• 40 Pounds of Trouble
• A Century of Cinema
• Academy Award
• Academy Awards
• Albert DeSalvo
• Alcoholism
• Alien X Factor
• Alma mater
• Anthony Adverse
• Arrivederci, Baby!
• Asthma
• Autobiography
• Balboa (film)
• Barry Paris
• BBC
• Bea Arthur
• Beachhead (film)
• Betty Ford Clinic
• Billy Wilder
• Blake Edwards
• BrainWaves
• Brittle Glory
• Bronx
• Bronx, New York
• Burt Lancaster
• Captain Newman, M.D.
• Cardiac arrest
• Carmel, California
• Cary Grant
• Casanova & Co.
• Casting director
• Center of the Web
• Christine Kaufmann
• Cirrhosis
• Cocaine
• Coma
• Crash Dive
• David & Fatima
• David O. Selznick
• Destination Tokyo
• Don't Make Waves
• Double Take
• Drug overdose
• Edward G. Robinson
• Elaine Stritch
• Elia Kazan
• Elvis Meets Nixon
• Empire Awards
• Erwin Piscator
• Flesh and Fury
• Francis (film)
• Frank Sinatra
• G.I. Bill
• Goodbye Charlie
• Greenwich Village
• Groucho Marx
• Hardball (1997 film)
• Harmony Books
• Heart bypass
• Henderson, Nevada
• Heroin
• Highway 101
• Hollywood
• Holocaust
• Houdini (film)
• Hungarian Army
• Hungarian Jews
• Hungarian language
• Hungarian people
• Hungary
• I Was a Shoplifter
• Ira Hayes
• Jack Lemmon
• James Dean
• Jamie Lee Curtis
• Janet Leigh
• Jerry Lewis
• Jewish
• John Wiley & Sons
• Johnny Dark (film)
• Johnny Stool Pigeon
• Joyce Selznick
• Juvenile delinquency
• Kansas Raiders
• Kelly Curtis
• Kings Go Forth
• Kirk Douglas
• Kirk Kerkorian
• Las Vegas Valley
• Laurence Olivier
• Lee Marvin
• Lepke (film)
• Life magazine
• Little Miss Marker
• London Conspiracy
• Louis & Frank
• Mafia Princess
• Marilyn Monroe
• McCoy (TV series)
• Midnight (1989 film)
• Military discharge
• Mission Monte Carlo
• Mister Cory
• Monte Carlo or Bust
• Murder in Three Acts
• Mátészalka
• Naked in New York
• New York Times
• Operation Petticoat
• Pablo Picasso
• Paul Frees
• Paul Matisse
• Pepe (film)
• Peter Golenbock
• Phyllis McGuire
• Play It to the Bone
• Pneumonia
• Prime Target
• Ralph Bellamy
• Reflections of Evil
• René Magritte
• Rich Little
• Robert Goulet
• Rod Steiger
• Roger Moore
• Roseanne (TV series)
• Rumba (dance)
• Schizophrenia
• Second World War
• Sextette
• Shelley Winters
• Sidney Poitier
• Sierra (film)
• Six Bridges to Cross
• So This Is Paris
• Some Like It Hot
• Son of Ali Baba
• Stanley Kubrick
• Stargames
• Submarine tender
• Surrealist
• Swashbucklers
• Synagogue
• Take One False Step
• Talent agent
• Taras Bulba (film)
• Tarzan in Manhattan
• Television program
• The All-American
• The Celluloid Closet
• The Defiant Ones
• The Flintstones
• The Great Impostor
• The Great Race
• The Lady Gambles
• The Manitou
• The Midnight Story
• The Mirror Crack'd
• The Mummy Lives
• The New School
• The Perfect Furlough
• The Persuaders!
• The Purple Mask
• The Rat Race
• The Rawhide Years
• The Square Jungle
• The Users (film)
• The Vikings (film)
• Title Shot
• Tokyo Bay
• Tony Curtis
• Tony Vanderploeg
• Trapeze (film)
• Tyrone Power
• United States
• United States Navy
• Universal Pictures
• US dollar
• USS Proteus (AS-19)
• Vega
• Viagra
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Walter Matthau
• Where Is Parsifal?
• Where's Marty?
• Who Was That Lady?
• Wikipedia Persondata
• Wild and Wonderful
• William Crawley
• Woman in Hiding
• You Bet Your Life
• YouTube
• 
  

• 
  Hollywood
  Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema. Today, much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as the Westside neighborhood, and the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, but significant auxiliary industries, such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies remain in Hollywood, as does the backlot of Paramount Pictures.
  On February 16, 2005, California Assembly Members Jackie Goldberg and Paul Koretz introduced a bill to require California to keep specific records on Hollywood as if it were independent, although it is not the typical practice of the City of Los Angeles to establish specific boundaries for districts or neighborhoods. For this to be done, the boundaries were defined. The bill was unanimously supported by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles City Council. Assembly Bill 588 was approved by the Governor of California on August 28, 2006, and now the district of Hollywood has official borders. The border can be loosely described as the area east of West Hollywood, south of Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Barham Boulevard, and the cities of Burbank and Glendale, north of Melrose Avenue and west of the Golden State Freeway and Hyperion Avenue. This includes all of Griffith Park and Los Feliz^{[citation needed]} – two areas that were hitherto considered separate from Hollywood by most Angelenos. The population of the district, including Los Feliz, as of the 2000 census was 123,436 and the median household income was $33,409 in 1999.
  
  wn.com/Hollywood
• 
  Hungary
  Hungary ⁱ/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
  Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
  
  wn.com/Hungary
• 
  Las Vegas Valley
  The Las Vegas Valley is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the US state of Nevada, and is the heart of the Las Vegas–Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a 600 sq mi (1,600 km²) basin area that contains the largest concentration of people in the state. The history of the Valley significantly intertwines with the history of the city of Las Vegas and one of the two primary cities (as used by the census bureau) in the MSA, with the other being Paradise. The valley is home to the three largest incorporated cities in Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.
  The names Las Vegas and Vegas are used to indicate the valley, the strip, the city and are used as a brand by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and used to denominate the entire region. The metropolitan area's population was at 741,459 in 1990. The population was approximately 2 million in 2010 (estimated). The valley is an area generally defined by the Spring Mountains on the west, Sheep Mountains to the north, Muddy Mountains and Lake Mead to the east, and the Black Mountains to the south.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Las_Vegas_Valley
• 
  Mátészalka
  Mátészalka is a town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary.
  It covers an area of 41.81 km² (16 sq mi) and has a population of 18,084 people (2005).
  Mátészalka is a sistertown of Zevenaar (NED).
  The town was the birthplace of actor Tony Curtis' father.
  
  Coordinates: 47°57′N 22°19′E / 47.95°N 22.317°E / 47.95; 22.317
  
  
  
  wn.com/Mátészalka
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States

• 
  Albert DeSalvo
  Albert Henry DeSalvo (September 3, 1931 – November 25, 1973) was a criminal in Boston, Massachusetts who confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area. DeSalvo was not imprisoned for these murders, however, but for a series of rapes. His murder confession has been disputed, and debate continues regarding which crimes DeSalvo actually committed.
  DeSalvo was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Frank and Charlotte DeSalvo. His father was of Italian ancestry and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His father was a violent alcoholic who at one point beat all of his wife's teeth out and bent her fingers back until they broke. He also forced his children to watch him have sex with prostitutes he brought home. DeSalvo tortured animals as a child and began shoplifting and stealing in early adolescence, frequently crossing paths with the law.
  In November 1943, the 12-year-old DeSalvo was first arrested for battery and robbery. In December of the same year he was sent to the Lyman School for Boys. In October 1944, he was paroled and started working as a delivery boy. In August 1946, he returned to the Lyman School for stealing an automobile. After completing his second sentence, DeSalvo joined the Army. He was honorably discharged after his first tour of duty. He re-enlisted and, in spite of being tried in a court-martial, DeSalvo was again honorably discharged.
  
  wn.com/Albert_DeSalvo
• 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
• 
  Bea Arthur
  Beatrice "Bea" Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009) was an American actress, comedienne and singer whose career spanned seven decades. Arthur achieved fame as the character Maude Findlay on the 1970s sitcoms All in the Family and Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls, winning Emmy Awards for both roles. A stage actress both before and after her television success, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Vera Charles in the original cast of Mame (1966).
  Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922 to Philip and Rebecca Frankel (1902–1986) in New York City. In 1933 her family moved to Cambridge, Maryland, where her parents operated a women's clothing shop. She attended Linden Hall School for Girls, an all girls boarding school in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before enrolling in the now-defunct Blackstone College for Girls in Blackstone, Virginia, where she was active in drama productions.
  Arthur joined the United States Marine Corps in 1943. She worked at such jobs as typist and truck driver, and was honorably discharged with the rank of staff sergeant in 1945. She had a single misconduct report in 1944 for contracting venereal disease. During her time in the Marines, she married another Marine, Robert Aurthur, and changed her last name. She later denied having served in the military.
  
  wn.com/Bea_Arthur
• 
  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
• 
  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
• 
  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
• Christine Kaufmann
  Christine Maria Kaufmann (born 11 January 1945 in Lengdorf, Styria, Austria) is a German actress. Her father is German and her mother is French. In 1961, she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress, the only German to be so honoured.
  Kaufmann became a ballerina at the Munich Opera. She started her film career at the age of seven in the 1952 adaptation of Im weißen Rößl (White Horse Inn). The film which brought her fame was Rosen-Resli, released in 1954, when she was only nine. She gained international recognition when she starred with Steve Reeves in The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) and with Kirk Douglas in Town Without Pity (1961). The following year she appeared in Escape from East Berlin.
  In 1963, Kaufmann married Tony Curtis, whom she had met during the filming of Taras Bulba (1962). They had two daughters, Alexandra (born 19 July 1964) and Allegra (born 11 July 1966). They divorced in 1968. Kaufmann resumed her career, which she had interrupted during her marriage.
  
  wn.com/Christine_Kaufmann
• 
  Elaine Stritch
  Elaine Stritch (born February 2, 1925) is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs. She is known for her performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in Stephen Sondheim's 1970 musical Company, her 2001 one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and recently for her role as Jack Donaghy's mother Colleen on NBC's 30 Rock. She has been nominated for the Tony Award five times in various categories, and won once, for Elaine Stritch at Liberty. Stritch is also a three-time Emmy Award winner.
  Elaine Stritch was born in 1925 in Detroit, Michigan to Mildred (née Jobe; 1893-1987), a homemaker, and George Joseph Stritch (1892-1987), an executive with B.F. Goodrich. Her family was wealthy and devoutly Roman Catholic. Stritch's father was of Irish descent and her mother was of Welsh descent. Samuel Cardinal Stritch, former Archbishop of Chicago, was one of her uncles.
  Stritch trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City under Erwin Piscator; other students at the Dramatic Workshop at this time included Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur.
  
  wn.com/Elaine_Stritch
• 
  Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan (IPA: [eˈlia kaˈzan]; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". He was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents. After studying acting at Yale, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theater in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Lee Strasberg, he introduced Method acting to the American stage and cinema as a new form of self-expression and psychological "realism". Kazan acted in only a few films, including City for Conquest (1940).
  Kazan introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the movie audiences, including Marlon Brando and James Dean. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He became "one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century" after directing a string of successful films, including, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globes. Among the other actors he introduced to movie audences were Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne, and Pat Hingle.
  
  wn.com/Elia_Kazan
• 
  Erwin Piscator
  Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 in Greifenstein-Ulm – 30 March 1966 in Starnberg) was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal beauty.
  Erwin Friedrich Max Piscator was born on December 17, 1893 in the village of Greifenstein-Ulm to Carl Piscator, a merchant, and Antonia Laparose. His family was descended from Johannes Piscator, a Protestant theologian who produced an important translation of the Bible in 1600. The family moved to Marburg where Piscator attended the Gymnasium Philippinum. In 1913, he enrolled at Munich University to study German, philosophy and art history. Piscator also took Arthur Kutscher's famous seminar in theatre history which Bertolt Brecht was also later to attend. He began his acting career in 1914, in small unpaid roles at the Munich Court Theatre, under the directorship of Ernst von Possart. In 1896, Carl Lautenschläger had installed one of the world's first revolving stages at that theatre.
  
  wn.com/Erwin_Piscator
• 
  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
• 
  Groucho Marx
  Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian and film and television star. He is known as a master of quick wit and widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era. His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life. His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty disguises, known as "Groucho glasses", a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
  In a 1950 radio episode of You Bet Your Life, Groucho stated that he was born in a room above a butcher's shop on 78th Street in New York City.
  
  wn.com/Groucho_Marx
• 
  Hungarian people
  Hungarians, also known as Magyars (Hungarian: magyarok), are a nation and ethnic group who speak Hungarian and are primarily associated with Hungary. There are around 14-15 million Hungarians, of whom 10 million live in today's Hungary (as of 2011). About 2.2 million Hungarians live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the 1918-1920 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Treaty of Trianon, and are now parts of Hungary's seven neighbour countries, especially Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Significant groups of people with Hungarian ancestry live in various other parts of the world, most of them in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada and Australia. Unlike the Hungarians living on the former territory of pre-1918-20 Kingdom of Hungary, only some of the ethnic Hungarians in other areas preserve the Hungarian language and traditions. The Hungarians can be classified into several subgroups according to local linguistic and cultural characteristics; subgroups with distinct identities include the Székely, the Csángó, the Palóc, and the Jassic people.
  
  wn.com/Hungarian_people
• 
  Ira Hayes
  Ira Hamilton Hayes (January 12, 1923 – January 24, 1955) was a Pima Native American and an American Marine who was one of the six men immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II. Hayes was an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community in Sacaton, Arizona, and enlisted in the Marine Forces Reserve on August 24, 1942. He trained as a Paramarine and saw action in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. On February 19, 1945, Hayes participated in the landing at Iwo Jima and fought in the subsequent battle for the island. On February 23, Hayes, together with fellow Marines Rene Gagnon, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and Mike Strank, and Navy Corpsman John Bradley, raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi, an event photographed by Joe Rosenthal.
  As a result of Rosenthal's photograph, Hayes and the others became national heroes in the United States. He was instrumental in confirming the identity of one of his fellow Marines in the photograph, Harlon Block. Hayes was never comfortable with his new-found fame, however, and after his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps he descended into alcoholism. He died of exposure and alcohol poisoning on January 24, 1955 after a night of drinking, and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
  
  wn.com/Ira_Hayes
• 
  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
• 
  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
• 
  Jamie Lee Curtis
  Jamie Lee Curtis (born November 22, 1958) is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many genres, and has won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards. Her 1998 book, Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day, made the best-seller list in The New York Times. Curtis has appeared in advertisements, and is a blogger for The Huffington Post online newspaper. She is married to actor, screenwriter, and director Christopher Guest.
  Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. Curtis's parents divorced in 1962, after which her mother married Robert Brandt. Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father's remarriages), Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose). Curtis attended Westlake School in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills High School, and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall. Returning to California in 1976, she attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She considered majoring in social work, but quit after one semester to pursue an acting career.
  
  wn.com/Jamie_Lee_Curtis
• 
  Janet Leigh
  Janet Leigh (born Jeanette Helen Morrison; July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004) was an American actress. She was the mother of Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis.
  Discovered by actress Norma Shearer, Leigh secured a contract with MGM and began her film career in 1947. She appeared in several popular films over the following decade, including Little Women (1949), Holiday Affair (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), and Living It Up (1954).
  In 1951, she married actor Tony Curtis, her third husband, with whom she co-starred in five films, including Houdini (1953), The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), and The Perfect Furlough (1958). During the latter half of the 1950s, she played mostly dramatic roles in such films as Safari (1955), Touch of Evil (1958) and Psycho (1960), for which she was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She continued to appear occasionally in films and television, including The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and two films with her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis: The Fog (1980) and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998).
  
  wn.com/Janet_Leigh
• 
  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
• Joyce Selznick
  Joyce Selznick (February 12, 1925-September 17, 1981) was a talent agent and casting director, and the niece to David O. Selznick, who produced Gone with the Wind in 1939 and founded Selznick International Pictures.
  Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Selznick was raised in the Hollywood culture due to her uncle's legendary status as a film producer. During her lifetime, she became a prominent and well-known figure among actors, having discovered, among others, Tony Curtis, James Darren, and Michael Pare. She managed Kurt Russell, Brenda Vaccaro, David Hasselhoff, Joey Travolta, Ann Jillian, and Fannie Flagg. In addition to these she helped launch the careers of George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway and Candice Bergen.
  She served as a casting director on thirteen films during her career, including The Buddy Holly Story, starring Gary Busey, in addition to writing on three others. In the 1988 made for television film The Ann Jillian Story, a film about Ann Jillian's life after she discovers she has breast cancer, Selznick was portrayed by actress Pam Hyatt. Selznick died on September 17th, 1981, in Hollywood.
  
  wn.com/Joyce_Selznick
• 
  Kelly Curtis
  Kelly Lee Curtis (born June 17, 1956) is an American actress.
  She was born in Santa Monica, California, the elder child of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh and the sister of actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Kelly Curtis began acting at the age of 27, playing Muffy in John Landis' Trading Places. Since her last acting appearance in 1999, she has worked as an assistant to Jamie Lee in the films Freaky Friday and Christmas with the Kranks.
  
  wn.com/Kelly_Curtis
• 
  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
• 
  Kirk Kerkorian
  Kerkor "Kirk" Kerkorian (born June 6, 1917) is an American businessman who is the president/CEO of Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping Las Vegas^{[citation needed]} and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr. the "father of the mega-resort."
  Kirk Kerkorian was born on June 6, 1917 in Fresno, California, to Armenian immigrant parents. Dropping out of school in 8th grade, he became a fairly skilled amateur boxer under the tutelage of his older brother, fighting under the name "Rifle Right Kerkorian" to win the Pacific amateur welterweight championship.
  In 1939, he met Ted O'Flaherty, for whom he installed wall furnaces that heated water. O'Flaherty was taking flying lessons, and having taken no interest Kerkorian took a guest seat one day and was converted on the views of the Californian coast.
  On sensing the oncoming World War II, and not wanting to join the infantry, he learned to fly at the Happy Bottom Riding Club in the Mojave Desert — adjacent to the USAF's Muroc Field, now Edwards Air Force Base. In exchange for flying lessons from pioneer aviatrix Pancho Barnes, he agreed to milk and look after her cattle.
  
  wn.com/Kirk_Kerkorian
• 
  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
• 
  Lee Marvin
  Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 – August 29, 1987) was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou (1965), he landed more heroic and sympathetic leading roles.
  Marvin was born in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and his wife Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion writer and beauty consultant. He was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin, Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England in 1635 and helped found Hartford, Connecticut.
  Marvin studied violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades." He attended St. Leo College Preparatory School in St. Leo, Florida after being expelled from several other schools for bad behavior.
  
  wn.com/Lee_Marvin
• 
  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
• 
  Pablo Picasso
  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
  Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
  
  wn.com/Pablo_Picasso
• Paul Frees
  Paul Frees (June 22, 1920 – November 2, 1986) was an American voice actor and character actor.
  He was born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago. Frees had an unusually wide four-octave voice range that would enable him to voice everything from the thundering basso profundo of the unseen "Ghost Host" in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland in California and at Disney World in Florida to the squeaky voice of the Little Green Sprout in the Green Giant vegetable commercials. He began his acting career in 1942 and remained active for over 40 years. During that time, he was involved in more than 250 films, cartoons and TV appearances; like many voice actors, his appearances were often uncredited.
  Frees' early radio career was cut short when he was drafted into World War II where he fought at Normandy, France on D-Day. He was wounded in action and was returned to the United States for a year of recuperation. He attended the Chouinard Art Institute under the G.I. Bill. When his first wife's health failed, he decided to drop out and return to radio work. He appeared frequently on Hollywood radio series, including Escape, playing lead roles and alternating with William Conrad as the opening announcer of Suspense in the late 1940s, and parts on Gunsmoke, (doing a passable impersonation of Howard McNear as Doc Adams for at least one episode, "The Cast"), and Crime Classics. One of his few starring roles in this medium was as Jethro Dumont in the 1949 series The Green Lama, as well as a syndicated anthology series The Player, in which Frees narrated and played all of the parts.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Frees
• Paul Matisse
  Paul Matisse (born 1933) is an artist and inventor. He is known especially for his public art installations, many of which are interactive. He is also inventor of the Kalliroscope.
  In 1954, Matisse graduated from Harvard, where he once lived in Eliot House with Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce, and Sadruddin Aga Khan, a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. After college he briefly studied at Harvard's Graduate School of Design before working in product development for Arthur D. Little. In 1962 he set off on his own, manufacturing Kalliroscopes.
  From 1977 to 1979 he helped enlarge a sculpture by Alexander Calder (who died in 1976) for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Thereafter, he began his own public art career.
  He currently resides in a former Baptist church in Groton, Massachusetts. He is the stepson of artist Marcel Duchamp and grandson of French painter Henri Matisse. Henri Matisse's son, Pierre Matisse, was Paul's father. His daughter Sophie Matisse is a painter in New York.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Matisse
• Peter Golenbock
  Peter Golenbock (born July 19, 1946) is a sports journalist and author. He is best known for the 1975 book Dynasty: The New York Yankees 1949–1964 about the Yankees of that era (including Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Casey Stengel, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Ralph Houk, and Yogi Berra). The book was a best-seller.
  Golenbock continued to write Yankees books - The Bronx Zoo (a 1979 release written with pitcher Sparky Lyle), Balls (with third baseman Graig Nettles), and Number 1 (with manager Billy Martin), to name a few. He covered the old Brooklyn Dodgers teams in Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (which won the 1984 CASEY Award for the best baseball book of the year). He has also written books on NASCAR and the New York Mets.
  Golenbock has also written books about collegiate athletics. Personal Fouls - The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano's North Carolina State revisited 1980's college basketball and focused on Jim Valvano and the NC State University basketball team. The book prompted an NCAA investigation which found that free tickets and shoes issued to players were sold for monetary gain by those players. Valvano lost his position as head coach and athletic director as a result of the investigation. Original publisher Simon and Schuster canceled the book after the university protested, and the State of North Carolina threatened a lawsuit over inaccurate charges on the book's projected dust jacket; the book was subsequently released by a smaller publishing house.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Golenbock
• 
  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
• 
  René Magritte
  René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fell under the umbrella of surrealism. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
  Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant, and Régina (née Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte's early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt at taking her own life; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
  
  wn.com/René_Magritte
• 
  Rich Little
  Richard Caruthers "Rich" Little (born November 26, 1938) is a Canadian-American impressionist and voice actor. He has long been known throughout the world as a top impersonator of famous people, resulting in his nickname, "The Man of a Thousand Voices", not to be confused with the legendary voice actor: Mel Blanc.
  Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Little was the middle of three sons. His father was a doctor. In his early teens, he formed a partnership with Geoff Scott, another budding impressionist, concentrating on reproducing the voices of Canadian politicians such as then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton (Geoff went on to become a politician). They were performing professionally in night clubs by age 17.
  Rich was an usher at the Elgin Movie Theatre in Ottawa where he would perfect his voices when standing at the back of the theatre. He started his amateur acting career at Ottawa's Little Theatre winning his first acting award at the Eastern Ontario Drama Festival in Deep River, Ontario. He went on to become a successful disc jockey, frequently incorporating impersonations into his show. In 1963, he was asked to audition by Mel Tormé, who was producing a new variety show for Judy Garland. The audition won him the job and in 1964, Little made his American television debut on CBS's The Judy Garland Show, where he astounded Garland with his imitations of various male celebrities. His impression of James Mason in A Star Is Born thrilled Garland, and his popularity began to grow.
  
  wn.com/Rich_Little
• 
  Robert Goulet
  Robert Gerard Goulet (November 26, 1933 – October 30, 2007) was a Canadian American entertainer as a singer and actor. He is probably best known for originating the role of Lancelot in the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot and his numerous appearances in Las Vegas.
  Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the only son of French Canadian parents Jeanette Gauthier and Joseph Georges André Goulet, a laborer. Through his father he was a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier as well as Jacques Goulet. Shortly after his father's death, 13-year-old Robert moved with his mother and sister Claire to Girouxville, Alberta, and he spent his formative years in Canada.
  Due to the Canadian citizenship law at the time, Goulet was not awarded Canadian citizenship despite his Canadian parents, making him a Lost Canadian. A 2008 law allowed him to retroactively be rewarded citizenship, but he died before it was received.
  Goulet's rise to fame started at the age of five when his aunts and uncles blackened his face with burnt cork and prompted him to do Al Jolson impressions. Though his performance was well-received by his relatives, the experience was deeply traumatic for the young Goulet, and left him with performance anxiety which plagued him for many years. Despite this stage fright, Goulet was encouraged by his parents to continue performing.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Goulet
• 
  Rod Steiger
  Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the television programs Marty and Jesus of Nazareth.
  Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger, of French, Scottish, and German descent. Steiger was raised as a Lutheran. He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger's mother (who subsequently left show business). Steiger grew up with his alcoholic mother before running away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw action on destroyers in the Pacific.
  Steiger appeared in over 100 motion pictures. He began his acting career in theatre and on live television in the early 1950s. On May 24, 1953, an episode of Goodyear Television Playhouse jump-started his career. The episode was the story of Marty written by Paddy Chayefsky. Marty is the story of a lonely homely butcher from the Bronx in search of love. Refusing to sign a seven-year studio contract, Steiger later turned down the role in the film version in 1955. Signing a studio contract at that time would "pigeon-hole" Steiger as to the roles he would later play and image portrayed on screen; those were two things Steiger objected to throughout his career. The role of Marty was turned over to Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine would receive the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Rod Steiger never regretted his decision to turn down the film role of Marty.
  
  wn.com/Rod_Steiger
• 
  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
• 
  Shelley Winters
  Shelley Winters (August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006. Winters won Academy Awards for her acting in The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, and is also remembered for her roles in A Place in the Sun, The Big Knife, Lolita, The Night of the Hunter, Alfie, and The Poseidon Adventure.
  Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose (née Winter), a singer with The Muny, and Jonas Schrift, a designer of men's clothing. Her parents were Jewish; her father immigrated from Austria, and her mother had been born in St. Louis to Austrian immigrants. Her parents had been third cousins. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was three years old. Her sister Blanche Schrift later married George Boroff, who ran The Circle Theatre (now named El Centro Theatre) in Los Angeles. Winters studied at The New School in New York City.
  
  wn.com/Shelley_Winters
• 
  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
• 
  Stanley Kubrick
  Stanley Kubrick (/ˈkuːbrɪk/; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor. He is regarded as having been one of America's greatest filmmakers. His films, typically adaptations of novels or short stories, were noted for their "dazzling" and unique cinematography, attention to details to achieve realism and an inspired use of music scores. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, including war, black comedy, horror and science fiction. Kubrick was also noted for being a perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging and working closely with his actors.
  Starting out as a photographer in New York City, he taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating high school. His earliest films were made on a shoestring budget, followed by one Hollywood blockbuster, after which he spent most of the rest of his career living and filming in England. His home became his workplace where he did his writing, research, editing and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete artistic control, but with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood studios.
  
  wn.com/Stanley_Kubrick
• 
  The Flintstones
  The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that was broadcast from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. The original pilot episode clip however was called the "Flagstones" (which first appeared in 1959 as a 90 second promotion to draw advertisers to the show) and was later reincorporated into the show's 1st episode (3rd episode in original airdate order). The show's name was changed to "The Flintstones" shortly thereafter. The show was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend.
  The show's continuing popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting.
  The show is set in the Stone Age town of Bedrock. (In some of the earlier episodes, it was also referred to as "Rockville"). In this fantasy version of the past, dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and other long-extinct animals co-exist with cavemen. Like their mid-20th century peers, these cavemen listen to records, live in split-level homes, and eat out at restaurants, yet their technology is made entirely from pre-industrial materials and largely powered through the use of various animals. For example, the cars are made out of stone, wood, and animal skins, and powered by the passengers' feet (as in the theme song, "Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet").
  
  wn.com/The_Flintstones
• 
  Tony Curtis
  Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz; June 3, 1925 – September 29, 2010) was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.
  Although his early film roles were partly the result of his good looks, by the later half of the 1950s he became a notable and strong screen presence. He began proving himself to be a “fine dramatic actor,” having the range to act in numerous dramatic and comedy roles. In his earliest parts he acted in a string of "mediocre" films, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports films, and a musical. However, by the time he starred in Houdini (1953) with his wife Janet Leigh, "his first clear success," notes critic David Thomson, his acting had progressed immensely.
  He won his first serious recognition as a skilled dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with co-star Burt Lancaster. The following year he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in another drama, The Defiant Ones (1958). Curtis then gave what many believe was his best acting, in a completely different role, the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959). Thomson calls it an "outrageous film," and it was voted the number 1 funniest film in history from a survey done by the American Film Institute. It costarred Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, and was directed by Billy Wilder. That was followed by Blake Edwards’ comedy Operation Petticoat (1959) with Cary Grant. They were both “frantic comedies,” and displayed "his impeccable comic timing." He often collaborated with Edwards on later films.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Curtis
• 
  Tyrone Power
  Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. (May 5, 1913 – November 15, 1958), usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile.
  Though renowned for his dark, classically handsome looks that made him a matinee idol from his first film appearance, Power played a wide range of roles, from film leading man to light comedy. In the 1950s, he began placing limits on the number of films he would make in order to have time for the stage. He received his biggest accolades as a stage actor in John Brown's Body and Mister Roberts. Power died from a heart attack at the age of 45.
  Power was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1914, the only son of Helen Emma "Patia" (née Reaume) and the English-born American stage and screen actor Tyrone Power, Sr. Power was descended from a long theatrical line going back to his great-grandfather, the actor and comedian Tyrone Power (1795-1841). His father's ancestry included Irish, English, and Protestant French Huguenots (the latter through his paternal grandmother's Lavenu and Blossett ancestors). His mother had Catholic French Canadian (through the Reaume family) and German (from Alsace-Lorraine) ancestry. Through his paternal great-grandmother, Anne Gilbert, Power was related to the actor Laurence Olivier; through his paternal grandmother, stage actress Ethel Lavenu, he was related by marriage to author Evelyn Waugh, and through his father's first cousin, Norah Emily Gorman Power, he was related to the theatrical director Sir (William) Tyrone Guthrie, founder of the Stratford Festival (now the Stratford Shakespeare Festival) in Canada and the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
  
  wn.com/Tyrone_Power
• 
  Vincent Van Gogh
  Vincent Willem van Gogh (UK  /ˌvæn ˈɡɒx/, US /ˌvæn ˈɡoʊ/;Dutch: [vɑŋ ˈɣɔχ] ( listen); 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
  Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Van_Gogh
• 
  Walter Matthau
  Walter Matthau (October 1, 1920 – July 1, 2000) was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears. He won an Academy Award for his performance in the 1966 Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie.
  Matthau was born Walter John Matthow in New York City's Lower East Side on October 1, 1920, the son of Rose (née Berolsky; from Lithuania), who worked in a sweatshop, and Milton Matthow, an electrician and peddler (from Russia), both Jewish immigrants. His surname has often incorrectly been listed as Matuschanskayasky (see below for a detailed discussion). As a young boy, Walter attended a Jewish non-profit sleepaway camp, Tranquillity Camp, where he first began acting in the shows the camp would stage on Saturday nights. He also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School.
  During World War II, Matthau served in the U.S. Army Air Forces with the Eighth Air Force in England as a B-24 Liberator radioman-gunner, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart. He reached the rank of staff sergeant and became interested in acting. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He often joked that his best early review came in a play where he posed as a derelict. One reviewer said, "The others just looked like actors in make-up, Walter Matthau really looks like a skid row bum!" Matthau was a respected stage actor for years in such fare as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and A Shot in the Dark. He won the 1962 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a play.
  
  wn.com/Walter_Matthau
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• William Crawley
  William Crawley is a BBC journalist and broadcaster.
  On radio, he presents BBC Radio Ulster's weekly Sunday Sequence programme and is part of the presenting team for Radio 4's Sunday. He also presents The Book Programme, a literary review programme, for Radio Ulster. Crawley's special edition of Sunday Sequence from Cape Town won the Andrew Cross Award for UK speech radio programme of the year. His other regular radio presenting roles include: Talk Back, BBC Radio Ulster's daily news and current affairs programme; Evening Extra, the station's drive-time news programme and Arts Extra, a daily arts review programme. Previous radio programmes include: The Bonfire Makers (for BBC Radio Four), an examination of Northern Ireland's controversial annual loyalist bonfire tradition, and documentaries about George Bernard Shaw and the controversial Hugh Lane paintings for BBC Radio Three.
  On 22 May 2009, the Hollywood screen legend Tony Curtis had to apologise to the BBC radio audience after he used three swear words in a six-minute interview with William Crawley on the BBC's Talk Back programme. William Crawley also apologised to the audience for 'that little bit of Holywood realism'. Curtis explained that he had forgotten that the interview was live.
  
  wn.com/William_Crawley

Jill and Tony Curtis Story, The (2008)

Actors

Director