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Richard Toth
Biography
Richard began performing in the 6th grade when he found it alleviated a stuttering problem. Since then, and doing it for slightly different reasons, he has made himself fairly clear on various stages and screens in the U.S. and Europe. After graduating from Fordham University at Lincoln Center, and scratching around for work in NYC experimental theaters and comedy clubs, he followed his passion for physical comedy and toured the U.S with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus as a featured clown. Trading in the grease paint for a black hood, he then worked for Hudson Vagabond Puppets, crossing the country again while manipulating larger-than-life puppets in a modified Bunraku style. Another stint on an Italian circus brought him to Europe, and eventually Prague, where he co-founded an international performance collective, Misery Loves Company, that united dynamic physicality, puppetry and theatrical investigation. While in Europe, he appeared in a number of local and visiting U.S. films, and was a regular in the Prague-based action movie factory, North American Pictures. Since returning to the States, he is frequently seen on downtown NYC and regional stages, as well as screens big and small. He is a member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA.
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Charles Trenet
Biography
Louis Charles Augustin Georges Trenet (18 May 1913 – 19 February 2001) was a renowned French singer-songwriter who composed both the music and the lyrics to nearly a thousand songs over a career that lasted more than 60 years. These include "Boum!" (1938), "La Mer" (1946) and "Nationale 7" (1955). Trenet is also noted for his work with musicians Michel Emer and Léo Chauliac, with whom he recorded "Y'a d'la joie" (1938) for the first and "La Romance de Paris" (1941) and "Douce France" (1947) for the latter. He was awarded an Honorary Molière Award in 2000.
Trenet's best-known songs include "Boum!", "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie", "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", "Ménilmontant" and "Douce France". His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to a thousand.
Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal. "Y'a d'la joie" evokes joy through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street, and a baker making excellent bread. The lovers engaged in a minuet in "Polka du Roi" reveal themselves at length to be "no longer human": they are made of wax and trapped in the Musée Grévin. Many of his hits from the 1930s and 1940s effectively combine the melodic and verbal nuances of French song with American swing rhythms.
His song "La Mer", which according to legend he composed with Léo Chauliac on a train in 1943, was recorded in 1946. Trenet explained in an interview that he was told that "La Mer" was not swing enough to be a hit, and for this reason it sat in a drawer for three years before being recorded.
"La Mer" is Trenet's best-known work outside the French-speaking world, with more than 400 recorded versions. The tune, given unrelated English words and the title "Beyond the Sea" (or sometimes "Sailing"), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s. "Beyond the Sea" was used in the ending credits of Finding Nemo.
Besides "La Mer", the other Trenet song to receive numerous recordings in English is "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", which lyricist Albert Beach adapted as "I Wish You Love". "I Wish You Love" was first recorded by Keely Smith in 1957, and since then by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Sam Cooke to Dusty Springfield.
Another of Trenet's songs, "Formidable", was written as impressions of a trip to the U.S. Other Trenet songs were recorded by French singers such as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Sablon and Fréhel.
Trenet was born in Avenue Charles Trenet, Narbonne, Occitanie, France, the son of Françoise Louise Constance (Caussat) and Lucien Etienne Paul Trenet. When he was seven years old, his parents divorced and he was sent to boarding school in Béziers, but he returned home just a few months later, suffering from typhoid fever. It was during his convalescence at home that he developed his artistic talents, taking up music, painting and sculpting. ...
Source: Article "Charles Trenet" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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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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Preston Foster
Biography
Preston Foster (August 24, 1900 – July 14, 1970) was an American stage and film actor, and singer. Foster entered films in 1929 after appearing as a Broadway stage actor. He was appearing in Broadway plays as late as October 1931 when he acted in a play titled Two Seconds starring Edward J. Pawley. Some of his notable films include: Doctor X (1932), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Annie Oakley (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (also 1935), The Informer (1935) (as the head of the organization), and My Friend Flicka (1943).
He starred on the television drama, Waterfront (1954–1955), playing the role of Captain John Herrick. Foster has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was sometimes credited in movies as Preston S. Foster. His first wife was stage actress Gertrude Warren (1926–1945; divorced). He had one daughter, Stephanie. He was married to his second wife, actress Sheila Darcy, from 1946 until his death.
During World War II while serving with the United States Coast Guard, he rose to the rank of Captain, Temporary Reserve. He eventually held the honorary rank of Commodore in the U.S. Coast Guard.
After the war and before his productive movie career, Foster became a singer of some note. In 1948 Foster created a trio with himself, Gene Leis and Foster’s wife, actress Sheila Darcy. Gene arranged the songs, and they played on radio and in clubs, appearing with Orrin Tucker, Peggy Ann Garner and Rita Hayworth.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Preston Foster, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Sam Shepard
Biography
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child (which was nominated for five Tony Awards) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs.
As an actor, his best known roles are as Calvin Meyer in Midnight Special, Robert Rayburn on Netflix's series Bloodline, Beverly Weston in August: Osage County, Harlan Whitford in Safe House, Hank Cahill in Brothers, Frank James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, George Cummings in Stealth, Frank Calhoun in The Notebook, Master General William F. Garrison in Black Hawk Down, J.C. Franklin in All the Pretty Horses, Thomas Callahan in The Pelican Brief, Frank Coutelle in Thunderheart, Spud Jones in Steel Magnolias, Dr. Jeff Cooper in Baby Boom, Doc Porter in Crimes of the Heart, and Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.
Over the years, he taught extensively on playwriting and other aspects of theater. He gave classes and seminars at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.
From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). From 1970 to 1971, he was involved in an extramarital affair with musician Patti Smith. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote two songs about her affairs with him during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. In "Coyote", from her eighth studio album Hejira, she recounts his seduction of her at a period while he was both married and having an extramarital affair with tour manager Christine O'Dell with the lines: "He's got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway."
He met actress Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances, in which they both acted. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for 27 years; they separated in 2009. They had two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987).
In 2014 and 2015, he dated actress Mia Kirshner.
His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark, stepfather to O-Lan Jones, was the subject of the 2013 documentary Shepard & Dark by Treva Wurmfeld. A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors, was also published that year.
He died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, KY, aged 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
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Brent King
Biography
Brent King grew up in a small suburban town outside of Houston, Texas. He graduated from Lamar Consolidated High School and attended TCU for four years, majoring in Radio-TV-Film and minoring in Theatre. He moved to Dallas, Texas to pursue an acting career and quickly made his way up in commercials and independent films. He recently finished principal photography on a short film that he wrote and starred in, called Saved. He then packed up and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a more lucrative acting career. He most recently was cast in Jeff London's third feature film, Arizona Sky.
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Evelyn Finley
Biography
Evelyn Ruth Finley was known as the most accomplished stunt rider in the western genre. Famous director William A. Wellman was one of many who regarded her as the best in the business. She worked with horses from early childhood and grew up a tomboy on her father's ranch. Her dad had promised 'to put her into pictures', but how she eventually arrived in Hollywood is unclear. Winning a beauty contest as 'Miss Albuquerque' might have helped. The year was 1936 and her first picture was as stunt double to Jean Parker. By 1940, Evelyn was under contract at Monogram where her skills in the saddle quickly promoted her to leading lady opposite the likes of Tex Ritter, Tom Keene, Johnny Mack Brown and Buster Crabbe. As blonde Eve Anderson, she got to star in one of the last serials made at Columbia, Perils of the Wilderness (1956). However, Evelyn preferred the stunt work to acting, often doubling on horseback for glamorous stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Loretta Young.
She remained involved in her area of expertise, either actively or as technical adviser, well into the 1980's. When not working in the film industry, she toured as an equestrian performer at different circuses. Evelyn was inducted into the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.
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Faz Fazakas
Biography
Franz "Faz" Fazakas (April 5, 1918 - September 28, 2013) was a special effects designer and puppeteer who contributed to many Muppet productions. Fazakas began his puppetry career in the 1950s with Bil Baird and his marionettes, performing in the Broadway show Flahooley (with Barbara Cook, playing a lion) as well as 1960s off-Broadway puppet productions (often alongside Jerry Nelson), including versions The Wizard of Oz (as the Tin Woodsman) and Winnie the Pooh (as the title character).
Faz Fazakas is usually cited as one of the most likely inspirations for Fozzie Bear's Name.
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Sean Kleier
Biography
Sean Thompson Kleier (born 1987) is an American actor. He is primarily known for the role of Lex Von Weber in Odd Mom Out, Mikel in Happyish[1] and appeared as Agent Stoltz in Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Kleier grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was educated there at Kentucky Country Day School. He further studied at Bowdoin College before moving to New York and doing improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade.
A co-founder of the production and media strategy company Motiv Creative, Kleier and his brother create content for political advocacy groups, particularly Represent.Us, a non-profit working on grassroots corruption, campaign finance and electoral reform.
Kleier played Agent Stoltz in the film Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Alessia Goria
Biography
La sua carriera artistica inizia nel 1998 con la fiction “Caro Domani” di Mariantonia Avati, regista che firma anche il suo debutto sul grande schermo con la pellicola “Anime” del 2003. Tra i suoi ultimi lavori, due film diretti da Roberto Faenza, “I giorni dell’abbandono” e “Alla luce del sole”, e le serie televisive ”Ho sposato uno sbirro” di Giorgio Capitani, “Don Matteo” di Giulio Base e “Nemici Amici” di Giulio Manfredonia. Partecipa al videoclip del cantante Raf “Prima che sia un giorno” e a numerosi spot pubblicitari
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