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Robert Ryan
Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. Known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains, Ryan performed for over three decades. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film noir drama ''Crossfire'' (1947). Early life Ryan was born in Chicago, the first child of Mabel Arbutus (née Bushnell), a secretary, and Timothy Aloysius Ryan, who was from a wealthy family who owned a real estate firm. He was of Irish (his paternal grandparents were from Thurles) and English descent. Ryan was raised Catholic and educated at Loyola Academy. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932, where he held the school's heavyweight boxing title for all four years of his attendance, along with lettering in football and track. After graduation, Ryan found employment as a stoker on a ship that traveled to Africa, a WPA worker, a ranch hand in Montana, and other odd jobs. He returne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Naked Spur
''The Naked Spur'' is a 1953 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, and Millard Mitchell. Written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, the film is about a bounty hunter who tries to bring a murderer to justice, and is forced to accept the help of two strangers who are less than trustworthy. The original music score was composed by Bronisław Kaper and the cinematography was by William C. Mellor. ''The Naked Spur'' was filmed on location in Durango and the San Juan Mountains in Colorado and in Lone Pine, California. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay—a rare honor for a Western. This was the third Western film collaboration between Anthony Mann and James Stewart. In 1997, ''The Naked Spur'' was added to the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2021, ''The Naked Spur'' was released on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born Theatre director, theatre and film director, theater manager, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his radically innovative and avant-garde stage productions, Reinhardt is regarded as one of the most prominent stage directors of the early 20th century. For example, Reinhardt's 1917 stage premiere of Reinhard Sorge's Kleist Prize-winning stage play ''Der Bettler'' almost single-handedly gave birth to Expressionism in Expressionism (theatre), the theatre and ultimately German expressionist cinema, in motion pictures as well. In 1920, Reinhardt established the Salzburg Festival by directing an open air production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Jedermann (play), acclaimed adaptation of the ''Elckerlijc, Everyman'' Medieval mystery play in the square before the Cathedral with the Alps as a background. This remains an annual custom at the Salzburg Festival to this day. Toby Cole and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's ''Lifeboat (1944 film), Lifeboat'' (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981. Bankhead was a member of the List of United States political families (B)#Bankheads and Brockmans, Bankhead and Brockman family, a prominent Alabama political family. Her John H. Bankhead, grandfather and her John H. Bankhead II, uncle were U.S. senators, and William B. Bankhead, her father was Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Bankhead supported liberalism in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Rose
Billy Rose (born William Samuel Rosenberg; September 6, 1899 – February 10, 1966) was an American impresario, theatrical showman, lyricist and columnist. 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 comedian and singer Fanny Brice (1891–1951). Life and work Rose was born to a Jewish family in New York City. He attended Public School 44, where he was the 50-yard dash champion. While in high school, Billy studied shorthand under John Robert Greg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American acting coach and actor. He co-founded, with theatre directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the nonprofit Actors Studio in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school," and, in 1966, he was involved in the creation of Actors Studio West in Los Angeles. Although other highly regarded teachers also developed versions of "The Method," Lee Strasberg is considered to be the "father of method acting in America," according to author Mel Gussow. From the 1920s until his death in 1982, "he revolutionized the art of acting by having a profound influence on performance in American theater and film." From his base in New York, Strasberg trained several generations of theatre and film notables, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clash By Night (play)
''Clash by Night'' is a romantic triangle drama by Clifford Odets which premiered on Broadway in 1941 and was later adapted to film and television. The title derives from Matthew Arnold's poem " Dover Beach" (1867): :Ah, love, let us be true :To one another! for the world, which seems :To lie before us like a land of dreams, :So various, so beautiful, so new, :Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, :Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; :And we are here as on a darkling plain :Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, :Where ignorant armies clash by night. Broadway The title carried a certain irony when Odets' play, produced by Billy Rose, debuted on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Directed by Lee Strasberg, the production opened December 27, 1941 and ran for a total of 49 performances before closing on February 7, 1942. Tallulah Bankhead and Lee J. Cobb headed the cast as Mae and Jerry Wilenski with Katherine Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play '' Clash by Night'' in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948. He returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas Rangers Ride Again
''Texas Rangers Ride Again'' is a 1940 American Western film directed by James P. Hogan, written by William R. Lipman and Horace McCoy, and starring Ellen Drew, John Howard, Akim Tamiroff, May Robson, Broderick Crawford, Charley Grapewin, and John Miljan. It was released on December 13, 1940, by Paramount Pictures. It was a sequel to '' The Texas Rangers''. Plot Ellen Dangerfield returns to her grandparents' ranch in Texas after a 10-year absence when her widowed grandmother Cecilia Dangerfield loses 3000 head of cattle to rustlers. Fed up with her grandson Carter's unwillingness to track down the thieves, Cecilia appeals to her old beau, Ben Caldwalder, of the Texas Rangers, for help. To infiltrate the rustlers, Ranger Jim Kingston poses as an outlaw known as the Pecos Kid, and is hired by Joe Yuma, who owns the packing company. There, Jim learns that Joe has been slaughtering Dangerfield cattle and disposing their carcasses in a lime pit. With his partner, Mace Townsley, Jim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North West Mounted Police (film)
''North West Mounted Police'' is a 1940 American epic north-western film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Madeleine Carroll. Written by Alan Le May, Jesse Lasky Jr., and C. Gardner Sullivan, and based on the 1938 novel ''The Royal Canadian Mounted Police'' by R. C. Fetherstonhaugh, the film is about a Texas Ranger who joins forces with the North-West Mounted Police to put down a rebellion in the north-west prairies of Canada. The supporting cast features Paulette Goddard, Preston Foster, Robert Preston, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney Jr. and George Bancroft. Regis Toomey, Richard Denning, Rod Cameron, and Robert Ryan make brief appearances in the film playing small roles. ''North West Mounted Police'' was DeMille's first film in Technicolor. The film premiered on October 21, 1940, in Regina, Saskatchewan. The film received an Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Anne Bauchens).Meyer 1998, p. 146. Plot In 1885, Métis leader Gabriel Dumo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Of The Mob
''Queen of the Mob'' is a 1940 American film (also known as ''The Woman from Hell''), directed by James P. Hogan. The source material here was a book attributed to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover entitled ''Persons in Hiding''. The events are loosely based on the kidnapping of Edward Bremer by the Barker-Karpis gang, which Hoover believed to have been led by Ma Barker. The names of the persons involved and other details of events were changed at the request of the FBI.Hardy, Philip (ed), ''The BFI Companion to Crime'', British Film Institute, 1997, p.42. Plot Infamous Ma Webster rules her clan of mobsters – mainly consisting of her three more or less criminally inclined sons – with an iron hand and without mercy. She is the terror of Centre City. She refuses to let anyone else handle the planning of all the clan's robberies, much to George Frost's dismay. George is the only clan member who isn't related to Ma Webster. George protests and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ghost Breakers
''The Ghost Breakers'' is a 1940 American mystery/ horror comedy film directed by George Marshall and starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. It was adapted by screenwriter Walter DeLeon as the third film version of the 1909 play '' The Ghost Breaker'' by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard. Along with the Abbott and Costello films ''Hold That Ghost'' and ''Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein'' and Hope and Goddard's own '' The Cat and the Canary'', it is cited as a prime example of the classic Hollywood horror-comedy. The film is primarily set in an abandoned house in Cuba. A woman has just inherited the house and the associated plantation, and she arrives to inspect her property. Accompanying her is her new love interest, a radio broadcaster from Manhattan. The duo encounters a supposed zombie, and take part in treasure hunting in the abandoned house. Plot The film opens in 1940 Manhattan during a violent evening thunderstorm. From a radio studio, broadcaster Larry Law ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Denning
Richard Denning (born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr.; March 27, 1914 – October 11, 1998) was an American actor who starred in science fiction films of the 1950s, including ''Unknown Island'' (1948), ''Creature from the Black Lagoon'' (1954 in film, 1954), ''Target Earth (film), Target Earth'' (1954), ''Day the World Ended'' (1955), ''Creature with the Atom Brain (1955 film), Creature with the Atom Brain'' (1955), and ''The Black Scorpion (film), The Black Scorpion'' (1957). Denning also appeared in the film ''An Affair to Remember'' (1957 in film, 1957) with Cary Grant and on radio with Lucille Ball in ''My Favorite Husband'' (1948–1951), the forerunner of ''I Love Lucy''. He's more well-known as Governor Paul Jameson in late 1960s-early 1980s police procedural TV series ''Hawaii Five-O (1968 TV series), Hawaii Five-O''. Early years Denning was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. After attending Manual Arts High ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
