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Art Metrano

Biography

Arthur "Art" Metrano (September 22, 1936 – September 8, 2021) was an American actor and comedian, born in Brooklyn, New York City. Metrano may be best known for his role as Lt./Capt./Cmdt. Mauser in Police Academy 2 and Police Academy 3. Metrano's first film role was as a truck driver in the 1961 Cold War thriller Rocket Attack U.S.A.. Among Metrano's TV guest appearances was a 1968 episode of Ironside. However, he is better known for his frequent appearances on talk and variety shows in the early 1970s, especially The Tonight Show, as a "magician" performing absurd tricks, such as making his fingers "jump" from one hand to another, while constantly humming an inane theme song – "Fine and Dandy", an early 1930s composition by Kay Swift. In December 2007, Metrano filed a lawsuit against Family Guy, asserting copyright infringement, and asking for damages in excess of two million dollars. Due to a fall at home in 1989, Metrano seriously injured his spinal cord and is disabled. Currently, he tours with his one-man show, "Jews Don't Belong On Ladders...An Accidental Comedy", which has raised more than $75,000 for Project Support for Spinal Cord Injury, to help buy crutches, wheelchairs, and supplies for handicapped people. Description above from the Wikipedia article Art Metrano, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Gore Vidal

Biography

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born Eugene Louis Vidal; October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California). Description above from the Wikipedia article Gore Vidal, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Robin McLeavy

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robin McLeavy (born 19 June 1981) is an Australian actress. McLeavy is from Sydney, Australia. She graduated from NIDA in 2004. McLeavy starred as Lola Stone in the critically acclaimed Australian horror film, The Loved Ones. The film was screened at Toronto International Film Festival in 2009 and won the Audience Choice Award. In 2009, McLeavy played the role of Stella Kowalski opposite Cate Blanchett and Joel Edgerton in the Sydney Theatre Company production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The production was directed by Liv Ullmann and toured to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. She received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Performer. She appeared in four encore seasons of Holding the Man, an award-winning play by Tommy Murphy. She played Isabella in Benedict Andrews's production of Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare at the Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, 5 – 25 July 2010. She appeared as Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Benedict Andrews for the Belvoir Theatre Company in 2007, and for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Between 2011 and 2016 McLeavy played frontier tribal abductee survivor Eva Oates on the Western series Hell on Wheels. This character, including physical likeness, was inspired by the real story of Olive Oatman. She portrayed Nancy Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in 2012. In 2015, McLeavy took on the role the voice of Nutsy, a Koala in Blinky Bill the Movie alongside Ryan Kwanten, Rufus Sewell, David Wenham, Toni Collette, Richard Roxburgh, Deborah Mailman, Barry Otto, and Barry Humphries on the Australian computer-animated adventure film based the book by Dorothy Wall; and she played Barbara Henning in Backtrack.
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David Boyd

Biography

David Russell Boyd, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer and director of television and film known for his role as director of photography for the Fox television series Firefly and the AMC series The Walking Dead. He also worked as the cinematographer on the first three episodes of HBO's Deadwood. On the NBC television series Friday Night Lights, he served as director of photography on 18 of 22 episodes in the first season and moved up to direct two more. He also directed the film Home Run, which was released in 2013. Description above from the Wikipedia article David Boyd (cinematographer), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Jacques Robert

Biography

Jacques Robert (June 27, 1921 – August 11, 1997) was a French author, screenwriter and journalist. Jacques Robert was born on 27 June 1921 in Lyon, France. He started his writing career as a journalist. In May 1945 Jacques Robert was the only Western journalist to descend into Hitler's bunker in Berlin, Germany. During his career he wrote more than 40 books and novels. Around 20 of his novels have been adapted for cinema, notably The Long Teeth directed by Daniel Gélin, Marie-Octobre directed by Julien Duvivier and Someone Behind the Door with Charles Bronson and Anthony Perkins. Jacques Robert was also a prolific screenwriter for film and television. He died in Rouen in 1997 at the age of 76. Source: Article "Jacques Robert (writer)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Eugene Lipinski

Biography

Eugene Lipinski is a British actor and screenwriter. He was born in Wansford Camp, Cambridgeshire and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He began acting at the age of twelve in amateur theater. After graduating from the University of Regina, he returned to the UK and attended the Royal Academy of Arts as well as the Drama Studio London. He is well-known TV series such as Animorphs as Visser Three, Fringe as December and Da Vinci's City Hall and Da Vinci's Inquest as Lloyd Manning. As the screenwriter, in 1991, he won Genie Awards for Best Screenplay in the 12th Genie Awards on Perfectly Normal.
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Sean Connery

Biography

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He 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, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Denise Benoit

Biography

Denise Benoît (10 September 1919 – 29 May 1973) was a French actress and singer, active across a wide range of genres on the stage, radio and television. Other members of her family were musicians. From a family of musicians, she was a daughter, grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter of musicians. Her mother (Léontine Benoît-Granier, died 1957) was a musician and composer who won prizes at the Paris Conservatoire, while her father Henri Benoît was a notable viola player in Paris, who was a member of the Capet Quartet in the 1920s, participating in several of their recordings during that period. Her brother, Jean-Christophe Benoît (born 1925) was a popular and much recorded baritone. Born Denise Marie Armande Frédérique Benoît in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Denise spent the bulk of her career there, and died in the same city while still active. Denise Benoît began learning the violin at the age of three from her father, later continuing with her mother. As a young woman, she began her professional life playing in Parisian theatre orchestras; while at the Théâtre Marigny a man looked into the pit and asked her whether she would not prefer to be playing on stage rather below it. Through several theatrical contacts she became the student of Jean Meyer, spent a year the Conservatoire and began her acting career in 1942. Her break-through came with an "unforgettable" portrayal of Natalia Stepenovna in A Marriage Proposal by Tchekhov. Her first role, in Sixième étage, was as a cleaning lady, and this debut tended to type-cast her for some time as servants, concierges and domestics. On screen she became restricted to being a secretary, a domestic and a waitress, and so began to refuse this type of role. In 1945 while a student of André Brunot at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique in Paris she took part in a televised play by Courteline; at the time she was only recognized as an actress, with her singing career yet to begin. In the 1950s, living in the Boulevard Malesherbes, Paris, already well-known on disc, she had facilities for recording at her apartment. Léontine, Jean-Christophe and Denise appeared together on record in some of the 'Chants de France' folksong series on Ducretet-Thomson. The extensive series of records of folk songs from around France was the brain-child of her mother Léontine, so it was natural that the family were at the centre of these recordings. In the 1950s she began a long association with radio broadcasting, which at the time she expressed a preference for, including for ten years on the regular programme of Louis Ducreux. While taking a respite for the birth of her first child in the early 1950s, Joseph Kosma guided her in broadening her song repertoire and wrote a few for her. After this, a career in cabaret began, with appearances at L'Écluse on the Left Bank, and she sang at other venues until the birth of a daughter in 1957. Source: Article "Denise Benoît" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Bianca Lawson

Biography

Bianca Lawson (born March 20, 1979) is an American actress. Lawson is known for her regular roles in the television series Saved by the Bell: The New Class, Goode Behavior, Pretty Little Liars, and Rogue. She has also had recurring roles in the series Sister, Sister, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Steve Harvey Show, Dawson's Creek, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, and Witches of East End. In 2016, Lawson began starring in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series Queen Sugar.
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Samuel Fuller

Biography

Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American screenwriter, novelist and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes. He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant  from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower.  At the age of 12, he began working in journalism  as a newspaper  copyboy. He became a crime reporter  in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of Jeanne Eagels' death.  He wrote pulp novels and screenplays  from the mid-1930s onwards. Fuller also became a screenplay  ghostwriter  but would never tell interviewers which screenplays that he ghost-wrote explaining "that's what a ghost writer is for". During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy  and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Falkenau  and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documentary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart.  Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division. After his controversial film "White Dog" was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film. Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.
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