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Sol Lesser
Sol Lesser (February 17, 1890 – September 19, 1980) was an American film producer. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1961. Biography In 1913, while living in San Francisco, Sol Lesser learned that the authorities were about to clean out the Barbary Coast district, a raucous area of gambling houses, saloons and brothels. He grabbed a camera and a friend, future Hollywood cameraman Hal Mohr, and roamed the area, especially the parts that were best-known before the area was shut down. (The Barbary Coast was not actually closed down until 1917.) This film is now considered a lost film. The resulting film was '' The Last Night of the Barbary Coast'', an early example of an exploitation film that was sold directly to movie theater owners by Lesser. With the profits from the film, he bought several theaters, and soon owned a cinema chain. Sol Lesser signed Jackie Coogan to a movie contract in 1922, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spokane, Washington
Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada–United States border, Canadian border, west of the Washington–Idaho border, and east of Seattle, along Interstate 90 in Washington, Interstate 90. Spokane is the economic and cultural center of the Spokane metropolitan area, the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene combined statistical area, and the Inland Northwest. It is known as the birthplace of Father's Day (United States), Father's Day, and locally by the nickname of "Lilac City". Officially, Spokane goes by the nickname of ''Hooptown USA'', due to Spokane's annual hosting of the Spokane Hoopfest, the world's largest basketball tournament. The city and the wider Inland Northwest area are served by Spokane International Airport, west of Downtown Spokane, which is located near a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Twist (1922 Film)
''Oliver Twist'' is a 1922 American silent drama film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1838 novel ''Oliver Twist'', featuring Lon Chaney as Fagin and Jackie Coogan as Oliver Twist. The film was directed by Frank Lloyd. It was selected as one of the best pictures of 1922 by New York Times, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Walter J. Israel handled the costuming. Studio interiors were filmed at the Robert Brunton Studios in Hollywood. The film's tagline was "8 Great Reels that make you ask for more. Will Hays says Jackie Coogan Films are the sort the World needs." A still exists showing Fagin training his wards to be pickpockets. Coogan was at the height of his career during the filming, having played the title role in Charles Chaplin's '' The Kid'' the previous year. Chaney was at the height of his career as the silent film's "Man of A Thousand Faces". He would play the title role the following year in '' The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', and three years later '' The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stage Door Canteen (film)
''Stage Door Canteen'' is a 1943 American World War II film with musical numbers and other entertainment interspersed with dramatic scenes by a largely unknown cast. The film was produced by Sol Lesser's Principal Artists Productions and directed by Frank Borzage. The film features many celebrity cameo appearances but primarily relates a simple drama set in the famed New York City restaurant and nightclub for American and Allied servicemen. Six bands are featured. The score and the original song, "We Mustn't Say Goodbye", were nominated for Academy Awards. ''Stage Door Canteen'' is in the public domain in North America and for this reason is widely available in many DVD and VHS releases of varying quality. Plot The film, made in wartime, celebrates the work of the Stage Door Canteen, created in New York City as a recreational center for both American and Allied servicemen on leave to socialize with, be entertained or served by Broadway celebrities. The storyline follows seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Our Town (1940 Film)
''Our Town'' is a 1940 American drama romance film adaptation of the 1938 play of the same name by Thornton Wilder, starring Martha Scott as Emily Webb, and William Holden as George Gibbs. The cast also included Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee and Frank Craven. It was adapted by Harry Chandlee, Craven and Wilder, and directed by Sam Wood. The film was a faithful reproduction of the play except for two significant changes: the film used scenery, whereas the play had not; the events of the third act, which in the play revolve around the death of one of the main characters, were turned into a dream from which she awakens, allowing her to resume a normal life. Producer Sol Lesser worked with Wilder in creating these changes. Wilder wrote Lesser that "Emily should live.... In a movie you see the people ''so close to'' that a distant relation is established. In the theater they are halfway abstractions in an allegory; in the movie they are very concrete... ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Artists
United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own financial and artistic interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios. After numerous ownership and structural changes and revamps, United Artists was acquired by media conglomerate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1981 for a reported $350 million ($ billion today). On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a controlling interest in One Three Media and Lightworkers Media and merged them to revive the television production unit of United Artists as United Artists Media Group (UAMG). MGM itself acquired UAMG on December 14, 2015, and folded it into MGM Television, their own television division. MGM briefly revived the United Artists brand as United Artist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serial Film
A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed. Usually, each serial involves a single set of characters, protagonistic and antagonistic, involved in a single story. The film is edited into chapters, after the fashion of serial fiction, and the episodes should not be shown out of order, as individual chapters, or as part of a random collection of short subjects. Each chapter was screened at a movie theater for one week, and typically ended with a cliffhanger, in which characters found themselves in perilous situations with little apparent chance of escape. Viewers had to return each week to see the cliffhangers resolved and to follow the continuing story. Movie serials were especially popular with children, and for many youths in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Breen
Isadore Borsuk (November 4, 1927 – September 19, 2016), better known as Bobby Breen, was a Canadian-born American actor and singer. He was a popular male child singer during the 1930s and reached major popularity with film and radio appearances. Early life Breen was born Isadore Borsuk on November 4, 1927 (according to some sources he was born in 1928) in Montréal, Canada, the son of Hyman (Chaim) and Rebecca Borsuk. His parents were poor Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. They, along with Breen's three older siblings (Gertrude, Sally, and Michael), migrated from Kyiv to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1927. Soon after, they relocated to Toronto. His singing talent as a boy soprano was discovered at age three by his sister Sally, herself an aspiring musical student who was several years his senior. While their parents did not show any particular interest, Sally decided to help him achieve stardom. With the assistance from her music teacher, Breen got a chance to perform in front of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George O'Brien (actor)
George O'Brien (April 19, 1899 – September 4, 1985) was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the sound film era of the 1930s. He is best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 Academy Award-winning film '' Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans''. O'Brien also starred in a number of Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s, including roles in 14 films under director David Howard and 10 with acclaimed-filmmaker John Ford. Early life O'Brien was born in San Francisco, California, the oldest son of Daniel J. and Margaret L. (née Donahue) O'Brien; O'Brien's father later became the chief of police for the City of San Francisco. (Dan O'Brien ordered the arrest of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in September 1921 at the scandalous Labor Day party held by Arbuckle.) In 1917, O'Brien enlisted in the United States Navy to fight in World War I, serving on a submarine chaser. He volunteered to act as a stretcher bearer for wounded Marines and was decorated for brave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 California gubernatorial election, 1934 Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his muckraking fictional novel, ''The Jungle'', which exposed the fictional labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published ''The Brass Check'', a muckraking Exposé (journalism), exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films '' Strike'' (1925), '' Battleship Potemkin'' (1925) and ''October'' (1928), as well as the historical epics '' Alexander Nevsky'' (1938) and ''Ivan the Terrible'' (1945/1958). In its 2012 decennial poll, the magazine '' Sight & Sound'' named his ''Battleship Potemkin'' the 11th-greatest film of all time. Early life Sergei Eisenstein was born on in Riga, in the Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire (present-day Latvia), to a middle-class family. His family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father, the architect Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, was born in the Kiev Governorate, to a Jewish merchant father, Osip, and a Swedish mother. Sergei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
¡Que Viva México! (unfinished Film)
''¡Que viva México!'' (, ; ) is a film project begun in 1930 by the Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) under contract to socialist author Upton Sinclair and other supporters in the United States. It would have been an episodic portrayal of Mexican culture and politics from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican Revolution. Production was beset by difficulties and was eventually abandoned. Jay Leyda and Zina Voynow call it Eisentein's "greatest film plan and his greatest personal tragedy". Overview Eisenstein had come to the United States to work on a film for Paramount Pictures, but, after various projects proposed by Charlie Chaplin and Paramount executives fell through, Paramount released him from his contract. Eisenstein would thereupon have been obliged to return to the USSR, but Upton Sinclair and a small group of financiers recruited by him and his wife Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair intervened on Eisenstein's behalf, inviting him to make a fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures, which is one of the Major film studios, "Big Five" film studios and a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony, Sony Group Corporation. On June 19, 1918, brothers Jack Cohn, Jack and Harry Cohn and their business partner Joe Brandt founded the studio as CBC Film Sales Corporation, Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name on January 10, 1924 (operating as Columbia Pictures Corporation until December 23, 1968), went public two years later, and eventually began to use the image of Columbia (personification), Columbia, the female personification of the United States, as its logo. In its early years, Columbia was a minor player in Hollywood, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
