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José Giovanni

Biography

José Giovanni (22 June 1923, Paris, France – 24 April 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland) was the pseudonym of Joseph Damiani, a French writer and film-maker of Corsican origin who became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1986. A former collaborationist and criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni often drew his inspiration from personal experience or from real gangsters, such as Abel Danos in his 1960 film Classe tous risques, overlooking that they had been members of the French Gestapo. In his films as well as his novels, while praising masculine friendships and advocating the confrontation of the individual against the world, he often championed the underworld but was always careful to hide his own links with the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II. Of Corsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Janson de Sailly. His father, a professional gambler who was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal casino, owned a hotel in the French Alps in Chamonix. Joseph worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing. From April to September 1943 Damiani was a member of Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of the Vichy Government youth movement controlled by Pierre Laval. In February 1944 Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, the LVF leader Simon Sabiani, he joined Jacques Doriot's fascist French Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by the Gestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitary Milice, introduced Joseph into the Pigalle underworld. In March 1944 Joseph Damiani went to Marseille where he became a member of the German Schutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted down Service du travail obligatoire - STO (Compulsory Work Service) dodgers. He served as bodyguard to its Marseille chief and took part in many arrests, often blackmailing his victims. In Lyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at the Liberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of the Milice - a friend of Damiani’s – in an attempt to secure his parents' release from a detention camp. They were not freed and Gourentzeig's father, Jacob, was shot by the Germans shortly after, on 21 August 1944, along with 109 Jewish hostages in the Bron (Lyon airport) massacre. After the Liberation in Paris on 18 May 1945, Joseph Damiani, his brother Paul, Georges Accad, a former Gestapo agent, and Jacques Ménassole, a former member of the Milice wearing a French Army lieutenant's uniform - all posing as Military Intelligence officers - abducted Haïm Cohen, a wine merchant, accusing him of being a black marketeer. He was tortured until he gave them the key to his safe and a check for 105,000 francs. He was then shot and his body thrown into the Seine. Joseph Damiani cashed the check at Barclay's Bank under the identity of "Count J. de Montreuil". ... Source: Article "José Giovanni" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Leonard Rossiter

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Leonard Rossiter (21 October 1926 – 5 October 1984) was an English actor known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp (1974–78), and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976–79). He also had a long and distinguished career in the theatre and gained some notoriety for a series of Cinzano commercials (1978–1983), with Joan Collins. Description above from the Wikipedia article Leonard Rossiter, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Stanisław Bareja

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Stanisław Sylwester Bareja (5 December 1929 – 14 June 1987) was a Polish filmmaker. Some of his films (mostly comedies) have reached cult status in Poland. His most famous film is Teddy Bear (Miś), filmed in 1980. His last work was Zmiennicy, a TV series completed in 1986 and aired in 1987. On 21 September 2006 Bareja was posthumously awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by President Lech Kaczyński and in 2005, a street in Warsaw was named after Stanisław Bareja.
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Steve Solberg

Biography

Steven Solberg began in film in the heyday of San Francisco’s 1970s counterculture, hot on the glittering high heels of Stonewall. He co-starred in the legendary 1970 counterculture surrealist film, Luminous Procuress (now in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection), directed by Steven Arnold. Solberg went on to work with many of the leading artists and filmmakers of the avant-garde movement. As a scenic designer and actor in Los Angeles from 1981- 1983 his credits include the scenic design for the LA County Art Museum’s Leo S. Bing Theater premiere of Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II, the world premiere of Eugene Ioneso’s Tales for People Under the Age of Three at Stages Theater Center, The LA premiere of Sam Shepard’s The Unseen Hand, Murray Mednick’s The Hunter and numerous other productions. In response to the devastating toll of the early AIDS epidemic and the necessity for a more stable and dependable livelihood following recovery from his own drug and alcohol addiction, Steven moved into the field of front-line social services. From 1998 – 2005 Steven incorporated art therapy in HIV Education and Prevention services for the Van Ness Recovery House Prevention Division and AIDS Project Los Angeles, and co-founded the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Medicine Circle with Dr. Donald Kilhefner where he developed curriculums and taught workshops such as “Seeing In The Dark: An Introduction to Queer Shamanism.” For the past couple of years, now, Solberg has been working on a documentary about GLBTQ elders, aging and spirituality. Robert Croonquist a frequent contributor to White Crane and an associate producer of David Weissman and Bill Weber’s The Cockettes documentary put it this way: “It is an important movie. I want very much to see this movie come to light. Word is Out told the story of my birth as a Gay man. The Cockettes told the story of my youth. Standing on the Bones of Our Ancestors tells the story of my adulthood.”
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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 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Randall Batinkoff

Biography

Randall Matthew Batinkoff (born October 16, 1968) is an American actor, known for his roles in the films For Keeps, School Ties, Higher Learning, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Player, and As Good As It Gets. He made his television debut in a 1974 commercial, after an agent spotted him at a toy store. He appeared in several made-for-television films in the 1980s, such as The Stepford Children, before being cast opposite teen startlet Molly Ringwald in the 1988 comedy, For Keeps. He starred as Terrance Dean on the short-lived CBS series, Better Days which only lasted 5 weeks before being canceled. In the early 1990s, he had roles in several widely released films, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Player, School Ties (all released 1992) and 1995's Higher Learning. From 1994 to 1995, he played Reverend David Grantland on the CBS series, Christy (he is Jewish in real life). He also appeared in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets where he shared an on-screen kiss with Helen Hunt. He has also appeared in a number of made-for-television movies including Skip Tracer, Who Gets the Dog?, and Black Widow, as well as the film The Last Lullaby. ​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  
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Fergal Devitt

Biography

Fergal Devitt is an Irish professional wrestler widely known for his tenure with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) as Prince Devitt, where he is a three-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion and six-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion. Devitt has wrestled for numerous promotions, including NWA UK Hammerlock, NWA Pro Wrestling, New England Championship Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, as well as having founded NWA Ireland with Paul Tracey. Devitt is currently signed to WWE performing on the NXT brand under the ring name Finn Bálor.
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Jaya Prada

Biography

Jaya Prada (born 3 April 1962) is an Indian film actress and politician. She was one of the iconic and influential actresses in both south and hindi film industry in late 70's, 80's and early 90's. Jaya Prada is the recipient of three Filmfare Awards South and has starred in many Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi films. She left the film industry at the peak of her career, as she joined the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1994 and entered politics. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) from Rampur from 2004 to 2014. She has been considered by many as the most beautiful face to grace Indian cinema, courtesy the reticent cinematic maestro Satyajit Ray who called her "the most beautiful face on the Indian screen".
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Jon Voight

Biography

Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight came to prominence in the late 1960s with his performance as a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969). During the 1970s, he became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972), a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, and a penniless ex-boxing champion in The Champ (1979). Although his output slowed during the 1980s, Voight received critical acclaim for his performance as a ruthless bank robber in Runaway Train (1985). During the 1990s, he most notably starred as an unscrupulous showman attorney in The Rainmaker (1997). Voight gave critically acclaimed biographical performances during the 2000s, appearing as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001), as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001), and as Pope John Paul II in the television film of the same name (2005). Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie.
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Leung Kar-yan

Biography

Bryan Leung Kar-yan (Chinese: 梁家仁 , born 20 January 1949) is a Hong Kong film and television actor and film director who has played roles in numerous acclaimed martial arts films. He joined Shaw Brothers in 1974 and soon met up with Sammo Hung and the two of them hit it off. Sammo has described Leung as a phenomenon – Sammo could show him any style of kung fu or any intricate choreography and Leung could learn it immediately. In the 70’s and early 80’s Leung was to appear in some terrific kung fu. Like so many other kung fu fighters, once the popularity of those films faded in the mid 80’s he had to switch career gears and become more of a character actor. He had a reasonably successful career though through to the middle of the 1990’s. ... credits to the author at hkcinemagic.
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