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- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.
After graduating from high school, she married Jack Robbins (Irving Wheeler), but the union lasted a month (the marriage was annulled because Carole was only 15 at the time). The couple remarried in August 1934, and the two headed to California to start a new life. For a while she worked as a dancer and singer, but before long the glitter of show business drew her to Los Angeles.
She won a studio contract with Warner Brothers but was a bit player for the most part in such films as A Star Is Born (1937), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937). The following year started out much the same way, with more bit roles. By 1939, she was getting a few speaking roles, although mostly one-liners, and that year ended much as had the previous two years, with more bit roles; also, she and Wheeler were divorced.
In 1940 she was cast as Loana in the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. (1940); she finally got noticed (the skimpy outfit helped), and her career began moving. She began getting parts in B pictures but didn't star in big productions -- although she had talent, the really good roles were given to the established stars of the day.
Her busiest year was 1942, with roles in Manila Calling (1942), The Powers Girl (1943), A Gentleman at Heart (1942), and three other movies. Unfortunately, critics took little notice of her films, and when they did, reviewers tended to focus on her breathtaking beauty. By the middle 1940s, Carole's career was beginning to short-circuit. Her contract with 20th Century-Fox had been canceled, her marriages to Willis Hunt Jr. and Thomas Wallace had failed, and her current marriage to Horace Schmidlapp was on the skids; all of that plus health problems spelled disaster for her professionally and personally.
Her final two films, Brass Monkey (1948) and The Silk Noose (1948) were released in 1948. On July 5, 1948, Carole committed suicide by taking an overdose of Seconal in her Brentwood Heights, California, home. She was only 29 and had made 49 pictures, most of which were, unfortunately, forgettable. If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance, she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater, but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., where he directed over four hundred and fifty short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flashback, the iris shot, the mask and cross-cutting. In the years following "Birth", Griffith never again saw the same monumental success as his signature film and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history.- Born Mary Whitty on June 19, 1865, to a Liverpool newspaper editor and his wife, she became known as May Whitty to the world. She first stepped onto the London stage in 1882 at which she worked as an understudy at the St. James Theatre and then began playing leading roles when she joined a traveling stock company. After nearly 25 years as one of Britain's leading stage actresses, she appeared in her first film, Enoch Arden (1914), in Great Britain. She did not care much for the experience and appeared in only a few silent films afterward.
In 1918, based on her service to the arts and for performing for the troops during World War I, she was named as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George V.
After a string of 1930s Broadway successes, she went to Hollywood, following the example of many of her British contemporaries. She found herself usually cast in highborn roles, sometimes crotchety, sometimes imperious, however often warmhearted. Classic examples of these were the crotchety Mrs. Bramson, an invalid who falls for the homicidal Robert Montgomery, in Night Must Fall (1937); Miss Froy\ in The Lady Vanishes (1938), wherein she plays the title character, enduring great physical exertion while maintaining her poise and dignity; and Lady Beldon in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a role which garnered her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She proved herself equally capable of playing working-class roles, such as the dowdy phony psychic in The Thirteenth Chair (1937). Besides two Oscar nominations, she also won the National Board of Review best acting award for the 1937 film Night Must Fall (1937).
In 1892, she married London producer Ben Webster. They were the parents of a daughter, Margaret Webster, who became a playwright and actress in her own right. Margaret penned her mother's biography, The Same Only Different, published in 1969.
Whitty died at the age of 82 as the result of cancer in Beverly Hills shortly after completing her scenes in the film The Sign of the Ram (1948).
She once said, "I've got everything Betty Grable has ... only I've had it longer." - Actor
- Soundtrack
Warren William, the stalwart leading man of pre-Production Code talkies, was born Warren William Krech on December 2, 1894 in Aitkin, Minnesota, the son of a newspaper publisher. William originally planned to become a journalist, but he had a change of heart, and instead went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and trained to become an actor. He served in the military in France during World War I, remaining in that country after the Armistice to tour with a theatrical company.
He made his Broadway debut as William Warren in the H.G. Wells play "The Wonderful Visit" in 1924. While appearing in 17 more plays on Broadway from 1924 to 1930, he also managed to appear in three silent pictures under his own name, Warren Krech. His only substantial role was in his first flicker, Fox's The Town That Forgot God (1922). In 1923, he played a credited bit part in support of "Perils of Pauline" star Pearl White in her last serial photoplay, Plunder (1923) but he went uncredited in a bit part in the Roaring Twenties/John Gilbert-as-bootlegger movie, Twelve Miles Out (1927).
Possessed of a first-rate speaking voice, rich, deep, and mellifluous, he was a natural for the talkies, and in 1931, he joined the stock company at Warner Bros., the studio that gave the world cinema sound. Projecting a patrician persona, Warren William initially thrived in the all-talking pictures. He appeared in a lead role in his first talkie, Honor of the Family (1931), an adaptation Honoré de Balzac's novel "Cousin Pons." Subsequently, he appeared as second leads and leads in support of the likes of Dolores Costello (Drew Barrymore's grandmother), H.B. Warner, Walter Huston, and Marian Marsh, before headlining The Mouthpiece (1932) as a district attorney who quits for the other side of the law, defending mobsters before a last reel conversion. It was his break-through role, followed up by a turn as a crooked campaign manager with more than just the affairs of state on his mind in The Dark Horse (1932). He then moved on to leading roles in A-list pictures, including the high-suds soap opera Three on a Match (1932), the classic musical Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), and the original Imitation of Life (1934) starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers.
William's outstanding performances in these roles include Skyscraper Souls (1932), The Match King (1932), and Employees' Entrance (1933). He also broadened his range to play the fraudulent clairvoyant in The Mind Reader (1933).
The early 30s was the apogee of William's career. He appeared opposite strong female stars, including Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak and Loretta Young.
With his patrician looks and bearing, William was loaned out to Cecil B. DeMille to play the patrician's patrician, Julius Caesar, again opposite of Ms. Colbert in Cleopatra (1934), a typical prodigal DeMille production in which Henry Wilcoxon avenged his mentor's assassination by rousing the rabble. William went on as the second Sam Spade (renamed Ted Shayne) in the "Maltese Falcon" remake Satan Met a Lady (1936) with Bette Davis. He eventually found himself in B-films. The same year he played Caesar, he made his inaugural and terminal appearance as William Powell's premier replacement in the role of Philo Vance in The Dragon Murder Case (1934), a character he would resurrect five years later in The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939).
After making his first appearance as the cinema sleuth Vance, William returned to his roots as a court-room advocate, cast as the first Perry Mason in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934). After four films, he was replaced as Erle Stanley Gardner's A-#1 attorney in 1936 by former silent screen heart-throb Ricardo Cortez, the man who had first played Sam Spade, in the original The Maltese Falcon (1931). Before leaving the studio, William appeared in one more picture under contract at Warners Bros., the A-list Stage Struck (1936); then the erstwhile Warners trouper trooped over to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a few years, to work as a character actor.
Another movie series beckoned and William appeared as Michael Lanyard's "The Lone Wolf," in nine movies made by Columbia from 1939 to 1943 beginning with The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939). Of the ten actors who appeared as "The Lone Wolf" in the 30 years the series ran, off and on, from 1919 until 1949, he made twice as many films as his nearest competitor (which included such top stars as Thomas Meighan and Melvyn Douglas). William continued to act in character parts calling for a patrician presence until his premature death in 1948.
Personally, Warren William was a shy and retiring type. Speaking of him, five-time Warners co-star Joan Blondell said that William "was an old man even when he was a young man." According to San Francisco critic Mick LaSalle's 2002 book "Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), William, who quite unlike his early Warner Bros.' stereotype as a heartless "love 'em and leave 'em"-style seducer, remained married to one woman throughout his adult life. He was an active inventor with multiple patents, designing one of the first recreational vehicles, reportedly so he could continue to sleep while being driven to the studio in the morning.
Warren William died in Hollywood on September 24, 1948, of multiple myeloma.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England. Smith was 30 by the time he embarked upon a career on the stage. It took another 20 plus years before he entered the flickering images of the movies. By 1915, Smith was over 50 in a medium that demanded young actors and starlets. For the next ten years, he appeared in a rather small number of silent movies, and after that, he faded from the scene. It was in 1930, with the advent of sound, that Smith found his position in the movies and that position would be distinguished roles. He played military officers, successful business men, ministers of the cloth and ministers of government. With the bushy eyebrows and stoic face, he played men who know about honour, tradition, and the correct path. He worked with big stars such as Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Shirley Temple. As for honours, Smith received the Order of the British Empire in 1938 and was knighted in 1944. He continued to work up to the time of his death.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and then director. The Proletkult's director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, became a big influence on Eisenstein, introducing him to the concept of biomechanics, or conditioned spontaneity. Eisenstein furthered Meyerhold's theory with his own "montage of attractions"--a sequence of pictures whose total emotion effect is greater than the sum of its parts. He later theorized that this style of editing worked in a similar fashion to Marx's dialectic. Though Eisenstein wanted to make films for the common man, his intense use of symbolism and metaphor in what he called "intellectual montage" sometimes lost his audience. Though he made only seven films in his career, he and his theoretical writings demonstrated how film could move beyond its nineteenth-century predecessor--Victorian theatre-- to create abstract concepts with concrete images.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Born in Illinois in 1904, the only child of Jennie and Frank Toland, Gregg and his mother moved to California several years after his parents divorced in 1910. Through Jennie's work as a housekeeper for several people in the movie business, Gregg may had gotten a $12-a-week job at age 15 as an office boy at William Fox Studios. Soon he was making $18 a week as an assistant cameraman. When sound came to movies in 1927, the audible whir of movie cameras became a problem, requiring the cumbersome use of soundproof booths. Toland helped devise a tool which silenced the camera's noise and which allowed the camera to move about more freely. In 1931, Toland received his first solo credit for the Eddie Cantor comedy, "Palmy Days." In 1939 he earned his first Oscar for his work on William Wyler's "Wuthering Heights." In the following year he sought out Orson Welles who then hired him to photograph "Citizen Kane." (Toland was said to have protected the inexperienced Welles from potential embarrassment by conferring with him in private about technical matters rather than bringing these up in front of the assembled cast and crew.) For "Kane" Toland used a method which became known as "deep focus" because it showed background objects as clearly as foreground objects. (Film theorist Andre Bazin said that Toland brought democracy to film-making by allowing viewers to discover what was interesting to them in a scene rather than having this choice dictated by the director.) Toland quickly became the highest paid cinematographer in the business, earning as much as $200,000 over a three year period. He also became perhaps the first cinematographer to receive prominent billing in the opening credits, rather than being relegated to a card containing seven or more other names. Tragically, Toland's career was cut short in 1948 by his untimely death at age 44. Toland had a daughter, Lothian, by his second wife and two sons, Gregg jr. and Timothy, by his third. Lothian became the wife of comic Red Skelton.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Most of Babe Ruth's records have been broken. In 1961, not only did Roger Maris break The Babe's 34-year-old record for most home runs in a season with 61* (2001), but Maris' teammate on the '61 Yankees, pitcher Whitey Ford broke the Babe's 43-year-old record for most scoreless innings pitched in a World Series when the Yankees dispatched the Reds that year in the postseason. (When asked how it felt to have beat the Babe's "other" record, Whitey responded, "It was a bad year for the Babe".)
Though Barry Bonds now holds the record for most home runs in a season (73), most home runs in a career (762), highest slugging percentage, most intentional walks, etc., The Babe still must be considered the greatest player who ever graced the game. In addition to his record 12 home run titles, his 13 slugging titles, his six R.B.I. titles, and his solo batting title (.378 in 1924; The Babe placed in the top five hitters in terms of batting average eight times, including a career high of .393 in 1923, when Harry Heilmann hit .403), The Babe won 18, 23 and 24 games as a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in 1915, 1916 and 1917, and won the American League E.R.A. title in '16. He set his first home run title in 1918, another year the Sox won the World Series, as a part-time position player and part-time pitcher, notching up 11 homers and nine wins. George Herman Ruth likely will remain the sole player in major league baseball history to win batting, home run, R.B.I., slugging *and* E.R.A. titles, plus eat a dozen hot dogs and drink the better part of a keg of bootleg "needle" beer before suiting up for a game.
From 1914 to 1919, The Babe played for the Boston Red Sox, with whom he appeared on three World's Championship teams. Sold to the New York Yankees by Red Sox owner and theatrical impresario Harry Frazee, he led the-then no pennant American League franchise in Gotham to seven A.L. pennants and four World Series titles from 1920-1934. He played out his string with the Boston Braves in 1935; even a washed-up Babe was still able to pole three circuit clouts in one game before calling it quits after 28 games and six in that last season. The following year, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yes, the Babe was mighty, and he did prevail more often than naught except over one opponent: Father Time.
The Babe ended his 22 years in the Big Leagues with 2,873 hits good for a career batting average of .342, 714 home runs, 2,217 R.B.I.s, and 2,174 runs scored in 2,503 games. (From his debut in 1914 through the 1918 season, when he was making his transition to becoming a full time position player, Ruth only appeared in 261 ball games as he was considered the top left-handed pitcher in the American League.) In the record books, Ty Cobb scored more runs and Hank Aaron hit more homers and racked up more R.B.I.s (Interestingly, Hammerin' Hank and The Babe ended their careers with the exact same number of runs scored.), but they played in far more games than the The Babe, with 3,035 and 3,298 games, respectively. Among modern players, Rickey Henderson, who surpassed Cobb's record for runs after 25 years in The Show, played in 3,081 games, and Barry Bonds appeared in almost 3,000 games.
No player ever had the impact, both on and off the field, as did the charismatic Babe. When he died of cancer in 1948, the New York Times headline read, "Babe Ruth/Idol of Millions of Boys/Dead".- Actor
- Soundtrack
James Baskett was born on February 16, 1904 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as James Franklin Baskett. He was an actor, known for Song of the South (1946), Revenge of the Zombies (1943) and Policy Man (1938). He was married to Margaret. He died on July 9, 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- His mother enrolled him in a dramatic class to overcome his self-consciousness. His gravel voice was exploited by an MGM talent scout. After his test and positive public reaction he was signed to a term contract to Our Gang. His favorite sport was bicycling. After Our Gang was over, Froggy was riding double on a motorized scooter with a friend delivering newspapers on a old three-lane highway in La Puente. Froggy was the passenger, his friend 'John Wilbrand' was driving and did a sudden U-turn into the front of a truck that hit and ended up killing Froggy who died around 6 hours later in the hospital. Froggy's friend John Wilbrand who was driving only suffered minor injuries. His older brother Tom said that he was just a normal type of kid in high school, doing well, when this accident occurred. After the gang, he did try out in some feature films, but he told his mother he wasn't interested in continuing with that. So his career in movies came to an end.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Samuel S. Hinds, a Harvard graduate, was a lawyer in Hollywood until the stock market crash of 1929, in which he lost most of his money. Hinds, who had an interest in theater acting, decided to embark on a career in acting, albeit it age 54. The tall, dignified-looking Hinds appeared in over 200 films, often cast as kindly authoritarian figures--doctors, judges, military officers, politicians, and such. His two most notable appearances were in Destry Rides Again (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In addition to his film work, he kept busy appearing on stage, and continued working up until his death in 1948.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Elissa Landi was born in Venice, Italy on December 6, 1904. From an early age, she wanted to be an actress and writer. Her acting career started at the Oxford Repertory Company and on London's West End performing with actors such as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. She played Desdemona in "Othello" and appeared in plays with and by Noel Coward (most notably "Blithe Spirit, in which she was forced to enter through the fireplace when the door jammed). She made her London debut in "The Storm," which lasted for five months and for which she received rave reviews for her performances. That led to meaty leads in "Lavendar Ladies" and other plays. European film producers took notice of the photogenic beauty, and Elissa starred in eight films over the next two years. Her first film was the German-made Synd (1928). Her career didn't impress critics, though, until she played Anthea Dane in The Price of Things (1930). She felt that she would make more headway in the U.S., so she went to New York in 1931 to star in the stage version of "A Farewell to Arms." Although the play made no huge impression, Hollywood sat up and took notice, and she soon appeared in Body and Soul (1931) opposite Charles Farrell. However, it wasn't until Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932) that many moviegoers got their first glimpse of Elissa, and they were enthralled, although she was among such heavyweight stars as Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, and Vivian Tobin. Completed in under eight weeks, the film was a smash hit. After A Passport to Hell (1932) and Devil's Lottery (1932), Elissa scored again in The Warrior's Husband (1933), a film about the intrigues and intricacies of the old Roman Empire that starred Marjorie Rambeau and Ernest Truex. In 1934 Elissa co-starred with Robert Donat in the classic The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). The next year saw Elissa as world-class singer Lisa Robbia, (singing voice dubbed by Nina Koshetz) in Enter Madame! (1934) with Cary Grant, the era's greatest leading man. In Cary Grant's biography, he mentions seeing Elissa at a typewriter, pursuing her other passion, writing, between takes throughout the filming process. After a mediocre role in Mad Holiday (1936), Elissa had a better part as the tormented Selma Landis in the hit After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the series. She appeared in only three movies after that, the last being the low-budget Corregidor (1943) for bottom-of-the-barrel Producers Releasing Corporation. When that picture was completed, Elissa left films behind and concentrated on writing; she produced six novels and poetry volumes. After Hollywood she concentrated on Broadway, regional theater, and summer stock near Kingston, New York, where she lived with her husband Curtis Thomas and their daughter. Elissa succumbed to cancer on October 21, 1948 at just 43 years old.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Edgar Kennedy, who was born on April 26, 1890, near Monterey, California, hit the road as a young man and traveled across the country, working in a succession of jobs. He became a professional boxer, claiming to have gone 14 rounds against The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey.
In addition to his knowledge of the "Sweet Science", Kennedy possessed a good musical voice, and wound up singing in musical shows in the Midwest, his first taste of show business. During his cross-country peregrinations he wound up in Los Angeles, and found himself hired as an actor by comedy producer Mack Sennett. At the Sennett Studios he was allegedly one of the original Keystone Kops, but soon graduated from bit parts to supporting roles in Keystone comedies, including Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) with Charles Chaplin. Kennedy had good roles in other Chaplin movies, but when his contract expired in 1921 he went freelance, though he did occasionally return to Sennett.
After leaving Sennett Kennedy established himself as a first-rate supporting comic, and made a career out of playing harassed businessmen, next-door neighbors, cops, etc. By the late 1920s his craft was most prominently featured in comedies for Hal Roach, Sennett's arch-rival, where he flourished in support of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It was with Roach that he developed his mastery of the "slow burn", a routine for which he became famous. He often played a none-too-bright policeman brought to the boiling point by the absurdities of Laurel and Hardy. He also directed the two in From Soup to Nuts (1928) and You're Darn Tootin' (1928).
RKO hired Kennedy to appear in a series of comedy shorts called "The Average Man," in which he played the head of a family. The shorts had very tight shooting schedules, often as few as three days, but Kennedy was always a pro and delighted the audience by giving them his all. He made over 200 short subjects and appeared in over 100 feature films, still in demand right up to the day he died of cancer on November 9, 1948.- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Second only to the great Caruso, Austrian opera singer Richard Tauber is revered as one of the world's finest Mozartian tenors to come out of early to mid-20th century Europe.
He was born on May 16, 1891 of modest means in Linz, Austria, the illegitimate son of soubrette Elisabeth Seiffert, who sang locally as well as toured. His father, Richard Anton Tauber, a legit actor, was not married to his mother and, in fact, was unaware of his parental status for quite some time after his son's birth. Richard traveled with his mother at a young age where he developed an ardent passion for the musical arts, but it proved a grueling and impossible undertaking for the actress who was continually on the road. The boy was finally sent to live with his father at age 6 who then took over his upbringing.
Trained in voice, Tauber initially seemed to lack fire and dimension, drawing unimpressive responses from his music masters. Unequipped to sing the heavy scores of the Romanticist composer Richard Wagner, who was his idol, Tauber subsequently studied piano and composition before coming under the tutelage of famed voice teacher Professor Carl Beines. It was Beines who redirected his pupil back to voice with the prospects of interpreting the classical works of Mozart.
Finally realizing and acknowledging his operatic niche, Tauber progressed quickly and made his public concert bow in 1912. A year later came his stage debut as Tamino in Mozart's "The Magic Flute" with the help of his father, who had become the Intendant of both the Municipal and Stadt-Theater in Chemnitz. A few days later he played Max in "Der Freischütz" and, as a result, was offered a five-year contract with the Dresden Opera. The Vienna and Berlin companies were to follow where he worked up a rich repertoire of roles in such operas as "Don Giovanni," "Tosca," "Mignon," "Faust" and "Carmen." During this time he also recorded extensively.
Richard extended his lyrical tenor in a then-unheard move to include lighter-styled operettas. His first performance of a Franz Lehár work was in Berlin in 1920 with "Zigeunerliebe". In 1922 he was offered the part of Armand in Lehár's "Frasquita" at the Theater an der Wien, which proved to be a resounding success. He not only singlehandedly revived Lehár's flagging career but greatly expanded his own audience of admirers. Lehár went on to compose several new works specifically designed for Tauber's voice. These included "Der Zarewitsch" (1926), "Friederike" (1928), "The Land of Smiles" (1929), "Beautiful Is the World" (1930), and "Giuditta."
Tauber's vast talents also included conducting at the Vienna Theater, where he met and married soprano Carlotta Vanconti. With their busy schedules they managed to occasionally tour in operettas together. After about a year of marriage, however, the bloom was off the rose and they separated in 1928, divorcing two years later. Tauber also tested the virtually new waters of talking pictures with such breakthrough musical films as Das Land des Lächelns (1930) [The Land of Smiles], Never Trust a Woman (1930) [Never Trust a Woman], The Alluring Goal (1930) [The Golden Goal], The Big Attraction (1931) [The Big Attraction], and Right to Happiness (1932) his more prominent vehicles.
Part Jewish on his father's side, the rise of Nazism in his native Austria had Richard making frequent out-of-country appearances in London. He also starred in several popular musical films in England. Following skirmishes with Nazi purists, he eventually emigrated to London. He appeared again in filmed musicals and earned fine notices for his portrayal of composer Franz Schubert in April Blossoms (1934), as well as for his work in Heart's Desire (1935), the Leoncavallo tragedy A Clown Must Laugh (1936), and Forbidden Music (1936). He met and married frequent British co-star Diana Napier in 1936.
Making his London operatic debut with "The Magic Flute" in 1938, the U.S. was willing to embrace Tauber with open arms but the artist remained true to England throughout the war years. As there was no opera staged in wartime Britain, he made ends meet with concerts, conducting and composing operettas, radio broadcasts and recordings. One of his operettas, "Old Chelsea," produced his signature song, "My Heart and I." In 1947, Tauber sought help for an aggravated cough which was subsequently diagnosed as lung cancer.
Despite extreme difficulties in breathing and the collapse of one lung, Tauber gave a bravura performance in one of his favorite roles, Don Ottavio in "Don Giovannia" at Covent Garden on September 27, 1947 and fulfilled this engagement the following day at the Camden Theatre, having begun and ended his formidable career performing Mozart. Three days later, on October 1st, he entered Guy's Hospital for the removal of a cancerous lung; the surgery took place the next day--only five days after his final performance.
Tauber died of complications on January 8, 1948. His devoted second wife Diana published her first biography of her husband a year after his death; her second "My Heart and I" was published in 1959.- Producer
- Director
- Cinematographer
Louis Lumière was a French engineer and industrialist who played a key role in the development of photography and cinema. His parents were Antoine Lumière, a photographer and painter, and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio. Here were born Auguste Lumière, Louis and their daughter Jeanne. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where their two other daughters were born: Mélina and Francine. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. At age 17, Louis invented a new process for film development using a dry plate. This process was significantly successful for the family business, permitting the opening of a new factory with an eventual production of 15 million plates per year. In 1894, his father, Antoine Lumière, attended an exhibition of Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris. Upon his return to Lyon, he showed his sons a length of film he had received from one of Edison's concessionaires; he also told them they should try to develop a cheaper alternative to the peephole film-viewing device and its bulky camera counterpart, the Kinetograph. This inspired brothers Auguste and Louis to work on a way to project film onto a screen, where many people could view it at the same time. By early 1895 they invented a device which they called the Cinématographe, a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures, and patented it on 13 February 1895. Their screening of a single film, Leaving the Factory (1895), on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the Society for the Development of the National Industry in Paris was probably the first presentation of projected film. Their first commercial public screening at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the birth of cinema. The cinematographe was an immediate hit, and its influence was colossal. Within just two years, the Lumière catalogue included well over a thousand films, all of them single-shot efforts running under a minute, and many photographed by cameramen sent to various exotic locations. The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. The Lumière freres' cinematographer was not their only invention. Mainly Louis is also credited with the birth of color photograph, the Autochromes, using a single exposure trichromic basis (instead of a long three-step exposure): a glass plaque is varnished and embedded with potato starch tinted in the three basic colors (rouge-orange, green and violet-blue), vegetal coal dust to fill the interstices and a black-and-white photographic emulsion layer to capture light. They were the main and more successful procedure for obtaining color photographs from 1903 to 1935, when Kodachrome, then Agfacolor and other less fragile film based procedures took over. An Autochrome is positivated from the same plaque, so they are unique images with a soft toned palette. As the Institut Lumière describes them, they are a middle point between photography and painting (akin specially to pointillism technique), because of their pastel shades and easy but still static pose looks.- Patricia Farr was born on 15 January 1913 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for This Gun for Hire (1942), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and Tailspin Tommy (1934). She was married to Robert Mayo. She died on 23 February 1948 in Burbank, California, USA.
- Actor
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Jack Kirk was born on 19 February 1895 in Nickerson, Kansas, USA. He was an actor, known for Zorro's Black Whip (1944), Stormy (1935) and The Topeka Terror (1945). He was married to Ethel Mason. He died on 13 September 1948 in Ketchikan, Alaska, USA.- Actress
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Born in January, 1901, Mary Eaton was one of 'The Seven Little Eatons' famous in the '20s and '30s. In fact, she received the greatest fame of her fellow performing brothers Joseph Eaton and Charles Eaton and sisters Pearl Eaton and Doris Eaton. Sister Evelyn was a stage manager and brother Robert was never lured into the business. The star of both the 1920 and 1922 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, blond Mary was Florenz Ziegfeld's backup in case his biggest star, Marilyn Miller, proved too recalcitrant. Eaton later replaced Miller as Eddie Cantor's leading lady in the phenomenally successful Broadway hit_Kid Boots (1923)_ and again in 1927 in Sunny. But Mary was a natural for talking picture stardom and was teamed with an aging Broadway juvenile, Oscar Shaw, in the Marx Brothers_The Cocoanuts (1929)_. She followed that up in the lead role of the all star cast_Glorifying the American Girl (1929)_. However, fame fades quickly and the Eaton family found themselves unwanted by the end of the '30s, on stage and on film. Mary, Pearl and Charles turned to alcohol. Mary married three alcoholics and died young of severe cirrhosis of the liver in 1948 aged 47. Pearl was murdered in her Manhatten Beach apartment in 1958 aged 60. The crime has never been solved. Charles died in 2004, aged 94. Doris died in 2010, aged 106.- Actress
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Nora Bennett Schilling was born in Chester, Illinois. She grew up and went to school near St. Louis. After modeling for a time, she went to visit a friend in California and was noticed by someone in the film industry. She successfully passed her screen test and began playing small parts in silent films in 1927, taking on the name Lane. In her 17 year career she played in over 80 films. Her notable works include her role as Zerelda in Jesse James (1927), her role as Sally in The Cisco Kid (1931), the villainous role of Goldie in Western Frontier (1935), as well as her supporting part in Jimmy the Gent (1934) which starred James Cagney and Bette Davis. She played in four Hopalong Cassidy films, two of which she was cast as the widowed ranch owner, Nora Blake. In her personal life, she was noted as an excellent swimmer and won many awards. On August 5, 1931, she and fellow actors Warner Baxter and Edmund Lowe were involved in a Southern Pacific train crash 20 miles east of Yuma, Arizona, but managed to escape uninjured. In 1941 she married Burdette Henney and retired from movies in 1944. The two lived a happy marriage until tragedy struck in 1948 when they went on a fishing trip in Bishop, California, during which Nora's husband died suddenly of a heart attack. On October 16, exactly one month after Burdette's death, the grief stricken widow shot herself dead after leaving a note to her step-son, simply saying she could not go on without him.- Actor
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Edwin Maxwell was born on 9 February 1886 in Dublin, Ireland. He was an actor, known for Scarface (1932), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and His Girl Friday (1940). He was married to Betty Alden. He died on 13 August 1948 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA.- Blonde and utterly beautiful, Mary Nolan had the requisite figure and prettiness to rise up fast in the Hollywood ranks. Her downfall, however, would be just as fast and not at all pretty.
She was born Mary Imogene Robertson in 1905 and began her show-business career as a teenage model. Showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. took a gander at her--and her gorgeous gams--and signed up the young beauty for his "Follies" shows. A Jazz-Age baby and party girl by nature, Mary (who was using the moniker Imogene Wilson) had already earned the somewhat dubious nickname of "Bubbles" while working in New York, but she made the fatal career mistake of involving herself with a married Ziegfeld comedian and stirring up a major sex scandal. Frank Tinney was a top headliner married to musical comedy star Edna Davenport at the time. Mary's relationship with Tinney became quite abusive and the tabloids exposed the affair after Mary was seriously hospitalized during one of their many arguments. As a third-party husband-stealer, Mary received no comfort at all despite her injuries, and was summarily fired by Ziegfeld.
Forced to flee to Germany to avoid the negative attention, Mary starred in a few films there under the new moniker Imogene Robertson. She weathered the storm for almost two years in Europe before returning unobtrusively to Hollywood films in 1927 under another new stage name--Mary Nolan.
She proved a capable if not exceptional leading lady, pacing herself well in such films as West of Zanzibar (1928) with Lon Chaney, Desert Nights (1929)--one of John Gilbert's last vehicles--and Outside the Law (1930), a gangster flick opposite Edward G. Robinson. She even appeared top-billed in a few minor efforts, including Shanghai Lady (1929) and Young Desire (1930), but Docks of San Francisco (1932) would prove to be her last film appearance.
Troubled over her sudden and inexplicable reversal of fortune, she unfortunately let her self-destructive tendencies kick in again. Broke and despondent, she suffered several nervous breakdowns and her health declined due to acute malnutrition and a variety of physical ailments. She turned to heroin, and it spelled the end.
Little was heard from her until 1948, when she died of cardiac arrest and liver problems. She was only 45 years old. Mary became just one more Hollywood tragedy -- an incredible beauty whose life turned absolutely beastly. - Actor
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Charles D. Brown was born on 1 July 1887 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Big Sleep (1946), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936). He was married to Nellie V. Tallman (actress). He died on 25 November 1948 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
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Character actor who made his film debut on the East Coast in October 1911. After serving in WWI, Chandler continued with his film and stage career becoming one of the most prolific (if more often than not uncredited) bit actors in the industry. Also appeared in vaudeville as a comedian and singer; when his act completed its run in Los Angeles, signed with Thomas H. Ince's 101 Ranch Productions. First appearing in westerns and silent comedies, he was later frequently cast as detectives and police officers. He was related through marriage to actor 'Philip Morris (I)', both being married to sisters of the same family. Even though it exceeds 320 films, Chandler's film resume is likely incomplete due to the likelihood that many of his earliest silent films are lost.- Actor
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Paul Wegener was born in Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, part of the German Empire. His birthplace is currently part of Poland, under the name "Jarantowice". Wegener's family included a number of scientists, the most notable being his cousin Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Alfred is remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift.
Paul has no known relation to another Paul Wegener (1908-1993), who served as a Nazi Party official and an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Paul Wegener initially followed legal studies in college, but dropped out in order to become a theatrical actor. By 1906, he was part of an acting troupe led by Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). Reinhardt went on to become a film director. By 1912, Wegener himself had become interested in the film medium, and sought roles as a film actor.
In 1913, Wegener heard of an old Jewish legend, concerning the Golem. He wanted to adapt the legend into film, and started co-writing a script with Henrik Galeen (1881-1949). Their script was adapted into the film "The Golem" (1915), with Wegener and Galeen serving as the two co-directors. The film was a success and established Wegener as a celebrated figure in German cinema. Wegener returned to adapting the Golem legend into film, by directing a parody film in 1917 and the more serious "The Golem: How He Came into the World" (1920). The 1920 film remains one of the classics of German cinema. Wegener's other films often reflected his personal interests, such as trick photography, the supernatural, and mysticism.
He continued his film career into the 1930s, and made the transition from silent films to sound films. Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), several actors and directors faced persecution or exile. Wegener instead found himself favored by the regime and appeared regularly in Nazi propaganda films of the 1940s. Wegener personally disliked the regime (which had persecuted a number of his friends and associates) and reputedly financed a number of German resistance groups.
In 1945, with World War II over and Berlin in ruins, Wegener took initiative as president of an organization intended to improve the living standards for surviving citizens of Berlin. He continued to appear in theatrical productions from 1945 to 1948, although he was suffering from an increasingly poor health.
In July 1948, Wegener collapsed on stage during a theatrical performance. The curtain was brought down and the rest of the performance was canceled. It was his last acting role, as he retired in an attempt to recuperate. He died in his sleep in September 1948. He was survived by his last wife Lyda Salmonova (1889-1968).- Actor
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Charles C. Wilson was born on 29 July 1894 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for It Happened One Night (1934), Blazing Across the Pecos (1948) and The Return of Jimmy Valentine (1936). He died on 7 January 1948 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.