Alison Leggatt
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Alison Leggatt
Alison Joy Leggatt (7 February 1904 – 15 July 1990) was an English character actress. Career Born in the Kensington district of London, Leggatt trained under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then based in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Leggatt spent the early part of her career primarily on the stage. Her performance in Miles Malleson's ''The Fanatics'' in 1927 launched her, according to ''The New York Times'', as "one of the most promising theatrical newcomers of her generation". Other stage work included the original 1931 Drury Lane production of ''Cavalcade'' by Noël Coward. Her first major film credit was as Aunt Sylvia in '' This Happy Breed'' (1944), Noël Coward's homage to the British working class. She was known for playing a variety of disapproving in-laws, motherly landladies, nosy neighbours and helpful housekeepers. She played opposite Petula Clark three times, in '' Here Come the Huggetts'' (1948), ''The Card'' (1952) and '' Goodbye, Mr. ...
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Alexander Bassano
Alexander Bassano (10 May 1829 – 21 October 1913) was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. He is known for his photo of the Earl Kitchener in the ''Lord Kitchener Wants You'' army recruitment poster during the First World War and his photographs of Queen Victoria. Biography Alessandro Bassano was the second youngest child of Italian Clemente Bassano, originally a fishmonger of Cranbourne Street, later an oilman and warehouseman of Jermyn Street, London, and his English wife, Elizabeth Browne. He later anglicised his first name to Alexander. Bassano received early artistic training with artists Augustus Egg and William Beverley. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street. The studio then moved to Piccadilly 1859–1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877. There was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 King's Road, Brighton from 1893 to 1899. The Old Bond Street studio ...
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ...
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Epitaph For George Dillon
''Epitaph for George Dillon'' is an early John Osborne Play (theatre), play, one of two he wrote in collaboration with Anthony Creighton (the other is ''Personal Enemy''). It was written before ''Look Back in Anger'', the play which made Osborne's career, but opened a year after at Experimental Theatre Club, Oxford Experimental Theatre in 1957, and was then produced at London's Royal Court Theatre, Royal Court theatre, where ''Look Back in Anger'' had debuted. It transferred to New York City shortly afterwards and garnered three Tony Award nominations. Themes The play tells the story of Kate Elliot's unhappy suburban South London family and the domestic havoc wrought when she decides to adopt George Dillon as a wiktionary:surrogate, surrogate son. It tackles typical Osborne themes, including religion (and Osborne's hatred thereof), vegetarianism, the casual deception of everyday life and scorn of the theatre. In common with Jimmy Porter in ''Look Back in Anger'', George Dillo ...
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John Osborne
John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his prose that criticized established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play '' Look Back in Anger'' transformed English theatre. Osborne was notorious for his violent language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children. Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. Early life Osborne was born on 12 December 1929 in London, the son of Thomas Godfrey Osborne, a commercial artist and advertising copywriter of South Welsh ancestry, and Nellie Beatrice Grove, a Cockney barmaid. In 1935 the family moved to the north Surrey suburb of Stoneleigh, near Ewell, in search of a better life, though Osborne would regard it as a cultural desert – a school friend declared subsequently that "he thought ewere a lot of dull ...
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The Confidential Clerk
First edition cover ( Faber and Faber) ''The Confidential Clerk'' is a comic verse play by T. S. Eliot. Synopsis Sir Claude Mulhammer, a wealthy entrepreneur, decides to smuggle his illegitimate son Colby into the household by employing him as his confidential clerk. He hopes that his eccentric wife, Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer, will take a liking to the boy and allow him to live as her adopted son. She in fact becomes convinced that Colby is actually her own son. Meanwhile, Lucasta Angel wants to marry B. Kaghan, but neither seems to have any parents at all. A drama of mistaken identity and confusion ensues. The "confidential clerk" of the title refers both to Colby, in his new job, and Eggerson, Sir Claude's old clerk who is seen retiring at the start of the play but returns in the final act to resolve the situation. Characters and original cast :Source: Play text.Eliot (1967), p. 6 Productions T. S. Eliot's penultimate play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1953, befo ...
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The Cocktail Party
''The Cocktail Party'' is a play by T. S. Eliot. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, '' Murder in the Cathedral'', is better remembered today. It focuses on a troubled married couple who, through the intervention of a mysterious stranger, settle their problems and move on with their lives. ''The Cocktail Party'' was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in 1948. It was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 the play had successful runs in London and New York theaters (the Broadway production received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play.) The play starts out seeming to be a light satire of the traditional British drawing room comedy. As it progresses, however, the work becomes a darker philosophical/psychological treatment of human relations. As in many of Eliot's works, the play uses absurdist elements to expose the isolation of the hum ...
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Geneva (play)
''Geneva, a Fancied Page of History in Three Acts'' (1938) is a topical play by George Bernard Shaw. It describes a summit meeting designed to contain the increasingly dangerous behaviour of three dictators, Herr Battler, Signor Bombardone, and General Flanco (parodies of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco). Because of its topicality in the run up to World War II, the play was constantly rewritten by Shaw to take account of rapidly changing events. Though initially a success, the play's flippant portrayal of Hitler and fascism have limited revivals in later years. Plot At the offices of the "Committee of Intellectual Cooperation" in Geneva, the only person present is a hopelessly overwhelmed secretary called Miss Begonia Brown. Various people turn up demanding redress of grievances: a Jew who complains of oppression in Germany; a colonial politician who had been denied the right to take his seat and a South American woman who objects to the politics of assassi ...
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as '' Man and Superman'' (1902), '' Pygmalion'' (1913) and '' Saint Joan'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for y ...
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West End Theatre
West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London.Christopher Innes, "West End" in ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1194–1195, Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London. Famous screen actors, British and international alike, frequently appear on the London stage. There are a total of 39 theatres in the West End, with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, opened in May 1663, the oldest theatre in London. The Savoy Theatre – built as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan – was entirely lit by electricity in 1881. Opening in October 2022, @sohoplace is the first new West End theatre in 50 years. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) announ ...
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Royal Shakespeare Theatre
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) (originally called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) is a grade II* listed 1,040+ seat thrust stage theatre owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is located in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon – Shakespeare's birthplace – in the English Midlands, beside the River Avon. The building incorporates the smaller Swan Theatre. The Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres re-opened in November 2010 after undergoing a major renovation known as the Transformation Project. History The original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre came about after a polemic 'The Tercentenary' was published by James Cox, mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1865, two years after the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, for a fitting memorial in the town. Eventually, through the efforts and donations of Edward Fordham Flower and his son Charles Edward Flower, owners of a local brewery business in Stratford, a ...
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The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (film)
''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' is a 1976 Oscar-nominated British-American mystery film directed by Herbert Ross and written by Nicholas Meyer. It is based on Meyer's 1974 novel of the same name and stars Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, and Laurence Olivier. Plot Dr. John H. Watson (Robert Duvall) becomes convinced that his friend Sherlock Holmes ( Nicol Williamson) is delusional—particularly in his belief that Professor James Moriarty (Laurence Olivier) is a criminal mastermind—as a result of his addiction to cocaine. Moriarty visits Watson to complain about being harassed by Holmes. Watson enlists the aid of Sherlock's brother, Mycroft ( Charles Gray), to trick Holmes into traveling to Vienna, where he will be treated by Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). During the course of his treatment, Holmes investigates a kidnapping case with international implications and Freud uncovers a dark personal secret suppressed in Holmes's subconscious. Cast * Nicol Williamson a ...
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