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John Monk Saunders
John Monk Saunders (November 22, 1897 – March 11, 1940) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and film director. Early life and career Born in Hinckley, Minnesota, to Robert C. Saunders and Nannie Monk Saunders, his family (6 children) moved to Seattle, Washington in 1907 where his father served as US Attorney. John attended Broadway High School, where he excelled as both student and athlete. Saunders, a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity, received his education at University of Washington in Seattle where he was president of his freshman class and quarterback on the freshman football team. He served in the Air Service during World War I as a flight instructor in Florida, but was never able to secure a posting to France, a disappointment that frustrated him for the remainder of his life. After the University of Washington, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, entering in the fall of 1919 where he was the first American to attend Magdalen College. Saunders was a member of their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fay Wray
Vina Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was a Canadian-American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film ''King Kong''. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed the first "scream queen". She had minor film roles, and gained media attention as one of the "WAMPAS Baby Stars" in 1926. This led to her contract with Paramount Pictures as a teenager, where she made more than a dozen feature films. After leaving Paramount, she signed deals with various film companies, got her first roles in horror films and many other types, including in '' The Bowery'' (1933) and '' Viva Villa!'' (1934), both of which star Wallace Beery. For RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., Wray starred in her most identifiable film, ''King Kong'' (1933). After its success, she had numerous roles in film and television, retiring in 1980. Life and career Early life Wray was born o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Award For Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (also known as Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony. The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception. There have been 611 films nominated for Best Picture and 97 winners. History Category name changes At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929 (for films made in 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English and American actor. Known for his blended British and American accent, debonair demeanor, lighthearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing, he was one of Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood's definitive leading man, leading men. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, Academy Award, received an Academy Honorary Award in 42nd Academy Awards, 1970, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. He was named AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars#List of 50 greatest screen legends: Top 25 Male and Top 25 Female stars, the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999. Grant was born into an impoverished family in Bristol, where he had an unhappy childhood marked by the absence of his mother and his father's alcoholism. He became attracted to theatre at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome. At 16, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fredric March
Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated stars of the 1930s and 1940s.Obituary '' Variety'', April 16, 1975, page 95. As a performer he was known for his versatility. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two Tony Awards as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and three Emmy Awards. March began his career in 1920, by working as an extra in movies filmed in New York City. He made his stage debut on Broadway in 1926 at the age of 29, and by the end of the decade, he had signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures. He made seven pictures in 1929. He went on to receive two Academy Awards, for his performances in ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' (1931) and ''The Best Years of Our Lives'' (1946). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in the films '' The Royal Family of Broadway'' (1930), '' A Star is Born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Eagle And The Hawk (1933 Film)
''The Eagle and the Hawk'' is a 1933 American Pre-Code aerial war film set in World War I . It was directed by Stuart Walker and Mitchell Leisen and was based on an original story by John Monk Saunders. The film stars Fredric March and Cary Grant as Royal Flying Corps fighter pilots. The supporting cast includes Carole Lombard, Jack Oakie, and Sir Guy Standing. Plot In World War I, American born pilots Lt. Jerry Young (Fredric March) and Lt. Mike "Slug" Richards (Jack Oakie) join Britain's Royal Flying Corps and are assigned to the dangerous mission of reconnaissance over enemy lines. During furious fighting, Jerry loses his air gunners/observers, one after the other, until only Henry Crocker (Cary Grant) is available to fly with him. The two men had previously met and fought. Jerry's dislike of Crocker grows after Crocker shoots a parachuting German observer who bailed out of a blimp. They eventually become friends of a sort, but Henry realizes that the war is taking a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Last Flight (1931 Film)
''The Last Flight'' (aka ''Single Lady'' and ''Spent Bullets'') is a 1931 American pre-Code ensemble cast film, starring Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler. It was directed by German filmmaker William Dieterle in his debut as an English-language film director. Modern sources consider ''The Last Flight'' one of the few cinematic treatments of "The Lost Generation." The scarred young World War I veterans have opted out of society to drink indefinitely and almost continuously in Paris with the vivacious and beautiful woman they have befriended.Pendo 1985, p. 12. Plot After World War I, pilots Cary Lockwood ( Richard Barthelmess), Shep Lambert ( David Manners), Bill Talbot ( John Mack Brown) and Francis ( Elliott Nugent) band together in Paris. Feeling they have no future, the men are constantly drunk. One night, as they make the rounds of nightclubs, they meet Nikki ( Helen Chandler), a wealthy but aimless woman, who they invite into their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Finger Points
''The Finger Points'' is a 1931 American Pre-Code drama film directed by John Francis Dillon and written by John Monk Saunders, W.R. Burnett and Robert Lord. The film stars Richard Barthelmess, Fay Wray, Regis Toomey, Robert Elliott, Clark Gable, Oscar Apfel and Robert Gleckler. The film was released by Warner Bros. on April 11, 1931. Clark Gable was chosen to be Louis J. Blanco, the chief enforcer of the mob. Contracted with MGM, Gable filmed scenes for ''The Finger Points'', '' Night Nurse'', and '' The Easiest Way'' simultaneously. Plot Breckenridge "Breck" Lee (Richard Barthelmess) is a young, naïve kid from the South who comes to a big city to get a job as a newspaperman. After getting hired by The Press, his first assignment is to expose the existence of a newly opened gambling parlor. Gangster Louis J. Blanco (Clark Gable) attempts to bribe Lee to keep quiet. Lee refuses to accept the bribe, and publishes an article about the casino which subsequently gets raided by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Fairbanks Jr
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. (December 9, 1909 – May 7, 2000) was an American actor, producer, and decorated United States Navy, naval officer of World War II. He is best-known for starring in such films as ''The Prisoner of Zenda (1937 film), The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1937), ''Gunga Din (film), Gunga Din'' (1939), and ''The Corsican Brothers (1941 film), The Corsican Brothers'' (1941). He was the son of Douglas Fairbanks and the stepson of Mary Pickford, and his first marriage was to actress Joan Crawford. Early life Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. was born in New York City in 1909. He was the only child of actor Douglas Fairbanks and Anna Beth Sully, the daughter of wealthy industrialist Daniel J. Sully. Fairbanks' father was one of cinema's first icons, noted for such swashbuckling adventure films as ''The Mark of Zorro (1920 film), The Mark of Zorro'', ''Robin Hood (1922 film), Robin Hood'', and ''The Thief of Bagdad (1924 film), The Thief of Bagdad''. Fairbanks had small role ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Barthelmess
Richard Semler Barthelmess (May 9, 1895 – August 17, 1963) was an American film actor, principally of the Hollywood silent era. He starred opposite Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith's '' Broken Blossoms'' (1919) and ''Way Down East'' (1920) and was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. The following year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two films: '' The Patent Leather Kid'' and '' The Noose''. Early life Barthelmess was born in New York City, the son of Caroline W. Harris, a stage actress, and Alfred W. Barthelmess. His father died when he was a year old. Through his mother, he grew up in the theatre, doing "walk-ons" from an early age. In contrast to that, he was educated at Hudson River Military Academy at Nyack, New York and Trinity College at Hartford, Connecticut. He did some acting in college and other amateur productions. By 1919 he had five years in stock company experience. Career Russian actress Alla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dawn Patrol (1930 Film)
''The Dawn Patrol'' is a 1930 American Pre-Code Hollywood, pre-Code World War I film starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It was directed by Howard Hawks, a former World War I flight instructor, who even flew in the film as a German pilot in an uncredited role. ''The Dawn Patrol'' won the Academy Award for Best Story for John Monk Saunders, an American writer said to have been haunted by his inability to get into combat as a flyer with the United States Army Air Service, U.S. Air Service. It was subsequently The Dawn Patrol (1938 film), remade in 1938 with the same title, and the original was then renamed ''Flight Commander'' and released later as part of the Warner Bros. film catalog. Plot During World War I, the pilots of an Royal Flying Corps, RFC squadron deal with the stress of combat primarily through nightly bouts of heavy drinking. The two aces of the squadron's "A Flight", Courtney and Scott, have come to hate the commanding officer, Brand, blaming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
She Goes To War
''She Goes to War'' is a 1929 sound part-talkie directed by Henry King and starring Eleanor Boardman. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the RCA Photophone sound-on-film system. The film was released a year after Boardman had starred in '' The Crowd''. Cast * Eleanor Boardman * John Holland * Margaret Seddon * Eulalie Jensen * Edmund Burns * Alma Rubens * Yola d'Avril Music The film featured a theme song entitled “There Is A Happy Land (Far Far Away)” with words by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis and music by Harry Akst. Also featured on the soundtrack are the songs "Wait For Me" and "Judy" which were both composed by the same trio. See also * List of early sound feature films (1926–1929) This is a list of early pre-recorded sound and part or full talking feature films made in the United States and Europe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg (; born Jonas Sternberg; May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an American filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the Silent film, silent to the Sound film, sound era, during which he worked with most of the major Hollywood studios. He is best known for his film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s, including the highly regarded Paramount/UFA production ''The Blue Angel'' (1930). Sternberg's finest works are noteworthy for their striking pictorial compositions, dense décor, chiaroscuro illumination, and relentless camera motion, endowing the scenes with emotional intensity. He is also credited with having initiated the gangster film genre with his silent era movie ''Underworld (1927 film), Underworld'' (1927). Sternberg's themes typically offer the spectacle of an individual's desperate struggle to maintain their personal integrity as they sacrifice themselves for lust or love. He was nominated for the Academy Aw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
