a Nation (1915). Her sound-era film appearances were sporadic, but included memorable roles in the controversial western Duel in the Sun (1946) and the offbeat thriller Night of the Hunter (1955). She did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s, and closed her career playing, for the first time, opposite Bette Davis in the 1987 film The Whales of August.
The American Film Institute (AFI) named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time. She was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1971, and in 1984 she received an AFI Life Achievement Award.
wn.com/Lillian_Gish -
Loretta Young
Loretta Young (January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the 1948 best actress Academy Award for her role in the 1947 film The Farmer's Daughter, and received an Oscar nomination for her role in Come to the Stable, in 1949.
Young then moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series called The Loretta Young Show, from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards, and reran successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. Young, a Catholic, worked with various Catholic charities after her acting career.
She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, as Gretchen Young. At confirmation, she took the name Michaela. She and her family moved to Hollywood when she was three years old.
She and her sisters Polly Ann and Elizabeth Jane (screen name Sally Blane) worked as child actresses, but of the three, Loretta was the most successful. Young's first role was at the age of three, in the silent film The Primrose Ring. The movie's star Mae Murray so fell in love with Young that she wanted to adopt her. Although her mother declined, Young was allowed to live with Murray for two years. During her high school years, Young was educated at Ramona Convent Secondary School.[citation needed] She was signed to a contract by John McCormick, husband of Colleen Moore, who saw the young girl as having potential. The name "Loretta" was given to her by Colleen, who would later explain that it was the name of her favorite doll.
wn.com/Loretta_Young -
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 -
Mae West
Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.
Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named West 15th among the greatest female stars of all time. One of the more controversial movie stars of her day, West encountered many problems, including censorship. When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums. She used the alias Jane Mast early in her career.
West was born Mary Jane West in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, delivered at home by an aunt who was a midwife. She was the eldest surviving child of John Patrick West and Matilda "Tillie" Doelger (also known as Matilda Delker Doelger), who had emigrated with her family from Bavaria to the United States in 1886. West's parents married on January 18, 1889, in Brooklyn.
wn.com/Mae_West -
Margaret Leighton
Margaret Leighton (26 February 1922 – 13 January 1976) was an English actress. She had an exquisite sense of grandeur and refinement. She created the role of Hannah Jelkes in Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana.
Born in Barnt Green, Worcestershire, Leighton made her stage debut as Dorothy in Laugh With Me (1938), which was also performed that year for BBC Television. She became a star of the Old Vic. Her Broadway debut was as the Queen in Henry IV (1946) starring Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson during a visit to America of the Old Vic company, which performed a total of five plays from its repertoire before returning to London.
After appearing in two British films, including the starring role of Flora MacDonald opposite David Niven in Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), the tall willowy actress played second female lead in Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949) starring Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, and Michael Wilding. She starred with Walter Pidgeon in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer crime/mystery Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951).
wn.com/Margaret_Leighton -
Marie Rambert
Dame Marie Rambert DBE (20 February 1888 – 12 June 1982) was a Polish-Jewish dancer and dance pedagogue who exerted a great influence on British ballet, both as a dancer and teacher.
Born to Jewish-Russian parents in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, she was originally named Cyvia Rambam. Her father and his siblings had to later change their last names for specific political reasons. Her father changed his to Ramberg, one of his brothers went to Rambert, and the last changed his name to Warszawski. Cyvia changed her name to Myriam Ramberg, and finally left it as Marie Rambert. In later years Marie was known to friends and dancers as Mim. She met her husband Ashley Dukes, a soldier on leave, at a dinner party in 1917. In Rambert's autobiography she says "after four days of personal meetings, and seven months of correspondence we were married on 3 March 1918." This was done partly as a joke so that Dukes could get 4 weeks of extended leave instead of 2 days. Their marriage lasted 41 years, until he died in 1959, leaving behind Marie and their two girls Angela and Helena, whom they called Lulu.
wn.com/Marie_Rambert -
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 -
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.
wn.com/Marlon_Brando -
Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon (born February 22, 1930) is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She has also spent much of her career performing in concerts with major symphony orchestras around the world and in operas and musicals throughout the United States.
Born Margaret Nixon McEathron in Altadena, California to Charles Nixon and Margaret Elsa (née Wittke) McEathron, Marni Nixon, a child actress, also began singing at an early age in choruses, including performing solos with the Roger Wagner Chorale.
She went on to study singing and opera with Carl Ebert, Jan Popper, Boris Goldovsky and Sarah Caldwell. She embarked on a varied career, involving film and musical comedy as well as opera and concerts. She appeared on American television, dubbed the singing voices of film actresses in The King and I, An Affair to Remember, West Side Story and My Fair Lady, and acted in several commercial stage ventures.
Under her own name, she has also recorded songs by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Anton Webern. Nixon received two Grammy Best Classical Performance, Vocal Soloist nominations, one for her Schönberg album and one for her Copland album.
wn.com/Marni_Nixon -
Martha Raye
Martha Raye (August 27, 1916 – October 19, 1994) was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television. She was honored in 1969 with an Academy Award as the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient for her volunteer efforts and services to the troops.
Raye's life as a singer and comedic performer began very early in her childhood. She was born at St. James Hospital, in Butte, Montana as Margy Reed, where her Irish immigrant parents, Peter F. Reed and Maybelle Hooper, were performing at a local vaudeville theatre as "Reed and Hooper." Two days after Martha was born, her mother was already back on stage, and Martha first appeared in their act when she was three years old. She performed with her brother, Bud, and soon the two children became such a highlight that the act was renamed "Margie and Bud." Some show business insiders speculated that the Judy Garland song from A Star Is Born, "I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho" was inspired by Raye's beginnings.
wn.com/Martha_Raye -
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.
wn.com/Martin_Scorsese -
Martine Carol
Martine Carol (16 May 1920 – 6 February 1967) was a French film actress.
Born Marie-Louise Jeanne Nicolle Mourer in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, (France), she studied acting under René Simon (1898–1966), making her stage debut in 1940 and her first motion picture in 1943. One of the most beautiful women in film, she was frequently cast as an elegant blonde seductress. During the late 1940s and early 1950s she was the leading sex symbol and a top box office draw of french cinema, and was considered a French version of America's Marilyn Monroe. One of her most famous roles was as the title character in Lola Montès (1955), directed by Max Ophüls, in a role which necessitated dark hair. However, by the late-1950s, roles for Carol had become fewer, due to the introductory of newcomer Brigitte Bardot.
Despite her fame and fortune, Martine Carol's personal life was filled with turmoil that included a suicide attempt and drug abuse, and four marriages. She was also kidnapped by gangster Pierre Loutrel (aka Pierrot le Fou or Crazy Pete), albeit briefly and received roses the next day as an apology.
wn.com/Martine_Carol -
Martita Hunt
Martita Hunt (30 January 1900 – 13 June 1969) was an English theatre and film actress.
Hunt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 30 January 1900 to British parents Alfred and Marta Hunt (née Burnett). She spent the first ten years of her life in Argentina before she returned with her parents to England to attend Queenwood Ladies' College, in Eastbourne, and then to train as an actress under Dame Genevieve Ward and Lady Benson.
Hunt began her acting career in repertory theatre at Liverpool before moving to London. She first appeared there in the Stage Society's production of Ernst Toller's The Machine Wreckers at the Kingsway Theatre in May 1923. From 1923-9 she appeared as the Principessa della Cercola in W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters (Globe, 1924) and as Mrs. Linden in Ibsen's A Doll's House (Playhouse, 1925) in the West End, along with engagements at club theatres such as the Q Theatre and the Arts Theatre and a short 1926 Chekhov season at the small Barnes Theatre under Victor Komisarjevsky (playing Charlotta Ivanovna, in The Cherry Orchard and Olga in Three Sisters).
wn.com/Martita_Hunt -
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950. Five of the Marx Brothers’ thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them (Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera) in the top twelve.
The core of the act was the three elder brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho; each developed a highly distinctive stage persona. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their stage characters to the same extent, and eventually left the act to pursue other careers. Gummo was not in any of the movies; Zeppo appeared in the first five.
Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia; and their father, Simon Marx (whose name was changed to Samuel Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian quarters.
wn.com/Marx_Brothers -
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford (April 8, 1892 - May 29, 1979) was a Canadian-American motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Known as "America's Sweetheart," "Little Mary" and "The girl with the curls," she was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting.
Because her international fame was triggered by moving images, she is a watershed figure in the history of modern celebrity and, as one of silent film's most important performers and producers, her contract demands were central to shaping the Hollywood industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time.
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Marie Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants, and worked a variety of odd jobs. Her mother, Charlotte Hennessy, was Irish Catholic. Mary had two younger siblings, Jack and Lottie Pickford, who would also become actors. To please the relatives, Pickford's mother baptized her in both the Methodist and Catholic churches (and used the opportunity to change her middle name to "Mary"). She was raised Roman Catholic after her alcoholic father left his family in 1895. He died three years later of a cerebral hemorrhage.
wn.com/Mary_Pickford -
Maureen Stapleton
Maureen Stapleton (June 21, 1925 – March 13, 2006) was an American actress in film, theater and television.
Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene (née Walsh) and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family. Her father was an alcoholic and her parents separated during her childhood.
Stapleton moved to New York City at the age of eighteen, and did modeling to pay the bills. She once said that it was her infatuation with the handsome Hollywood actor Joel McCrea which led her into acting. She made her Broadway debut in the production featuring Burgess Meredith of The Playboy of the Western World in 1946. That same year, she played the role of Iras in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" in a touring production by actress and producer Katharine Cornell. Stepping in because Anna Magnani refused the role due to her limited English, Stapleton won a Tony Award for her role in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo in 1951. (Magnani's English improved, however, and she was able to play the role in the film version, winning an Oscar.) Stapleton played in other Williams' productions, including Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton and Orpheus Descending (and its film adaptation, The Fugitive Kind, co-starring her friend Marlon Brando), as well as Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. She won a second Tony Award for Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady, which was written especially for her, in 1971. Later Broadway roles included "Birdie" in The Little Foxes opposite Elizabeth Taylor and as a replacement for Jessica Tandy in The Gin Game.
wn.com/Maureen_Stapleton -
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier (September 12, 1888 – January 1, 1972) was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond. His trademark attire was a boater hat, which he always wore on stage with a tuxedo.
Born in Paris, he made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in four menial jobs as a teenager. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at the time, Fréhel. Although their relationship was brief, she secured him his first major engagement, as a mimic and a singer in l'Alcazar in Marseille to which he received critical acclaim by French theatre critics. In 1918 he discovered jazz and ragtime and went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre.
In 1917, he discovered jazz and ragtime and toured the United States. Whilst there, he met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought Dédé to Broadway in 1922. He also developed an interest in acting, and had success in the operetta Dédé. When talkies arrived, he went to Hollywood in 1928 where he played his first American role in Innocents of Paris. In 1930 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his roles in The Love Parade (1929) and The Big Pond (1930), which secured his first big American hit, Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight.
wn.com/Maurice_Chevalier -
Mel Ferrer
Mel Ferrer (August 25, 1917 – June 2, 2008) was an American actor, film director and film producer.
Ferrer was born Melchor Gastón Ferrer in Elberon, New Jersey, of Cuban and Irish descent. His father, Dr. José María Ferrer (1857–1920), was born in Cuba, was an authority on pneumonia and served as chief of staff of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. His American mother, the former Mary Matilda Irene O'Donohue (1878–1967), was a daughter of coffee broker Joseph J. O'Donohue, New York's City Commissioner of Parks, a founder of the Coffee Exchange, and a founder of the Brooklyn-New York Ferry. An ardent opponent of Prohibition, Irene Ferrer was named, in 1934, the New York State chairman of the Citizens Committee for Sane Liquor Laws.
Ferrer had three siblings. His elder sister was Dr. M. Irené Ferrer, a cardiologist and educator, who helped refine the cardiac catheter and electrocardiogram. His brother, Dr. Jose M. Ferrer, was a surgeon. His other sister, Teresa (Terry) Ferrer, was the religion editor of The New York Herald Tribune and education editor of Newsweek. The family is not related to actors José or Miguel Ferrer.
wn.com/Mel_Ferrer -
Merle Oberon
Merle Oberon (19 February 1911 - 23 November 1979) was an Indian-born British actress. She began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her success in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935). A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she soon followed this with her most renowned performance in Wuthering Heights (1939).
Estelle Merle Thompson was born in Bombay, British India on 19 February 1911. According to some sources, her birth name was Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson. Merle was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911.
Over the years, Oberon obscured her parentage. Some sources claim Merle's parents as Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Māori heritage, and Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington, who worked in Indian Railways.
wn.com/Merle_Oberon -
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented actors of all time.
Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971), before her screen debut in the television movie Deadliest Season (1977). In that same year, she made her film debut with Julia (1977). Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Academy Award nomination and the latter her first win. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011).
Streep has received 17 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and 26 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, five New York Film Critics Circle Awards, two BAFTA awards, an Australian Film Institute Award, five Grammy Award nominations, and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2009 for her contribution to American culture through performing arts, the youngest actress in each award's history.
wn.com/Meryl_Streep -
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor.
Caine is one of two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, the other one being Jack Nicholson. In 2000, Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to cinema.
Caine was born in St Olave's Hospital, Rotherhithe, Southwark in South East London, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900-1989), a cook and charwoman, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish market porter. His father was of English, Irish, and, reportedly, Irish Traveller ancestry. Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion (his father was Catholic).
Caine grew up in Southwark, South London, and during the Second World War he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk. After the war, when his father was demobilised, the family was rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a pre-fabricated house made in Canada, as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940-41.
wn.com/Michael_Caine -
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.
wn.com/Michael_Douglas -
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born Michael Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931) is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other noteworthy films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, Working Girl, Closer and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.
Nichols is one of a small group of people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. His other honors include the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010.
Mike Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte (née Landauer) and Paul Peschkowsky, a physician. His father was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family that had been wealthy and lived in Siberia, leaving after the Russian Revolution and settling in Germany around 1920. His mother's family were German Jews. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. Nichols is a third cousin twice removed of scientist Albert Einstein, through Nichols' mother. He moved to the United States to flee the Nazis on April 28, 1939. His father, who had changed his name to Paul Nichols, had successfully set up a medical practice in Manhattan and the family lived near Central Park. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944 and attended public elementary school in Manhattan (PS 87). After graduating from Walden High School, Nichols briefly attended New York University before dropping out. In 1950, he enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Chicago.
wn.com/Mike_Nichols -
Millie Perkins
Millie Perkins (born May 12, 1938) is an American film and television actress perhaps best known for her debut film role as Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank.
Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Millie grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Her father was a merchant marine captain. Perkins was working as a receptionist at a New York City advertising agency when she caught the eye of a visiting photographer with a resultant career as a model; by 1958 Perkins was an international cover girl. However, in 1958, she was vigorously pursued, and then selected, to appear in her first film, in the title role of The Diary of Anne Frank. Perkins had never studied nor sought to be an actress, but George Stevens saw her on the cover of several magazines and tried to convince her to read for the part. Finally, she flew to Hollywood for a screen test and, with much fanfare, landed the role of Anne Frank in George Stevens' 1959 film "The Diary of Anne Frank." Perkins received almost universally excellent reviews for her portrayal of Anne although the film was a notorious commercial flop.
wn.com/Millie_Perkins -
Nancy Kelly
Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an American actress, who was a movie leading lady in the 1930s, making 36 movies between 1926 and 1977, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James (1939), which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone later that same year.
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, she was the older sister of actor Jack Kelly, who played "Bart Maverick" alongside James Garner and Roger Moore in the television series Maverick. Kelly began her career as a child actress, whose image had appeared in so many different advertisements by the time she was nine years old that Film Daily called her "the most photographed child in America due to commercial posing." She also played Dorothy Gale in a 1933 to 1934 radio show based on the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
As an adult, she was a leading lady in twenty-seven movies in the 1930s and '40s, including director John Ford's Submarine Patrol, the comedy He Married His Wife with Joel McCrea, Frontier Marshal with Randolph Scott as Wyatt Earp, and Tarzan's Desert Mystery with Johnny Weismuller. Kelly was subsequently a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre as well as a Tony Award winner for her performance in The Bad Seed, which she followed up by starring in the film version in 1956 and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also starred on television, including leading roles in "The Storm" (1961) episode of Thriller and "The Lonely Hour" (1963) episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In 1957, Kelly was nominated at the 9th Primetime Emmy Awards#Best Single Performance by an Actress for a Emmy Awards for Best Single Performance by an Actress for TV episode "The Pilot" in Studio One.
wn.com/Nancy_Kelly -
Nanette Fabray
Nanette Fabray (born October 27, 1920) is an American actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, and activist. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life. In the mid-1950s, she served as Sid Caesar's comedic partner on Caesar's Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards. From 1979-1984, she appeared as Grandma Katherine Romano on One Day at a Time.
Fabray overcame a significant hearing impairment and has been a long-time advocate for the rights of the deaf and hard of hearing. Her honors representing the handicapped include the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award.
Fabray was born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Fabares in San Diego, California, to Raul Bernard Fabares, a train conductor, and Lily Agnes McGovern, a housewife. The family resided in Los Angeles and Fabray's mother was instrumental in getting her daughter involved in show business as a child. At a young age, she studied tap dancing with, among others, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. She made her professional stage debut as "Miss New Years Eve 1923" at the Million Dollar Theater at the age of three. The following year, she made her first film appearance as an extra in the Our Gang short Cradle Robbers. She spent much of her childhood appearing in vaudeville productions as a dancer and singer. She appeared with stars such as Ben Turpin.
wn.com/Nanette_Fabray -
Natasha Rostova
Countess Natalya "Natasha" Ilyinichna Rostova (born 1792, according to the book; Russian: Наталья "Наташа" Ильинична Ростова Natal'ja "Nataša" Il'inična Rostova, named Natasha Rostova in the Rosemary Edmonds version) is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.
At the start of the novel in 1805, Natasha is a 12-year old girl, the daughter of Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova. She has fallen in love with young Prince Boris Drubetskoy, who lives with his mother in the Rostov estate. She becomes close friends with Count Pierre Bezukhov, who frequently visits the Rostovs. When Boris leaves to pursue a career in the staff of General Mikhail Kutuzov, their friendship evaporates, and at her first ball, Pierre introduces her to Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. They fall in love and become engaged, but Andrei's father objects to the match. He forces Andrei to postpone the marriage for a year, in which he should stay in a resort abroad to better his health. A visit to Andrey's father ends in a falling-out between Natasha and Princess Marya, Andrey's sister. During Andrey's absence, Prince Anatole Kuragin takes advantage of the situation by courting Natasha, even though he is already married. She succumbs to his charms, and tries to elope with Kuragin. Although this is thwarted by Natasha's cousin Sonya, Natasha hastily writes to Princess Marya, breaking off the engagement. After her plan to elope is ruined, Natasha attempts suicide. She is rescued by the doctor before she dies.
wn.com/Natasha_Rostova -
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 -
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, claiming to be raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.
wn.com/Oprah_Winfrey -
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 -
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.
wn.com/Paul_Newman -
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian: Петар Богдановић, Petar Bogdanović, born July 30, 1939) is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola. His most critically acclaimed film is The Last Picture Show (1971).
Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe and born in Kingston, New York in America, the son of Herma (née Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His Austrian-born mother was Jewish and his father was Serbian and an Eastern Orthodox Christian. He was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with acting teacher Stella Adler, and appeared on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich was known as a film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich showcased the work of American directors such as Orson Welles and John Ford, whom he later wrote a book about based on the notes he had produced for the MoMA retrospective of the director, and Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.
wn.com/Peter_Bogdanovich -
Peter Finch
Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch (28 September 1916 – 14 January 1977) was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a Best Actor award from the Golden Globes. He was the first of two people to win a posthumous Academy Award in an acting category; the other was fellow Australian Heath Ledger.
Finch was born as Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch in London to Alicia Gladys Fisher. At the time, Alicia was married to George Finch. George Finch was born in New South Wales, Australia, but was educated in Paris and Zurich. He was a research chemist when he moved to England in 1912 and later served during the first World War with the Royal Army Ordnance Depot and the Royal Field Artillery. In 1915, at Portsmouth, in Hampshire, George married Alicia Fisher, the daughter of a Kent barrister. However, George Finch was not Peter Finch's biological father. He learned only in his mid-40s that his biological father was Wentworth Edward Dallas "Jock" Campbell, an Indian Army officer, whose adultery with Finch's mother was the cause of George and Alice's divorce, when Peter was two years old. Alicia Finch married "Jock" Campbell in 1922.
wn.com/Peter_Finch -
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.
In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.
wn.com/Quincy_Jones -
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other-worldly dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India.
A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At age sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. He graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and strident anti-nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.
wn.com/Rabindranath_Tagore -
Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned sixty-two years.
He was born Ralph Rexford Bellamy in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lilla Louise (née Smith), a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was fifteen and managed to get into a road show. He toured with road shows before finally landing in New York City, New York. He began acting on stage there and by 1927 owned his own theatre company. In 1931, he made his film debut and worked constantly throughout the decade first as a lead then as a capable supporting actor. Bellamy was cast in the lead role in the film Straight from the Shoulder (1936) and also in the film It Can't Last Forever (1937) with Edward J. Pawley.
He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and played a similar part, that of a naive boyfriend competing with the sophisticated Grant character, in His Girl Friday (1940). He portrayed detective Ellery Queen in a few films during the 1940s, but as his film career did not progress, he returned to the stage, where he continued to perform throughout the fifties. Highly regarded within the industry, he was a founder of the Screen Actors Guild and served as President of Actors' Equity from 1952-1964.
wn.com/Ralph_Bellamy -
Red Skelton
Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997) was an American entertainer best known for being a national radio and television comedian between 1937 and 1971. Skelton, who has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, began his show business career in his teens as a circus clown and continued on vaudeville and Broadway and in films, radio, TV, night clubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.
Born in Vincennes, Indiana, Richard Skelton was the fourth son of Ida Mae (née Fields) and Joseph E. Skelton (1878–1913). Joseph, a grocer, died two months before his last child was born; he had once been a clown with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. In Skelton's lifetime there was some dispute about the year of his birth. Author Wesley Hyatt suggests that since Skelton began working at such an early age, he may have had to say he was older than he actually was in order to work.
wn.com/Red_Skelton -
Rex Harrison
Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison (5 March 1908 – 2 June 1990) was an English actor of stage and screen. One of Harrison's best remembered film roles was that of Professor Henry Higgins in the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady. The role earned him a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award and Best Actor Oscar.
Harrison was born in Huyton, Lancashire, and educated at Liverpool College. After a bout of childhood measles, Harrison lost most of the sight in his left eye, which on one occasion caused some on-stage difficulty. He first appeared on the stage in 1924 in Liverpool. Harrison's acting career was interrupted during World War II while serving in the Royal Air Force, reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He acted in various stage productions until 11 May 1990. He acted in the West End of London when he was young, appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, which proved to be his breakthrough role.
wn.com/Rex_Harrison -
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG ( /ˌmɒntəlˈbɑːn/; Spanish pronunciation: [montalˈβan]; November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009) was a Mexican radio, television, theatre and film actor. He had a career spanning six decades (motion pictures from 1943 to 2006) and many notable roles. During the mid-1970s, Montalbán was notable as the spokesman in automobile advertisements for the Chrysler Cordoba, in which he famously extolled the "soft Corinthian leather" used for its interior. He also advertised the Chrysler New Yorker. From 1977 to 1984, he became famous as Mr. Roarke the main star in the television series Fantasy Island. He played Khan Noonien Singh in both the 1967 episode "Space Seed" of the first season of the original Star Trek series, and the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He won an Emmy Award in 1978 for his role in the miniseries How the West Was Won and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 1993. Into his 80s, he continued to perform, often providing voices for animated films and commercials, and appearing in several Spy Kids films as "Grandfather Valentin".
wn.com/Ricardo_Montalbán -
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."
Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian family. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school paper with James Baldwin. After briefly attending Columbia University, he started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines in 1942, taking identification pictures of the crewmen with his Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father as a going-away present. In 1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's.
In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. From 1950 he also contributed photographs to Life, Look and Graphis and in 1952 became Staff Editor and photographer for Theatre Arts Magazine. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action. Towards the end of the 1950s he became dissatisfied with daylight photography and open air locations and so turned to studio photography, using strobe lighting.
wn.com/Richard_Avedon -
Richard Crenna
Richard Donald Crenna (November 30, 1926 – January 17, 2003) was an American motion picture, television, and radio actor and occasional television director. He starred in such motion pictures as The Sand Pebbles, Wait Until Dark, Body Heat, the first three Rambo movies, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and The Flamingo Kid. Crenna played "Walter Denton" in the CBS radio and CBS-TV network series Our Miss Brooks, and "Luke McCoy" in ABC's TV comedy series, The Real McCoys, (1957–63), which moved to CBS-TV in September 1962. Crenna was in one of the few TV political dramatic series Slattery's People on CBS. Crenna played "Colonel Trautman" in the first three Rambo movies. He also played "Frank Skimmerhorn" in the critically acclaimed mini-series Centennial.
Crenna was born in Los Angeles, the only child of Edith J. (née Pollette), who was a hotel manager in Los Angeles, and Dominick Anthony Crenna, a pharmacist. His parents were both of Italian ancestry. Crenna attended Virgil Junior High School, followed by Belmont High School in Los Angeles. Following High School Crenna participated in WWII serving in the infantry as a Radioman - where he saw combat duty in the European theater at the Battle of the Bulge. Crenna also served in the Pacific theater decoding Japanese intercepts. Following WWII, Crenna attended the University of Southern California where he Majored in English. Crenna served in the US Army during World War II.
wn.com/Richard_Crenna -
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 Altman
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
His films MASH (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and Nashville (1975) have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to practice as a Catholic as an adult, although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.
wn.com/Robert_Altman -
Robert Benjamin
Robert Saul Benjamin (1909-1979). Robert Benjamin was a founding partner of the movie-litigation firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. With his longtime friend and partner, Arthur Krim, he took over United Artists in 1951. The deal that they struck with then-owners Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford was that if the company showed a profit in any one of the first three years of their management, the two would be able to purchase a 50% share of the company for one dollar.
The Krim-Benjamin team quickly showed a profit, and they bought out Chaplin and Pickford to own the company outright in 1955. In 1957, they took the company public.
In 1979, Robert Benjamin won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award posthumously. His wife Jean accepted the award on his behalf.
wn.com/Robert_Benjamin -
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s.
Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet (née Gunderson), was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker. A sister, Annette, (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career) was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than 2 years old. After his death, Ann Mitchum was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former British Army major who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.
wn.com/Robert_Mitchum -
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 -
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner (born February 10, 1930) is an American actor of stage, screen, and television, best known for starring in the television shows It Takes a Thief (1968–70), Switch (1975–78), and Hart to Hart (1979–84). In movies, Wagner is known for his role as Number Two in the Austin Powers films (1997, 1999, 2002). He also had a recurring role as Teddy Leopold on the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men.
Wagner's autobiography, Pieces of My Heart: A Life, written with author Scott Eyman, was published on September 23, 2008.
Wagner was born in Detroit, Michigan. He is the son of Hazel Alvera (née Boe), a telephone operator, and Robert John Wagner Sr., a traveling salesman who worked for the Ford Motor Company. His paternal grandparents were born in Germany. Wagner has a sister, Mary. He graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1949.
He made his film debut in The Happy Years (1950). He was signed by agent Henry Willson and put under contract with 20th Century-Fox, where he gained attention with a small but showy part as a shellshocked soldier in With a Song in My Heart (1952). This led to star roles in a series of films including Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and Prince Valiant (1954), and White Feather (1955, with Debra Paget and Jeffrey Hunter), A Kiss Before Dying (1956, a rare villainous role) and Between Heaven and Hell (1956).
wn.com/Robert_Wagner -
Robert Wolders
Robert Wolders (born 28 September 1936) is a Dutch television actor.
He played the role of Erik Hunter in the second season of the TV series Laredo. He also had various guest roles in other shows but has not made an acting appearance since 1975.
He is most famous for his marriage to the actress Merle Oberon in 1975; after Oberon died in 1979, Wolders became the companion of Audrey Hepburn until her death in 1993.
wn.com/Robert_Wolders -
Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE (born 14 October 1927) is an English actor. He is best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in the official film series between 1973 and 1985.
Moore was born in Stockwell, London. The only child of George Alfred Moore, a policeman, and Lillian "Lily" (née Pope), a housewife, he attended Battersea Grammar School, but was evacuated to Holsworthy, Devon during Second World War and was then educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. He then attended the College of the Venerable Bede at the University of Durham but never graduated. At 18 years old, shortly after the end of the war, Moore was conscripted for national service. He was commissioned as an officer and eventually became a Captain. Moore served in the Royal Army Service Corps, commanding a small depot in West Germany. He later transferred to the entertainment branch (under luminaries such as Spike Milligan), and immediately prior to his national service, there was a brief stint at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), during which his fees were paid by film director Brian Desmond Hurst, who also used Moore as an extra in his film Trottie True. Moore was a classmate at RADA with his future Bond colleague Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny. The young Moore first appeared in films during the mid to late-1940s, as an extra. Moore's film idol as a child was Stewart Granger. As a 17-year-old, Moore appeared as an extra in the film Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), finally meeting his idol on the set. Moore later worked with Granger in The Wild Geese.
wn.com/Roger_Moore -
Romy Schneider
Romy Schneider (23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was an Austrian-born German film actress who also held French citizenship.
Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Nazi-era Vienna, six months after the Anschluss, into a family of actors that included her paternal grandmother Rosa Albach-Retty, her Austrian father Wolf Albach-Retty and her German mother Magda Schneider. After her parents' divorce in 1945, Magda took charge of Romy and her brother Wolfi, eventually supervising the young girl's career, often appearing alongside her daughter. Her career was also overseen by her stepfather, Hans Herbert Blatzheim, a noted restaurateur who Schneider indicated had an unhealthy interest in her.
Romy Schneider's first film, made when she was 15, was Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) in 1953, credited as Romy Schneider-Albach. In 1954, Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (known in the U.S. as The Story of Vickie and in Britain as Victoria in Dover). Schneider's breakthrough came with her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, in the romantic biopic Sissi (1955) and its two sequels, Sissi – The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), all with Karlheinz Böhm, who became a close friend. Less stereotypical films during this busy period include Robinson soll nicht sterben (The Legend of Robinson Crusoe) (1957) putting her among a stellar cast and opposite a young Horst Buchholz, and Monpti (1957), directed by Helmut Käutner and again opposite Buchholz.
wn.com/Romy_Schneider -
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 -
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell (June 4, 1907 – November 28, 1976) was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame. She won all 5 Golden Globes for which she was nominated, and was tied with Meryl Streep for wins until 2007 when Streep was awarded a sixth. Russell won a Tony Award in 1953 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Ruth in the Broadway show Wonderful Town (a musical based on the film My Sister Eileen, in which she also starred).
Russell was known for playing character roles, exceptionally wealthy, dignified ladylike women, as well as for being one of the few actresses of her time who regularly played professional women, such as judges, reporters, and psychiatrists. She had a wide career span from the 1930s to the 1970s and attributed her long career to the fact that, although usually playing classy and glamorous roles, she never became a sex symbol, not being famous for her looks.
wn.com/Rosalind_Russell -
Rosemary Harris
Rosemary Ann Harris (born 19 September 1927) is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.
Harris was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, England, the daughter of Enid Maude Frances (née Campion) and Stafford Berkley Harris. Her grandmother was Romanian. Her father was in the Royal Air Force and as a result, Harris' family lived in India during her childhood. She attended convent schools, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1951 to 1952.[citation needed]
Early in her acting career, she gained experience in English repertory theatre (in 1948, she acted in Kiss and Tell at Eastbourne with Tilsa Page and John Clark) before training at RADA.[citation needed] She first appeared in New York in 1951 in Moss Hart's Climate of Eden, and then returned to England for her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch which ran for a year at the Aldwich. She then entered a classical acting period in productions with the Bristol Old Vic and then the Old Vic.[citation needed]
wn.com/Rosemary_Harris -
Sada Thompson
Sada Carolyn Thompson (September 27, 1927 – May 4, 2011) was an American stage, film, and television actress.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1927 to Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss (née Gibson), and raised in New Jersey, Thompson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, after which she worked steadily in regional theatre in such plays as The Seagull, Pygmalion, Our Town, Arms and the Man, and Blithe Spirit. She received training at Pittsburgh Playhouse, where she appeared in numerous productions.
She made her Off-Broadway debut in a 1955 production of Under Milkwood, and the following year she appeared on television in a Goodyear Television Playhouse production. She made her Broadway debut in the 1959 musical Juno. Her additional New York City stage-credits include The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Tartuffe, and Twigs. Her stage performances won her an Obie Award, a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, three Drama Desk Awards and two Sarah Siddons Awards (the last presented for outstanding performances in Chicago theatre). She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.[when?]
wn.com/Sada_Thompson -
Salvatore Ferragamo
Salvatore Ferragamo (June 5, 1898 – August 7, 1960) was an Italian shoe designer. He worked with many Hollywood stars in the 1920s, before returning to Italy to found the eponymous company making unique hand-made footwear. His scientific and creative approach to shoes spawned many innovations such as the wedge heel and cage heel. Film stars and celebrities continue to patronize his company, which has evolved into a luxury goods empire spanning the world.
Salvatore Ferragamo was born in 1898 in Bonito, near Avellino, the eleventh of 14 children. After making his first pair of shoes at age nine, for his sisters to wear at their confirmation, young Salvatore decided that he had found his calling. He always had a passion for shoes. After studying shoemaking in Naples for a year, Ferragamo opened a small store based in his parent's home. In 1914, he emigrated to Boston, where one of his brothers worked in a cowboy boot factory.
After a brief stint at the factory, Ferragamo convinced his brothers to move to California, first Santa Barbara then Hollywood. It was here that Ferragamo found success, initially opening a shop for repair and made-to-measure shoes, which soon became prized items among celebrities of the day, leading to a long period of designing footwear for the cinema. However, his thriving reputation as 'Shoemaker to the Stars' only partially satisfied him. He could not fathom why his shoes pleased the eye yet hurt the foot, so he proceeded to study anatomy at the University of Southern California.
wn.com/Salvatore_Ferragamo -
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn (c. July 1879 – January 31, 1974) was an American film producer. He was most notably well known for being the founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood.
Goldwyn was born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire to a Hasidic, Polish Jewish family. At an early age, he left Warsaw on foot and penniless. He made his way to Birmingham, England, where he remained with relatives for a few years using the name Samuel Goldfish. In 1898, he emigrated to the United States, but fearing refusal of entry, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada, before moving on to New York in January 1899. He found work in upstate Gloversville, New York, in the bustling garment business. Soon his innate marketing skills made him a very successful salesman at the Albano Glove Company. After four years, as vice-president for sales, he moved back to New York City.[citation needed]
In 1913, Goldfish along with his brother-in-law Jesse L. Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, and Arthur Friend formed a partnership, The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, to produce feature length motion pictures. Film rights for the stage play The Squaw Man were purchased for $4000 and Dustin Farnum was hired for the leading role. Shooting for the first feature film made in Hollywood began on December 29, 1913.
wn.com/Samuel_Goldwyn -
Sandy Dennis
Sandra Dale “Sandy” Dennis (April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992) was an American theater and film actress. At the height of her career in the 1960s she won two Tony Awards, as well as an Oscar for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Dennis was born in Hastings, Nebraska, the daughter of Yvonne, a secretary, and Jack Dennis, a postal clerk. She had a brother, Frank. A high school classmate of Dick Cavett, she attended the Nebraska Wesleyan University and University of Nebraska. Dennis grew up in Kenesaw and Lincoln, Nebraska, appearing in the Lincoln Community Theater Group and moving to New York City at the age of 19.
Dennis made her television debut in 1956 in The Guiding Light. In 1963, she appeared in the The Fugitive which starred David Janssen, in the episode "The Other Side of the Mountain." In 1964, she appeared in the television episode "Don't Mention My Name in Sheboygan" of Craig Stevens's CBS drama, Mr. Broadway. Her film debut was the role of Kay in Splendor in the Grass (1961). However, she was more committed to following a career in the theater. She won consecutive Tony Awards for her performances in A Thousand Clowns (1963) and Any Wednesday (1964). She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Honey, the fragile, neurotic young wife of George Segal, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). She followed this with well-received performances in Up the Down Staircase (1967), The Fox (1967), Sweet November (1968) and The Out-of-Towners (1970).
wn.com/Sandy_Dennis -
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-canonical Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again). In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock. He was knighted in July 2000. Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
wn.com/Sean_Connery -
Sherry Lansing
Sherry Lansing (born July 31, 1944) is a former actress and American film studio executive. She is former CEO of Paramount Pictures, and when president of production at 20th Century Fox was the first woman to head a Hollywood studio. In 1996, she became the first woman named Pioneer of the Year by the Foundation of the Motion Picture Pioneers, and the first woman studio head to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, she became the first woman studio head to place hand and foot prints at Grauman's Chinese Theater. In 2001, she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies' Home Journal, and The Hollywood Reporter named her fourth on its Power 100 list in 2003.
Lansing was born Sherry Lee Duhl in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, the former Margot Heimann, fled from Nazi Germany; her father was David Duhl, a real-estate investor, who died when she was nine. Lansing attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated in 1962. In 1966, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Northwestern University, where she was a member of Sigma Delta Tau sorority.
wn.com/Sherry_Lansing -
Shirley Booth
Shirley Booth (August 30, 1898 – October 16, 1992) was an American actress.
Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950. She made her film debut, reprising her role in the 1952 film version, and won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance. Despite her successful entry into films, she preferred stage acting, and made only four more films.
From 1961 until 1966, she played the title role in the sitcom Hazel, for which she won two Emmy Awards, and was acclaimed for her performance in the 1966 television production of The Glass Menagerie. She retired in 1974.
Booth was born as Marjory Ford, the daughter of Albert James Ford and Virginia Martha Wright. Her childhood was spent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where she attended P.S. 152. By the time of the 1910 census in April 1910, aged 11, she was known as Thelma by her family. She had only one sibling, a younger sister, Jean Valentine Ford, who died January 23, 2010.
wn.com/Shirley_Booth -
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLean Beaty (born April 24, 1934), known professionally as Shirley MacLaine, is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well known for her beliefs in New Age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career. She was nominated for an Academy Award five times before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1983 for her role in Terms of Endearment. Her younger brother is Warren Beatty.
Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada; MacLaine's grandparents were also teachers.The family was devoutly Baptist. Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A.A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.
wn.com/Shirley_MacLaine -
Shirley Temple
Shirley Jane Temple (born April 23, 1928), later Shirley Temple Black, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. She began her film career in 1932 at the age of three, and in 1934, found international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935, and film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Licensed merchandise that capitalized on her wholesome image included dolls, dishes, and clothing. Her box office popularity waned as she reached adolescence, and she left the film industry at the age of 12 to attend high school[clarification needed]. She appeared in a few films of varying quality in her mid-to-late teens, and retired completely from films in 1950 at the age of 22. She was the top box-office draw four years in a row (1935–38) in a Motion Picture Herald poll.
wn.com/Shirley_Temple -
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE ( /ˈpwɑːtjeɪ/ or /ˈpwɑːti.eɪ/; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three well-received films To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box office star of that year. In all three films, issues revolve around the race of the characters Poitier portrays. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
Poitier has directed a number of popular movies such as A Piece of the Action; Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Since 1997 he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama.
wn.com/Sidney_Poitier -
Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70) and Hart to Hart (1979–84), but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980). He is the sixth best selling writer of all time.
Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, of Russian Jewish ancestry, were Ascher "Otto" Schechtel (1894–1967), manager of a jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, Sidney made his first sale, $5 for a poem. During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, and after graduating from Denver East High School, he attended Northwestern University and contributed short plays to drama groups. He is the author of 18 novels (which have sold over 300 million copies), over 200 television scripts, 25 major motion pictures and 6 Broadway plays.
wn.com/Sidney_Sheldon -
Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret (French pronunciation: [simɔn siɲɔˈʁɛ]; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top (1959). In her lifetime she also received a BAFTA, an Emmy, Golden Globe, Cannes Film Festival recognition and the Silver Bear for Best Actress.
Signoret was born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany to André and Georgette (Signoret) Kaminker as the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Her father, a pioneering interpreter who worked in the League of Nations, was a French-born Jewish army officer of Polish descent, who brought the family to Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother Georgette, from whom she acquired her stage name, was a French Catholic. Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere and studied the English language in school, earning a teaching certificate. She tutored English and Latin and worked part-time as a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper, Les nouveaux temps, run by Jean Luchaire.
wn.com/Simone_Signoret -
Sol Lesser
Sol Lesser (17 February 1890, Spokane, Washington – 19 September 1980, Hollywood, California) was an American film producer and presenter.
In 1915, while living in San Francisco, Lesser learned that the authorities were about to clean out the Barbary Coast district, a raucous area of gambling houses, saloons and brothels. He grabbed a camera and a friend, future Hollywood cameraman Hal Mohr, and roamed the area, especially the parts that were best-known before the area was shut down. (The Barbary Coast wasn't actually closed down until 1917.) This film is now considered a lost film.
The resulting film was The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, an early example of an exploitation film that was sold directly to movie theater owners by Lesser. With the profits from the film, he bought several theaters, and soon owned a cinema chain.
Sol Lesser signed Jackie Coogan to a movie contract in 1922, establishing both as major Hollywood names. The Coogan-Lesser hits included Oliver Twist and Peck's Bad Boy. Lesser made a successful transition to sound films, with his own Principal Pictures company; he would either distribute his productions himself under the Principal name, or arrange for a major studio to release them under their own trademarks. In 1939, Lesser produced Thunder Over Mexico a compilation film made from Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico! with the permission of Upton Sinclair, who had commissioned the Soviet film maker, and his wife.
wn.com/Sol_Lesser -
Sonia Gaskell
Sonia Gaskell (born 14 April 1904, died 9 July 1974) was a Lithuanian-Dutch dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, and dance director.
Sonia Gaskell was born in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania, of Russian Jewish parents and first studied ballet in Kharkov, Ukraine. In 1921 she was sent to Palestine to escape Russian pogroms against the Jews. She relocated to Paris with her first husband in 1925, where she continued her ballet studies with Lubov Egorova and Léo Staats, and began dancing in nightclubs and touring cabaret shows during the 1930s.
She danced for the Ballets Russes from 1927-29 and Les Ballets de Paris where she served as director and choreographer until 1939, when she moved to Amsterdam with her Dutch husband. She worked as a dance teacher in Amsterdam, hiding from the Nazis during World War II, but still teaching. She established and served as director of companies including Ballet Recital, Ballet Studio '45 and the Netherlands Ballet. She was founder of the Netherlands Ballet Academy in The Hague, and served as artistic director of the Dutch National Ballet from 1961-68. Gaskell retired as director in 1969, and afterward served on the board of UNESCO and worked in TV productions. She died in Paris.
wn.com/Sonia_Gaskell -
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI (born Sofia Villani Scicolone; 20 September 1934) is an Italian actress.
In 1962, Loren, among 21 other awards, won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance. Loren has won several international awards, including one Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Laurel Award. Her other films include: Houseboat (1958), El Cid (1961), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian-Style (1964), and A Special Day (1977). She has received critical and commercial success in TV movies such as Courage (1986) and in American blockbusters such as Grumpier Old Men (1995), and Nine (2009). In 1994 she starred in Robert Altman's Ready to Wear, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination the same year. In 1995 she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements. In 2011 she dubbed one of the characters of Pixar blockbuster Cars 2 for non-English speaking markets.
wn.com/Sophia_Loren -
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 -
Stanley Donen
Stanley Donen (pronounced /ˈdɔːnən/ DAWN-ən; born April 13, 1924) is an American film director and choreographer whose most celebrated works are Singin' in the Rain and On the Town, both of which he co-directed with actor and dancer Gene Kelly. His other noteworthy films include Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face, Indiscreet, Damn Yankees!, Charade, and Two for the Road. He received an Honorary Academy Award in 1998 for his body of work and a Career Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival in 2004.
Donen has been hailed by film critic David Quinlan as "the King of the Hollywood musicals". He began his career in the chorus line on Broadway for director George Abbott, where he befriended Gene Kelly. In 1943 he went to Hollywood and worked as a choreographer for several years before he and Kelly made On the Town in 1949. He then worked as a contract director for MGM under producer Arthur Freed and continued to make hit films and gain critical acclaim, both as a solo director and for his work with Kelly. In 1952 Donen and Kelly co-directed the musical Singin' in the Rain, which went on to become regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Donen's relationship with Kelly had been shaky for several years and deteriorated in 1955 during the making of their final collaboration: It's Always Fair Weather. He then broke his contract with MGM and became an independent producer of his own work in 1957. By the end of the 1950s musical films were losing popularity and Donen began to focus on comedies instead, continuing to make hit films until the late 1960s. After that his films became fewer and his last theatrical film was released in 1984. He briefly returned to the stage as a director in the 1990s and again in 2002. Donen was married five times and had three children. His current long term partner is film director and comedian Elaine May.
wn.com/Stanley_Donen -
Steve Broidy
Samuel “Steve” Broidy (June 14, 1905 - April 28, 1991) was an American executive in the U.S. motion picture industry.
Broidy was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He and went on to attend Boston University and entered the film industry as a salesman with the Franklin Film Company in 1925, moved to Universal Studios in 1926, and in 1931 began working for Warner Bros. Studios. He joined Monogram Pictures in 1933 as Boston sales manager and in 1940 was elected to the board of directors and named Vice President and General Sales Manager. As V.P., Broidy took charge of operations early in 1945 and later that year was named President.
He remained President of Monogram until 1965, when he left to form his own company, Motion Pictures International. As an independent, Broidy produced Good Times (Columbia), The Fox (Claridge Pictures, 1967), and 80 Steps to Jonah (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1969). He also produced, uncredited, The Poseidon Adventure in 1972.
An active philanthropist, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1962, and was Founding Life Chairman of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Broidy served on the MPAA Board of Governors from June 1960 through May 1969, and was their Second Vice President from 1967 to 1968.
wn.com/Steve_Broidy -
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.
wn.com/Steven_Spielberg -
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward (June 30, 1917 – March 14, 1975) was an American actress.
After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward traveled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958).
Hayward married and lived in Georgia and following her Oscar-winning performance, her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died in 1975 of brain cancer.
wn.com/Susan_Hayward -
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 -
Susan Strasberg
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg (May 22, 1938 – January 21, 1999) was an American film and stage actress.
Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg. Her brother John Strasberg is an acting coach.
After a widely praised performance as a teenager in Picnic (1956), Strasberg originated the title role in the Broadway production of The Diary of Anne Frank and was nominated for a Tony Award at the age of 18. She later starred in the Italian Holocaust film Kapò which was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film of 1960.
From the 1960s into the 1980s Strasberg guest starred in many U.S. television dramas, including The Virginian, The Invaders, Bonanza, The F.B.I., Breaking Point, Burke's Law, The Streets of San Francisco, Night Gallery, McCloud, Alias Smith & Jones, The Big Valley, Remington Steele, and The Rockford Files (in a 1974 episode she played Deborah Ryder and in 1976 she played Karen Stiles, Rockford's ex-girlfriend).
wn.com/Susan_Strasberg -
Tammy Grimes
Tammy Lee Grimes (born January 30, 1934) is an American actress and singer.
Grimes was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eola Willard (née Niles), a naturalist and spiritualist, and Nicholas Luther Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended high school at the then-all girls school, Beaver Country Day School, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and then studied acting at New York City's prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse.
Grimes made her debut on the New York stage at the Neighborhood Playhouse in May 1955 in Jonah and the Whale. She made her Broadway stage debut as an understudy for Kim Stanley in the starring role in Bus Stop in June 1955. In 1956, she appeared in the off-Broadway production, The Littlest Revue, and in 1959 had the lead role in the Broadway production of Noël Coward's play Look After Lulu!, after she was discovered in a nightclub by the playwright.
She starred in the 1960 musical comedy The Unsinkable Molly Brown for which she won a Tony Award (Best Featured Actress in a Musical) for what The New York Times called her "buoyant" performance as a rough-hewn Colorado social climber. She portrayed the title character, a Western mining millionairess who survived the sinking of the Titanic. In 1964, she appeared in the episode "The He-She Chemistry" of Craig Stevens's CBS drama Mr. Broadway. She made two separate appearances on the early '60s TV series Route 66.
wn.com/Tammy_Grimes -
Thorold Dickinson
Thorold Barron Dickinson (16 November 1903, Bristol, England – 14 April 1984, Oxford, England) was a British film director, screenwriter, producer, and Britains's first university Professor of Film.
Of Norwegian descent, his father was the Archdeacon of Bristol, Dickinson was educated at Clifton College and Keble College, Oxford where he read theology, history and French. He was sent down from Oxford in his last year because his interest in theatre and film caused him to neglect his studies; he was inspired by lectures given by Edward Gordon Craig. During his time at Oxford he interrupted his studies to observe the film industry in France where he worked with George Pearson, the father of an Oxford friend. For Pearson he wrote the scenario of The Little People (1926). Following this he observed the American industry's transition to sound in New York in 1929. In the 1920s and 1930s he was active in the London Film Society, being responsible for the technical presentation of films. At the LFS, he helped introduce the work of the Soviet directors Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov to British audiences.
wn.com/Thorold_Dickinson -
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Philadelphia and as the title character in Forrest Gump, roles which won him two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor. Hanks is also known for his Oscar nominated roles in Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.
Hanks' other acting roles include Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell, The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb, Toy Story as Woody and Charlie Wilson's War as Charlie Wilson.
Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was an itinerant cook. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer)[citation needed], Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California.[citation needed]
wn.com/Tom_Hanks -
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), known as Truman Capote ( /ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊtiː/), was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.
Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother and multiple migrations. He had discovered his calling as a writer by the age of 11, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract to write Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1966), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home, a book Capote spent four years writing, with much help from Harper Lee, who wrote the famous To Kill a Mockingbird. A milestone in popular culture, In Cold Blood was the peak of his literary career, though it was not his final book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.
wn.com/Truman_Capote -
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (who called her "a profoundly truthful actress"). Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, and this curtailed film opportunities, focusing her to perform in New York theaters. She won the Tony Award three times. She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor. She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.
Born in Göttingen, Germany, the daughter of Thyra A. (née Leisner) and Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924, when her father received a position at Cornell University. She was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players. She studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936. After spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin, where her father was the head of the department of art history, she left for New York City in 1937. Her first professional role was as Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the title role of Hamlet in Dennis, Massachusetts in 1937.
wn.com/Uta_Hagen -
Virginia McKenna
Virginia A. McKennaOBE (born 7 June 1931, London) is a British stage and screen actress, author and wildlife campaigner.
McKenna trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama then worked on stage in London's West End theatres before making her motion picture debut in 1952. She continued to appear in both films and on stage and in 1954–1955 was a member of the Old Vic theatre company. She was married for a few months in 1954 to actor Denholm Elliott. Her second husband was actor Bill Travers with whom she had four children and to whom she was married until his death in 1994.
In 1956, McKenna won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film, A Town Like Alice and two years later was nominated for Best Actress again for her role as the World War II SOE agent Violette Szabo, in 1958's Carve Her Name with Pride.
However, McKenna is best remembered for her 1966 role as Joy Adamson in the true-life film Born Free for which she received a nomination for a Golden Globe. Bill Travers, her real life husband, co-starred with her, portraying conservationist George Adamson, and the experience led them to become active supporters for wild animal rights and the protection of their natural habitat. McKenna appeared in An Elephant Called Slowly, a travelogue of what it was like years ago in Kenya, Africa. The film features her close friend conservationist George Adamson and also elephants Eleanor (raised by conservationst Daphne Sheldrick) and young Pole Pole. The death of Pole Pole in a zoo was to lead to Virginia and Bill founding the organization Zoo Check. This led to McKenna and her husband becoming involved in the Zoo Check Campaign in 1984 and to their establishing the "Born Free Foundation" in 1991.
wn.com/Virginia_McKenna -
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 -
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 -
Wikipedia Persondata
wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata -
William Holden
William Holden (April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974. One of the most popular and well known movie stars of all time, Holden was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s, he was named one of the "Top 10 Stars of the Year" six times (1954–1958, 1961) and appeared on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars list as number 25. He starred in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of all time, including such blockbusters as Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, The Towering Inferno, and Network.
Holden was born William Franklin Beedle, Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, the son of Mary Blanche (née Ball), a schoolteacher, and William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist. He had two younger brothers, Robert and Richard. Holden's paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Lancaster County after emigrating from England in the 17th century. Growing up, Holden was raised in the Methodist church, and while some sources cite him as a Congregationalist, Holden identified himself as a Methodist throughout his life. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three.
wn.com/William_Holden -
William Wyler
William Wyler (July 1, 1902 – July 27, 1981) was a leading Alsatian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter who made his mark in Hollywood as one of film industry's icons.
Notable works included Ben-Hur (1959), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Mrs. Miniver (1942), all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture. He earned his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, starring Walter Huston and Mary Astor, "sparking a 20-year run of almost unbroken greatness."
Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a "bona fide perfectionist," whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance, "became the stuff of legend." His ability to direct a string of classic literary adaptations into huge box-office and critical successes made him one of "Hollywood's most bankable moviemakers" during the 1930s and 1940s.
Other popular films include Funny Girl (1968), How to Steal a Million (1966), The Big Country (1958), Roman Holiday (1953), The Heiress (1949), The Letter (1940), The Westerner (1940), Wuthering Heights (1939), Jezebel (1938), Dodsworth (1936), A House Divided (1931), and Hell's Heroes (1930).
wn.com/William_Wyler -
Yves Montand
Yves Montand (French pronunciation: [iv mɔ̃ˈtɑ̃]; 13 October 1921 – 9 November 1991) was an Italian-born French actor and singer.
Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, the son of poor peasants Giuseppina (née Simoni) and Giovanni Livi, a broommaker. Montand's mother was a devout Catholic, while his father held strong Communist beliefs. Because of the Fascist regime in Italy, Montand's family left for France in 1923. He grew up in Marseilles, where, as a young man, he worked in his sister's barber shop, and later on the docks. He began a career in show business as a music-hall singer. In 1944, he was discovered by Édith Piaf in Paris and she made him part of her act, becoming his mentor and lover.
Montand went on to international recognition as a singer and actor, starring in numerous films. His recognizably crooner songs, especially those about Paris, became instant classics.
He was one of the most famous performers at Bruno Coquatrix's famous Paris Olympia music hall, and toured with musicians including Didi Duprat.
wn.com/Yves_Montand -
Yvonne Mitchell
Yvonne Mitchell (7 July 1915 – 24 March 1979) was an English stage, television and film actor. She was born Yvonne Frances Joseph, but in 1946 changed her name by deed poll to Yvonne Mitchell (without the Frances). Her mother's maiden name was Mitchell. After beginning her acting career in theatre, Mitchell progressed to films in the late 1940s. Her roles include Julia in the 1954 BBC adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. She retired from acting in 1977.
Outside of acting, Mitchell was also an established author, writing several books for children and adults as well as winning awards for playwriting. Her plays include The Same Sky. She wrote an acclaimed biography of the French writer Colette, and her own autobiography was published in 1957.
Already an experienced stage actor, she made her speaking debut in film in The Queen of Spades (1949), although she had played an uncredited minor role in Love on the Dole eight years earlier. She appeared in several prominent film roles over the following three decades, winning a British Film Award for The Divided Heart (1954) and the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival for Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957). She also appeared in the role of Mildred in the controversial 1959 film Sapphire.
wn.com/Yvonne_Mitchell -
Zoe Caldwell
Zoe Caldwell, OBE (born 14 September 1933) is an Australian-born actress.
She was born as Ada Caldwell in Melbourne, Australia and was raised in the suburb of Balwyn in Yongala Street. Her father, Edgar, was a plumber and her mother, Zoe, was a taxi dancer. Caldwell's mother, Zoe, had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage. She would often load some of the neighbourhood kids into it to take them to the Elizabethan Theatre in Richmond where they would go backstage and watch rehearsals and performances.
Caldwell has won four Tony Awards for her performances on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' Slapstick Tragedy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Medea and Master Class. In the last she portrayed opera diva Maria Callas. In Stratford, Ontario she has worked often, including her role as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra opposite Christopher Plummer's Mark Antony in 1967. She emigrated to England upon being invited to join the RSC at a time when Charles Laughton was attempting Lear, and Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins, Albert Finney were among the other newcomers in the company. She played Bianca in the 1959 production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson. Later she played the indomitable Helena opposite Dame Edith Evans in a production of "All's Well That Ends Well". It was in this last that Caldwell worked under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie whom she calls a "...pathfinder. He cut a path through the forest and all you had to do was follow it."[citation needed] Her career later brought her to America, where she was one of the original company of actors under Guthrie's direction at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. At the Guthrie, she played parts such as Ophelia in Hamlet and Natasha in Three Sisters.
wn.com/Zoe_Caldwell
RELEASE
ALBUMS
- Tomorrow
- Over, and Over
- The Tree Song
- Saturday
- Balcony
- Hey You
- So Good [Acst Ver]
- Once Again [Acst Ver]
- 111 Nottingham
RELEASE
ALBUMS
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
Sway
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:45
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Sway - Dean Martin (Love Songs)
http://wn.com/Sway
Dean Martin "Everybody Loves Somebody"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:40
- Updated: 27 Dec 2012
From the wonderful summer of 1964 comes Dean Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody" written in 1947 by Irving Taylor and Ken Lane. It was recorded by Dean on April 16, 1964 and was released as a single reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15. Included on the LP of the same name, it is available on CD on the Collector's Choice label combined with the Dream with Dean album. I dedicate this song to you, Leona, for all the wonderful memories. A part of me will always love you.
http://wn.com/Dean_Martin_Everybody_Loves_Somebody
From the wonderful summer of 1964 comes Dean Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody" written in 1947 by Irving Taylor and Ken Lane. It was recorded by Dean on April 16, 1964 and was released as a single reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15. Included on the LP of the same name, it is available on CD on the Collector's Choice label combined with the Dream with Dean album. I dedicate this song to you, Leona, for all the wonderful memories. A part of me will always love you.
- published: 10 Sep 2011
- views: 757165
- author: catman916
Dean Martin - Let it Snow!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:07
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
Classic Christmas song by Dean Martin with christmas pics.
http://wn.com/Dean_Martin_Let_it_Snow!
Classic Christmas song by Dean Martin with christmas pics.
- published: 03 Dec 2008
- views: 13887523
- author: Kyle Wolfreys
Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole, filmed on breath hold by Julie Gautier
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:18
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
After FREE FALL, our new project: NARCOSE. Watch the trailer and support the project to make it happen: www.ulule.com FREE FALL: World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT. Edited by BLUENERY (c). Music: ARCHIVE - you make me feel.
http://wn.com/Guillaume_Nery_base_jumping_at_Dean's_Blue_Hole,_filmed_on_breath_hold_by_Julie_Gautier
After FREE FALL, our new project: NARCOSE. Watch the trailer and support the project to make it happen: www.ulule.com FREE FALL: World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT. Edited by BLUENERY (c). Music: ARCHIVE - you make me feel.
- published: 30 May 2010
- views: 13009521
- author: guillaumenery
James Dean
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 93:34
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
Biography of the legendary actor James Dean.
http://wn.com/James_Dean
Sleeping With Sirens - If I'm James Dean, Then You're Audrey Hepburn (Video)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:42
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
itunes.apple.com Stay for tonight If you want to I can show you What my dreams are made of, as I'm dreaming of your face I've been away for a long time Such a long time And I miss you there I can't imagine being anywhere else I can't imagine being anywhere else but here How the hell did you ever pick me? Honestly, I could sing you a song But I don't think words can express your beauty It's singing to me How the hell did we end up like this? You bring out the beast in me I fell in love from the moment we kissed Since then we've been history They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me It goes to show, I hope that you know that you are What my dreams are made of Can't fall asleep, can't fall asleep I lay in my bed awake, in my bed awake at night As I dream of you I'll fall in love, you'll fall in love It could mean everything, everything to me I can't imagine being anywhere else They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know we'll be Ok The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know I'll be Ok They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need ...
http://wn.com/Sleeping_With_Sirens_If_I'm_James_Dean,_Then_You're_Audrey_Hepburn_Video
itunes.apple.com Stay for tonight If you want to I can show you What my dreams are made of, as I'm dreaming of your face I've been away for a long time Such a long time And I miss you there I can't imagine being anywhere else I can't imagine being anywhere else but here How the hell did you ever pick me? Honestly, I could sing you a song But I don't think words can express your beauty It's singing to me How the hell did we end up like this? You bring out the beast in me I fell in love from the moment we kissed Since then we've been history They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me It goes to show, I hope that you know that you are What my dreams are made of Can't fall asleep, can't fall asleep I lay in my bed awake, in my bed awake at night As I dream of you I'll fall in love, you'll fall in love It could mean everything, everything to me I can't imagine being anywhere else They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know we'll be Ok The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know I'll be Ok They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need ...
- published: 06 Aug 2010
- views: 9591872
- author: riserecords
Dean Martin - Sway
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
PLZ rate comment subscribe share & the best thing you do is to enjoy the song and subscribe to me!!! When marimba rhythms start to play Dance with me, make me sway Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore Hold me close, sway me more Like a flower bending in the breeze Bend with me, sway with ease When we dance you have a way with me Stay with me, sway with me Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now You know how Sway me smooth, sway me now When marimba rhythms start to play Dance with me, make me sway Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore Hold me close, sway me more Like a flower bending in the breeze Bend with me, sway with ease When we dance you have a way with me Stay with me, sway with me Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When ...
http://wn.com/Dean_Martin_Sway
PLZ rate comment subscribe share & the best thing you do is to enjoy the song and subscribe to me!!! When marimba rhythms start to play Dance with me, make me sway Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore Hold me close, sway me more Like a flower bending in the breeze Bend with me, sway with ease When we dance you have a way with me Stay with me, sway with me Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now You know how Sway me smooth, sway me now When marimba rhythms start to play Dance with me, make me sway Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore Hold me close, sway me more Like a flower bending in the breeze Bend with me, sway with ease When we dance you have a way with me Stay with me, sway with me Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When we sway I go weak I can hear the sounds of violins Long before it begins Make me thrill as only you know how Sway me smooth, sway me now Other dancers may be on the floor Dear, but my eyes will see only you Only you have the magic technique When ...
- published: 23 Jan 2009
- views: 2277642
- author: hamasohamaso
Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Dean Martin
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:52
- Updated: 27 Dec 2012
Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Dean Martin
http://wn.com/Walking_In_A_Winter_Wonderland_Dean_Martin
Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Dean Martin
- published: 15 Mar 2009
- views: 1762431
- author: L. Heitmann
Dean Martin - Let it Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:55
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Dean Martin - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
http://wn.com/Dean_Martin_Let_it_Snow!_Let_It_Snow!_Let_It_Snow!
Dean Martin - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- published: 14 Nov 2010
- views: 1054414
- author: christmastime4u
Ester Dean - Drop It Low ft. Chris Brown
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:33
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
Music video by Ester Dean performing Drop It Low. (C) 2009 Interscope Records
http://wn.com/Ester_Dean_Drop_It_Low_ft_Chris_Brown
Music video by Ester Dean performing Drop It Low. (C) 2009 Interscope Records
- published: 24 Nov 2009
- views: 18985234
- author: EsterDeanVEVO
The James Dean Story
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 79:50
- Updated: 26 Dec 2012
viewster.com - watch MORE free movies on http Portrait of James Dean assembled from existing material includes East of Eden (1955) outtakes, shots from the opening night of Giant (1956), and his TV safe driving message (Dean died in a car crash).
http://wn.com/The_James_Dean_Story
viewster.com - watch MORE free movies on http Portrait of James Dean assembled from existing material includes East of Eden (1955) outtakes, shots from the opening night of Giant (1956), and his TV safe driving message (Dean died in a car crash).
- published: 19 May 2011
- views: 28571
- author: ViewsterTV
Dean Wilson Heli Shoot
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:53
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
www.motocrossactionmag.com
http://wn.com/Dean_Wilson_Heli_Shoot
FCW TV 18.09.2011 - Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 33:40
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Seth Rollins (Tyler Black) vs. Dean Ambrose (Jon Moxley). FCW 15 Championship Match with a 30 minutes time limit. Follow me on Twitter @CactusBack.
http://wn.com/FCW_TV_18092011_Seth_Rollins_vs_Dean_Ambrose
Seth Rollins (Tyler Black) vs. Dean Ambrose (Jon Moxley). FCW 15 Championship Match with a 30 minutes time limit. Follow me on Twitter @CactusBack.
- published: 20 Sep 2011
- views: 138118
- author: CactusBack1
DayZ - Interview with Lead Developer Dean Hall
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:04
- Updated: 13 Dec 2012
I was lucky enough to sit down with Dean Hall, Project Lead at Bohemia Interactive and lead developer for DayZ. I asked him about the difficulty, the benefits of using the ARMA II game engine, and future plans for the distribution of his mod. Sorry for the bad audio quality, I was pretty unprepared for my first trip to E3 (and I think the first interview I've ever conducted...). Thanks to Josh Kowbell and Semblance for some of the interview question suggestions. wikigameguides.com Twitter @JohnTarrJr http Twitter @ExplicitD goo.gl Facebook goo.gl Google+ goo.gl Twitch.tv Livestreams goo.gl Our podcast: 2 Chimps on a Davenport goo.gl Support us by using our Amazon Affiliate link goo.gl
http://wn.com/DayZ_Interview_with_Lead_Developer_Dean_Hall
I was lucky enough to sit down with Dean Hall, Project Lead at Bohemia Interactive and lead developer for DayZ. I asked him about the difficulty, the benefits of using the ARMA II game engine, and future plans for the distribution of his mod. Sorry for the bad audio quality, I was pretty unprepared for my first trip to E3 (and I think the first interview I've ever conducted...). Thanks to Josh Kowbell and Semblance for some of the interview question suggestions. wikigameguides.com Twitter @JohnTarrJr http Twitter @ExplicitD goo.gl Facebook goo.gl Google+ goo.gl Twitch.tv Livestreams goo.gl Our podcast: 2 Chimps on a Davenport goo.gl Support us by using our Amazon Affiliate link goo.gl
- published: 11 Jun 2012
- views: 4771
- author: NextGenWalkthroughs
Sleeping With Sirens - If I'm James Dean, You're Audrey Hepburn
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:41
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
itunes.apple.com www.facebook.com Stay for tonight, If you want to, I can show you, What my dreams are made of, As I'm dreaming of your face, I've been away for a long time, Such a long time, And I miss you there, I can't imagine being anywhere else, I can't imagine being anywhere else but here, How the hell did you ever pick me, Honestly, I could sing you a song, But I don't think words can express your beauty, Sing to me, How the hell did we end up like this, You bring out the beast in me, I fell in love from the moment we kissed, Since then we've been history, They say that love is forever, Your forever is all that I need, Please stay as long as you need, You promise if things won't be broken, But I swear that I will never leave, Please stay forever with me, You built the shell, I hope that you know that you are, What my dreams are made of, Can't fall asleep, Run away, get away, get away, As I dream of you, Fall in love, You fall in love, You've taken everything, Everything to me, I can't imagine being anywhere else, The way that we are, Is the reason I stay, As long as you're here with me, I know I'll be okay,
http://wn.com/Sleeping_With_Sirens_If_I'm_James_Dean,_You're_Audrey_Hepburn
itunes.apple.com www.facebook.com Stay for tonight, If you want to, I can show you, What my dreams are made of, As I'm dreaming of your face, I've been away for a long time, Such a long time, And I miss you there, I can't imagine being anywhere else, I can't imagine being anywhere else but here, How the hell did you ever pick me, Honestly, I could sing you a song, But I don't think words can express your beauty, Sing to me, How the hell did we end up like this, You bring out the beast in me, I fell in love from the moment we kissed, Since then we've been history, They say that love is forever, Your forever is all that I need, Please stay as long as you need, You promise if things won't be broken, But I swear that I will never leave, Please stay forever with me, You built the shell, I hope that you know that you are, What my dreams are made of, Can't fall asleep, Run away, get away, get away, As I dream of you, Fall in love, You fall in love, You've taken everything, Everything to me, I can't imagine being anywhere else, The way that we are, Is the reason I stay, As long as you're here with me, I know I'll be okay,
- published: 10 Feb 2011
- views: 2377818
- author: riserecords
WWE '13 Community Showcase: Dean Ambrose (Xbox 360)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:13
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
WWE '13 Community Showcase: Dean Ambrose (Xbox 360) Download Details: caws.smacktalks.org Video Formula: www.youtube.com Facebook: facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/WWE_'13_Community_Showcase_Dean_Ambrose_Xbox_360
WWE '13 Community Showcase: Dean Ambrose (Xbox 360) Download Details: caws.smacktalks.org Video Formula: www.youtube.com Facebook: facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com
- published: 21 Dec 2012
- views: 8505
- author: Smacktalks
Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin Reunite
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:17
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Frank Sinatra suprises Telethon host Jerry Lewis with a suprise guest - the one and only Dean Martin! Take a look at this classic MDA Telethon moment from 1976.
http://wn.com/Jerry_Lewis,_Frank_Sinatra_Dean_Martin_Reunite
Frank Sinatra suprises Telethon host Jerry Lewis with a suprise guest - the one and only Dean Martin! Take a look at this classic MDA Telethon moment from 1976.
- published: 13 Aug 2009
- views: 414759
- author: MySpaceMDA
Jim Carrey imitating James Dean
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:54
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Jim Carrey seen here in an episode of Inside The Actors Studio impersonating one of his favorite actors, the legendary James Dean. I make no claims of ownership of this material.
http://wn.com/Jim_Carrey_imitating_James_Dean
Jim Carrey seen here in an episode of Inside The Actors Studio impersonating one of his favorite actors, the legendary James Dean. I make no claims of ownership of this material.
- published: 18 Feb 2011
- views: 1238898
- author: iflushed nemo
UCMMA - UCMMA 18 - Face Off - UCMMA - Dean Amasinger vs John Maguire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:29
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
Dean Amasinger takes on John Maguire in the Welterweight title fight of UCMMA's 'Faceoff' on February the 5th, 2011
http://wn.com/UCMMA_UCMMA_18_Face_Off_UCMMA_Dean_Amasinger_vs_John_Maguire
Dean Amasinger takes on John Maguire in the Welterweight title fight of UCMMA's 'Faceoff' on February the 5th, 2011
- published: 11 Feb 2011
- views: 18026
- author: UltimateChallengeMMA
Dean Winstanley 9 darter 2012 / 2013 PDC World Championships
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:04
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
Dean Winstanley 9 darter 2012/2013 PDC World Championships against Vincent van der Voort Last 32. Check out www.youtube.com for loads of Darts exhibition coverage.
http://wn.com/Dean_Winstanley_9_darter_2012_2013_PDC_World_Championships
Dean Winstanley 9 darter 2012/2013 PDC World Championships against Vincent van der Voort Last 32. Check out www.youtube.com for loads of Darts exhibition coverage.
- published: 23 Dec 2012
- views: 84371
- author: dinktyke
Gensu Dean - Forever (feat. Large Professor)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:14
- Updated: 28 Dec 2012
"Forever (feat. Large Professor)" from Gensu Dean's debut album "Lo-Fi Fingahz". Directed by Calvan Fowler for DayDream Film Works. 2012. available @ itunes now! itunes.apple.com Electric blue vinyl edition: Gensu Dean "Lo-Fi Finghaz" www.fatbeats.com Deluxe Compact Disc Version www.undergroundhiphop.com
http://wn.com/Gensu_Dean_Forever_feat_Large_Professor
"Forever (feat. Large Professor)" from Gensu Dean's debut album "Lo-Fi Fingahz". Directed by Calvan Fowler for DayDream Film Works. 2012. available @ itunes now! itunes.apple.com Electric blue vinyl edition: Gensu Dean "Lo-Fi Finghaz" www.fatbeats.com Deluxe Compact Disc Version www.undergroundhiphop.com
- published: 21 Mar 2012
- views: 212643
- author: mellomusicgroup
Sleeping With Sirens - James Dean & Audrey Hepburn (Acoustic version)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:17
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
iTUNES: itunes.apple.com MERCH: riserecords.merchnow.com Stay for tonight If you want to I can show you What my dreams are made of, as I'm dreaming of your face I've been away for a long time Such a long time And I miss you there I can't imagine being anywhere else I can't imagine being anywhere else but here How the hell did you ever pick me? Honestly, I could sing you a song But I don't think words can express your beauty It's singing to me How the hell did we end up like this? You bring out the beast in me I fell in love from the moment we kissed Since then we've been history They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me It goes to show, I hope that you know that you are What my dreams are made of Can't fall asleep, can't fall asleep I lay in my bed awake, in my bed awake at night As I dream of you I'll fall in love, you'll fall in love It could mean everything, everything to me I can't imagine being anywhere else They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know we'll be Ok The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know I'll be Ok They say that love is ...
http://wn.com/Sleeping_With_Sirens_James_Dean_Audrey_Hepburn_Acoustic_version
iTUNES: itunes.apple.com MERCH: riserecords.merchnow.com Stay for tonight If you want to I can show you What my dreams are made of, as I'm dreaming of your face I've been away for a long time Such a long time And I miss you there I can't imagine being anywhere else I can't imagine being anywhere else but here How the hell did you ever pick me? Honestly, I could sing you a song But I don't think words can express your beauty It's singing to me How the hell did we end up like this? You bring out the beast in me I fell in love from the moment we kissed Since then we've been history They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me It goes to show, I hope that you know that you are What my dreams are made of Can't fall asleep, can't fall asleep I lay in my bed awake, in my bed awake at night As I dream of you I'll fall in love, you'll fall in love It could mean everything, everything to me I can't imagine being anywhere else They say that love is forever Your forever is all that I need Please stay as long as you need Can't promise that things won't be broken But I swear that I will never leave Please stay forever with me The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know we'll be Ok The way that we are It's the reason I stay As long as you're here with me I know I'll be Ok They say that love is ...
- published: 30 May 2012
- views: 4742400
- author: riserecords
MGK - Invincible (Explicit) ft. Ester Dean
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:07
- Updated: 29 Dec 2012
Music video by MGK performing Invincible (Explicit) (C) 2012 Bad Boy/Interscope Records Buy Now: smarturl.it
http://wn.com/MGK_Invincible_Explicit_ft_Ester_Dean
Music video by MGK performing Invincible (Explicit) (C) 2012 Bad Boy/Interscope Records Buy Now: smarturl.it
- published: 03 Jun 2012
- views: 4664708
- author: MGKVEVO
photo: US Navy / HMC Josh Ives
27 Dec 2012
Imperial adventures are nothing new in the Middle East. Neither is their glorification, as Peter O’Toole’s pained Lawrence of Arabia eternally reminds us. But for a decade or so now, things have been heating up, as if to coincide with climate change and fears of declining petroleum reserves ... The Belly for Belligerence? ... The question loomed over beltway intelligentsia like an ephemeral Gordian knot ... We’re All Hawks Now ... While George W ... ....(size: 9.3Kb)
photo: WN / Janice Sabnal
27 Dec 2012
Washington. Six people, including two young children, were left dead in weather-related accidents, as winter snowstorms complicated travel for many Americans in the Midwest and Northeast on Wednesday. Snow totals in parts of Indiana ranged from 6 to 12 inches, CNN reported. About 350 snowploughs were clearing roads throughout the city. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told residents they should avoid nonessential travel ... IANS ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)
photo: AP / Ben Curtis
28 Dec 2012
The president of Central African Republic (CAR) has urgently called on France and other foreign powers to help his government fend off rebels who are quickly seizing territory and approaching the capital. Speaking to crowds in Bangui, a city of some 600,000, Francois Bozize on Thursday pleaded with foreign powers to do what they could. He pointed in particular to France, Central African Republic's former colonial ruler ... 516 Share ... News ... ....(size: 19.5Kb)
photo: AP / K.M.Chaudary
27 Dec 2012
Large crowds of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters are gathering to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ms Bhutto died in a gun and bomb attack during her 2007 election campaign. Hundreds of thousands of people have set up camp near the Bhutto family's ancestral home in Sindh province ... He cannot contest an election until his 25th birthday. Show of strength ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)
photo: AP / Khalil Hamra, File
26 Dec 2012
Cairo • The official approval of Egypt’s disputed, Islamist-backed constitution Tuesday held out little hope of stabilizing the country after two years of turmoil and Islamist President Mohammed Morsi may now face a more immediate crisis with the economy falling deeper into distress ... Join the Discussion. The battle over the constitution left Egypt deeply polarized at a time when the government is increasingly cash-strapped ... The U.S ... " ... ....(size: 5.7Kb)
Irish Times
29 Dec 2012
Ferguson had been frustrated at Old Trafford when the referee, Mike Dean, overruled the assistant, Jake Collin, to allow Newcastle’s second goal, despite it initially being ruled out for offside; the Newcastle striker Papiss Cisse was beyond the final defender when Danny Simpson’s drive was turned into his own net by Jonny Evans in the 28th minute....(size: 4.4Kb)
Skiddle
29 Dec 2012
event info venue news Hannah Holland - David Frank - Dean Marc - Detrimental (Xmas Party) details. Lineup and Details for Hannah Holland - David Frank - Dean Marc - Detrimental (Xmas Party) on Sat 29th December 2012. Hannah Holland - David Frank Dean Marc & Detrimental will playing the finest Underground House Music, ......(size: 2.3Kb)
The Times of India
29 Dec 2012
VADODARA ... But Jain refused to relent ... "I had no intention to hurt anybody's religious sentiments ... Singh has assured that hence worth all art works will be screened 100 per cent by a committee comprising of faculty dean, four head of departments, two senate members and one dean nominated by vice-chancellor, two artists nominated by syndicate and two representatives form society nominated by syndicate of which one will be women. ....(size: 2.2Kb)
The Independent
29 Dec 2012
Download. Rubber Bullets; The Dean and I; Sand In My Face; Oh Effendi; I'm Not In Love ....(size: 0.8Kb)
Billboard
29 Dec 2012
... ... . Actors Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell were previously reported to have lined up to portray the group in the motion-capture animated film, alongside tribute band the Fab 4 ... ....(size: 1.2Kb)
Ohio
29 Dec 2012
The Hudson Library & Historical Society’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship Research will offer a free series of advanced MBA-related programs for the small-business community ... Hanlon, assistant dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Akron ... ....(size: 1.3Kb)
Stuff
29 Dec 2012
Captain Brendon McCullum led from the front as the Black Caps produced a solid batting display in their warm-up match against a South African XI in Paarl today ... McCullum was the best with 65 ... There was also the pleasing sight of Dean Brownlie joining the team in the Cape ... ....(size: 1.6Kb)
The Guardian
29 Dec 2012
What links New York to Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi? Spoiler alert. answers below (don't cheat!). Building bridges… What's New York's connection with Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi? Photograph. Lawrence Manning/Corbis. The questions ... 2 In the military website, ARRSE stands for what?. 3 Millvina Dean (d 2009) was the last survivor of what incident? ... ....(size: 3.1Kb)
Irish Times
29 Dec 2012
A day after Alex Ferguson was told he would not be punished for his confrontation with the referee Mike Dean, the English Football Association has written to Roberto Mancini and Harry Redknapp, asking them to explain their public criticisms of match officials during the St Stephen’s Day programme of Premier League fixtures ... “Maybe he should go to Specsavers. It’s just poor refereeing ... ....(size: 2.0Kb)
The Washington Post
29 Dec 2012
William C. Stuart III, 86, a co-founder of Stuart & Maury Realtors in Washington, died Dec. 7 of cardiac arrest at the Rockville Nursing Home. A son, William C. Stuart IV, confirmed his death ... In 1956, he and two partners, Deane Maury and Charles “Ted” Berry, founded Stuart & Maury, which focused primarily on residential real estate ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)
The Examiner
29 Dec 2012
So you want to get fit and enjoy the benefits of more exercise in 2013...but you aren't sure of how to achieve your goal ... Walking your dog ... If you're walking in the early morning or evening, choose a reflective model, such as Nite Ize NND-03-10L Nite Dawg Light Up Dog Collar or Dean and Tyler DT Dog Harness, Black With Reflective Trim ... Oz ... ....(size: 1.9Kb)
LA Daily News
29 Dec 2012
Posted. 12/28/2012 04.39.10 PM PST. December 29, 2012 12.43 AM GMTUpdated. 12/28/2012 04.43.55 PM PST. The Board of Supervisors will vote next month to put a $55 per year tax before voters to pay for local and regional projects to help keep pollution out of our waterways, clean up stormwater and increase local sources of clean drinking water ... (Dean Musgrove/Staff Photographer)....(size: 2.1Kb)
 |
Look up dean in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Dean may refer to:
Title[link]
|
- Dean (education)
- Dean (Christianity), persons in certain positions of authority within a religious hierarchy
- The head of a Bar association or equivalent body in some jurisdictions
The title is also given less formally to the longest-serving member of certain groups, as:
- Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, the most senior ambassador in a country's diplomatic corps
- Dean of the House (disambiguation), the most senior member of a country's legislature
Places[link]
- in Australia
- Dean, Victoria, Australia
- in Canada
- Dean, Nova Scotia, Canada
- in China
- De'an County, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China
- in the United Kingdom
- Lower Dean, Bedfordshire, England
- Upper Dean, Bedfordshire, England
- Dean, Cheshire, England
- Dean, Cumbria, England
- Dean, Devon, England
- Dean, Dorset, England
- Dean, Hampshire, England
- Dean, Lancashire, England
- Dean, Oxfordshire, England
- Dean, Somerset, England
- Dean Village, Scotland
- Forest of Dean, England
- in the United States
Companies[link]
- Dean Foods, a dairy processor in Dallas, Texas
- Dean Guitars, manufacturer of guitars and other stringed instruments
Other[link]
- Hurricane Dean
- USS Dean II (SP-98), a United States Navy patrol boat in commission from 1917 to 1918
- Dean number a dimensionless group in fluid mechanics, which occurs in the study of flow in curved pipes and channels
See also[link]
 |
This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. |
http://wn.com/Dean
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Дин
http://fr.wn.com/Dean
http://nl.wn.com/Dean
http://pt.wn.com/Dean
http://de.wn.com/Dean
http://it.wn.com/Dean
http://cs.wn.com/Dean
http://pl.wn.com/Dean
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean
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.
This article is about the American singer and actor. For the Arizona politician, see Dean Martin (politician).
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008) |
| Dean Martin | |
|---|---|
 Photo 1960 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Dino Paul Crocetti |
| Also known as | Dean Martin The King of Cool Dino Dino Martini |
| Born | (1917-06-07)June 7, 1917 Steubenville, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | December 25, 1995(1995-12-25) (aged 78) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Big band, easy listening, pop standard, country |
| Occupations | Musician, singer, actor, comedian, film producer |
| Years active | 1939–1995 |
| Labels | Capitol, Reprise |
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?". Nicknamed the "King of Cool",[1][2] he was one of the members of the "Rat Pack" and a major star in four areas of show business: concert stage/night clubs, recordings, motion pictures, and television.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents, Gaetano and Angela Crocetti (née Barra). His father was from Montesilvano, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy, and his mother was an Italian of part Neapolitan and part Sicilian ancestry. Martin was the younger of two sons. His brother was named Bill. Martin spoke only Italian until he started school. He attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, and took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager. He was the target of much ridicule for his broken English and ultimately dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought that he was smarter than his teachers.[3] He delivered bootleg liquor, served as a speakeasy croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as welterweight. He grew up a neighbor to Jimmy the Greek.
At the age of 15, he was a boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crochet". His prizefighting years earned him a broken nose (later straightened), a scarred lip, and many sets of broken knuckles (a result of not being able to afford the tape used to wrap boxers' hands). Of his twelve bouts, he would later say "I won all but eleven."[4] For a time, he roomed with Sonny King, who, like Martin, was just starting in show business and had little money. It is said that Martin and King held bare-knuckle matches in their apartment, fighting until one of them was knocked out; people paid to watch. Martin knocked out King in the first round of an amateur boxing match.[5]
Eventually, Martin gave up boxing. He worked as a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop where he had started as a stock boy. At the same time, he sang with local bands, calling himself "Dino Martini" (after the famous Metropolitan Opera tenor, Nino Martini). He got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. He sang in a crooning style influenced by Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), among others. In the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins, who suggested that he change his name to Dean Martin.
In October 1941, Martin married Elizabeth Anne McDonald. During their marriage (ended by divorce in 1949), they had four children. Martin worked for various bands throughout the early 1940s, mostly on looks and personality until he developed his own singing style. Martin famously flopped at the Riobamba, a high class nightclub in New York,[6] when he followed Frank Sinatra in 1943, but it was the setting for their meeting.
Martin was drafted into the United States Army in 1944 during World War II, serving a year stationed in Akron, Ohio. He was then reclassified as 4-F and was discharged (possibly because of a double hernia; Jerry Lewis referred to the surgery that Martin needed for this in his autobiography).
By 1946, Martin was doing relatively well, but was still little more than an East Coast nightclub singer with a common style, similar to that of Bing Crosby. He drew audiences to the clubs where he played, but he inspired none of the fanatical popularity enjoyed by Sinatra.
Alleged Mafia connections[link]
A biography of Martin titled Dean Martin: King of the Road, by Michael Freedland, alleged that he had links to the Mafia early in his career. According to this book, Martin received help with his singing career from members of the Chicago Outfit, who owned saloons in the city, and later performed in shows hosted by these bosses when he was a star. The mob bosses were Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana. Freedland suggests that Martin felt little sympathy for the Mafia and did small favors for them only if it was not inconvenient for him. Another book, The Animal in Hollywood by John L. Smith, depicted Martin's longtime friendship with Mafia mobsters Johnny Roselli and Anthony Fiato. Smith suggested that Fiato did many favors for Martin, such as recovering money from two swindlers who had cheated his ex-wife Betty out of thousands of dollars of her alimony.[7]
Career[link]
Teaming with Jerry Lewis[link]
Main article: Martin and Lewis
Martin attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures, but a Hollywood contract was not forthcoming. He met comic Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participation in each other's acts and the ultimate formation of a music-comedy team.
Martin and Lewis's official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not well received. The owner, Skinny D'Amato, warned them that if they did not come up with a better act for their second show later that night, they would be fired. Huddling together in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to "go for broke", to throw out the pre-scripted gags and to improvise. Martin sang and Lewis came out dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and making a shambles of both Martin's performance and the club's sense of decorum until Lewis was chased from the room as Martin pelted him with breadrolls. They did slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes, and did whatever else popped into their heads at the moment. This time, the audience doubled over in laughter. This success led to a series of well-paying engagements on the Eastern seaboard, culminating in a triumphant run at New York's Copacabana. Patrons were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and ultimately the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. The secret, both said, is that they essentially ignored the audience and played to one another.
The team made its TV debut on the very first broadcast of CBS-TV network's Toast of the Town (later called The Ed Sullivan Show) with Ed Sullivan and Rodgers & Hammerstein appearing on this same inaugural telecast of June 20, 1948. A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year Martin and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal B. Wallis as comedy relief for the movie My Friend Irma.
Their agent, Abby Greshler, negotiated for them one of Hollywood's best deals: although they received only a modest $75,000 between them for their films with Wallis, Martin and Lewis were free to do one outside film a year, which they would co-produce through their own York Productions. They also had complete control of their club, record, radio and television appearances, and it was through these endeavors that they earned millions of dollars.
In Dean & Me, Lewis calls Martin one of the great comic geniuses of all time. But the harsh comments from the critics, as well as frustration with the formulaic similarity of Martin and Lewis movies, which producer Hal Wallis stubbornly refused to change, led to Martin's dissatisfaction.[8] He put less enthusiasm into the work, leading to escalating arguments with Lewis. They finally could not work together, especially after Martin told his partner he was "nothing to me but a dollar sign". The act broke up in 1956, 10 years to the day from the first official teaming.
Martin's first solo film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), was a box office failure. He was still popular as a singer, but with rock and roll surging to the fore, the era of the pop crooner was waning.
Solo career[link]
Never totally comfortable in films, Martin wanted to be known as a real actor. Though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in a war drama, The Young Lions (1957), he was ecstatic to receive the part because it would be a dramatic showcase with the two most intriguing young actors of the period and he could learn from Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Tony Randall already had the part, but talent agency MCA realized that with this movie, Martin would become a triple threat: they could make money from his work in night clubs, movies, and records. Martin replaced Randall and the film turned out to be the beginning of Martin's spectacular comeback. Success would continue as Martin starred alongside Frank Sinatra for the first time in a highly acclaimed Vincente Minnelli drama, Some Came Running (1958). By the mid '60s, Martin was a top movie, recording, television, and nightclub star, while Lewis' film career declined. Martin was acclaimed for his performance as Dude in Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks and also starring John Wayne and singer Ricky Nelson. He teamed up again with Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), somewhat unconvincingly cast as brothers.
In 1960, Martin was cast in the motion picture version of the Judy Holliday hit stage play Bells Are Ringing. Martin played a satiric variation of his own womanizing persona as Vegas singer "Dino" in Billy Wilder's comedy Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) with Kim Novak, and he was not above poking fun at his image in films such as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s, in which he was a co-producer. Indeed, in the second Matt Helm film Murderers' Row (1966), Helm, about to be executed, receives a last cigarette, and tells the provider, "I'll remember you from the great beyond," continuing sotto voce, "somewhere around Steubenville, I hope."
As a singer, Martin copied the styles of Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), Bing Crosby, and Perry Como until he developed his own and could hold his own in duets with Sinatra and Crosby. Like Sinatra, he could not read music, but he recorded more than 100 albums and 600 songs. His signature tune, "Everybody Loves Somebody", knocked The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" out of the number-one spot in the United States in 1964. This was followed by the similarly-styled "The Door is Still Open to My Heart", which reached number six later that year. Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by Martin, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style. Martin, like Elvis, was influenced by country music. By 1965, some of Martin's albums, such as Dean "Tex" Martin, The Hit Sound Of Dean Martin, Welcome To My World and Gentle On My Mind were composed of country and western songs made famous by artists like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens. Martin hosted country performers on his TV show and was named "Man Of the Year" by the Country Music Association in 1966. "Ain't That a Kick in the Head", a song Martin performed in Ocean's 11 that never became a hit at the time, has enjoyed a spectacular revival in the media and pop culture.
For three decades, Martin was among the most popular acts in Las Vegas. Martin sang and was one of the smoothest comics in the business, benefiting from the decade of raucous comedy with Lewis. Martin's daughter, Gail, also sang in Vegas and on his TV show, co-hosting his summer replacement series on NBC. Though often thought of as a ladies' man, Martin spent a lot of time with his family; as second wife Jeanne put it, prior to the couple's divorce, "He was home every night for dinner."
The Rat Pack[link]
Main article: Rat Pack
As Martin's solo career grew, he and Frank Sinatra became close friends. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin and Sinatra, along with friends Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis, Jr. formed the legendary Rat Pack, so called by the public after an earlier group of social friends, the Holmby Hills Rat Pack centered on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, of which Sinatra had been a member.
The Martin-Sinatra-Davis-Lawford-Bishop group referred to themselves as "The Summit" or "The Clan" and never as "The Rat Pack", although this has remained their identity in the popular imagination. The men made films together, formed an important part of the Hollywood social scene in those years, and were politically influential (through Lawford's marriage to Patricia Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy).
The Rat Pack were legendary for their Las Vegas Strip performances. For example, the marquee at the Sands Hotel might read DEAN MARTIN---MAYBE FRANK---MAYBE SAMMY. Las Vegas rooms were at a premium when the Rat Pack would appear, with many visitors sleeping in hotel lobbies or cars to get a chance to see the three men together. Their appearances were unprecedentedly valuable because the city would always become flooded with high rollers, wealthy gamblers who would routinely leave substantial fortunes in the casinos' coffers. Their act (always in tuxedo) consisted of each singing individual numbers, duets and trios, along with much seemingly improvised slapstick and chatter. In the socially-charged 1960s, their jokes revolved around adult themes, such as Sinatra's infamous womanizing and Martin's legendary drinking, as well as many at the expense of Davis's race and religion. Davis famously practiced Judaism and used Yiddish phrases onstage, eliciting much merriment from both his stage-mates and his audiences.[citation needed] It was all good-natured male bonding, never vicious, rarely foul-mouthed,[citation needed] and the three had great respect for each other. The Rat Pack was largely responsible for the integration of Las Vegas. Sinatra and Martin were active supporters of the Civil Rights Movement and refused to perform in clubs that would not allow African-American or Jewish performers.[9]
Posthumously, the Rat Pack has experienced a popular revival, inspiring the George Clooney/Brad Pitt "Ocean's" trilogy.
The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast[link]
In 1965, Martin launched his weekly NBC comedy-variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image as a lazy, carefree boozer. There he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-drunk crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with hilarious remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy if slurred remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. During an interview he stated, and this may have been tongue-in-cheek, that he had someone record them on cassette tape so he could listen to them; this is evidenced by his comments to this effect on the British TV documentary 'Wine, Women and Song' which was aired in 1983.
The TV show was a success. Martin prided himself on memorizing whole scripts – not merely his own lines.[citation needed] He disliked rehearsing because he firmly believed his best performances were his first.[citation needed] The show's loose format prompted quick-witted improvisation from Martin and the cast. On occasion, he made remarks in Italian, some mild obscenities that brought angry mail from offended, Italian-speaking viewers.[citation needed] This prompted a battle between Martin and NBC censors, who insisted on more scrutiny of the show's content. The show was often in the Top Ten. Martin, deeply appreciative of the efforts of the show's producer, his friend Greg Garrison, later made a handshake deal giving Garrison, a pioneer TV producer in the 1950s, 50% ownership of the show. However, the validity of that ownership is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by NBC Universal.
Despite Martin's reputation as a heavy drinker – a reputation perpetuated via his vanity license plates reading "DRUNKY" – he was remarkably self-disciplined.[10] He was often the first to call it a night, and when not on tour or on a film location, liked to go home to see his wife and children. Phyllis Diller has said that Martin was indeed drinking alcohol onstage and not apple juice. She also commented that although he was not drunk, he was not really sober either, but had very strict rules when it came to performances. He borrowed the lovable-drunk shtick from Joe E. Lewis, but his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism. More often than not, Martin's idea of a good time was playing golf or watching TV, particularly westerns – not staying with Rat Pack friends Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. into the early hours of the morning.[citation needed]
Martin starred in and co-produced a series of four Matt Helm superspy comedy adventures. A fifth, The Ravagers, was planned starring Sharon Tate and Martin in a dual role, one as a serial killer, but due to the murder of Tate and the decline of the spy genre, the film was never made.[citation needed]
By the early 1970s, The Dean Martin Show was still earning solid ratings, and although he was no longer a Top 40 hitmaker, his record albums continued to sell steadily. His name on a marquee could guarantee casinos and nightclubs a standing-room-only crowd. He found a way to make his passion for golf profitable by offering his own signature line of golf balls. Shrewd investments had greatly increased Martin's personal wealth; at the time of his death, Martin was reportedly the single largest minority shareholder of RCA stock. Martin even managed to cure himself of his claustrophobia by reportedly locking himself in the elevator of a tall building and riding up and down for hours until he was no longer panic-stricken.[citation needed]
Now comfortable financially, Martin did not need to work as much and he began reducing his schedule. The final (1973–74) season of his variety show would be retooled into one of celebrity roasts, requiring less of Martin's involvement. After the show's cancellation, NBC continued to air The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast format in a series of TV specials through 1984. In those 11 years, Martin and his panel of pals successfully ridiculed and made fun of these legendary stars in this order: Ronald Reagan, Hugh Hefner, Ed McMahon, William Conrad, Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, Barry Goldwater, Johnny Carson, Wilt Chamberlain, Hubert Humphrey, Carroll O'Connor, Monty Hall, Jack Klugman & Tony Randall, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Leo Durocher, Truman Capote, Don Rickles, Ralph Nader, Jack Benny, Redd Foxx, Bobby Riggs, George Washington, Dan Rowan & Dick Martin, Hank Aaron, Joe Namath, Bob Hope, Telly Savalas, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Landon, Evel Knievel, Valerie Harper, Muhammad Ali, Dean Martin, Dennis Weaver, Joe Garagiola, Danny Thomas, Angie Dickinson, Gabe Kaplan, Ted Knight, Peter Marshall, Dan Haggerty, Frank Sinatra, Jack Klugman, Jimmy Stewart, George Burns, Betty White, Suzanne Somers, Joan Collins, and Mr T. For nearly a decade, Martin had recorded as many as four albums a year for Reprise Records. That stopped in November 1974, when Martin recorded his final Reprise album - Once In A While, released in 1978. His last recording sessions were for Warner Brothers Records. An album titled The Nashville Sessions was released in 1983, from which he had a hit with "(I Think That I Just Wrote) My First Country Song", which was recorded with Conway Twitty and made a respectable showing on the country charts. A followup single "L.A. Is My Home" / "Drinking Champagne" came in 1985. The 1975 film Mr. Ricco marked Martin's final starring role, and Martin limited his live performances to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.[citation needed]
Martin seemed to suffer a mid-life crisis. In 1972, he filed for divorce from his second wife, Jeanne. A week later, his business partnership with the Riviera was dissolved amid reports of the casino's refusal to agree to Martin's request to perform only once a night. He was quickly snapped up by the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, and signed a three-picture deal with MGM Studios. Less than a month after his second marriage had been legally dissolved, Martin married 26-year-old Catherine Hawn on April 25, 1973. Hawn had been the receptionist at the chic Gene Shacrove hair salon in Beverly Hills. They divorced November 10, 1976. He was also briefly engaged to Gail Renshaw, Miss World-U.S.A. 1969.
Eventually, Martin reconciled with Jeanne, though they never remarried. He also made a public reconciliation with Jerry Lewis on Lewis' Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1976. Frank Sinatra shocked Lewis and the world by bringing Martin out on stage. As Martin and Lewis embraced, the audience erupted in cheers and the phone banks lit up, resulting in one of the telethon's most profitable years. Lewis reported the event was one of the three most memorable of his life. Lewis brought down the house when he quipped, "So, you working?" Martin, playing drunk, replied that he was "at the Meggum" – this reference to the MGM Grand Hotel convulsed Lewis.[citation needed] This, along with the death of Martin's son Dean Paul Martin a few years later, helped to bring the two men together. They maintained a quiet friendship, but only performed together again once, in 1989, on Martin's 72nd birthday.[11]
Personal life[link]
Martin was married three times. Martin's first wife, Elizabeth Anne McDonald, tried by all accounts to be a good wife and mother to their four children, but her efforts were ultimately undone by her alcoholism[citation needed]. It remains a matter of speculation whether her alcoholism led to the failure of the marriage, or whether Martin's infidelities led to Betty's alcoholism. Subsequent to their divorce, Martin gained custody of their children; Betty lived out her life in quiet obscurity in San Francisco. Their children were Stephen Craig (born June 29, 1942), Claudia Dean (March 16, 1944 - 2001 from breast cancer), Barbara Gail (born April 11, 1945) and Deana (Dina) (born August 19, 1948).
Martin's second wife was Jeanne Biegger. A stunning blonde, Jeanne could sometimes be spotted in Martin's audience while he was still married to Betty. Their marriage lasted 24 years (1949–1973) and produced three children. Their children were Dean Paul (November 17, 1951 - March 21, 1987; plane crash), Ricci James (born September 20, 1953) and Gina Caroline (born December 20, 1956), whose marriage made Dean the father-in-law of The Beach Boys' Carl Wilson.
Martin's third marriage, to Catherine Hawn, lasted three years. One of Martin's managers had spotted her at the reception desk of a hair salon on Rodeo Drive, then arranged a meeting. Martin adopted Hawn's daughter, Sasha, but their marriage also failed. Martin initiated divorce proceedings.
Martin's uncle was Leonard Barr, who appeared in several of his shows.
Later years and death[link]
On December 1, 1983 while gambling at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City, Martin and Sinatra intimidated the dealer and several employees into breaking New Jersey law by making the dealer deal the cards by hand instead of from a shoe. Although Sinatra and Martin were implicated as the cause of the violation, neither was fined by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. The Golden Nugget received a $25,000 fine (which Sinatra paid, stating that it was his responsibility as he and Martin were the cause of the fine) and four employees including the dealer, a supervisor and pit boss were suspended from their jobs without pay.
Martin returned to films briefly with appearances in the two star-laden, yet critically panned Cannonball Run movies. He also had a minor hit single with "Since I Met You Baby" and made his first music video, which appeared on MTV. The video was created by Martin's youngest son, Ricci.
On March 21, 1987, Martin's son, Dean Paul (formerly Dino of the '60s "teeny-bopper" rock group Dino, Desi & Billy), was killed when his F-4 Phantom II jet fighter crashed while flying with the California Air National Guard. A much-touted tour with Davis and Sinatra in 1988 sputtered. On one occasion, he infuriated Sinatra when he turned to him and muttered, "Frank, what the hell are we doing up here?" Martin, who always responded best to a club audience, felt lost in the huge stadiums they were performing in (at Sinatra's insistence), and he was not interested in drinking until dawn after performances. His final Vegas shows were at Bally's Hotel in 1990. There he had his final reunion with Jerry Lewis on his 72nd birthday. Martin's last two TV appearances involved tributes to his former Rat Pack members. On December 8, 1989, he joined many stars of the entertainment industry in Sammy Davis, Jr's 60th anniversary celebration, which aired only a few weeks before Davis died from throat cancer. In December 1990, he congratulated Frank Sinatra on his 75th birthday special.
Martin was diagnosed with lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in September 1993, and in early 1995 retired from public life. He died of acute respiratory failure resulting from emphysema at his Beverly Hills home on Christmas morning 1995, at age 78.[12] The lights of the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor.
Martin is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Tributes and legacy[link]
In 1996, Ohio Rte. 7, through Steubenville, was rededicated as "Dean Martin Boulevard." Road signs bearing an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Martin's likeness officially designate the stretch, along with a state historical marker, in the Gazebo Park at Route 7 and North Fourth Street.
An annual "Dean Martin Festival" celebration is held in Steubenville. Impersonators, friends and family of Martin, and various entertainers, many of Italian ancestry, appear.
In 2005, Clark County, Nevada renamed Industrial Road as Dean Martin Drive. A similarly named street was dedicated in 2008 in Rancho Mirage, California.
Martin's family was presented a gold record in 2004 for Dino: The Essential Dean Martin, his fastest-selling album ever, which also hit the iTunes Top 10. For the week ending December 23, 2006, the Dean Martin and Martina McBride duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" reached #7 on the R&R AC chart. It also went to #36 on the R&R Country chart - the last time Martin had a song this high in the charts was in 1965, with the song "I Will", which reached #10 on the Pop chart.
An album of duets, Forever Cool, was released by Capitol/EMI in 2007. It features Martin's voice with Kevin Spacey, Shelby Lynne, Joss Stone, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Robbie Williams, McBride and others.
His footprints were immortalized at Grauman's Chinese Theater in 1964. Martin has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6519 Hollywood Boulevard, for movies; one at 1617 Vine, for recordings; and one at 6651 Hollywood Boulevard, for television.
In February 2009, Martin was honored with a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Four of his surviving children, Gail, Deana, Ricci and Gina, were on hand to accept on his behalf. In 2009, Martin was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
Popular culture[link]
A number of Dean Martin songs have constantly been featured across popular culture for decades. Hit songs such as "Ain't That a Kick in the Head", "Sway","You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You", "That's Amore", and Martin's signature song "Everybody Loves Somebody" (and many more) have been used in films (such as the Oscar-winning Logorama, A Bronx Tale, Casino, Goodfellas, Payback, and Return to Me), television series (such as American Dad!, Friends, and House MD), video games (such as The Godfather: The Game, The Godfather II, Fallout: New Vegas, and Mafia II), and even fashion shows (such as the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2008).
In film and television[link]
- In a 1996 episode of the NBC-TV series Boston Common, actor Anthony Clark pantomimes and dances a routine to Martin's 1960 song, "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?"
- In That '70s show episode, S-6/E-2 "Join Together." When the Forman's were throwing away all of their bad foods and drinks, because of Red's Heart Attack. Red's beloved beer and his meats were taken away and Red's Fresh mouth son, Eric said,"Whoa look at this, it looks like Dean Martin exploded!"
- In the movie A Bronx Tale, Martin's song, "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?", was featured during the scene when C was playing dice.
- A Budweiser TV commercial that premiered during Super Bowl XLI featured Martin's "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?".
- British actor Jeremy Northam portrayed the entertainer in a made-for-TV movie called, Martin and Lewis, alongside Will & Grace's Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis.
- Martin was portrayed by Joe Mantegna in an HBO movie about Sinatra and Martin titled The Rat Pack. Mantegna was nominated for both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the role.
- In the movie Return to Me, three of his recordings are featured: "Good Morning, Life," "Buona Sera" and "Return to Me".
- Danny Gans portrayed Martin in the miniseries Sinatra.
- In the pilot episode of White Collar, Peter refers to Neal as "Dino", referencing the newly-found Sy Devore suits that Neal now wears – made famous by the "Rat Pack".
- In the movie Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega go out to dinner at "Jack Rabbit Slim's" – she chooses "Martin and Lewis", and a $5 milkshake shows up.
- In the movie Moonstruck, Martin's recording of "That's Amore" plays over both the opening and closing credits.
- In the HBO television series, The Sopranos, in season 6 episode "Johnny Cakes", "That's Amore" is heard when Vito Spatafore is cooking.
- In the Wong Kar-Wai movie 2046, Martin's recording of "Sway" is played extensively.
- In a Royal Automobile Club commercial, "Memories are Made of This" is sung.
- In the 2009, 60's-era French parody film, "OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus... (Lost in Rio)" starring Jean Dujardin, Martin's "Gentle On My Mind" plays during the opening credits scene
- In the 2011 film, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol Martin's song "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?" is used by Cruise to arouse his fellow prisoner's into a riot.
In games and gambling[link]
- Martin is the subject of "Dean Martin's Wild Party", a video slot machine found in some casinos. The game features songs sung by Martin during the bonus game and the count-up of a player's winnings.
- The 2010 video game, Fallout: New Vegas, features Martin's "Ain't that a Kick in the Head?" throughout the game. It can be listened to on the "New Vegas" radio channel and heard on the loud speakers when entering the Vegas Strip. The first quest of the game is named after the same song, as the player character is afflicted with a headshot wound.
- Dean Martin's music is featured on the radios in the video games Mafia II and Godfather II.
In music[link]
- A compilation album called, Amore!, debuted at Number One on Billboard magazine's Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in its February 21, 2009 issue.
Other[link]
- In the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2008, "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?" was the opening song from the show.
Discography[link]
Main article: Dean Martin discography
Filmography[link]
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Film Vodvil: Art Mooney and Orchestra | Short | |
| 1949 | My Friend Irma | Steve Laird | |
| 1950 | My Friend Irma Goes West | Steve Laird | |
| At War with the Army | 1st Sgt. Vic Puccinelli | ||
| Screen Snapshots: Thirtieth Anniversary Special | Short | ||
| 1951 | That's My Boy | Bill Baker | |
| 1952 | Sailor Beware | Al Crowthers | |
| Jumping Jacks | Corp. Chick Allen | ||
| Road to Bali | Man in Lala's dream | Cameo (uncredited) | |
| The Stooge | Bill Miller | ||
| 1953 | Scared Stiff | Larry Todd | |
| The Caddy | Joe Anthony | ||
| Money from Home | Herman 'Honey Talk' Nelson | ||
| 1954 | Living It Up | Dr. Steve Harris | |
| 3 Ring Circus | Peter 'Pete' Nelson | ||
| 1955 | You're Never Too Young | Bob Miles | |
| Artists and Models | Rick Todd | ||
| 1956 | Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars | Short | |
| Pardners | Slim Mosely Jr. / Slim Mosely Sr. | ||
| Hollywood or Bust | Steve Wiley | ||
| 1957 | Ten Thousand Bedrooms | Ray Hunter | |
| 1958 | The Young Lions | Michael Whiteacre | |
| Some Came Running | Bama Dillert (professional gambler) | ||
| 1959 | Rio Bravo | Dude ('Borachón') | |
| Career | Maurice 'Maury' Novak | ||
| 1960 | Who Was That Lady? | Michael Haney | Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| Bells Are Ringing | Jeffrey Moss | ||
| Ocean's 11 | Sam Harmon | ||
| Pepe | Cameo | ||
| 1961 | All in a Night's Work | Tony Ryder | |
| Ada | Bo Gillis | ||
| 1962 | Something's Got to Give | Nicholas 'Nick' Arden | (unfinished) |
| Sergeants 3 | Sgt. Chip Deal | ||
| The Road to Hong Kong | The 'Grape' on plutonium | Cameo (uncredited) | |
| Who's Got the Action? | Steve Flood | ||
| 1963 | 38-24-36 | Self | |
| Come Blow Your Horn | The Bum | (uncredited) | |
| Toys in the Attic | Julian Berniers | ||
| 4 for Texas | Joe Jarrett | ||
| Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? | Jason Steel | ||
| 1964 | What a Way to Go! | Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley | |
| Robin and the 7 Hoods | Little John | ||
| Kiss Me, Stupid | Dino | ||
| 1965 | The Sons of Katie Elder | Tom Elder | |
| Marriage on the Rocks | Ernie Brewer | ||
| 1966 | The Silencers | Matt Helm | |
| Texas Across the River | Sam Hollis | ||
| Murderers' Row | Matt Helm | ||
| 1967 | Rough Night in Jericho | Alex Flood | |
| The Ambushers | Matt Helm | ||
| 1968 | How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life | David Sloane | |
| Bandolero! | Dee Bishop | ||
| Rowan & Martin at the Movies | Short | ||
| 5 Card Stud | Van Morgan | ||
| 1969 | The Wrecking Crew | Matt Helm | |
| 1970 | Airport | Capt. Vernon Demerest | |
| 1971 | Something Big | Joe Baker | |
| 1973 | Showdown | Billy Massey | |
| 1975 | Mr. Ricco | Joe Ricco | |
| 1981 | The Cannonball Run | Jamie Blake | |
| 1984 | Cannonball Run II | Jamie Blake | |
| Terror in the Aisles | archival footage |
References[link]
- ^ "Dean Martin's Diva Daughter: Elvis Called My Dad 'The King of Cool'"
- ^ "Dean Martin 'just a golfer' to his kids", thestar.com
- ^ Parish, James Robert (2003). Hollywood Songsters: Singers Who ACT and Actors Who Sing: A Biographical Dictionary Volume 2. Routledge. p. 533. ISBN 978-0-415-94333-8.
- ^ Tosches, Nick. Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams. Vintage, London, 1999, page 57. ISBN 0-7493-9897-3
- ^ "Dean Martin Amateur Boxing Record". Boxing-Scoop.com. 1917-06-07. http://www.boxing-scoop.com/show_boxer.php?boxer_ID=11280. Retrieved 2012-04-15.
- ^ "Two New to Biz Take Over Riobamba." The Billboard, New York, New York, September 16, 1944, page 24. Link to scanned copy online.
- ^ Smith, John L. The Animal in Hollywood: Anthony Fiato's Life in the Mafia. Barricade Books, New York, 1998. ISBN 1-56980-126-6
- ^ Lewis, Jerry (2005). Dean and Me: (A Love Story). Doubleday. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-7679-2086-5.
- ^ Sinatra, nancy (1998). Frank Sinatra: an American legend. Readers Digest Assn. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-7621-0134-4.
- ^ Metzger, Richard (July 8, 2011), "Richard Metzger: The time I met Dean Martin", Dangerous Minds, retrieved July 11, 2011.
- ^ Talevski, Nick (2006). Knocking on Heaven's Door: Rock Obituaries. Omnibus Press. p. 399. ISBN 978-1-84609-091-2.
- ^ Holden, Stephen. Dean Martin, Pop Crooner And Comic Actor, Dies at 78, The New York Times, December 26, 1995.
Further reading[link]
- Arthur Marx. Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself): The story of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, New York, NY: Hawthorn Books, 1974, ISBN 978-0-8015-2430-1
- Lewis, Jerry and James Kaplan. Dean & Me (A Love Story). Doubleday, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-7679-2086-4
- Tosches, Nick. Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams. Delta Trade Paperbacks, New York, 1992 (1st edition). ISBN 0-385-33429-X
- Smith, John L. The Animal in Hollywood: Anthony Fiato's Life in the Mafia. Barricade Books, New York, 1998. ISBN 1-56980-126-6
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dean Martin |
- Dean Martin at the Internet Movie Database
- Dean Martin at The Biography Channel
- Cleveland.com: Homegrown Heroes: Dean Martin Timeline
- Dean Works the room at the Sands
- Dean Martin biography/discography on The Interlude Era site
- Radio interview with Deana Martin WSLR
|
|
|||||
|
|||||||||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Martin, Dean |
| Alternative names | Crocetti, Dino Paul |
| Short description | Singer, actor, comedian |
| Date of birth | June 7, 1917 |
| Place of birth | Steubenville, Ohio, United States |
| Date of death | December 25, 1995 |
| Place of death | Beverly Hills, California, USA |
http://wn.com/Dean_Martin
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://cs.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://id.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://es.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://ru.wn.com/Дин Мартин
http://nl.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://pt.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://pl.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://fr.wn.com/Dean Martin
http://de.wn.com/Dean Martin
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Martin
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.
This article is about the actor. For other uses, see James Dean (disambiguation).
| James Dean | |
|---|---|
 Dean in Giant (1955) |
|
| Born | James Byron Dean (1931-02-08)February 8, 1931 Marion, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | September 30, 1955(1955-09-30) (aged 24) Cholame, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Motor vehicle accident |
| Other names | Jimmy Dean |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1951–1955 |
| Signature |  |
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American film actor.[1] He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.[2]
Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.[3]
Contents |
Early life[link]
James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment house located at the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts young Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him".[4] He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine years old.
Unable to care for his son, Winton Dean sent James to live with Winton's sister Ortense and her husband Marcus Winslow on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in a Quaker background. Dean sought the counsel and friendship of Methodist pastor, the Rev. James DeWeerd. DeWeerd seemed to have had a formative influence upon Dean, especially upon his future interests in bullfighting, car racing, and the theater. According to Billy J. Harbin, "Dean had an intimate relationship with his pastor... which began in his senior year of high school and endured for many years."[5] Their sexual relationship was earlier suggested in the 1994 book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean by Paul Alexander.[6] In 2011, it was reported that he once told Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in Giant, that he was sexually abused by a minister two years after his mother's death.[7]
In high school, Dean's overall performance was mediocre. However, he was a popular school athlete, having successfully played on the baseball and basketball teams and studied drama and competed in forensics through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School on May 16, 1949, Dean moved back to California with his beagle, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. Dean transferred to UCLA for one semester[8] and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. He pledged the Sigma Nu fraternity but was never initiated. While at UCLA, he was picked from a pool of 350 actors to land the role of Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting with James Whitmore's acting workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor.[9]
Acting career[link]
Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola television commercial.[10] He quit college to act full time and was cast as John the Beloved Disciple in Hill Number One, an Easter television special, and three walk-on roles in movies, Fixed Bayonets!, Sailor Beware, and Has Anybody Seen My Gal? His only speaking part was in Sailor Beware, a Paramount comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; Dean played a boxing trainer. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay.[11][12]
In October 1951, following actor James Whitmore's and his mentor Rogers Brackett's advice, Dean moved to New York City. There he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series, The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the legendary Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. Proud of this accomplishment, Dean referred to the Studio in a 1952 letter to his family as "The greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock. ... Very few get into it ... It is the best thing that can happen to an actor. I am one of the youngest to belong."[11]
Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of such early 1950s television shows as Kraft Television Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, Danger, and General Electric Theater. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode "Glory in the Flower", saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later immortalize in Rebel Without a Cause. (This summer 1953 program was also notable for featuring the song "Crazy Man, Crazy", one of the first dramatic TV programs to feature rock and roll.) Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as "Bachir", a pandering North African houseboy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.[13]
[edit] East of Eden
Main article: East of Eden (film)
In 1953, director Elia Kazan was looking for a substantive actor to play the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask', for screenwriter Paul Osborn's adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel had dealt with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s.
In contrast, the film chose to deal predominantly with the character of Cal Trask. Though he initially seems more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron, Cal is soon seen to be more worldly, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (played by Raymond Massey) who seeks to invent a vegetable refrigeration process. Cal is bothered by the mystery of their supposedly dead mother, and discovers she is still alive and a brothel-keeping 'madame' (Jo Van Fleet). Elia Kazan said of Cal before casting, "I wanted a Brando for the role." Osborn suggested Dean, who then met with Steinbeck; the future Nobel laureate did not like the moody, complex young man personally, but thought him perfect for the part. Kazan set about putting the wheels in motion to cast the relatively unknown young actor in the role; on April 8, 1954, Dean left New York City and headed for Los Angeles to begin shooting.[14][15][16]
Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from a father figure.
Much of Dean's performance in the film is unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train boxcar (after searching out his mother in nearby Monterey). The most famous improvisation of the film occurs when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000 (offered in reparation for his father's business loss). Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and in a gesture of extreme emotion, lunged forward and grabbed him in a full embrace, crying. This cut and Massey's shocked reaction were kept in the film by Kazan.
For the 1955 Academy Awards, Dean received a posthumous nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in East of Eden, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. (Jeanne Eagels was unofficially nominated for Best Actress in 1929, when the rules for selection of the winner were different.)
[edit] Rebel Without a Cause
Main article: Rebel Without a Cause
Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role in Rebel Without a Cause, a film that would prove to be hugely popular among teenagers. The film has been cited as an accurate representation of teenage angst.[17] It co-starred teen actors Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper and was directed by Nicholas Ray.
[edit] Giant
Main article: Giant (1956 film)
Giant, which was posthumously released in 1956, saw Dean play a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as Jim Stark and Cal Trask. In the film, he plays Jett, an oil-rich Texan. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in one scene, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline.
Giant would be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Dean mumbled so much that the scene had to later be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited.
For the 1956 Academy Awards, Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant.
Racing career and 'Little Bastard'[link]
In April, 1955, after securing the co-starring role of Cal Trask in East of Eden, Dean purchased a 1955 Triumph Tiger T110, 650 cc motorcycle and later, a used red, 1953 MG TD sports car.[18] In March, 1955, Dean traded the MG for a new 1955 Porsche Super Speedster purchased from Competition Motors in Hollywood. He traded the Triumph T110 for a 1955 Triumph TR5 Trophy three days after filming wrapped on East of Eden.[18] Just before filming began on Rebel Without a Cause, Dean entered the Palm Springs Road Races with the Speedster on March 26-27. He finished first overall in Saturday’s novice class and second overall in the Sunday main event. Dean also raced the Speedster at Bakersfield on May 1-2, finishing first in class and third overall. His final race with the Speedster was at Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, May 30, where he started in the eighteenth position, worked his way up to fourth, before over-revving his engine and blowing a piston. He did not finish the race.[19]
During the filming of Giant from June through mid-September, Warner Bros. had barred Dean from all racing activities. In July, Dean put down a deposit on a new Lotus IX sports racer with Jay Chamberlain, a dealer in Burbank. Dean was told that the Lotus delivery would be delayed until the fall. As Dean was finishing up Giant’s filming, he suddenly traded in his Speedster at Competition Motors for a new, more powerful and faster 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder on September 21 and entered the upcoming Salinas Road Race event scheduled for October 1-2. He also purchased a new 1955 Ford Country Squire station wagon to use for towing the new Spyder to and from the races on an open wheel car trailer.[20]
According to Lee Raskin, Porsche historian, and author of James Dean At Speed, Dean asked custom car painter and pin striper Dean Jeffries to paint Little Bastard on the car:
- "Dean Jeffries, who had a paint shop next to Barris did the customizing work which consisted of: painting '130' in black non-permanent paint on the front hood, doors and rear deck lid. He also painted "Little Bastard" in script across the rear cowling. The red leather bucket seats and red tail stripes were original. The tail stripes were painted by the Stuttgart factory, which was customary on the Spyders for racing ID."[21]
Purportedly, James Dean had been given the nickname "Little Bastard" by Bill Hickman, a Warner Bros stunt driver who became friendly with Dean. Previous references to Hickman say he was Dean's dialogue coach on Giant. Bob Hinkle, a Texan, was actually Dean's Giant dialogue coach. Hickman was part of Dean's group driving to the Salinas Road Races on September 30, 1955. Hickman says he called Dean, "little bastard." And Dean called Hickman, "big bastard." Another version of the "Little Bastard" origin has been corroborated by two of Dean's close friends, Lew Bracker, and photographer, Phil Stern. They believe Jack Warner of Warner Bros. had once referred to Dean as a little bastard after Dean refused to vacate his temporary East of Eden trailer on the studio's lot. And Dean wanted to get 'even' with Warner by naming his race car, "Little Bastard" and to show Warner that despite his sports car racing ban during all filming, Dean was going to be racing the "Little Bastard" in between making movies for Warner Bros.[22] When Dean introduced himself to British actor Alec Guinness outside the Villa Capri restaurant in Hollywood, he asked him to take a look at his brand new Porsche Spyder. Guinness thought the car appeared 'sinister' and told Dean: "If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week." This encounter took place on September 23, 1955, seven days before Dean's death.[23][24]
Personal relationships[link]
Screenwriter William Bast was one of Dean's closest friends, a fact acknowledged by Dean's family.[25] According to Dean's first biographer (1956),[26] Bast was his roommate at UCLA and later in New York, and knew Dean throughout the last five years of his life. Fifty years after Dean's death, he stated that their friendship had included some sexual intimacy.[27]
Early in Dean's career, after Dean signed his contract with Warner Brothers, the studio's public relations department began generating stories about Dean's liaisons with a variety of young actresses who were mostly drawn from the clientele of Dean's Hollywood agent, Dick Clayton. Studio press releases also grouped "Dean together with two other actors, Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, identifying each of the men as an 'eligible bachelor' who has not yet found the time to commit to a single woman: 'They say their film rehearsals are in conflict with their marriage rehearsals.'"[28]
Shortly before filming began on East of Eden, Dean befriended horse trainer Monty Roberts. Roberts introduced Dean to the area and the two became close friends. Dean had planned to meet with Roberts shortly after the race on September 30 to discuss plans for the construction of a ranch, which would be owned by Dean but managed by Roberts. Roberts and his wife were the first people to learn of Dean's death through a telephone call placed by Dean's mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, immediately following the incident, in which Wütherich mumbled through a broken jaw that Dean had died. Roberts and his family did not attend Dean's funeral because, although the two considered themselves 'brothers', their friendship was unknown to Dean's family.[29]
Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens.[30] Angeli's mother was reported to have disapproved of the relationship because Dean was not Roman Catholic. In his autobiography, East of Eden director Elia Kazan, while dismissing the notion that Dean could possibly have had any success with women, paradoxically alluded to Dean and Angeli's "romance", claiming that he had heard them loudly making love in Dean's dressing room. For a very short time the story of a Dean-Angeli love affair was even promoted by Dean himself, who fed it to various gossip columnists and to his co-star, Julie Harris, who in interviews has reported that Dean told her about being madly in love with Angeli. However, in early October 1954, Angeli had unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone, to Dean's expressed irritation.[31] Angeli married Damone the following month, and gossip columnists reported that Dean, or someone dressed like him, watched the wedding from across the road on a motorcycle. However, when Bast questioned him about the reports, Dean denied that he would have done anything so "dumb", and Bast, like Paul Alexander, believes the relationship was a mere publicity stunt.[32][33] Pier Angeli only talked once about the relationship in her later life in an interview, giving vivid descriptions of romantic meetings at the beach. Dean biographer John Howlett said these read like wishful fantasies,[34] as Bast claims them to be.[35]
Actress Liz Sheridan claims that she and Dean had a short affair in New York. In her memoir, she also states that Dean was having a sexual involvement with director Rogers Brackett, and describes her negative response to this situation.[36] However, again Bast is skeptical whether this was a true love affair and says Dean and Sheridan did not spend much time together.[11] He has also dated actress Ursula Andress.
Dean avoided the draft by registering as a homosexual, then classified by the US government as a mental disorder. When questioned about his orientation, he is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But, I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back."[37]
Death[link]
On Friday morning, 30 September 1955, Dean and his Porsche factory-trained mechanic, Rolf Wütherich were at Competition Motors in Hollywood preparing Dean’s new Porsche 550 Spyder for the weekend sports car races at Salinas, California. Dean originally intended to trailer the Porsche to Salinas, behind his 1955 Ford Country Squire station wagon, driven by friend and movie stunt man Bill Hickman and accompanied by professional photographer Sanford H. Roth who was planning a photo story of Dean at the races for Colliers Magazine. Because the Porsche didn’t have enough ‘break-in’ miles prior to the race, Wütherich recommended that Dean drive the Spyder to Salinas to get more ‘seat time’ behind the wheel. The group had coffee and donuts at the Hollywood Ranch Market on Vine Street across from Competition Motors (not the legendary Farmer’s Market at W 3rd St & S Fairfax Ave as previously reported) before leaving around 1:15 p.m. PST. They stopped at the Mobil station for gasoline on Ventura Blvd. at Beverly Glen Blvd. in Sherman Oaks around 2:00 p.m. The group then headed north on CA Route 99 and then over the ‘Grapevine’ toward Bakersfield.[38]
At 3:30 p.m., Dean was stopped by California Highway Patrolman O.V. Hunter at Mettler Station on Wheeler Ridge, just south of Bakersfield, for driving 65 mph (105 km/h) in a 55 mph (89 km/h) zone. Hickman, following behind the Spyder in the Ford with the trailer, was also ticketed for driving 20 mph (32 km/h) over the limit, as the speed limit for all vehicles towing a trailer was 45 mph (72 km/h). After receiving the speeding citations, Dean and Hickman turned left onto Route 166/33 to avoid going through Bakersfield’s slow 25 mph downtown district. Route 166/33 was a known short-cut for all the sports car drivers going to Salinas, called ‘the racer’s road,’ which took them directly to Blackwells Corner at CA Route 466 (later SR 46). At Blackwells Corner, Dean stopped briefly only for refreshments and met up with fellow racers Lance Reventlow and Bruce Kessler, who were also on their way to the Salinas road races in Reventlow’s Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupe. As Reventlow and Kessler were leaving, they all agreed to meet for dinner in Paso Robles.[39]
At approximately 5:15 p.m., Dean and Hickman left Blackwells Corner driving west on Route 466 toward Paso Robles, approximately sixty miles away. Dean accelerated in the Porsche and left the Ford station wagon far behind. Further along on Route 466, the Porsche crested Polonio Pass and headed down the long Antelope Grade, passing cars along the way toward the junction floor at Route 466 and 41. Dean spotted a black-and-white 1950 Ford Custom coupe, driving at a high rate of speed heading east on Rt. 466 toward the junction. The time was approximately 5:45 p.m., PST. Its driver, 23-year-old Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed, suddenly turned in front of the Porsche to take the left fork onto Route 41. Turnupseed then hesitated as he 'spiked' the brakes just as the Ford crossed over the center line. Dean saw an impending crash and apparently tried to 'power steer' the Spyder in a 'side stepping' racing maneuver, but there wasn't enough time or space as the two cars crashed almost head-on. The Spyder flipped up into the air and landed back on its wheels off in a gully, northwest of the junction. The sheer velocity of the impact sent the much-heavier Ford broad-sliding thirty-nine feet down Route 466 in the westbound lane.[40]
According to a story in the 1 October 2005, edition of the Los Angeles Times,[41] California Highway Patrol Captain Ernest Tripke and his partner, Corporal Ronald Nelson, had been finishing a coffee break in Paso Robles when they were called to the scene of the accident at the Route 466/41 junction. Before Officers Tripke and Nelson arrived, James Dean had been extricated from the Spyder's mangled cockpit, his left foot had been crushed between the clutch and brake pedal. Dean was severely injured as he took the brunt of the crash with a broken neck and several internal and external injuries. Nelson witnessed an unconscious and dying Dean being placed into an ambulance; and a barely conscious Wütherich, who had been thrown from the Spyder, was lying on the shoulder of the road next to the wrecked Porsche. Dean and Wütherich were taken in the same ambulance to the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, 28 miles away. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival at 6:20 p.m. PST by the attending emergency room physician, Dr. Robert Bossert.[42]
Wütherich survived with a broken jaw and serious hip and femur injuries that required immediate surgery. Turnupseed was only slightly injured with facial bruises and a bloodied nose. After being interviewed by the CHP, Turnupseed hitch-hiked in the dark to his home in Tulare. Hickman and Roth arrived at the accident scene approximately ten minutes after the crash. Hickman assisted in extricating Dean from the wreckage. Roth took photographs of the accident scene, which are now owned by Seita Ohnishi, a retired Kobe, Japan businessman. Ohnishi, in 1977, designed and erected a stainless steel memorial in tribute to James Dean at Cholame, just a mile west of the accident site.[43]
There have been many questions raised over the decades about the accident: who was driving the Porsche? Were Turnupseed and Dean both recklessly speeding? What was said prior to the accident? Some say that Dean's last known words, uttered right before the impact after Wütherich told Dean to slow down when they both saw the Ford Custom coupe about to pull into their lane, was: "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us."[44] James Dean historian Lee Raskin believes that this is pure conjecture about Wütherich saying anything to Dean, or Dean saying anything to Wütherich prior to the crash. According to the Coroner's deposition taken of Wütherich in the hospital, and later in a 1960 interview given to an official Porsche magazine, Christophorus, he couldn't recall any of the exact moments leading up to and after the crash.[45]
At the Official Coroner’s Inquest, held at the San Luis Obispo Court House on 11 October 1955, Turnupseed told the jury that he did not see the low-profile Porsche until after he was turning left onto Route 41. After other testimony by the CHP, and witnesses to the accident, the coroner's jury retired to deliberate. It came back with a verdict of "accidental death with no criminal intent" finding Donald Turnupseed not guilty of any contributory wrongdoing in the death of James Dean. The deceased Dean was also found not guilty of any criminal intent or contributory wrongdoing for the accident.[46]
Although not charged with (what could have been) vehicular manslaughter, Turnupseed had nevertheless been dealt a devastating blow that would haunt him for the rest of his life. "Not only was he involved in an accident that resulted in one man's death, but it was a death that will never be forgotten, a death whose reverberations are still being felt all over the world."[47]
Turnupseed granted just one interview to the Tulare Advance-Register newspaper immediately following the crash, but after that he refused to speak publicly about the accident. Turnupseed went on to own and operate a very successful family electrical contracting business in Tulare; only later, to die at age 63 from lung cancer in 1995.[48] Wütherich, after having several complicated surgeries on his hip and femur, went back to Germany in 1957 having psychological and legal problems. He worked with the Porsche Factory's testing department and international rallye and racing teams during the 1960's. Wütherich was one of the first employees of Porsche and he worked for the factory eighteen years before being terminated. Wütherich died in July 1981, in Kupferzell, Germany, when he lost control of his car and crashed into a residence. Like James Dean, Rolf Wütherich had to be extricated from the wreck and he died at the accident scene. He was 53 years old.[49]
There is an ironic epilogue to James Dean's fatal crash in 1955: while filming Giant, Dean also filmed a short Public Service Announcement (PSA) with actor Gig Young for the National Safety Council. It featured James Dean dressed as the young Jett Rink talking about how driving fast on the highway can be more dangerous than racing on the track. It ends with Dean, instead of saying the popular phrase "The life you save may be your own" he humorously ad-libbed, "The life you might save might be mine." This legendary black and white PSA, released following Dean's death, can now be viewed on YouTube.[50]
Memorial[link]
James Dean is buried in Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana, less than a mile from where he grew up on his aunt and uncle's farm. In 1977, a Dean memorial was erected in Cholame, California. The stylized sculpture is composed of stainless steel around a tree of heaven growing in front of the former Cholame post office building. The sculpture was designed in Japan and transported to Cholame, accompanied by the project's benefactor, Seita Ohnishi of Kobe, Japan, a retired business man and devoted Dean fan. Ohnishi chose the site after examining the location of the accident, less than a mile away. The original Highway 41 and 46 junction where the accident occurred is now a pasture, and the two roadways were realigned over the decades to make it safer. On 30 September 2005, the junction at Highways 46 and 41 was dedicated as the James Dean Memorial Junction as part of the State of California's official commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death.[51] (Maps of the intersection 35°44′5″N 120°17′4″W / 35.73472°N 120.28444°W / 35.73472; -120.28444)
The dates and hours of Dean's birth and death are etched into the sculpture, along with a handwritten description by Dean's friend William Bast of one of Dean's favorite lines from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince: "What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Documentary[link]
On 15 February 2009, all three CHP officers who dealt with James Dean on the day of his death—Officer Otie Hunter, who ticketed Dean for speeding; and Officers Ernie Tripke and Ronald Nelson, who investigated the fatal crash—participated in an SCVTV documentary co-produced by the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society and shared their memories of that fateful day. The Stuff of Legend: James Dean's Final Ride (Documentary).
Legacy and iconic status[link]
Impact on culture and media[link]
|
|
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2012) |
American teenagers at the time of Dean's major films identified with Dean and the roles he played, especially in Rebel Without A Cause: the typical teenager, caught where no one, not even his peers, can understand him. Joe Hyams says that Dean was "one of the rare stars, like Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift, whom both men and women find sexy." According to Marjorie Garber, this quality is "the undefinable extra something that makes a star."[52] Dean's iconic appeal has been attributed to the public's need for someone to stand up for the disenfranchised young of the era,[53] and to the air of androgyny[54] that he projected onscreen. Dean's "loving tenderness towards the besotted Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause continues to touch and excite gay audiences by its honesty. The Gay Times Readers' Awards cited him as the male gay icon of all time."[55]
Dean is mentioned or featured in various songs. In addition, he is often noted within television shows, films, books and novels. In an episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation, the character Liberty likens the rebellious, anti-social Sean Cameron to James Dean. On the sitcom Happy Days, Fonzie has a picture of Dean in his closet next to his mirror. A picture of Dean also appears on Rizzo's wall in the film Grease. On the American version of the TV series Queer as Folk, the main character Brian Kinney mentions James Dean together with Cobain and Hendrix, saying, "They're all legends. They'll always be young, and they will always be beautiful". In the alternate history book Homeward Bound by Harry Turtledove, Dean is stated to have not died in a car crash and to have made several more films, including Rescuing Private Ranfall, based on Saving Private Ryan.
Dean's estate still earns about $5,000,000 per year, according to Forbes Magazine.[56]
On April 20, 2010, a long "lost" live episode of the General Electric Theater called "The Dark, Dark Hours" featuring James Dean in a performance with Ronald Reagan was uncovered by NBC writer Wayne Federman while working on a Ronald Reagan television retrospective.[57] The episode, originally broadcast December 12, 1954, drew international attention and highlights were featured on numerous national media outlets including: The CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America. It was later revealed that some footage from the episode was first featured in the 2005 documentary, James Dean: Forever Young.[58]
Debated sexual orientation[link]
Today, Dean is often considered an icon because of his "experimental" take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality.[55] There have been several claims and assertions that Dean has had sexual relationships with men and women.
William Bast, one of Dean's closest friends,[25] was Dean's first biographer (1956).[59] He recently published a revealing update of his first book, in which, after years of successfully dodging the question as to whether he and Dean were sexually involved,[60][61] he finally stated that they were.[27] In this second book, Bast describes the difficult circumstances of their involvement and also deals frankly with some of Dean's other reported gay relationships, notably the actor's friendship with Rogers Brackett, the influential producer of radio dramas who encouraged Dean in his career and provided him with useful professional contacts.[62]
Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any gay activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. Val Holley notes that, according to Hollywood biographer Lawrence J. Quirk, gay Hollywood columnist Mike Connolly "would put the make on the most prominent young actors, including Robert Francis, Guy Madison, Anthony Perkins, Nick Adams and James Dean."[63] However, the "trade only" notion is debated by Bast[27] and other Dean biographers.[64] Aside from Bast's account of his own relationship with Dean, Dean's fellow biker and "Night Watch" member John Gilmore claims he and Dean "experimented" with gay acts on one occasion in New York, and it is difficult to see how Dean, then already in his twenties, would have viewed this as a "trade" means of advancing his career.[65]
Screenwriter Gavin Lambert, himself gay and part of the Hollywood gay circles of the 1950s and 1960s, described Dean as being gay. Rebel director Nicholas Ray is on record as saying that Dean was gay.[66] Additionally, William Bast and biographer Paul Alexander conclude that Dean was gay, while John Howlett concludes that Dean was "certainly bisexual".[32][67][68] George Perry's biography reduces these aspects of Dean's sexuality to "experimentation".[69] Still, Hyams and Paul Alexander also claim that Dean's relationship with pastor De Weerd had a sexual aspect, too.[32][70] Bast also shows that Dean had knowledge of gay bars and customs.[71] Consequently, Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon's book Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) includes an entry on James Dean.
The "curse" of "Little Bastard"[link]
The ‘curse’ of James Dean’s “Little Bastard” has become part of America’s cultural mythology, first printed in the tabloids, later put into biographies, and TV documentaries; and now it's found readily on internet blogs and James Dean web sites. Warren Beath, a James Dean archivist and author believes the source of the myth is Hollywood’s George Barris, the original ‘King of the Kustomizers,' who says he was the first to purchase the wrecked “Little Bastard.” Barris heavily promoted the ‘curse’ after he placed the wreck on public display in 1956. Over the years, Barris described a series of accidents that mysteriously occurred from 1956 to 1960 involving the “Little Bastard,” which resulted in serious injuries to spectators and even a truck driver’s death.[72] Lee Raskin, a noted Porsche historian, feels that many of the current internet postings regarding the ‘curse’ of the “Little Bastard” appear to have been ‘borrowed’ directly from George Barris’ 1974 book, Cars of the Stars,[73] which is highlighted throughout with ‘factoids.’[74]
Reliable information obtained through dozens of interviews with James Dean's family, personal friends of Dean, the Eschrich family, and numerous members of the California Sports Car Club (CSCC), many of whom raced with and against Dean, tell a very different version from Barris’ Cars of the Stars “Little Bastard” account: After the death of James Dean, the wreckage of the Porsche Spyder, VIN 550-0055, was declared as a total loss by the insurance company, and who paid Dean’s father, Winton, the fair market value as a settlement. The insurance company, in turn, through a salvage yard in Burbank, sold the entire wrecked Porsche Spyder with a bill of sale to Dr. William F. Eschrich of Burbank, CA. Dr. Eschrich, a CSCC racer, who had competed against Dean in his own sports car ‘specials’ at three race events during 1955, realized that the undamaged Porsche 4-cam engine, transaxle, and hard to find spare parts were extremely valuable. Dr. Eschrich took the wrecked Porsche Spyder to his own garage and dismantled all of the engine and mechanical parts. Dr. Eschrich installed the Porsche 4-cam engine (mounted up front) in his Lotus IX race car chassis. Eschrich then raced the Porsche-powered Lotus, which he called a ‘Potus,’ at seven CSCC events during 1956. At the Pomona Sports Car Races on October 21, 1956, Dr. Eschrich, while driving his Potus sports racer, was involved in a very minor ‘shunt’ with another driver. Dr. Eschrich was not injured in this incident. During the same race however, Dr. Troy McHenry was killed instantly when the steering mechanism (the Pittman arm) in his Porsche 550 failed, and he drove off the course into a tree.[75]
Barris’ Cars of the Stars erroneously states that Dr. McHenry, “driving a car powered by the engine from Dean’s car, was killed when his vehicle went out of control and struck a tree in the first race in which the motor had been used since Dean’s mishap. Another doctor, William F. Eschrid (sic) of Burbank, was injured in the same race when his car, which contained the drivetrain from Dean’s car, rolled over.”[76] Dr. Eschrich, interviewed a day after Dr. McHenry’s fatal accident, said he had loaned the Dean transmission and several other parts to Dr. McHenry. “I don’t believe he was using the transmission when he crashed, but he was using the back swinging arms which holds the rear end.”[77] Dr. McHenry appears to have the distinction of being the only bona fide victim of the ‘curse’ of Dean’s “Little Bastard.”[78]
Personal friends of Dean also say that he was not close with Barris. That although Barris may have ‘customized’ several cars for the Rebel Without a Cause movie, he never customized any of Dean’s personal cars and certainly not either of the Porsches.[79] Lew Bracker, Dean’s best friend in L.A. and fellow Porsche racer, maintains that Barris wasn’t involved with Dean’s sports car racing activities; and he was never considered to be part of Dean's ‘inner circle’ invited to go to Salinas on 30 September 1955.[80] It’s not known exactly how Barris knew Dr. Echrich, but he was ‘given’ the Spyder’s mangled body after Dr. Eschrich had stripped out the Porsche. In 1956, Barris announced that he was going to rebuild the Porsche Spyder, but that proved to be a Herculean task as the wrecked chassis had no remaining integral strength. Instead, Barris decided to weld aluminum sheet metal over the caved-in left front fender and cockpit area. He proceeded to beat on the aluminum panels with a ‘2x4’ to try to ‘simulate’ what would appear to be collision damage.[81] Later in 1956, Barris loaned out the “Little Bastard” to the Los Angeles chapter of the National Safety Council for a local rod and custom car show. The gruesome display was promoted as: “James Dean’s Last Sports Car.” During 1957-1959, the “Little Bastard” exhibit began to appear at various rod and custom car shows, movie theatres, bowling alleys, and highway safety displays throughout California.[82]
On the other hand, there are a few stories associated with the ‘curse’ that can be corroborated. For example, a wire service story on March 12, 1959, reported that the “Little Bastard,” temporarily stored in a Fresno, California garage at 3158 Hamilton Avenue, caught fire “awaiting display as a safety exhibit in a coming sports and custom automobile show,” The May 12, 1959, Fresno Bee, went on to say that the fire occurred on the night of March 11th, and only slight damage occurred to the Spyder without any damage to other cars or property in the garage. No one was injured. “The cause of the fire is unknown. It burned two tires and scorched the paint on the vehicle.”[83] Later that year, the ‘Little Bastard” was moved around the country like a travelling circus to annual auto shows and traffic safety exhibitions. Legend also holds that the “Little Bastard” mysteriously disappeared in 1960. According to Barris, the Spyder was returning from a traffic safety exhibit in Florida in a sealed truck. When the trailer arrived back in Los Angeles, the trailer was unlocked and the car had completely disappeared into ‘thin air,’ according to Barris. In Barris’ book and in many TV documentaries, he said the “Little Bastard” was being shipped back in a sealed boxcar. When the train arrived in LA, Baris said he signed the manifest and verified that the seal was intact -- but the boxcar was empty.[84]
Raskin theorizes that Barris’ “Little Bastard” side show had finally lost its fan appeal just as the 1960’s pop culture began to focus on a need for more speed with ‘big block’ Muscle Cars, and later, the high reving ‘car tunes’ from Jan and Dean, Ronny and the Daytonas, the Rip Chords, and the Beach Boys.[1]
Raskin also believes that Barris opted to ‘misplace’ the “Little Bastard.” The mysterious disappearance stories were Barris’ way of perpetuating the Dean myth, especially on the milestone anniversaries of James Dean’s death.[85]
Although the legendary “Little Bastard” seemingly has disappeared from sight, Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, IL claims to have an original piece of Dean’s Spyder on display (a small chunk of aluminum, a few square inches in size) that was actually pried off and stolen from an area near the broken windscreen while the Spyder was being stored in the Cholame Garage following the accident. Also, in 2005, for the 50th Anniversary of James Dean’s death, the Volo Auto Museum in Volo, IL announced they were displaying what was purported to be the “Little Bastard’s” passenger door. Volo and George Barris offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that they owned the remains of the “Little Bastard.” No one came forth to claim the prize.[86]
The 4-Cam Porsche engine (#90059) along with the original California Owner’s Registration (aka CA Pink Slip) listing the engine number is still in the possession of the family of the late Dr. Eschrich. The Porsche’s transaxle assembly (#10046), is currently owned by Porsche collector and restorer, Jack Styles in Massachusetts. Historian and author Lee Raskin originally documented and published all the serial numbers (VINs) for Dean’s Porsche Spyder (chassis, engine, transmission); as well as for his 356 Super Speedster. To date, neither of Dean’s Porsches have been located.[87][88]
Filmography[link]
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Fixed Bayonets! | Doggie | (uncredited) |
| 1952 | Sailor Beware | Boxing opponent's second | (uncredited) |
| Has Anybody Seen My Gal? | Youth at soda fountain | (uncredited) | |
| 1953 | Trouble Along the Way | Extra | (uncredited) |
| 1955 | East of Eden | Cal Trask | Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor Jussi Award for Best Foreign Actor |
| Rebel Without a Cause | Jim Stark | Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor | |
| 1956 | Giant | Jett Rink | Golden Globe Special Achievement Award for Best Dramatic Actor Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actor |
Stage[link]
Broadway[link]
- See the Jaguar (1952)
- The Immoralist (1954) – based on the book by André Gide
Off-Broadway[link]
- The Metamorphosis (1952) – based on the novella by Franz Kafka
- The Scarecrow (1954)
- Women of Trachis (1954) – translation by Ezra Pound
Television[link]
- Father Peyton's Family Theater, "Hill Number One" (Easter Sunday, April 1, 1951)
- The Web, "Sleeping Dogs" (February 20, 1952)
- Studio One, "Ten Thousand Horses Singing" (March 3, 1952)
- Lux Video Theatre, "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" (March 17, 1952)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "Prologue to Glory" (May 21, 1952)
- Studio One, "Abraham Lincoln" (May 26, 1952)
- Hallmark Hall of Fame, "Forgotten Children" (June 2, 1952)
- The Kate Smith Show, "Hounds of Heaven" (January 15, 1953)
- Treasury Men In Action, "The Case of the Watchful Dog" (January 29, 1953)
- You Are There, "The Capture of Jesse James" (February 8, 1953)
- Danger, "No Room" (April 14, 1953)
- Treasury Men In Action, "The Case of the Sawed-Off Shotgun" (April 16, 1953)
- Tales of Tomorrow, "The Evil Within" (May 1, 1953)
- Campbell Soundstage, "Something For An Empty Briefcase" (July 17, 1953)
- Studio One Summer Theater, "Sentence of Death" (August 17, 1953)
- Danger, "Death Is My Neighbor" (August 25, 1953)
- The Big Story, "Rex Newman, Reporter for the Globe and News" (September 11, 1953)
- Omnibus, "Glory In Flower" (October 4, 1953)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "Keep Our Honor Bright" (October 14, 1953)
- Campbell Soundstage, "Life Sentence" (October 16, 1953)
- Kraft Television Theatre, "A Long Time Till Dawn" (November 11, 1953)
- Armstrong Circle Theater, "The Bells of Cockaigne" (November 17, 1953)
- Robert Montgomery Presents the Johnson's Wax Program, Harvest (November 23, 1953)
- Danger, "The Little Women" (March 30, 1954)
- Philco TV Playhouse, "Run Like A Thief" (September 5, 1954)
- Danger, "Padlocks" (November 9, 1954)
- General Electric Theater, "I'm A Fool" (November 14, 1954)
- General Electric Theater, "The Dark, Dark Hour" (December 12, 1954)
- The United States Steel Hour, "The Thief" (January 4, 1955)
- Lux Video Theatre, "The Life of Emile Zola" (March 10, 1955) – appeared in a promotional interview for East of Eden shown after the program aired
- Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, "The Unlighted Road" (May 6, 1955)
Biographical films[link]
- James Dean: Portrait of a Friend aka James Dean (1976)[89]
- James Dean: The First American Teenager (1976), a television biography that includes interviews with Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and Nicholas Ray.[90]
- Sense Memories (PBS American Masters television biography) (2005)[91]
- Forever James Dean (1988), Warner Home Video (1995)[92]
- James Dean (fictionalized TV biographical film) (2001)
- James Dean – Kleiner Prinz, Little Bastard aka James Dean – Little Prince, Little Bastard, German television biography, includes interviews with William Bast, Marcus Winslow Jr, Robert Heller (2005)[93]
- James Dean: The Final Day features interviews with William Bast, Liz Sheridan and Maila Nurmi. Dean's bisexuality is openly discussed. Episode of Naked Hollywood television miniseries produced by The Oxford Film Company in association the BBC, aired in the US on the A&E Network, 1991.[94]
- Living Famously: James Dean, Australian television biography includes interviews with Martin Landau, Betsy Palmer, William Bast, and Bob Hinkle (2003, 2006).[95]
- James Dean – Mit Vollgas durchs Leben, Austrian television biography includes interviews with Rolf Weutherich and William Bast (2005).[93]
- James Dean – Outside the Lines (2002), episode of Biography, US television documentary includes interviews with Rod Steiger, William Bast, and Martin Landau (2002).[96]
- Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2012) [97]
References[link]
- ^ Obituary Variety, October 5, 1955.
- ^ Goodman, Ezra (September 24, 1956). "Delirium over dead star". Life (Vol. 41 No. 13): pp. 75–88.
- ^ http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/stars50.pdf?docID=262
- ^ Michael DeAngelis, Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson and Keanu Reeves (Duke University Press, 2001), p. 97.
- ^ For more details concerning this homosexual relationship, see Billy J. Harbin, Kim Marra and Robert A. Schanke, eds., The Gay And Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era (University of Michigan Press, 2005), 133. See also Joe and Jay Hyams, James Dean: Little Boy Lost (1992), p.20, who present an account alleging Dean's molestation as a teenager by his early mentor DeWeerd and describe it as Dean's first homosexual encounter (although DeWeerd himself portrayed his relationship with Dean as a completely conventional one).
- ^ Paul Alexander, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, Viking, 1994, p. 44.
- ^ Sessums, Kevin (March 23, 2011). "Elizabeth Taylor Interview About Her AIDS Advocacy". http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-23/elizabeth-taylor-interview-about-her-aids-advocacy-plus-stars-remember/?cid=sexybeast:mainpromo4. Retrieved March 24, 2011.
- ^ "Notable Actors | UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television". Tft.ucla.edu. 2010-02-11. http://www.tft.ucla.edu/alumni/notable-actors/. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ "The unseen James Dean". London: The Times. March 6, 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article518348.ece. Retrieved January 6, 2010.
- ^ "1950 Pepsi commercial". YouTube. 1950-12-13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQfikxbS4zE. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ a b c Bast, W., Surviving James Dean, New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2006.
- ^ On Dean's relationship with Brackett, see also Hyams, James Dean: Little Boy Lost, p.79.
- ^ Reise, R. The Unabridged James Dean, 1991
- ^ Holley, pages x-196.
- ^ Perry, pages 109-226.
- ^ Rathgeb, page 20.
- ^ Lemire, Christy. "5 most memorable teen-angst movies". MSNBC. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38037807/ns/today-entertainment/t/most-memorable-teen-angst-movies/#.T4ejLni1nww.
- ^ a b Wasef, Basem; Leno, Jay (2007), Legendary Motorcycles: The Stories and Bikes Made Famous by Elvis, Peter Fonda, Kenny Roberts and Other Motorcycling Greats, MotorBooks International, pp. 13–19, ISBN 0-7603-3070-0, http://books.google.com/books?id=jxWweoxJrxMC&pg=PA13, retrieved 2012-05-20
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. pp. 47–48; 68–71; 73–74; 78–81; 83–86. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean : At speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. pp. 101–102. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Raskin, Lee. ""Little Bastard" | The Silver Spyder Porsche/Dean Mystery Revisited". James Dean At Speed. David Bull Publishing. http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/little-bastard-the-silver-spyder-porschedean-mystery-revisited/. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. p. 106. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Guinness, Alec. Blessings in Disguise [Random House, 1985, ISBN 0-394-55237-7], ch. 4 (pp. 34-35)
- ^ "Premonition of Sir Alec Guiness". YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p_ZLFiq_fs. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ a b Perry, George, James Dean, London, New York: DK Publishing, 2005, p. 68 ("Authorized by the James Dean Estate")
- ^ William Bast, James Dean: a Biography, New York: Ballantine Books, 1956
- ^ a b c Bast, William: Surviving James Dean (Barricade Books, 2006), pp. 133, 183-232.
- ^ Michael DeAngelis, Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson and Keanu Reeves, p. 98.
- ^ Roberts, M. (1997). "The Man Who Listens to Horses." Random House. 102—104.
- ^ In his 1992 biography, James Dean: Little Boy Lost, journalist Joe Hyams, who claims to have known Dean personally, devotes an entire chapter to Dean's relationship with Angeli.
- ^ Bast, William, Surviving James Dean, p. 196, New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2006
- ^ a b c Alexander, Paul, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, New York: Viking, 1994
- ^ William Bast, Surviving James Dean, p. 197, (2006).
- ^ John Howlett, James Dean: A Biography, Plexus 1997
- ^ William Bast, Surviving James Dean
- ^ Liz Sheridan, Dizzy & Jimmy (ReganBooks HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 144-151.
- ^ Riese, Randall, The Unabridged James Dean: His Life and Legacy from A to Z, p. 239, Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1991.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. pp. 111–115. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. pp. 116–118. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. pp. 122–127. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Chawkins, Steve, "Remembering a 'Giant'", Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2005.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. p. 138,135. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Frascella, L., Weisel, A. Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause", p.233, New York: Touchstone, 2005
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ Beath, Warren (2005). James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. pp. 50–51. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/07864200006|07864200006]].
- ^ Riese, Randall (1991). The Unabridged James Dean: His Life from A to Z. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books. p. 534. ISBN 0-8092-4061-0.
- ^ (1995, July 13/14). "Obituary: Turnupseed, Donald", Tulare Advance-Register
- ^ Raskin, Lee (2005). James Dean: At Speed. Phoenix, Ariz.: David Bull. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7.
- ^ YouTube
- ^ California State Legislature (2002-08-15). "Senate Concurrent Resolution 52, Chapter 107" (PDF). http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/01-02/bill/sen/sb_0051-0100/scr_52_bill_20020815_chaptered.pdf.
- ^ Marjorie B. Garber, Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (2000), p.140. See also "Bisexuality and Celebrity." In Rhiel and Suchoff, The Seductions of Biography, p.18.
- ^ Perry, G., James Dean, p. 204, New York, DK Publishing, Inc., 2005
- ^ David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (Princeton University Press, 1997), p.244.
- ^ a b Garry Wotherspoon and Robert F. Aldrich, Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: from Antiquity to World War II (Routledge, 2001), p.105.
- ^ Lisa DiCarlo (October 25, 2004). "The Top Earners For 2004". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2004/10/25/cx_2004deadcelebtears_15.html. Retrieved February 24, 2006.
- ^ "Rare Film of Ronald Reagan, James Dean Unearthed (April 21, 2010)". CBS News. 2010-04-21. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/21/entertainment/main6417586.shtml. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ "Brian Williams NBC News: The Daily Nightly (April 22, 2010)". Dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com. 1945-04-13. http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/_nv/more/section/archive?date=2010/4. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ William Bast, James Dean: a Biography, New York: Ballantine Books, 1956.
- ^ Riese, Randall, The Unabridged James Dean: His Life from A to Z, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1991, pp. 41, 238
- ^ Alexander, Paul, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, New York: Viking, 1994, p. 87
- ^ Bast, Surviving James Dean, pp. 133, 150, 183.
- ^ Val Holley, Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip (2003), p.22.
- ^ Donald Spoto, Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean (HarperCollins, 1996), pp.150-151. See also Val Holley, James Dean: The Biography, pp.6, 7, 8, 78, 80, 85, 94, 153.
- ^ John Gilmore, Live Fast – Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1998).
- ^ See Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, Live Fast, Die Young – The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.
- ^ William Bast, Surviving James Dean (Barricade Books, 2006)
- ^ John Howlett (1997), James Dean, London: Plexus, p. 167
- ^ George Perry, James Dean, DK Publishing 2005
- ^ Joe Hyams, James Dean – Little Boy Lost, Warner Books 1992
- ^ William Bast, Surviving James Dean, Barricade 2006, p. 53-54, p. 135
- ^ Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon, 2005, pp 50-51.(McFarland & Co., Inc,Jef ferson, NC)ISBN 07864200006
- ^ Barris, George, Cars of the Stars,1974, pp.20-23.(Jonathan David Publishers)
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 130,133-134. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 131-134. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7
- ^ Barris, George, Cars of the Stars, 1974, pp. 21-22.
- ^ Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of Celebrity Phenomenon, 2005, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, Pomona, CA; Oct. 24, 1956; pp. 6
- ^ Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon, 2005, pp. 151.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 74, Interview with Frank Mazola, Rebel Without a Cause, cast member, “Crunch," Los Angeles, 2004.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 113, Interview with Lew Bracker, (close friend of James Dean invited to the Salinas races) pp. 113 , Los Angeles, 2004.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 133. Interview with car customizer, Dean Jeffries, Los Angeles, 2004.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 134.
- ^ Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of Celebrity Phenomenon, 2005, pp 51.
- ^ Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon, 2005, pp. 51.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 133-134.
- ^ Raskin, Lee, James Dean At Speed, 2005, pp. 130,133-134. ISBN 978-1-893618-49-7
- ^ Porsche Panorama, Porsche Club of America,Inc; Little Bastard: Search for James Dean's Spyder, July, 1984, Lee Raskin, pp. 12-16, 19-20. ISSN 0147-3565.
- ^ Henrichs, Steve;Marinello, Marco; Perrin, Jim, Raskin, Lee; Stoddard, Charles A; Zigg, Donald; Porsche Speedster TYP 540: Quintessential Sports Car, 2004, Big Lake Media, Inc., Incline Village, NV. ISBN 0-9746468-0-6, pp.186-190
- ^ "''James Dean'' at IMDB". Imdb.com. http://imdb.com/title/tt0074708/. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ hotfriend1. "James Dean: The First American Teenager". IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072990/. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
- ^ "''Sense Memories'' at IMDB". Imdb.com. http://imdb.com/title/tt0776283/. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ "''Forever James Dean'' at IMDB". Imdb.com. http://imdb.com/title/tt0268312/. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ a b James Dean – Kleiner Prinz, little Bastard film page at IMDB
- ^ "''Naked Hollywood'' at IMDB". Imdb.com. http://imdb.com/title/tt0297595/. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
- ^ Living Famously: James Dean at IMDB
- ^ Biography episode page at IMDB
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1705113/
Further reading[link]
- Alexander, Paul: Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean . Viking, 1994. ISBN 0-670-84951-0
- Bast, William : James Dean: A Biography. Ballantine Books, 1956.
- Bast, William : Surviving James Dean. Barricade Books, 2006. ISBN 1-56980-298-X
- Beath, Warren: Death of James Dean. Grove Press, 1986. ISBN 0-394-55758-1
- Beath, Warren, with Wheeldon, Paula; James Dean in Death: A Popular Encyclopedia of a Celebrity Phenomenon, McFarland & Co.,Inc., 2005. ISBN 07864200006
- Dalton, David : James Dean-The Mutant King: A Biography. Chicago Review Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55652-398-X
- Frascella, Lawrence and Weisel, Al : Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause. Touchstone, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-6082-1
- Gilmore, John : Live Fast-Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56025-169-7
- Gilmore, John: The Real James Dean. Pyramid Books, 1975. ISBN 0-515-03814-8
- Heinrichs, Steve; Marinello, Marco; Perrin, Jim; Raskin, Lee; Stoddard, Charles A; Zigg, Donald; Porsche Speedster TYP540: Quintessential Sports Car, 2004, Big Lake Media, Inc.,ISBN 0-9746468-0-6
- Holley, Val: James Dean: The Biography. St. Martin's Griffin, 1996. ISBN 0-312-15156-X
- Howell, John: James Dean: A Biography. Plexus Publishing, 1997. Second Revised Edition. ISBN 0-85965-243-2
- Hyams, Joe; Hyams, Jay: James Dean: Little Boy Lost. Time Warner Publishing, 1992. ISBN 0-446-51643-0
- Martinetti, Ronald: The James Dean Story, Pinnacle Books, 1975. ISBN 0-523-00633-0
- Morrissey: James Dean Is Not Dead. Babylon books, 1983. ISBN 0-907188-06-0
- Perry, George: James Dean. DK Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-4053-0525-8
- Riese, Randall: The Unabridged James Dean: His Life from A to Z. Contemporary Books, 1991. ISBN 0-8092-4061-0
- Raskin, Lee: James Dean: At Speed. David Bull Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-893618-49-8
- Sheridan, Liz: Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life With James Dean : A Love Story. HarperCollins Canada / Harper Trade, 2000. ISBN 0-06-039383-1
- Spoto, Donald: Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean. Harpercollins, 1996. ISBN 0-06-017656-3
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James Dean |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: James Dean |
- James Dean at the Internet Movie Database
- James Dean at the Internet Broadway Database
- James Dean at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- AMC's James Dean Photo Gallery: Living Fast and Dying Young
- James Dean.com link to "Official" CMG James Dean website
- 10 James Dean Essentials: Photo Essay on AMCtv.com
- James Dean: Hollywood's Rebel Icon - slideshow by Life magazine
- Mad about the boy on the Guardian Unlimited.
- James Dean Gallery site
- James Dean at Find a Grave, includes photos of Dean's Tombstone.
- James Dean at American Legends.
- JamesDeanArchives.com
- William Bast, Dean's biographer.
- The Stuff of Legend: James Dean's Final Ride (Documentary)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Dean, James |
| Alternative names | Dean, James Byron |
| Short description | actor |
| Date of birth | February 8, 1931 |
| Place of birth | Marion, Indiana, United States |
| Date of death | September 30, 1955 |
| Place of death | Cholame, California, United States |
http://wn.com/James_Dean
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/James Dean
http://cs.wn.com/James Dean
http://id.wn.com/James Dean
http://es.wn.com/James Dean
http://ru.wn.com/Дин, Джеймс
http://pt.wn.com/James Dean
http://pl.wn.com/James Dean
http://fr.wn.com/James Dean
http://de.wn.com/James Dean
http://hi.wn.com/जेम्स डीन
http://nl.wn.com/James Dean
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dean
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.
| Audrey Hepburn | |
|---|---|
 Hepburn in a studio publicity portrait for 1957 film Love in the Afternoon |
|
| Born | Audrey Kathleen Ruston (1929-05-04)4 May 1929 Ixelles, Belgium |
| Died | 20 January 1993(1993-01-20) (aged 63) Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland |
| Cause of death | Appendiceal cancer |
| Resting place | Tolochenaz Cemetery, Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names |
|
| Occupation | Actress, humanitarian |
| Years active | 1948–1992 |
| Spouse |
|
| Partner |
|
| Children |
|
| Parents |
|
| Awards | List of awards and honours |
| Signature |  |
| Website | |
| www.audreyhepburn.com | |
Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time who was ranked as the third greatest female screen legend in the history of American cinema. Remembered as both a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century, Hepburn redefined glamour with "elfin" features and a gamine waif-like figure that inspired designs by Givenchy and earned her place in the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.[1][2][3]
Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War, where she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell in Amsterdam before moving to London in 1948 to continue ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions.
After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award-winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age who received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and accrued a Tony Award for her theatrical performance in the 1954 Broadway play Ondine. Hepburn remains one of few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
She appeared in fewer films as her life went on, devoting much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although contributing to the organisation since 1954, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia between 1988 and 1992. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in late 1992, but a month later, aged 63, Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland in early 1993.[4][5][6]
Contents |
Early life[link]
Audrey Hepburn was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 on Rue Keyenveld in Ixelles, a municipality in Brussels in Belgium.[7] Her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (1889–1980), was born in Úžice, Bohemia[8] to a father of British Isles and Austrian descent[9] and an Austrian mother.[10] Ruston had earlier been married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress he met in the Dutch East Indies.[11] Although born Ruston, he later double-barrelled the surname to the more "aristocratic" Hepburn-Ruston, mistakenly[12] believing himself descended from James Hepburn, third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.[11]
Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra (1900–1984), was a Dutch aristocrat and the daughter of Aarnoud van Heemstra, who was mayor of Arnhem from 1910 to 1920 and served as Governor of Suriname from 1921 to 1928. Ella's mother was Elbrig Willemine Henriette, Baroness van Asbeck (1873-1939), who was a granddaughter of Dirk van Hogendorp.[10] At age nineteen, Ella had married the knight Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford, but they divorced in 1925. Hepburn had two half-brothers from this marriage: Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford (1920–1979) and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford (1924–2010).[11][13]
Ruston and van Heemstra married in Batavia in September 1926. They moved back to Europe, to Ixelles in Belgium, where Hepburn was born in 1929. In January 1932 the family moved on to Linkebeek, a nearby Brussels municipality.[14] Although born in Belgium, Hepburn had British citizenship through her father.[7] Because of her mother's family in the Netherlands and her father's job with a British company,[15] the family often travelled between the three countries. With her multinational background, she had a talent for languages and went on to speak fluent English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. Hepburn was a playful and imaginative child who discovered a passion for ballet by the age of 5, loved to read and was nicknamed "Monkey Puzzle" by her father.
Childhood and adolescence in World War II[link]
Hepburn's parents were members of the British Union of Fascists in the mid-1930s,[16] with her father becoming a true Nazi sympathiser.[17] After her mother discovered him in bed with the nanny of her children,[18] Hepburn's father left the family abruptly. In the 1960s, Hepburn would finally locate him again in Dublin through the Red Cross. Although he remained emotionally detached, his daughter remained in contact and supported him financially until his death.[19]
After Joseph had left in 1935, Ella van Heemstra took her children home to Arnhem, though her sons spent much time with their father in The Hague. Ella and Audrey moved to Kent in 1937, where Hepburn was educated at a tiny independent girls' school in the village of Elham, run by the sisters Rigden and then attended by about 14 children.[20][21] In September 1939, her mother relocated her back home in Arnhem, in the belief that, like in the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. Whilst there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where, in addition to the standard school curriculum, she trained in ballet with Winja Marova. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, a derivative of her mother's name Ella,[22] because an "English sounding" name was considered dangerous during the German occupation. In 1942, her uncle Otto van Limburg Stirum, husband of Ella's older sister Miesje, was executed in retaliation for a sabotage by the resistance movement, while her half-brother Jan was deported to Berlin to work in a German labour camp (Alex went into hiding to avoid the same fate).[23] After this, Ella, Miesje and Audrey moved in with Baron van Heemstra in nearby Velp. During her wartime struggles, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition, developed acute anæmia, respiratory problems, and œdema.[24] Hepburn, in a retrospective interview, commented, "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child."[25]
Notwithstanding such strife, by 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She had secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance. "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances," she remarked.[26] After the Allied landing on D-Day, living conditions grew worse and Arnhem was subsequently devastated by Allied artillery fire under Operation Market Garden. During the Dutch famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans had blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands' already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.[17][27] One way that Hepburn passed the time was by drawing; some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.[28] When the country was liberated, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed.[29] Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk.[30] Hepburn's war-time experiences sparked her devotion to UNICEF, an international humanitarian organisation, in her later career.[17][27]
Career[link]
Career beginnings and early roles[link]
After the war ended in 1945, Ella and Audrey moved to Amsterdam, where Hepburn took ballet lessons for three years with Sonia Gaskell, arguably the leading figure in Dutch ballet.[31] In 1948 she appeared for the first time on film, as an air stewardess in an educational travel film made by Charles van der Linden and Henry Josephson, Dutch in Seven Lessons.[32] Gaskell provided an introduction to Marie Rambert, and in 1948 Hepburn traveled with her mother to London to study ballet at the Ballet Rambert. She supported herself with part-time work as a model. Around that time she decided to drop "Ruston" from her double-barreled surname. When Hepburn asked Rambert about her future, Rambert assured her that she could continue to work there and have a great career, but her relatively tall height of 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)[33] coupled with her poor nutrition during the war would keep her from becoming a prima ballerina. Hepburn trusted Rambert's assessment and decided to pursue acting: a career in which she at least had the chance to excel.[34] After becoming a star, Rambert said of Hepburn, "She was a wonderful learner. If she had wanted to persevere, she might have become an outstanding ballerina."[35]
Hepburn's mother worked menial jobs in order to support them but Hepburn needed to find employment. Since she had trained in theatre all her life, working as a London chorus girl seemed sensible. "I needed the money; it paid ₤3 more than ballet jobs."[36] She performed in the musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome and Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End. Her theatrical work, however, revealed that her voice was not strong and needed to be developed. Hepburn, therefore, took elocution lessons with the actor Felix Aylmer.[37] After being spotted by a scout for Paramount Pictures on stage,[35] Hepburn registered with the casting officers of British film studios while working in the West End and appeared in minor roles in the 1951 films One Wild Oat, Laughter in Paradise, Young Wives' Tale and The Lavender Hill Mob. Hepburn's first significant film performance was in Thorold Dickinson's The Secret People (1952), in which she played a prodigious ballerina and performed all of her own dancing sequences. Noticed by the French novelist Colette when on the set of Monte Carlo Baby (1951), Hepburn was also chosen to play the title character in the Broadway play Gigi. Upon first sight of Hepburn, Colette whispered, "Voilà," indicating Hepburn, "there's your Gigi."[35][38] Opening on 24 November 1951 at the Fulton Theatre, the play ran for 219 performances finishing on 31 May 1952.[39] Hepburn's debut on Broadway earned her a Theatre World Award.[39]
[edit] Roman Holiday and increased popularity
In the Italian-set Roman Holiday (1953), a film she would later call her dearest movie, Hepburn had her first starring role as Princess Ann, an incognito European princess who, escaping the reins of royalty, falls in love with an American newsman (Gregory Peck). While producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn's screen test that he cast her in the lead. Unbeknownst that she was still being filmed after the screen test, Hepburn displayed her ability as she candidly answered questions, relaxed and completely unaware. Wyler later commented, "She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting and we said, 'That's the girl!'"[40] Originally, the film was to have had only Gregory Peck's name above its title in large font while she would receive "Introducing Audrey Hepburn" beneath though Peck suggested to Wyler that he elevate her to equal billing so her name appeared before the title and in type as large as his: "You've got to change that because she'll be a big star and I'll look like a big jerk."[41]
File:Hepburn 1954 oscars.jpg
Hepburn with her first and only competitive Academy Award in 1953
Peck was correct. Hepburn garnered critical and commercial acclaim for her portrayal and supplemented the unexpected Academy Award for Best Actress with her first BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and only Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama in 1953. A. H. Weiler noted in The New York Times that although "she is not precisely a newcomer to films, [Hepburn] the British actress who is being starred for the first time as Princess Ann, is a slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike in her profound appreciation of newly found, simple pleasures and love. Although she bravely smiles her acknowledgement of the end of that affair, she remains a pitifully lonely figure facing a stuffy future."[1] Due to the instant celebrity that came with the film, she was signed to a seven-picture contract with Paramount with twelve months in between films to allow her time for stage work[42] while spawning what became known as the Audrey Hepburn "look" after her illustration was placed on the September 1953 cover of TIME magazine.[43]
Following her success in Roman Holiday, she starred in Billy Wilder's romantic Cinderella-story comedy Sabrina (1954) in which wealthy brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) compete for the affections of their chauffeur's innocent daughter (Hepburn). For her performance, she was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Actress while winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role the same year. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times labeled Hepburn "a young lady of extraordinary range of sensitive and moving expressions within such a frail and slender frame" concluding that "she is even more luminous as the daughter and pet of the servants' hall than she was as a princess last year."[44] The uncredited Hubert de Givenchy was responsible for many of Hepburn's outfits in the film. Initially disappointed, Givenchy noted that, upon being told that the actress would be "Miss Hepburn", he had expected Katharine Hepburn. When faced with this actress, he told Hepburn he had little time to spare. Nevertheless, she knew exactly how she wanted to look and asked to view his latest collection.[41] Their collaboration in Sabrina formed a life-long friendship and partnership; she was often a muse for many of his designs and her style became renowned internationally.
Beginning another collaboration that year, this time with actor Mel Ferrer, she starred in the fantasy play Ondine on Broadway. With her lithe and lean frame, Hepburn made a convincing water spirit named Ondine in this sad story about love found and lost with a human (Ferrer). A New York Times critic commented, "Somehow Miss Hepburn is able to translate [its intangibles] into the language of the theatre without artfulness or precociousness. She gives a pulsing performance that is all grace and enchantment, disciplined by an instinct for the realities of the stage." While the leading characters in the play grow apart, the actors found themselves becoming closer. Hepburn and Ferrer got married on September 25, 1954, in Switzerland; their sometimes tumultuous partnership would last for the better part of the next fifteen years. Her performance won her the 1954 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, the same year she won the Academy Award for Roman Holiday. Hepburn, therefore, stands as one of three actresses to receive the Academy and Tony Awards for Best Actress in the same year (the others being Shirley Booth and Ellen Burstyn).[45] By the mid-1950s, Hepburn was vastly becoming one of the biggest motion picture stars in Hollywood and received the Golden Globe for World Film Favorite – Female in 1955,[46] but also a major fashion influence. Her gamine and elfin appearance and widely recognised sense of chic were both admired and imitated. Hepburn was asked to play Anne Frank's counterpart in both the Broadway and film adaptations of Frank's life. Hepburn, however, who was born the same year as Frank, found herself "emotionally incapable" of the task, and at almost thirty years old, too old.[47] The role was eventually given to Susan Strasberg and Millie Perkins in the play and film respectively.
Having become one of Hollywood's most popular box-office attractions, she went on to star in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including her BAFTA- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Natasha Rostova in War and Peace (1956), an adaptation of the Tolstoy novel set during the Napoleonic wars with Henry Fonda and husband Mel Ferrer. In 1957, she exhibited her dancing abilities in her debut musical film Funny Face (1957) where Fred Astaire, a fashion photographer, discovers a beatnik bookstore clerk (Hepburn), who, lured by a free trip to Paris, becomes a beautiful model. The same year Hepburn starred in another romantic comedy, Love in the Afternoon, alongside Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier. Yet, she stepped away from lighthearted fare when she played Sister Luke in The Nun's Story (1959), which focuses on the character's struggle to succeed as a nun alongside co-star Peter Finch. The role accrued her third Academy Award nomination and earned her a second BAFTA Award. A review in Variety said "Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance." Films in Review stated that her performance "will forever silence those who have thought her less an actress than a symbol of the sophisticated child/woman. Her portrayal of Sister Luke is one of the great performances of the screen."[48] Reportedly, she spent hours in convents and with members of the Church to bring truth to her portrayal: "I gave more time, energy and thought to this than to any of my previous screen performances."[49] Following this, she received lukewarm reception for starring with Anthony Perkins in the romantic adventure Green Mansions (1959) where she plays – "with grace and dignity" – the "ethereal" Rima, a jungle girl, who falls in love with a Venezuelan traveller played by Perkins[50] and The Unforgiven (1960), her only western film, where she appears "a bit too polished, too fragile and civilized among such tough and stubborn types" of Burt Lancaster and Lillian Gish in a story of racism against a group of Native Americans.[51]
[edit] Breakfast at Tiffany's and continued stardom
Three months after the birth of her son, Sean, in 1960, Hepburn began work on Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), a film very loosely based on the Truman Capote novella. The film was drastically changed from the original version. Capote disapproved of many changes and proclaimed that Hepburn was "grossly miscast"[52] as Holly Golightly, a quirky New York call girl,[53] a role he had envisioned for Marilyn Monroe.[52] Hepburn's portrayal of Golightly was adapted from the original: "I can't play a hooker," she admitted to Marty Jurow, co-producer of the film.[52] Despite the lack of sexual innuendo in her character,[52] her portrayal was nominated for the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actress and became an iconic character in American cinema. Often considered her defining role,[54] Holly Golightly, Hepburn's high fashion style and sophistication within the film became synonymous with her. She named the role "the jazziest of my career"[55] yet admitted that, "I'm an introvert. Playing the extroverted girl was the hardest thing I ever did."[56] The little black dress which is worn by Hepburn in the beginning of the film is cited as one of the most iconic items of clothing in the history of the twentieth century and perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time.[57][58][59][60]
Playing opposite Shirley MacLaine and James Garner, her next role in William Wyler's lesbian-themed drama The Children's Hour (1961) saw Hepburn and MacLaine play teachers whose lives become troubled after a student accuses them of being lesbians. The film was one of Hollywood's earliest treatments of the subject of lesbianism,[54] and perhaps due to the illiberal state of society, the film and Hepburn's performance went seemingly unnoticed both critically and commercially. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, however, noted that "it is not too well acted" with the exception of Hepburn who "gives the impression of being sensitive and pure" of its "muted theme"[61] while Variety magazine also complimented Hepburn's "soft sensitivity, marvellous projection and emotional understatement" adding that Hepburn and MacLaine "beautifully complement each other."[62]
Her only film with Cary Grant came in the comic thriller Charade (1963). Hepburn, who plays Regina Lampert, finds herself pursued by several men who chase the fortune her murdered husband had stolen. The role earned her third and final competitive BAFTA Award and accrued another Golden Globe nomination though critic Bosley Crowther was less kind: "Hepburn is cheerfully committed to a mood of how-nuts-can-you-be in an obviously comforting assortment of expensive Givenchy costumes."[63] Grant (59 years old at the time), who had previously withdrawn from the starring male lead roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, was sensitive about the age difference between Hepburn (at age 34) and him, making him uncomfortable about the romantic interplay. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to change the screenplay so that Hepburn's character would be the one to romantically pursue his.[64] Grant, however, loved to humour Hepburn and once said, "All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn."[65]
Paris When It Sizzles (1964) reteamed Hepburn with William Holden nearly ten years after Sabrina. The Parisian-set screwball comedy, called "marshmallow-weight hokum",[66] was "uniformly panned"[67] but critics were kind to Hepburn's creation of Gabrielle Simpson, the young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter (Holden) who aids his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots, describing her as "a refreshingly individual creature in an era of the exaggerated curve."[66] Critical reception was worsened by a number of problems that plagued the set behind the scenes. Holden tried, without success, to rekindle a romance with the now-married actress; that, combined with his alcoholism made the situation a challenge. Hepburn, after principal photography began, demanded the dismissal of cinematographer Claude Renoir after seeing what she felt were unflattering dailies.[67] Superstitious, she also insisted on dressing room 55 because that was her lucky number (she had dressing room 55 for Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and required that Givenchy, her long-time designer, be given a credit in the film for her perfume.[67]
File:Mflscrapbkpg02.jpg
Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1964)
"Not since Gone with the Wind has a motion picture created such universal excitement as My Fair Lady," wrote Soundstage magazine in 1964,[45] yet Hepburn's landing the role of Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 George Cukor film adaptation of the stage musical sparked controversy. Julie Andrews, who had originated the role in the stage show, had not been offered the part because producer Jack Warner thought Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor more "bankable" propositions.[68] Initially refusing, Hepburn asked Warner to give it to Andrews but, eventually, Hepburn was cast.[68] Further friction was created when, although non-singer Hepburn had sung with "throaty charm" in Funny Face and had lengthy vocal preparation for the role in My Fair Lady,[68] her vocals were dubbed by Marni Nixon.[69][70] A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle's songs were not transposed down to accommodate Hepburn's "low-mezzo voice" (as Nixon referred to it).[68] Upset, when first informed, she walked out. She returned the next day and apologized to everybody for her "wicked behavior".[68] Although Hepburn had lip synced to her recorded tracks during filming, Nixon looped her vocals in post-production and was given multiple attempts to match Hepburn's lip movements precisely.[68] Overall, about 90% of her singing was dubbed despite being promised that most of her vocals would be used.[68] Hepburn's voice remains in one line in "I Could Have Danced All Night", in the first verse of "Just You Wait", and in the entirety of its reprise in addition to sing-talking in parts of "The Rain in Spain" in the finished film.[68] When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, "You could tell, couldn't you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted ... next time —" She bit her lip to prevent her saying more.[56] She later admitted that she would have never have accepted the role knowing that Warner intended to have nearly all of her singing dubbed.[68] The controversy reached its height when, despite the film's accumulation of eight out of a possible twelve awards at the 37th Academy Awards, Hepburn was left nomination-less in the Best Actress category. Julie Andrews, however, was nominated for her efforts in Mary Poppins (1964), and won it. The media tried to play up a rivalry between the two actresses, even though both women denied any such bad feelings existed and got along well. Despite such strife, many critics greatly applauded Hepburn's "exquisite" performance.[70] "The happiest thing about [My Fair Lady]," wrote Bosley Crowther in The New York Times "is that Audrey Hepburn superbly justifies the decision of Jack Warner to get her to play the title role."[69] Her co-star Rex Harrison, who played Professor Higgins, also called Hepburn his favourite leading lady and Gene Ringgold of Soundstage also commented that "Audrey Hepburn is magnificent. She is Eliza for the ages,"[45] while adding, "Everyone agreed that if Julie Andrews was not to be in the film, Audrey Hepburn was the perfect choice."[45]
As the decade carried on, Hepburn appeared in an assortment of genres including the heist comedy How to Steal a Million (1966) where she played Nicole, the daughter of a famous art collector whose collection consists entirely of forgeries. Fearing her father's exposure, Nicole sets out to steal one of his priceless statues with the help of Simon Dermott (Peter O'Toole). In 1967, she starred in two films; the first being Two for the Road, a non-linear and innovative British dramedy that traces the course of a couple's troubled marriage. Director Stanley Donen said that Hepburn was more free and happy than he had ever seen her, and he credited that to co-star Albert Finney.[71] The second, Wait Until Dark, is a suspense thriller in which Hepburn demonstrated her acting range by playing the part of a terrorised blind woman. Filmed on the brink of divorce, it was a difficult film considering husband Mel Ferrer was its producer and she lost fifteen pounds under the stress, but she found solace in co-star Richard Crenna and director Terence Young. Hepburn earned her fifth and final competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress; Bosley Crawther affirmed, "Hepburn plays the poignant role, the quickness with which she changes and the skill with which she manifests terror attract sympathy and anxiety to her and give her genuine solidity in the final scenes."[72]
Final entertainment-related projects[link]
From 1967 onward, after fifteen highly successful years in film, Hepburn decided to devote more time to her family and acted only occasionally. She attempted a comeback in 1976, co-starring with Sean Connery, in the period piece Robin and Marian, which was moderately successful. In 1979, Hepburn took the lead role of Elizabeth Roffe in the international production of Bloodline, re-teaming with director Terence Young (Wait Until Dark). She shared top billing with co-stars Ben Gazzara, James Mason and Romy Schneider. Author Sidney Sheldon revised his novel when it was reissued to tie into the film, making her character a much older woman to better match the actress's age. The film, an international intrigue amid the jet-set, was a critical and box office failure. Hepburn's last starring role in a cinematic film was with Ben Gazzara in the 1981 comedy They All Laughed, directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The film was overshadowed by the murder of one of its stars, Bogdanovich's girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten; the film was released after Stratten's death but only in limited runs. In 1987, she co-starred with Robert Wagner in a tongue-in-cheek made-for-television caper film, Love Among Thieves, which borrowed elements from several of Hepburn's films, most notably Charade and How to Steal a Million.
After finishing her last role in a motion picture in 1988, a cameo appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always, Hepburn completed only two more entertainment-related projects, both critically acclaimed. Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn was a PBS documentary television series, her final performance before cameras filmed on location in seven countries in the spring and summer of 1990. A one-hour special preceded the series, debuting in March 1991, while the series commenced the day after her death (21 January 1993). For the series's debut, Hepburn was posthumously awarded the 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming. Recorded in 1992, her spoken word album, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales, features readings of classic children's stories and earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She remains one of the few entertainers to win Grammy and Emmy Awards posthumously.
Contributions to UNICEF[link]
Hepburn was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. Then-United States president George H. W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work with UNICEF, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posthumously awarded her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her contribution to humanity, with her son accepting on her behalf. Grateful for her own good fortune after enduring the German occupation as a child, she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping impoverished children in the poorest nations. Hepburn's travels were made easier by her wide knowledge of languages; besides being naturally bilingual in English and Dutch, she also was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.[73]
Though she had done work for UNICEF in the 1950s, starting in 1954 with radio presentations, this was a much higher level of dedication. Those close to her[who?] say that the thoughts of dying, helpless children consumed her for the rest of her life. Her first field mission was to Ethiopia in 1988. She visited an orphanage in Mek'ele that housed 500 starving children and had UNICEF send food. Of the trip, she said, "I have a broken heart. I feel desperate. I can't stand the idea that two million people are in imminent danger of starving to death, many of them children, [and] not because there isn't tons of food sitting in the northern port of Shoa. It can't be distributed. Last spring, Red Cross and UNICEF workers were ordered out of the northern provinces because of two simultaneous civil wars... I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering."[74]
In August 1988, Hepburn went to Turkey on an immunisation campaign. She called Turkey "the loveliest example" of UNICEF's capabilities. Of the trip, she said, "the army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad."[citation needed] In October, Hepburn went to South America. In Venezuela and Ecuador, Hepburn told the United States Congress, "I saw tiny mountain communities, slums, and shantytowns receive water systems for the first time by some miracle – and the miracle is UNICEF. I watched boys build their own schoolhouse with bricks and cement provided by UNICEF." Hepburn toured Central America in February 1989, and met with leaders in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In April, she visited Sudan with Wolders as part of a mission called "Operation Lifeline". Because of civil war, food from aid agencies had been cut off. The mission was to ferry food to southern Sudan. Hepburn said, "I saw but one glaring truth: These are not natural disasters but man-made tragedies for which there is only one man-made solution – peace."[citation needed] In October, Hepburn and Wolders went to Bangladesh. John Isaac, a UN photographer, said, "Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her – she was like the Pied Piper." In October 1990, Hepburn went to Vietnam in an effort to collaborate with the government for national UNICEF-supported immunisation and clean water programmes.
In September 1992, four months before she died, Hepburn went to Somalia. Calling it "apocalyptic", she said, "I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this." "The earth is red – an extraordinary sight – that deep terracotta red. And you see the villages, displacement camps and compounds, and the earth is all rippled around them like an ocean bed. And those were the graves. There are graves everywhere. Along the road, around the paths that you take, along the riverbeds, near every camp – there are graves everywhere."[citation needed] Though scarred by what she had seen, Hepburn still had hope. "Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicisation of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanisation of politics." "Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist. I have seen the miracle of water which UNICEF has helped to make a reality. Where for centuries young girls and women had to walk for miles to get water, now they have clean drinking water near their homes. Water is life, and clean water now means health for the children of this village." "People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognise the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF."
Personal life[link]
Romances, marriages, children and miscarriages[link]
In 1952, Hepburn was engaged to the young James Hanson,[75] whom she had known since her London dancing days. She called it "love at first sight"; however, after having her wedding dress fitted and the date set, she decided the marriage would not work because the demands of their careers would keep them apart most of the time.[76] She issued a statement about her decision, saying, "When I get married, I want to be really married."[77] In the early 1950s, she also dated future Hair producer Michael Butler.[78] Hepburn and Gregory Peck bonded during the filming of Roman Holiday (1953) and there were rumours that they were romantically involved; both denied it. Hepburn, however, added, "Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you're going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can't do it any other way. But you don't carry it beyond the set."[79] They did however become lifelong friends. During the filming of Sabrina (1954), Hepburn and the already-married William Holden became romantically involved. She hoped to marry him and have children, but she broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had undergone a vasectomy.[80][81] Although a common perception that Bogart and Hepburn (both starred in Sabrina together) did not get along, Hepburn commented that, "Sometimes it's the so-called 'tough guys' that are the most tender hearted, as Bogey was with me."[82]
At a cocktail party hosted by Gregory Peck, Hepburn met American actor Mel Ferrer.[45] Ferrer recalled that, "We began talking about theatre; she knew all about the La Jolla Playhouse Summer Theatre, where Greg Peck and I had been co-producing plays. She also said she'd seen me three times in the movie Lili. Finally, she said she'd like to do a play with me, and she asked me to send her a likely play if I found one."[45][83] Ferrer, vying for Hepburn to take the title role, sent her the script for the play Ondine. She agreed and rehearsals started in January 1954. Eight months later, on 25 September 1954, after meeting, working together and falling in love, the pair were married[84] while preparing to star together in the film War and Peace (1955). Before having their only son, Hepburn had two miscarriages in March 1955[citation needed] and in 1959. The latter occurred when filming The Unforgiven (1960) where breaking her back after falling off a horse and onto a rock resulted in hospital stay and miscarriage induced by physical and mental stress. Hepburn, therefore, took a year off work in order to successfully have a child. Sean Hepburn Ferrer, their son, whose godfather was the novelist A. J. Cronin who resided near Hepburn in Lucerne, was born on 17 July 1960. Despite the insistence from gossip columns that the marriage would not last, Hepburn claimed that she and her husband were inseparable and very happy together yet admitting that he had a bad temper.[85] Ferrer was rumoured to be too controlling of Hepburn and had been referred to by others as being her Svengali – an accusation that Hepburn laughed off.[86] William Holden was quoted as saying, "I think Audrey allows Mel to think he influences her." After a 14 year marriage, the couple divorced on 5 December 1968. Their son believed that Hepburn had stayed in the marriage too long. In June 2008, Mel Ferrer died of heart failure at the age of ninety.
She met Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti on a cruise and fell in love with him on a trip to Greek ruins. She believed she would have more children, and possibly stop working. She married him on 18 January 1969 at age 40, she gave birth to their son Luca Dotti on 8 February 1970. When pregnant with Luca in 1969, Hepburn was more careful, resting for months and passing the time by painting before delivering him by caesarean section. Hepburn had her final miscarriage in 1974.[87] Although Dotti loved Hepburn and was well liked by Sean, who called him "fun", he began having affairs with younger women. As for herself, Hepburn had a romantic relationship with actor Ben Gazzara during the filming of the 1979 movie Bloodline.[3] The Dotti-Hepburn marriage lasted thirteen years and ended in 1982 when Hepburn felt Luca and Sean were old enough to handle life with a single mother.[citation needed] Although Hepburn broke off all contact with Ferrer (she only spoke to him twice more in the remainder of her life), she remained in touch with Dotti for the benefit of Luca. In October 2007, Andrea Dotti died from complications of a colonoscopy.
From 1980 until her death, Hepburn lived and was romantically involved with Dutch actor Robert Wolders,[88] the widower of actress Merle Oberon. She met Wolders through a friend in the later stage of her marriage to Dotti. The divorce from Dotti finalised, Wolders and Hepburn started their lives together, although they never married. In 1989, she called the nine years she had spent with him the happiest years of her life. "Took me long enough," she said in an interview with American journalist Barbara Walters. Walters then asked why they never married; Hepburn replied that they were married, just not formally.[citation needed]
Death[link]
Upon return from Somalia to Switzerland in late September 1992, Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pains. She went to specialists and received inconclusive results, so decided to have herself examined while on a trip to Los Angeles, California in October. On 1 November, Hepburn checked in at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with her family. Doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer that had spread from her appendix, a very rare form of cancer belonging to a group of cancers known as pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP).[89] Having grown slowly over several years, the cancer had metastasised, not as a tumour, but as a thin coating over her small intestine. After surgery, the doctors put Hepburn through 5-fluorouracil Leucovorin chemotherapy.[90] A few days later, she had an obstruction and medication was not enough to dull the pain. She underwent further surgery on 1 December. After one hour, the surgeon decided that the cancer had spread too far to be removed fully, and was inoperable.
After coming to terms with the gravity of Hepburn's illness, her family decided to return home to Switzerland in order to celebrate her last Christmas. Because Hepburn was still recovering from surgery, she was unable to fly on commercial aircraft. Hubert de Givenchy offered to help and arranged for Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon to send her private Gulfstream jet, filled with flowers, to take Hepburn from Los Angeles to Geneva.[91] On the evening of 20 January 1993, at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland, Hepburn died in her sleep of appendiceal cancer. After her death, Gregory Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore.[92]
Funeral services were held at the village church of Tolochenaz, Switzerland, on 24 January 1993. Maurice Eindiguer, the same pastor who wed Hepburn and Mel Ferrer and baptised her son Sean in 1960, presided over her funeral while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, of UNICEF, delivered a eulogy. Many family members and friends attended the funeral, including her sons, partner Robert Wolders, brother Ian Quarles van Ufford, ex-husbands Andrea Dotti and Mel Ferrer, Hubert de Givenchy, executives of UNICEF, and fellow actors Alain Delon and Roger Moore.[93] Flower arrangements were sent to the funeral by Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor and the Dutch royal family.[94] The same day as her funeral, Hepburn was interred at the Tolochenaz Cemetery, a small cemetery that sits atop a hill overlooking the village.[95]
Legacy[link]
Hepburn's legacy as an actress and a personality has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named Hepburn third among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time. Even in her last years, she remained a visible presence in the film world. She received a tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1991 and was a frequent presenter at the Academy Awards. She was the recipient of four posthumous awards including the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and competitive Grammy and Emmy Awards. She has been the subject of many biographies since her death and the 2000 dramatisation of her life titled The Audrey Hepburn Story which starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Emmy Rossum as the older and younger Hepburn respectively.[96] The film concludes with footage of the real Audrey Hepburn, shot during one of her final missions for UNICEF.
Hepburn's image is widely used in advertising campaigns across the world. In Japan, a series of commercials used colourised and digitally enhanced clips of Hepburn in Roman Holiday to advertise Kirin black tea. In the United States, Hepburn was featured in a Gap commercial which ran from 7 September 2006, to 5 October 2006. It used clips of her dancing from Funny Face, set to AC/DC's "Back in Black", with the tagline "It's Back – The Skinny Black Pant". To celebrate its "Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap made a sizeable donation to the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund.[97]
Hepburn has been considered a gay icon.[98][99][100]
Style[link]
Hepburn's reverence as a fashion icon has continued long since her death, proved by accruing the titles "most beautiful woman of all time" and "most beautiful woman of the 20th century" in polls by Evian and QVC respectively.[101][102][103] Despite her physique being far from the Hollywood preference of bosomy actresses like Marilyn Monroe, Martine Carol, Kim Novak and Lana Turner. "This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past," said director Billy Wilder maliciously, adding that she was very feminine by her grace, huge eyes and long legs, but even against the gender stereotypes of the time, the natural thickness of her brown eyebrows makes her "funny face unforgettable."[104]
Her style was partially the result of meeting the couturier Hubert de Givenchy, who designed her dresses for Sabrina in 1954. Hepburn revealed, "[Givenchy] gave me a look, a kind, a silhouette. He has always been the best and he stayed the best. Because he kept the spare style that I love. What is more beautiful than a simple sheath made an extraordinary way in a special fabric, and just two earrings?"[104] The designer created her outfits for many other films, including Funny Face, Love in the Afternoon, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Paris When It Sizzles, Charade and How to Steal a Million. In the latter, Peter O'Toole's character tells Hepburn's to "give Givenchy the night off", persuading her to dress as a cleaning lady. Givenchy was always amazed that, even after thirty five years of collaboration, "her measurements [had] not changed an inch."[104] Givenchy remained Hepburn's friend and ambassador, and she his muse, throughout her life. Hepburn observed, "I have many things in common with Hubert. We like the same things."[104] She agreed to model, on occasions, the creations of her friend. In 1988, when he presented his summer collection in Paris, she said, "Wherever I am in the world, he is always there. He is a man who does not disperse into worldliness. He has time for those he loves."[104] Givenchy subsequently created a perfume for her titled L'Interdit (French for "Forbidden"). She equally inspired fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who captured an intentionally overexposed close-up of Hepburn's face in which only her famous features – her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth – are visible. "I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait."[105]
Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo created a shoe for her and made her ambassador of his fashion house while honouring her in a 1999 exhibition dedicated to the actress titled Audrey Hepburn, a woman, the style. She also popularised the Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses after the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) in addition to being on the cover of many fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She exercised fashion in her lifetime and continues to influence fashion. Fashion experts affirmed that Hepburn's longevity as a style icon results from her sticking with a look that suited her: "clean lines, simple yet bold accessories, minimalist palette."[106] One of her many costars, Shirley Maclaine, wrote in her 1996 memoir My Lucky Stars, "[Hepburn] had very rare qualities and I envied her style and taste. I felt clumsy and old fashioned when I was with her." Hepburn's fashion styles continue to be popular among women today.[107] Although Hepburn enjoyed fashion, she did not place much importance on it, preferring casual and comfortable clothes contrary to her image.[108] In addition, she never considered herself attractive. She stated in a 1959 interview, "you can even say that I hated myself at certain periods. I was too fat, or maybe too tall, or maybe just plain too ugly... you can say my definiteness stems from underlying feelings of insecurity and inferiority. I couldn't conquer these feelings by acting indecisive. I found the only way to get the better of them was by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive."[109]
The "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's, designed by Givenchy, was sold at a Christie's auction on 5 December 2006 for £467,200 (approximately $920,000), almost seven times its £70,000 pre-sale estimate. This was the highest price paid for a dress from a film,[110] until it was surpassed by the $4.6 million paid in June 2011 for the Marilyn Monroe "subway dress" from The Seven Year Itch.[111] The proceeds went to the City of Joy Aid charity to aid underprivileged children in India. The head of the charity said, "there are tears in my eyes. I am absolutely dumbfounded to believe that a piece of cloth which belonged to such a magical actress will now enable me to buy bricks and cement to put the most destitute children in the world into schools."[112] However, the dress auctioned by Christie's was not the one that Hepburn wore in the film.[113] Of the two dresses that Hepburn did wear, one is held in the Givenchy archives while the other is displayed in the Museum of Costume in Madrid.[112] A subsequent London auction of Hepburn's film wardrobe in December 2009 raised £270,200 ($437,000), including £60,000 for the black Chantilly lace cocktail gown from How to Steal a Million. Half the proceeds were donated to All Children in School, a joint venture of The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund and UNICEF.[114]
Credits[link]
| Title | Year | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch in Seven Lessons | 1948 | KLM stewardess | Dutch: Nederlands in Zeven Lessen |
| One Wild Oat | 1951 | Hotel receptionist | Minor role |
| Young Wives' Tale | 1951 | Eve Lester | Minor role |
| Laughter in Paradise | 1951 | Frieda, cigarette girl | Minor role |
| Lavender Hill Mob, TheThe Lavender Hill Mob | 1951 | Chiquita | Minor role |
| Secret People, TheThe Secret People | 1952 | Nora Brentano | First major role |
| Monte Carlo Baby | 1952 | Linda Farell (Melissa Walter in French version) | Two versions were made: an English and a French entitled Nous irons à Monte Carlo |
| Roman Holiday | 1953 | Princess Ann | Academy Award for Best Actress BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |
| Sabrina | 1954 | Sabrina Fairchild | Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated–BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated–New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Soundtrack credits include "La Vie en rose", "Yes! We Have No Bananas" |
| War and Peace | 1956 | Natasha Rostova | Nominated–BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| Love in the Afternoon | 1957 | Ariane Chavasse / Thin Girl | Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated–New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |
| Funny Face | 1957 | Jo Stockton | Her first musical film Soundtrack credits include "How Long Has This Been Going On?", "Bonjour, Paris!", "On How to Be Lovely", "'S Wonderful" |
| Green Mansions | 1959 | Rima | |
| Nun's Story, TheThe Nun's Story | 1959 | Sister Luke (Gabrielle van der Mal) | BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| Unforgiven, TheThe Unforgiven | 1960 | Rachel Zachary | Her only western film |
| Breakfast at Tiffany's | 1961 | Holly Golightly | Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Soundtrack credits include "Moon River" |
| Children's Hour, TheThe Children's Hour | 1961 | Karen Wright | |
| Charade | 1963 | Regina "Reggie" Lampert | BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| Paris When It Sizzles | 1964 | Gabrielle Simpson / Gaby | |
| My Fair Lady | 1964 | Eliza Doolittle | Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated–New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |
| How to Steal a Million | 1966 | Nicole Bonnet | |
| Two for the Road | 1967 | Joanna Wallace | Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| Wait Until Dark | 1967 | Susy Hendrix | Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated–New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |
| Robin and Marian | 1976 | Lady Marian | |
| Bloodline | 1979 | Elizabeth Roffe | Her only R-rated film |
| They All Laughed | 1981 | Angela Niotes | |
| Always | 1989 | Hap | Cameo |
| Title | Year | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday Night Theatre | 1951 | Celia | Episode entitled "The Silent Village" |
| CBS Television Workshop | 1952 | Herself | Episode entitled "Rainy Day at Paradise Junction" |
| Mayerling | 1957 | Maria Vetsera |
|
| Love Among Thieves | 1987 | Baroness Caroline DuLac | Television movie |
| Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn | 1993 | Herself | Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming |
| Audrey Hepburn: In Her Own Words | 1993 | Herself | Documentary |
| Title | Year(s) | Role | Venue(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High Button Shoes | 1948–49 | Chorus girl | London Hippodrome | Opened 22 December 1948 for 291 performances |
| Sauce Tartare | 1949 | Chorus girl | Cambridge Theatre | Opened 18 May 1949 |
| Sauce Piquante | 1950 | Featured player | Cambridge Theatre | Opened 27 April 1950 |
| Gigi | 1951–52 | Gigi | Fulton Theatre | Opened 24 November 1951; closed 31 May 1952 Theatre World Award |
| Gigi | 1952–53 | Gigi | Various | US tour Began 13 October 1952 in Pittsburgh; closed 16 May 1953 in San Franscisco Also visited Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Los Angeles |
| Ondine | 1954 | Ondine | 46th Street Theatre | Opened 18 February 1954; closed 26 June 1954 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play |
Awards[link]
Main article: List of awards and honours received by Audrey Hepburn
See also[link]
- List of persons who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards
- White floral Givenchy dress of Audrey Hepburn (Academy Awards, 1954)
References[link]
- ^ a b Weiler, A. W. (28 August 1953). "'Roman Holiday' at Music Hall Is Modern Fairy Tale Starring Peck and Audrey Hepburn". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940DE6DA153EE53BBC4051DFBE668388649EDE. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ Vanity Fair
- ^ Ultimate Style - The Best of the Best Dressed List. 2004. pp. 74-77 & 89. ISBN 2 84323 513 8.
- ^ de Givenchy, Hubert (2007). Audrey Hepburn. London: Pavilion. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-86205-775-3.
- ^ Ferrer, Sean (2005). Audrey Hepburn, an Elegant Spirit. New York: Atria. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-671-02479-6.
- ^ Paris, Barry (2001). Audrey Hepburn. City: Berkley Trade. p. 361. ISBN 978-0-425-18212-3.
- ^ a b (Registered 18 July 1929) Audrey Hepburn's birth certificate
- ^ On Hepburn's birth certificate her father was British through birth in London. This was corrected in 1952 by her mother to "born in Onzic, Bohemia". Onzic is a misreading of Ouzic (German Auschiz), now Úžice in Czechia. [1]
- ^ Walker, page 6
- ^ a b "Ancestral tree of Audrey Hepburn". Genealogics.org. http://www.genealogics.org/pedigree.php?personID=I00009396&tree=LEO. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
- ^ a b c Spoto, Donald (19 November 2006). "1929–1939". Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn. New York: Harmony. ISBN 0-307-23758-3.
- ^ Walker, page 6
- ^ "Ian van Ufford Quarles Obituary". The Times. http://announcements.thetimes.co.uk/obituaries/timesonline-uk/obituary-preview.aspx?n=ian-van-ufford-quarles&pid=143195604&referrer=2282. Retrieved 29–31 May 2010.
- ^ vrijdag 6 mei 2011, 07u26. "De vijf hoeken van de wereld: Amerika in Elsene". brusselnieuws.be. http://www.brusselnieuws.be/cultuur/de-vijf-hoeken-van-de-wereld-amerika-elsene. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
- ^ Walker (page 8) writes that it is unclear for what kind of company he worked; he was listed as a "financial adviser" in a Dutch business directory
- ^ Charlotte Mosley, editor. (2007). "The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters". London: Fourth Estate. pg 63, 65.
- ^ a b c Tichner, Martha (26 November 2006). "Audrey Hepburn". CBS Sunday Morning.
- ^ Walker, page 14
- ^ Klein, Edward. (5 March 1989). "You Can't Love Without the Fear of Losing". Parade.
- ^ "Famous and Notable People 'In and Around' the Elham Valley". www.elham.co.uk. http://www.elham.co.uk/Famous_People.htm. Retrieved 4 September 2009.
- ^ Walker, pp. 17-19
- ^ Audrey Hepburn at Genealogics 1990 note from Audrey Hepburn at Genealogics, referenced 23 September 2007 (click link to enlarge)
- ^ Cox, Alex (20 January 2011). "Audrey Hepburn: an iconic problem". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/20/audrey-hepburn-breakfast-at-tiffanys.
- ^ Garner, Lesley. Lesley Garner meets the legendary actress as she prepares for this week's Unicef gala performance, The Sunday Telegraph, 26 May 1991
- ^ "Tribute to the Humanitarian Work of Audrey Hepburn | Articles". Ahepburn.com. 26 May 1991. http://www.ahepburn.com/article6.html. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ Audrey Hepburn, Coronet, January 1955
- ^ a b James, Caryn (1993). "Audrey Hepburn, Actress, Is Dead at 63". New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 January 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070118162914/http://www.nytimes.com/specials/magazine4/articles/hepburn1.html. Retrieved 26 November 2006.
- ^ "L'Ange des Enfants – Audrey Hepburn Photo Gallery". Audrey1.org. http://www.audrey1.org/archives/28/audrey-hepburn-photo-gallery. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ "Tribute to the Humanitarian Work of Audrey Hepburn | Her Work – Getting Involved with UNICEF". Ahepburn.com. 3 August 1988. http://www.ahepburn.com/work1.html. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ Seigel, Jessica. Interview with Audrey Hepburn, The Chicago Tribune, 20 January 1992
- ^ "Welcome to Audrey Hepburn.com". Audreyhepburn.com. http://audreyhepburn.com/. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ Vermilye, Jerry (1995). The complete films of Audrey Hepburn. New York: Citadel Press. p. 67. ISBN 0-8065-1598-8.
- ^ Kilagallen, Dorothy. (27 September 1953). "H.R.H. Audrey Hepburn". The American Weekly. p. 7.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn's Son Remembers Her Life". Larry King Live. 2003-12-24. CNN.
- ^ a b c "Princess Apparent". Time. 7 September 1953. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,818831,00.html.
- ^ Nichols, Mark Audrey Hepburn Goes Back to the Bar, Coronet, November 1956
- ^ Walker, Alexander (1994). Audrey, Her Real Story. London: Orion. p. 55. ISBN 1-85797-352-6.
- ^ "Lighting Up Broadway". Extra Magazine (People). Winter 1993. http://www.audrey1.org/archives/9/audrey-hepburn-archives.
- ^ a b Gigi at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ "Filmography: Roman Holiday". audrey1.com. Archived from the original on 21 January 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080121012947/http://www.audrey1.com/films/roman.html. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ a b Zekas, Rita (2 January 2004). "Audrey Hepburn: A reluctant icon". Toronto Star: pp. D05. ""The title credits were supposed to be Gregory Peck starring and 'introducing' Audrey Hepburn. But he said, 'You've got to change that because she'll be a big star and I'll look like a big jerk.'""
- ^ Connolly, Mike. Who Needs Beauty!, Photoplay, January 1954
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn: Behind the sparkle of rhinestones, a diamond's glow". TIME. 7 September 1953. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19530907,00.html. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (23 September 1954). "Screen: 'Sabrina' Bows at Criterion; Billy Wilder Produces and Directs Comedy". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9406E3DF1238E23BBC4B51DFBF66838F649EDE.
- ^ a b c d e f Ringgold, Gene. My Fair Lady – the finest of them all!, Soundstage, December 1964
- ^ "Hepburn's Golden Globe nominations and awards". Goldenglobes.org. 14 January 2010. http://www.goldenglobes.org/browse/member/28367. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ Corr, John. (8 February 1990) Mindful of Her Past, Hepburn Travels the World for UNICEF, Philadelphia Inquierer, p. F12
- ^ "Filmography: The Nun's Story". audrey1.com. Archived from the original on 14 February 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060214090022/http://www.audrey1.com/films/nun.html. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ http://www.audreyhepburnlibrary.com/nunstory/images/nunsstory03.jpg
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (20 March 1959). "Delicate Enchantment of 'Green Mansions'; Audrey Hepburn Stars in Role of Rima". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9805E3DB1038EF3BBC4851DFB5668382649EDE.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (7 April 1960). "Screen: "The Unforgiven':Huston Film Stars Miss Hepburn, Lancaster". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9800E2DD123AEF3ABC4F53DFB266838B679EDE.
- ^ a b c d Honan, Corinna (14 November 2010). "Tantrums at Tiffany's: How a viper's nest of clashing egos nearly killed off one of the best-loved films ever made". Daily Mail (London). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1326830/Breakfast-At-Tiffany-s-Clashing-egos-nearly-killed-best-loved-films.html.
- ^ E.A. Hanks. [2], Vanity Fair, 22 June 2010
- ^ a b "Audrey Hepburn: Style icon". BBC News. 4 May 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3667517.stm.
- ^ Kane, Chris. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Screen Stories, December 1961
- ^ a b Archer, Eugene. With A Little Bit Of Luck And Plenty Of Talent, The New York Times, 1 November 1964
- ^ "The Most Famous Dresses Ever". Glamour.com. April 2007. http://www.glamour.com/fashion/2007/04/famous-dresses#slide=3. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn dress". Hello Magazine. 6 December 2006. http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2006/12/06/audrey-hepburn-dress/.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn's little black dress tops fashion list". The Independent (UK). 17 May 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/news/audrey-hepburns-little-black-dress-tops-fashion-list-1984507.html. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
- ^ Steele, Valerie (9 November 2010). The Berg Companion to Fashion. Berg Publishers. p. 483. ISBN 978-1-84788-592-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=Hemsvn9ZbRkC&pg=PA483. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (15 March 1962). "The Screen: New 'Children's Hour':Another Film Version of Play Arrives Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn Star". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D07EEDA1338E63ABC4D52DFB5668389679EDE.
- ^ "The Children's Hour". Variety. 31 December 1960. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117789870?refcatid=31.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (6 December 1963). "Screen: Audrey Hepburn and Grant in 'Charade':Comedy-Melodrama Is at the Music Hall Production Abounds in Ghoulish Humor". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A0DE6DA1E30EF3BBC4E53DFB4678388679EDE.
- ^ Eastman, John (1989). Retakes: Behind the Scenes of 500 Classic Movies. Ballantine Books. pp. 57–58. ISBN 0-345-35399-4.
- ^ How Awful About Audrey!, Motion Picture, May 1964
- ^ a b "Paris When It Sizzles". Variety. 1 January 1964. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117793876.html. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
- ^ a b c Eleanor Quin. "Paris When It Sizzles: Overview Article". Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=86269&category=Articles. Retrieved 27 May 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/trivia
- ^ a b Crowther, Bosley (22 October 1964). "Screen: Lots of Chocolates for Miss Eliza Doolittle:'My Fair Lady' Bows at the Criterion". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9401E6DA1E3FEE32A25751C2A9669D946591D6CF.
- ^ a b "Audrey Hepburn". The Daily Telegraph (London). 22 January 1993. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/5894883/Audrey-Hepburn.html.
- ^ Behind Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer's Breakup, Screenland, December 1967
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (27 October 1967). "The Screen:Audrey Hepburn Stars in 'Wait Until Dark'". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E05E2DE1038E43BBC4F51DFB667838C679EDE.
- ^ Paris 1996, p.91
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn – Ambassador of Children". audrey1.com. http://www.audrey1.org/biography/21/audrey-hepburn-unicef-overview. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ Alex Brummer, Hanson: a Biography, (London: Fourth Estate, 1994) p. 47–50 & p.52
- ^ Hyams, Joe. Why Audrey Hepburn Was Afraid Of Marriage, Filmland, January, 1954
- ^ http://www.audreyhepburnlibrary.com/mfl/images/soundstage12-64pg30.jpg
- ^ Kogan, Rick; The Aging of Aquarius, Chicago Tribune, 6/30/96, michaelbutler.com. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
- ^ Tusher, Bill. Candy Pants Princess, Motion Picture, February 1954
- ^ Paris, Barry. The Enduring Mystique of Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, 1996
- ^ Sabrina (1954) from Turner Classic Movies
- ^ Hepburn, Audrey. My Fair Lady, Film Festival
- ^ Walter, Alexander (1997). Audrey. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-18046-2.
- ^ http://www.audreyhepburnlibrary.com/50s/images/everybodys3-10-56pg1.jpg
- ^ Stone, David. 'My Husband Mel', Everybodys, 10 March 1956
- ^ Behind Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer's Breakup, Screenland, December 1967
- ^ "An Audrey Hepburn Biography: 1955–1975". audrey1.com. http://www.audrey1.org/biography/16/audrey-hepburn-timeline-1929-1949. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn, Actress, Is Dead at 63". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/specials/magazine4/articles/hepburn1.html.
- ^ Paris 1996, p.361
- ^ "Selim Jocelyn, ""The Fairest of All", CR Magazine, Fall 2009". Crmagazine.org. http://www.crmagazine.org/archive/Fall2009/Pages/AudreyHepburnAppendixCancer.aspx. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ Harris, Warren G., (1994). – Audrey Hepburn: A Biography. – New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. – p.289. – ISBN 0-671-75800-4
- ^ "Two favorite poems of Audrey Hepburn". audrey1.com. Archived from the original on 8 January 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070108192436/http://www.audrey1.com/poems.html. Retrieved 14 January 2008.
- ^ Binder, David (25 January 1993). "Hepburn's Role As Ambassador Is Paid Tribute". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/25/arts/hepburn-s-role-as-ambassador-is-paid-tribute.html.
- ^ "A Gentle Goodbye -Surrounded by the Men She Loved, the Star Was Laid to Rest on a Swiss Hilltop". People. 1 January 1993. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20063483,00.html.
- ^ News Service, N.Y. Times. (25 January 1993). "Hepburn buried in Switzerland". Record-Journal. p. 10.
- ^ Tynan, William (27 March 2000). "The Audrey Hepburn Story". TIME. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996489,00.html. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ "New Gap marketing campaign featuring original film footage of Audrey Hepburn helps Gap "Keeps it Simple" this Fall – WBOC-TV 16". Web.archive.org. 28 September 2007. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928010941/http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5371942. Retrieved 6 September 2010.
- ^ . http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/kyle-in-queen-sweep-as-gay-icon-of-all-time-13399454.html.
- ^ Grew, Tony (2007-01-05). "Gordon Ramsay 50th most popular gay icon". PinkNews.co.uk. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-3431.html/. Retrieved 2011-07-14.
- ^ "National Portrait Gallery - Gay Icons". Npg.org.uk:8080. http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/gayicons/youricons.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-14.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn 'most beautiful woman of all time'". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1 June 2004. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/31/1085855500521.html.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn tops beauty poll". BBC NEWS. 31 May 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3763887.stm.
- ^ Sinclair, Lulu (1 July 2010). "Actress Tops Poll Of 20th Century Beauties". Sky. http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/15657271. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
- ^ a b c d e Regard sur Audrey Hepburn, Regard Magazine n° 4, Paris, January 1993.
- ^ Karney, Robyn. A Star Danced: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, Bloomsbury. London: 1993
- ^ Lane, Megan (7 April 2006). "Audrey Hepburn: Why the fuss?". BBC News (BBC). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4884428.stm.
- ^ "Audrey Hepburn’s Best-dressed Film Icon". Web.archive.org. 2008-01-14. Archived from the original on 2008-01-14. http://web.archive.org/web/20080114022425/http://www.factio-magazine.com/specialfeatures/des__Audrey.cfm. Retrieved 2011-07-14.
- ^ "Hepburn revival feeding false image?". The Age (Melbourne). 2 October 2006. http://www.theage.com.au/news/people/hepburn-revival-feeding-false-image/2006/10/01/1159641215445.html.
- ^ Harris, Eleanor. Audrey Hepburn, Good Housekeeping, August 1959
- ^ Dahl, Melissa (11 December 2006). "Stylebook: Hepburn gown fetches record price". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06345/745167-314.stm. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
- ^ "Marilyn Monroe "subway" dress sells for $4.6 million". Reuters. June 19, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/19/us-monroe-idUSTRE75I2NM20110619. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
- ^ a b "Auction Frenzy over Hepburn dress". BBC NEWS. 5 December 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6209658.stm.
- ^ Christie's online catalog. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
- ^ Ellicott, Claire (9 December 2009). "Audrey Hepburn's Givenchy couture collection sold at auction for £270,000". Daily Mail (UK). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1234361/Audrey-Hepburns-Givenchy-couture-collection-sold-auction-270-000.html.
Further reading[link]
- Brizel, Scott (2009). Audrey Hepburn: International Cover Girl. Titan Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84856-611-8.
- Chesire, Ellen (2003). Audrey Hepburn. Pocket Essentials. ISBN 978-1-903047-67-5.
- Hepburn-Ferrer, Sean (2003). Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit: A Son Remembers. Atria. ISBN 0-671-02478-7.
- Keogh, Pamela Clarke (2009). Audrey Style. Aurum Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84513-490-7.
- Maychick, Diana (1996). Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait. Birch Lane Pr. ISBN 978-1-55972-195-0.
- Paris, Barry (1997). Audrey Hepburn. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-81728-4.
- Spoto, Donald (2006). Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn. Arrow.
- Walker, Alexander (1994). Audrey: Her Real Story. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. ISBN 978-1-85797-352-5.
- Woodward, Ian (1984). Audrey Hepburn. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-06074-9.
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Audrey Hepburn |
|
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Audrey Hepburn |
- Official website of Hepburn (and the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund)
- Audrey Hepburn collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Works by or about Audrey Hepburn in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Audrey Hepburn at the Internet Movie Database
- Audrey Hepburn at the Internet Broadway Database
- Audrey Hepburn at the TCM Movie Database
- Audrey Hepburn at AllRovi
- Audrey Hepburn Quotes Collection of quotes and articles
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Hepburn, Audrey |
| Alternative names | Ruston, Audrey Kathleen |
| Short description | actress |
| Date of birth | 4 May 1929 |
| Place of birth | Brussels, Belgium |
| Date of death | 20 January 1993 |
| Place of death | Tolochenaz, Switzerland |
http://wn.com/Audrey_Hepburn
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://cs.wn.com/Audrey Hepburnová
http://es.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://ru.wn.com/Хепбёрн, Одри
http://nl.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://id.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://pl.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://fr.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://de.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
http://hi.wn.com/आड्री हेपबर्न
http://pt.wn.com/Audrey Hepburn
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Hepburn
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.
| Ester Dean | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Ester Renay Dean |
| Born | (1986-04-15) 15 April 1986 (age 26) Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Genres | R&B, hip hop, pop |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, actress, voice actress |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 2009–present |
| Labels | Roc Nation / Interscope |
| Associated acts | Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, RichGirl, Shakira, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Ciara, Nicole Scherzinger, Usher, Kelly Rowland, Girlicious, Rihanna, R. Kelly, Britney Spears, Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, Pia Toscano, Tinie Tempah, Lil Wayne, Machine Gun Kelly, Drake |
| Website | EsterDean.com |
Ester Renay Dean (born April 15, 1986) is an American singer and songwriter, and record producer signed to Roc Nation. She is most notable for her dual appearance on Rio: Music From The Motion Picture (2011) and her 2009 US hit single "Drop It Low", which featured singer Chris Brown.
Dean has also written songs with many artists including Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Nicki Minaj, Kelly Clarkson, Ciara, Nicole Scherzinger, Usher, Kelly Rowland, Girlicious, Rihanna, R. Kelly, Britney Spears, Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, Pia Toscano, Tinie Tempah, Lil Wayne, Machine Gun Kelly and recently Shakira.
In 2012 Dean also lent her voice to Ice Age as one of the characters, as well to the film Pitch Perfect and the soundtrack.
Contents |
Biography[link]
1986-2010: Early life and career beginnings[link]
Ester Dean was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1986, but lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then in her late teens, she moved to Omaha, Nebraska. After graduating from Omaha North High School, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, until relocating to Los Angeles, California. In an interview Dean spoke on her family life,
Oh, my whole family can sing. When I was growing up, I said I was going to be a chef. And my cousin was like, “No you aren't. You're going to sing.” And I'm like, “No, I'm not. I'm going to be a chef. And that's it.” And they're like, “No, you're going to sing.” And I said, “Okay, well I'll sing and get the money and set-up a restaurant.” My mom, she used to do gospel plays. And we used to go on the road with her and perform in the choir, so I grew up watching her star in these gospel plays. And it just showed, like, “Oh my God, I want to do this or do something like this.” I noticed how I started to get jealous when they used to pick other little girls to sing certain parts. And I'd be like, “Well, I can sing that better.” Or we'd be in their studio and I'm like, “I want to sing in a studio.” When I was really young, that childhood jealousy and seeing what I really wanted – I used to sing into anything I could hear myself back on. That's what I'd do. Even if it was karaoke, I just wanted to be heard, you know? I believe my mom wanted me to be a star and an artist. I think it trickles down. Sometimes it takes them to want it for you to do it.[1][2]
When Dean relocated to Los Angeles, California, she became a successful songwriter, and was introduced to Polow da Don, and later signed to Zone 4 Records/Interscope Records. During her tenure, Dean has amassed a catalog of songs she has written or co-written for other artists, such as Britney Spears, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Monica, Keri Hilson, Keyshia Cole, Kelly Rowland, Girlicious, Katy Perry, Trey Songz, Kelly Clarkson, Ciara, Usher, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj, Pia Toscano, Ginuwine, Teyana Taylor, Scotty McCreery, Beyoncé Knowles, and Mary J. Blige, among others.
Dean recorded and released her first single, "Drop It Low" which features singer Chris Brown, from the LeBron James documentary, More Than a Game (2009), which peaked at #38 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming her first US Top 40 single. The song received positive reviews, and the song was remixed by artists such as Lil Wayne, Trey Songz and Diddy. Dean has co-written songs featured on the Step Up 3D Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2010) and Burlesque: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2010).
2011-Present: First studio album and Roc Nation[link]
Throughout 2011 Dean carried on song writing while working on her album, she co-wrote "Super Bass", for Nicki Minaj's debut album Pink Friday (2010).[3] has gone on to achieve the position of number three on the Hot 100.[4] The song's title is included as part of the title of a UK Deluxe edition of the album, Pink Friday (Super Bass Edition).[5] Dean has a dual appearance on Rio: Music From The Motion Picture (2011) with "Let Me Take You To Rio" and "Take You To Rio". Dean is featured on the song "Invincible", the second single by American rapper Machine Gun Kelly's debut album. The song has been used in a HTC ReZound ad and also served as one of several theme songs for WrestleMania XXVIII.
Talking on her debut album Ester said "I did not want to be an artist because I was afraid" Dean confesses, "I had tried that before but I learned I had to lose when I weighed only , it poisoned me, however Polow wanted to embrace everything about me and welcomed me to his family just like me ".[6] Dean is working on her debut studio album set to be released in early 2012. Ester told billboard "We're working on picking songs right now," Ester tells The Juice. Ester is shooting for a sound that suits her unique voice, which she calls "hard" and "raspy."[7] In January 2012 Dean took to twitter to announce that she has signed to Roc Nation “I’m so Grateful 4 my Team Past and Present! Bringing in the New Year with my new Team @RocNation 2012,”[8] She has worked with Stargate on six of the album's tracks.[9] Gimme Money featuring Nicki Minaj was released online in February 2012 through Dean's official Twitter. Dean tweeted “If you guys Love Gimmie Money ft Nicki Minaj as my Single let’s get it Trending #GimmieMoney”.[10] Dean has also picked 10 tracks that will be featured on her debut album.[11]
Dean made an appearance in Ice Age: Continental Drift. "I'm just excited," Dean says of playing her character, the Sloth Siren. "On August 23, I go put my voice down. And my character gets to sing." Ester is one of many musicians in the Ice Age: Continental Drift cast. Drake, Nicki Minaj, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Lopez are lending their voices to the film.[7]
For her album, Dean has been reported to be working with rapper Nicki Minaj and Roc Nation signed Alexis Jordan.[12][13] There is talk of calling the album "UnderESTAmated."[14]
Artistry[link]
Songwriting style[link]
In a 2012 article in The New Yorker, Dean described her preferred method of songwriting: "I go into the booth and I scream and I sing and I yell, and sometimes it's words but most time [sic] it's not...and I just see when I get this little chill [on her upper arm, below the shoulder] and then I'm, like, 'Yeah, that's the hook.'"[15]
Discography[link]
Main article: List of songs written by Ester Dean
Singles[link]
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Certifications | Album | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | US R&B | US Pop | ||||
| "Drop It Low" (featuring Chris Brown) |
2009 | 38 | 33 | 32 | More Than a Game OST | |
| "Gimme Money" (featuring Nicki Minaj) |
2012 | — | — | — | TBA | |
Guest Vocals[link]
| Year | Title | Album | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | "I Think I Love Her" | The State vs. Radric Davis | Gucci Mane |
| 2009 | "Birthday Sex (Remix)" | Jeremih | Jeremih |
| 2009 | "I Love U" | Graffiti | Chris Brown |
| 2010 | "Hot Tottie" | Versus | Usher |
| 2010 | "Grammy" | The DeAndre Way | Soulja Boy |
| 2010 | "I Know You Got a Man" | Battle of the Sexes | Ludacris |
| 2010 | "Super Bass" | Pink Friday | Nicki Minaj |
| 2010 | "Love Suicide" | Disc-Overy | Tinie Tempah |
| 2011 | "Invincible" | Lace Up | MGK |
Filmography[link]
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Rio | Boy in gondola | |
| 2012 | Ice Age: Continental Drift | Sloth Siren | |
| Pitch Perfect | Cynthia Rose |
References[link]
- ^ Clayton Perry (26 October 2009). "Interview: Ester Dean - Singer and Songwriter". blogcritics.org. http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-ester-dean-singer-and-songwriter/. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-ester-dean-singer-and-songwriter/
- ^ Gary Trust (15 June 2011). "Adele 'Rolling' Along Atop Hot 100, Jason Aldean & Nicki Minaj Reach Top 10". billboard.com. http://www.billboard.com/news/adele-rolling-along-atop-hot-100-jason-aldean-1005237392.story#/news/adele-rolling-along-atop-hot-100-jason-aldean-1005237392.story. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Nicki Minaj - Super Bass - Billboard.com". Billboard. Prometheus Global Media. http://www.billboard.com/song/nicki-minaj/super-bass/23225424#/song/nicki-minaj/super-bass/23225424. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
- ^ "Pink Friday (Super Bass Edition) - Amazon.com". amazon.co.uk. Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0052WKZYC/. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Ester Dean biography - all about Ester Dean". artistwiki.com. http://artistwiki.com/ester-dean/biography. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ a b Erica Thompson (19 August 2011). "Ester Dean Talks 'Ice Age 4,' New Album and Missy Elliott". billboard.com. http://www.billboard.com/column/the-juice/ester-dean-talks-ice-age-4-new-album-and-1005322932.story#/column/the-juice/ester-dean-talks-ice-age-4-new-album-and-1005322932.story. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Ester Dean Signs Management Deal With Roc Nation". rap-up.com. http://www.rap-up.com/2012/01/02/ester-dean-signs-management-deal-with-roc-nation/#more-108780. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Ester Dean - Twitter Status". twitter.com. 27 January 2012. https://twitter.com/#!/EsterDean/status/162979067208015872. Retrieved 30 January 2012.
- ^ "New Music: Ester Dean F/ Nicki Minaj – ‘Gimmie Money’". rap-up.com. 21 February 2012. http://www.rap-up.com/2012/02/21/new-music-ester-dean-f-nicki-minaj-gimmie-money/#more-114243. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
- ^ "New Music: Ester Dean – ‘Let It Grow (Celebrate The World)’". rap-up.com. http://www.rap-up.com/2012/02/21/new-music-ester-dean-let-it-grow-celebrate-the-world/#more-114238. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
- ^ David Greenwald (22 February 2012). "Nicki Minaj Guests on Ester Dean's 'Gimme Money': Listen". billboard.com. http://www.billboard.com/column/the-juice/nicki-minaj-guests-on-ester-dean-s-gimme-1006260752.story. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
- ^ "Ester Dean & Alexis Jordan". dailymusicjuice.blogspot.com. 9 November 2011. http://dailymusicjuice.blogspot.com/2011/11/ester-dean-alexis-jordan.html. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
- ^ Seabrook, John (26). "The Song Machine". The New Yorker LXXXVIII (6): 48-55.
- ^ Seabrook, John (26). "The Song Machine". The New Yorker LXXXVIII (6): 48-55.
External links[link]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Dean, Ester |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American singer and songwriter |
| Date of birth | 1986-04-15 |
| Place of birth | Muskogee, Oklahoma, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Ester_Dean
Related pages:
http://fr.wn.com/Ester Dean
http://pt.wn.com/Ester Dean
http://de.wn.com/Ester Dean
http://it.wn.com/Ester Dean
http://pl.wn.com/Ester Dean
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester_Dean
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.
More Videos
Wiki Summary
Dean may refer to:
The title is also given less formally to the longest-serving member of certain groups, as:
