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- Actor
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Albert Victor Bramble was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1880. He became a well-known classical stage performer, beginning in 1900. In addition, he appeared in quite a few films, first for the B&C Film Company in 1914, where he stayed until the late 1920s. He was also a producer and director, and in 1916 he gave up acting for those fields. He appeared in only one talkie, 25 years after his last film acting role, in Outcast of the Islands (1951), starring Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard.- Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff (Achmed Abdullah) was the author of numerous adventure and mystery stories, usually set in strange and exotic locations.
His father, Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff, was a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his mother, Princess Nourmahal Durani, was the daughter of the Amir of Afghanistan. Alexander, along with his brother Yar and sister Gothia, were born at the Romanoff Palace in Yalta, the future site of the historic Second World War conference among Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. After pressure from the Afghan and Russian royal houses forced their parents to divorce, Alexander--along with his sister--went to live with their uncle in Afghanistan; Yar, the oldest, stayed with his father in Russia. Alexander was adopted by his uncle, who changed his name to Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan el-Durani el Iddrissyeh and raised him in the Muslim faith. Yar became an officer in the Russian army and was killed in 1914 at the Battle of Tannenberg. Gothia was said to have married an Indian rajah. In 1936, after years of being torn between the Russian Orthodox Church he was baptized in and the Muslim faith he was raised in, Abdullah became a Roman Catholic.
He went to schools in Afghanistan, India, France and finally England, where he attended Eton and Oxford. Upon graduation he became a British citizen and joined the British army, where he served with merit in China, Tibet, Russia, Eastern Europe, France, India and Africa. Because of his ability to blend in with different cultures, he was often called upon by British Intelligence to work as a spy. Not long after Abdullah retired from the British army with the rank of captain, he joined the Turkish army and fought with distinction in the First Balkan War (1912-1913). By the time Abdullah decided to pursue a writing career his life experiences had gained him a plethora of material to draw upon for decades to come.
Abdullah began writing in earnest after coming to the US sometime after 1914. Soon stories like "The Blue Eyed Manchu", "The Red Stain", "The Soul Catcher" and "Bucking the Tiger" were appearing in newspapers and magazines across the country. By the early 1920s he was writing for both the stage and the screen. In 1928 he published a collection of ballads and poems from Central Asia entitled "Lute and Scimitar". His autobiography, "The Cat Had Nine Lives" (1933), reads like one of his romantic adventure stories. In 1937 he wrote with John Kenney, a cookbook entitled, "For Men Only". Abdullah's first Broadway play, "The Honourable Mr. Wong" (1932), was adapted from his story "The Hatchetman" and was written with the help of David Belasco around the time he became a permanent resident of the US. Though many of his stories and plays were very popular with the public, he will probably always be best remembered for the classic films The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935).
Abdullah must have cut quite an imposing figure when seen out in public, with his military posture, impeccable suit, hat tilted just so, gray spats and monocled eye. In 1945 he passed away on his birthday at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York after an illness of several months. He was survived by his third wife, Rosemary Dutton, whom he married in 1940, a year after his second wife of 20 years, literary agent Jean Wick, had passed away. His first wife, Irene Augusta Bainbridge, was still married to him when he filled out his Word War One draft registration card in 1918. - Actor
- Soundtrack
In an interview in "Disc" magazine published in June 1959, following the release of his third (and ultimately unsuccessful) single, Adam Faith declared that his ambition was to become an actor/director--not a singer. Nine years, 35 singles, 24 chart entries, 15 EPs and seven albums later he finally decided to leave the record industry to concentrate fully on fulfilling his thespian dream. Over the next 34 years Faith was to achieve at least the major part of this long-held ambition by becoming one of Britain's most popular stars of stage and screen. However, during his singing career with EMI, he vied with Cliff Richard as the UK's most popular male singer and pop idol.
Adam Faith was born Terry Nelhams in Acton, London, on June 23, 1940, the third of five children. He attended John Perryn secondary modern school in Acton and from the age of 12 was able to demonstrate his entrepreneurial skills by means of a series of paper rounds, which enabled him to finance his own clothes budget. This was augmented further when he started selling papers from a pitch to enable him to pay for more than 100 pounds worth of other "gear", including a record player and an impressive bicycle, both costing around 28 pounds--a large sum indeed by 1950s standards. All this was achieved before he left school, at which point he embarked on his first full-time employment as an odd job boy for a silk screen printer close to his home.
After only a few weeks with this company he heard of a vacancy for a messenger boy at Rank Screen Services and was taken on at the princely sum of 3 pounds ten shillings per week, dedicating himself to the task of obtaining a transfer to the studios. However, after a year elapsed without any sign of his move, he left to join a company in Wardour Street, Soho, known as TV Advertising Ltd. This was a period when he, like many of his peers, was bitten by the skiffle bug which was then sweeping Britain. His first great idol was Lonnie Donegan, who inspired him to form his first group with colleagues from work. They called themselves "The Worried Men" after one of their most popular numbers, "Worried Man Blues". According to Nelhams, they played all the local Soho expresso coffee bars--Mars, The Cat's Whiskers, Orlando's, The Skiffle Cellar and, of course, the famous Two Is, where they eventually became resident.
Nelhams was becoming exhausted, which was not surprising in view of his extra-curricular activities. He had been promoted to assistant cutter at TV Advertising and not only did he combine evening performances with his day job, but he also decided to take managerial responsibility for the group's affairs. Jack Good's Six-Five Special (1957) TV program had a reputation for originality. One idea was to broadcast a show direct from the Two Is. Naturally, as the resident band, The Worried Men opened and closed the program--valuable exposure and, ultimately, Nelham's first big break.
Good was impressed with Nelhams' performance but not necessarily with the group as a whole. He invited Nelhams back on the show as a solo singer, convinced of his potential as Britain's answer to James Dean. Nelhams, encouraged by this optimism, gave up his job as a film cutter and turned professional. Good not only secured him a recording contract with EMI's HMV label on the strength of the TV appearance, but also helped him choose the now familiar name Adam Faith. Faith's debut disc combined "(Got a) Heartsick Feeling" with "Brother Heartache & Sister Tears", and was released in January 1958. It received very little publicity, either in the form of music press coverage or from EMI's own advertising department. Not surprisingly, it failed to make any impression on the charts. Despite all Good's confidence in him, Faith also failed to make any immediate impression on television, but Good gave him another opportunity when he booked him to appear in his stage show version of "Six Five Special" (The John Barry Seven were also on the bill and this brief first meeting with composer John Barry was later to prove of vital importance). However, the stage show wasn't the success Good envisaged, and after just four performances Faith found himself out of work.
Faith, ever the survivor, swallowed his pride and made the painful decision to abandon his show-biz career by returning to the film cutting world. Despite this, HMV released his second single in December of the same year, a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' "High School Confidential", backed with "Country Music Holiday" Apart from scant attention in the music press, mainly to the effect that he was covering a Jerry Lee song, it attracted no publicity whatsoever. After a couple of temporary jobs back in the business, he found a job as a cutter at National Studios at Elstree. It was while he was there he received a phone call from John Barry in March of 1959, inviting him to audition for Drumbeat (1959). This new program was an attempt by BBC Television to counter ATV's popular Oh Boy! (1958) show. After sufficiently impressing producer Stewart Morris, Faith landed an initial contract for three shows, which was later extended to the full 22-week run.
Fortune once again smiled on Faith when Barry introduced him to his own manager, the redoubtable Eve Taylor. Taylor, whose father was a show-business impresario of some renown, was steeped in the tradition and was herself part of a comedy and tap-dancing act during the 1930s. Since becoming an agent she had established a reputation for never accepting anything less than the best for her clients, and many an errant theater manager had experienced the lash of her biting tongue! She readily agreed to take him on, and immediately set about changing his image and appearance, securing him another recording contract, initially with Top Rank.
His only record for them ("Ah, Poor Little Baby" / "Runk Bunk") was released on June 6, with only the former side benefiting from an arrangement and accompaniment by John Barry. Both sides, incidentally, were produced by Tony Hatch, just prior to his appointment as A&R manager at Pye/Piccadilly Records. Unfortunately, this record also failed to attract the attention of pop pundits, but on this occasion Faith was clearly hindered by a total absence of publicity caused by the release date--unluckily coinciding with a national printing strike! Despite the failure of his first three records, Faith was becoming very well known and popular through his 'Drumbeat" appearances. Acting still had a hold on him, and in August he announced his intention to take drama and elocution classes in order to enhance his acting potential. It was about halfway through the "Drumbeat" series when Faith attracted the attention of film producer George Willoughby, who was searching for a young pop singer to appear in his new film, Wild for Kicks (1960), then in pre-production. Although Faith had little record success up 'til then, Willoughby was struck by the young man's stage presence and signed him on the strength of this. The script called for Faith to sing only a couple of songs. As Barry was by then arranging not only Faith's recordings but also his live "Drumbeat" material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big-screen debut--Barry's own very first steps into the world of film music composing.
Faith's success on "Drumbeat" enabled Eve Taylor to secure him another recording contract, this time with Parlophone. The quest for suitable material to launch the Parlophone debut began in earnest and was eventually resolved out of a friendship built up on "Drumbeat". A study of the "Drumbeat" scripts reveal how Faith had initially concentrated on singing a large proportion of cover versions; the majority, up-tempo slices of American rock 'n' roll. A significant turning point ensued when he asked to perform his own version of the current Cliff Richard hit "Living Doll". It became apparent to Barry that Faith's vocal delivery was more attractive in a gentler mode and, as a result of this discovery, he decided to concentrate on delivering this kind of material. Nevertheless, before this first Parlophone single was issued, Faith made his label debut on the live "Drumbeat" album, recorded on May 10 at Abbey Road Studios, London, and released two months later. On this LP, the rock 'n' roll influence remained. Faith sang three numbers--"Say Mama", "C'mon Everybody" and "Believe What You Say", all accompanied by John Barry.
The "Drumbeat" LP also showcased the performing talents of one Johnny Worth, a member of Jackie and The Raindrops vocal trio, better known as Johnny Worth (also known as Les Vandyke). Worth was to become the final piece in the Parlophone backroom jigsaw that catapulted Faith from contender to champion in the pop market place. Worth, born in Battersea, London, on June 21, 1931, began working as a draughtsman prior to his compulsory two-year hitch in the army. On returning to civvy life he was determined to stay out of office work and make his name as a singer. Like many singers, he also aspired towards song writing, although his first three attempts were rejected out of hand by music publishers. However, when Faith, striking up a friendship with him on the "Drumbeat" set, asked if he had any material suitable for recording, Worth approached JB7 pianist Les Reed to help him arrange a demo of one of these initial songs, "What Do You Want?". Barry has always been credited with the idea of using pizzicato strings (inspired by Buddy Holly's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore") but according to Worth, this was entirely his own brainchild. Because he was still under contract to Oriole, Worth felt the need to adopt a pseudonym while writing songs, and so was born Les Vandyke. This was derived by combining Reed's own first name with Worth's London telephone exchange!
Barry was impressed enough with the demo to commence working on an arrangement for the song, using that same Buddy Holly-influenced pizzicato style. According to Faith, the singing style he adopted for this now legendary recording was based on coaching he received from Roy Young, another "Drumbeat" cast member. Having heard Faith rehearsing it during a shared car journey, Young made a number of suggestions, in particular persuading him to alter his pronunciation of "baby" to "bay-beh". "What Do You Want?" (b/w "From Now Until Forever") was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on September 25, 1959, a mere month after "Drumbeat" ended. At the same time Faith was also signed to appear in an episode of Rediffusion's No Hiding Place (1959) TV series. Norman Newell, Faith and Barry's A&R manager, was unable to produce the recording session. As a result, assistant John Burgess took the helm in his absence, and was to do so for the remainder of Faith's EMI career. According to Barry, on hearing the record, Newell publicly declared his disapproval, vowing that Barry would on no account ever be allowed to take part in any more sessions! After the recording Barry admitted that both he and Faith were despondent following previous commercial failures. This time they were determined to impose their own personal tastes far more emphatically than they had done previously, when the flavor of the day tended to override aesthetic considerations.
Despite favorable reviews of "What Do You Want?", on its October 24 release date in both The New Musical Express and Disc, manager Eve Taylor still insisted that Faith's future lay in acting. Keith Fordyce, writing in the former, praised Barry's arrangement and choice of instrumentation --Jack Good, columnist in its rival, applauded the production, tipping chart success on both sides of the Atlantic. EMI, perhaps scenting success, mounted a strong advertising campaign promoting the single far more vigorously than either of Faith's first two HMV releases.
In the following issue of "Disc", Eve Taylor, recognizing good copy when she saw it, claimed Faith had definitely made his last record to concentrate on acting, citing his appearance in a 90-minute drama for Rediffusion TV at the end of year as evidence. Despite this, "What Do You Want?" was given a considerable boost when it was played and voted a unanimous hit on BBC TV's Juke Box Jury (1959), and when Faith sang it live on an edition of ATV's "Boy Meets Girl".
On November 14 the first tangible sign of chart recognition was apparent when The Record Mirror's "British Only" chart listed "What Do You Want?" as a new entry at #9. Clearly, interest was growing, to a point when it entered the NME charts at #18 the following week. Adam Faith, singer, had clearly arrived. His mentor, Jack Good, while applauding his success, claimed his acting actually improved his singing. He also mentioned that the song was initially rejected by Johnny Kidd, although Worth denied this, maintaining that he had refused permission for Kidd to use it when the singer had wanted to give it a rock 'n' roll treatment. Another surprise arrived with the revelation that the orchestral backing consisted of just four strings, with two tenor saxes suggesting the sound of a cello.
By December Faith was #1 in the NME charts. He confessed to being terrified of becoming just another overnight sensation and was therefore determined to continue to develop his acting skills by way of special training at the Royal Court Theatre. He admitted to enjoying Frank Sinatra, Peter Gunn (1958), Jean Sibelius' "1st Symphony" and playing golf--tastes considered rather esoteric and sophisticated for a typical teenager of the period! At this stage he still lived at home in Acton with his parents, an older sister, a twin brother & sister, another brother having already married and left the roost.
Any one-hit wonder will tell you of the problems associated with finding an equally memorable follow-up. Not surprisingly, the Faith management decided to rely on the Worth / Barry team for inspiration, and this proved a wise move. At the recording session John Burgess again took charge of production, since Norman Newell was afraid of upsetting a winning formula. On January 15 "Poor Me" was released with "WDYW" still at #2 on the charts! Faith had finished recording his "Beat Girl" songs just three days previously and had signed to appear in another film - "Moment Of Truth". The following day he received a silver disc for "What Do You Want", awarded for sales of 250,000, and appeared on BBC Radio's "Saturday Club", following this with a guest appearance on the Beverley Sisters' TV show on January 25, where he sang "Poor Me". This song, another originally rejected by several music publishers in its original incarnation as "Poor Man", shot to #1 on the UK charts.
After the success of "Poor Me", Faith--the "reluctant" pop-singer--revealed how much he wanted to sustain his chart success. His new film, now retitled Never Let Go (1960), commenced shooting on February 22, starring Peter Sellers and Richard Todd. With his newly acquired wealth generated from two #1 singles, Faith announced his plan to buy a new car, a new house for his parents and to invest the rest (a significant move in light of his subsequent financial success).
Although his next record, "Big Time" / "Someone Else's Baby", released on April 8 while "Poor Me" was still at #15 on the charts, just failed to become his third consecutive #1 (it was beaten by The Everly Brothers' "Cathy's Clown"), during the next few years Faith went on to score many more hits. His albums were successful, too. "Beat Girl", for example, issued at a time when the film had yet to surface in the cinema, attracted excellent reviews and reached the top ten in the UK album charts. Though this was in the main a John Barry instrumental album, three songs were sung by Faith and this fact alone could only have enhanced sales. One of these songs, "The Beat Girl Song", written by Barry and Trevor Peacock, failed to appear in the film itself.
December brought two more significant events in the ever-changing world of Adam Faith. First he bought a Hampton Court house for 6000 pounds, where he moved with the rest of his family from the Acton council house. Second, he was invited and agreed to appear on BBC TV's controversial yet prestigious Face to Face (1959)--a major coup for Faith. Transmitted live on December 11, Faith surprised many a viewer by dint of his resolution and alertness in the face of some tough questioning from presenter John Freeman.
Faith's third film, the comedy What a Whopper (1961), premiered during the summer, although the title song was not considered strong enough for single release. Instead, he chose a song from the film, entitled "The Time Has Come". written--as usual--by Johnny Worth. This reached #4 on the charts and fared better than the film, which opened at the Rialto, London, on September 28 to a terrible pasting from the press.
In March of 1962 Faith undertook an 11-day nature cure at a Surrey rest home. He had not stopped touring and recording for eight months and was completely fatigued. At the Surrey retreat he read the script for his next film project, Mix Me a Person (1962), which was due to start filming immediately after this short period of recuperation. August dawned with good reviews for the film, which opened in London. This, his fourth picture, was a thriller in which his character (Harry Jukes) spent a great deal of time behind bars. He did manage to sing a couple of songs, however, en route: the title song and a version of "La Bamba".
One of the biggest news items in the music industry that autumn stemmed from the surprise decision from the Barry and Faith camp to sever musical links--a purely amicable arrangement designed to enable both parties to develop alternative projects. Barry explained the motives behind this move more fully in an interview with Record Mirror's Peter Jones: "In the early days Johnny Worth, Adam and I were concentrating on one thing, Adam's records. We were after bread. We were all starting in the business and we were all ambitious. But towards one end only. We were all in the same boat but eventually you reach a climax in all that channeled activity. I'd say it is impossible for three people to stick together permanently in this way. You are bound to develop into different adult channels. We wanted financial gains. When you've got those, you can relax and choose your work. It's a matter of sitting back and considering precisely what you want to do in your career. Do you want to be tied by the boundaries of pop music? Do you want to include all kinds of music? Or all art forms? As an artist, a musician, you can learn something from all forms . . . From literature, films and comedy. So no, it wasn't a surprise I left. But you might say it was a surprise I stayed so long."
Initially the hits continued almost unabated, first with Johnny Keating taking over as arranger and accompanying Faith with his orchestra, and then accompanied by a new group, The Roulettes.
Faith flew to Australia in October with John Leyton for an 18-day tour that also encompassed New Zealand and Hong Kong, returning to his new home in Esher, Surrey, a "manor-type" house set in an acre of landscaped garden. The house itself included a ground floor-billiards room and a blue-carpeted bedroom housing a white, silk-covered king-sized bed--with an adjoining wardroom. What's more, he employed a butler, maid, gardener and valet! How times had changed from those childhood days in Acton.
However, the hits eventually began to dry up. In 1967 his biggest "hit" was his marriage to former dancer Jackie Irving. Quite possibly his biggest commercial coup was in persuading Sandie Shaw to perform and record "Puppet On A String", a decision she was later to regret. Not only did it become the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, but it also reached #1 in the UK and in many other European countries. Faith convinced her it was in her best interests to sing it, after she had fallen out with their mutual manager over its merits as a song. Her gratitude to Faith for his advice was somewhat tempered, however, when Taylor revealed much later that he had a financial interest in her and the song's publishers! Clearly Faith's aptitude for spotting an investment opportunity had not diminished.
Adam Faith released his last single for EMI in 1968, "You Make My Life Worthwhile". Arranged and conducted by Ken Woodman, it was an excellent recording that deserved a better fate than it got, but with Faith opting to make his stage debut playing Feste in William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", he was in no position to promote it. In view of this, both he and EMI decided to part company; Faith, the actor, was consigning Faith, the pop star, to the annals of music history.
Faith's success on stage and screen was hardly unexpected, given his thirst for knowledge and capacity for hard work. He decided to learn stagecraft from first principles in repertory theatre, out of which a number of small parts initially emanated. This stood him in good stead, when he was given a more substantial role in "Night Must Fall", playing opposite Dame Sybil Thorndike. In effect, this amounted to his big break; his stage equivalent of appearing on "Drumbeat"! In autumn of 1969 he took the lead in a touring version of "Billy Liar", and 18 months later found renewed television fame in the title role of Budgie (1971).
Apart from one comeback album for Warner Bros in 1974 (borne, one suspects, out of a desire to celebrate in song his full recovery from a near-fatal car crash a year earlier) and an original cast recording he made of the musical version of "Budgie" in 1988, Faith concentrated almost solely on acting and went a considerable way to achieving his ambition expressed so lucidly back in 1959, prior to his 19th birthday.
During the 1970s he impressed both moviegoers and critics alike with convincing performances in Stardust (1974), Foxes (1980) and McVicar (1980), and also found time to immerse himself in the management side of the rock industry. Budding agent and song-writer Dave Courtney (who Faith knew as a result of his association with The Roulettes) introduced him to former busker Leo Sayer. Instantly impressed by Sayer's vocal prowess and songwriting ability, Faith immediately set out a strategy for launching his protégée, and as a direct spin-off, also produced a solo album for The Who's Roger Daltrey, which contained a selection of Sayer/Courtney songs.
The 1980s saw Faith once again reinvent himself in the public eye, this time in the form of a self-appointed financial guru; he even wrote a column for "The Mail On Sunday", aptly titled "Faith In The City", which epitomized the "get-rich-quick" philosophy espoused in that Margaret Thatcher-drenched decade. It ended on something of a sour note when he was prevented from issuing a free fact sheet that promised to make its recipients millionaires! This was also a period when Faith was often heard to be scathing about his own recording legacy, holding it chiefly responsible for scuppering his attempts at securing a lasting acting career. As guest at a dinner party where his old hits were being played, he was chastised by the host for criticizing them so harshly, for rubbishing the very music he had enjoyed as a youth. Faith was rather taken aback by this accusation and was forced to re-appraise his feelings for his pop career.
Judging from subsequent comments made in the media, he has clearly done so. On the eve of the release of a brand-new album, "Midnight Postcards" (released in November '93), he told "The Daily Mail" that he was no longer dismissive about his pop star roots and saw no incongruency in combining an acting with a singing career. "I retired from singing 20 years ago so I could be an actor. I had begun to hate my pop association because I so wanted to act. In those days you couldn't really do both. Now I realize that the two things I do best are singing and acting. I'm only sorry that it has taken me so long to combine the two."
On stage for some years he performed the title role in "Alfie" around the provinces, played the narrator in "A Chorus Line" and toured the UK in "Love & Marriage". Often in demand for television, following his initial success with "Budgie", in the 1990s he starred in the highly successful BBC TV drama Love Hurts (1992), with Zoë Wanamaker; and in 2002 made the less popular The House That Jack Built (2002), also for the BBC.
He had a heart bypass operation in the mid-'80s, but had enjoyed reasonable health from then onwards. However, the failure of his cable TV channel, The Money Channel, a couple of years ago resulted in his bankruptcy, and may have taken a toll on his health. He was planning a one-man stage performance tour of Britain the next year, in which he would act out his career, including some of the songs that launched it. He died at the age of 62 from a heart attack, a few hours after finishing a performance of "Love & Marriage".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Adelaide Louise Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her family moved across the East River to Harlem, and it was here, among the rich and fertile renaissance of black culture in the 1920s, that Adelaide nurtured her dreams of becoming a star. Her first stage role was in 1921 in the chorus line of the all-black Broadway musical "Shuffle Along", which gave her a taste of the limelight. The show ran for 504 performances and then went on tour.
Her next stint on stage came in 1923, when she was featured in the all-black Broadway musical "Runnin' Wild." Of her performance, Variety wrote, " . . . picked from the chorus is Adelaide Hall, who can be termed a real find. She jazzes a number as Paul Whiteman would have it done, and her singing of 'Old Fashinoed Love' is a knockout." The show ran for 213 performances and then went on tour. In 1925 she toured Europe as lead in "The Chocolate Kiddies Revue". She introduced Europe to the Charleston dance and performed it to Duke Ellington's "Jig Walk" (the fact is that she was a sensation in Europe before the better known Josephine Baker--who always gets credited for introducing Europe to the Charleston--did.
In 1927 she recorded "Creole Love Call" on a record, backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The record caused a furore after its release because of its blatantly sexual overtones, but it went on to sell millions of copies and is still selling. It is widely regarded as among the most famous and important jazz recordings ever made. It introduced "scat singing" to the general public, and catapulted Adelaide and Ellington to international stardom. The next year Adelaide starred on Broadway in "Blackbirds of 1928" with Bill Robinson (aka "Bojangles"). The show went on to become the longest-running all-black revue ever to appear on Broadway, a record that remains unbroken. The show gave Adelaide three hit songs: "I Can't Give You Anything but Love", "Diga Diga Do" and "I Must Have That Man." She and Bojangles became the black equivalent to Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire and the show made her the first black international superstar (Josephine Baker at the time was only a star in Europe, not the US). In 1929 she performed in the "Blackbirds of 1928" revue in Paris, France, at the world-famous Moulin Rouge for three months. The New Amsterdan News reported that "Adelaide Hall takes Paris by storm." The next year she returned to Broaeway and co-starred with Bojangles in "Brown Buddies", to great acclaim. In 1931 she began a world tour that lasted for almost two years and took her to two continents, played to over a million people and made her the wealthiest black woman in America. During the tour she discovered the blind pianist Art Tatum, whom she employed as her pianist. In 1934 she starred at Harlem's Cotton Club for eight months in one of the club's most successful revue, during which she introduced Harold Arlen's timeless classic "Ill Wind" and the raunchy "Primitive Prima Donna", which were especially written for her. She made her film debut the next year in the musical short An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935) for Vitaphone, which also starred The Nicholas Brothers.
She moved to Paris in 1936 and for the next three years toured extensively all over Europe. She starred in a production of "The Sun Never Sets" at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1938 with Todd Duncan, with music by Cole Porter. In 1939 she settled in Great Britain, where she spent the remainder of her life. She appeared in the classic fantasy The Thief of Bagdad (1940) in 1940, and during the war she joined ENSA and toured military facilities in Britain and abroad, entertaining the troops, and at the end of the war she was actually one of the first entertainers to perform in Germany.
For the next 20 years Adelaide was Britain's most famous and successful black female vocalist. She had numerous shows on the BBC, including "Harlem in Mayfair" (1939), "Dark Sohistication" (1943), "Starlight" (1947), "Variety in Sepia" (1949), "Black Magic" (1949), and "Old Songs for New". She also made over 50 recordings for Decca Records. In 1951 she starred in Cole Porter's musical "Kiss Me Kate" at London's Coliseum Theatre, a show that ran for a year, then went on tour. The next year she starred in "Love from Judy" at London's Saville Theatre, which also ran fora year and then went on tour. In 1956 she starred in "Someone to Talk To" at London's Duchess Theatre. The next year she returned to the US and starred on Broadway in the musical "Jamaica" with Lena Horne.
The 1960s were not good career-wise for Adelaide, and her star faded considerably. Horever, in 1979 she appeared in the Newport Jazz Festival's production of "Black Broadway" and te next year she and Elisabeth Welch and Edith Wilson starred in a production of the show at New York's Town Hall. In 1983 she returned to New York City for a surprise guest appearance at Eubie Blakes 100th birthday concert. On April 1 of that year Adelaide starred in "Sacred Music Of Duke Ellington", which was performed at St Paul's Cathedral in London and televised. In 1985 she appeared on numerous British television shows including "A Royal Celebration . . . Forty Years of Peace", "Omnibus,The Cotton Club Comes to The Ritz" and an episode of The South Bank Show (1978) called "The Real Cotton Club". In 1986 Adelaide appeared on the British TV show "Chasing A Rainbow." Returning to New York two years later, she starred in a concert at the famed Carnegie Hall. In 1989 her biographical documentary Sophisticated Lady (1989) premiered at the London Film Festival and made its TV debut the next year.
In 1990 Adelaide recorded and released three albums: "I Touched a Star", "Hall of Memories" and "Live at the Riverside". She performed in concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1991 at age 90 in "A Tribute to Adelaide Hall". On Mardch 4 of the following year she once more journeyed to New York, this time for a two-day appearance at Carnegie Hall. Unfortunately, this was her last performance. She died of pneumonia in London, England, on November 7, 1993.- Aileen Pringle's favorite film was a mid-1920s silent based on a book by Elinor Glyn: Three Weeks (1924), sort of a "Lady Chatterly's Lover". She recalled in a 1980 telephone conversation: "The film was in good taste; some people thought the book was trashy". Anita Loos wrote in "A Girl Like I", the first volume of her autobiography, vaudeville comic Joe Frisco telling Glynn: "Leave me get this straight. You want to find some tramp that don't look like a tramp, to play that English tramp in your picture. But take it from me, that kind of tramp don't hang out in Hollywood". Aileen had spent her 20s married to Charles McKenzie Pringle, the son of Sir John Pringle, a Jamaica landowner and a member of the Privy and Legislative Councils of Jamaica. Aileen lived in Jamaica until she went on stage with George Arliss. When she began divorce proceedings against Pringle in 1926, Hollywood gossip columnists speculated she would marry H.L. Mencken. She did not remarry until 1944 when she became the bride of James M. Cain, author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". I opened my 1980 telephone conversation with Aileen by mentioning that the day before I had been reading her correspondence with Mencken at the New York Public Library. "But all the letters were destroyed", she said. I knew that Mencken had asked for all of his letters to her back at the time he became engaged to Sara Haardt. Aileen was the only woman who received such a request from Mencken at that time. "It was your letters from the late '30s and '40s I was reading", I told Aileen. "In one of them Mencken was urging you to write a book. Did you ever finish it?" "No. I got married instead." In a 1946 letter she wrote to Mencken. "If I had remained married to that psychotic Cain, I would be wearing a straitjacket instead of the New Look."
- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born into a traditional south Indian family, Aishwarya started modeling at a young age. This green-blue-eyed beauty appeared in advertisements for many prestigious firms; the ones that brought her into the limelight were the garden sari and the Pepsi ad. Crowned Miss India 1994 runner-up, she was a hot favorite in the run for miss world title, which she won, her beauty and charm made her India's darling. Ash stormed into the Indian movie industry, where she has proven herself a brilliant & genuine actress. Her performance in Iruvar (1997) was critically acclaimed, and she won the Screen best female debutant award for her role in ...Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya (1997). She was adored in movies like Taal (1999), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Devdas (2002), her item number in 'Bunty & Bubbly' had sent waves of rhythm across the nation. With her successful Bollywood movies and prestigious Hollywood projects lined up for release it is impossible to ignore this Indian diva in international scenes.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Although it is very unlikely that his admittedly cheap-'n'-cheesy films will ever be acknowledged as true works of cinematic art, producer/director/screenwriter Al Adamson did, nonetheless, make a slew of entertainingly trashy low-budget exploitation features for the drive-in market throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
He was born on July 25, 1929, in Hollywood, California, the son of actress Dolores Booth and actor/director Victor Adamson who, appropriately enough, specialized in shoddy B-grade - and lower - Westerns in the 1920s and 1930s, both as an actor and especially as a director. Adamson's first foray into filmmaking was helping his father as director and producer on the film Halfway to Hell (1953). In the mid-1960s, he founded the prolific grindhouse outfit Independent-International Pictures with fellow producer/distributor Samuel M. Sherman. Adamson cranked out flicks in every conceivable genre: scuzzy biker items (Satan's Sadists (1969), Hell's Bloody Devils (1970), Angels' Wild Women (1971)), grungy Westerns (Five Bloody Graves (1969), Jessi's Girls (1975)), smarmy softcore porn sex comedies (The Naughty Stewardesses (1973), Blazing Stewardesses (1975)), funky blaxploitation films (Mean Mother (1973), Black Heat (1976)), ridiculous science fiction dross (the gloriously ghastly Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)), two Jim Kelly martial arts/action outings (Black Samurai (1976) and Death Dimension (1978)), lurid horror fare (Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), Brain of Blood (1971), Nurse Sherri (1977)) and even a tongue-in-cheek softcore porn science fiction musical (Cinderella 2000 (1977)). Moreover, Adamson served as producer for both the exciting Fred Williamson blaxploitation vehicle Hammer (1972) and the acclaimed made-for-TV drama Cry Rape (1973). The casts of Adamson's films were made up of oddball but enthusiastic amateurs and faded professional thespians whose careers were on the wane, including Kent Taylor, Russ Tamblyn, Lon Chaney Jr. and the ubiquitous John Carradine. Adamson frequently gave his wife, Regina Carrol, sizable parts in his films. Moreover, he was a mentor for future schlock feature directors Greydon Clark and John 'Bud' Cardos. He was also instrumental in launching the career of ace cinematographer Gary Graver. In addition, Adamson kept fellow top cinematographers László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond employed in the early days of their careers.
Al Adamson's life came to a brutal and untimely end at 66 when he was murdered by his live-in contractor, Fred Fulford, on August 2, 1995.- Music Department
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Prolific Academy Award-winning songwriter Al Dubin ("Lullaby of Broadway" [1935]) came to the US in 1893 and was educated at the Perkiomen Seminary in Pennsylvania. He joined the staff of several New York music publishing companies. He enlisted in the US Army in World War I and served in the 77th Infantry Division. After the war he returned to the music business, composing the scores for the Broadway hits "The Streets of Paris" and "Keep Off the Grass". Coming to Hollywood under contract to Warner Brothers, his chief musical collaborator was Harry Warren, but he also worked with Joseph A. Burke, J. Fred Coots, Jimmy McHugh, Sammy Fain, Victor Herbert, James V. Monaco, Mabel Wayne, Joseph Meyer, J. Russel Robinson and Burton Lane. His other popular song compositions include "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", "Twas Only an Irishman's Dream", "Just a Girl that Men Forget", "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You", "My Dream of the Big Parade", "Painting the Clouds With Sunshine", "The Kiss Waltz", "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes", "For You", "42nd Street", "Shuffle Off to Buffalo", "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me", "Young and Healthy", "Shadow Waltz", "We're In the Money", "Pettin' in the Park", "Remember My Forgotten Man", "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song", "Keep Young and Beautiful", "Honeymoon Hotel", "Shanghai Lil", "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "Fair and Warmer", "I'll String Along With You", "Why Do I Dream Those Dreams?", "I Only Have Eyes for You", "Sweet Music", "The Words Are in My Heart", "I'm Going Shopping With You", "About a Quarter to Nine", "She's a Latin from Manhattan", "Go Into Your Dance", "The Little Things You Used to Do", "Lulu's Back in Town", "The Rose in Her Hair", "Where Am I? (Am I in Heaven?)", "Don't Give Up the Ship", "I'd Love to Take Orders from You", "Page Miss Glory", "I'll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs", "With Plenty of Money and You", "All's Fair in Love and War", "Summer Night", "September in the Rain", "Remember Me", "Am I in Love?", "'Cause My Baby Says It's So", "I Know Now", "You Can't Run Away from Love Tonight", "Song of the Marines", "The Latin Quarter", "Day Dreaming", "Garden of the Moon", "Love Is Where You Find It", "The Girl Friend of the Whirling Dervish", "Feudin' and Fightin'", "Indian Summer", "My Dream of the Big Parade", and "Anniversary Waltz".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hodge starred on radio as "The Green Hornet" in the 1940s. In the 1950s he was popular to TV fans as Captain Video. By the time of his death however, he had become an alcoholic and was living on $63 a week social security checks. He died alone and forgotten.- Producer
- Additional Crew
Al Lichtman was at one time a burlesque house usher and, in 1912, a field manager for Famous Players. In the early 1920s he owned and operated his own distribution company. He served as an executive at such studios as Famous Players, MGM, United Artists and 20th Century-Fox and was a major figure in the development of CinemaScope. In 1919 he worked with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and William S. Hart in the formation of United Artists Pictures, of which he became president. Lichtman met Adolph Zukor and worked with him at Paramount Pictures before becoming a field manager for Zukor at Famous Players. Later, he created his own company, Alco Films, which went bankrupt after his partner stole money. Creditors took over and Alco was renamed Metro Pictures, the predecessor of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Lichtman and Zukor's paths kept intersecting during these years and he presented the idea of block booking to Zukor, which then became a new industry standard.
Many titles followed: president at Preferred Pictures, sales manager and president at United Artists, after which he reorganized MGM, serving as vice president and executive producer of films like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With The Wind". Eventually, he joined 20th Century Fox and became head of distribution, during which time he played a crucial role in developing CinemaScope. He retired from Fox in 1957. Lichtman later served as President of Preferred Pictures and executive produced the film "The Young Lions" with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Cliff.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Alan Birkinshaw started his working career as a Jackaroo in Australia. Soon afterwords he became a horse breaker and then a rodeo rider. He returned to the UK and on his 20th birthday joined Lew Grade's ATV as a television cameraman working on mainstream dramas and light entertainment shows. After 18 months he left ATV and became a freelance TV cameraman. At age 22 he directed and produced his first television drama, "A Nice Dream While It Lasted", written by his sister, renowned author Fay Weldon. At 24 Birkinshaw was directing television programs for Westward Television and then London Weekend Television, including quiz shows, farming programs, live television news shows and drama. He directed a ground-breaking, before-its-time, light entertainment show beamed down to the UK from a circling airplane. This was for a pirate TV station run by the then infamous Ronan O'Rahilly, who began the first-ever pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, in the 1960s. Soon after that he turned to documentaries and commercials and then moved into the world of feature films.
One of his first theatrical films was a horror movie, Killer's Moon (1978), which he also produced and co-wrote with Fay Weldon. This has since become a cult film, attracting a certain amount of controversy, and 30 years after its production is being studied in universities and other film courses. Next, a short film called Dead End (1980), which Birkinshaw also wrote and directed. It was the first film for the multi Oscar-nominated composer George Fenton. The film had a major release in the UK and went on to be shown all around the world. After another two short films, "Henley" and "The Circus", Birkinshaw went to the Philippines to make an action-adventure movie called "Greed" (eventually released as Invaders of the Lost Gold (1982)), starring Stuart Whitman, Harold Sakata and Edmund Purdom. It wasn't easy getting finance for movies in England, and he soon went back to making commercials, at the same time setting up his own film distribution and production company, West World Films. Birkinshaw was Additional Director (uncredited) on Ordeal by Innocence (1984). starring Donald Sutherland. Soon afterwards Birkinshaw found himself in India making a dramatized documentary on the life of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This was commissioned by the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and caused questions to be asked in the Indian Parliament. By now Birkinshaw was getting a reputation for tough assignments and he was called in to direct an action series called Zorc (1992) with the volatile German actor Klaus Löwitsch. After this was finished, Birkinshaw was in Africa with more tough actors. 'Oliver Reed' in The House of Usher (1989) was just one of them. In a Swiss/German/ French co-production Birkinshaw directed the true story of a Swiss boxer in Punch (1993) starring Donald Sutherland . The boxing sequences in this movie were hailed as extraordinary given the time and the budget. The hugely budgeted Space Precinct (1994) and its famous action sequences with the Cyborg which Birkinshaw directed was followed by more work in Germany and saw Birkinshaw directing 90-minute comedy dramas for German television--a series called Die Unbestechliche (1994) starred Maja Maranow and Martin Benrath.
Birkinshaw has won many awards for his work, and has been writing screenplays, a novel and directing occasionally. He also has a thriving business producing and selling marble statues to customers all over the world.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Director Alan Crosland was born in New York City on August 10, 1894, into an upper-middle class family, which soon moved to East Orange, NJ, where Alan was reared. His family's finances allowed for him to spend part of his elementary education in England, where he acquired a curious Anglo-American accent that he would affect for the rest of his life. With a restless personality that was complemented by a sharp intellect and a smooth tongue, Crosland had an uncanny ability to befriend even the most disagreeable people around him (a talent he would put to good use in Hollywood). He attended Dartmouth College but left before graduation, deciding he wanted to become a journalist, and eventually landed a job with the New York Globe, writing articles and short stories on the side for movie magazines. From 1912 he began to moonlight with the nearby Edison Company as an actor and stage manager. He performed a variety of duties there, eventually directing the studio's last feature, The Unbeliever (1918), shortly before being drafted into the US Army during World War I. He served out the Great War in the Army Photo Service. After the armistice he signed with a smaller independent company, Select, one he had briefly worked with prior to the war, remaining with them on ten more pictures through 1922. During this period he gained an enviable reputation for effectively directing some of the most temperamental stars of the day. He was of the few directors who actually liked Erich von Stroheim and obtained effective performances from the notoriously hammy (yet undeniably talented) Lionel Barrymore.
He signed with Goldwyn-Cosmopolitan in 1923, where the reviews for Under the Red Robe (1923) placed him solidly in the ranks of Hollywood's top directors. He became the first director a studio wanted when shooting a big-budget, prestigious historical drama, especially if it starred a difficult actor that might be inclined to spin costs out of control. With his reputation growing, Crosland lived life to the hilt, thoroughly enjoying the 1920s Hollywood lifestyle; he was frequently seen around town looking always dapper in the latest flashy cars and inside the latest hot spot with a dazzling starlet.
After a brief stint at Paramount, Crosland signed with Warner Brothers and was assigned to projects by Darryl F. Zanuck just when the studio was in the midst of a make-or-break gamble on sound with its Vitaphone sound-on-disk system. At that time Warner Brothers was considered almost a "Poverty Row" studio, well below the ranks of MGM, Universal and Paramount. It had acquired an unenviable reputation in Hollywood as having only two major stars, one of whom was a German Shepherd named Rin-Tin-Tin and the other the temperamental, hard-drinking John Barrymore, who was hauled out for its few prestige pictures. One of the five combative brothers who ran the studio, Sam Warner, saw sound as the way to eliminate the need for theatrical orchestras and establish what he felt was Warner's rightful place within the film industry. Crosland's reputation for handling both spectacle and difficult stars made him the obvious choice to direct the studio's first tentative stab at sound, Don Juan (1926), which was the first film to contain synchronized music and sound effects. It was a moderate success and he was picked for an even more ambitious project, The Jazz Singer (1927), a part-talkie, on which the studio's entire fortunes rested. Crosland was chosen to direct the maudlin story largely on his ability to work with the notoriously difficult Al Jolson, after George Jessel (who had starred in the Broadway production) walked out over a pay dispute. The $500,000 production had only 281 spoken words (mostly incidental to the songs and ad-libbed by Jolson) but it ignited the public's voracious appetite for talkies and grossed $3,000,000, a blockbuster in those days.
Hollywood was soon caught up in a war between competing sound technologies: Warner's Vitaphone and Fox's superior Western Electric sound-on-film process. Meanwhile, studios faced enormous conversion costs and uncertainties over their stars' abilities to transition to sound. By 1928 the silent film had reached the pinnacle of its artistic achievement and the early talkies, by comparison, appeared crude. While some studios--most notably MGM (whose parent Loew's faced monumental costs related to converting its extensive theater network)--adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward both the public acceptance of sound and choosing a system, Warner's saw talkies in the form of its Vitaphone as its salvation. In Crosland's world of 1927-29, it should be remembered that sound cameras were fixed and muffled, large microphones had to be cleverly hidden and actors were often justifiably terrified of how their voices would be received. Unfortunately the Vitaphone process seriously limited the ability to edit a film, resulting in stagy long takes, and with its cumbersome electro-mechanical hardware and fragile records that would often break in transit, it was soon obvious that Fox's sound-on-film system was vastly superior (Warner's would quietly admit technological defeat in 1931 and convert).
Technology issues aside, the Vitaphone propelled Warner Brothers solidly into the ranks of the A-list studios and, infused with cash, it acquired Fox's First National theatrical network by 1930, a crucial business move that greatly expanded the studio's distribution capabilities and enabled it to ride out huge losses it would incur from 1931-34. It was during this all-too-brief transition period that Alan Crosland was the most experienced sound director in town. He directed another part-talkie hit, Glorious Betsy (1928), starring Dolores Costello, a return to his favored costume spectacle.
By mid-1929 it became apparent that a movie could not solely depend on the novelty of sound; hits required production values and a degree of action, an uncomfortable situation given the restrictions of the equipment. At this point Crosland stumbled badly. A primitive attempt at color didn't help On with the Show! (1929), a creaky musical starring a badly miscast Betty Compson and Arthur Lake, a textbook example of claustrophobic filmmaking and Crosland's first real flop. He tripped again with Captain Thunder (1930), one of his worst films. His next two assignments delved into the opera genre with dismal box office returns. His personal life became rocky, with his first marriage to Juanita Fletcher failing in 1930. He hastily wed actress Natalie Moorhead, a union that would last less than five years. Although he would direct more than 20 features--some of them moderately successful--after his career triumph with "The Jazz Singer," Crosland fell from the ranks of A-list directors and settled into directing B-level pictures.
Early in the morning of July 10, 1936, he was driving on Sunset Boulevard when his car hit some road debris and he swerved off the road, flipping twice in a construction zone. He was rushed to the hospital with multiple broken bones and a suspected skull fracture. Within four days he contracted pneumonia and his condition was downgraded by his doctor. He died on July 16, 1936, just shy of his 42nd birthday. His last film, The Case of the Black Cat (1936), was completed by William C. McGann. Crosland was survived by his son (with Juanita Fletcher), Alan Crosland Jr., who became a very successful television director in the 1960s-'70s.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The man many consider to have possessed the greatest voice ever in popular music, Alan Dale had a career that spanned three decades and 16 record labels. At age 17 he was a big-band vocalist, first with Carmen Cavallaro, then George Paxton. In 1948 he achieved stardom via CBS' musical quiz show Sing It Again (1950) (this is the program referred to in the James Stewart film Pot o' Gold (1941))). His own The Alan Dale Show (1948) (Dumont and CBS) was the first television program kinescoped for showing in other parts of the country.
By 1951 Dale was one of the hottest singers around. Then fate dealt him a terrible blow. Overwork, combined with unhappy events in his private life, aggravated an ulcer condition, and he collapsed during one of his live TV shows. By the time he had recovered his health he had lost all of his shows. His climb back began with old friend Bob Thiele, then A&R chief of Coral Records. Previously, Thiele had produced many of Alan's hits, and proceeded to do so again with "Oh, Marie", "I'm Sorry", "Cherry Pink", "Sweet and Gentle" and "Rockin the Cha Cha". The success of the latter led to Dale's starring in the 1957 film Don't Knock the Rock (1956). Unfortunately, the dark and seamy side of show business eventually caused Alan to become disillusioned (as detailed in his autobiography "The Spider and the Marionettes") and, quite deliberately, he gradually faded from the spotlight. Which is our loss, because Alan Dale was one of the very best (Mel Tormé mentioned him in his book "My Singing Teachers"), and he deserves to be rediscovered, just as Tony Bennett has been.- Director
- Producer
- Cinematographer
Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Alan J. Levi began his filmmaking career at age 15 when he produced and directed a half-hour 16mm black-and-white comedy entitled "Keep Your Spirits High" while a sophomore in high school. Finding no one who would hire this aspiring director, he organized his own company, "Petite Productions," which was financed entirely by his fellow schoolmates, and with a grand total of $256 in operating costs, he began his career as a Director/Producer. By the time he graduated from high school, he completed a total of 43 films, produced for such organizations as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, St. Louis Board of Education, The National Safety Council and other institutions that couldn't afford the high prices of commercial filmmaking companies.
During the summer between high school and college, Alan came to Hollywood and, under the guidance of his mentor Dick Powell, studied film technique at various studios--direction under André De Toth, makeup at the MGM makeup department with William Tuttle, photography at Paramount and Warner Bros. on the sets of in-production feature films, editing with the Warner's TV editing staff, etc.
A graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in Radio, TV and Film and minors in Psychology and Electrical Engineering, Alan had directed and/or photographed over 2000 hours of live and videotaped television around the world, and functioned as Director of Photography and Director for over 450 prime-time network commercials before landing a job as Associate Producer at MGM. Since then his directing credits have earned him a Cannes Film Festival Gold Lion, a Western Heritage Award, two New York International TV and Film Festival Grand Awards, two Clio Awards and several Silver Spikes. He has guest-lectured on filmmaking technique at AFI, USC, UCLA, National Institute of Health, and Brooks Institute of Photography as well as numerous acting and film-making study groups.
He was director and/or director of photography on nearly 70 Wide World of Sports (1981) and the acclaimed "Up Close and Personals" for the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. These afforded him the opportunity to become intimately involved in such events as auto racing (Indy, stock, midgets, drags), airplane racing, gymnastics, water polo, wrestling, golf, swimming and diving an, among many others, the traditional stand-bys--baseball and football.
Alan has directed over 350 hours of prime-time network television over the past over 45 years, which included Movies-of-the-Week, pilots and miniseries such as Scruples (1981), The Immigrants (1978), Battlestar Galactica (1978), The Incredible Hulk (1978), Columbo (1971), Knight Rider 2000 (1991) (TV), The Return of Sam McCloud (1989), B.L. Stryker (1989), Dead Man's Revenge (1994). The Legend of the Golden Gun (1979), Go West, Young Girl (1978), Judgment Day (1999), The Invisible Woman (1983), The Stepford Children (1987) and The Last Song (1980).
Among the series he's directed are NCIS (2003), NCIS: Los Angeles (2009), ER (1994), JAG (1995), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Dr. Vegas (2004), The Fugitive (2000), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Miami Vice (1984), Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982), Quantum Leap (1989), Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993), The Cosby Mysteries (1994), Promised Land (1996), Courthouse (1995), Sweet Justice (1994), Simon & Simon (1981), Airwolf (1984), Hooperman (1987), Misfits of Science (1985), The Bionic Woman (1976), Fame (1982), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), Gemini Man (1976), Falcon Crest (1981), Scene of the Crime (1984), The Oregon Trail (1976), What Really Happened to the Class of '65? (1977) and a few (unmentionable) others. He has also produced the pilots and/or series of "Columbo", "Airwolf", "Voyagers", "Misfits of Science", "The Invisible Woman" and "Probe".
Alan lives in the Los Angeles area with his actress/wife of nearly 40 years, Sondra Currie, and their "kid"--a Bombay rescue kitty "Boo".- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Alan Le May was a novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter, although today he may be best remembered for his novels which served as the basis for two classic westerns, The Searchers (1956) and The Unforgiven (1960). He started his career as a journalist before becoming a full-time author (he wrote 17 novels in all).- Albert Anastasia was born February 26, 1903, in Calabria, Italy, famous for its hams and the 'ndrangheta, which was every bit as vicious as the Sicilian Mafia. He was brought to America as a child along with his eight brothers. When he was starting in organized crime, he helped Salvatore Lucania, who later became known as Lucky Luciano, murder Giuseppe Masseria (aka "Joe The Boss" or "The Chinese"). When the "Boss of Bosses", Salvatore Maranzano, was murdered by Luciano, La Cosa Nostra was divided into different families known as The Commission. The bosses of the family Anastasia belonged to were brothers Vincent Mangano and Philip Mangano.
It wasn't long before Anastasia started to lust for power. As the underboss, he and Vincent Mangano often fought physically. Anastasia, being younger, would usually win. Anastasia's old friend and boss of the Luciano family, Frank Costello, soon found himself in a pickle when his partner, Vito Genovese, returned from Italy after nine years' exile. Costello needed Anastasia's help but couldn't do a thing unless he had an entire family behind him. Costello and Anastasia soon came up with the idea of killing the Manganos. On April 19, 1951, one of the most mysterious murders in Mafia history occurred. The body of Phil Mangano was found in a marshland with three bullets in the back of his head and two in each cheek. When the police tried to contact his brother, they couldn't reach him. When Vincent didn't show up at his brother's funeral, the police and Mafia bosses assumed that Vincent had been murdered as well. Frank Costello stuck up for Anastasia when the families had a sit-down to discuss the murder, saying that the Manganos were planning to kill him. Anastasia was now the boss of the former Mangano family.
After he became the boss, he and his younger brother, Anthony Anastasia (aka "Tough Tony") - who changed his last name to Anastasio, most likely in order to avoid public connections with his brother--ran the Brooklyn waterfronts for over a decade. When Lucky Luciano was arrested, Albert and his brother Tony sabotaged a huge French ocean liner moored at a pier and spread the word that it had been done by Nazi saboteurs. They then made a deal with the US government that they would "protect" the waterfront from further "sabotage" in exchange for Luciano's release. A compromise was reached in which Luciano was sent to a minimum-security prison. Under Luciano's order, Anastasia became the head of the Mafia's enforcement arm, known as Murder Inc. This group of killers was responsible for an estimated 700 to 1000 murders, the large number of killings attributed to Anastasia's hot temper and love of violence. When he saw an interview with a New York shop owner named Arnold Schuster, who had recognized notorious bank robber Willie Sutton on the street and notified the police, who then arrested Sutton, Anastasia immediately ordered that Schuster be killed; he had no connection with Sutton, but his reasoning for ordering Schuster's murder what that "I don't like rats".
Schuster's death enraged the public as well as the other Mafia bosses. A few years later Luciano was deported to Italy, and the Italian government then exiled him to Sicily where, during WW II, he and the local Mafia ingratiated themselves with US forces after the invasion of Sicily by identifying and helping capture "fascists" and "fascist sympathizers" (most of whom, strangely enough, turned out to be Luciano's competitors in his various criminal enterprises).
When Luciano left, Genovese wanted more and more power, but Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia and Anastasia's underboss Frank Scalise ran things. Genovese was growing irritated with Albert because of the many murders committed by Albert's crew, which Genovese considered unjustified and which went against the Mafia's laws. Albert was also selling memberships for his family for a few thousand dollars apiece. Genovese hired future boss Vincent Gigante (aka "The Chin") to kill Costello. In 1957 Costello was shot in the head by Gigante, but Costello's phenomenal luck held and he was only grazed by the bullet. However, the assassination attempt persuaded him to semi-retire from his life of crime. By tradition, an underboss was murdered before the boss, in order to prevent retaliation. Anastasia's strongest ally, Joe Adonis, was suddenly deported to Italy. His underboss, Frank Scalise, was murdered not long afterwards when he went out to buy some fruit.
One of Anastasia's capos, Carlo Gambino, who later became the most powerful Mafia boss in US history, was secretly meeting with Vito Genovese to discuss the planned killing of Anastasia. Genovese promised that Gambino would be named the boss of the family if he killed Anastasia. Carlo could not refuse. Anastasia was about the same age, so by the time Carlo became boss, he wouldn't have much longer to live. Gambino consulted Joe Profaci, another Mafia boss, and the two hired the Gallo brothers, including the infamous Joe Gallo (aka "Crazy Joe"), to kill Anastasia. Anastasia's favorite barber shop was on the bottom floor of the famous Park Sheraton Hotel. He loved getting his beard trimmed and the feel of the towel on his face. When the barber put the towel on Albert's face, two of the three Gallo brothers rushed in and fired five shots into Anastasia, blasting him out of the barber's chair. The New York criminal and law enforcement communities were relieved that "The Lord High Executioner" had been taken out. Some people, however, were not so happy about it, and one of the most troubled was future boss John Gotti. Albert had been his role model and, at the time, his one hope of getting in the family. Albert's brother Tough Tony continued to control the waterfronts after Albert's death. - Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
One of the most prolific B-movie composers, Albert Glasser started off as a copyist in the music department at Warner Brothers in the late 1930s, learning the art of film scoring from scratch while working under such big guns as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He graduated to orchestrating, and by the mid-'40s was composing and directing his own scores. A hard, fast worker, Glasser found his musical skills put to the test in the frantic, down-to-the-wire world of B-picture making. He scored a staggering 135 movies between 1944 and 1962, not counting at least 35 features for which he received no credit. In addition to scoring 300 television shows and 450 radio programs, he arranged and conducted for noted American operetta composer Rudolf Friml and orchestrated for Ferde Grofé Sr. (with whom he first collaborated on the sci-fi classic Rocketship X-M (1950)).- Director
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Albert Pyun was an award-winning US filmmaker best known for his contributions to the science-fiction and action genres. He is credited with pioneering the cyborg sub-genre and is considered to be a maverick and renegade in independent genre cinema. With over 50 titles to his name, he has enjoyed a prolific career spanning 30+ years and has earned himself a fevered cult following.
His first film, The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), was the highest-grossing independent film of 1982, earning $36,714,025 in the US. The film's success led to Pyun being attached to various large sci-fi projects, including Total Recall (1990) (eventually directed by Paul Verhoeven) and he became a much sought-after director by several studios. His follow-up film was the post-apocalyptic sci-fi Radioactive Dreams (1984), which helped launch the careers of Michael Dudikoff and John Stockwell, and cemented Pyun's reputation for being an edgy and creative filmmaker. The 1980s was a highly productive decade for him, with the release of Dangerously Close (1986), Vicious Lips (1986), Down Twisted (1987), Alien from L.A. (1988), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988), Cyborg (1989) and Deceit (1990).
Pyun's work with Cannon Pictures saw him direct more films for the company than any other filmmaker and his involvement with "Spider-Man" and "Masters of the Universe 2" became legendary. When both films were canceled mid-way into their productions, Pyun devised a breakneck strategy to combine the sets and costume designs from both to salvage the lost money and deliver a single stand-alone film. The result was Cyborg (1989), which opened in 1989 as the fourth highest grossing film in the United States. It grossed $10,166,459 and gave Jean-Claude Van Damme his Hollywood superstar status.
The 1990s proved to be an even more prolific decade, with Pyun directing a further 24 films. Notable throughout those years include Captain America (1990), Nemesis (1992), Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995), Nemesis 3: Time Lapse (1996), Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996), Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991), Knightriders (1981), Omega Doom (1996), Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996), Hong Kong 97 (1994), Postmortem (1998) and Mean Guns (1997). His work with Charles Band's Full Moon Pictures saw him direct Dollman (1991) and Arcade (1993), both of which continue to hold a strong cult following.
The 2000s marked a new era for Pyun, as he moved away from the independent studio system and began making films much more independently by way of self-funding and outsourcing money personally. This allowed for greater creative freedoms as a filmmaker, despite his budgets being drastically reduced. His new approach to filmmaking has divided audiences, however; those who have followed his career closely agree that his films since 2000 have been far more audacious and personal, none more so than his 2013 film Road to Hell (2008) (shot in 2008). Inspired by Walter Hill's classic Streets of Fire (1984), the film acts as a spiritual sequel and presents the two protagonists in an alternative future. Michael Paré and Deborah Van Valkenburgh reprised their roles of Tom and Reva Cody and their characters are pitted against a vibrant and surreal purgatory landscape. The film has enjoyed a steady run on the festival circuit and is slated for a home-entertainment release. Other notable films from this decade include the stunning one-shot horror film Invasion (2004) (aka "Infection"), the brutal drug trade thriller Bulletface (2010) and the long-awaited Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010), a follow up to "The Sword and the Sorcerer". Investor and distributor interference on this film jeopardized the final theatrical cut and the film is slated, along with several of his other films, for an upcoming director's cut release.
The 2010s have proven to be a difficult time in Pyun's career due to declining health and difficulties getting a major project released. His film Cyborg Nemesis: The Dark Rift was shot, but remains unfinished due to pending post-production issues. An incomplete version of the film was screened for an audience at the Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival. His health took a turn for the worst in 2012 when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The effect of the illness took an emotional and physical toll on him and in early 2013 he announced his retirement. Following a brief hiatus he concluded that the best remedy was filmmaking and he made a triumphant return with The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper (2014). While he endured medical tests and treatments, the film had an incredibly fast turnaround and was written, shot and completed within a matter of weeks. The story line was a direct follow-up to "Invasion" and continued the one-shot concept. It was entirely filmed over the course of a single day and showcased Pyun's ability to think outside the box, both practically and creatively.
As of 2015 Pyun had attempted to develop various other projects, while maintaining ongoing treatment for his multiple sclerosis. These projects include "Napoleon", "The Kickboxer": "City of Blood" and "Algiers". In maintaining a strong relationship with his fan base Pyun has shared the production details of these projects on his Facebook page and maintains that he is still actively pursuing them. Their further development will depend on his ongoing health. He attributes his relationship with his fans as a driving force in fighting his illness and he has shared his medical journey with them almost every step of the way.
November of 2015 saw the release of a conceptual teaser trailer for a brand-new film titled "Star Warfare Rangers" and the "Cyborg Witch of Endor" (later retitled Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire (2017)). Having evolved from various attempts to revive his "Cyborg" saga, the film is an original story detailing the search for a missing Cyborg child. The film marked Albert's 33rd collaboration with his long-standing composer Tony Riparetti and boasts an impressive cast including Brad Thornton, Glenn Maynard, Ellie Church, Tommie Vegas, Shane Ryan and Morgan Weisser, among others.
Pyun's career has seen him work with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, many of whom got their first break with him. He has worked with the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sasha Mitchell, Christopher Lambert, Natasha Henstridge, Brion James, Tim Thomerson, Jackie Earle Haley, Teri Hatcher, Rutger Hauer, Olivier Gruner, Charlie Sheen, Burt Reynolds, Steven Seagal, Rob Lowe, Ice-T, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Sorbo, Tom Sizemore, Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Hopper, Kevin Gage, Robert Patrick, Seth Green, Dennis Chan, Ned Beatty, Darren McGavin, Ronny Cox, Kris Kristofferson, George Kennedy, Richard Lynch, Lee Horsley, Richard Moll, Courteney Cox, Tom Matthews, Nicholas Guest, Kathy Ireland, Deep Roy, Michel Qissi, Andrew Divoff, David Carradine, Vincent Klyn, Mitch Pileggi, Yuji Okumoto, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Michael Pare and Deborah Van Vulkenburgh. His most frequent actor collaborations have been with Norbert Weisser and Scott Paulin, who have worked alongside Albert in dozens of films spanning several decades.
Albert passed away on November 22, 2022 in Las Vegas, NV, where he lived with his wife and producer, Cynthia Curnan.- Actor
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Albert Salmi was born on March 11, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, to Finnish parents. After serving in the Army during WWII, he used the GI Bill to study at the Dramatic Workshop of the American Theater Wing and the prestigious Actors Studio. He became a stage actor, very soon landing on Broadway, where his role as Bo Decker in "Bus Stop" was his biggest stage success. A compromise between the stage and screen was live TV drama, in which he was cast regularly. His portrayal of Bruce Pearson in the The United States Steel Hour (1953)'s live 1956 broadcast of "Bang the Drum Slowly" was heart-tuggingly poignant. Salmi's very first film appearance was a choice role in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), for which he turned down an Oscar nomination. The National Board of Review succeeded in presenting him with its award for the same picture, however. Salmi came to enjoy film work and actively sought out parts in westerns. He became a very familiar presence, especially on the TV screen, where he guest starred in many of the westerns and other series of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1967 he was presented with the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his role in the Gunsmoke (1955) episode entitled "Death Watch". This bronze cowboy on horseback became his most cherished award. Salmi demonstrated his versatility, however, as years went on. Tall, brawny and sometimes quite intimidating, he was often cast as the bad guy or the authority figure. He was equally convincing, though, as a wronged or misunderstood good guy or a good-natured sidekick. A method actor, Salmi had the ability to make you love or hate his character.
He was, in real life, quite different from most of the characters he played. A quiet-natured family man, he was an oddity by glitzy Hollywood standards. Many of his friends and co-stars have commented on his sense of humor and his lack of pretense. In semi-retirement, he shared his knowledge of theatre by teaching drama classes in Spokane, Washington, where he and his wife settled.- Director
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Born in Brazil in 1897, Alberto Cavalcanti began his film career in France in 1920, working as writer, art director and director. He directed the avant-garde documentary Nothing But Time (1926) ("Nothing but Time"), a portrait of the lives of Parisian workers in a single day. He moved to England in 1933 to join the GPO Film Unit under John Grierson, working as a sound engineer (Night Mail (1936)) then as a producer. He went to work for Ealing Studios during the war, initially as head of Michael Balcon's short film unit until 1946, again working as an art director, producer and director. His notable films as director include Champagne Charlie (1944), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and I Became a Criminal (1947). After the latter film he moved back to Brazil. There he made Song of the Sea (1953) ("The Song of the Sea") and A Real Woman (1954) ("Woman of Truth") with his own production company. However, his progressive political views caught the attention of the the right-wing Brazilian authorities, and Cavalcanti thought it prudent to return to Europe in 1954. He eventually settled in France, where he continued his work in television. He died in Paris in 1982.- Actor
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Prolific, versatile, and ubiquitous character actor Aldo Sambrell was featured in over 140 international motion pictures in a remarkably long, varied, and illustrious career that spanned four and a half decades. Swarthy and burly, usually sporting a thick mustache, and often projecting an air of quiet oily menace, Sambrell was frequently cast in colorful supporting parts as hateful villains and lethal gunslingers in numerous Italian spaghetti Westerns. Sambrell was born Alfredo Sanchez Brell on February 23, 1931 in Madrid, Spain. His family fled Spain because of the Spanish Civil War and he was raised in Mexico. While in Mexico Aldo played professional soccer in the Mexican leagues in Pueblo and Monterrey. After beginning his career in the entertainment industry as a singer, Sambrell eventually returned to Spain and made his film debut in an uncredited bit role as a Jewish rebel in the biblical epic King of Kings (1961). Aldo appeared in his first spaghetti western in 1963. Sambrell was perhaps best known for his gritty portrayals of scruffy bandit gang members in Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and C'era una volta questo pazzo, pazzo, pazzo West (1973). Sambrell gave a memorably chilling performance as ruthless bandit gang leader Mervyn Duncan in Navajo Joe (1966). He had a rare lead role as voodoo priest Gatenebo in the laughably lousy horror clunker Voodoo Black Exorcist (1974). Among the many directors Aldo worked for are David Lean, Richard Fleischer, John Milius, Sergio Corbucci, Umberto Lenzi, León Klimovsky, Jess Franco, Richard Lester, Jackie Chan, Charlton Heston, Matt Cimber and Enzo G. Castellari. Moreover, Sambrell also wrote, produced and directed a few films. He was married to actress Cándida López. His last film role was as an aging actor in the poignant short Río seco (2006). Aldo died at age 79 on July 10, 2010 in Alicante, Spain after suffering a series of strokes.- Producer
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Aleksandr Khanzhonkov was the world's first maker of a cartoon film, the first maker of a full-time feature film in Russia and the founder of the first Russian film studio.
He was born Aleksandr Alekseevich Khanzhonkov on August 8, 1877, in the village of Khanzhonkovo, Donetsk province, Russian Empire (now Donetsk, Ukraine). His father, Aleksei Khanzhonkov, was a landlord of Don Cossack ancestry. In 1896 Aleksandr graduated from Novocherkassk Cossack Cadet School, then was promoted to junior officer in the privileged Don Cossack unit in Moscow. Khanzhonkov fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and was decorated for bravery. In 1905 he received an honorable discharge and a veteran officer's package of 5,000 rubles.
In 1905 he bought the film production company Gomon i Siversen in Moscow. He also brought new equipment from Pathe and started his own filmmaking business. In 1905-06 he shot his first documentaries. By the beginning of 1906 he invested all of his money in his filmmaking business, and obtained registration for filmmaking in Moscow. In the spring of 1906 he showed imported French films, as well as his own documentaries from his company, now named A. Khanzhonkov & Co., which initially was registered as a trade business. In 1907 Khanzhonkov produced his first film, "Palochkin i Galochkin", but it was not completed and he decided not to release it.
In 1908 Khanzhonkov released his first feature film, Drama v tabore podmoskovnykh tsygan (1908). At that time he hired actors and directors from the Vvedensky Narodny Dom Theatre Company, including such actors as Aleksandra Goncharova, Andrei Gromov, Pyotr Chardynin and Ivan Mozzhukhin. Between 1909 and 1919 he produced about 100 films. He was the biggest film producer in Russia, and made more films than all other Russian film studios combined. He produced 12 films in 1912 and 20 in 1913 alone. By 1914 his net annual profit surpassed 150,000 rubles, which in 2012 would be comparable to $50 million.
In 1911 Khanzhonkov produced the first full-length feature film in Russia, Defense of Sevastopol (1911), about the siege of the city of Sebastopol during the Crimean War of 1854-55. The production was sponsored by Tsar Nicholas II. Khanzhonkov made a painstaking effort and produced a really advanced period film epic. He found many surviving veterans of the Crimean war, and used the same locations where the historic battle took place. The Tsar issued orders that Khanzhonkov was given temporary right to command and direct the movements of several regiments of the Imperial Army and Navy that were used in the massive battle scenes. Khanzhonkov became the first director in the world to use two cameras. The premiere of the 100-minute film took place at the Livadia palace in Yalta, before the the tsar and his court, and with the cast and crew of more than 100 in attendance. Khanzhonkov was awarded and decorated for the film. He was also commissioned by the tsar to make several documentaries and feature films about various official events in Russia, such as Votsareniye doma Romanovykh (1913).
During the early years of Russian cinema, Khanzhonkov collaborated with theatrical directors, such as Vasili Goncharov and Yevgeny Bauer. His works with Bauer were considered among the highest achievements of the silent film era in Russia. Khanzhonkov also played an important role in the formation of the Russian film industry during the 1910s. In 1910 he started the first Russian film magazine, "Vestnik cinematografii", a comprehensive quarterly publication about emerging film culture and film business. In 1912 he produced the world's first cartoon, _Prekrasnaya Lukanida, ili Voina usachei s rogachami (1912)_, directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz.
In 1916 Khanzhonkov bought land on the Black Sea coast in Yalta, Crimea, and built the new Khanzhonkovs Studio there. In the spring of 1917 he moved his Moscow studio, with actors and staff, to the new location in Yalta. There, from 1917-20, he produced about 15 films. In 1920, after the defeat of the Russian White army of Gen. Vrangel in Crimea, Khanzhonkov's studio and his land were nationalized by the Communist government. At the same time Khanzhonkov's Film Factory in Zamoskvotrechye in Moscow was also confiscated and nationalized by the Communist government, then renamed Goskino (the first location of Goskino was on Zhitnaya St.). Khanzhonkov left the country, together with his best actors, directors and cinematographers. In 1922 he started a film studio in Baden, Austria.
In 1923 Khanzhonkov was invited to come back to Russia by the newly founded "Rusfilm" company. The invitation was sponsored by Soviet Culture Commissar Anatoli Lunacharsky, who sent an official welcome telegram to Khanzhonkov. In 1923 Khanzhonkov returned to Russia, but the "Rusfilm" company suddenly folded. He was hired by Goskino as production consultant, then worked for Proletkino Studios. In 1926 he was falsely accused of embezzlement and arrested. Although he was later cleared of all charges, he was left penniless. His health declined and he moved from Moscow to Yalta and never worked again.
By 1934, Khanzhonkov, aged 56, was disabled and jobless. He wrote a passionate letter to the government which took all his wealth and made him poor, and he was eventually granted a pension from the Russian government. In 1937 he published a book of memoirs titled "Pervye gody Russkoi kinematografii" ("The First Years of Russian Cinema"). By that time he was living in the glorious past. His first wife, writer Antonina Khanzhonkova, died in emigration and the couple's two children were grown up. Back in Russia Khanzhonkov married his assistant, Vera Dmitrievna Popova-Khanzhonkova, who cared for him for the rest of his life while he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was using a wheelchair due to his disability. He survived the Nazi occupation of Yalta during World War II. He died on September 26, 1945, in Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union (now Ukraine).
Khanzhonkov's films were edited to remove any pro-monarchist elements during the regime of Joseph Stalin. In 1956 the cultural "thaw" was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, the ban on Khanzhonkov's films was ended and many of his movies were shown on public television as well as in theaters.- Producer
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Alex Wagner is the host of MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner (2011) (weekdays at noon ET). She had been an MSNBC analyst and a frequent MSNBC guest since 2010. She was also a reporter with Huffington Post, where she covered innovation in the American economy, investigating the intersection of business, politics and new technology. Prior to this, Wagner served as the White House correspondent for Politics Daily, where she chronicled a number of international and domestic affairs ranging from the BP oil spill to the Egyptian revolution.
Wagner was the Executive Director of Not On Our Watch, an advocacy and grant making non-profit founded by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and Don Cheadle, from 2007 to 2009. With the goal of stopping and preventing mass atrocities, Wagner traveled to troubled hot spots including Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
From 2004 to 2007 she was the Editor in Chief of the Fader Magazine, covering cultural movements around the globe from Brazil to China to South Africa. Prior to this, she served as the Cultural Correspondent for the Washington, DC-based think tank Center for American Progress.
Wagner is a native of Washington, DC, and attended Brown University.- Actor
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Alfonso Arau has had a long and fruitful career both in front of and behind the camera and is one of the most prominent Latino film-makers in Hollywood. He was a drama disciple of Seki Sano--a Japanese teacher, classmate of Lee Strasberg with Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia--and traveled the world from 1964 to 1968 with his one-man show, "Pantomime Happy Madness", after studying with Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
A renowned writer-producer-director-actor in theater and film for more than twenty years, in 1969 he directed his first feature film, El águila descalza (1971), in which he also starred. He has directed many films in Mexico, among them Inspector Calzonzin (1974) and Mojado Power (1981). He has received six Arieles--the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar--and numerous international film awards.
Arau has acted in a number of Mexican and Hollywood films, including The Wild Bunch (1969), El Topo (1970), Mojado Power (1981), Used Cars (1980), Romancing the Stone (1984), Three Amigos! (1986) and Committed (2000). In addition to Like Water for Chocolate (1992), his directing credits include A Walk in the Clouds (1995) with Keanu Reeves and Picking Up the Pieces (2000) with Woody Allen. For television he has done The Magnificent Ambersons (2002), based on the script of Orson Welles' film version (The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)) and the novel by Booth Tarkington.- Actress
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Alice B. Russell is better known as Oscar Micheaux's wife, but she played important parts in almost all of her husband's films. Alice usually played the sympathetic mother figure, a mature role model, a guardian angel to young naive ladies, etc. She was a wonderful emotional actress, never overdoing her sadness and pain but just enough to move you. Alice proved to be a fine actress in many roles - whether small or large she made her presence known. Ten Minutes to Live (1932), Murder in Harlem (1935), God's Step Children (1938), Birthright (1938), among others, had moments that let her light shine.- Having worked as a telephone operator at age 13 and a fashion model afterwards, Alice Joyce joined the Kalem film company at 20, making her debut in The Deacon's Daughter (1910), and achieved popularity as a charming, proper leading lady in many shorts. After Vitagraph bought out Kalem, Joyce began appearing in the company's features, and her career soared. She was so popular as an ingénue that she was still playing those parts into her late 20s, but eventually she switched to older, more mature roles. She played Clara Bow's mother in Bow's wildly popular film Dancing Mothers (1926). After retiring from the screen, she married director Clarence Brown.
- Venezuelan-born Alicia Machado is the daughter of a Cuban father and Spanish mother who immigrated to Venezuela during the middle of the 1900s. Her father, a relative of former Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado, fled Cuba and found refuge in Venezuela after the fall of the Machado regime. Alicia began modeling at an early age before winning the title of Miss Venezuela. After winning the 1996 Miss Universe title (the fourth contestant from Venezuela to do so in the pageant's history), Alicia became a media star; however, winning the title came with a price. Alicia gained weight and was forced by pageant owner Donald Trump to either lose the weight quickly or lose the crown. Many womens' groups attacked Trump's ultimatum, calling it sexist and discriminatory, but within a few months Alicia lost the weight and was allowed to keep her crown. Returning to Venezuela after her reign, she transformed herself into a Spanish-language soap opera/serial star. She shoots the serials in her native Venezuela and remains a major media star throughout Latin America.
- Aliza Gur was born Aliza Gross in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 1944. She was Miss Israel of 1960 in the Miss Universe pageant, placing in the top 15. Her parents had fled Germany during the rise to power of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and they eventually settled in Israel, where she and her brother were born.
She emigrated to the US in her 20s and settled in California, where she began her film and television career. Her television credits include guest appearances on Get Smart (1965) and The Wild Wild West (1965), among other shows. Her film credits include From Russia with Love (1963), Kill a Dragon (1967) and the cult vampire film Beast of Morocco (1968) (she was also, at 12 years of age, an extra in The Ten Commandments (1956). Her parents came to the United States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, for a time. They passed away in the mid-'70s. - Actor
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Louis Ginsberg, the moderate Jewish Socialist and his wife Naomi, who was a radical Communist and irrepressible nudist are the parents of Irwin Allen Ginsberg, the poet and man of many other things eg. actor. Poems he written eg. Howl, Six gallery, Sunflower Sutra ... His themes: drugs, against Vietnam War, politics, "beat generation", hippies, buddhism, ... In 1970 he met with a Tibetan guru and he accepted Trungpa Rinpoche as his personal guru. He created a poetry school 'Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics'. He has remained active, publishing poems, realising musical recordings. He published a book with his own photos.- Actor
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Born in San Francisco's Castro District, Allen Holubar was the first of five children of Constantin Josef Holubar and Margaret Allen C. Holubar, who immigrated from Bohemia in 1875 and married Margaret, a Scots woman, in San Francisco (Allen was born at 44 Caselli Ave. in a house that still stands). Despite parental pressures to be a machinist, Allen worked his way up from sweeping floors to acting, starting at the Alcazar & Alhambra Theatres in San Francisco. He was evidently a prominent dramatic actor, known widely across the US from 1908-1912. However, in the words of a San Francisco newspaper at the time, "He forsook legitimate drama for the moving picture screen" in 1913. After starring in several landmark films, he began directing and was one of Carl Laemmle's first directors at Universal Pictures. Later, after having differences with Laemmle, he founded his own production company, Allen Holubar Pictures, in 1917.
As an up-and-coming producer, he was famous for being the first to coordinate a movie shoot (Hurricane's Gal (1922)) using radio. In the words of a local paper, "Mr. Holubar has successfully performed the unprecedented task of using the wireless waves to direct the movements of an airship, a destroyer and a schooner, maneuvering all of these within his camera's range as he supervised these activities from a hydroplane far above."
He died of postoperative complications from gallstone surgery at the height of his career in 1923. His wife, the former actress Dorothy Phillips, did not act again until the mid-'60s, when she played an old woman in Cat Ballou (1965), starring Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda.- Actress
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Amanda Blake was born in Buffalo, NY, of English and Scottish descent. She and her parents moved to Claremont, California, while Amanda was still in high school, and she graduated from Claremont High. She enrolled at Pomona College but, due to her avid participation in community and theater productions, she was devoting much more time to acting than her schoolwork. Amanda started on a full acting schedule, doing summer stock in New England. She followed that up with theater and radio acting in Buffalo and then movies in Hollywood. While acting in small theater and stock companies she also painted backdrops and scenery. She was still in her teens when she debuted in MGM"s Stars in My Crown (1950), and her first television role was in Double Exposure (1952). Her most famous role, however, came in 1955, when she starred in the classic western series Gunsmoke (1955) as "Miss Kitty" Russell, the feisty madame and proprietor of Dodge City's Long Branch Saloon opposite James Arness' Marshal Matt Dillon.- When Anheuser-Busch chose Amber Smith as the spokesperson for its new Michelob Ultra Amber lite beer, it was on a mission. Through posters, life-size standees and Point-of-purchase promotional materials, Amber's image was plastered across the nation. However, it was the 20-city "Meet Amber" tour that delivered on the campaign title!
A gifted high school student, Amber was discovered at an international modeling convention. The 15-year-old won and soon flew to Paris, where she worked hard and often and established a reputation for being passionate and expressive both on film and in print. Her "exotic" good looks drew the attention of top photographers such as the famous Helmut Newton, but it was her chameleon-like quality that got her on the covers of such prestigious magazines as "Vogue", "Elle", "Esquire", "Maxim" and "Playboy". Amber walked the runway for Chanel and represented Loreal Cosmetics and Wonderbra in their national advertising campaigns.
She then achieved the ultimate accolade for a fashion model: appearing in the coveted role of "Sports Illustrated" magazine's swimwear model. She has produced four award-winning calendars, two nationally released posters and a modeling documentary DVD, "Amber Smith Raw" (available in stores). Amber has already completed two movie scripts and has started on a how-to book that will contain her own stories, detailed experiences and opinions on the modeling and entertainment world.
After ripping through the modeling world, she added acting to her resume. She has worked with such acclaimed directors as Curtis Hanson, Abel Ferrara, Paul Mazursky and Barbra Streisand and landed parts in two Academy Award-winning movies, L.A. Confidential (1997) and American Beauty (1999), as well as a host of others. Her television credits include Just Shoot Me! (1997) and Friends (1994) (as "Amber Smith, Supermodel").
In 2005 E! Entertainment chose Amber for a reality show pilot, titled "The Amber Smith Project," which follows Amber's efforts to open up a modeling agency in Miami Beach. She also filmed yet another pilot, "The Anchorwoman," in which she will take over the life of a broadcast journalist. "The Anchorwoman" is in development.
She launched the 2006 Michelob Ultra Amber Lite beer "Meet Amber" campaign, which was created entirely around her. All promotional materials feature her image, name and signature. The "Meet Amber" national tour was launched the summer of 2006 through the end of the year. - Actress
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Introduced to most of the world in 2005 with the smash single "1 Thing," triple-threat actress / dancer / singer-songwriter-producer Ameriie continues to evolve.
Amerie was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to Mi Suk, a Korean-born artist, and Charles Rogers, an African-American military man. As a young girl, she lived in a variety of places, including South Korea, Germany, Texas and Alaska due to her father's US military career. Having to constantly adapt to new environments, she developed a very strong sense of self early on. She excelled in school, but also found a creative outlet in writing fiction and music.
Ameriie went on to Georgetown University, where she earned a bachelors degree in English and Fine Arts/Design. After securing a record deal shortly after graduation, she released her debut album "All I Have" and, together with Richard A. Harrison, helped steer contemporary R&B away from synthetic sounds through the use of live, aggressive instrumentation and vocalization. Three years later she turned out "Touch", which solidified her as one of music's most exciting artists, thanks to the overwhelming success of the go-go-inspired track "1 Thing." In 2007 she released "Because I Love It", which featured the hip-hop electro sound that is still prevalent in pop music today.
After releasing three critically acclaimed albums, Ameriie decided it was time to reposition herself. In 2008 she parted ways with Sony and co-founded entertainment company Feeniix Rising Entertainment with business partner Lennie Nicholson. "In Love & War", an aggressive mix of trunk rattling hip-hop, raw soul reminiscent of James Brown and classic Led Zeppelin-era rock-'n-roll, quickly followed. The singer managed to turn the tumultuous times of past relationships into a moving collection of songs which resonate with anyone who has ever been on the wrong side of love.
Ameriie is in the process of recording her latest project, "Cymatika", which she describes as an album that speaks to "the things that drive us." Always fusing different musical elements, this time she picks up where 2007's "Because I Love It" left off, and adds a heavier dose of New Wave, trance and electronica. Ameriie is also working on three books: her first fiction novel, a guide book for young girls and teens, and a wedding planning book with celebrity wedding planner Tiffany Nieves-Cook, with whom she's been planning her wedding for the past year.- Actress
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Amy Ray is half of the internationally famous, Grammy-Award-winning folk/rock duo Indigo Girls. She began playing the guitar at an early age and in high school began playing as a duo with Emily Saliers; the duo adopted the name "Indigo Girls" in 1985. After several years of college and playing the local scenes in Atlanta, GA, and nearby Athens, the duo was signed to Epic Records in 1988, and their first major-label album "Indigo Girls" was released in 1989. Their major albums to date are "Strange Fire" (1987, re-released in 1989), "Indigo Girls" (1989), "Nomads*Indians*Saints" (1990), "Rites of Passage" (1992), "Swamp Ophelia" (1994), "1200 Curfews" (1995) and "Shaming of the Sun" (1997). Boys on the Side (1995) is their only movie appearance to date (although they did appear in the first Ellen (1994) episode of 1998).- Actress
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Ana Cristina is an American singer/actress/songwriter. Born in Miami, she is a first-generation Cuban-American of Spanish, Italian, and English ancestry. She became the first Hispanic person to perform "The Star- Spangled Banner" at the 2005 Presidential Inauguration. She performed at the White House for Hispanic Heritage Month before the President of the United States and the Crown Prince of Spain in 2006. That year she recorded the theme song for the World Cup Germany for the Univision TV Network, "You Can Change the World," and its bilingual counterpart, "El Mundo Puedes Cambiar". She was a former Miss South Florida USA 2011.
Ana Cristina has released records for Sony Music, after being signed at 15. She is fluent in English and Spanish and writes her songs using guitar and piano. She was interested in theatre and acting her whole life and has studied at many Florida institutes. After moving to Los Angeles, she studied at Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica.
Ana has two sisters, Marisa and Aileen, who are 13 and 10 years her senior. She enjoys staying fit by doing yoga, hiking and cycling. Her hobbies include dancing, cooking, watching movies, swimming, traveling, and anything to do with water. In 2010 She graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor's Degree in Broadcast Journalism. She resides in Los Angeles and has a cavalier King Charles spaniel mix named Hope.- Actress
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Ana de la Reguera grew up in the tropical state of Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. She began her performance arts studies in the Cultural Institute of Veracruz, then left for Televisa's Center for Artistic Education (CEA) and TV Aztecas' artistic institute (CEFAC) in Mexico City, later taking study with Lisa Robertson and Aaron Spicer in Los Angeles and acting coach Juan 'Carlos Corzza in Spain. In theater she participated in "El Cartero" ("Il Postino") for which she received two awards: one for "Best Actress" from the Association of Theatre Journalists in Mexico and the other for the year's "Most Promising Actress" from the Association of Theatre Critics and Journalists.
De la Reguera's professional career began with her role in the telenovela Azul (1996), followed by Pueblo chico, infierno grande (1997)--for which she received the Heraldo Award for "Best Breakout Female Actress"--and Desencuentro (1997), which was her third telenovela under the direction of the internationally recognized Ernesto Alonso. _"Tentaciones" (1998)_ marked her beginning with powerhouse Argos Comunicación. She was immediately offered roles in _"Destino" (1998)_ and Todo por amor (2000), for which she received "The Golden Palm Award." After that, it was non-stop work for de la Reguera. In 2002 she starred in Cara o Cruz (2001), which was the first telenovela co-produced by Argos Comunicación and Telemundo, made exclusively for the Hispanic audience living in the US. The following year she played María in the telenovela Por tí (2002) for TV Azteca and the mini-series that followed up on Pedro el escamoso (2001), Como Pedro por su casa (2003), which was a co-production between Colombia's Caracol and Telemundo. Additionally, de la Reguera also had the lead role in the Peruvian soap opera Luciana y Nicolás (2003).
De la Reguera's introduction into film began with Por la libre (2000), which earned her two nominations: "El Heraldo de la Revelación Femenina" (Best New Actress) and "Eres Mejor Actriz" (Best Actress). Later she acted in Un secreto de Esperanza (2002) with Oscar nominee Katy Jurado. In 2003 Ana starred in the highly acclaimed comedy Ladies' Night (2003), alongside Ana Claudia Talancón. The movie became the box-office success of the year and won her three major awards: "the Latin America MTV's Favorite Actress Award," the Mexican movie industry Award for Best Actress of the year, "CANACINE," and the "Diosa de Plata (Silver Godess) Award" for Best Supporting Actress (2003).
In 2005 she played the starring role in Gitanas (2004), which aired on Telemundo in the US and now has been seen as far away as Ukraine, Spain and Argentina. In 2006 de la Reguera had the lead in the powerful On the Edge (2006), which earned her her second "Diosa de Plata [Silver Goddess] Award" for best actress. In addition, she also starred in Paraiso Travel (2008), playing the role of Milagros, singing and dancing for the first time in a movie. John Leguizamo and Colombian star Margarita Rosa de Francisco were also in the cast. The film was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival and later released throughout the US and Latin America. That same year Ana received her big break into American cinema when she landed the role of Sister Encarnación in the comedy Nacho Libre (2006). The film by Jared Hess--director of Napoleon Dynamite (2004)--and co-starring Jack Black gave her the opportunity to be seen around the world.
In 2008 she became the new face for Cover Girl worldwide, alongside celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Queen Latifah, Ellen DeGeneres and Rihanna. From there her career received many other impressive endorsements, including campaigns with Pantene, Special K and Flip, Macy's, Coca-Cola (Ciel), Pepsi (Be Light) and Caress, among many others. She began 2010 with a worldwide publicity campaign for Lipton Tea alongside actor Hugh Jackman. Most recently, she did an international campaign with Kahlúa benefiting her hometown of Veracruz, Mexico, left demolished after the resent destruction of Huricaine Karl.
In the action-thriller film Sultanes del Sur (2007), filmed mainly in Argentina, she plays Monica Silvari, a mean and sophisticated bank robber alongside Spanish actors Jordi Mollà and Tony Dalton. In the spring of 2008 Ana began filming Capadocia (2008), an HBO mega-production TV show about the chaotic and miserable life in a women's prison in Mexico. The show aired with record-breaking ratings in Mexico and Latin America, and was released in the US in the fall of 2008 for HBO OLE. Three of the most recognized directors in Latin America participated in this HBO original production: Epigmenio Ibarra, Jorge Aragón and Luis F Peraza. The successful series got three International Emmy nominations for its first season, and this fall marked the opening of "Capadocia"'s second season.
In 2009 she shot Di Di Hollywood (2010) from famed Jamón, Jamón (2000) director Bigas Luna. That same year she went back to the Mexican theatre for six months where she played "Desdemona" in William Shakespeare "Othello". The play was hugely successful in Mexico's renowned Juan Ruiz de Alarcón theater, and she was named "Best Actress" by the Journalist Theatre Association at the annual Bravo Awards and by the ACTP. Later that year she filmed the extremely moving Mexican film El Traspatio (2009), in which she played a cop in an outlaw border city controlled by drug traffickers and killers. Directed by Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002), nominated for an Oscar for "Best Foreign Film"), the picture was chosen to represent Mexico in the 2010 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category, and earned de la Reguera the "Best Actress Award" at the Imagen Awards and the CANACINE Awards, and won the "Silver Plaque" at the Chicago Film Festival.
The beginning of 2010 brought the opening of her Hollywood film Cop Out (2010), co-starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and directed by Kevin Smith. She played Gabriela, a strong-willed woman with very picante and colorful language, who gets rescued by Willis and Tracy--and gets them in trouble in the process. In that same year brought the release of her film Hidalgo. La historia jamás contada (2010), about the controversial life of Mexico's independence hero, priest Miguel Hidalgo. She plays Hidalgo's second wife and shares credit with Demián Bichir (Weeds (2005), Che: Part One (2008)).
In the US she also had a recurring role on the USA Network's series Royal Pains (2009), and starred in the critically-acclaimed, Will Farrell-produced HBO comedy Eastbound & Down (2009) co-starring Danny McBride as down-and-out baseball player and love interest Kenny Powers. She also had a role in the Jon Favreau-directed Cowboys & Aliens (2011) starring Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and Sam Rockwell, produced by Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. The film crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in its story about a lone cowboy leading an uprising against murderous aliens from outer space. Ana also played a nurse in the teen drama Everything, Everything (2017), and in 2021, starred in two action-horror films, Army of the Dead (2021) and The Forever Purge (2021).
As if her busy acting career isn't enough, de la Reguera is also heavily involved with charity work. Most recently she uploaded a video to YouTube in order to help raise awareness for Veracruz, her home state, affected by heavy rains and a devastating Hurricane Karl. In the video she speaks about a variety of options for support and help that victims of the Hurrcane can utilize, and offers methods to make donations. The viral campaign went all over Twitter and other online sites, raising much needed money for the victims of the hurricane. She also founded the organization VeracruzANA AC, which is a philanthropic organization whose mission is to raise funds and build a tourist boulevard of Antigua--something that has been promised by political organizations for years. Antigua is one of the most important and historical communities in Veracruz, and also one of the areas the most damaged by the hurricane. This June marked the culmination of her hard work and the grand Opening ceremony for the touristic boulevard.- Director
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Director/Producer/Writer) Andrew Davis is a filmmaker with a reputation for directing intelligent thrillers, most notably the Academy Award-nominated box-office hit The Fugitive (1993), starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The film received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and earned Jones a Best Supporting Actor award. Davis garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director and a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Direction. In reviewing "The Fugitive", film critic Roger Ebert commended Davis, noting that he "transcends genre and shows an ability to marry action and artistry that deserves comparison with [Alfred Hitchcock], David Lean and Carol Reed. He paints with bold, visual strokes."
Davis is the son of parents who met in a repertory theater company in Chicago, where he was raised. His late father, Nathan Davis, worked on several of his films, including his role as Shia LaBeouf's grandfather in Holes (2011). Andy received his degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and began his work in motion pictures as an assistant cameraman to renowned cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler on the 1969 classic Medium Cool (1969). Wexler's ultra-realistic approach was to have a great influence on Davis, who then became a director of photography on numerous award-winning television commercials and documentaries, including 15 studio and independent features. In 1976, joined by many of his fellow cinematographers, Davis challenged the IATSE union's restrictive studio roster system in a landmark class-action suit that forced the industry to open its doors to young technicians in all crafts.
Davis made his directorial debut in 1978 with the critically acclaimed independent musical Stony Island (1978), which he also co-wrote and produced. The thriller The Final Terror (1983) was Davis' sophomore project, for producer Joe Roth, which starred then- newcomers Darryl Hanah, Joe Pantoliano, Rachel Ward and Adrian Zmed. Davis then co-wrote the screenplay for Harry Belafonte's rap musical Beat Street (1984) before moving into the director's chair full-time for Mike Medavoy and Orion Pictures on the Chuck Norris classic Code of Silence (1985). Davis directed, co-produced and co-wrote Steven Seagal's feature film debut, Above the Law (1988), for Warner Brothers. The Package (1989), (Orion) followed, directed by Davis and starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones. Davis went on to direct 1992's top grossing picture, Under Siege (1992), for Warner Brothers, a classic action film teaming Steven Seagal with Tommy Lee Jones.
Davis' other directorial credits include (for Warner Bros.) Collateral Damage (2002), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; A Perfect Murder (1998), starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen; Chain Reaction (1996), starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz; and Steal Big Steal Little (1995), starring Andy Garcia and Alan Arkin.
Davis next directed and produced "Holes", the feature film adaptation of Louis Sachar's beloved Newberry Medal and National Book Award-winning children's novel. Starring Shia Labeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Patricia Arquette and released by the Walt Disney Company, "Holes" was named one of the 100 Best Family Films. It has been praised by audiences of all ages, furthering Davis' reputation as a director with a wide range. A.O. Scott's review in "The New York Times" called it "the best film released by an American studio so far this year".
In 2000, Davis completed the Disney/Touchstone feature film The Guardian (2006), which honors the true heroes of the ocean, the Rescue Swimmers of the U.S. Coast Guard. Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher portray heroic swimmers committed to the personal and physical sacrifices necessary to save the lives of those stranded helplessly in the sea. In an unforgettable instance of life imitating art, the film's New Orleans production was halted due to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. The staff of U.S. Coast Guard advisors to the production left to help rescue 35,000 people in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in American history.
Presently, Davis is developing several projects through his Santa Barbara based production company, Chicago Pacific Entertainment, including: Silvers Gold - A Return to Treasure Island, a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, adapting the Gene Wilder novella My French Whore, Mentors - a series for worldwide television with a pilot episode examining the lives of two legendary photographers. Davis recently completed his first novel, alongside writer Jeff Biggers, Disturbing the Bones, a geopolitical thriller involving the world threatening discovery of rouge weapons found in Southern Illinois by a Chicago detective and a young female archaeologist set for release in summer 2024 by Melville House Publishing. 2023 saw both the 20th anniversary of Holes and the 30th anniversary of a newly remastered version of The Fugitive (1993) overseen by Davis at Warner Bros slated for a limited rerelease in theaters in spring 2024 with a global release on 4K UHD disc in November 2023. In November 2023, Davis' first film, Stony Island (1978) celebrates its 45th anniversary with a theatrical screening at the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago before its North American digital debut on major VOD platforms and DVD.- Angelique Joan is a Franco-British actress based in London. known for Allied (2016), BBC Doctors, The Crown and RED (2017).
Angelique Joan starred in RED (2017), a mental health campaign, which won the Oxford Film Festival and the Audience awards at 'Dance with films' in Los Angeles.
Her acting career started at 7 years old in commercials and theatre. While obtaining her Masters degree in English Literature, she also studied acting at Cours Florent in Paris and a summer course at the Los Angeles Playhouse School of Drama before moving to London.
From the age of 5, she was fully bilingual in English and French and can easily switch between both languages and accents. - Actress
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Beautiful Anita Page was one of the most famous and popular leading ladies during the last years of the silent screen and the first years of the talkie era. She was best known for starring in The Broadway Melody (1929), the first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her leading men included John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Buster Keaton, and Robert Montgomery.
Only in her late teens when stardom beckoned, Anita had a huge following that earned her record amounts of fan mail, but she was seldom given lead roles, most often playing second lead, perhaps due to her youthful inexperience as an actress. She was a charming, much-loved screen personality, but by 1932 MGM seemed to lose interest in her career despite impressive work in such films as Night Court (1932) and Skyscraper Souls (1932), and before the year was out her contract was not renewed. She slipped off into "B" stardom in films at Columbia, Universal, and even more minor studios. She retired from the screen in 1936, making a return 25 years later in The Runaway (1961) with Cesar Romero, and she lived quietly out of the limelight for over half a century. In the 1990s, the now widowed star was rediscovered by the media, which enjoyed her light-humored journeys down memory lane about her career, MGM, the silent and early talkie eras, and the stars she knew, earning the actress a devoted cult of young fans and a few brief appearances in ultra-low-budget films of the 1990s.- Actress
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Ann, born Dorothy Gatley, spent most of her childhood as an "army brat" constantly moving around before the family finally settled in New York. Ann first appeared on the stage while she spent a year attending Bryn Mawr College. She became a clerk and freelance script reader with a film company before she made her stage debut in Greenwich Village. From there she went to Broadway, and when pictures needed actors who could walk and talk, she went to Hollywood. She was signed by Pathe and made her debut, with Fredric March in Paris Bound (1929). She became a leading lady, and the roles that she played were always the same, but her co-stars changed. She was the gentle, refined heroine as in The Animal Kingdom (1932), wherein she played Daisy, the rejected fiancée of Leslie Howard. By 1933, her popularity started to decline as she appeared in a parade of tearjerkers as someone always ready to sacrifice herself for the good of others. She quit films in 1937 when she married conductor Warner Janssen, but she could not stay away. She came back five years later in Eyes in the Night (1942). Her roles after that were mature character roles for the next five years. Another break, another three films, and then in 1956 she appeared once again with Fredric March, the man with whom she started her career in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). She continued to appear sporadically on TV in the 1960s and died at age 79 in 1981.- Actress
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Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as "Oriental" women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men. Even when the role called for playing opposite a Caucasian in yellowface, as with Paul Muni's as the Chinese peasant Wang Lung in The Good Earth (1937), Wong was rejected, since she did not fit a Caucasian's imagined ideal look for an Asian woman. The discrimination she faced in the domestic industry caused her to go to Europe for work in English and German films. Her name, which she also spelled Wong Lew Song, translates literally as "Frosted Yellow Willows" but has been interpreted as "Second-Daughter Yellow Butterfly." Her family gave her the English-language name Anna May. She was born on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles in an integrated neighborhood dominated by Irish and Germans, one block from Chinatown, where her father ran the Sam Kee Laundry.
The Wong family moved back to Chinatown two years after Liu Tsong's birth, but in 1910 they uprooted themselves, moving to a nearby Figueroa Street neighborhood where they had Mexican and East European neighbors. There were two steep hills between the Wongs' new home and Chinatown, but as her biographer, Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, points out, those hills put a psychological as well as physical distance between Liu Tsong and Chinatown. Los Angeles' Chinatown already was teeming with movie shoots when she was a girl. She would haunt the neighborhood nickelodeons, having become enraptured with the early "flickers." Though her traditional father strongly disapproved of his daughter's cinephilia, as it deflected her from scholastic pursuits, there was little he could do about it, as Liu was determined to be an actress. The film industry was in the midst of relocating from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood was booming. Liu Tsong would haunt movie shoots as she had earlier haunted the nickelodeons. Her favorite stars were Pearl White, of The Perils of Pauline (1914) serial fame, and White's leading man, Crane Wilbur. She was also fond of Ruth Roland.
Educated at a Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she would skip school to watch film shoots in her neighborhood. She made tip money from delivering laundry for her father, which she spent on going to the movies. Her father, if he discovered she had gone to the movies during school hours, would spank her with a bamboo stick. Around the time she was nine years old, she began begging filmmakers for parts, behavior that got her dubbed "C.C.C." for "curious Chinese child."
Liu Tsong's first film role was as an uncredited extra in Metro Pictures' The Red Lantern (1919), starring Alla Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. The part was obtained for her by a friend of her father's (without his knowledge) who worked in the movie industry. Retaining the family surname "Wong" and the English-language "Christian" name bestowed on her by her parents, Liu Tsong Americanized herself as "Anna May Wong" for the movie industry, though she would not receive an on-screen credit for another two years.
The rechristened Anna May Wong appeared in bit parts in movies starring Priscilla Dean, Colleen Moore and the Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian star of American movies. Due to her father's demands, she had an adult guardian at the studio, and would be locked in her dressing room between scenes if she was the only Asian in the cast. Initially balancing school work and her budding film career, she eventually dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue acting full time. She was aided by the fact that, though still a teenager, she looked more mature than her real age.
Director Marshall Neilan cast the teenage Anna May in a bit part in his film Dinty (1920), then gave her her first credited role in the "Hop" sequence of Bits of Life (1921), the American movie industry's first anthology film. In "Hop" Wong played Toy Ling, the abused wife of Lon Chaney's character Chin Gow, which the Man of a Thousand Faces played in yellowface. She next appeared in support of John Gilbert in Fox's Shame (1921) before being cast in her first major role at the age of 17, the lead in The Toll of the Sea (1922). She played Lotus Flower in this adaptation of the opera "Madame Butterfly," which moved the action from Japan to China. "The Toll of the Sea" was the first feature film shot entirely in Technicolor's two-strip color process. By appearing top-billed in this romantic melodrama, Anna became the first native-born Asian performer to star in a major Hollywood movie. Most portrayals of Asian women were done by Caucasian actresses in "yellow-face," such as the 1915 Madame Butterfly (1915) starring "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford (who was born in Toronto, Canada) in the title role. In "The Toll of the Sea," Anna May's character perpetuates the stereotype of the Asian "lotus blossom," a self-sacrificial woman who surrenders her life for the love of a Caucasian man. The film was a hit, and it showcased Wong in a preternaturally mature and restrained performance. This breakthrough should have launched Anna May Wong as a star, but for one thing: She was Chinese in a country that excluded (by law) Chinese from emigrating to the US, that forbade (by law) Chinese from marrying Caucasians and that generally excluded (by law or otherwise) Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness.
"The Toll of the Sea" made Anna May Wong a known, and thus a marketable, commodity in Hollywood. She became the #1 actress when a young Asian female part had to be cast, but unfortunately lead roles for Asians were few and far between. Instead of becoming a star, this beautiful woman with a complexion described as "a rose blushing through old ivory" continued to be stuck in supporting roles, as in Tod Browning's melodrama Drifting (1923) and the western Thundering Dawn (1923). She even played an Eskimo in The Alaskan (1924). She appeared as Tiger Lily, "Chieftainess of the Indians," in Paramount's prestigious production of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1924), but the role was very small (the film was shot on Santa Catalina Island, where the cast stayed during the production.
The 170-cm-tall (5'7", although other sources cite her height as 5'4½") beauty was known as the world's best-dressed woman and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema. Her big breakthrough after her auspicious start with "The Toll of the Sea" finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The $2-million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the movie-going public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" type, was born.
Despite her waxing fame, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles from the 1920s through the 1940s, despite the ready availability of Anna May Wong. She was unable to attract lead parts despite her beauty and proven acting talent, even in films featuring Asian women, but she did carve out a career as a supporting player in everything from A-list movies to two-reel comedies and serials. The characters she played typically were duplicitous or murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. It was a demeaning apprenticeship that most Caucasian actresses did not have to go through. Anna wanted was to play modern American women all through her career but was thwarted because of racism. Later, when she journeyed to Europe to escape the typecasting of Hollywood, she told journalist Doris Mackie, "I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass."
Wong embodied the Caucasian ideal of a foreign exotic beauty, an alien presence despite her American citizenship. The movie magazine "Pictures" published a memoir of hers in 1926 in which she complained, "A lot of people, when they first meet me, are surprised that I speak and write English without difficulty. But why shouldn't I? I was born right here in Los Angeles and went to the public schools here. I speak English without any accent at all. But my parents complain that the same cannot be said of my Chinese. Although I have gone to Chinese schools, and always talk to my father and mother in our native tongue, it is said that I speak Chinese with an English accent!". Many Chinese-Americans considered themselves "Chinese in America," an attitude bolstered by the anti-Chinese, anti-Asian attitude of the US government and the American culture. In her memoir, Wong referred to herself as "Chinese" or "Americanized Chinese," but not as an "American" or "Chinese-American."
Anna May Wong appeared as a dancer in a play within a movie shot in Technicolor for the Ronald Colman vehicle His Supreme Moment (1925), but her Hollywood output generally was undistinguished. In 1926 she seems to have appeared in a "race" film made by Chinese-Americans for a Chinese-American audience, The Silk Bouquet (1926) (aka "The Dragon Horse"). Moving between Poverty Row and the majors, she appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (1927) at Warner Brothers. Warners also cast her in support of Oriental yellowface queen Myrna Loy in The Crimson City (1928). Despite her WASP looks and red hair, Loy in Chinese yellowface had become a major "Oriental" star in American films desiring an exotic element. This indignity may have been what pushed Wong to seek her future somewhere other than Hollywood.
She moved to Europe in 1928, where she made movies in the UK and Germany. She made her debut on the London stage with the young up-and-coming Laurence Olivier in the play "The Circle of Chalk." After receiving a drubbing for her voice and singing from the London critics, she paid a Cambridge University tutor to improve her speech, with the result that she acquired an upper-crust English accent. Later she appeared in Vienna, Austria, in the play "Springtime."
European directors appreciated Wong's unique talents and beauty, and they used her in ways that stereotype-minded Hollywood, hemmed in by American prejudice, would not or could not. Moving to Germany to appear in German films, she became acquainted with German film personalities, including Marlene Dietrich and actress-filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. She learned German and French and began to develop a continental European attitude and outlook. In Europe she was welcomed as a star. According to her biographer Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Wong hobnobbed with "an intellectual elite that included princes, playwrights, artists and photographers who clamored to work with her." Anna May Wong was featured in magazines all over the world, far more than actresses of a similar level of accomplishment. She became a media superstar, and her coiffure and complexion were copied, while "coolie coats" became the rage. According to Hodges, "[S]he was the one American star who spoke to the French people, more than Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Mary Pickford, the top American actresses of the time." But, ironically, "[S]he's the one who's now forgotten." Wong was cast in Ewald André Dupont's silent film Piccadilly (1929) as a maid who is fired from her job at a London nightclub after dancing on top of a table, then rehired as a dancer to infuse the club with exotic glamour. Her first talkie was The Flame of Love (1930) (aka "The Road to Dishonour", although some sources claim it was "Song" aka "Wasted Love" in that same year), which was released by British International Pictures. In a time before dubbing, when different versions of a single film were filmed in different languages, Wong played in the English, French and German versions of the movie.
Paramount Pictures offered her a contract with the promise of lead roles in major productions. Returning to the US in 1930, Wong appeared on Broadway in the play "On the Spot." It was a hit, running for 167 performances, and she moved on to Hollywood and Paramount, where she starred in an adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel "Daughter of Fu Manchu" called Daughter of the Dragon (1931). She was back in stereotype-land, this time as the ultimate "Dragon Lady," who with her father Fu Manchu (played by ethnic Swede Warner Oland, the future Charlie Chan) embodied the evil "Yellow Peril." While "Daughter of the Dragon" may have been B-movie pulp, it enabled Wong to show off her talent by delivering a powerful performance.
Her best role in Hollywood in the early 1930s was in support of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Oscar-winning classic Shanghai Express (1932). However, Hollywood in the 1930s was as racist as it had been in the Roaring Twenties, and MGM refused to cast her in its 1932 production of The Son-Daughter (1932), for which she did a screen-test, as she was "too Chinese to play a Chinese." Helen Hayes played the role in yellow-face. Similarly, she was later kept out of both a lead and supporting role in MGM's prestige production of The Good Earth (1937), its filming of Pearl S. Buck's popular novel, after flunking another screen test for failing to live up to a white man's idea of what "looked" Chinese. MGM screen-tested her for the lead role of O-Lan, the sympathetic wife of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (to be played by Paul Muni, personally cast in the part by Irving Thalberg). She also was considered for the supporting role of Lotus, Wang Lung's concubine. Anna, an ethnic Chinese, lost out on both roles to two Austrian women, Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch, as Albert Lewin, the Thalberg assistant who was casting the film, vetoed Wong and other ethnic Chinese because their looks didn't fit his conception of what Chinese people should look like. Ironically, the year "The Good Earth" came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look Magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl." Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger. Luise Rainer would win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance of O-Lan in Chinese yellowface.
There were practical considerations for MGM's refusal to cast Wong opposite Muni. It was illegal in many states, including California, for Asians to marry Caucasians, and featuring an interracial couple, even if they were playing the same race, likely would mean the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly severe, such as the South. The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 forbid black/white miscegenation and MGM did cast Walter Connelly (a white actor) opposite Soo Yong (a Chines-American actress) as a married couple. Anna May returned to England, reportedly distraught at the injustice perpetrated by MGM and her home country. In England she alternated between films and the stage, but she was obliged to return to the US to fulfill her Paramount contract. She appeared in two Robert Florey-directed pictures, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) as a non-stereotypical Asian-American female lead, and Dangerous to Know (1938). She also appeared in major roles in King of Chinatown (1939) and Island of Lost Men (1939).
Anna May Wong did not appear in films from 1939-41, when she was cast as a supporting player in Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941), an entry in the B-movie series. Her last two starring roles in films were in a pair of anti-Japanese propaganda films, Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady from Chungking (1942), both of which were made by Producers Releasing Corp., the lowest of the Poverty Row studios. The major studios, when shooting propaganda films requiring a sympathetic Asian lead, reverted to the old practice of casting Caucasians in yellow-face, no matter how absurd the result.
As her movie career went into eclipse in the 1940s (she would not appear in another motion picture until 1949), she found work on the stage and in radio and then in the new medium of television. Wong wrote a preface to the book "New Chinese Recipes" in 1942, which was one of the first Chinese cookbooks printed in the US. The proceeds from the cookbook were dedicated to United China Relief.
Though Wong was vocal in her opposition to stereotypes and typecasting, and was one of Hollywood's more memorable victims of racism in being denied leading roles in A-list pictures because the racist mores of the times prevented an Asian woman from kissing a Caucasian actor, she was considered socially suspect by her own people. The roles she was forced to accept in order to have an acting career, as well as her status as a single woman, disgusted many Chinese in America and in her ancestral homeland, where actresses were equated with prostitutes and where women were still played by men in classical opera. On a trip to China in 1936, Anna May was welcomed by the country's cultural elite in cosmopolitan Beijing and Shanghai, but she had to abandon a trip to her parents' ancestral village when her progress was blocked by a crowd of protesters. Someone in the crowed denounced her with "Down with Huang Liu Tsong, the stooge that disgraces China. Don't let her go ashore." Upon her return from China, Wong was determined to play Chinese characters more authentically, but her only options were to reject roles she deemed racist or to try to soften them from within the belly of the beast. Ultimately for this proud woman, it was a losing battle.
Chinese nationalism had been on the upswing since Yat-sen Sun ended the Manchu Empire in 1911 and was rife in reaction to the war of aggression launched against China by the Empire of Japan. Chinese nationalists, concerned about the portrayal of Chinese people as evil incarnate in American popular culture, were offended by Wong's portrayals of Asians and exotics. Though she would spend the World War II years working for Chinese charities and relief agencies, she was snubbed by Madame Chiang, the sister-in-law of Yat-sen Sun and wife of Kai-Shek Chiang, the army general who led the Nationalist Chinese, during Madame Chiang's 1942-43 propaganda tour of the US. Her biographer Hodges claims this was the beginning of a consensus among Chinese and Chinese-Americans that Wong was an embarrassment. Chinese and Chinese-Americans chose to blame her rather than Hollywood for the demeaning stereotypes she had to play in order to work. The result of this new consensus, according to Hodges, was that "her memory has been washed away."
Anna May's career in motion pictures was virtually finished after the war. She got her own TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951), on the Dumont Network, playing a Chinese detective in a role written expressly for her, a character who was even given her real Chinese name. The half-hour program, which ran weekly from August 27 to November 21, 1951, was the first TV show to star an Asian-American.
Wong's personal relationships typically were with older Caucasian men, but California law forbade marriage between Asians and Caucasians until 1948. One of her white lovers offered to marry her in Mexico, but the couple's intentions became known and he backed off when his Hollywood career was jeopardized. Wong mused about marrying a Chinese man at times, but the Chinese culture held actresses to be on a par with prostitutes, which made her suspect marriage material. She was afraid that the mores of her culture likely meant that marrying a Chinese would force her to quit her career and be an obedient wife.
Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 American, English and German films in her career, making her the first global Chinese-American movie star. She was forced to fight against racism and stereotyping all her professional life, while simultaneously being criticized by Chinese at home and abroad for perpetuating stereotypes in the media. Despite this tremendous burden, the beautiful woman assayed an elegance and sophistication on-screen that made her the paradigm of Asian women for a generation of movie audiences.
Anna May Wong loved reading, and her favorite subjects spanned a wide range, everything from Asian history and Tzu Lao to William Shakespeare. She never married but occupied her time with golf, horses, and skiing. Wong smoked, drank too much, and suffered from depression. She was poised to make a comeback as a character actress on the big screen toward the end of her life, having appeared as Lana Turner's maid in Ross Hunter's sudsy potboiler Portrait in Black (1960). She was cast in the role of Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1961), the movie version of Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song," but before shooting could begin she passed away.
Anna May Wong died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA, after a long struggle against Laennec's cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. Her fame lives on, four decades after her death. She is a part of American popular consciousness, chosen as one of the first movie stars to be featured on a postage stamp. And the interest in her continues: a play about Anna entitled "China Doll--The Imagined Life of an American Actress," written by Elizabeth Wong, had its premiere at Maine's Bowdoin College in 1997. A lecture and film series, "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," was held at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2004, sponsored by "Playboy" publisher Hugh Hefner. That same year New York City's Museum of Modern Art held its own tribute to Wong, "Retrospective of a Chinese-American Screen Actress." Finally she was getting the respect in her own country that was denied her during her career.
A biography by Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend," was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. Hodges considers Anna May's life and career to be amazing, particularly in light of the fact that her star has yet to be eclipsed by any other Asian-American female star, despite the change in attitudes. Finally, in 2004, the British Film Institute restored E.A. Dupont's 1929 silent film "Piccadilly".- Actress
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Anneka Svenska is an actress, UK TV presenter and animal expert, with a 20-year history in TV, theatre and film. She is most famous for her successful Channel 5 cult show outTHERE (2001), which ran for three years. Anneka wrote and hosted this movie show as fictional spoof character "Eden", - a cyberbabe with the extraordinary power to channel video images.
As well as "outTHERE", Anneka has appeared in TFI Friday (1996), The Big Breakfast (1999), Bump & Grind (2006), Clubavision (2000), "Granada Movies", "Movie Cafe", Brainiac (2007), It's Me or the Dog (2008), Rory Bremner (1988), "The Generation Game", Still Crazy (1998), The Lost Son (1999) and EastEnders (1985).
Anneka's love of theatre started when she trained at the Jackie Palmer Stage School between the age of 4 and 16, where she appeared in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and The Technicolour Dreamcoat". She carried on her school education, winning awards for her comedy writing and directing at her local high school. Anneka practiced at this time alongside the 4 Ways Theatre Group, where she appeared in many comedy productions. Anneka later went on to graduate with honors in Dance and Drama at De Montford University and finished her training with a postgraduate diploma from The Guildford School of Acting. Anneka has trained in tap dance, comedy writing, physical theatre, Meisner, Method and stage combat.- Actress
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Anny Ondra was a Polish-Czech-Austrian-German-French singer and a film and stage actress. As a child she lived in Prague, where her father was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian army. After graduating from convent school in Prague, she studied to be an actress with Professor Bor. She was already a star in the Czech theater when, at age 16, the teenage beauty was discovered by the film industry.
From 1920--mostly under the direction of Karel Lamac--she became a major comedic star in Czech cinema, and in 1928 she conquered German cinema. Historically, she was Alfred Hitchcock's first blonde, appearing in his film Blackmail (1929), which was England's--and Hitchcock's--first talking film (Hitchcock, knowing that not all theaters supported talkies, also shot a silent version of the film). In 1930 in Germany she created, with the help of Karel Lamac, the Ondra-Lamac Film Society, which lasted till 1936. She was in Die vom Rummelplatz (1930) ("Those of the Sideshow") but the film, was lost and remains so to this day.
She played in German-, Czech- and French-language versions of all her movies, always as the leading lady. She became an international cinema superstar and one of the most beloved of German film stars. She appeared in more than 88 films. She retired from the industry in 1957 and lived in Hollenstedt in der Lüneburger Heide, Germany (near Hamburg), with her husband, boxing champion Max Schmeling, whom she married in 1933.
She died in Hollenstedt and will never be forgotten by her fans.- Sporting the name Walter Craig when out of the limelight and the stage name Anthony Dexter when in it, he rounded out his years teaching high school English, Speech, and Drama classes at Eagle Rock High School (circa 1968-78) in the Los Angeles area. His best-known role as an actor, however, occurred when he landed the part of Rudolph Valentino in the actor's biopic Valentino (1951). He was reputed to have won the role from a competitive field of 75,000 aspiring Valentinos. The film's producer, 'Edward Small', claimed to have made 400 screen tests for the part until discovering Dexter--the perfect fit. So much alike was Dexter in appearance to Valentino that Valentino fan clubs, upon learning of Dexter, applauded the choice of him to play their star. Even the press lauded Dexter as "incredible. The same eyes, ears, mouth--the same grace in dancing" (according to a 1950 Los Angeles Times article quoting George Melford, who directed Valentino in The Sheik (1921). Although "Valentino" was not the success its producers had hoped for, Dexter managed to garner future parts in movies similar to the roles the real Valentino had played: John Smith in Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953); Captain Kidd in Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl (1954); a pirate leader in The Black Pirates (1954); Christopher Columbus in The Story of Mankind (1957). After these roles, his career gradually diminished until ultimately he was cast in a bit part in Julie Andrews' vehicle Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).
Dexter grew up on a farm in Talmadge, Nebraska, where he played such good football in high school that he earned a scholarship to St. Olaf's College in Minnesota. There he began his pursuit of stage and screen, singing first in the college's choir before going on to the University of Iowa to get his M.A. in speech and drama. Even during World War II, Dexter--then a sergeant with the Army Special Services--toured England and other parts of the European theater of war doing the show "Claudia." Having not limited himself to movies, he did at least one notable run at summer theatre in San Francisco in "The King and I" and added to his credits parts in the Broadway shows "The Three Sisters," "Ah, Wilderness" and "The Barretts of Wimpole Street." He died at the age of 88 in Greeley, Colorado. - Actor
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The future stage, screen and TV star (real name: Fred Eisley) was born in Philadelphia. His father was general sales manager and "troubleshooter" for a large company, and his work kept the family on the move (up and down the East Coast) throughout Eisley's young life. As early as the days of school plays Eisley knew that he wanted to be an actor, but because he lacked show-business contacts he felt nothing would come of his aspiration. He later took drama courses at the University of Miami, "not because I thought I could really be an actor, but because I was taking the easy way out to get a degree". Finally following up on his longtime ambition, Eisley landed a job with a stock company in Pennsylvania, where he worked opposite James Dunn in a stage production of "A Slight Case of Murder." Later roles in long-running plays like "Mister Roberts", "Picnic" and "The Desperate Hours" ensued, along with some early movie (Operation Pacific (1951), Fearless Fagan (1952)) and television (Racket Squad (1950)) work. Eisley later went on to TV and exploitation movie stardom.- Producer
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Anthony Havelock-Allan produced some of the best known and critically acclaimed films of British cinema, including In Which We Serve (1942), Brief Encounter (1945), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Great Expectations (1946). The films were commercial triumphs for Two Cities and Cineguild production companies, making Havelock-Allan one of the most influential producers in the British film industry. He is also remembered for two films he made starring his then-wife Valerie Hobson: the melodrama Blanche Fury (1948) and The Hideout (1948), which introduced Howard Keel to the screen.
Born at Blackwell Manor, Darlington, England, Havelock-Allan was educated at Charterhouse. Having turned down a career in the army he worked as a stockbroker and nightclub manager before becoming a casting director. In the early 1930s he spent two years producing "quota quickies", low-budget, quickly-made films--often in six days or less--made for Paramount-British in order to satisfy a British government requirement that a certain percentage of films shown in Britain had to be made in Britain. While these "quickies" were made for little money and varied greatly in quality, they did provide a valuable training ground for directors such as Michael Powell and such cameramen Ronald Neame (later to become a top director). Many of them also featured then unknown actors, such as Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford. In 1942 he produced one of the most famous of all flag-waving war films: Noël Coward's In Which We Serve (1942), co-directed by Coward with David Lean. The naval epic was a thinly disguised saga of the maritime exploits of Lord Louis Mountbatten and included definitive performances from Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson and John Mills. A year later he formed the creative partnership of Cineguild Productions with Noel Coward, David Lean and Ronald Neame, which made This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945), an adaptation of Coward's play "Still Life". Cineguild broke up in 1949 and Havelock-Allan formed Constellation Films, an independent production company financed by the Rank Organisation. With that company he made Paul Gallico's Never Take No for an Answer (1951).
In 1960 Havelock-Allan and Lord Brabourne formed British Home Entertainment, which sought to introduce pay-TV into Britain. The company was sold in 1969 after the closure of a trial service. Havelock-Allan's later films included Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) and David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970).- Editor
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Anthony M. Lanza was born in 1936 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He made his own 16mm movies as a kid and studied film at the University of Southern California. After graduating from USC, Anthony secured his first motion picture gig as both co-editor and co-producer of Timothy Carey's sublimely screwy one-of-a-kind exploitation oddity The World's Greatest Sinner (1962). Lanza went on to edit such offbeat low-budget movies as Wild Guitar (1962), The Sadist (1963), What's Up Front! (1964), The Nasty Rabbit (1964), Deadwood '76 (1965), Dinah East (1970) and Doomsday Voyage (1972). He was an assistant director on both The Skydivers (1963) and Bigfoot (1970). Moreover, he handled post-production supervisor duties on such straight-to-video items as Body Count (1995) and The Dangerous (1995). Lanza has directed three theatrical features: the gritty biker romp The Glory Stompers (1967) ('Dennis Hopper (I)''s first-ever biker flick), the dire talk show spoof "The Irv Carlson Show" and the supremely schlocky sci-fi/horror camp hoot The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971). In addition, he directed another three pictures that either weren't finished or failed to receive theatrical releases: "Desert Gems," "Freedom Riders" and "Squeeze Play."
Lanza died on October 16, 2010 at the Rosewood Nursing Home in Lake Charles, Louisiana.- Actor
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Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, and the rest of his family was Mexican.
After starting life in extremely modest circumstances in Mexico, his family moved to Los Angeles, where he grew up in the Boyle Heights and Echo Park neighborhoods. He played in the band of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson as a youth and as a deputy preacher. He attended Polytechnic High School and later Belmont High, but eventually dropped out. The young Quinn boxed (which stood him in good stead as a stage actor, when he played Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" to rave reviews in Chicago), then later studied architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the great architect's studio, Taliesin, in Arizona. Quinn was close to Wright, who encouraged him when he decided to give acting a try. Made his credited film debut in Parole! (1936). After a brief apprenticeship on stage, Quinn hit Hollywood in 1936 and picked up a variety of small roles in several films at Paramount, including an Indian warrior in The Plainsman (1936), which was directed by the man who later became his father-in-law, Cecil B. DeMille.
As a contract player at Paramount, Quinn's roles were mainly ethnic types, such as an Arab chieftain in the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope comedy, Road to Morocco (1942). As a Mexican national (he did not become an American citizen until 1947), he was exempt from the draft. With many other actors in military service during WWII, he was able to move up into better supporting roles. He married DeMille's daughter Katherine DeMille, which afforded him entrance to the top circles of Hollywood society. He became disenchanted with his career and did not renew his Paramount contract despite the advice of others, including his father-in-law, with whom he did not get along (whom Quinn reportedly felt had never accepted him due to his Mexican roots; the two men were also on opposite ends of the political spectrum) but they eventually were able to develop a civil relationship. Quinn returned to the stage to hone his craft. His portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Chicago and on Broadway (where he replaced the legendary Marlon Brando, who is forever associated with the role) made his reputation and boosted his film career when he returned to the movies.
Brando and Elia Kazan, who directed "Streetcar" on Broadway and on film (A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)), were crucial to Quinn's future success. Kazan, knowing the two were potential rivals due to their acclaimed portrayals of Kowalski, cast Quinn as Brando's brother in his biographical film of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Viva Zapata! (1952). Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for 1952, making him the first Mexican-American to win an Oscar. It was not to be his lone appearance in the winner's circle: he won his second Supporting Actor Oscar in 1957 for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's biographical film of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life (1956), opposite Kirk Douglas. Over the next decade Quinn lived in Italy and became a major figure in world cinema, as many studios shot films in Italy to take advantage of the lower costs ("runaway production" had battered the industry since its beginnings in the New York/New Jersey area in the 1910s). He appeared in several Italian films, giving one of his greatest performances as the circus strongman who brutalizes the sweet soul played by Giulietta Masina in her husband Federico Fellini's masterpiece The Road (1954). He met his second wife, Jolanda Addolori, a wardrobe assistant, while he was in Rome filming Barabbas (1961).
Alternating between Europe and Hollywood, Quinn built his reputation and entered the front rank of character actors and character leads. He received his third Oscar nomination (and first for Best Actor) for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). He played a Greek resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation in the monster hit The Guns of Navarone (1961) and received kudos for his portrayal of a once-great boxer on his way down in Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). He went back to playing ethnic roles, such as an Arab warlord in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and he played the eponymous lead in the "sword-and-sandal" blockbuster Barabbas (1961). Two years later, he reached the zenith of his career, playing Zorba the Greek in the film of the same name (a.k.a. Zorba the Greek (1964)), which brought him his fourth, and last, Oscar nomination as Best Actor. The 1960s were kind to him: he played character leads in such major films as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969). However, his appearance in the title role in the film adaptation of John Fowles' novel, The Magus (1968), did nothing to save the film, which was one of that decade's notorious turkeys.
In the 1960s, Quinn told Life magazine that he would fight against typecasting. Unfortunately, the following decade saw him slip back into playing ethnic types again, in such critical bombs as The Greek Tycoon (1978). He starred as the Hispanic mayor of a southwestern city on the short-lived television series The Man and the City (1971), but his career lost its momentum during the 1970s. Aside from playing a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in the cinematic roman-a-clef The Greek Tycoon (1978), his other major roles of the decade were as Hamza in the controversial The Message (1976) (a.k.a. "Mohammad, Messenger of God"); as the Italian patriarch in The Inheritance (1976); yet another Arab in Caravans (1978); and as a Mexican patriarch in The Children of Sanchez (1978). In 1983, he reprised his most famous role, Zorba the Greek, on Broadway in the revival of the musical "Zorba" for 362 performances (opposite Lila Kedrova, who had also appeared in the film, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance). His career slowed during the 1990s but he continued to work steadily in films and television, including an appearance with frequent film co-star Maureen O'Hara in Only the Lonely (1991).
Quinn lived out the latter years of his life in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his time painting and sculpting. Beginning in 1982, he held numerous major exhibitions in cities such as Vienna, Paris, and Seoul. He died in a hospital in Boston at age 86 from pneumonia and respiratory failure linked to his battle with throat cancer.- Director
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A legendary figure in British film distribution of the 1960s and 1970s, Antony Balch was renowned for buying up European art/exploitation films and giving them catchy new English titles ("Weird Weirdo", "Don't Deliver Us From Evil"), as well as being responsible for the legendary sound version of Benjamin Christensen's silent documentary classic Häxan (1922), where the intertitles were replaced with a commentary by Balch's friend William S. Burroughs, with whom he started his film career with the shorts Towers Open Fire (1966) and The Cut Ups (1966), both extensions of Burroughs' writing technique. Balch's only two features were the surreal Burroughs-influenced Bizarre (1970) and the comedy Horror Hospital (1973).- One of the most respected Latina actresses in Hollywood, April Hernandez-Castillo's personal life story is one of victory. Her feature film debut as Eva Benitez in the Image Award-nominated MTV film, Freedom Writers (2007), alongside Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank, put her in the ranks of some of the biggest names in the industry.
An actress with a blend of unlimited expression and humor, the Bronx (NY) native made her stage debut at the famous New York Comedy Club in New York City as a stand-up comedienne. As an actress, April expanded her stage experience to television. She got her first acting break as the Yo/Yoa Girl alongside NBA All-Star Houston Rockets center Yao Ming in the 2004 Super Bowl Visa Check Card national commercial. Next came major television roles that would include NBC's Emmy-award winning series ER (1994), Law & Order (1990) and 30 Rock (2006). Keeping an eye on the big screen, in 2007 she tried out for the role of a lifetime and got it--in "Freedom Writers". She would co-star alongside one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Hilary Swank. It was in this role that April would catch the attention of The View (1997) producers, who invited her to co-host the show.
Reaching critical heights, her portrayal of Eva Benitez earned her recognition and critical acclaim confirming her status as one of the more talented up-and-coming actresses. Displaying the talent and drive to parlay success into a career as a respected actress, April garnered roles in the pilot Blue Blood (2008) on Fox and Showtime's Nurse Jackie (2009), CBS' Person of Interest (2011) and received a SAG Award nomination for her role as Officer Cira Manson in Showtime's award-winning drama Dexter (2006), a role in John Mitchell's sci-fi comedy The History of Future Folk (2012), guest-starred as Danny Pino's sister on NBC's drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and appeared in two episodes of FOX's hit show The Following (2013).
April has demonstrated her versatility as an actress. However, her latest role is not in front of the camera but as a motivational and inspirational speaker.