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Frances Langford
Biography
Frances Langford won fame on radio (primarily as Bob Hope's vocalist, later sparring comically with Don Ameche as "The Bickersons"), via recordings and in the movies. In spite of the fact that she played mostly in minor musicals (plus appearing occasionally in "A" productions, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), This Is the Army (1943) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954)), she introduced major songs like "I'm in the Mood for Love" in Every Night at Eight (1935), "You are My Lucky Star" and "Broadway Rhythm" in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Cole Porter's "Easy to Love" in Born to Dance (1936) and "Hooray for Hollywood" in Hollywood Hotel (1937).
Date of Birth 4 April 1913, Lakeland, Florida
Date of Death 11 July 2005, Jensen Beach, Florida (congestive heart failure)
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David Farrar
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Farrar (21 August 1908 – 31 August 1995) was an English stage and film actor, born in Forest Gate, east London.
Three of his most notable film roles were leads in the Powell and Pressburger films Black Narcissus (1947), The Small Back Room (1949), and Gone to Earth (1950).
He retired in 1962. After the death of his wife Irene in 1976, he moved to South Africa to be with their daughter.
Description above from the Wikipedia article David Farrar (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Benny Goodman
Biography
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".
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Mihiro
Biography
There is not much that makes Kashiwazaki famous, except the worrying presence of a nuclear power plant, but the city has Mihiro Tangicuhi a.k.a. simply Mihiro. Born Yamase Hiromi, she is a Japanese actress, writer, singer, gravure and AV idol from Kashiwazaki City in Niigata Prefecture. She began her career as a gravure idol in 2001 and singer with her debut single SunFlower of 2004, but entered the AV universe a year thereafter. She entered the world of mainstream acting in 2006 with an appearance on TV Tokyo's drama 2nd House with gravure idol Sayaka Isoyama and increasingly appeared on TV variety shows and commercials. She was also a member of the short-lived Man-zoku Divas adult video star group. By 2007 she had a recurring role on TV Asahi's Tissue serial. She starred in the film Cruel Restaurant in 2008, which mixed fun, cooking, sex and dumplings. She continued her roles on television, cinema and adult video realms. She and many other S1 agency actresses like Ozawa Maria were regularly on TV Osaka's variety show Please Muscat or Onegai Muscat. 2009 brought the Nude autobiography, which went over her life including her entry into the porn world. Mihiro was in Korean Classroom, alongside Aoi Sora, in 2009, which aired on Korean television. Nude became a movie in 2010. She retired from adult movies in that year, but continued her life in the entertainment industry. She made many a man cross in 2015 by marrying stuntman Shimokawa Shinya on her birthday. They were dating for three years.
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Alex Scott
Biography
Alex Scott (18 September 1929 – 25 June 2015) was an Australian-British television actor best known for his appearances in British television productions of the 1960s, including Special Branch, The Avengers, Danger Man, The Saint and the final episode ("The Smile Behind the Veil", 1969) of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). He also appeared as Klaus in The Adventures of William Tell, episode 22 "The Killer" (1959).
Scott had roles in such films as Darling (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Blue Max (1966), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Twins of Evil (1971) and The Asphyx (1972), and had been directed by Sir Laurence Olivier (The Shifting Heart), François Truffaut, John Sumner (Godsend) and John Schlesinger, among others.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sven Nykvist
Biography
Sven Vilhem Nykvist (3 December 1922 – 20 September 2006) was a Swedish cinematographer. He worked on over 120 films, but is known especially for his work with director Ingmar Bergman. He won Academy Awards for his work on two Bergman films, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) in 1973 and Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) in 1983, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
His work is generally noted for its naturalism and simplicity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest cinematographers of all time. In 2003, Nykvist was judged one of history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild.
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Sergio Amidei
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sergio Amidei (30 October 1904 – 14 April 1981) was an Italian screenwriter and an important figure in Italy's neorealist movement.
Amidei was born in Trieste. He worked with famed Italian directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. He was nominated for four Academy Awards: in 1946 for Rome, Open City, in 1947 for Shoeshine, in 1949 for Paisà and in 1961 for Il generale della Rovere.
He died in Rome.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sergio Amidei, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Giuseppe Tornatore
Biography
Giuseppe Tornatore (born 27 May 1956) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. Born in Bagheria near Palermo, Tornatore developed an interest in acting and the theatre from at least the age of 16 and put on works by Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo. He worked initially as a freelance photographer. Then, switching to cinema, he made his debut with Le minoranze etniche in Sicilia (The Ethnic Minorities in Sicily), a collaborative documentary film which won a Salerno Festival prize. He then worked for RAI before releasing his first full-length film, Il Camorrista, in 1985. This evoked a positive response from audience and critics alike and Tornatore was awarded the Silver Ribbon for best new director. Tornatore's best known screen work was released in 1988: Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, a film narrating the life of a successful film director who has returned to his native town in Sicily for the funeral of his mentor. This obtained worldwide success and won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Subsequently Tornatore released several other films. In 2007 he won the Silver George for Best Director at the 29th Moscow International Film Festival for The Unknown Woman.
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Francesco Rosi
Biography
Francesco Rosi (15 November 1922 – 10 January 2015) was an Italian film director. His film The Mattei Affair won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Rosi's films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s, often appeared to have political messages. While the topics for his later films became less politically oriented and more angled toward literature, he continued to direct until 1997, his last film being the Primo Levi book adaptation The Truce.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Francesco Rosi, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Gillo Pontecorvo
Biography
Gillo Pontecorvo, born November 19, 1919 in Pisa and died October 12, 2006 in Rome, is an Italian filmmaker. Of Italian Jewish origin, Gillou Pontecorvo is the brother of Bruno Pontecorvo, a nuclear physicist working for the USSR, and Guido Pontecorvo, an Italian-British geneticist, as well as the grandson of the Jewish industrialist Pellegrino Pontecorvo. He has three sons: Marco (cinematographer and director), Simone (painter) and Ludovico (physicist).
A chemist by training, he quickly turned to journalism and became correspondent in Paris for several Italian publications. In 1941, he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and participated in anti-fascist activities in northern Italy. After the Soviet repression of the Budapest uprising in 1956, he broke with the PCI, while continuing to claim Marxism. He started in cinema after the Second World War as assistant to Yves Allégret1 and Mario Monicelli in particular. From 1953, he produced his first documentary essays (Giovanna, MM, 1956). In 1956, he contributed to an episode of Die Windrose, supervised by Alberto Cavalcanti.
The following year, he directed his first feature film, A Called Squarcio (La grande strada azzurra, produced by Maleno Malenotti, based on a novel by Franco Solinas). Then he describes the concentration camp world in the film Kapò (1960), the story of a Jewish woman who becomes an auxiliary of the Nazis. The film was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film in 1961. It gave rise to a famous controversy over the "Kapò tracking shot", which Jacques Rivette had deemed unworthy in an article in Cahiers du cinéma entitled "De l' abjection.” In 1966, he directed his most important film, The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri), a reconstruction of the police action of the French army during the Battle of Algiers which was a fundamental episode of the war. from Algeria. This film was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival, but remained banned in France for a long time and its exploitation caused a lot of uproar linked to the scenes of torture committed by the French army. In Queimada (1969), dominated by the interpretation of Marlon Brando, he once again attacks colonialism, with an evocation of the Haitian revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. Faced with the commercial failure of Queimada, Pontecorvo stopped making films. He still directed a secondary film, Operation Ogre (Ogro, 1979), on the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco by ETA during Francoism, and collaborated on the film L'addio a Enrico Berlinguer (1984).
In 1992, he was appointed director of the Venice Film Festival. In 1993, during the 50th edition of the Mostra, Pontecorvo presented Steven Spielberg with an honorary Golden Lion, at the time of the release of Schindler's List. He died on October 12, 2006, at the age of 86, in Rome, Italy.
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