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George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film. Early life and education Devine was born in Hendon, London to Georgios Devine (son of an Irish father and a Greek mother) and a Canadian mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady (from Vancouver). His father was a clerk in Martins Bank. Ruth Devine became mentally unstable after her son's birth, and his parents' marriage, deeply unhappy throughout his early childhood, had broken down by the time he was in his early teens. Around this time he was sent to Clayesmore School, an independent boys' boarding school founded by his uncle Alexander "Lex" Devine, who took his nephew under his wing hoping that he would take over the running of the school. In 1929, Devine went to Oxford University to read for a degree in history at Wadham College. It was at Oxford that his interest i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophie Harris
Audrey Sophia "Sophie" Harris (2 July 1900 – 10 March 1966) was an English award winning theatre and opera costume and scenic designer. Biography Born in Hayes, Kent, the third child and first daughter of William Birkbeck Harris, a Lloyds Insurance clerk, and his wife Kathleen Marion Carey. With her younger sister Margaret "Percy" Harris she studied at The Chelsea Illustrators Studio in London. A fellow student was Elizabeth Montgomery, and the three formed a theatre design partnership known as Motley Theatre Design Group. The first full-scale production on which they worked was ''Romeo and Juliet'' for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), John Gielgud's début as a director. The great success of this led to an invitation from Gielgud to design Gordon Daviot's ''Richard of Bordeaux'', which opened at the New Theatre in St Martins Lane, London, in February 1933. The production was a huge success, achieving cult status, with playgoers queuing round the block ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Jacques Saint-Denis (13 September 1897 – 31 July 1971), ''dit'' Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theatre director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theatre from the 1930s on. Life and career Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who had founded the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1913. Saint-Denis was exposed to theatre early in his life. He joined Copeau's troupe in 1919, after their return from New York City, where they had performed for two years. Saint-Denis was greatly influenced by Copeau's approach to theatre taught at his Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, which embraced not only the play on stage but also the actor training itself. He soon became Copeau's right-hand man, like Charles Dullin or Louis Jouvet before him. Together with other members of the troupe of the Vieux-Colombier, he followed his uncle to Burgundy in 1924, where they formed a new troupe th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daphne Du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist. Although du Maurier is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but they have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels ''Rebecca (novel), Rebecca'', ''Frenchman's Creek (novel), Frenchman's Creek'', ''My Cousin Rachel'' and ''Jamaica Inn (novel), Jamaica Inn'', and the short stories "The Birds (story), The Birds" and "Not After Midnight, and Other Stories#"Don't Look Now", Don't Look Now". Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Expectations (1946 Film)
''Great Expectations'' is a 1946 British drama film directed by David Lean, based on the 1861 novel by Charles Dickens and starring John Mills and Valerie Hobson. The supporting cast included Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt and Alec Guinness. The script is based on a slimmed-down version of Dickens' novel. It was written by David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and Kay Walsh, after Lean had seen an abridged 1939 stage version of the novel, written by Alec Guinness. In the stage version, Guinness had played Herbert Pocket while Martita Hunt played Miss Havisham, roles that they reprised for the film. However, the film was not a strict adaptation of the play. The film was produced by Ronald Neame and photographed by Guy Green. It was the first of two films Lean directed based on Dickens' novels, the other being his 1948 adaptation of ''Oliver Twist''. John Bryan and Wilfred Shi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of Cinema of the United Kingdom, British cinema. He directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), ''Lawrence of Arabia (film), Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), ''Doctor Zhivago (film), Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), ''Ryan's Daughter'' (1970), and ''A Passage to India (film), A Passage to India'' (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels ''Great Expectations (1946 film), Great Expectations'' (1946) and ''Oliver Twist (1948 film), Oliver Twist'' (1948), as well as the romantic drama ''Brief Encounter'' (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's ''In Which We Serve'', which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios, be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham is a character in Charles Dickens's 1861 novel ''Great Expectations''. She is a wealthy spinster, once jilted at the altar, who insists on wearing her wedding dress for the rest of her life. She lives in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. Dickens describes her as looking like "the witch of the place". In the novel, she schemes to have the young orphan, Pip, fall in love with Estella, so that Estella can " break his heart". Although she has often been portrayed in film versions as very elderly, Dickens's own notes indicate that she is only in her mid-thirties at the start of the novel. However, it is indicated in the novel that her long seclusion without sunlight has aged her. She is one of the most gothic characters in the work of Dickens. Character history Miss Havisham's father was a wealthy brewer and her mother died shortly after she was born. Her father remarried and had an illegitimate son, Arthur, with the household cook. Miss Havis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martita Hunt
Martita Edith Hunt (30 January 190013 June 1969) was an Argentine-born British theatre and film actress. She had a dominant stage presence and played a wide range of powerful characters. She is best remembered for her performance as Miss Havisham in David Lean's '' Great Expectations'' (1946). Early life Hunt was born in Buenos Aires on 30 January 1900 to English parents Alfred and Marta (née Burnett) Hunt. Aged ten, she travelled with her parents to the United Kingdom, where she attended Queenwood Ladies' College in Eastbourne, and then trained as an actress. Career Early theatrical career Hunt began her acting career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before moving to London. She first appeared there in the Stage Society's production of Ernst Toller's ''The Machine Wreckers'' at the Kingsway Theatre in May 1923. From 1923 to 1929, she appeared as the Principessa della Cercola in W. Somerset Maugham's '' Our Betters'' (Globe, 1924) and as Mrs. Linde in Ibsen's ''A Doll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Expectations
''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by English author Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. The novel is a bildungsroman and depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens' second novel, after ''David Copperfield'', to be fully narrated in the first person.''Bleak House'' alternates between a third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, but the former is predominant. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical '' All the Year Round'', from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman & Hall published the novel in three volumes. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. ''Great Expectations'' is full of extreme imagery—poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death—and has a colour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John Dickens, John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed Penny reading, readings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned vigor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. In the BFI, British Film Institute listing of 1999 of BFI Top 100 British films, the 100 most important British films of the 20th century, he was the single most noted actor, represented across nine films — six in starring roles and three in supporting roles — including five directed by David Lean and four from Ealing Studios. He won an Academy Awards, Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, BAFTA, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Golden Globe and a Tony Award. In 1959, he was Knight Bachelor, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989. Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Characters in Hamlet#Osric, Osric in ''Haml ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jocelyn Herbert
Jocelyn Herbert RDI (22 February 1917 – 6 May 2003) was a British stage designer. Early life Born in London the second of the four children of playwright, novelist, humorist and parliamentarian A. P. Herbert (1890–1971), through her father she had contact with artists, writers and stage people. She began her artistic training in Paris under the painter André Lhote (1885–1962). She then continued her education at the Slade School of Art, London where she trained in theatre design before joining the London Theatre Studio in 1936 where her theatre designs were used in the Studio's theatrical experiments. It was here that she was taught by Margaret Harris and Sophie Harris of the Motley Theatre Design Group. World War II (1939–45) interrupted this final stage of training, leading Herbert to concentrate on her family life. The Royal Court Theatre and George Devine Herbert's professional career began in 1956 when she joined George Devine's English Stage Company. Dev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Theatre Studio
The London Theatre Studio was a drama school, drama and design school in Upper Street, Islington, London, from 1936 to 1939. It was directed by the French actor and director Michel Saint-Denis. The school was the first in England to teach theatrical design as well as drama. It was closed at the beginning of the World War II, Second World War, and after the war its director and other instructors returned to teaching drama and design in other places. Background In 1929, with the support of Jacques Copeau, his uncle, Michel Saint-Denis and other members of Copeau's company moved to Paris and established the ''Compagnie des Quinze'', a company of actors, in which Saint-Denis put into effect the innovative teaching methods of Copeau. This folded in 1934, and in 1935 Saint-Denis moved to London, where the next year he founded the London Theatre Studio with George Devine, Marius Goring, and Glen Byam Shaw. with a conversion of the building designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
