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Alfred Cheney Johnston
Alfred Cheney Johnston (known as "Cheney" to his friends and associates) (April 8, 1885 – April 17, 1971) was a New York City-based photographer known for his portraits of ''Ziegfeld Follies'' showgirls as well as of actors and actresses from the worlds of stage and film. Biography Johnston was born into an affluent New York banking family, which subsequently moved to Mount Vernon, New York. Initially he studied painting and illustration at the National Academy of Design in New York, but after graduating in 1908 (and marrying fellow student Doris Gernon the next year), his subsequent efforts to earn a living as a portrait painter did not meet with success. Instead, reportedly at the suggestion of longtime family friend and famed illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, he started to employ the camera previously used to record his painting subjects as his basic creative medium. In approximately 1917, Johnston was hired by famed New York City live-theater showman and producer Floren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wall Street Crash Of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The Great Crash is mostly associated with October 24, 1929, called ''Black Thursday'', the day of the largest sell-off of shares in U.S. history, and October 29, 1929, called ''Black Tuesday'', when investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Background The " Roaring Twenties", the decade following World War I that led to the crash, was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Pickford
Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios and United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Pickford is considered to be one of the most recognisable women in history. Cited as "America's Sweetheart" during the silent film era, she is named on the list of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars as the 24th top female stars from the Classical Hollywood Cinema era and the "girl with the curls", Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Etting
Ruth Etting (November 23, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American singer and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film. Known as "America's sweetheart of song", her signature tunes were " Shine On, Harvest Moon", " Ten Cents a Dance" and " Love Me or Leave Me". As a young girl in Nebraska, Etting had wanted to become an artist; she drew and sketched all the time. At sixteen, her grandparents decided to send her to art school in Chicago. While Etting attended class, she found a job at the Marigold Gardens nightclub; after a short time there, Etting gave up art classes in favor of a career in show business. Etting, who enjoyed singing in school and church, never took voice lessons. She quickly became a featured vocalist at the club. Etting was then managed by Moe Snyder, whom she married in 1922. Snyder made arrangements for Etting's recording and film contracts as well as her personal and radio appearances. She beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belle Baker
Belle Baker (December 25, 1893 in New York City – April 29, 1957 in Los Angeles) was an American singer and actress. Popular throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Baker introduced a number of ragtime and torch songs including Irving Berlin's " Blue Skies" and " My Yiddishe Mama". She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and introduced a number of Irving Berlin's songs. An early adapter to radio, Baker hosted her own radio show during the 1930s. Eddie Cantor called her “ Dinah Shore, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland all rolled into one.” Early life Baker was born Bella Becker in 1893 to a Russian Jewish family. Baker started performing at the Lower East Side's Cannon Street Music Hall at age 11, where she was discovered by the Yiddish Theatre manager Jacob Adler. She was managed in vaudeville by Lew Leslie, who would become Baker's first husband. She made her vaudeville debut in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the age of 15. She performed in Oscar Hammerstein I's Victoria Theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Pennington (actress)
Anna Pennington (December 23, 1893 – November 4, 1971) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who starred on Broadway in the 1910s and 1920s, notably in the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' and ''George White's Scandals''. She became famous for what was, at the time, called a "Shake and Quiver Dancer", and was noted for her variation of the " Black Bottom". She also was noted as an accomplished tap dancer. Ray Henderson wrote the extant version of "Black Bottom" for Ann – she had already been performing the popular version of the dance for some time. Some years prior to this, she had also topped the bill on Broadway in her performance of the musically similar "Charleston". Pennington also achieved fame as a star of both silent and sound motion pictures. Early life Pennington was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 23, 1893, and reputedly moved with her family to Camden, New Jersey, around 1900. Her father worked for the Victor music company, they were Quakers, and she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grace Moore
Mary Willie Grace Moore (December 5, 1898January 26, 1947) was an American operatic soprano and actress in musical theatre and film.Obituary '' Variety'', January 29, 1947, page 48. She was nicknamed the "Tennessee Nightingale." Her films helped to popularize opera by bringing it to a larger audience. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in '' One Night of Love''. In 1947, Moore died in a plane crash at the age of 48. She published an autobiography in 1944 titled ''You're Only Human Once''. In 1953, a film about her life was released titled ''So This Is Love'' starring Kathryn Grayson. Early life Moore was born Mary Willie Grace Moore, the daughter of Tessa Jane (née Stokely) and Richard Lawson Moore. She was born in the community of Slabtown (now considered part of Del Rio) in Cocke County, Tennessee. By the time she was two years old, her family had relocated to Knoxville, a move Moore later described as traumatic, as she found ur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller (born Mary Ellen Reynolds; September 1, 1898 – April 7, 1936) was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. Her enormous popularity and famed image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, frequent illness, and ultimately her sudden death due to complications of nasal surgery at age 37. Early life Marilyn Miller was born in 1898 in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson.Staff (March 20, 1942"Marilyn Miller's Mother Dies"''The New York Times'', p.19 The tiny, delicately featured blonde was only four years old when she debuted in the role of Mademoiselle Sugarlump at Lakes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Morgan (singer)
Helen Morgan (née Riggins; August 2, 1900 – October 9, 1941) was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s. She starred as Julie LaVerne in the original Broadway production of Hammerstein and Kern's musical '' Show Boat'' in 1927, as well as in the 1932 Broadway revival of the musical, and appeared in two film adaptations, a part-talkie made in 1929 (prologue only) and a full-sound version made in 1936, becoming firmly associated with the role. She suffered from bouts of alcoholism, and despite her notable success in the title role of another Hammerstein and Kern's Broadway musical, '' Sweet Adeline'' (1929), her stage career was relatively short. Helen Morgan died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 41. She was portrayed by Polly Bergen in the '' Playhouse 90'' drama ''The Helen Morgan Story'' and by Ann Blyth in the 1957 biopic based on the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ina Claire
Ina Claire (born Ina Fagan; October 15, 1893February 21, 1985) was an American stage and film actress. Early years Ina Fagan was born October 15, 1893 in Washington, D.C. After the death of her father, Claire began doing imitations of fellow boarders in the boarding house where she and her mother, Cora, and brother, Allen, were forced to live. Claire's mother took her out of school in the eighth grade, and she used her mother's maiden name when she began her career appearing in vaudeville. In 1906, she gave a recitation as the grand finale of a program presented by Miss Cora B. Shreve's pupils in Washington, D.C. She was identified in a newspaper article as Ina Claire Fagan. Career Claire made her professional stage debut in October 1907 in Elmira, New York. She played Florie in a production of ''The Fatal Flower'' — the beginning of a two-year contract. In 1909, she appeared in a vaudeville act entitled "Dainty Mimic", which included an imitation of actor Harry Lauder. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolly Sisters
Rosie Dolly (October 24, 1892 – February 1, 1970) and Jenny Dolly (October 24, 1892 – June 1, 1941), known professionally as The Dolly Sisters, were Hungarian-American identical twin dancers, singers and actresses, popular in vaudeville and theatre during the 1910s and 1920s. Both sisters also appeared in two silent films. Early lives and careers The sisters, Rózsika Deutsch (later known as Rose or Rosie) and Janka Deutsch (later known as Yancsi or Jenny), were born on October 24, 1892, in Balassagyarmat, Hungary. Their parents were Julius (born Gyula Deutsch, c. 1865) and Margaret Deutsch (born Margit Weisz, c. 1874). Julius and son Istvan (later known as Edward, born March 31, 1898) emigrated to the United States in October 1904; the twins and their mother arrived May 1905. As children, the sisters trained as dancers and began earning money in beer halls as early as 1907. Barred for being under age by the New York City stage, they toured the Orpheum Circuit until 190 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruby Keeler
Ethel Ruby Keeler (August 25, 1909 – February 28, 1993) was an American actress, dancer, and singer who was paired on-screen with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Bros., particularly '' 42nd Street'' (1933). From 1928 to 1940, she was married to actor and singer Al Jolson. She retired from show business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971. Early life Keeler was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1909 to Ralph Hector and Nellie (''née'' Lahey) Keeler, one of six siblings in an Irish Catholic family. Two sisters, Helen and Gertrude, had brief performing careers. Her father was a truck driver. When Ruby was three years old, her family moved to New York City, where her father could get better pay. Although Keeler was interested in taking dance lessons, the family could not afford to send her. Keeler attended St. Catherine of Siena on New York's East Side, and one period each week, a dance teacher taught all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
