Albert Bassermann (7 September 1867 – 15 May 1952) was a German stage and screen actor.
Bassermann began his acting career in 1887 in his birthplace, Mannheim. He then spent four years at the Hoftheater in Meiningen. He then moved to Berlin. From 1899, he worked for Otto Brahm. He began work at the Deutsches Theater from 1904, and in 1909 worked at the Lessing Theatre. From 1909 to 1915, Bassermann worked with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.
Bassermann was among the first German theatre actors who worked in film. In 1913, he played the main role of the lawyer in Max Mack's Der Andere (The Other), after the play by Paul Lindau. He also worked with German silent film directors Richard Oswald, Ernst Lubitsch, Leopold Jessner and Lupu Pick.
In 1933, Bassermann left Germany and lived in the United States from 1938.
Annija Simsone who played opposite Bassermann in the Neue Wiener Beuhne Theater in the 1920s wrote the following in her autobiography:"During the Hitler era, Bassermann did not perform in Germany, though Adolf Hitler personally held him in high regard; Elsa was Jewish. Bassermann was told that if he wanted to continue to perform in Germany, he would have to get divorced. He did not get divorced, but Elsa and he went to Switzerland instead."
Brigitte Helm (17 March 1906 – 11 June 1996) was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis.
Born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Helm's first role was that of Maria in Metropolis which she began work on while only 18 years old. After Metropolis, Helm made over thirty other films, including talking pictures, before retiring in 1936. Her other appearances include The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), Alraune (1928), L'Argent (1928), Gloria (1931), The Blue Danube (1932), L'Atlantide (1932), and Gold (1934).
Though having a 10-year contract with UFA expiring in 1935, Helm incurred the wrath of Nazi Germany for "race defilement" in marrying her second husband Dr. Hugo von Kuenheim, an industrialist of Jewish background. Helm was also involved in several traffic accidents, and was briefly imprisoned. According to Otto Dietrich's book The Hitler I Knew, Adolf Hitler himself saw that manslaughter charges against her from an automobile accident were dropped.
Richard D. Carlson (April 29, 1912 - November 25, 1977) was an American actor, television and film director, and screenwriter.
Born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, Carlson graduated from the University of Minnesota with an M.A. degree, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He later appeared on the Broadway stage in the 1930s after studying and teaching drama in Minnesota. His first film role was in the 1938 David O. Selznick comedy The Young in Heart. He worked as a freelance actor, appearing in many different film studio works, beginning in 1939 when he moved to California. Before the war, he appeared mostly in comedies and dramas, including The Little Foxes and Too Many Girls with Lucille Ball in 1940.
Like many actors, Carlson served in World War II, interrupting his acting career. After returning he found it difficult to win new roles, and his future in Hollywood remained in doubt until 1948. In that year, Carlson was cast in two low-budget film noir releases, Behind Locked Doors and The Amazing Mr. X. Despite this, real success in Hollywood eluded him until 1950, when he co-starred with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger in the highly successful jungle adventure film King Solomon's Mines, shot on location in Africa. Other films followed, including the World War II naval action film Flat Top.
Nancy Kelly (March 25, 1921 – January 2, 1995) was an American actress, who was a movie leading lady in the 1930s, making 36 movies between 1926 and 1977, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James (1939), which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone later that same year.
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, she was the older sister of actor Jack Kelly, who played "Bart Maverick" alongside James Garner and Roger Moore in the television series Maverick. Kelly began her career as a child actress, whose image had appeared in so many different advertisements by the time she was nine years old that Film Daily called her "the most photographed child in America due to commercial posing." She also played Dorothy Gale in a 1933 to 1934 radio show based on the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
As an adult, she was a leading lady in twenty-seven movies in the 1930s and '40s, including director John Ford's Submarine Patrol, the comedy He Married His Wife with Joel McCrea, Frontier Marshal with Randolph Scott as Wyatt Earp, and Tarzan's Desert Mystery with Johnny Weismuller. Kelly was subsequently a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre as well as a Tony Award winner for her performance in The Bad Seed, which she followed up by starring in the film version in 1956 and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also starred on television, including leading roles in "The Storm" (1961) episode of Thriller and "The Lonely Hour" (1963) episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In 1957, Kelly was nominated at the 9th Primetime Emmy Awards#Best Single Performance by an Actress for a Emmy Awards for Best Single Performance by an Actress for TV episode "The Pilot" in Studio One.
Knute Kenneth Rockne ( /kəˈnuːt/ kə-NOOT; March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was an American football player and coach, both at the University of Notre Dame. He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." A Norwegian American, he was educated as a chemist at the University of Notre Dame. He popularized the forward pass and made Notre Dame a major factor in collegiate football.
Knute Rockne was born Knut Larsen Rokne in Voss, Norway to the smith and wagonmaker Lars Knutson Rokne (1858–1912) and his wife Martha Pedersdatter Gjermo (1859–1944). He emigrated with his parents at five years old to Chicago. He grew up in the Logan Square area of Chicago, on the northwest side of the city. Rockne learned to play football in his neighborhood and later played end in a local group called the Logan Square Tigers. He attended North West Division High School in Chicago playing football and also running track.