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Roy Webb
Royden Denslow Webb (October 3, 1888 – December 10, 1982) was an American film music composer. One of the charter members of ASCAP, Webb has hundreds of film music credits to his name, mainly with RKO Pictures. He is best known for film noir and horror film scores, in particular for the films of Val Lewton. Biography Born in Manhattan, New York, Webb orchestrated and conducted for the Broadway stage before moving to Hollywood in the late 1920s to work as music director for Radio Pictures, later RKO Pictures. He remained at RKO until 1955, then worked freelance for several years, scoring several episodes of ''Wagon Train''. Webb is credited as composer or arranger on more than 200 films, and received Academy Award nominations for '' Quality Street'' (1937), ''My Favorite Wife'' (1940), ''I Married a Witch'' (1942), ''Joan of Paris'' (1942), '' The Fallen Sparrow'' (1943), ''The Fighting Seabees'' (1944), and '' The Enchanted Cottage'' (1945). His piano concerto from ''The Enchan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Music
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers under the guidance of or in collaboration with the film's director or producer and are then most often performed by an ensemble of musicians – usually including an orchestra (most likely a symphony orchestra) or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – known as playback singers – and recorded by a sound engineer. The term is less frequently applied to music written for media such as live theatre, television and radio programs, and video games, and said music is typically referred to as either the soundtrack or incidental music. Film scores encompass an enormous variety of style ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
The Los Angeles Philharmonic (LA Phil) is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. The orchestra holds a regular concert season from October until June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July until September. Gustavo Dudamel is the current Music Director, while Esa-Pekka Salonen serves as Conductor Laureate, and Zubin Mehta as Conductor Emeritus. John Adams is the orchestra’s current Composer-in-Residence. Since the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall on October 23, 2003, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has presented 57 world premieres, one North American premiere, and 26 U.S. premieres, and has commissioned or co-commissioned 63 new works. The orchestra's former chief executive officer, Deborah Borda, has said, "Our intention has been to integrate 21st-century music into the orchestra's everyday activity, especially since we moved into the new hall". History 1919–1933: Founding the Philharmonic The orchestra wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Down To Their Last Yacht
''Down to Their Last Yacht'' is a 1934 comic adventure produced and distributed by RKO Pictures. Plot After the stock market crash of 1929, the Colt-Stratton family is forced to rent their yacht to the nouveau riche at the behest of Nella Fitzgerald (Polly Moran), including gambler Barry Forbes (Sidney Blackmer) and his sidekick Freddy Finn (Sterling Holloway). When Freddy rigs the yacht's roulette wheel to respond to his saxophone, he is caught, but moments later, Captain "Sunny Jim" Roberts (Ned Sparks) runs the yacht aground on the South Sea Island of Malakamokolu, ruled by Queen Malakamokalu (Mary Boland), a White woman, who takes the passengers as forced labor. Tiring them, she offers to release them if Barry stays to marry her. However, once she hears Freddy play his saxophone, she falls in love with him and plans to blow up the yacht with a bomb. Barry manages to rescue the passengers, not the boat, and they accept their new home in the tropics. Cast * Mary Boland as Quee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Our Betters
''Our Betters'' is a 1933 American pre-Code satirical comedy film directed by George Cukor and starring Constance Bennett, Anita Louise and Gilbert Roland. The screenplay by Jane Murfin and Harry Wagstaff Gribble is based on the 1917 play of the same title by Somerset Maugham. Tommy Atkins worked as assistant director, while the sets were designed by the art director Van Nest Polglase. Plot Just after her wedding, American hardware heiress Pearl Saunders overhears her husband, Lord George Grayston, telling his mistress that he only married her for her money. Disillusioned, she grows hard and cynical. Five years later, she has made herself a force among the British upper class with her parties. Among her friends are divorced Duchess Minnie, gossip-loving Thornton Clay, philanthropic Princess Flora, and Arthur Fenwick, her wealthy and adoring lover. Arthur discreetly provides her with a much-needed regular allowance, as her now absent husband has squandered most of her fortun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinerama
Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35 mm movie film, 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, Subtended angle, subtending 146-degrees of arc. The trademarked process was marketed by the Cinerama corporation. It was the first of several novel processes introduced during the 1950s when the movie industry was reacting to competition from television. Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening. The Cinerama projection screen, rather than being a continuous surface like most screens, is made of hundreds of individual vertical strips of standard perforated screen material, each about inch (~22 millimeters) wide, with each strip angled to face the audience, to prevent light scattered from one end of the deeply curved screen from reflecting across the screen and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
This Is Cinerama
''This Is Cinerama'' is a 1952 American documentary film directed by Mike Todd, Michael Todd Jr., Walter A. Thompson and Fred Rickey and starring Lowell Thomas.American Film Institute It is designed to introduce the widescreen process Cinerama, which broadens the so that the viewer's peripheral vision is involved. ''This Is Cinerama'' premiered on September 30, 1952, at the in |
The Magnificent Ambersons
''The Magnificent Ambersons'' is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, the second in his ''Growth'' trilogy after '' The Turmoil'' (1915) and before ''The Midlander'' (1923, retitled ''National Avenue'' in 1927). It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1925, it was adapted into the silent film '' Pampered Youth'' directed by David Smith. In 1942, it was made into ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' film written and directed by Orson Welles (though the released version was edited against Welles' wishes). Much later in 2002, came a same-titled TV adaptation based on Welles' screenplay. Plot summary The story is set in a largely-fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place. The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in film scoring. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary." An Academy Award-winner for '' The Devil and Daniel Webster'' (1941), Herrmann worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles's '' The Mercury Theater on the Air'', and his first film score was for Welles's film debut, ''Citizen Kane'' (1941). He is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably '' The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1956) (where he makes a cameo as the conductor at Royal Albert Hall), ''Vertigo'' (1958), ''North by Northwest'' (1959), '' Psycho'' (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American Drama (film and television), drama film directed by, produced by and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's List of directorial debuts, first feature film. The film à clef, quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a composite character based on American Media proprietor, media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick, Harold McCormick, as well as aspects of the screenwriters' own lives. After the Broadway theatre, Broadway success of Welles's Mercury Theatre and the controversial 1938 radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), The War of the Worlds" on ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'', Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Although it was unusual for an untried director, he was given freedom to develop his own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alma Mater
Alma mater (; : almae matres) is an allegorical Latin phrase meaning "nourishing mother". It personifies a school that a person has attended or graduated from. The term is related to ''alumnus'', literally meaning 'nursling', which describes a school graduate. In its earliest usage, ''alma mater'' was an honorific title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele.''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', 3rd edition Later, in Catholicism, it became a title for Mary, mother of Jesus. By the early 17th century, the nursing mother became an allegory for universities. Used by many schools in Europe and North America, it has special association with the University of Bologna, whose motto ''Alma Mater Studiorum'' ("nurturing mother of studies") emphasizes its role in originating the modern university. Several university campuses in North America have artistic representations of ''alma mater'', depicted as a robed woman wearing a laurel wreath crown. Etymology Although ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roar, Lion, Roar
"Roar, Lion, Roar" is the primary fight song of Columbia University. It was originally titled "Bold Buccaneers" and was written with different lyrics for the 1923 Varsity Show ''Half Moon Inn'' by Columbia undergraduates Corey Ford and Morris W. Watkins, and alumnus Roy Webb. In order to compete in the Columbia Alumni Federation's contest to find a school fight song the same year, Ford wrote a new set of lyrics that would become "Roar, Lion, Roar". The title references Columbia's mascot, the Columbia Lion. Lyrics The original lyrics are: Today the song is almost always performed with only the second stanza. "Bold Buccaneers" The 1923 Varsity Show, ''Half Moon Inn'', was based on characters from '' The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.'' by Washington Irving, including Rip Van Winkle and Hendrick Hudson, the historical explorer for whom the Hudson River is named and who discovered Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay on his ship, the '' Halve Maen'' ("Half Moon"). The pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church (Manhattan), Trinity Church in Manhattan, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York (state), New York and the fifth-First university in the United States, oldest in the United States. Columbia was established as a Colonial colleges, colonial college by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College (New York), Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia is organized into twenty schoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
