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Alfred Cheney Johnston
Alfred Cheney Johnston (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 in New York into an affluent 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 Florenz Ziegfeld as a contracted photographer, and was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and business failures around the world. The economic contagion began in 1929 in the United States, the largest economy in the world, with the devastating Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 often considered the beginning of the Depression. Among the countries with the most unemployed were the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Weimar Republic, Germany. The Depression was preceded by a period of industrial growth and social development known as the "Roaring Twenties". Much of the profit generated by the boom was invested in speculation, such as on the stock market, contributing to growing Wealth inequality in the United States, wealth inequality. Banks were subject to laissez-faire, minimal regulation, resulting in loose lending and wides ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Mae Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most famously for her 1950 turn in Billy Wilder's ''Sunset Boulevard (film), Sunset Boulevard'', which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, Golden Globe Award. Swanson was born in Chicago and raised in a military family that moved from base to base. Her infatuation with Essanay Studios actor Francis X. Bushman led to her aunt taking her to tour the actor's Chicago studio. The 15-year-old Swanson was offered a brief walk-on for one film and eventually a stock-players contract, beginning her life's career in front of the cameras. Swanson left school, and was soon hired to work in California for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon. She was eventually recruited by Famous Players–Lasky ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Pickford
Gladys Louise Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress and producer. A Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, pioneer in the American film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades, Pickford was one of the most popular actresses of the silent film era. Beginning her film career in 1909, Pickford became Hollywood's first millionaire by 1916, and, at the height of her career, had complete creative control of her films and was one of the most recognizable women in the world. Due to her popularity, unprecedented international fame, and success as an actress and businesswoman, she was known as the "Queen of the Movies". She was a significant figure in the development of film acting and is credited with having defined the type in cinema, a persona that also earned her the nickname "America's Sweetheart". In 1919, she co-founded United Artists alongside Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Etting
Ruth Etting (November 23, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American singer and actress during 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 (Donaldson and Kahn song), 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 any formal singing lessons. She quickly became a featured vocalist at the club. Etting was then managed by Martin Snyder, Moe Snyder, whom she married in 1922. Snyder was known for being very protective of Ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belle Baker
Belle Baker (born Bella Becker; December 25, 1893 in New York City – April 29, 1957, in Los Angeles) was a American Jews, Jewish 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 (1926 song), Blue Skies" and "My Yiddishe Momme, 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 originally from Akmenė, Akmene, Lithuania on New York's Lower East Side. She was the third child of eight children born to Hyman (Chaim) Becker and Sarah Rabinowitz. Her mother was chronically ill. Born into extreme poverty, Baker was unable to attend school and Child labor in the United S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Pennington (actress)
Anna Rebecca 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''. Early life Pennington was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 23, 1893, to John I. Pennington and his wife, Mary (Reeder) Pennington. Early career There are differing accounts of Pennington's early career. She reportedly studied at Professor Walter G. Wroe's dance school in Philadelphia and performed in popular theaters as part of ''Wroe's Buds''. She later studied with Caroline Littlefield and her daughter, future ballerina Catherine Littlefield, and became part of the Littlefield's dance group. It is said she was dancing with this group when Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. recruited her for a Broadway show in 1911. In 1910, Pennington reportedly performed as part of the ''De Haven Sextet'' (composed of "the celebrated comedian Sydney Gibson and six y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grace Moore
Mary Willie Grace Moore (December 5, 1898January 26, 1947) was an American operatic lyric soprano and actress in musical theatre and film.Obituary ''Variety Obituaries, 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 1947 KLM Douglas DC-3 Copenhagen accident, 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 (film), 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, Tennessee, Del Rio) in Cocke County, Tennessee. By the time she was tw ... [...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. She died suddenly from 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 Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio, performing as a member of her family's vaudeville act, named The Columbian Trio. That act, which included her stepfather Oscar Caro Miller a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Morgan (singer)
Helen Morgan (née Riggin; 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 televi ... [...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 '20s. 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 in Balassagyarmat, Hungary. Their parents were Julius (born Gyula Deutsch, ) and Margaret Deutsch (born Margit Weisz, ). 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 1909 when they debuted on the Keith Vaudevi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
