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Pierre Salinger
Biography
Pierre Emil George Salinger (June 14, 1925 – October 16, 2004) was an American journalist, author and politician. He served as the ninth press secretary for United States Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Salinger served as a United States Senator in 1964 and as campaign manager for the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign.
After leaving politics, Salinger became known for his work as an ABC News correspondent, particularly for his coverage of the Iran Hostage Crisis; the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; and his claims of a missile being the cause of the explosion of TWA Flight 800.
Salinger was born in San Francisco, California. His father, Herbert Salinger, was a New York City-born mining engineer, and his mother, Jehanne (née Biétry), was a French-born journalist. Salinger's mother was Catholic and his father was Jewish.
His maternal grandfather was Pierre Biétry, a member of the French National Assembly, who became known for his "vigorous" defense of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly convicted of treason in 1894. Bietry died in Indochina at the age of 39.
Salinger was considered a child prodigy in music who played on a grand piano even before he learned to read. After his family moved to Canada, his parents discovered his innate talent at the piano and he was enrolled into the Toronto Conservatory of Music, where he was groomed to become a concert pianist. He recalled, "Each weekday, a tutor came to the house for three hours of academic instruction, and when she left, I was 'free' to practice the piano for four or five hours."
He gave his first public concert when he was six and was considered a concert pianist. He continued studying piano after they returned to San Francisco and was able play scores by Bach, Debussy, Beethoven and George Gershwin, whom he once met.
When he was 12, Salinger's mother told him his full-time piano studies were isolating him from society. She suggested he spend a year away from piano to engage in other social activities, including sports. He did, but never returned to his original goal of becoming a pianist and instead wanted to become a writer or journalist.
His talent and love of music carried over into his career as press secretary when, at the behest of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, he would invite musicians such as Pablo Casals and Igor Stravinsky to the White House. President Lyndon B. Johnson once had Salinger perform on the piano to 600 of his guests. "If Jackie Kennedy was the one who thought maybe America was ready for a higher culture, her ally in it or her agent was Pierre," said Richard Reeves, author of President Kennedy: Profile of Power (1993).
Salinger attended public magnet Lowell High School in San Francisco. He attended San Francisco State University (then College) from 1941 to 1943, during which time he became managing editor and columnist for the student newspaper.
Salinger left SF State to enlist in the United States Navy in July 1943 and became skipper of a submarine chaser off Okinawa during World War II. He distinguished himself during Typhoon Louise by making a daring rescue of some men stranded on a reef. For this act, he received the Navy and Marine Corps medal. ...
Source: Article "Pierre Salinger" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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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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Mario Caiano
Biography
Mario Caiano (February 13, 1933-September 20, 2015) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and second unit director.
Born in Rome, he directed nearly 50 films since 1961 and 27 films and TV scripts since 1954.
Caiano directed and wrote the script to the 1965 horror film starring Barbara Steele, Nightmare Castle (Amanti d'oltretomba) and for the 1972 horror film Eye in the Labyrinth.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Mario Caiano, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Wernher von Braun
Biography
Werner Von Braun was a rocket pioneer and became the world's leading rocket scientist. Starting his career as a Nazi SS officer in the 1930s, and leading the team that developed what became the V-2 rocket, over 3,000 of which were eventually launched at England and Belgium during the later years of WWII. Following the war, Von Braun and 1600 other Nazi scientists were relocated to the United States via Operation Paperclip. Von Braun went to work for the US Army building early ballistic missiles, but was eventually absorbed into NACA, which became NASA, and became the first Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, whose primary task was development of the Saturn V heavy-lift rocket system which was used in the NASA manned moon landings in the late 60s-early 70s.
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Lizanne Tulip
Biography
Lizanne Tulip is a South African born, award-winning actress who moved to Los Angeles to further her career. Theatre trained in London, Lizanne has been cast in a number of feature films, short films, comedy sketches, music videos, silent movies, commercials, documentaries, industrial videos and virals. She works with highly respected LA theatre companies, including Tim Robbins' The Actors' Gang, the Antaeus Company, Playback Theatre and Theatrical Arts Foundation. Lizanne has performed in both Calendar Girls and The Secret Garden at the prestigious California Theatre of the Performing Arts. She has also enjoyed collaborating in Improvisation and Sketch performances at the LA Connection Comedy Theatre. Lizanne is playing the leading role of Krista in Hercules, Houdini, Holmes. She is trained in Ballet, Contemporary and National Dance, including Turkish Belly Dancing. A successful Voiceover Artist in two languages, Lizanne's work includes radio drama, documentaries and travel guides, commercials, dubbing, animation (Disney Junior) and audio books. She shares her voiceover and narration skills by reading to children from less advantaged backgrounds throughout Los Angeles. Lizanne is a trained Drama Therapist, working with children with special needs, primarily autism. Her aim is to also work with at-risk youth. She is furthering her studies at the Drama Therapy Institute of Los Angeles. Her focus being Alternative Healing, Creative Arts Therapy and Narradrama.
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Danielle Brisebois
Biography
Danielle Anne Brisebois (born June 28, 1969) is an American producer, singer-songwriter and former actress. She is most recognized for her role as Stephanie Mills on the sitcoms All in the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as playing Molly in the original Broadway production of the musicalAnnie. In the 1990s she recorded two solo albums, Arrive All Over You andPortable Life, and was a member of the New Radicals and contributed to writing the songs for the album Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too. She has written or co-written a number of songs, including Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten", and "Pocketful of Sunshine". In January 2015, Brisebois and writing partner Gregg Alexander were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song Lost Stars from the film Begin Again.
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Jonathon Young
Biography
Jonathon Young is a Canadian actor best known for his role of Nikola Tesla on the SyFy show Sanctuary. Appearances include The Fog, Eureka, and Stargate Atlantis. Jonathon is a well-respected stage actor. He is the co-founder of the Electric Company Theatre in Vancouver, Canada in which he is also the artistic director, playwright and a frequently acts.
He was raised in British Columbia, along with his brother and sister. Their father was a school teacher who also started a community theatre in Armstrong, British Columbia. At a Q&A after "No Exit", Jonathon Young said that his father often brought him and his sister to watch him act and that this is where his love for theatre began. Becoming an actor was never a choice, but rather just something he knew he was going to do.
Jonathon is a graduate of the Studio 58 theatre school at Vancouver’s Langara College. In 1996 he co-founded the Electric Company Theatre along with fellow Studio 58 alumni Kim Collier, David Hudgins, and Kevin Kerr. He is a three-time winner of the Jessie Richardson Award. His play Palace Grand was commissioned for production by Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in 2008.
Young is married to actor/director Kim Collier.
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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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Dante Ferretti
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dante Ferretti (Italian pronunciation: [ˌdante ferˈretti], born 26 February 1943) is an Italian production designer, art director and costume designer.
Throughout his career, Ferretti has worked with many great directors, both American and Italian, including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Terry Gilliam, Franco Zeffirelli, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Anthony Minghella, and Tim Burton. He frequently collaborates with his wife, set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo.
Ferretti was a protégé of Federico Fellini, and worked under him for five films. He also had a five-film collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini and later developed a very close professional relationship with Martin Scorsese, designing seven of his last eight movies.
In 2008, he designed the set for Howard Shore's opera The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
Ferretti has won three Academy Awards for Best Art Direction; for The Aviator, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Hugo. He had seven previous nominations. In addition, he was nominated for Best Costume Design for Kundun. He has also won three BAFTA Awards.
In 2012, he designed the decor for Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto, a restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
For the 2015 Expo held in Milan, Italy Ferretti was commissioned to do a series of statues articulating the concept ""Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life".
He is member of the Italy-USA Foundation.
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Lee Sung-kyoung
Biography
Lee Sung-kyoung (Hangul: 이성경; born 10 August 1990) is a South Korean actress and model.
Lee began her entertainment career as a model where she competed at the local Super Model Contest in 2008. Lee made her acting debut as the first actress from YG Entertainment and model company K-Plus strategic partnership in the SBS drama "It's Okay, That's Love". She acted in the television dramas Cheese in the Trap and The Doctors before taking her first leading role as the titular character in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo.
Lee began her entertainment career as a model where she competed at the local Super Model Contest in 2008. In 2013, The Papers collaborated with Lee with the single "I Love You". In 2014, Lee made her acting debut with a supporting role in television drama It's Okay, That's Love, being the first model-actress promoted under the joint venture of YG Entertainment and K-Plus. This was followed by the weekend drama, Flower of Queen in 2015. She won "Best New Actress" in a Special Project Drama at the MBC Drama Awards for her role. In January 2016, Lee featured in tvN's college romance series, Cheese in the Trap. On April 28, 2016, Lee released a collaboration single with Eddy Kim, which is a cover of Sharp's "My Lips like Warm Coffee". Lee then starred in the SBS' prime-time medical drama, The Doctors as a neurosurgeon. The same year, she took on her first leading role in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo, a youth sports drama inspired by the real-life story of Olympic weightlifting champion Jang Mi-ran. In 2017, Lee dubbed the film Trolls alongside Park Hyung-sik. She was also cast in the romance film Love+Sling, directed by first-time director Kim Dae-woong. She was also featured in PSY's 4X2=8 with the single "Last Scene". In 2018, Lee starred in the fantasy melodrama About Time. She was cast in the action-comedy film Miss & Mrs. Cops released on May 9, 2019, alongside Ra Mi-ran. In 2020, Lee starred in the second season of the hit medical drama Dr. Romantic, playing Cha Eun-jae, a skilled cardiothoracic surgeon with Ahn Hyo-seop as her leading man. Dr. Romantic Kim 2 went down to be the highest viewed cable drama of 2020, Lee was praised for her portrayal of Cha Eun Jae and won many accolades for her role
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