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Zaki Fatin Abdel Wahab
Biography
Zaki Abdel Wahab (February 18, 1961 - March 20, 2022) was an Egyptian actor and film director. He was the son of renowned Egyptian singer Laila Mourad and director Fatin Abdel Wahab. He graduated from the Directing Department of the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema in 1983.
Abdel Wahab worked as a second assistant director in the movie People on the Top (1981) and as an assistant director in many of Youssef Chahine's films, including The Sixth Day (1986), in which he made his debut as an actor. He also acted in Alexandria Again and Forever (1989), I Love Cinema (2004), and starred in Yousry Nasrallah's Mercedes (1993). In 1996, Zaki directed his feature film Romantica, which was a biography of his life. He was the location manager of American films and miniseries shot in Egypt such as Mysteries of Egypt (1998) and The Mummy Returns (2001).
Zaki married actress Soad Hosny in 1981 after she separated from the film director Ali Badrakhan. However, they separated after only a few months of marriage, and he stated in more than one interview that the reason was his mother's opposition. He died in 2022 after a battle with lung cancer.
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Dudley Digges
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dudley Digges (June 9, 1879 – October 24, 1947) was an Irish character actor on stage and in motion pictures.
He was born in Dublin. He went to America with a group of Irish players in 1904 and became successful both as an actor and producer. For a time he was stage manager to Charles Frohman and George Arliss. He went to Hollywood in 1930.
On stage, one of his famous roles was as Ficsur in the original 1921 Broadway production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, the play that Rodgers and Hammerstein later musicalized as Carousel. Ficsur was the criminal who talks Liliom into helping him commit a robbery; in Carousel, his name was changed to Jigger Craigin, but the character otherwise remained almost the same. He played the role of the Heavenly Examiner in both the original Broadway and the 1930 screen versions of Sutton Vane's hit play Outward Bound.
Digges appeared in forty films between 1929 and 1946, including the original, nearly forgotten 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon, as Caspar Gutman, the character later made famous by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart film version of the story. He also worked as a director on Broadway.
In 1924, Digges founded the Maverick Theater, in Woodstock, New York, with the assistance of Hervey White, the founder of the Maverick Arts Colony. Digges was artistic director of a company that included Helen Hayes and Edward G. Robinson.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Dudley Digges (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Raye Hollitt
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Raye Hollitt (born April 17, 1964) is an American actress and female bodybuilder, also known by her stage name Zap, one of the original cast members of American Gladiators. She was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Raye Hollitt appeared in Season 1 of American Gladiators in 1989, taking off the second season (1990–91) for maternity leave, before returning for Season 3 and continuing on the show through 1995. She reappeared for an alumni show in the final season (1995–96).
Hollitt married actor Ted Prior in 1990. Ted remarried in 1992 and has three children, as well as, their daughter, Teddi Rae. She is not married to date.
Before she was famous as Zap, Hollitt was a contestant on the game show Card Sharks, and had a speaking role in Blake Edwards' 1989 film, Skin Deep.
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Manfred Mann
Biography
Manfred Sepse Lubowitz (born 21 October 1940), known professionally as Manfred Mann, is a South African–English keyboardist, arranger, singer and songwriter. He is best known as a founding member and eponym of the bands Manfred Mann, Manfred Mann Chapter Three and Manfred Mann's Earth Band.
Lubowitz was raised in a Lithuanian-Jewish family in Johannesburg, the son of David Lubowitz and Alma Cohen. He studied music at the University of the Witwatersrand, and worked as a jazz pianist at a number of clubs in Johannesburg.
Strongly opposed to the apartheid system in his native South Africa, Lubowitz moved to the United Kingdom in 1961 and began to write for Jazz News under the pseudonym Manfred Manne (after jazz drummer Shelly Manne), which was soon shortened to Manfred Mann. The next year he met drummer and keyboard player Mike Hugg at Clacton Butlins Holiday Camp; together they formed a large blues-jazz band called the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers. This eventually evolved into a five-piece group, and they signed a record deal with EMI in 1963, under the HMV label.
They changed their name to Manfred Mann at the suggestion of the label's record producer, and from 1964 to 1969 they had a succession of hit records, including "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" (originally by The Exciters), "Sha La La" (originally by The Shirelles), "Pretty Flamingo", and "Mighty Quinn" (written by Bob Dylan). The group split up in 1969, and Mann immediately formed another outfit with Mike Hugg; Manfred Mann Chapter Three, an experimental jazz rock band. They disbanded after two albums, but Mann formed a new outfit in 1971, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, which still records and performs to this day. Their well-known hits included three Springsteen covers, "Spirit in the Night", "For You" and "Blinded by the Light", as well as a number of covers of other artists, including "Runner" (Ian Thomas), "Davy's on the Road Again" (The Band), "You Angel You" (Bob Dylan), "Demolition Man" (The Police), "Lies (Through the '80s)" and "Joybringer" (based upon "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" from The Planets by Gustav Holst.)
Manfred Mann also appeared as a jazz pianist in the 1969 Jesús Franco film Venus in Furs, and performed the score for that film. He has also released solo projects under "Manfred Mann's Plain Music" and "Manfred Mann '06".
Mann has used various keyboard instruments through his career (piano and organ in the early 1960s, later also including mellotron), but he is especially known for his distinctive solo performance on the Minimoog synthesizer, which he personalized by extensive use of a filter. His keyboard parts are often improvised and inspired by jazz. One example, as he explained in an interview with eclipsed magazine, is his tendency to bend notes downwards on the synthesizer, which he says he got from Miles Davis.
In the 2000s, he has regularly used a Roland keytar on stage for two or three songs. The instrument is visually striking for being decorated with zebra stripes. In the early 1970s, he played drums during the intro of the song "Black and Blue". ...
Source: Article "Manfred Mann (musician)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Sam Jaffe
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sam Jaffe (March 10, 1891 – March 24, 1984) was an American actor, teacher, musician and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and appeared in other classic films such as Ben-Hur (1959) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). He may be best remembered for playing the title role in Gunga Din (1939), and the High Lama in Lost Horizon (1937).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sam Jaffe licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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HipHop Tamizha Adhi
Biography
Adhi was born on 20 February 1990 as Adhithya Ramachandran Venkatapathy, while Jeeva was born on 29 June 1991 as Jeeva K.R.S. Adhi was born into a middle-class family with no knowledge in music or cinema; his father works at Bharathiar University while his mother comes from an agricultural background. Adhi came to know of rap music through Michael Jackson's "Jam". His interest in hip hop music started developing when he was in the tenth grade. He would upload rap songs to the internet and got positive response from people expressing interest in listening to more of his music; this encouraged him to start rapping in Tamil, also because he was more comfortable with it. Adhi named his account on the video-sharing site YouTube as "Hiphop Tamizha" with an image of the Tamil poetSubramania Bharati, to avoid being caught by his parents. Adhi's father had initially opposed his idea of choosing music as his career; Adhi himself had no formal education in music. He studied at Chavara Vidya Bhavan, andelectrical engineering at Bannari Amman Institute of Technology. He holds a state-level rank in Tamil Nadu Common Entrance Test and is a graduate in Master of Business Administration from Madras University. As of October 2014, he is studying a Ph.D course at Bharathiar University. Adhi first met Jeeva in Orkut in 2005; the latter adopted the moniker "DJ Jeeva Beatz". In 2006, Adhi released Viswaroobam Arambam, considered the first Tamil hip hop mixtape. It also played a major role in promoting hip hop as a part of the Tamil culture. In the same year, he met Yogi B of the Malaysian hip hop group Poetic Ammo, who became Hiphop Tamizha's advisor. "I used to send some of my underground music releases to Yogi, and one day, I received a call from him, but I thought someone was playing a prank on me. It turned out to be him and he encouraged me to start Hiphop Tamizha," recalled Adhi years later. The duo started as underground, until they were asked by the Tamil Nadu Election Commission to compose an election anthem; Adhi never knew how they found the group. Hiphop Tamizha's single "Ezhuvoam Vaa" was eventually chosen as the official anthem for Tamil Nadu's 2011 state elections; though the song was unsuccessful, Adhi and Jeeva considered it at one point their "best work so far". Although Hiphop Tamizha is a duo, Jeeva has seldom made public appearances; Adhi told IndiaGlitz that this is due to his shyness, and compared him to the unseen lion in the emblem of India, which includes four lions, but shows only three. Other independent artists have also collaborated with them, including beatboxer Bharadwaj Balaji (also known as BBB or Triple B) and B-boy Bravo. The official logo of Hiphop Tamizha is a graffiti of Bharati.
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Yuri Bogatyryov
Biography
Yuri Bogatyryov was a renowned Soviet actor born on March 2, 1947, in Riga, Latvia. He graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School in 1968 and quickly became one of the most celebrated actors of his generation. Bogatyryov is best known for his collaborations with director Nikita Mikhalkov, including standout performances in films such as "Slave of Love" (1976), "An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano" (1977), and "Five Evenings" (1979). His role in the 1981 film "Kinfolk" further solidified his reputation as a versatile and compelling actor. Bogatyryov's talent extended to the stage, where he performed at the Sovremennik Theatre. Tragically, his life was cut short when he died on February 2, 1989, in Moscow. Despite his untimely death, Yuri Bogatyryov remains a significant figure in Soviet and Russian cinema.
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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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Angie Stone
Biography
Angie Stone (born Angela Laverne Brown, December 18, 1961) was an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, and has won two Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards. In 2021, she received the Soul Music Icon Award at the Black Music Honors.
She rose to fame in the late 1970s as member of the hip hop trio The Sequence. In the early 1990s, she became a member of the R&B trio Vertical Hold. Stone would later release her solo debut Black Diamond (1999) on Arista Records, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and spawned the single "No More Rain (In This Cloud)".
After transitioning to J Records, she released her second album, Mahogany Soul (2001), which included the hit single "Wish I Didn't Miss You"; followed by the albums Stone Love (2004) and The Art of Love & War (2007), her first number-one album on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
She ventured into acting in the 2000s, making her film debut in the 2002 comedy film The Hot Chick, and her stage debut in 2003, in the role of Big Mama Morton in the Broadway musical Chicago. She has since appeared in supporting roles in films and television series as well as several musical productions, including VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club and TV One's R&B Divas, and movies such as The Fighting Temptations (2003), Pastor Brown (2009) and School Gyrls (2010).
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Claudia Jordan
Biography
Jordan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a mother from Italy and an African-American father. Claudia's parents met when her father was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Brindisi, Italy. Claudia Jordan was a sprinter and earned all-state honors in track and field while in high school in Rhode Island. Claudia Jordan competed in three Junior Olympics and in college became an All-American sprinter in the 400-meter relay. In addition to the sprints she finished third in the long jump at the East Coast Invitational.
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