Billy Rose's Aquacade
''Billy Rose's Aquacade'' was a music, dance and swimming show produced by Billy Rose at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, Ohio during its second year, in 1937. The show featured Olympians Johnny Weissmuller, Eleanor Holm Jarret, Dick Degener, and other performers in a 5000-seat amphitheater that could seat 2000 diners. There was a 128 foot wide floating stage constructed on barges that could be moved to shore electrically for use as a dance floor. Dance bands such as Wayne King, Shep Fields, and Glen Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra performed there. Later ''Aquacade'' moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair where it was the most successful production of the fair (Lowe). The Art Deco 11,000 seat amphitheatre at the north end of Meadow Lake was designed by architects Sloan & Robertson. Shows were staged by John Murray Anderson to the orchestrations of Ted Royal. The pool and the 300 by stage could be hidden behind a lighted high curtain of water. In addition to Wei ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Billy Rose
Billy Rose (born William Samuel Rosenberg; September 6, 1899 – February 10, 1966) was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. For years both before and after World War II, Billy Rose was a major force in entertainment, with shows such as ''Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt'' (1931), ''Jumbo'' (1935), '' Billy Rose's Aquacade'' (1937), and '' Carmen Jones'' (1943). As a lyricist, he is credited with many songs, notably " Don't Bring Lulu" (1925), " Tonight You Belong To Me" (1926), " Me and My Shadow" (1927), "More Than You Know" (1929), " Without a Song" (1929), "It Happened in Monterrey" (1930) and " It's Only a Paper Moon" (1933). Despite his accomplishments, Rose may be best known today as the husband of famed comedian and singer Fanny Brice (1891–1951). Life and work Rose was born to a Jewish family in New York City, United States. He attended Public School 44, where he was the 50-yard dash champion. While in high school, Billy studied shorthand under John ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gertrude Ederle
Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1906 – November 30, 2003) was an American competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and world record-holder in five events. On August 6, 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Among other nicknames, the press sometimes called her " Queen of the Waves". Early years Gertrude Ederle was born on October 23, 1906, in Manhattan, New York City. She was the third of six children and the daughter of German immigrants, Gertrude Anna Haberstroh and Henry Ederle. According to a biography of Ederle, ''America's Girl'', her father ran a butcher shop on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. Her father taught her to swim in Highlands, New Jersey, where the family owned a summer cottage. Amateur career Ederle trained at the Women's Swimming Association (WSA), which produced such competitors as Ethelda Bleibtrey, Charlotte Boyle, Helen Wainwright, Aileen Riggin, Eleanor Holm and Esther Williams. Her yearly dues of $3 allowed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York Public Library For The Performing Arts
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one of the branch libraries. History Founding and original configuration Originally the collections that formed The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA) were housed in two buildings. The Research collections on Dance, Music, and Theatre were located at the New York Public Library Main Branch, now named the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, and the circulating music collection was located in the 58th Street Library. A separate center to house performing arts ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alice Hughes
Alice Mary Hughes (1857–1939) was a leading London portrait photographer specializing in images of fashionable women and children. Biography Hughes was the eldest daughter of the portrait painter Edward Hughes (1832-1908). After studying photography at the London Polytechnic she opened a studio in 1891 next to her father's in Gower Street, London which she operated until December 1910. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 11 March 2013. In her day, she was a leading photographer of royalty, fashionable women and children producing elegant prints. During her most successful periods, she employed up to 60 women and took up to 15 sittings a day. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Gelernter
David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an American computer scientist, artist, and writer. He is a professor of computer science at Yale University. Gelernter is known for contributions to parallel computation in the 1980s, and for books on topics such as computed worlds (''Mirror Worlds''). Gelernter is also known for his belief, expressed in his book '' America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats)'', that liberal academia has a destructive influence on American society. He is in addition known for his views against women in the workforce, and his rejection of the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change and evolution. In 1993 Gelernter was sent a mail bomb by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber. He opened it and the resulting explosion almost killed him, leaving him with permanent loss of use of his right hand, and permanent damage to his right eye. Early life and education Gelernter grew up on Long ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Esther Williams
Esther Jane Williams (August 8, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American competitive swimmer and actress. She set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team. Unable to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics because of the outbreak of World War II, she joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, where she took on the role vacated by Eleanor Holm after the show's move from New York City to San Francisco. While in the city, she spent five months swimming alongside Olympic gold-medal winner and ''Tarzan'' star Johnny Weissmuller. Williams caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer scouts at the Aquacade. After appearing in several small roles, and alongside Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film and future five-time co-star Van Johnson in '' A Guy Named Joe'', Williams made a series of films in the 1940s and early 1950s known as "aquamusicals", which featured elaborate performances with synchronised swimming and diving. Every year from 1945 to 1949, W ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Golden Gate International Exposition
The Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) (1939 and 1940), held at San Francisco's Treasure Island, was a World's Fair celebrating, among other things, the city's two newly built bridges. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. The exposition opened from February 18, 1939, through October 29, 1939, and from May 25, 1940, through September 29, 1940. History The idea to hold a World's Fair to commemorate the completion of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge started from a letter to '' The San Francisco News'' in February 1933. Architects W.P. Day and George Kelham were assigned to consider the merits of potential sites around the city, including Golden Gate Park, China Basin, Candle Stick Point, and Lake Merced. By 1934, the choice of sites had been narrowed to the areas adjoining the two bridges: either "an island built up from shallow water" north of Yerba Buena Island which would go on to be named Treasure Island, or t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Buster Crabbe
Clarence Linden Crabbe II (; February 7, 1908 – April 23, 1983), known professionally as Buster Crabbe, was an American two-time Olympic swimmer and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. Early life Crabbe was born in 1908 to Edward Clinton Simmons Crabbe, a real estate broker, and Lucy Agnes (née McNamara) Crabbe, in Oakland, California. He had a brother, Edward Clinton Simmons Crabbe Jr. (1909–1972). Crabbe grew up in Hawaii and graduated from Punahou School in Honolulu. He then attended the University of Southern California, where he was the school's first All-American swimmer (1931) and a 1931 NCAA freestyle titlist. He also ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fanny Brice
Fania Borach (October 29, 1891 – May 29, 1951), known professionally as Fanny Brice or Fannie Brice, was an American comedienne, illustrated song model, singer, and theater and film actress who made many stage, radio, and film appearances. She is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series '' The Baby Snooks Show''. She was famously portrayed by Barbra Streisand in the stage musical '' Funny Girl''. Early life Fania Borach was born in Manhattan, New York City, United States, the third child of Rose (née Stern 1867–1941), a Jewish Hungarian woman who immigrated to the US at age 10, and Alsatian immigrant Charles Borach. The Borachs were saloon owners and had four children: Phillip, born in 1887; Carrie, born in 1889; Fania, born in 1891; and Louis, born in 1893. Under the name Lew Brice, her younger brother also became an entertainer and was the first husband of actress Mae Clarke. In 1908, Brice dropped out of school to work in a burlesque r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Art Jarrett
Arthur L. Jarrett Jr. (July 20, 1907 – July 23, 1987) born to stage actor and playwright Arthur L. Jarrett Sr. (1884–1960). Art Jr. was an American singer, actor, and bandleader in the 1930s and 1940s. Early career Near the end of the 1920s into the 1930s, Jarrett was a member of the dance orchestras of Earl Burtnett, Ted Weems, Jimmie Noone, and Red Nichols, playing banjo, guitar, and trombone as well as singing. He recorded for Victor and Brunswick. He also recorded a handful of vocals for Isham Jones in 1931. His high tenor voice made him popular in feature films and shorts. He had a record year in 1933, introducing such songs as " Everything I Have is Yours" from ''Dancing Lady'', " Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" from '' Sitting Pretty'', and "Let's Fall in Love" from the movie of the same name. Jarrett also performed in vaudeville. Bandleader In 1936, he left Ted Weems to lead his own orchestra. In 1941, he took on the leadership of Hal Kemp's orchestra follo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bill Robinson
Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging," adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence." His signature routine was the stair dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word ''copacetic'' t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |