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Byrne Piven
Bernard Piven (September 24, 1929 – February 18, 2002) was an American actor, director and the co-founder of the Playwrights Theatre Club, a forerunner of comedy enterprise The Second City. Life and career Piven was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania the son of Katie (née Balaban) and Samuel Piven, who were Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants. He came to Chicago in 1954 and met Joyce Hiller at the University of Chicago. They were married a short time later. In the 1950s, the Pivens were two of the founding members of the Playwrights Theatre Club, along with Paul Sills and David Shepard. Playwrights featured such budding stars as Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner and Barbara Harris. In the mid-1950s, the Pivens moved to New York, where they studied with Uta Hagen. Piven played the leads in several New York Shakespeare Festival productions. He was also part of the Obie Award-winning cast of ''A House Remembered''. They returned to Chicago in 1967 to rejoin Sills, Sheldon Patinkin, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Scranton is the most populous city in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley metropolitan area, which has a population of 562,037 as of 2020. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, sixth-most populous city in Pennsylvania. The contiguous network of five City, cities and more than 40 boroughs all built in a straight line in Northeastern Pennsylvania's urban core act culturally and logistically as one continuous city, so while Scranton is a mid-sized city, the larger Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area contains half a million residents in roughly 300 square miles (780 km2). Scranton is the cultural and economic center of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a region of the state with over 1.3 million residents. Scranton hosts a United States federal courts, federal court building for the United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheldon Patinkin
Sheldon Arthur Patinkin (August 27, 1935 – September 21, 2014) was a chair of the Theater Department of Columbia College Chicago, artistic director of the Getz Theater of Columbia College, Artistic Consultant of The Second City and of Steppenwolf Theatre and co-director of the Steppenwolf Theatre Summer Ensemble Workshops. He received a Jeff Award for directing his Irving Berlin revue ''Puttin’ on the Ritz'' and a special Jeff for his contribution to Chicago theater. His translation of Brecht's '' The Good Person of Setzuan'' was directed by Frank Galati at the Goodman Theatre. He was a cousin of the actor and singer Mandy Patinkin. Career Among his directing projects outside of the college were ''The Glass Menagerie'' (Gift Theater Company), ''South Pacific'' (Metropolis Art Center), ''Uncle Vanya'' (Steppenwolf), ''Long Day's Journey into Night'' (Irish Rep and the Galway Festival in Ireland) and ''Krapp's Last Tape'' for the Buckets of Beckett Festival, both starring Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Creator (film)
''Creator'' is a 1985 American comedy film directed by Ivan Passer, starring Peter O'Toole, Vincent Spano, Mariel Hemingway, and Virginia Madsen. It is based on the 1980 novel of the same title by Jeremy Leven, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation. Plot Dr. Harry Wolper is an eccentric medical professor teaching at a small Southern California college who is obsessed with making a clone of his wife Lucy who died in childbirth 30 years earlier. Harry hires Boris Lafkin, a struggling pre-med student as his personal assistant to help him with his experiments by obtaining lab equipment and working in his backyard shed in exchange for which Harry gives Boris love life advice in courting an attractive student named Barbara who slowly becomes smitten with Boris. To continue his research into cloning, Harry meets and employs a young woman, named Meli, who practically moves in with him on an agreement to contribute her ovary sample as part of the cloning progress. Meli slowly falls f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Fox Piven
Frances Fox Piven (born October 10, 1932) is an American professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982.Frances Fox Piven Papers – Biographical Note , Sophia Smith Collection, , Five Colleges Archives & Manuscript Collections Piven is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism. A public advocate of the wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frasier
''Frasier'' () is an American television sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for 11 seasons from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey (screenwriter), Peter Casey, and David Lee (screenwriter), David Lee (as Grub Street Productions), in association with Kelsey Grammer, Grammnet Productions (1995–2004) and Paramount Television (original), Paramount Television. The series was created as a Spin-off (media), spin-off of the sitcom ''Cheers''. It continues the story of psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), who returns to his hometown, Seattle, as a radio show host. He reconnects with his father, Martin Crane, Martin (John Mahoney), a retired police officer, and his younger brother, Niles Crane, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), a fellow psychiatrist. Included in the series cast were Peri Gilpin as Frasier's producer Roz Doyle, and Jane Leeves as Daphne Moon, Martin's live-in caregiver. Dan Butler's role as List of Frasie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnum PI
''Magnum, P.I.'' is an American Crime film, crime drama television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from December 11, 1980, to May 1, 1988, during its first-run broadcast on the American television network CBS. ''Magnum, P.I.'' consistently ranked in the top 20 U.S. television programs in the Nielsen ratings during the first five years of its original run, finishing as high as number three for the 1982–83 season. The series entered syndication in 1986 under the title ''Magnum'' in order to differentiate reruns from new episodes still airing under the original title on CBS. A Magnum P.I. (2018 TV series), remake series of the same name was ordered to series on May 11, 2018, and premiered on September 24, 2018, on CBS. Premise Thomas Magnum, Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV is a private investigator played by Tom Selleck. He lives in the guesthouse of a beachfront estate called Robin's Nest, in Hawai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miami Vice
''Miami Vice'' is an American crime drama television series created by Anthony Yerkovich and produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series stars Don Johnson as James "Sonny" Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs, Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, two Miami-Dade Police Department, Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami, Florida. The series ran for five seasons on NBC from September 16, 1984 to June 28, 1989, airing on Friday nights at the 10:00 Post Meridiam, p.m. standard time slot. Unlike traditional police procedurals, ''Miami Vice'' drew heavily upon 1980s culture, specifically noting its integration of contemporary pop and rock music, contemporary Sports car, sports cars (such as the Ferrari Testarossa and Lamborghini Countach), and stylish or stylized visuals. ''People (magazine), People'' magazine states that ''Miami Vice'' was the "first show to look really new and different since color TV was invented". Decades later, ''Miami Vice'' would s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uncle Ben's
Ben's Original, formerly called Uncle Ben's, is an American brand of parboiled rice and other related food products that were introduced by Converted Rice Inc., which is now owned by Mars, Inc. Uncle Ben's rice was first marketed in 1943 and was the top-selling rice in the United States until the 1990s. In 2020, it was rebranded as "Ben's Original" in the US and Canada. History In the 1910s, the German-British chemist Erich Huzenlaub (1888–1964) and the British chemist Francis Heron Rogers invented a form of parboiling designed to retain more of the nutrients in rice, now known as the Huzenlaub Process. The process entailed vacuum drying the whole grain, then steaming, and finally, vacuum drying and removal of the husk. This increased the rice's nutritional value, reduced cooking time, and made it resistant to weevils. In 1932, Forrest Mars Sr. moved to the United Kingdom with a remit to expand the Mars food company internationally. While in the United Kingdom, M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aidan Quinn
Aidan Quinn (born March 8, 1959) is an Irish-American actor. He made his film debut in '' Reckless'' (1984), and has starred in over 80 feature films, including ''Desperately Seeking Susan'' (1985), '' The Mission'' (1986), '' Stakeout'' (1987), ''All My Sons'' (1987), '' Avalon'' (1990), ''The Handmaid's Tale'' (1990), ''Benny & Joon'' (1993), '' Legends of the Fall'' (1994), '' Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'' (1994), '' Michael Collins'' (1996), ''Practical Magic'' (1998), '' Song for a Raggy Boy'' (2003), '' Wild Child'' (2008) and ''Unknown'' (2011). He also played Captain Thomas "Tommy" Gregson on the CBS television series '' Elementary'' (2012–19). Quinn has received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in the television films '' An Early Frost'' (1985) and ''Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'' (2007). Highly active in Irish cinema as well as in the United States, Quinn is a four-time Irish Film and Television (IFTA) Award nominee, winning Best Support ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sunshine Boys
''The Sunshine Boys'' is an original two-act play written by Neil Simon that premiered December 20, 1972, on Broadway starring Jack Albertson as Willie Clark and Sam Levene as Al Lewis and later adapted for film and television. Plot The play's protagonists are Al Lewis and Willie Clark. Lewis and Clark were once a successful vaudevillian comedy duo known as the Sunshine Boys. During the later years of their 43-year run, animosity between the partners grew to the point where they ceased to speak with each other. Eleven years prior to the events of the play, Al retired from show business, leaving Willie struggling to keep his career afloat. Willie, now an old man struggling with memory loss, reluctantly accepts an offer from his nephew Ben, a talent agent, to reunite with Al for a CBS special on the history of comedy. Willie and Al meet in Willie's apartment to rehearse their classic doctor and tax collector sketch. The reunion gets off to a bad start, with the two gettin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shelley Berman
Sheldon Leonard Berman (February 3, 1925 – September 1, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, writer, teacher, and lecturer. He was awarded three gold records for his comedy albums and he won the first Grammy Award for a spoken comedy recording in 1959. In 2008 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Larry David's father on '' Curb Your Enthusiasm. Berman taught humor writing at the University of Southern California for more than 20 years. Early life and education Berman was born in Chicago, the son of Irene (née Marks) and Nathan Berman. He was Jewish. He had a younger brother, Ronald. He served in the Navy during World War II, after which he enrolled in Chicago's Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago (now at DePaul University) as a drama student. There he met fellow student Sarah Herman, whom he married in 1947. His career began with an acting company in Woodstock, Illinois, and in 1949 he and his wife made their way to New York City ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Jefferson
Joseph Jefferson III (February 20, 1829 – April 23, 1905), often known as Joe Jefferson, was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedians. Beginning as a young child, he continued as a performer for most of his 76 years. Jefferson was particularly well known for his adaptation and portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on the stage, reprising the role in several silent film adaptations. After 1865, he created no other major role and toured with this play for decades. Life and career Jefferson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Joseph Jefferson Jr., was a scenic designer and actor and his mother an actress. He appeared onstage early in life, often being used when a play called for "a babe in arms". His first recorded appearance was at the Washington Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he appeared in a benefit performance for the minstrel Thomas D. Rice. Jefferson was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
