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The Michelangelo
The Taft Hotel building is a 22-story pre-war Spanish Renaissance structure that occupies the eastern side of Seventh Avenue between 50th and 51st streets, just north of Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. In its modern configuration, it features two separate portions with their own entrance on 51st Street. The larger portion is devoted to the residential condominium called Executive Plaza, with each of its 440 units being privately owned. Certain units are rented by their owners to the public. A smaller portion of the building contains The Michelangelo, a Starhotels hotel. History Hotel Manger On October 22, 1924, it was announced that Manger Hotels, owned by the Manger brothers, had purchased a block on Seventh Avenue between 50th and 51st streets from Realty Associates and Bing & Bing for approximately $5.5 million, after plans for a sports arena on that site fell through. H. Craig Severance was hired to design a 1,250 room hotel and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Roxy Theatre (New York City)
The Roxy Theatre was a 5,920-seat movie palace at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, just off Times Square in New York City. It was the largest movie theater ever built at the time of its construction in 1927. It opened on March 11, 1927 with the silent film ''The Love of Sunya'' starring Gloria Swanson. It was a leading Broadway film showcase through the 1950s and also noted for its lavish stage shows. It closed and was demolished in 1960. Early history The theater was conceived by film producer Herbert Lubin in mid-1925 as the world's largest and finest movie palace. To realize his dream, Lubin brought in the successful and innovative theater operator Samuel Roxy Rothafel, Samuel L. Rothafel, aka "Roxy", enticing him with a large salary, a percentage of the profits and stock options, and even offering to name the theatre after him. It was intended as the first of six Roxy Theatres in the New York area. Roxy was determined to make the theater the summit of his c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, largest, and average area per state and territory, smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's Economy of New York City, economic and Government of New York City, administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, Media in New York City, media, and show business, entertainment capital of the world. Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonization of the Americas, D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Dolly Dawn
Dolly Dawn (born Theresa Anna Maria Stabile; February 3, 1916 – December 11, 2002) was an American big band singer. She was vocalist with George Hall's Hotel Taft Orchestra in the 1930s, and later had a solo career. Biography Dawn was born Theresa Anna Maria Stabile in Newark, New Jersey on February 3 1916, and grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. Her parents were Italian immigrants; the jazz saxophonist Dick Stabile was a cousin. Dawn initially used stage name Billie Starr, and appeared weekly on a local radio show. In 1935 she replaced Loretta Lee as vocalist with George Hall's orchestra; she was given the name Dolly Dawn by Harriet Mencken, a writer for the ''New York Journal-American''. She and the band broadcast six days a week from the Grill Room of the Taft Hotel in New York via CBS Radio, and became very popular. Her most successful song with the band was "You're a Sweetheart", released in 1938. On July 4, 1941, at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, George Hall offi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Penn Mutual
The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, commonly referred to as Penn Mutual, was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1847. It was the seventh mutual life insurance company chartered in the United States. As of 2019, it had 3,140 employees, $3.7 billion in revenue, and $36.7 billion in assets. Penn Mutual is headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. In 2024, Penn Mutual announced that the Penn Mutual Board of Trustees approved a record $265 million dividend award in 2025 to participating policyholders. Dividends are a key measure of a mutual company’s performance, and Penn Mutual's dividend history remains one of the strongest and most consistent in the industry. Buildings Penn Mutual's original Philadelphia headquarters was erected in 1850–51 to designs by architect Gordon Parker Cummings, at the northeast corner of Third and Dock. The five-story building was the "first cast-iron building in Philadelphia, and one of the earliest cast-iron b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Dinner Date (1950 DuMont TV Series)
''Dinner Date'', also known as ''Dinner Date with Vincent Lopez'', is a musical variety show that was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network on Saturdays from 8 to 8:30 pm ET from January 28, 1950, to July 22, 1950 or July 29, 1950. The show, "a relaxed program of music and song", hosted by bandleader Vincent Lopez, was broadcast from the Grill Room at the Hotel Taft in New York City, where Lopez and his orchestra performed from 1942 to 1962. Besides Lopez's longtime vocalists Lee Russell and Ann Warren, the show featured guest stars such as Cab Calloway, Arthur Tracy, and Woody Herman. Episodes often featured content related to letters sent in by viewers or to names of some of the viewers. The shows were unscripted, but Lopez planned "to the second" what he, the orchestra, and other performers would do. Unlike some contemporary variety programs, performers appeared only once in each episode. Warren Russell and George Putnam were the announcers. ''Dinner Dates competition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network (also the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being first overall in the United States. It was owned by DuMont Laboratories, Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and television set manufacturer and broadcasting company. DuMont was founded in 1940 and began operation on August 15, 1946. The network was hindered by the cost of broadcasting, a freeze on new television stations in 1948 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and even by the company's partner, Paramount Pictures. Despite its innovations in broadcasting, and launching one of television's biggest stars of the 1950s — Jackie Gleason — the network never reached solid finances. Forced to expand on Ultra high frequency, UHF channels when UHF tuning was not yet standard on television sets, DuMont fought an uphill battle for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Gloria Parker
Gloria Parker (née Rosenthal; August 20, 1921April 13, 2022) was an American musician and bandleader who had a radio show during the big band era. '' The Gloria Parker Show'' was broadcast nightly from 1950 to 1957, coast to coast on WABC. She played the marimba, organ, and singing glasses ( glass harp). Dubbed ''Princess of the Marimba'', she conducted the 21-piece Swingphony from the Kelly Lyceum Ballroom in Buffalo, New York. This was the largest big band led by a female bandleader. Edgar Battle and Walter Thomas were arrangers for the Swingphony. Early life Parker was born in Brooklyn on August 20, 1921. Her father, Jack, was the owner of a garage; her mother, Rose (Glickman), was a violinist with Mark Warnow & the Hit Parade Orchestra. Her grandfather immigrated to the United States from the modern-day Czech Republic, and taught her how to play glasses. She started learning the violin at the age of four or five, playing a quarter-sized version of the instrument at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Vincent Lopez
Vincent Lopez (December 30, 1895 – September 20, 1975) was an American bandleader, actor, and pianist. Early life and education Lopez was born of Portuguese immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, Distinguished Americans & Canadians of Portuguese Descent and was leading his own dance band in New York City by 1916. On November 27, 1921, his band began broadcasting on the new medium of entertainment radio; the band's weekly 90-minute show on the Newark, New Jersey, station WJZ boosted the popularity of both himself and of radio. He became one of North America's most popular bandleaders, and would retain that status through the 1940s. Career He began his radio programs by announcing "Hello everybody, Lopez speaking!" His theme song was "Nola", Felix Arndt's novelty ragtime piece of 1915, and Lopez became so identified with it that he occasionally satirized it. (His 1939 movie short for Vitaphone, ''Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra'', features the entir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tony Pastor (bandleader)
''For the Victorian era impresario of the same name, see Tony Pastor.'' Tony Pastor (born Antonio Pestritto; October 26, 1907 – October 31, 1969) was an Italian American novelty singer and tenor saxophonist. Career He was born in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. Pastor began playing saxophone when he was sixteen. He played tenor sax with John Cavallaro (1927), Irving Aaronson (1928–30), and Austin Wylie (1930), then opened his own night club in Hartford, Connecticut and led the band there for three years. After that, he played with Smith Ballew (1934), Joe Venuti, Paul Fredricks, Vincent Lopez, and Artie Shaw's first (1936–37) and second (1937–39) orchestras. In November 1939, when Shaw walked off the bandstand in the Cafe Rouge located inside the Hotel Pennsylvania (essentially quitting his own band), Pastor was soon coaxed into leading his own big band, which he did from 1939 to 1959. Radio Soon after going out on his own, Pastor and his orchestra played ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Glenn Miller
Alton Glen "Glenn" Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band conductor, arranger, composer, trombonist, and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Army Air Forces, US Army Air Forces. His civilian band, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, was one of the most popular and successful bands of the 20th century and the big band era. Glenn Miller and his Orchestra was the best-selling recording band from 1939 to 1942. Unlike his military unit, Miller's civilian band did not have a string section, but it did have a Slapping (music), slap bass in the rhythm section. It was also a touring band that played multiple radio broadcasts nearly every day. Its best-selling records include Miller's theme song, "Moonlight Serenade", and the first gold record ever made, "Chattanooga Choo Choo", a song on the soundtrack of Miller's first film, ''Sun Valley Serenade'', and the number-one song in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Jimmy Dorsey
James Francis Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards " I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and " It's the Dreamer in Me". His other major recordings were "Tailspin", " John Silver", " So Many Times", " Amapola", "Brazil ( Aquarela do Brasil)", " Pennies from Heaven" with Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Frances Langford, "Grand Central Getaway", and " So Rare". He played clarinet on the seminal jazz standards " Singin' the Blues" in 1927 and the original 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind", which were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Early life Jimmy Dorsey was born on Leap Day 1904 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, United States, the first son of Theresa Langton Dorsey and Thomas Francis Dorsey. His father, Thomas, was initially a coal miner, but would later become a music teacher and marching-band director. Both Jimmy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
