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Christmas Holiday
''Christmas Holiday'' is a 1944 American film noir crime film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly. Based on the 1939 novel of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, the film is about a woman who marries a Southern aristocrat who inherited his family's streak of violence and instability and soon drags the woman into a life of misery. After he is arrested, the woman runs away from her husband's family, changes her name, and finds work as a singer in a New Orleans dive. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score for Hans J. Salter. Plot On Christmas Eve in New Orleans, U.S. Army officer Charlie Mason meets beautiful Maison Lafitte hostess "Jackie" (whose real name is Abigail Manette). She tells him, in flashbacks, the story of the decline of her marriage with the charming but unbalanced Robert Manette. When her husband kills a bookie, his controlling mother tries to cover it up. When he is caught, she and her son blame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak (; 8 August 1900 – 10 March 1973) was a German Jewish film director. His career spanned some 40 years, working extensively in the United States and France, as well as in his native country. Though he worked in many genres, he was best known as a skilled craftsman of thrillers and film noir, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for '' The Killers'' (1946). Early life Siodmak was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak and the brother of Curt, Werner and Roland. His parents were both from Jewish families in Leipzig (the myth of his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee was necessary for him to obtain a visa in Paris during World War II). He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt directed a film of Siodmak's story '' Conflict'' in 1945). At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble origina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flashback (narrative)
A flashback, more formally known as analepsis, is an interjected scene (fiction), scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the Plot (narrative), story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started. In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma". Flashbacks are important in film noir and melodrama films. In films and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year
"Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year" is the title of a 1943 traditional pop composition by Frank Loesser, written for and introduced in the 1944 film ''Christmas Holiday'', the song was largely overlooked for some ten years before being rediscovered in the mid-1950s to become a pop and jazz standard much recorded by vocalists and instrumentalists. Composition / theme An early instance of Frank Loesser writing his own music for his lyrics, "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year" has been described by singer Michael Feinstein - the "foremost expert on the music of the Great American Songbook" - as "a perfect example of that heart-on-your-sleeve quality evident in so many oesser songs" The composer's daughter: Susan Loesser, classes the song as a rare "melancholy" item in her father's songbook, but one whose lyric is "not without hope". "Spring Will Be ..." belongs to a sub-genre of songs which treat springtime as a metaphor in an ironic context, the most extreme exemplars ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turhan Bey
Turhan Bey (born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Şahultavi, 30 March 192230 September 2012). was an Austrian-born actor of Turkish and Czech-Jewish origins. Active in Hollywood from 1941 to 1953, he was dubbed "The Turkish Delight" by his fans.. After his return to Austria, he pursued careers as a photographer and stage director. Returning to Hollywood after a 40-year hiatus, he made several guest appearances in 1990s television series including ''SeaQuest DSV'', ''Murder, She Wrote'' and ''Babylon 5'' as well as a number of films. After retiring, he appeared in a number of documentaries, including a German-language documentary on his life. Life and career Bey was born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Şahultavi in Vienna, Austria, on 30 March 1922, as the son of a Turkish diplomat and a Czechoslovakian-Jewish mother. After the ''Anschluss'' annexing Austria to Nazi Germany and his parents' divorce, he and his mother immigrated to the United States in October 1938, initially settling in Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dwight Taylor (writer)
Dwight Oliver Taylor (January 1, 1903 – December 31, 1986) was an American author, playwright, and film/television screenwriter. Background Dwight Taylor was the son of actress Laurette Taylor and her husband, Charles A. Taylor. Dwight Taylor attended Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, New Jersey where he began drawing and painting and wrote a book of poetry. After refusing an opportunity to work as a cub reporter for '' The New York World'', he began his career as a journalist for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, serving as one of the first editors for their "Talk of the Town". He began screenwriting for Hollywood films in 1930 and for television in 1953. His first produced play was '' Don't Tell George'' (1928). Other plays included such as ''Lipstick'' and '' Gay Divorce''. Taylor's first screenplay was ''Jailbreak''. First National Pictures bought the project in 1929 while it was still in manuscript form and had Alfred A. Cohn and Henry McCarty adapt it to becom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nightclub Singer
A nightclub act is a production, usually of nightclub music or comedy, designed for performance at a nightclub, a type of drinking establishment, by a nightclub performer such as a nightclub singer or nightclub dancer, whose performance may also be referred to as a ''nightclub act''. A scheduled performance, such as a wedding gig, is a club date.Church , Joseph (2015). ''Music Direction for the Stage: A View from the Podium'', pp. 57–58. Oxford University. . Acts may resemble revues and, "a good part of the music heard in nightclubs is standard (music), standard traditional pop, popular song (jazz standards and the so-called Great American Songbook) and theatre music, theater music repertoire...comedy songs, novelty songs, and the occasional torch song." "Cabaret, literally, is a subset of nightclub performance...In actual modern usage the terms 'nightclub' and 'cabaret' are virtually interchangeable." The role (fiction), role of the female nightclub singer occurs frequ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer (; 28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American films during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised, in romantic dramas such as ''The Garden of Allah (1936 film), The Garden of Allah'' (1936), ''Algiers (1938 film), Algiers'' (1938), and ''Love Affair (1939 film), Love Affair'' (1939), as well as the mystery-thriller ''Gaslight (1944 film), Gaslight'' (1944). He received four Academy Awards, Oscar nominations for Best Actor. He also appeared as himself on the CBS sitcom ''I Love Lucy''. Life and career Early years Boyer was born in Figeac, Lot, France, the son of Augustine Louise Durand and Maurice Boyer, a merchant. Boyer (whose surname comes from , the Occitan language, Occitan word for "cowherd") was a shy small-town boy who discovered the movies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady On A Train
''Lady on a Train'' is a 1945 American crime comedy film noir directed by Charles David and starring Deanna Durbin, Ralph Bellamy, and David Bruce. Based on a story by Leslie Charteris, the film is about a woman who witnesses a murder in a nearby building from her train window. After she reports the murder to the police, who quickly dismiss her story, she turns to a popular mystery writer to help her solve the crime. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound. Plot San Francisco debutante Nicki Collins goes to visit her aunt in New York. Her father's employee, Haskell, is to meet her and facilitate her stay. Before reaching Grand Central, Nicki's train makes a brief stop and, when she looks up from the book she is reading – a mystery by novelist Wayne Morgan – she witnesses a murder in a nearby building. Upon arrival, she slips away from Haskell and goes to the police, but the desk sergeant, seeing the novel in her hand, assumes she imagined the crim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hays Office
The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Under Hays's leadership, the MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began rigidly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. From 1934 to 1954, the code was closely associated with Joseph Breen, the administrator appointed by Hays to enforce the code in Hollywood. The film industry followed the guidelines set by the code well into the late 1950s, but it began to weaken, owing to the combine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger (born Walter Feuchtwanger; July 11, 1894 – November 18, 1968) was an American film producer active from the 1910s, his career concluding with the turbulent production of ''Cleopatra,'' his last film, in 1963. He began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and eventually worked at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. He also served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1939 to October 1941 and from December 1941 to 1945. Strongly influenced by European films, Wanger developed a reputation as an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas. He achieved notoriety when, in 1951, he shot and wounded the agent of his wife, Joan Bennett, because he suspected they were having an affair. He was convicted of the crime and served a four-month sentence, then returned to making movies. After his death, his production compan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Bruce (actor)
David Bruce (born Marden Andrew McBroom; January 6, 1916 – May 3, 1976)Wilson, Scott (2016). "Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed."'. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 96. . """California, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1940-1947", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGXB-2S6G : Fri Apr 04 00:36:36 UTC 2025), Entry for Marden A McBroom and Vernon McBroom. was an American film actor. He was a company member of Peninsula Players Theatre in Fish Creek, Wisconsin in 1939. Life and career Born Marden Andrew McBroom in Kankakee, Illinois (but always known as Andy to his friends), Bruce was the second of four children born to prominent Kankakee restaurateur Vernon McBroom and his wife, the former Neva Voorhees."United States, Census, 1920", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJ4F-KGY : Wed Jan 08 14:58:56 UTC 2025), Entry for Vernon W McBroom and Neva M McBroom, 1920."United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gale Sondergaard
Gale Sondergaard (born Edith Holm Sondergaard; February 15, 1899 – August 14, 1985) was an American actress. Sondergaard began her acting career in theater and progressed to films in 1936. She was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her film debut in '' Anthony Adverse'' (1936). She regularly had supporting roles in films during the late 1930s and 1940s, including '' The Cat and the Canary'' (1939), '' The Mark of Zorro'' (1940) and '' The Letter'' (1940). For her role in '' Anna and the King of Siam'' (1946), she was nominated for her second Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. After 1949, her screen work came to an abrupt end for 20 years, primarily due to the Hollywood blacklist. Married to director Herbert Biberman, Sondergaard supported him when he was accused of communism and imprisoned as one of the Hollywood Ten in the early 1950s. She moved with Biberman to New York City and worked in theater. She only returned to occasiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
