Austin Cedric Gibbons (March 23, 1893 – July 26, 1960) was an Irish American art director and production designer who was one of the most important and influential in the field in the history of American film. He also made a great impact on motion picture theater architecture through the 1930s to 1950s, the period considered the golden-era of theater architecture. He is credited as the designer of the Oscar statuette in 1928.
Gibbons was born in Dublin, Ireland and studied at the Art Students League of New York and worked for his architect father. While at Edison Studios from 1915, he first designed a set for a film released in 1919, assisting Hugo Ballin. But, after this first foray, the studio closed, and he signed with Samuel Goldwyn in 1918. This evolved to working for Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1924 to 1956—a 32-year career.
Gibbons was one of the original 36 founding members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and oversaw the design of the Academy Awards statuette in 1928, a trophy for which he himself would be nominated 39 times, winning 11—second only to Walt Disney, who won 26.
Paul Cavanagh (8 December 1888 – 15 March 1964) was an English film actor. He appeared in over 100 films between 1928 and 1959. He was born in Chislehurst, Kent and died in London from a heart attack.
Cavanagh was educated at Cambridge where he studied law. He went to Canada where he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. After serving in World War I, he returned to Canada but eventually went back to England to practise law.
He went onto the stage after a stroke of bad luck in 1924 caused him to lose his savings, and later he went into films. He died in 1964, aged 75.
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
John David Landis (born August 3, 1950) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.
Landis was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Shirley Levine (née Magaziner) and Marshall Landis, an interior designer and decorator. His family relocated to Los Angeles when he was four months old.
He began working as a mailboy at 20th Century Fox. His first noteworthy job in Hollywood was working as a "go-fer" and then as an assistant director during filming MGM's Kelly's Heroes in Yugoslavia in 1969; he replaced the film's original assistant director, who suffered from a nervous breakdown and was sent home by the producers. While filming, he met actors Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland, both of whom he would later cast in his own films. Following this, Landis worked on many films made in Europe (especially in Italy and England), most notably, Once Upon a Time in the West, El Condor and A Town Called Bastard (a.k.a. A Town Called Hell). Landis also worked as a stunt double.
Harriet Hoctor (September 25, 1905 — June 9, 1977) was a ballerina, dancer, actress and instructor from Hoosick Falls, New York. Composer George Gershwin composed a symphonic orchestral piece (Hoctor's Ballet) specifically for Hoctor in the film Shall We Dance (1937).
Born to Timothy Hoctor and Elizabeth Kearny, Harriet Hoctor was one of four children, the others being Martin Francis ("Frank"), John, and Eloise. Harriet Hoctor never married.
Hoctor's maternal aunt, Annie Kearney, was a social secretary to a wealthy woman in Hoosick Falls who took an interest in young Harriet. At the age of twelve she was sent to New York City and placed under the tutelage of Russian ballet master Louis H. Chalif of the Normal School of Dancing. In 1930 Hoctor lived with Kearney in a house on Murray Hill, Manhattan, just around the corner from the home of J. Pierpont Morgan.[citation needed]
By the time she was sixteen, Hoctor was touring in vaudeville on the same bill as the Duncan Sisters. She was asked to join their act and became a key player in their Topsy and Eva show presented on Broadway. Hoctor appeared in a doll ballet and was informed that Florenz Ziegfeld was offering her a trial part in his production of The Three Musketeers (1928). By 1929, she was given the first opportunity to dance during a ballet staging of George Gershwin's An American in Paris.[citation needed]