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Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.1978- Marian Anderson was born on February 27, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the first of three sisters in the family. Her father, named John Anderson, was a salesman at a railroad station. Her mother, named Anna Anderson, was a schoolteacher. From the age of six, Anderson sang in the choir of the United Methodist Church, where she became known as the "baby contralto." She taught herself piano and violin until the age of sixteen.
She was sponsored by her neighbors, who raised money for her to study under Giuseppe Boghetti. Their teacher-student relationship blossomed into a friendship that lasted for several decades. Boghetti broadened her range from traditional spirituals to classical opera repertoire. With the help of Joseph Pasternack, Anderson became the first African-American singer to perform with the Philharmonic Society of Philadelphia. Pasternack also introduced her to the Victor recording company, where Anderson made recordings of spirituals in 1923-1924. In 1925, Boghetti secretly entered Anderson in a New York Philharmonic contest, which she won and gave a successful performance with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925, before a crowd of seven thousand.
Anderson went to Europe in 1927, because she saw Europe as a place of real freedom and culture, where she could perfect her craft. She spent most of her time in Germany and Scandinavia making successful tours with the Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen. Vehanen introduced her to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius who added a number of songs to her repertoire. In May of 1934, in Paris Anderson met Sol Hurok, who offered her a guarantee: 15 concerts with a fee of $500 per concert. No other impresario could match Hurok's offer, which Anderson signed. Under the direction of Sol Hurok, Anderson became the third highest box office draw. Her 1935 concert tour of the Soviet Union was another sensation. Anderson managed to overcome the communist censorship by changing the titles of spirituals and religious songs; Shubert's "Ave Maria" was translated by her Russian interpreter as "an aria by Schubert." She was also invited to the Moscow Art Theatre and performed for legendary directors Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
She brought her Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen to America. In 1936 Sol Hurok arranged for her to perform at Constitution Hall, which was owned by the "Daughters of the American Revolution" (DAR). Anderson was rejected because of the "white performers only" policy of the DAR. Hurok quickly turned to a black school in Washington D.C. and the concert was a success. Anderson was invited by the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to perform for President Roosevelt at the White House, and the two women developed friendship. However in 1939, DAR again turned Anderson away from the Constitution Hall. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from DAR in protest of their discrimination of non-white artists. Sol Hurok brilliantly resolved the situation; he organized an open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which was, ironically, near the Constitution Hall. 75,000 people of all races attended that historic concert of Anderson; it was broadcast nationwide and made her a celebrity.
During the 1940's Anderson's best accompanist Kosti Vahanen left for Finland, and her teacher Boghetti passed away. She was diagnosed with a cyst in her throat and had to stop her singing career. Her comeback after a throat surgery in 1948, was another sensation. Her voice sounded as beautiful as ever and the emotional depth in her song interpretations was impressive. However, some critics mentioned her troubles with technique, pitch, and breath in her later years. Anderson's career spanned over forty years. She made over two thousand performances worldwide, including concerts for inaugurations of American Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Kennedy, King Gustav of Sweden, and the King and Queen of England. Anderson became the first African-American vocalist in Japan's history to perform for the Imperial Court in 1953. In 1955, Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, becoming the first African-American singer to perform there. In 1955, she sang in Hebrew with the Israel Philharmonic. In 1958, Anderson was appointed a delegate to the UN and made several diplomatic trips as a "goodwill ambassador" to Africa and Asia.
In 1964 Sol Hurok was asked by Anderson to organize her farewell concert tour. She began her last tour in October of 1964 with a concert in Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall. After six months and 50 concerts in the USA and Canada Anderson gave her final performance on April 18, 1965, at Carnegie Hall. She spent her retirement years on her 155-acre farm in Connecticut, and extended her continuous support of such talents as Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price and others. In 1990, Anderson made a documentary on her life and career, in addition to the documentary of her 1939 Lincoln Memorial Concert. She died of heart failure on April 8, 1993, in Portland, Oregon, and was laid to rest in Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.1978 - Additional Crew
- Actor
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George Balanchine was a Georgian-American ballet dancer and one of the foremost choreographers of the 20th century. Regarded as the founder of American ballet, he established and led the New York City Ballet for more than three decades.
Balanchine was born Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, the son of Meliton Balanchivadze, a noted Georgian composer who later became the Culture Minister of the first Georgian Democratic Republic. Young Balanchine studied piano with his father from the age of 5. In 1913, he was admitted in the ballet class of the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. In 1914, he made his stage debut with the Mariinsky Imperial Ballet as Cupid in "The Sleeping Beauty" ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. In 1921, he graduated as a classic ballet dancer. He also studied piano and composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. From 1921-24, he was a dancer with the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
In 1924, he emigrated from Russia together with his first wife, ballerina Tamara Geva, whom he wed in 1923. That same year auditioned for and was hired as a dancer by impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his "Russian Ballet". A knee injury forced him to quit dancing, and Diaghilev employed him as a choreographer. From 1924-29 he created nine major ballets as well as choreographing smaller productions. He choreographed such ballets as "L'Enfant et les Sortileges" by Maurice Ravel, "Apollon Musagete" and "Le Chant du Rossignol" by Igor Stravinsky, in which he introduced then 14-year-old Alicia Markova.
After Diaghilev's death, Balanchine had a few uncertain years. He played a cameo role as a dancer in Dark Red Roses (1929) with Lydia Lopokova, a former Diaghilev ballerina. After a brief stint with the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, Balanchine moved to Monte Carlo. There, from 1930-33, he choreographed three ballets for "Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo", starring Tamara Toumanova. At that time he collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil. In 1933, he formed "Les Ballets" with Boris Kochno, Diaghilev's last private secretary, and made performances in London. There he was met the young American impresario Lincoln Kirstein, who invited him to start a ballet company in New York. Balanchine said, "Yes. But first, a school", and came to New York at the end of 1933. There he co-founded the School of American Ballet, which opened its doors on January 2, 1934.
In 1935, he co-founded the American Ballet, which became the resident company of the Metropolitan Opera for a few years until their separation from the Opera in 1938. Balanchine took his dancers to Hollywood. There he promoted his second wife, Vera Zorina, to several leading roles and worked as ballet choreographer in The Goldwyn Follies (1938), On Your Toes (1939), We Are Not Alone (1939), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Follow the Boys (1944). In 1946, Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein founded the Ballet Society, renamed the "New York City Ballet" in 1948. It became the most innovative ballet company in the world. He choreographed the five-part series Great Performances: Dance in America (1976) for PBS and the film The Turning Point (1977).
In Christmas 1954, Balanchine staged "The Nutcracker" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and started the tradition of seasonal performances of this classic ballet. His choreography was re-created for the 1993 film version of the production, The Nutcracker (1993). Balanchine and New York City Ballet made a home in the New York State Theater building at Lincoln Center, designed by Philip Johnson, in 1964. The new home for Balanchine's ballet was commissioned and funded with the help of Kirstein, who served as the general director of Balanchine's ballet company from 1933-89. Their work was documented from 1933-55 by photographer George Platt Lynes. Their friends and collaborators were Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, Pavel Tchelitchev, Cecil Beaton, Alexandra Danilova and many others.
Balanchine was married four times, all to ballerinas; he also had common-law relationships, but remained childless. He died in New York on April 30, 1983, and was laid to rest in Oakland Cemetery, Sag Harbor, New York.1978- Music Department
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Richard Rodgers is an American composer, known largely for his work in musical theater.
With 43 Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the most significant American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant impact on popular music.
He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart, with whom he wrote several musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including Pal Joey (1957), A Connecticut Yankee (1955), On Your Toes (1939), Babes in Arms (1939), and Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), South Pacific (1958), The King and I (1956), and The Sound of Music (1965). His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebrated for bringing the Broadway musical to a new maturity by telling stories that were focused around characters and drama rather than the light-hearted entertainment that the genre was known for beforehand.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top American entertainment awards in television, recording, movies and Broadway - an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award, now known collectively as an EGOT. In addition, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of only two people to receive all five awards (Marvin Hamlisch is the other).1978- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Arthur B. Rubinstein was born on 31 March 1938 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for Stakeout (1987), WarGames (1983) and Nick of Time (1995). He was married to Barbara Ferris. He died on 23 April 2018 in the USA.1978- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Aaron Copland is an Academy Award-winning composer (The Heiress (1949)), author, conductor, lecturer and educator. He was educated at public schools and was a music student of his sister and later Leopold Wolfson, Victor Wittgenstein, Clarence Adler, Rubin Goldmark and Nadia Boulanger. In 1925, he received the first Guggenheim fellowship awarded to a composer. He was a lecturer for ten years at the New School for Social Research, a guest lecturer at Harvard University between 1935 and 1944, and Dean of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood from 1946. With Roger Sessions, he organized the Copland-Sessions concert series for young American composers, and he founded the American Festival of Contemporary Music, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York. He was a conductor in the United States and abroad. As a guest conductor for the Boston Symphony, he toured with Charles Münch throughout the Far East in 1960. His memberships included the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal, and the US Medal of Freedom.1979- Music Artist
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On Saturday, June 15th, 1996, an era in jazz singing came to an end, with the death of Ella Fitzgerald at her home in California. She was the last of four great female jazz singers (including Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Carmen McRae) who defined one of the most prolific eras in jazz vocal style. Ella had extraordinary vocal skills from the time she was a teenager, and joined the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1935 when she was 16 years old. With an output of more than 200 albums, she was at her sophisticated best with the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, of George Gershwin, and of Cole Porter. Her 13 Grammy awards are more than any other jazz performer, and she won the Best Female Vocalist award three years in a row. Completely at home with up-tempo songs, her scat singing placed her jazz vocals with the finest jazz instrumentalists, and it was this magnificent voice that she brought to her film appearances. Her last few years, during which she had a bout with congestive heart failure and suffered bilateral amputation of her legs from complications of diabetes, were spent in seclusion.1979- Actor
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This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.1979- Additional Crew
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American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham was a revolutionary artist of modern dance in the early 20th century. Born in Allegheny, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in May 1894, her family moved to California when she was 10. She was inspired at that early age to become a dancer when she saw Ruth St. Denis perform her exotic "Epytia" modern dance in 1914. After much study, Graham brought a different dynamics and interpretation to modern dance, one of sharp angles and natural motion. Graham's father was an "alienist," a term used at the turn of the century describe a physician who specialized in human psychology. Dr. Graham was interested in the way people used their bodies, and that interest was passed on to his eldest daughter. Martha frequently repeated her father's maxim of "Movement never lies." Her abstract approach to dance and her minimal use of costumes and set decorations was disconcerting to audiences accustomed to the lovely fluid movements of modern dance introduced earlier by the likes of Isadora Duncan (many critics accused Graham of making dance "ugly"). What Graham wanted to evoke with her style of dance was a heightened awareness of life. She eventually developed a strong following and won over the critics. Her dance themes were inspired by America's past, biblical stories, historical figures, classical mythology, primitive rituals, and surprisingly, psychoanalyst Carl Jung's writings, Emily Dickinson's poems, Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, and Zen Buddhism. She danced with such a passion that her presence on stage was electrifying. Graham founded the Dance Repertory Theater in New York in 1930. She was the first dancer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship in 1932. From 1931 to 1935, Graham toured the United States in the production "Electra." She was fascinated by different cultures, and her interest in Native Americans of the southwest United States was first embodied in the production "Primitive Mysteries." In 1937, she danced for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House. Her most famous dance, "Appalachian Spring," was first performed in 1944. Graham gave her last stage performance in 1968, at age 74. In all, she produced 181 original ballets. A year before her death in 1990, she choreographed, at age 95, Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag"; the show featured costumes by Calvin Klein.1979- Writer
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Tennessee Williams met long-term partner Frank Merlo in the summer of 1948 (Merlo died of lung cancer in the fall of 1963). Though separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962, the two were partners for 15 years. Merlo acted as his personal manager/secretary.
Williams spent much of his most prolific years in Rome, Italy, and his enduring friendship with Italian stage and screen legend Anna Magnani lasted 24 years and inspired both "The Rose Tattoo" and "Orpheus Descending". Magnani realized the lead parts of these two plays, which were written for her, in their film versions. The turbulent and inspirational friendship shared between Williams and Magnani is the subject of the internationally acclaimed play "Roman Nights" by Franco D'Alessandro.
Aside from his published "Memoirs", the only authorized biographical book on Williams is by Bruce Smith, entitled "Costly Performances - Tennessee Williams; The Last Stage." This book deals with the last four years of Williams' life (1979-1983).1979- Writer
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Renowned composer ("West Side Story", "Candide", "On The Town"), conductor, arranger, pianist, educator, author, TV/radio host, educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University (BA) with Walter Piston. Edward Burlingame Hill and A. Tillman Merritt. He studied piano with Helen Coates, Heinrich Gebhard and Isabelle Vengerova, at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, and at the Berkshire Music Center with Serge Koussevitzky (and became an assistant to Koussevitzky). He was assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1943-1944, and conductor of the New York Symphony, 1945-1948.
He was music advisor to the Israel Philharmonic from 1948-1949, and a member of the faculty at the Berkshire Music Center from 1948 (though he did take leaves of absence), and head of the conducting department there in 1951. He was Professor of Music at Brandeis University, 1951-1956; and co-conductor of the New York Philharmonic, 1957-1958, and music director there after 1958. He won an Emmy award for his televised Young People's Concerts. He was guest conductor of symphony orchestras in the USA and Europe, and conducted the Israel Philharmonic seven times between 1947 and 1957. He toured the US with Koussevitzky in 1951, and was the first American to conduct at the La Scala Opera House in Milan, in 1953. He was awarded the Sonning Prize in Denmark, and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
He joined ASCAP in 1944, and his chief musical collaborators included Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Latouche, and Stephen Sondheim. His song compositions include "New York, New York", "Lonely Town", "Some Other Time", "I Can Cook, Too", "I Get Carried Away", "Lucky to Be Me", "Ohio", "A Quiet Girl", "It's Love", "A Little Bit in Love", "Wrong Note Rag", "Glitter and Be Gay", "El Dorado", "The Best of All Possible Worlds", "Maria", "Tonight", "Something's Coming", "I Feel Pretty", "Cool", "America", and "Gee, Officer Krupke".1980- Actor
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One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur boxer. Cagney was of Norwegian (from his maternal grandfather) and Irish descent. Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace), after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney.1980- Additional Crew
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Agnes de Mille was born on 18 September 1905 in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Oklahoma! (1955), The Ragamuffin (1916) and Carousel (1956). She was married to Walter Foy Prude. She died on 7 October 1993 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.1980- Lynn Fontanne was a British actress of French and Irish descent. She spend most of her acting career in the United States, and she is considered among the great leading ladies of American theatre. She formed an acting duo with her husband Alfred Lunt (1892-1977). Fontanne had few film roles, but was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Fontanne was born in Woodford, Essex in 1887, which was at the time a suburb of London with an ever-growing population. Woodford was annexed to Greater London in 1965 as part of an administrative reform. It is currently part of the London Borough of Redbridge. Fontanne's parents were Jules Fontanne (of French descent) and Frances Ellen Thornley (of Irish descent).
Fontanne first gained fame in 1921, at the age of 34. She portrayed the protagonist character Dulcy in the farce play "Dulcy" by George Simon Kaufman (1889-1961) and Marc Connelly (1890-1980), and won acclaim as a comedy actress. She became known for her witty roles, and had roles specifically written for her by Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (1893-1973), Robert Emmet Sherwood (1896-1955), and Noël Coward (1899-1973).
Fontanne enjoyed further success with a leading dramatic role in "Strange Interlude" (1928) by Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953). Fontanne portrayed protagonist Nina Leeds, a woman who lost her original fiance in World War play. The grieving Nina then engages in a series of affairs, before marrying "amiable fool" Sam Evans. She is aware that madness runs in the Evans family, so she has a child with a lover and has Sam acknowledge it as his own. She then maintains secret affairs for the next twenty years, while still posing as a loving wife. Due to its content, the play was considered controversial in the 1920s, but it was a hit.
Fontanne made her film debut in the romantic comedy "Second Youth". She had her greatest success in the medium with the comedy "The Guardsman" (1931). In the film, a jealous husband creates a second identity to seduce his wife. Fontanne played the wife, who recognizes her husband but decides to play along. Fontanne was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, but the Award was instead won by rival actress Helen Hayes (1900-1993).
Fontanne's most notable theatrical success in the 1930s was the risque play "Design for Living" (1933), involving bisexuality and a ménage à trois. Fontanne continued performing as a stage actress until her official retirement in 1958. During her last year as a stage actress, Fontanne and Lunt introduced their new theatrical house, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
Fontanne continued appearing regularly in television until the mid-1960s. She received an Emmy Award for her role in "The Magnificent Yankee" (1965), and was nominated for a second one for her role as Maria Feodorovna (1847-1928) in "Anastasia" (1967). Fontanne received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Fontane continued living in retirement until 1983, residing in her summer home "Ten Chimneys" in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. She was 95-years-old at the time of her death, one of the oldest living actresses. Following her death, Ten chimneys was converted to a house museum and social center for American theater.1980 - Actress
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Leontyne Price was born on 10 February 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi, USA. She is an actress, known for Romeo + Juliet (1996), The Metropolitan Opera Presents (1977) and NBC Television Opera Theatre (1949). She was previously married to William Warfield.1980- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".1981- Actor
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Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. However, the real truth was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he would not see his mother again until he was in his late 20s).
He left school at age 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the United States. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times", ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62.
One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style - "high comedy with polished words". In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.
Although Grant retired from the screen, he remained active. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Faberge. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed. Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle - Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Airlines in 1987) and MGM.
Grant expressed no interest in making a career comeback. He was in good health until almost the end of his life, when he suffered a mild stroke in October 1984. In his last years, he undertook tours of the United States in a one-man-show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Davenport, Iowa.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second male star of Golden Age of Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).1981- Actress
- Soundtrack
Known as "The First lady of the American Theater", Helen Hayes had a legendary career on stage and in films and television that spanned over eighty years. Hayes was born in Washington, D.C., to Catherine Estelle "Essie" Hayes, an actress who worked in touring companies, and Francis van Arnum Brown, a clerk and salesman. Her maternal grandparents were Irish. A child actress in the first decade of the 20th century, by the time she turned twenty in 1920 she was well on her way to a landmark career on the American stage, becoming perhaps the greatest female star of the theatre during the 1930s and 1940s. She made a handful of scattered films during the silent era and in 1931 was signed to MGM with great fanfare to begin a career starring in films. Her first three films, Arrowsmith (1931), The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), and A Farewell to Arms (1932), were great hits and she would win the 1932 Oscar for Best Actress for her work in Madelon Claudet. Alas, her lack of screen glamour worked against her becoming a box office star during the golden era of Hollywood, and her subsequent films were often not well received by critics. Within four years she had abandoned the screen and returned to the stage for the greatest success of her career, "Victoria Regina", which ran for three years starting in 1935. Helen Hayes returned to motion pictures with a few featured roles in 1950s films and frequently appeared on television. In 1970, she made a screen comeback in Airport (1970), a role originally offered to Claudette Colbert, who declined it, earning Hayes her second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actress. Helen Hayes retired from the stage in 1971 but enjoyed enormous fame and popularity over the next fifteen years with many roles in motion pictures and television productions, retiring in 1985 after starring in the TV film Murder with Mirrors (1985).1981- Additional Crew
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Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre when it was formed in 1940 portraying a variety of roles for several years before devising his own creations such as 'Fancy Free' about 3 sailors on leave in New York which marked a long association with Leonard Bernstein. With Jerome in one of the leading roles it opened at the Metropolitan Opera House in April 1944 and quickly established Jerome and Leonard as important talents particularly when the play was turned into the film'On the Town' Among ballets Jerome staged for the New York City Ballet, of which he became company director are 'Pied Piper','The Cage',and 'Inter Play'. In 1958 he formed his own company 'Ballets: USA which did tours of Europe and the Middle East, New York and a national tour. Several members of the company were in the film West Side Story which Jerome staged fir Broadway, the National Company and London.1981- Rudolf Serkin was born on 28 March 1903 in Eger, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Cheb, Czech Republic]. He was married to Irene Busch. He died on 8 May 1991 in Guilford, Vermont, USA.1981
- Writer
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Legendary Broadway writer/producer/director George Abbott was born in 1887 in Forestville, New York. His father was mayor of Salamanca, New York, for two terms. In 1898 his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Abbott attended Kearney Military Academy. The family returned to New York, where Abbott attended Hamburg High School, graduating in 1907, and the University of Rochester (BA degree in 1911). He wrote the play "Perfectly Harmless" for University Dramatic Club. He attended Harvard University from 1911-1912, studying play writing under George Pierce Baker, and wrote "The Head of the Family" for Harvard Dramatic Club. In 1912 he won $100 in a play contest sponsored by the Bijou Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, for "The Man in the Manhole", and worked at the Bijou for a year as assistant stage manager. He made his Broadway debut as an actor in 1913 in "The Misleading Lady" (as Babe Merrill, a drunken student), followed by "The Yeoman of the Guard" (1915), "The Queen's Enemies" (1916), "Daddies" (1918), "The Broken Wing" (1920), "Dulcy" (on tour) (1921), "Zander the Great" (1923), "White Desert" (1923), "Hell-Bent for Heaven" (1924), "Lazybones" (1924), "Processional" (1925) and "Cowboy Crazy" (1926). From that point he concentrated on writing and directing, with "The Fall Guy" (his Broadway's debut, 1925), "Three Men on a Horse" (1935), "Jumbo" (1935), "On Your Toes" (1936), "The Boys from Syracuse" (1938), "Too Many Girls" (1939), "Pal Joey" (1940), "Best Foot Forward" (1941), "On the Town" (1944), "High Buttom Shoes" (1947), "Where's Charley?" (1948), "Call Me Madam" (1950), "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1951), "Wonderful Town" (1953), "The Pajama Game" (1954), "Damn Yankees" (1955), "New Girl Town" (1957), "Fiorello!" (1959), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum" (1962), "Flora, the Red Menace" (1965; Liza Minnelli's Broadway debut).
He won five Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize (for "Fiorello!"). He was nominated for an Oscar for writing All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). His daughter, Judith Abbott, is a stage actress/director and was married (1946-49) to Tom Ewell.1982- Actress
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Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, a.k.a. Mary Robinson McConnell, tried their hand at acting in local productions. Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared before stage audiences with great success. Had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time; however, she found her way onto the big screen when, in 1912, she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912), followed by The One She Loved (1912) and My Baby (1912). She would make 12 films for Griffith in 1912. With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart".
In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (1915). She was not making the large number of films that she had been in the beginning because she was successful and popular enough to be able to pick and choose the right films to appear in. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). By the early 1920s, her career was on its way down. As with anything else, be it sports or politics, new faces appeared on the scene to replace the "old", and Lillian was no different. In fact, she did not appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian was not idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions, to the acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933, she filmed His Double Life (1933), but did not make another film for nine years.
When she returned in 1943, she appeared in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946), but lost to Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946).
One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955), also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. In 1969, she published her autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me". In 1987, she made what was to be her last motion picture, The Whales of August (1987), a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. Her 75-year career is almost unbeatable in any field, let alone the film industry. On February 27, 1993, at age 99, Lillian Gish died peacefully in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment in New York City. She never married.1982- Actor
- Music Department
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The King of Swing! Famed clarinetist, composer ("Stompin' at the Savoy") and conductor, educated at the Lewis Institute in Chicago and a student of Schillinger and Schoepp. He was a clarinetist with the orchestras of Bix Beiderbecke, Jules Herbuveaux, Arnold Johnson and Ben Pollack, and also played in Broadway theater orchestras. He began to lead his own orchestras in 1934 at the Billy Rose Music Hall, then conducted the orchestra on the weekly radio program "Let's Dance" in 1934-1935, and played at numerous hotels, colleges and theaters. Expanding his musical efforts, he performed in chamber music concerts, later touring throughout the US, Europe, the Far East, South America and the USSR and made many recordings. Joining ASCAP in 1945, his chief musical collaborators included Count Basie, Harry James, Mitchell Parish, Andy Razaf, Edgar M. Sampson, Chick Webb, and Teddy Wilson. Some of his other popular songs and instrumental compositions include "Lullaby in Rhythm," "Don't Be That Way," "Seven Come Eleven," "Flying Home," "Two O'Clock Jump," "Air Mail Special," "Dizzy Spells," "If Dreams Come True," "Georgia Jubilee," "Four Once More," and "The Kingdom of Swing".1982- Actor
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Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third son of Harriet Catherine (Curran) and James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Irish and German ancestry.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in Hollywood when Gene Kelly arrived in town in 1941. He came direct from the hit 1940 original Broadway production of "Pal Joey" and planned to return to the Broadway stage after making the one film required by his contract. His first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. What kept Kelly in Hollywood were "the kindred creative spirits" he found behind the scenes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The talent pool was especially large during World War II, when Hollywood was a refuge for many musicians and others in the performing arts of Europe who were forced to flee the Nazis. After the war, a new generation was coming of age. Those who saw An American in Paris (1951) would try to make real life as romantic as the reel life they saw portrayed in that musical, and the first time they saw Paris, they were seeing again in memory the seventeen-minute ballet sequence set to the title song written by George Gershwin and choreographed by Kelly. The sequence cost a half million dollars (U.S.) to make in 1951 dollars. Another Kelly musical of the era, Singin' in the Rain (1952), was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for its National Film Registry. Kelly was in the same league as Fred Astaire, but instead of a top hat and tails Kelly wore work clothes that went with his masculine, athletic dance style.
Gene Kelly died at age 83 of complications from two strokes on February 2, 1996 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California.1982- Music Department
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Eugene Ormandy conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years, one of the longest tenures of a maestro and one orchestra. The Philadelphia under Ormandy's direction wad extremely popular, winning two Grammy Awards and being awarded three gold records for sales exceeding 500,000 units.
The maestro was born Jeno Ormandy-Blau on November 18, 1899 in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Jewish parents. His father, Benjamin, was a dentist who was an amateur violinist. The five-year-old Jeno studied violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music and began performing at age seven. The prodigy graduated at the age of 14 from the Academy with a master's degree and got his teaching certificate at the age of 17. In addition to serving as concertmaster of Germany's Blüthner Orchestra, he performed as a soloist. He also found time to take a university degree in philosophy in 1920.
In 1921, he emigrated to America with the promise of a tour. In America, he took the name "Eugene Ormandy", eventually becoming a citizen in 1927.
He performed professionally in the 77-member orchestra of the Capitol Theatre in New York City, which provided the musical accompaniment to silent movies. He soon became the concertmaster and a conductor of the ensemble. As a violinist, Ormandy cut 16 recordings in the years 1923 through 1929.
Ormandy first conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931, filing in for Arturo Toscanini, was ill. His success with the Philadelphia led to his being awarded the baton to conduct the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1931 through 1936. Ormandy and the Minneapolis recorded for RCA Victor.
In 1936, he was appointed associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra under music director Leopold Stokowski, from whom he took over as principal conductor (music director) in 1938, a position he held until 1980. Ormandy achieved international renown in the City of Brotherly Love, creating the fabled "Philadelphia Sound." The Philadelphia Sound was rooted in lush string sonorities, legato phrasing and a rounded, voluptuous tone. The music he created was popular with audiences and the record-buying public, if not critics.
Ormandy did not impose his personality on music, as did many great conductors. He sought to serve the work, approaching the music with intelligence, balance, and proper pacing. He created a sonic beauty comparable to Herbert von Karajan's work with the Berlin Philharmonic. Ormandy was noted for his performances of Romantic and post-Romantic music and particularly excelled at the music of Richard Strauss and Sergei Rachmaninov. In the 1930s, he and Rachmaninov developed a close relationship, and the Philadelphia premiered the composer's Symphonic Dances. Ormandy also conducted the American premieres of several of Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies.
The Philadelphia Orchestra, under his baton, became the first symphony to be broadcast on American TV in 1948. Ormandy received an honorary knighthood in 1976 as part of Queen Elizabeth II's observation of the American bicentennial.
Eugene Ormandy retired as the Philadelphia Orchestra's music director in 1980. He died on March 12, 1985.1982