• 1939 in film
• 1940 in film
• 1941 in film
• 1942 in film
• 1943 in film
• 1944 in film
• 1945 in film
• 1946 in film
• 1947 in film
• 1948 in film
• 1949 in film
• 1950 in film
• 1951 in film
• 20th Century Fox
• Air Force (film)
• Al Schmid
• Angelo Patri
• Antisemitism
• Awake and Sing
• B movie
• Bette Davis
• Broadhurst Theater
• Broadway theatre
• Bronx
• Brooklyn
• Brooks Atkinson
• Canada Lee
• Castle on the Hudson
• Cheryl Crawford
• Clifford Odets
• Communism
• Daisy Kenyon
• Daughters Courageous
• Destination Tokyo
• Dust Be My Destiny
• Elia Kazan
• Elmer Rice
• Eva Le Gallienne
• Find a Grave
• Flowing Gold
• Force of Evil
• Four Daughters
• Four Wives
• Franchot Tone
• Golden Boy (play)
• Harold Clurman
• Hazzan
• He Ran All the Way
• Hollywood
• Hollywood blacklist
• Hollywood Boulevard
• Hollywood Canteen
• HUAC
• Humoresque (film)
• Inherent Vice
• J. Edward Bromberg
• James Cagney
• James Dean
• Jerome Avenue
• Jigsaw (1949 film)
• Jim Beaver
• Joan Crawford
• John Garfield
• John Prine
• Juarez (1939 film)
• Lana Turner
• Lee Strasberg
• Lower East Side
• Luther Adler
• Mady Christians
• Maria Ouspenskaya
• Marlon Brando
• Method acting
• Michael Curtiz
• Montgomery Clift
• Moscow Art Theater
• Movie studio
• New York
• New York Times
• Paramount Pictures
• Paul Muni
• Pride of the Marines
• Queens
• Red Channels
• Richard Boleslavski
• Rudolph Valentino
• Saturday's Children
• Scarlet fever
• Show Business at War
• Stella Adler
• Sullivan's Travels
• The Fallen Sparrow
• Theatre Guild
• Thomas Pynchon
• Tortilla Flat (film)
• Under My Skin (film)
• United States
• Variety Obituaries
• Waiting for Lefty
• War bond
• Warner Bros.
• We Were Strangers
• West Bronx
• Westchester County
• Wikipedia Persondata
• World War II
• 
  

• 
  Broadway theatre
  Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
  The Broadway theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.081 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2011, compared with $1.037 billion for 2010. Attendance in 2011 was 12.13 million.
  New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, and especially so with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels in the 1840s.
  
  wn.com/Broadway_theatre
• 
  Brooklyn
  Coordinates: 40°41′34″N 73°59′25″W / 40.69278°N 73.99028°W / 40.69278; -73.99028
  Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with approximately 2.5 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.
  Brooklyn was an independent city until it was annexed by New York City in 1898. It continues to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves where particular ethnic groups and cultures predominate.
  Brooklyn's official motto is Eendraght Maeckt Maght. Written in the (early modern spelling of the) Dutch language, it is inspired by the motto of the United Dutch Provinces and translated "Unity makes strength". The motto is displayed on the borough seal and flag, which also feature a young robed woman bearing fasces, a traditional emblem of republicanism. Brooklyn's official colors are blue and gold.
  
  wn.com/Brooklyn
• 
  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
• 
  Jerome Avenue
  Jerome Avenue is one of the longest thoroughfares in the New York City borough of the Bronx, New York, United States. The road is 5.6 miles (9 km) long and stretches from Highbridge general area to Woodlawn. Both of these termini are with the Major Deegan Expressway which runs parallel to the west. Most of the elevated IRT Jerome Avenue Line runs along Jerome Avenue. The Cross Bronx Expressway interchanges with Jerome and the Deegan. Though it runs through territory now known as the West Bronx Jerome Avenue is the dividing avenue between the nominal 'West' and 'East' streets in the Bronx; 5th Avenue serves Manhattan in the same capacity.
  The south end of Jerome Avenue is at interchange 5 of the Major Deegan Expressway. The road begins as a divided highway, intersecting with 161st Street, which goes to Yankee Stadium and its station of the IRT Jerome Avenue Line. Jerome merges into the road to the Macombs Dam Bridge and heads north, paralleling Macombs Dam Park. After some intersections with local roads, Jerome Avenue intersects with 167th Street which at the intersection which, west of there, is named Edward L. Grant Highway. Just east of the intersection is the 167th Street station, another station along the way. Several blocks north, 170th Street intersects, just before crossing the Grant Highway. A subway station is also present here.
  
  wn.com/Jerome_Avenue
• 
  New York
  New York (/njuː ˈjɔrk/; locally IPA: [nɪu ˈjɔək] or [nuː ˈjɔɹk] ( listen)) is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. New York is the 27th most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 7th most densely populated of the 50 United States. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the west and north, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
  New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. Alone, it makes up over 40 percent of the population of New York state. It is known for its status as a center for finance and culture and for its status as the largest gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York City is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.
  
  wn.com/New_York
• 
  Queens
  Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City and the largest in area and the second-largest in population. Since 1899, Queens has had the same boundaries as Queens County, which is now the second most populous county in New York State and the fourth-most densely populated county in the United States. Queens, as well as neighboring borough Brooklyn, sits on the west end of geographic Long Island. Queens is the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world with a population of over 2.2 million, 46% of whom are foreign-born, representing over 100 different nations and speaking over 138 different languages.
  Were each New York City borough an independent city, Queens would be the nation's fourth largest city, after Los Angeles, Chicago, and Brooklyn. Queens has the second-largest and most diversified economy of all the five boroughs of New York City.Long Island City, on the Queens waterfront across from Manhattan on the East River, is the site of the Citicorp Building, the tallest skyscraper in New York City outside of Manhattan and the tallest building on geographic Long Island.
  
  wn.com/Queens
• 
  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
• 
  West Bronx
  The West Bronx is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The neighborhood lies west of the Bronx River and roughly corresponds to the western half of the borough.
  The West Bronx is more densely populated than the East Bronx, and is closer to Upper Manhattan. From the late 17th century to the middle 19th century this was the central and southern part of the Town of Yonkers, but then became the separate Town of Kingsbridge. In 1874, the then towns of Kingsbridge, West Farms and Morrisania were transferred to New York County, becoming the first area outside Manhattan to be annexed by the City of New York. Today's West Bronx was then known as the "Annexed District". In 1898, the city annexed the modern-day East Bronx as well as western Queens County (today's borough of Queens, with the remainder of what was eastern Queens County becoming the newly-formed Nassau County), all of the City of Brooklyn (today's borough of Brooklyn), and all of Richmond County (today's borough of Staten Island) to form the consolidated city of New York.
  
  wn.com/West_Bronx

• Al Schmid
  Al Schmid was born on 20 October 1920, as Albert Andrew Schmid in Burholme, Pennsylvania. Schmid was a United States Marine who was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at the Battle of the Tenaru during the Battle of Guadalcanal. His life story appeared in the American news magazines of the time, the book Al Schmid, Marine by Roger Butterfield, and the 1945 film Pride of the Marines in which he was played by John Garfield.
  Schmid worked a variety of jobs before becoming an apprentice steel burner at the Dodge Steel Company in Philadelphia in 1940.
  After hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Schmid enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on 9 December 1941, being trained at Parris Island South Carolina and New River North Carolina where he was assigned to the 11th Machine Gun Squad, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division. He used a bonus from his employer to purchase an engagement ring for his girlfriend Ruth Hartley.
  Schmid landed with his Regiment at Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. On the night of 21 August 1942, Schmid was manning a M1917 Browning machine gun along with Corporal LeRoy Diamond and PFC Johnny Rivers. Schmid refused medical treatment for a serious foot infection in order to remain with his weapon and fellow Marines.
  
  wn.com/Al_Schmid
• Angelo Patri
  Angelo Patri (November 26, 1876–September 13, 1965) was an Italian-American author and educator.
  His real surname was Petraglia, and he was born in Piaggine (Salerno province). Patri came to the United States when he was five. He gained a B.A. at the College of the City of New York in 1897, and an M.A. at Columbia University in 1904. A schoolteacher in New York from 1898 to 1908, he may have been the first Italian-born American to become a school principal in the United States. In attempting to engage the student with tasks that went beyond book learning, he was influenced by the writings of John Dewey. From 1908 to 1913 he was principal of Public School No. 4, and in 1913 he became principal of Public School 45, Bronx, New York. He wrote a syndicated column, "Our Children," on child psychology for newspapers and magazines.
  Books for parents and teachers:
  Books for children:
  
  wn.com/Angelo_Patri
• 
  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
• Brooks Atkinson
  Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960. In his obituary, the Times called him "the most important reviewer of his time."
  Atkinson was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, where, as a boy, he printed his own newspaper (using movable type), and planned a career in journalism. He graduated from Harvard University in 1917, and worked at The Springfield Daily News and the Boston Evening Transcript, where he was assistant to the drama critic. In 1922, he became the editor of the New York Times Book Review, and in 1925 the drama critic.
  Atkinson quickly became known for his commitment to new kinds of theatre—he was one of the first critical admirers of Eugene O'Neill—for his interest in all kinds of drama, including off-Broadway productions, and for his wit. In 1928, he said of the new play The Front Page, "No one who has ground his heels in the grime of a police headquarters press room will complain that this argot misrepresents the gentlemen of the press." Atkinson had covered the police beat for the Evening Transcript.
  
  wn.com/Brooks_Atkinson
• 
  Canada Lee
  Canada Lee (March 3, 1907 — May 9, 1952) was an American actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. A champion of civil rights in the 1930s and 1940s, he died shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He became an actor after careers as a jockey, boxer, and musician. Lee furthered the African-American tradition in theater pioneered by such actors as Paul Robeson. Lee is the father of actor Carl Lee.
  Lee was born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata on March 3, 1907 in New York City. He was raised by his West Indian parents in New York City. He was a talented musician, and by age 12 was a concert violinist. In his early teens, he ran away from home to become a jockey and after growing too large to ride, he decided to try boxing.
  Lee began boxing in 1926. Before one match, an announcer, stumbling over Lionel’s surname, mispronounced his name as "Canada Lee". Lee adopted the mistake as his own. At 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) and about 144 pounds (65 kg), he fought as a welterweight. His professional boxing record is listed variously as 38 wins with 15 knockouts, 32 losses with 8 knockouts, and 8 draws; 44 wins with 11 knockouts, 31 losses, and three draws; or 33-31-7 with 13 knockouts. He fought and lost to world champions Jack Britton, Tommy Freeman, and Lou Brouillard. He boxed a ten-round draw with middleweight champion Vince Dundee in 1928.
  
  wn.com/Canada_Lee
• Cheryl Crawford
  Cheryl Crawford (September 24, 1902 – October 7, 1986) was an American theatre producer and director.
  Born in Akron, Ohio, Crawford majored in drama at Smith College. Following graduation, she moved to New York City and enrolled at the Theatre Guild's school. By then she knew that she didn't want to pursue an acting career, but saw no other way to gain access to the organization producing the highest quality theatre of its time. Finishing their training in 1927, she was hired by Theresa Helburn, the Guild's Executive Director, as a casting secretary. She then worked her way through various backstage jobs, including assistant stage manager, to assistant to the “Board of Managers,” an importantant administrative job. While working at the Guild, she met Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg who had also been working there as play reader and actor, respectively. She was impressed with these two young men and joined their animated discussions about the need for a radically new form of American theatre. In 1930 Crawford urged Clurman to start giving semi-public talks to groups of like-minded actors. After he followed her suggestion and the talks attracted more people than could fit in Clurman's apartment, Crawford arranged for the use of a showroom at the Steinway Piano Company. In 1931, Crawford, Clurman and Strasberg announced the formation of The Group Theatre and invited 28 young actors who had been attending Clurman's talks to join them for a twelve-week long summer of training and rehearsal at Brookfield Center, Connecticut.
  
  wn.com/Cheryl_Crawford
• 
  Clifford Odets
  Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and director.
  Odets was born in Philadelphia to Louis Odets (born Gorodetsky) and Pearl Geisinger, Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high school after two years to become an actor. In 1931, he became a founding member of the Group Theatre, a highly influential New York theatre company that utilized an acting technique new to the United States. This technique was based on the system devised by the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski. It was further developed by Group Theatre director Lee Strasberg and became known as The Method. Odets eventually became the Group's primary playwright.
  Odets pursued acting with great passion and ingenuity. At the age of 19 he struck out on his own, billing himself as ″The Rover Reciter.″ Under this moniker he procured bookings as a radio elocutionist. He moved away from his parents, to Greenwich Village, where he acted with the Poet's Theatre under the direction of Village legend Harry Kemp. Odets claimed to have become America's first real disc jockey at about this time, at radio station WBNY, as well as a drama critic. In this capacity he saw the 1926 Broadway production of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. O'Casey's work would prove to be a powerful influence on Odets.
  
  wn.com/Clifford_Odets
• 
  Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan (IPA: [eˈlia kaˈzan]; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". He was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents. After studying acting at Yale, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theater in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Lee Strasberg, he introduced Method acting to the American stage and cinema as a new form of self-expression and psychological "realism". Kazan acted in only a few films, including City for Conquest (1940).
  Kazan introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the movie audiences, including Marlon Brando and James Dean. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He became "one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century" after directing a string of successful films, including, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globes. Among the other actors he introduced to movie audences were Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne, and Pat Hingle.
  
  wn.com/Elia_Kazan
• 
  Elmer Rice
  Elmer Rice (28 September 1892 – 8 May 1967) was an American playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1929 play, Street Scene.
  
  wn.com/Elmer_Rice
• 
  Eva Le Gallienne
  Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) was a theatrical actress, producer, and director during the first half of the 20th century.
  Le Gallienne was born in London to an English poet of French descent, Richard Le Gallienne, and a Danish journalist, Julie Norregard. After Eva's parents separated when she was three years old, she spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between Paris and England. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna.
  The next year Le Gallienne sailed for New York, and then on to Arizona and California where she performed in several theatre productions. After travelling in Europe for a period of time, she returned to New York and became a Broadway star in several plays including Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago (1920) and Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1921).
  Disillusioned by the state of commercial theatre in the 1920s, Le Gallienne founded the Civic Repertory Theatre in the former Fourteenth Street Theatre in Manhattan, New York. She was backed by the financial support of one of her lovers, Alice DeLamar, a wealthy Colorado gold mine heiress, whose support was instrumental in the success of the repertory theatre movement in the U.S. In 1928 she earned a great success with her performance in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. As head of the Civic Repertory Theatre, she is known to have rejected the admission of Bette Davis, whose attitude she described as "insincere" and "frivolous". The Civic Rep disbanded at the height of the Depression in 1934.
  
  wn.com/Eva_Le_Gallienne
• 
  Franchot Tone
  Franchot Tone (February 27, 1905 – September 18, 1968) was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and many other films through the 1960s. In the early 1960s Tone appeared in character roles on TV dramas like Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
  He was born as Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone in Niagara Falls, New York, the youngest son of Dr. Frank Jerome Tone, the wealthy president of the Carborundum Company, and his socially-prominent wife, Gertrude Van Vrancken Franchot. Tone was a distant relative of Wolfe Tone: his great-great-great-great-grandfather John was a first cousin of Peter Tone, whose eldest son was Theobald Wolfe Tone. Tone was of French Canadian, Irish, English and Basque ancestry.
  Tone attended The Hill School in Pottstown, PA and Cornell University, where he was President of the drama club and was elected to the Sphinx Head Society. He also joined Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He gave up the family business to pursue an acting career in the theatre. After graduating, he moved to Greenwich Village, New York, and got his first major Broadway role in the 1929 Katharine Cornell production of The Age of Innocence.
  
  wn.com/Franchot_Tone
• Harold Clurman
  Harold Edgar Clurman (September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980) was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre (1931–1941). He directed more than 40 plays in his career and, during the 1950s, was nominated for a Tony Award as director for several productions. In addition to his directing career, he was drama critic for The New Republic (1948–52) and The Nation (1953–1980), helping shape American theater by writing about it. Clurman wrote seven books about the theatre, including his memoir The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties (1961).
  Clurman was born on the Lower East Side of New York City to Jewish immigrant parents from eastern Europe. His parents took him at age six to Yiddish theater, here Jacob Adler's performances in Yiddish translations of Karl Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise fascinated him, although he did not understand Yiddish. [Adler, 1999, p. 333 (commentary)].
  
  wn.com/Harold_Clurman
• 
  James Cagney
  James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing tough guys. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its 50 Greatest American Screen Legends.
  In his first professional acting performance, he danced dressed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
  
  wn.com/James_Cagney
• 
  James Dean
  James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.
  Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
  James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, at the Seven Gables apartment house located at the corner of 4th Street and McClure Street in Marion, Indiana, to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, James and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. The family spent several years there, and by all accounts young Dean was very close to his mother. According to Michael DeAngelis, she was "the only person capable of understanding him". He was enrolled at Brentwood Public School in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles until his mother died of cancer when Dean was nine years old.
  
  wn.com/James_Dean
• 
  Jim Beaver
  James Norman "Jim" Beaver, Jr. (born August 12, 1950) is an American stage, film, and television actor, playwright, screenwriter, and film historian. He is perhaps most familiar to worldwide audiences as the gruff but tenderhearted prospector Whitney Ellsworth on the HBO Western drama series Deadwood, a starring role which brought him acclaim and a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Ensemble Acting after three decades of supporting work in films and TV. He portrays Bobby Singer in the CW television series Supernatural. His memoir Life's That Way was published in April 2009.
  
  wn.com/Jim_Beaver
• 
  Joan Crawford
  Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977), born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre.
  Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled "box office poison".
  After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.
  
  wn.com/Joan_Crawford
• 
  John Garfield
  John Garfield (March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City and in the early 1930s became an important member of the Group Theater. In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner Bros.' major stars. Called to testify before the U.S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), he denied Communist affiliation and refused to "name names", effectively ending his film career. Some have claimed that the stress of this incident led to his premature death at 39 from a heart attack. Garfield is acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method actors as Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean.
  Jacob Garfinkle was born in a small apartment on Rivington Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, to David and Hannah Garfinkle, Russian Jewish immigrants. In early infancy a middle name—Julius—was added, and for the rest of his life those who knew him well called him Julie. His father, a clothes presser and part time cantor, struggled to make a living and to provide even marginal comfort for his small family. When Garfield was five, his brother Max was born and their mother never fully recovered from what was described as a "difficult" pregnancy. She died two years later and the young boys were sent to live with various relatives, all poor, scattered across the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Several of these relatives lived in tenements in a section of East Brooklyn called Brownsville and there Garfield lived in one house and slept in another. At school he was judged a poor reader and speller, deficits that were aggravated by irregular attendance. He would later say of his time on the streets there, that he learned "all the meanness, all the toughness it's possible for kids to acquire."
  
  wn.com/John_Garfield
• 
  John Prine
  John Prine (born October 10, 1946, in Maywood, Illinois) is an American country/folk singer-songwriter. He has been active as a recording artist and live performer since the early 1970s.
  Prine is the son of William Prine and Verna Hamm. Prine started playing guitar at age 14, taught by his brother, David. Prine attended Proviso East High School, and was a member on the school's gymnastic team. He was a postman for five years and served in the Army during the Vietnam War era, serving in Germany, before beginning his musical career in Chicago.
  In the late 1960s, while Prine was delivering mail in Maywood, Illinois, he began to sing at open mic evenings at the Fifth Peg on Armitage Avenue. Prine was initially a spectator, reluctant to perform, but eventually did so in response to a "You think you can do better?" comment made to him by another performer. Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert heard him there and wrote the first review Prine ever received, calling him a great songwriter. He became a central figure in the Chicago Folk Revival, which also included such singer-songwriters as Steve Goodman, Bonnie Koloc, Jim Post and Fred Holstein. Joined by such established musicians as Jethro Burns and Bob Gibson, Prine performed frequently at such clubs as the Earl of Old Town, the Quiet Knight, Somebody Else's Troubles, The 5th Peg, and the Bulls.
  
  wn.com/John_Prine
• 
  Lana Turner
  Lana Turner (February 8, 1921 - June 29, 1995) was an American actress.
  Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget (1937). She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). During the early 1940s she established herself as a leading actress in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and Somewhere I'll Find You (1942). She is known as one of the first Hollywood scream queens thanks to her role in the 1941 horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and her reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her performance in the film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Her popularity continued through the 1950s, in such films as The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Peyton Place (1957), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
  In 1958, her daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed Turner's lover Johnny Stompanato to death. A coroner's inquest brought considerable media attention to Turner and concluded that Crane had acted in self defense. Turner's next film, Imitation of Life (1959), proved to be one of the greatest successes of her career, but from the early 1960s, her roles were fewer.
  
  wn.com/Lana_Turner
• 
  Lee Strasberg
  Lee Strasberg (November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the non-profit Actors Studio, in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school". In 1969, Strasberg founded the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City and in Hollywood to teach the work he pioneered.
  He is considered the "father of method acting in America," according to author Mel Gussow, and from the 1920s until his death in 1982 "he revolutionized the art of acting by having a profound influence on performance in American theater and movies". From his base in New York, he trained several generations of theatre and film's most illustrious talents, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and director Elia Kazan.
  
  wn.com/Lee_Strasberg
• 
  Luther Adler
  Luther Adler (May 4, 1903 – December 8, 1984) was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway.
  Born Lutha Adler in New York City, Adler was one of six children born to Russian Jewish actors Sara and Jacob P. Adler. His siblings also worked in theatre; his sister Stella Adler achieved fame as an actress and drama teacher. His brother Jay also achieved some fame as an actor.
  Adler made his first acting appearance on Broadway in 1921 and appeared in several productions before joining The Group Theatre in 1931. He played opposite Katharine Cornell in Alien Corn (1933), his sister Stella in Gold Eagle Guy (1934), Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost (both 1935), and Frances Farmer in Golden Boy (1937). He also appeared in the anti-war musical Johnny Johnson (1936). By the early 1940s he was also directing but his first production They Should Have Stood in Bed closed after only eleven performances in 1942. His next directorial venture, A Flag is Born, ran for 120 performances in 1946 and featured newcomer Marlon Brando in one of the major roles. In 1965, when Zero Mostel left the Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof during a contract dispute, Adler took over the role of Tevye.
  
  wn.com/Luther_Adler
• Mady Christians
  Marguerita Maria "Mady" Christians (January 19, 1892 – October 28, 1951) was an Austrian actress who achieved a successful acting career in theatre and film, in the United States until she was blacklisted during the McCarthy period.
  Her family went to Berlin when she was one year old, and to New York in 1912. Five years later she returned to Europe to study under Max Reinhardt. She appeared in a number of European films before getting into American films.
  On Broadway, she originated the title role in the 1944 play I Remember Mama. Her last movie roles were in All My Sons, based on the play by Arthur Miller, and Letter from an Unknown Woman, both released in 1948.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Mady_Christians
• 
  Maria Ouspenskaya
  Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya (Russian: Мария Алeкceeвнa Успенская; July 29, 1876, – December 3, 1949) was a Russian actress and acting teacher. She achieved success as a stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an elderly woman in Hollywood films.
  Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Russian Empire and studied singing in Warsaw, Poland and acting in Moscow. She was a founding member of the First Studio, a theatre studio of the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre. There she was trained by Konstantin Stanislavski and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky in the 'system'.
  The Moscow Art Theatre traveled widely throughout Europe, and when it arrived in New York in 1922, Ouspenskaya decided to stay there. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade. She taught acting at the American Laboratory Theatre and in 1929, together with her colleague from Moscow Art Theatre Richard Boleslavsky,^{[citation needed]} she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York. One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was Anne Baxter, then an unknown teenager.
  
  wn.com/Maria_Ouspenskaya
• 
  Marlon Brando
  Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Brando was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Persons of the Century in 1999.
  Brando had a significant impact on film acting, and was the foremost example of the "method" acting style. While he became notorious for his "mumbling" diction and exuding a raw animal magnetism, his mercurial performances were nonetheless highly regarded, and he is widely considered as one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, "He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'." Actor Jack Nicholson once said, "When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one." He was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest screen legend among male movie stars.
  
  wn.com/Marlon_Brando
• Michael Curtiz
  Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early credits as Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States, many of them cinema classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday of the Warner Bros. studio in the 1930s and '40s.
  He was less successful from the late 1940s onwards, when he attempted to move from studio direction into production and freelance work, but he continued working until shortly before his death.
  Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary). He claimed to have been born December 24, 1886. Both the date and the year are open to doubt: he was fond of telling tall stories about his early years, including that he had run away from home to join the circus and that he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games, but he seems to have had a conventional middle-class upbringing. He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Curtiz
• 
  Montgomery Clift
  Edward Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) was an American film and stage actor.The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men".
  He often played outsiders, often "victim-heroes," - examples include the social climber in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun, the anguished Catholic priest in Hitchcock's I Confess, the doomed regular soldier Robert E. Lee Prewitt in Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity, and the Jewish GI bullied by antisemites in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions. Later, after a disfiguring car crash in 1956, and alcohol and prescription drug abuse, he became erratic. Nevertheless important roles were still his, including "the reckless, alcoholic, mother-fixated rodeo performer in Huston's The Misfits, the title role in Huston's Freud, and the concentration camp victim in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg."
  Clift received four Academy Award nominations during his career, three for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor.
  
  wn.com/Montgomery_Clift
• 
  Paul Muni
  Paul Muni (born Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund; 22 September 1895 – 25 August 1967) was an Austrian-born American stage and film actor. During the 1930s, he was considered one of the most prestigious actors at Warner Brothers studios, and one of the rare actors who was given the privilege of choosing which parts he wanted.
  His acting quality, usually playing a powerful character, such as Scarface, was partly a result of his intense preparation for his parts, often immersing himself in study of the real character's traits and mannerisms. He was also highly skilled in using makeup techniques, a talent he learned from his parents, who were also actors, and from his early years on stage with the Yiddish Theater, in New York. At the age of 12, he played the stage role of an 80-year-old man; in one of his films, Seven Faces, he played seven different characters.
  He was nominated six times for an Oscar, winning once as Best Actor in The Story of Louis Pasteur.
  Muni was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, Galicia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv, Ukraine (formerly Lwów, Poland). His family emigrated to the United States in 1902.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Muni
• 
  Rudolph Valentino
  Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor, known simply as "Valentino" and also an early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik. He had applied for American citizenship shortly before his death.
  His sudden death at age 31 caused mass hysteria among his female fans, further propelling him into icon status. Though his films are not as well known today, his name is still widely known.
  Valentino was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D'Antonguolla in Castellaneta, Puglia, Kingdom of Italy. His mother, Marie Berta Gabrielle (née Barbin; 1856–1919), was French, born in Lure in Lorraine. His father, Giovanni Antonio Giuseppe Fedele Guglielmi di Valentina D'Antonguolla, was Italian; he was a veterinarian who died of malaria when Valentino was 11. He had an older brother, Alberto (1892–1981), a younger sister, Maria, and an older sister Beatrice who died in infancy.
  
  wn.com/Rudolph_Valentino
• 
  Stella Adler
  Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher, who founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City (1949) and the The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles (1985) with long-time protege Joanne Linville, who continues to teach and furthers Adler's legacy. Her grandson Tom Oppenheim now runs the school in New York, which produced alumni including Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Jenny Lumet, daughter of Sidney Lumet. Irene Gilbert, long-time protege and close personal friend, founded the Stella Adler Academy of Acting and Theatre in Los Angeles, and was instrumental in bringing Stella Adler to the West Coast to teach on a permanent basis. The LA school continues to flourish as an acting studio and houses several theaters, alumni of the Stella Adler-Los Angeles school include Mark Ruffalo, Benicio Del Toro, Brion James, Salma Hayek, Clifton Collins Jr. & Sean Astin.
  Born in New York City's Lower East Side, Adler was a member of the Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty, the youngest daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler, the sister of Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler; in fact all her five siblings were actors. They were a significant part of a vital ethnic theatrical scene that thrived in New York from the late 19th century well into the 1950s. Stella Adler would become the most famous and influential member of her family. She began acting at the age of four as a part of the "Independent Yiddish Art Company" of her parents, and concluded it 55 years later, in 1961. During that time, and for years after, Stella Adler taught acting as well.
  
  wn.com/Stella_Adler
• 
  Thomas Pynchon
  Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. He is a MacArthur Fellow noted for his dense and complex novels, and both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science, and mathematics. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
  Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and Mason & Dixon (1997). Pynchon is also known for being very private; very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Pynchon
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata

John Garfield (2002)

Genres

• Documentary
• Short

Taglines:

Quotes: