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Wai Wang
Biography
Wai Wang (Chinese: 韋弘, 3 November 1936 - 2010) was a Taiwanese actor. Started acting in his home country of Taiwan under the stage name "Xiao Lin" (Little Lam) before adopting the new name "Wu Bin" later in 1968. After his leading turn in The One-Legged Dragon, he started his career with the Shaw Brothers under the name Frankie Wei. He stayed with the Shaw Brothers for 7 years and was well known for his portrayal of villans and for starring in many of Lu Chi's erotic thillers. He made his first attempt at directing with 1979's Lewd Lizard before retiring in 1984.
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Ian Fleming
Biography
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels.
Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964) and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Fleming was married to Anne Charteris. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ian Fleming, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Anthony Read
Biography
Anthony Read (21 April 1935 – 21 November 2015) was an English television producer, screenwriter, script editor and author. He was principally active in British television from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, which included a period as a script editor and writer of Doctor Who from 1977 to 1979, although he occasionally contributed to televised productions until 1999.
Beginning in the 1980s, he launched a second career as a print author, concentrating largely on World War II histories. He was also a chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. From 2004 he regularly wrote prose fiction, mainly in the form of a revival of his television series The Baker Street Boys (1983).
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Valerio Zurlini
Biography
Valerio Zurlini (19 March 1926 – 26 October 1982) was an Italian stage and film director and screenwriter.
During his law studies in Rome , he started working in the theatre. In 1943, he joined the Italian resistance . Zurlini became a member of the Italian Communist Party . He filmed short documentaries in the immediate post-war period before he directed his first feature film in 1954, The Girls of San Frediano . In 1958, Zurlini won the Nastro d'Argento together with Leonardo Benvenuti , Piero De Bernardi and Alberto Lattuada for Best Script for Lattuada's Guendalina . Zurlini made his name as a director with his second feature film, Violent Summer (1959), starring Eleonora Rossi Drago and Jean Louis Trintignant . In 1961, Zurlini filmed Girl with a Suitcase , starring Claudia Cardinale , who became a film star in Italy, and Jacques Perrin , who would become Zurlini's favorite actor. His 1962 film Family Diary earned Zurlini the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (it tied with Tarkovsky 's Ivan's Childhood ). Both The Girls of San Frediano and Family Diary were based on Vasco Pratolini 's work.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Bo Johnson
Biography
Bo Johnson is a comedian from Seattle, Washington. He can be found headlining clubs, breweries, and appropriately sized theaters across the United States and Canada. His stand up has been featured on Netflix is a Joke Radio, season two of Kevin Hart Presents: Hart of the City on Comedy Central, Don’t Tell Comedy Secret Sets, Hulu, & LOL Live! at the prestigious Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. He was a finalist in the 39th annual Seattle International Comedy Competition and is a regular at festivals including Bumbershoot, SF Sketchfest, the Double Down Comedy Experience sponsored by Zappos, Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas, Rifflandia in Victoria BC, Prizefest, and Big Pine Comedy Festival in Phoenix. Bo has opened for theatre acts including Marc Maron, Jessica Kirson, and David Nihill. With a growing online audience Bo’s jokes have been viewed millions of times online.
Separate from stand up comedy, one time Bo and his best friend from high school snuck into a movie theater as one person. That video was broadcast on TV shows like the now cancelled Caught on Camera with Nick Cannon on NBC and the lowest rated daytime talk show at the time, The Meredith Veira Show. Bo still gets messages each year from friends seeing the video go viral on different meme accounts. Numerous magazines and newspapers also wrote about the hijinks, including an article in Cosmopolitan titled, “Man Sneaks His BFF Into Movie Theater by Stuffing Him Into His Pants.” More recently Bo trained his roommates dog by walking her to Shania Twain's "Man! I feel like a Woman!" in a viral stunt earning over 7 millions views on Tik Tok and press coverage in both major and incredibly minor publications.
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Peter Hyams
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Peter Hyams (born July 26, 1943) is an American screenwriter, director and cinematographer, probably best known for directing the 1984 science fiction adventure 2010 (the sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey), Capricorn One, the comic book adaptation Timecop and the Arnold Schwarzenegger horror/action film End of Days.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Peter Hyams, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Fernando Rey
Biography
Fernando Rey (September 20, 1917 – March 9, 1994) — best known as Fernando Rey — was a Spanish film, theatre, and TV actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States. A suave, international actor best known for his roles in the films of surrealist director Luis Buñuel (Tristana, 1970; Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972; That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) and as a drug lord in The French Connection (1971), he appeared in more than 150 films over half a century.
The debonair Rey was described by French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni as "the last of the Continental guys". He achieved his greatest notoriety after he turned 50: "Perhaps it is a pity that my success came so late in life", he told The Times of Madrid in 1973. "It might have been better to have been successful while young, like El Cordobes in the bullring. Then your life is all before you to enjoy it."
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Noor Jehan
Biography
Noor Jehan (September 21, 1926 – December 23, 2000), also known by her honorific title Malika-e-Tarannum (Queen of Melody), was a widely-admired Pakistani playback singer and former actress whose career lasted for more than half a century. She started in British India in the 1930s but moved to Pakistan with its inception, and came to be considered one of the greatest and most influential singers in Indian subcontinent history. She holds the record for having given voice to the largest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema. Noor Jehan received more than 15 Nigar Awards for Best Female Playback Singer, eight for Best Urdu Singer Female and the rest for Punjabi Playback. She was the first Pakistani singer to sing at the Royal Albert Hall London and even she received the third-highest honour and civilian award of the country, the Sitara-e-Imtiaz.
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Jan Hendriks
Biography
Jan Hendriks (born Heinz Joachim Hinz, December 6, 1928, Berlin – died likely December 13, 1991, Berlin) was a German actor and voice actor.
After studying acting at the Hebbel Theatre school in Berlin, he began his career on stage before making his film debut in Robert A. Stemmle’s Sündige Grenze (1951), for which he became the first winner of the German Film Award for Best New Actor. He went on to appear in more than 90 film and television productions, including several Edgar Wallace films.
Hendriks was widely known to television audiences for his role as Inspector Martin Brenner in the crime series Der Alte (1977–1986). He also worked as a voice actor, dubbing performers such as Humphrey Bogart and Anthony Quinn.
He died in Berlin in December 1991.
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