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Douglas Shearer
Douglas Graham Shearer (November 17, 1899 – January 5, 1971) was a Canadian American pioneering sound designer and recording director who played a key role in the advancement of sound technology for motion pictures. The elder brother of actress Norma Shearer, he won seven Academy Awards for his work. In 2008, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. Early life and career Shearer was born in Westmount, Quebec, to a prominent family that fell on hard times after his father's business failed, which ultimately led to his parents' separation. Douglas remained with his father Andrew in Montreal while his two younger sisters, Norma Shearer (the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star) and Athole Shearer (also a Hollywood actress and one-time wife of director Howard Hawks), moved to the United States—to New York City—with their mother, Edith. Unable to afford a university education, Douglas Shearer left school and began working in a variety of jobs. In 1924, he traveled to Hollywood, Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Or Technical Academy Award
The Scientific and Technical Awards are three different Honorary Awards that are given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) during the annual Academy Awards season. The Awards have been presented since the 4th Academy Awards in November 1931, to recognize original developments resulting in significant improvements in motion picture production and exhibition. The Awards are presented at a formal dinner ceremony a couple weeks before the principal Academy Awards ceremony. These awards recognize significant milestones in the development of technology for motion pictures and are conferred by vote of the Academy Board of Governors. Potential nominations for awards are investigated by a special committee within the Academy, "The Scientific and Technical Awards Committee", which presents a written report and recommendation to the Board of Governors. Additionally, the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, given for "outstanding service and dedication in uph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viva Villa!
''Viva Villa!'' is a 1934 American pre-Code film directed by Jack Conway and starring Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The screenplay was written by Ben Hecht, adapted from the 1933 book '' Viva Villa!'' by Edgecumb Pinchon and O. B. Stade. The film was shot on location in Mexico and produced by David O. Selznick. There was uncredited assistance with the script by Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman were also uncredited directors on the film. The film is a fictionalized biography of Pancho Villa starring Beery in the titular role and featuring Fay Wray, who had played the leading lady in ''King Kong'' the previous year. The supporting cast includes Leo Carillo, Donald Cook, Stuart Erwin, Henry B. Walthall, Joseph Schildkraut and Katherine DeMille. Plot After seeing his poor father lose his land and be whipped to death for protesting, young Pancho Villa stabs one of the killers, then heads off into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green Dolphin Street (film)
''Green Dolphin Street'' is a 1947 historical drama disaster film starring Lana Turner, Van Heflin, and Donna Reed, directed by Victor Saville, and produced by Carey Wilson. Based on the 1944 novel '' Green Dolphin Street'' by Elizabeth Goudge, it was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Plot In the 1840s, in the town of San Pierre on the English Channel Island of Guernsey, two sisters, Marguerite ( Donna Reed) and Marianne Patourel ( Lana Turner), daughters of the wealthy Octavius Patourel (Edmund Gwenn), fall in love with the same young man, William Ozanne ( Richard Hart). Marguerite is sweet and simple, while Marianne is extremely shrewd and plans to take over the family shipping business. William is the son of Dr. Edmond Ozanne ( Frank Morgan), who has recently returned to the island after many years away. Additionally, Dr. Ozanne is the former teenage lover of Sophie Patourel (Gladys Cooper), Marguerite and Marianne's mother. Sophie's mother broke up their youthful roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' is a 1944 American war film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo is based on the 1943 book of the same name by Captain Ted W. Lawson. Lawson was a pilot on the historic Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan, four months after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid was planned, led by, and named after United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who was promoted two ranks, to Brigadier General, the day after the raid. Sam Zimbalist was the film's producer and Mervyn LeRoy directed. The picture stars Van Johnson as Lawson; Phyllis Thaxter as his wife, Ellen; Robert Walker as Corporal David Thatcher; Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Bob Gray; and Spencer Tracy as Lieutenant Colonel—and soon General— Jimmy Doolittle. Tracy's appearance in the film is more in the nature of a guest star; he receives special billing rather than his usual top billi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Award For Best Visual Effects
The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is an Academy Award given for the best achievement in visual effects. History of the award The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences first recognized the technical contributions of special effects to movies at its inaugural dinner in 1929, presenting a plaque for "Best Engineering Effects" to the first Best Picture Oscar winner, the World War I flying drama '' Wings''. Producer David O. Selznick, then production head at RKO Studios, petitioned the Academy Board of Governors to recognize the work of animator Willis O'Brien for his groundbreaking work on 1933's '' King Kong''. It was not until 1938 when a film was actually recognized for its effects work, when a "Special Achievement Award for Special Effects" was given to the Paramount film '' Spawn of the North''. The following year, "Best Special Effects" became a recognized category, although on occasion the Academy has chosen to honor a single film outright rather than nominate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Caruso
''The Great Caruso'' is a 1951 biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starring Mario Lanza as Enrico Caruso. It was directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Joe Pasternak with Jesse L. Lasky as associate producer from a screenplay by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig. The original music was by Johnny Green and the cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg. Costume design was by Helen Rose and Gile Steele. The film is a highly fictionalized biography of the life of Caruso. Cast The Opera Montage are Metropolitan Opera stars, notably sopranos Teresa Celli, Lucine Amara and Marina Koshetz, mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom, baritone Giuseppe Valdengo and bass Nicola Moscona. Factual discrepancies Although the film follows the basic facts of Caruso's life, several of the characters and most of the incidents portrayed in the movie are entirely fictional. Members of the Caruso family in Italy successfully sued MGM for damages because of this. Here are a few of the many fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strike Up The Band (film)
''Strike Up the Band'' is a 1940 American musical film produced by the Arthur Freed unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Busby Berkeley and stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in the second of a series of musicals they co-starred in, after ''Babes in Arms'', all directed by Berkeley. The story written for the 1927 stage musical '' Strike Up the Band'', and its successful 1930 Broadway revision, bear no resemblance to this film, aside from the title song. Plot Jimmy Connors (Mickey Rooney), a student at Riverwood High School, plays the drums in the school band but dreams of playing in a dance band. He and his “gal” Mary Holden (Judy Garland) sell the school principal on the idea of forming a dance orchestra and putting on a dance to raise money. The principal is initially doubtful but then agrees to buy the first ticket. The event is a success, and the school's debt for the instruments is paid off. Famous band leader Paul Whiteman (played by himself) spons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco (1936 Film)
''San Francisco'' is a 1936 musical-drama disaster film directed by W. S. Van Dyke, based on the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy. MacDonald's singing helped make this film a major hit, coming on the heels of her other 1936 blockbuster, ''Rose Marie''. Plot On New Year's Eve, 1905, saloon keeper "Blackie" Norton hires Mary Blake to sing in his bar, the ''Paradise Club'' on Pacific Street in the notorious Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Mary becomes a star attraction at the ''Paradise'', especially for her signature tune, "San Francisco". Blackie's friend Matt predicts that Mary will not stay long on the "Coast". Blackie decides to run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at the behest of his childhood friend Father Tim Mullen, who believes Blackie can use the supervisor position to implement reform. Mary is hired by the Tivoli Opera House on Market Street, where she becomes involved with Nob Hill s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naughty Marietta (film)
''Naughty Marietta'' is a 1935 American musical romance film based on the 1910 operetta of the same name by Victor Herbert. Jeanette MacDonald stars as a princess who flees an arranged marriage. She sails for New Orleans and is rescued from pirates by Captain Richard Warrington (Nelson Eddy). Five of Herbert's most famous songs come from the score of ''Naughty Marietta'', with words by lyricist Rida Johnson Young: "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", " Italian Street Song", "Neath the Southern Moon", "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" and "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! (Along the Highway)". Additional lyrics for several of Herbert's songs were penned for the film by Gus Kahn. The film was written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, John Lee Mahin and Rida Johnson Young. Plot To avoid an arranged marriage to Don Carlos, an elderly Spanish duke, Princess Marie masquerades as her uncle's former servant, Marietta, and escapes from France on a ship with casquette girls who are traveling to New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Big House (1930 Film)
''The Big House'' is a 1930 American pre-Code prison drama film directed by George Hill, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starring Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone and Robert Montgomery. The story and dialogue were written by Frances Marion, who won the Academy Award for Best Writing Achievement. As one of the first prison movies, it inspired many others of this genre. Background The story was inspired by a spate of prison riots in 1929 and resulting federal investigation. In response, George Hill wrote a twenty-seven page story treatment called "The Reign of Terror: A Story of Crime and Punishment". Irving Thalberg gave the go ahead for the screenplay and assigned Frances Marion to work with George Hill. Lon Chaney was originally chosen for the role of Butch, a violent career criminal who rules the prison cellblock, but the cancer from which he was to die in August 1930 had already advanced too far and the role went to Wallace Beery. The movie launched Beery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific And Technical Academy Award
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
