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Blanche Sweet
Biography
From Wikipedia
Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry.
Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, Judith of Bethulia. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford.
Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer.
During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars.
Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in 1930's Show Girl in Hollywood, before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1935. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958.
Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, her career in both of these fields petered out, and she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive recognition for her work.
On September 24, 1984, a tribute to Blanche Sweet was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Miss Sweet introduced her 1925 film, The Sporting Venus.
Sweet died in New York City of a stroke, on September 6, 1986, just weeks after her 90th birthday.
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I.M. Pei
Biography
Ieoh Ming Pei (Chinese: 貝聿銘), FAIA, RIBA[2] (English: /joʊ.mɪŋ.ˈpeɪ/ yoh-ming-PAY[3][4] 26 April 1917 – 16 May 2019) was a Chinese-American architect. Born in Guangzhou but raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but he quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became a friend of the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.
Notable Buildings He Designed and Constructed
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
National Gallery of Art East Building
Louvre Pyramid, Paris
Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong
Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
Indiana University Art Museum
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Miho Museum
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Eddie Vartan
Biography
Edmond Vartan (10 August 1937 – 19 June 2001) was a French musician, bandleader, arranger, and record producer.
Vartan was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and moved to France with his parents and younger sister Sylvie in 1952. He worked as a trumpet player in Paris jazz clubs, including the Blue Note, and in 1961 gave up his law studies to work as a full-time musician and A&R man for Decca Records.
He worked with jazz enthusiast Daniel Filipacchi on the radio programme Pour ceux qui aiment le jazz ("For those who love jazz"). They also wrote songs together, including "Le transistor", a 1961 hit in France for Frankie Jordan, and then worked on the popular radio show Salut les copains. After Jordan recorded "Panne d'essence" (a version of Floyd Robinson's "Out of Gas") as a duet with Sylvie Vartan, her brother Eddie continued to work with both artists in the early 1960s. He also released records under his own name as a bandleader, and worked with many French singers, notably as the musical director and producer of Johnny Hallyday, who became Sylvie's husband. Among the musicians regularly used by Vartan was English guitarist Mick Jones, later of Spooky Tooth and Foreigner. Eddie Vartan became a leading producer in the French yé-yé pop scene of the 1960s, and also produced Nick Garrie's cult 1969 LP, The Nightmare of J. B. Stanislas. As a songwriter, Vartan's successes included "Jésus-Christ", a 1970 hit for Johnny Hallyday.
Vartan also worked on film soundtracks, notably working on the 1968 film À tout casser and also with directors Georges Lautner, Michel Deville, and Michel Audiard. He published a memoir, Il a neigé sur le mont Vitocha ("It snowed on Mount Vitosha") in 1994.
He died in 2001, aged 63, from a cerebral hemorrhage, and was buried in his home village of Loconville. His son is the actor Michael Vartan.
Source: Article "Eddie Vartan" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Enar Tarmo
Biography
Enar Tarmo (born on March 3, 1968 in Tallinn) is an Estonian actor, stuntman and theater person.
He graduated from Tallinn 4th Middle School in 1986 and from Tallinn Pedagogical University in 1996, majoring in leadership by distance learning. He worked as an actor in the Ruto Killakund troupe from 1990 to 1992. Since 1992, he has been working at the Von Krahl Theatre. He was an actor and technician from 1992 to 2001, a pyrotechnician from 1992 to 1996, and since 2001 he has been a technical director.
He has been the technical director of the theater festival Baltoscandal and has worked as a stuntman in films.
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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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Maj-Britt Nilsson
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Maj-Britt Nilsson (11 December 1924 – 19 December 2006) was a Swedish movie actress of the 1940s and 1950s.
Nilsson was born in Stockholm and trained at the drama school of the Royal Dramatic Theater there. She appeared in the following three Ingmar Bergman films: Till Glädje (To Joy, 1950), Sommarlek (Summer Interlude or Illicit Interlude 1951), and Kvinnors Väntan (Secrets of Women or Waiting Women, 1952). She also appeared in the English language film A Matter of Morals (1961), directed in Sweden by John Cromwell.
Maj-Britt Nilsson died in Cannes, France, aged 82. Her death, which was not widely reported outside Sweden, was confirmed by Jon Asp, executive editor of the online publication Ingmar Bergman Face to Face. No cause was announced.
In 1951 she married Per Gerhard, a theater director and son of Karl Gerhard, a prominent Swedish singer, who survives her.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Maj-Britt Nilsson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Garret Sato
Biography
Garret Sato was born in Oahu, Hawaii and attended Aiea High School and then Leeward Community College where he started his acting carreer. Sato has been part of numerous movies including: Pearl Harbor, The Mask, Street Kings, The Shadow, Wasteland, Violent Blue and the short film 'Blood Country' which premiered in 2008 at the Hawaii International Film Festival..
He has had a reoccurring role on the television show Hawaii Five-0 as Detective Ahuna. Sato has also has roles in the television shows: 24, ER, NCIS: Los Angeles and Alias.
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William Bishop
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
William Paxton Bishop (July 16 1918 - October 3 1959) was an American television and movie actor from Oak Park, Illinois. He was best known for his role as Steve Connors on the 1950's NBC comedy series It's a Great Life[1] and for his roles in films including Harriet Craig, The Killer That Stalked New York and in numerous B-Movies and westerns such as The Tougher They Come, Gun Belt, The Basketball Fix, Cripple Creek and Wyoming Renegades.
Description above from the Wikipedia article William Bishop (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Sam Peckinpah
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah (February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch (1969). He was known for the innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence, as well as his revisionist approach to the Western genre.
Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals, and the corruption of violence in human society. He was given the nickname "Bloody Sam" owing to the violence in his films. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable, but are forced to compromise in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.
Peckinpah's combative personality, marked by years of alcohol and drug abuse, has often overshadowed his professional legacy. Many of his films were noted for behind-the-scenes battles with producers and crew members, damaging his reputation and career during his lifetime. Many of his films, such as Straw Dogs (1971), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), remain controversial.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sam Peckinpah, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Tom Downing
Biography
Tom Downing is an Irish-American television and film actor, producer, and writer. Along with his work on the Emmy Winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Chicago PD, Shameless, and BULL, his first major film was playing the lead in the dark comedy The Life & Death of an Unhappily Married Man. The film went on a 50 city international film festival tour winning over 20 awards including 14 for Best Film and over 30 nominations. Winning Best Actor and Actor of the Year, he garnered acclaim for a "truly great lead performance". That year, Whistler International Film Festival named it a Top Pick alongside Carol (Cate Blanchett), Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), and Born To Be Blue (Ethan Hawke). The film went on to win the Canada Int'l Film Festival "Rising Star Award" and the "Extra Mile Award" from the Sydney Indie Film Festival. Following a worldwide release, it became a "Top-Selling Comedy" distributed through Time-Warner, Sony, Amazon, and iTunes platforms. The following year, he appeared in Keep The Change (Best U.S. Film Winner, Tribeca Film Festival - Kino Lorber North American Theatrical) and Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez which grossed $157.6 million globally. Tom recently starred in the multi award-winning film Skeletons alongside Robin Lord Taylor (Gotham). Tom is the creator, producer, and writing supervisor of Greetings! From Prison, an award-winning dark comedy series starring himself along with Rusty Schwimmer (The Perfect Storm), John Reynolds (Stranger Things), and Chris Redd (Saturday Night Live). The show is a Silver Award Winner for Excellence in Internet Television (DC Webfest) and winner of Best Premise and Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series (LA Webfest). Tom was born to a large Irish Catholic family in Cleveland, Ohio. At 14, he began his creative work by taking music, singing, and acting classes while making small indie films and running his own radio show in Lafayette, IN. where he spent his formative years. Tom is a graduate of the world famous training centers The Second City Conservatory, The iO Theatre, Chicago's Artistic Home, and Purdue University where he was named the first recipient of their Outstanding Alumni Award in Film & Video Studies. In addition to acting, he is also a country and western singer and guitar player and drummer and is also an experienced acrylic painter. He splits his time between Los Angeles and New York City.
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