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• 
  

• 
  Alsace
  Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
  The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
  
  wn.com/Alsace
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  California
  California (pronounced ⁱ/kælɨˈfɔrnjə/) is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third most extensive (after Alaska and Texas). It is home to the nation's second- and sixth-largest census statistical areas (Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and San Francisco Bay Area), and eight of the nation's fifty most populated cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland). The capital city is Sacramento.
  California's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west, to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east – from the Redwood–Douglas-fir forests of the northwest, to the Mojave Desert areas in the southeast. The center of the state is dominated by Central Valley, a major agricultural area. California contains both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney and Death Valley), and has the third-longest coastline of all states (after Alaska and Florida). Earthquakes are a common occurrence due to the state's location along the Pacific Ring of Fire: about 37,000 are recorded annually.
  
  wn.com/California
• 
  Cannes Film Festival
  The Cannes International Film Festival (French: Le Festival International du Film de Cannes or just Festival de Cannes), is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is the world's most prestigious and publicized film festival. The invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
  The 2012 Cannes Film Festival took place from May 16 to May 27, 2012. The President of the Jury was the Italian film director Nanni Moretti.
  The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in the late 1930s when Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger and with the support of the British and Americans,^{[clarification needed]} set up an international cinematographic festival. In 1947, the festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. Moreover, the principle of equality was introduced, so that the jury was to be made up only of one representative per country. Also, this year the festival was held at the made-for-the-occasion Palais des Festivals, although the roof was unfinished and blew off during a storm. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1951, owing to better relations between France and Italy, the Cannes Festival was moved to Spring, while the Mostra remained in Autumn.
  
  wn.com/Cannes_Film_Festival
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  France
  France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).
  Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
  
  wn.com/France
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  German Empire
  The German Empire (German: Deutsches Kaiserreich) is the common name given to the state officially named the Deutsches Reich (literally: "German Realm"), designating Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.
  The German Empire consisted of 27 constituent territories (most of them ruled by royal families). While the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the population and most of the territory of the Reich; the Prussian leadership became supplanted by German leaders and Prussia itself played a lesser role. As Dwyer (2005) points out, Prussia's "political and cultural influence had diminished considerably" by the 1890s. Its three largest neighbors were rivals Imperial Russia to the east and France to the west and ally Austria-Hungary to the south.
  After 1850, Germany industrialized rapidly, with a foundation in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals and railways. From a population of 41 million people in 1871, it grew to 68 million in 1913. From a heavily rural nation in 1815, it was now predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological and scientific giant, receiving more Nobel Prizes in science than Britain, France, Russia and the United States combined.
  
  wn.com/German_Empire
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  Germany
  Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
  A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
  
  wn.com/Germany
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  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
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  Los Angeles
  Los Angeles (ⁱ/lɒs ˈændʒələs/ loss-AN-jə-ləs; Spanish: [los ˈaŋxeles], which is written Los Ángeles; British pronounciation /lɒs ˈændʒəliːz/ loss-AN-jə-leez) with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in the state of California, and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of 468.67 square miles (1,213.8 km²), and is located in Southern California. Often known by its initials L.A., the city is the focal point of the larger Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan statistical area and Greater Los Angeles Area region, which contain 12,828,837 and nearly 18 million people respectively as of 2010, making it one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world and the second largest in the United States. Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States, while the entire Los Angeles area itself has been recognized as the most diverse of the nation's largest cities. The city's inhabitants are referred to as "Angelenos".
  
  wn.com/Los_Angeles
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  Mulhouse
  Coordinates: 47°44′58″N 7°20′24″E / 47.7495°N 7.3399°E / 47.7495; 7.3399
  Mulhouse (French: Mulhouse, pronounced: [myluz]; Alsatian: Milhüsa or Milhüse, [mɪlˈyːzə]; German: Mülhausen; i.e. mill hamlet) is a city and commune in eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. With a population of 110,514 and 278,206 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2006, it is the largest city in the Haut-Rhin département, and the second largest in the Alsace region after Strasbourg. Mulhouse is the principal commune of the 32 making up the Communauté d'agglomération Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération (MAA, population 252,000).
  Mulhouse is famous for its museums, especially the Cité de l’Automobile (also known as "Musée national de l’automobile") and the Musée Français du Chemin de Fer (also known as "Cité du train"), respectively the largest automobile and railway museums in France. An industrial town nicknamed "the French Manchester", Mulhouse is also the main seat of the Upper Alsace University, where the secretariat of the European Physical Society can be found.
  
  wn.com/Mulhouse
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  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

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  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
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  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
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  Alsace
  Alsace (French: Alsace [alzas]; Alsatian: Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass, pre-1996: Elsaß, IPA: [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area (8,280 km²), and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km² (total population in 2006: 1,815,488; 1 January 2008 estimate: 1,836,000). Alsace is located on France's eastern border and on the west bank of the upper Rhine adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. The political, economic and cultural capital as well as largest city of Alsace is Strasbourg. Because that city is the seat of dozens of international organizations and bodies, Alsace is politically one of the most important regions in the European Union.
  The name "Alsace" can be traced back to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation derives it from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. The region was historically part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was gradually annexed by France in the 17th century under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV and made one of the provinces of France. Alsace is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Lorraine, because German possession of parts of these two régions (as the imperial province Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918) was contested in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years.
  
  wn.com/Alsace
• Arthur Freed
  Arthur Freed (September 9, 1894 – April 12, 1973) was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a JewishAmerican lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.
  Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago. After meeting Minnie Marx, he sang as part of the act of her sons, the Marx Brothers, on the vaudeville circuit, and also wrote material for the brothers. He soon began to write songs, and was eventually hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For years, he wrote lyrics for numerous films, many set to music by Nacio Herb Brown.
  In 1939, after working (uncredited) in the role of associate producer on The Wizard of Oz, he was promoted to being the head of his own unit within MGM, and helped elevate the studio to the leading creator of film musicals. His first solo credit as producer was the film version of Rodgers and Hart's smash Broadway musical Babes in Arms (also 1939), released only a few months after The Wizard of Oz. It starred Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, and it was so successful that it ushered in a long series of "let's put on a show" "backyard" musicals, all starring Rooney and Garland.
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Freed
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  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
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  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
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  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
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  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
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  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
• Buddy Adler
  E. Maurice "Buddy" Adler (June 22, 1909 – July 12, 1960) was an American film producer and a former production head for 20th Century Fox studios.
  Born in New York City, New York, he married in 1940 actress Anita Louise Fremault (1915–1970) with whom he had two children.
  In 1954, his production of From Here to Eternity won the Academy Award for Best Picture and in 1956, his Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing was nominated for best picture. Adler also produced the 1956 film Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe.
  He was the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1957. The following year he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures.
  Buddy Adler died of lung cancer, aged 51, in Los Angeles and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His widow died ten years later.
  
  wn.com/Buddy_Adler
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  Carl Laemmle
  Carl Laemmle (January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939), born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios – Universal. Laemmle produced or was otherwise involved in over four hundred films.
  Regarded as one of the most important of the early film pioneers, Laemmle was born on the Radstrasse just outside the former Jewish quarter of Laupheim. He emigrated to the US in 1884, working in Chicago as a bookkeeper or office manager for 20 years. He began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service, the Laemmle Film Service.
  On April 30, 1912, in New York, Carl Laemmle of IMP, Pat Powers of Powers Motion Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company, David Horsley of Nestor Film Company and Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company merged their studios and the Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated. They founded the Universal Motion Picture Manufacturing Company in 1912, and established the studio on 235 acres (0.95 km²) of land in the San Fernando Valley, California in 1915.
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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• David Lean
  Sir David Lean, CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984); for bringing Charles Dickens' novels to the silver screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
  Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick,, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002. Lean has four films in the top eleven of the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films.
  David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student; he left in his mid-teens and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. At age 16, his father deserted the family when he ran off with another woman, and young David would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.
  
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• Delbert Mann
  Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. (January 30, 1920 – November 11, 2007) was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty. It was the first Best Picture winner to be based on a television program, being adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. Mann is also the only director other than Billy Wilder and Roman Polanski to win an Oscar for his direction and a Cannes Palme d'Or for the same film. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America.
  Mann was born in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, the son of Ora (née Patton), a civic worker and teacher, and Delbert Martin Mann, Sr., a college professor. Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. After school, he served with the U.S. Army Air Forces in WW II, as a combat pilot of a B-24 Liberator of the 467th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force in England. After his discharge he attended Yale Drama School, and graduated, followed by work in theater and eventually, TV and movies. He was married to Ann Caroline Mann from 1941 until his wife's death in 2001. Mann died from pneumonia on November 11, 2007 at a Los Angeles hospital.
  
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  Dino De Laurentiis
  Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian film producer.
  He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. His studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
  Following his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento, (1940) he produced nearly 150 films during the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s, Dino De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas (1961) a Christian religious epic, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather.
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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  Fanny Brice
  Fanny Brice (October 29, 1891 – May 29, 1951) was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedian, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show. Thirteen years after her death, she was portrayed on the Broadway stage by Barbra Streisand in the musical Funny Girl and its 1968 film adaptation.
  Fanny Brice (occasionally spelled Fannie Brice) was the stage name of Fania Borach, born in New York City, the third child of relatively well-off saloon owners of Hungarian Jewish descent. In 1908, Brice dropped out of school to work in a burlesque revue, and two years later she began her association with Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 to 1911. She was hired again in 1921 and performed in them into the 1930s. In the 1921 Follies, she was featured singing "My Man" which became both a big hit and her signature song. She made a popular recording of it for Victor Records.
  
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  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.
  
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  Frank Capra
  Frank Russell Capra (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s. His rags-to-riches story, having worked his way through college, has led film historians like Ian Freer to consider Capra the "American dream personified."
  Capra became one of America's most powerful directors during the 1930s, winning three Oscars as Best Director. Among his leading films was It Happened One Night (1934), which became the first film to win all five top Oscars, including Best Picture. Other leading films included Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and State of the Union (1948). Because of his early fame as a director, his name was listed "above the title" of his films when they were publicized. People "flocked to the theaters" during the 1930s and 1940s to see films directed by Frank Capra.
  
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  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.
  
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• Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann (29 April 1907 – 14 March 1997) was an Austrian-American film director. He won two Academy Awards for directing films (From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons) in many genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir, and play adaptations. Nineteen actors appearing in Zinnemann's films received Academy Award nominations for their performances: among that number are Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Glynis Johns, Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Gary Cooper and Maximilian Schell.
  Zinnemann was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. While growing up in Austria, he wanted to become a musician, but went on to study law. While studying at the University of Vienna, he became drawn to films and eventually became a cameraman. He worked in Germany with several other beginners (Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak also worked with him on the 1929 feature People on Sunday) before going to America to study film.
  Zinnemann's penchant for realism and authenticity is evident in his first feature The Wave (1935), shot on location in Mexico with mostly non-professional actors recruited among the locals, which is one of the earliest examples of realism in narrative film. Earlier in the decade, in fact, Zinnemann had worked with documentarian Robert Flaherty, an association he considered "the most important event of my professional life".
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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  George Lucas
  George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.
  George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.
  Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.
  
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• George Stevens
  George Stevens (December 18, 1904 – March 8, 1975) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.
  Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank (1959), nominated for Best Director, Giant (1956), winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane (1953), Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun (1951), winner of Oscar for Best Director.
  He was born in Oakland, California, and his family included his father Landers Stevens and his mother Georgie Cooper, both stage actors. His uncle was drama critic Ashton Stevens. He also had two brothers, Jack and writer Aston Stevens. He learned about the stage from his parents and worked and toured with them, on his way to filmmaking. He broke into the movie business as a cameraman, working on many Laurel and Hardy short films, such as Night Owls (1930). His first feature film was The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble in 1933.
  In 1934 he got his first directing job, the slapstick Kentucky Kernels. His big break came when he directed Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams in 1935. He went on in the late 1930s to direct several Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies, not only with the two actors together, but on their own. In 1940, he directed Carole Lombard in Vigil in the Night, and the film has an alternate ending for European audiences in recognition of World War II, which the US had not yet entered.
  
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  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.
  
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  Harrison Ford
  Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American film actor and producer. He is famous for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. Ford is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. His career has spanned six decades and includes roles in several Hollywood blockbusters, including Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One, and What Lies Beneath. At one point, four of the top six box-office hits of all time included one of his roles. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.
  In 1997, Ford was ranked No. 1 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. As of July 2008^[update], the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total over US$3.5 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star. Ford is the husband of actress Calista Flockhart.
  
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  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.
  
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• Ian Freer
  Ian Freer is a British non-fiction author and Film magazine editor, who has written several books relating to films. His most recent work was The Complete Spielberg, a guide to the films of Steven Spielberg.
  He is currently employed with the film magazine Empire and is one of their senior reviewers as well as the assistant editor of the magazine.
  
  
  
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  Ingmar Bergman
  Ernst Ingmar Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋmar ˈbærjman] ( listen); 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of all time.
  He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over one hundred and seventy plays. Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of Sweden. His major subjects were death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.
  Bergman was active for more than six decades. In 1976 his career was seriously threatened as the result of a botched criminal investigation for alleged income tax evasion. Outraged, Bergman suspended a number of pending productions, closed his studios, and went into self-imposed exile in Germany for eight years.
  
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  Irving Thalberg
  Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make hundreds of very profitable films, including Grand Hotel, China Seas, Camille, Mutiny on the Bounty and The Good Earth. His films carved out a major international market, "projecting a seductive image of American life brimming with vitality and rooted in democracy and personal freedom," states biographer Roland Flamini.
  He was born in Brooklyn, NY, and as a child was afflicted with a congenital heart disease that he was told would lead to his death before he reached the age of thirty. After graduating high school he took night classes in typing and worked as a store clerk during the day. He then took a job as a secretary at Universal Studios’ New York office, and was later made studio manager for their Los Angeles facility, where he oversaw production of a hundred films during his three years with the company. Among the films he produced were The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
  
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  Jack Cardiff
  Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC (18 September 1914 – 22 April 2009) was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.
  His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century. He was best known for his influential colour cinematography for directors such as Powell and Pressburger, Huston and Hitchcock.
  In 2000 he was awarded an OBE and in 2001 he was awarded an Honorary Oscar for his contribution to the cinema.
  Jack Cardiff's work is reviewed in detail in the documentary film: Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010).
  Cardiff was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the son of Florence and John Joseph Cardiff, music hall entertainers. He worked as an actor from an early age, both in the music hall and in a number of silent films: My Son, My Son (1918), Billy's Rose (1922), The Loves of Mary, Queen of Scots (1923) and Tiptoes (1927). At 15 he began working as a camera assistant, clapper boy and production runner for British International Pictures, including Hitchcock's The Skin Game (1931).
  
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  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.
  
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  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 .
  
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  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."
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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  Jerry Wald
  Jerry Wald (September 16, 1911 – July 13, 1962) was an American producer and screenwriter for motion pictures and radio shows.
  Born Jerome Irving Wald in Brooklyn, New York, he had a brother and sons who were active in show business. Jerry began writing a radio column for the New York Evening Graphic while a student at New York University. This led to him to produce several Rambling 'Round Radio Row featurettes for Vitaphone, Warner Brothers' short subject division, in 1932-'33.
  Wald produced and wrote many films between the 1930s and 1960s including Stars Over Broadway (1935), The Roaring Twenties (1939), On Your Toes (1939, in collaboration with playwright Lawrence Riley), They Drive by Night (1940), Navy Blues (1941), Across the Pacific (1942), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Destination Tokyo (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), Johnny Belinda (1948), Key Largo (1948), Always Leave Them Laughing (1949), The Glass Menagerie (1950), Perfect Strangers (1950), Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), The Blue Veil (1951), Peyton Place (1957), An Affair to Remember (1957), In Love and War (1958), The Sound and the Fury (1959), Sons and Lovers (1960), Return to Peyton Place (1961) and Wild in the Country (1961).
  
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• John Calley
  John Calley (July 8, 1930 – September 13, 2011) was an American film studio executive and producer. He was quite influential during his years at Warner Bros. (where he worked from 1968 to 1981) and "produced a film a month, on average, including commercial successes like The Exorcist and Superman." During his seven years at Sony Pictures Entertainment starting in 1996, five of which he was chairman and chief executive, he was credited with "reinvigorat[ing]" that major film studio.
  Together with Mike Nichols and Ismail Merchant, Calley produced 1993's The Remains of the Day, for which the trio received an Oscar nomination—Calley's only such Best Picture nomination.
  A best picture nomination Calley potentially missed was when, as Sony's new head, he nixed the studio's backing of Terence Malick's 1998 film The Thin Red Line, reportedly because he thought Malick couldn't keep to the budget. (The film stayed on budget and received seven Academy Award nominations.)
  He was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the inaugural Governors Awards ceremony on November 11, 2009. For the ceremony, Calley, unable to attend in person due to illness, recorded remarks that were projected on a giant video screen, remarks characterizing the life of a film studio executive and called "one of the night's more startling bits of honesty": "You're very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky."
  
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  John Ford
  John Ford (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973) was an American film director. He was famous for both his Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath. His four Academy Awards for Best Director (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record, and one of those films, How Green Was My Valley, also won Best Picture.
  In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films (although nearly all of his silent films are now lost) and he is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. Ford's films and personality were held in high regard by his colleagues, with Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles among those who have named him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
  In particular, Ford was a pioneer of location shooting and the long shot which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain.
  Ford was born John Martin "Jack" Feeney (though he later often gave his given names as Sean Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or O'Fearna; an Irish language equivalent of Feeney) in Cape Elizabeth, Maine to John Augustine Feeney and Barbara "Abbey" Curran, on February 1, 1894 (though he occasionally said 1895 and that date is erroneously inscribed on his tombstone). His father, John Augustine, was born in Spiddal,County Galway, Ireland in 1854. Barbara Curran had been born in the Aran Islands, in the town of Kilronan on the island of Inishmore (Inis Mór). John A. Feeney's grandmother, Barbara Morris, was said to be a member of a local (impoverished) gentry family, the Morrises of Spiddal, headed at present by Lord Killanin.
  
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  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.
  
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• John Sturges
  John Eliot Sturges (January 3, 1910 – August 18, 1992) was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963) and Ice Station Zebra (1968).
  He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932. During World War II, he directed documentaries and training films for the US Army Air Corps. Sturges's mainstream directorial career began in 1946 with The Man Who Dared, the first of many B-movies. He made imaginative use of the widescreen CinemaScope format by placing Spencer Tracy alone against a vast desert panorama in the suspense film Bad Day at Black Rock for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination in 1955. Over the course of his career, Sturges developed a reputation for elevated character-based drama within the confines of genre filmmaking. He was awarded the Golden Boot Award in 1992 for his lifetime contribution to Westerns.
  He once met with Akira Kurosawa, who told him that he loved The Magnificent Seven (which was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) and presented him with a samurai sword. Sturges considered this the proudest moment of his professional career.
  
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• Joshua Logan
  Joshua Lockwood Logan III (October 5, 1908 – July 12, 1988) was an American stage and film director and writer.
  Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan (née Nabors) and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide. Logan, his mother, and younger sister, Mary Lee, then moved to his maternal grandparents’ home in Mansfield, Louisiana, which Logan used forty years later as the setting for his play The Wisteria Trees. Logan's mother remarried six years after his father's death and he then attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where his stepfather served on the staff. At school, he experienced his first drama class and felt at home. After his high school graduation he attended Princeton University. At Princeton, he was involved with the intercollegiate summer stock company, known as the University Players, with fellow student James Stewart and also non-student Henry Fonda. During his senior year he served as president of the Princeton Triangle Club. Before his graduation he won a scholarship to study in Moscow with Constantin Stanislavsky, and Logan left school without a diploma.
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
  
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• Lawrence Weingarten
  Lawrence Weingarten (December 30, 1897 — February 5, 1975) was an American film producer. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1974. Weingarten died of leukemia in 1975 at the age of 77.
  
  
  
  
  
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• Leo McCarey
  Thomas Leo McCarey (October 3, 1898 – July 5, 1969) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies. French director Jean Renoir once said that "Leo McCarey understood people better than any other Hollywood director."
  Born in Los Angeles, California, he graduated from the University of Southern California law school and began in the movie business as an assistant director to Tod Browning in 1920, but honed his skills at the Hal Roach Studios for the rest of that decade. Hired by Hal Roach in 1923, McCarey initially wrote gags for the Our Gang series and other studio stars, then produced and directed shorts, including two-reelers with Charley Chase. While at Roach, McCarey cast Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together and guided development of their onscreen characters, thus creating one of the most enduring comedy teams of all time. He only officially appeared as director of the duo shorts We Faw Down (1928), Liberty (1929) and Wrong Again (1929), but wrote many of the screenplays. By 1929, he was vice-president of production for the entire studio.
  
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  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.
  
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• László Benedek
  László Benedek, sometimes credited as Laslo Benedek (March 5, 1905 – March 11, 1992), was a Hungarian-born film director.
  Born in Budapest, he worked as a writer and editor in Hungarian cinema until World War II. Louis B. Mayer helped the Jewish Benedek escape and brought him to Hollywood where he directed his first film for MGM in 1944 as a stand-in.
  He gained wide recognition for his direction of 1951's Death of a Salesman, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and a Best Director nomination from the Directors Guild of America. However, it was for his directorial efforts on his next project that Benedek is best remembered. His 1953 motorcycle gang film The Wild One caused a storm of controversy and was banned in the United Kingdom until 1968.
  László Benedek spoke several languages and directed in Germany, making the 1955 film Kinder, Mütter und ein General and in France in 1960, directing Recours en grâce. In Hollywood, Benedek went on to make more motion pictures, but also became a significant director of television series, beginning with the Perry Mason series in 1957. He also directed episodes of other shows, including The Outer Limits, Mannix, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Untouchables, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
  
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  Margaret Sullavan
  Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960 was an American stage and film actress. She began her career onstage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday.
  Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 movies, four of which were opposite James Stewart in a popular partnership. She retired from the screen in the early forties, but returned in 1950 to make her last movie, No Sad Songs For Me (1950), in which she plays a woman who is dying of cancer. For the rest of her career she would only appear on the stage. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Three Comrades (1938). She died of an overdose of barbiturates on January 1, 1960, aged only 50 years old.
  Sullavan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker, Cornelius Sullavan and his wife, Garland Brooke. The first years of Margaret's childhood were spent isolated from other children. She suffered from a painful muscular weakness in the legs that prevented her from walking, so that she was unable to mingle with other children until the age of six. After recovery she emerged as an adventurous and tomboyish child who preferred playing with the children from the poorer neighborhood, much to the disapproval of her class-conscious parents.
  
  wn.com/Margaret_Sullavan
• Margaret Tallichet
  wn.com/Margaret_Tallichet
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  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.
  
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  Mary Astor
  Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941) with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.
  She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost saw her career destroyed due to public scandal in the mid-1930s. She was sued for support by her parents and was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband during a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor went on to even greater success on the screen, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie (1941). She was an MGM contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to act in movies, on television and on stage until her retirement from the screen in 1964. Astor was the author of five novels. Her autobiography became a bestseller, as did her later book, A Life on Film, which was specifically about her career.
  
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• Mervyn LeRoy
  Mervyn LeRoy (October 15, 1900 - September 13, 1987) was an American film director, film producer and sometime actor.
  Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake. (His paternal grandfather owned a successful San Francisco department store that was destroyed in the quake; the store was heavily insured, but the insurance company went bankrupt in the aftermath of the earthquake.) To make money, young Mervyn sold newspapers and entered talent shows as a singer. Through this he worked his way into vaudeville. When his act broke up, he and his cousin, Jesse Lasky, went to Hollywood.
  LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films. His first directing job was in 1927's No Place to Go. When his movies made lots of money without costing too much, he became well-received in the movie business.
  In 1931 he directed two key films which launched Edward G. Robinson into major stardom, the Oscar-nominated critique of tabloid journalism Five Star Final, and the classic gangster epic Little Caesar. From that point forward, LeRoy would be responsible for a diverse variety of films as a director and producer. In 1938 he was chosen as head of production at MGM, where he was responsible for the decision to make The Wizard of Oz. He was responsible for discovering Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Robert Mitchum and Lana Turner.
  
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  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 Curtiz
  Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early credits as Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States, many of them cinema classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday of the Warner Bros. studio in the 1930s and '40s.
  He was less successful from the late 1940s onwards, when he attempted to move from studio direction into production and freelance work, but he continued working until shortly before his death.
  Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary). He claimed to have been born December 24, 1886. Both the date and the year are open to doubt: he was fond of telling tall stories about his early years, including that he had run away from home to join the circus and that he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games, but he seems to have had a conventional middle-class upbringing. He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.
  
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  Michael Douglas
  Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons.
  Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian-born actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda; Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens.
  
  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.
  
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  Morgan Freeman
  Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Unforgiven, Glory, Seven, Deep Impact, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce Almighty, Batman Begins, March of the Penguins, The Bucket List, Wanted, The Dark Knight, and RED.
  Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber who died April 27, 1961, from cirrhosis. He has three older siblings. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. His family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. Freeman made his acting debut at age 9, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, later named Threadgill Elementary School, in Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1955, he graduated from Broad Street, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force.
  
  wn.com/Morgan_Freeman
• 
  Norman Jewison
  Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, O.Ont (born July 21, 1926) is a Canadian film director, producer, actor and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Highlights of his directing career include In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Moonstruck (1987), Other People's Money (1991), The Hurricane (1999) and The Statement (2003). Jewison has addressed important social and political issues throughout his directing and producing career, often making controversial or complicated subjects accessible to mainstream audiences.
  Jewison was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Dorothy Irene (née Weaver) and Percy Joseph Jewison, who managed a convenience store and post office. He attended Kew Beach School and Malvern Collegiate Institute, and while growing up in the 1930s displayed an aptitude for performing and theatre. Jewison was often mistaken for Jewish due to his Jewish-sounding name, though he and his family were actually Protestant. He served in the Royal Canadian Navy (1944–1945) during World War II, and after being discharged traveled in the American South, where he encountered segregation, an experience that would influence his later work.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Jewison
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  Olivia de Havilland
  Olivia Mary de Havilland (born 1 July 1916) is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.
  Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan, to parents from the United Kingdom. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland (31 August 1872 – 20 May 1968, aged 95), was a patent attorney with a practice in Japan, and her mother, Lilian Augusta (née Ruse; 11 June 1886 – 20 February 1975, aged 88) was a stage actress who had left her career after going to Tokyo with her husband – she would return to work after her daughters had already won fame in the 40s, with the stage name of Lillian Fontaine. Her parents married in 1914 and they separated in 1919, when Lilian decided to end the marriage after discovering that her husband used the sexual services of geisha girls, but divorce was not signed until February 1925.
  
  wn.com/Olivia_de_Havilland
• 
  Orson Welles
  George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.
  After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
  
  wn.com/Orson_Welles
• Ray Stark
  Ray Stark (October 3, 1915 – January 17, 2004) was an American film producer and powerbroker known for his Machiavellian ways.
  While putting together the Broadway musical Funny Girl - the highly fictionalized account of the life of his mother-in-law, Fanny Brice - its producer David Merrick took Stark and his wife to see an unknown singer perform at the Bon Soir in Greenwich Village. At first, the Starks balked at using Barbra Streisand, but settled for her when they couldn't get Eydie Gorme or Carol Burnett and their initial choice, Anne Bancroft, pulled out.^{[citation needed]}
  Stark forced Streisand to sign a four-picture deal with his Rastar Productions in exchange for reprising Brice. They collaborated on The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), The Way We Were (1973) and Funny Lady (1975), but there was obvious bitterness: after Funny Lady wrapped, Streisand gave Stark an antique mirror on which she wrote in lipstick, "Paid in full."
  Stark was the power behind the throne at Columbia Pictures in the 1970s and 80s. In 1977, when actor Cliff Robertson started an investigation which revealed that Columbia President David Begelman had forged checks, Stark told Robertson to not press on. Robertson said he would do "what a citizen should do in this situation," and Robertson was blacklisted for two years. The story is detailed in David McClintick's Indecent Exposure: a True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street.
  
  wn.com/Ray_Stark
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  Robert De Niro
  Robert De Niro (pronounced /dəˈnɪəroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  His critically acclaimed, longtime collaborations with Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991). In addition, he received nominations for his acting in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Also in 1990, his portrayal as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination.
  He has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). He has received accolades for his esteemed career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
  
  wn.com/Robert_De_Niro
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  Robert Rossen
  Robert Rossen (March 16, 1908 – February 18, 1966) was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades. His 1949 film All the King's Men won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, while Rossen was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director. He won the Golden Globe for Best Director and the film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture. In 1961 he made The Hustler, which was nominated for nine Oscars and won two. Rossen was nominated as Best Director and with Sidney Carroll for Best Adapted Screenplay but did not win either award.
  After directing and writing for the stage in New York, Rossen moved to Hollywood in 1937. There he worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. until 1941, and then interrupted his career to serve until 1944 as the chairman of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization Against the War, a body to organize writers for the effort in World War II. In 1945 he joined a picket line against Warner Bros., making an enemy of Jack Warner. After making one film for Hal Wallis's new-formed production company, Rossen made one for Columbia Pictures, another for Wallis and most of his later films for his own companies, usually in collaboration with Columbia.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Rossen
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  Robert Wise
  Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American film director, producer and editor. He twice won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture, for West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and Best Picture for The Sand Pebbles (1966).
  Among his other films are The Body Snatcher; Born to Kill; The Set-Up; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Destination Gobi; Run Silent, Run Deep; I Want to Live!; The Haunting; The Andromeda Strain; The Hindenburg; and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  Wise was the president of the Directors Guild of America from 1971 to 1975 and later became the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  Often contrasted with 'auteur' directors such as Stanley Kubrick who tended to bring a distinctive directorial "look" to a particular genre, Wise is famously viewed to have allowed his (sometimes studio assigned) story to dictate style. Later critics such as Martin Scorsese expanded that characterization, insisting that despite Wise's notorious workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget, his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan. Through whatever means, Wise's approach brought him critical success as a director in many different traditional film genres: horror, noir, western, war, science fiction, musical and drama, with many repeat successes within each genre. Wise's tendency towards professionalism led to a degree of preparedness which, though nominally motivated by studio budget constraints, nevertheless advanced the moviemaking art, with many Academy Award-winning films the result. Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Wise
• Sam Spiegel
  Sam Spiegel (November 11, 1901 – December 31, 1985) was an Austrian-born American independent film producer.
  Spiegel was born in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now in Poland) as Samuel P. Spiegel to a German-Jewish father and Polish mother^{[citation needed]} and educated at the University of Vienna. His brother was Shalom Spiegel, a professor of medieval Hebrew poetry. Spiegel worked briefly in Hollywood in 1927 following a stint serving with Hashomer Hatzair in Palestine. He then went to Berlin to produce German and French adaptations of Universal films until 1933 when he fled Germany. As an independent producer, Spiegel was behind a number of European films. In 1938, he immigrated to Mexico and subsequently the United States. Between 1935 and 1954, Spiegel billed himself as S.P. Eagle. After that he used his real name. "...Spiegel a decidedly flawed protagonist, as well as the wit, sophistication, and Old World charm that make him a titanic figure the likes of which the movie industry will not see again."
  
  wn.com/Sam_Spiegel
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  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
• Saul Zaentz
  Saul Zaentz ( /ˈzænts/; born February 28, 1921) is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
  Zaentz's film production career is marked by a dedication to the adaptation of the novel. A prolific reader, Zaentz typically does not produce original screenplays. His most recent production, Goya's Ghosts, is an exception, being an original story by Jean-Claude Carrière and Miloš Forman.
  Zaentz was born to immigrant Jewish parents in Passaic, New Jersey. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, Zaentz began realizing his passion for music as a distributor for Granz's Jazz Record company, a job that included managing concert tours for greats like Duke Ellington and Stan Getz. Zaentz went to William B.Cruz Memorial school number 11 in Passaic New Jersey as a child.
  In 1955 he joined Fantasy Records, for many years the largest independent jazz record label in the world. In 1967 Zaentz and other partners purchased the label from founders Max and Sol Weiss. The partners signed roots-rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), fronted by former Fantasy warehouseman John Fogerty.
  
  wn.com/Saul_Zaentz
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  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
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  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
• 
  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
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  Stanley Kramer
  Stanley Earl Kramer (September 29, 1913 – February 19, 2001) was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message movies", and becoming one of the nation's most respected filmmakers. As an independent producer and director, he distinguished himself and his films by bringing attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism, nuclear war, greed, creationism vs. evolution and the causes and effects of fascism.
  Despite the controversial subjects of his films, many of which received mixed reviews, the film industry nonetheless recognized their importance and quality during most of his career, awarding his films sixteen Academy Awards and eighty nominations. He was nominated nine times as either producer or director.
  His notable films include High Noon (1952, as producer), The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Ship of Fools (1965) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). After a string of unsuccessful productions in the 1970s, he retired from films.
  
  wn.com/Stanley_Kramer
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  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
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  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
• Vincente Minnelli
  Vincente Minnelli (February 28, 1903 – July 25, 1986) was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made many comedies and melodramas. He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951; they were the parents of Liza Minnelli.
  Born as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago, he was the youngest of four known sons, only two of whom survived to adulthood, born to Marie Émilie Odile Lebeau (stage name: Mina Gennell) and Vincent Charles Minnelli. His father was musical conductor of Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Minnelli's Chicago-born mother was of French Canadian descent with a strong probability of Native American (Anishinaabe) lineage included via her Mackinac Island, Michigan born mother. The family toured small towns primarily in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before settling permanently in Delaware, Ohio.
  
  wn.com/Vincente_Minnelli
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  Walt Disney
  Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010 financial year.
  Disney is particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. During his lifetime he received four honorary Academy Awards and won 22 Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.
  
  wn.com/Walt_Disney
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  Walter Huston
  Walter Thomas Huston ( /ˈwɔːltər ˈhjuːstən/; April 5, 1883 – April 7, 1950) was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.
  Huston was born in York County, Ontario, the son of Elizabeth (née McGibbon) and Robert Moore Huston, a provincial farmer who founded a construction company. He was of Scottish and Irish descent.
  Huston began his Broadway career in 1924. Once talkies began in Hollywood, he achieved fame in character roles. His first major role was in 1929's The Virginian with Gary Cooper. He appeared in the Broadway theatrical adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Dodsworth in 1934 and the play's film version two years later.
  Huston remained busy throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both on stage and screen (becoming one of America's most distinguished actors); he performed "September Song" in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 (his grandaughter Anjelica Huston sang it on the May 7, 2012 episode of the NBC TV series "Smash"). Among his films are Abraham Lincoln (1930), Rain (1932), Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Mission to Moscow (1943), a pro-Soviet World War II propaganda film as Ambassador Joseph E. Davies. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1948 for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was directed by his son, John Huston. His last film was The Furies in 1950 with Barbara Stanwyck.
  
  wn.com/Walter_Huston
• Walter 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
• 
  Warren Beatty
  Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
  Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
  
  wn.com/Warren_Beatty
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• 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

Bette Davis and William Wyler (2003)

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• Documentary

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