Richard Brooks

Richard Brooks (May 18, 1912 – March 11, 1992) was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer. His outstanding works as director are Blackboard Jungle (1955); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958); Elmer Gantry (1960) – for which he won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay); In Cold Blood (1967); and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

Early life and career

Brooks was born as Reuben Sax to Hyman and Esther Sax, Russian Jewish immigrants. Married teenagers when they immigrated to the United States in 1908, they found employment in Philadelphia's textile and clothing industry. Their only child and son Reuben Sax was born in 1912 in Philadelphia. He attended public schools Joseph Leidy Elementary,Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School and West Philadelphia High School, graduating from the latter in 1929.

Sax took classes at Temple University for two years, studying journalism and playing on the school's baseball team. He dropped out and left home when he discovered that his parents were going into debt to pay for his tuition. He rode freight trains around the East and Midwest for a period of time but eventually returned to Philadelphia to seek work as a newspaper reporter. At some point in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Sax began using the name Richard Brooks professionally. He changed his name legally in 1943.

Wrong Is Right

Wrong Is Right, released in the UK as The Man With the Deadly Lens, is a 1982 thriller film directed by Richard Brooks from his own script based on Charles McCarry's novel The Better Angels. The film, starring Sean Connery as TV news reporter Patrick Hale, is about the theft of two suitcase nukes, and deals with media bias, reality television, government conspiracy, and Islamic terrorism.

Plot

In the near future, violence has become something of a national sport and television news has fallen to tabloid depths. Patrick Hale (Sean Connery), a globe-trotting reporter with access to a staggering array of world leaders, has ventured to the Arab country of Hegreb to interview his old acquaintance, King Ibn Awad (Ron Moody).

Awad has learned that the President of the United States (George Grizzard) may have issued orders for his removal; as a result, Awad is apparently making arrangements to deliver two suitcase nukes to a terrorist, with the intention of detonating them in Israel and the United States, unless the President resigns.

Inferno (Dante)

Inferno (pronounced [imˈfɛrno]; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.

Overview and vestibule of Hell

The poem starts on Maundy Thursday in the year 1300. The narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along our life's path" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita) – half of the Biblical lifespan of seventy (Psalm 89:10, Vulgate; Psalm 90:10, KJV). The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood (selva oscura) in front of a mountain, assailed by three beasts (a lion, a lonza [usually rendered as "leopard" or "leopon"], and a she-wolf) he cannot evade. Unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via, also translatable as "right way") to salvation, he is conscious that he is ruining himself and falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent (l sol tace).

Queen mother

A Queen mother is a dowager queen who was the mother of the reigning monarch (or an empress mother in the case of an empire). The term has been used in English since at least 1577. It arises in hereditary monarchies in Europe and is also used to describe a number of similar yet distinct monarchical concepts in non-European cultures around the world.

"The Queen Mother" usually refers to Elizabeth The Queen Mother, 1900–2002 (queen, 1936–1952; queen mother, 1952–2002), who was the mother of Queen Elizabeth II, and held the status of queen mother for 50 years.

Status

A widowed queen consort, or dowager queen, has an important royal position (regardless whether or not she is the mother of the reigning sovereign) but does not normally have any rights to succeed a king as monarch on his death unless she happens to be next in line to the throne (one possibility would be if the King and Queen were also cousins and childless, the King had no other siblings, and she in her other position as his cousin was also his heiress presumptive).

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart (/ˈboʊɡɑːrt/; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American screen actor whose performances in iconic 1940s films noir such as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep earned him the legacy of cultural icon.

Bogart began acting in 1921 after a hitch in the U.S. Navy in World War I and little success in various jobs in finance and the production side of the theater. Gradually he became a regular in Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).

Bogart's breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941 with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca (1943; Oscar nomination) raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), all four with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); In a Lonely Place (1950); The African Queen (1951; Oscar winner); Sabrina (1954); and The Caine Mutiny (1954; Oscar nomination). His last film was The Harder They Fall (1956).