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Samson Raphaelson
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Samson Raphaelson (March 30, 1894 in New York City – July 16, 1983 in New York City) was an American screenwriter and playwright.
Born in New York City, Raphaelson worked on nine films with Ernst Lubitsch, including Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Shop Around the Corner (1939), Heaven Can Wait (1943), and That Lady in Ermine (1948). He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). He is the author of the play Day of Atonement, which was made into The Jazz Singer (1927), the first talking picture, produced by Warner Brothers in the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process. Samson Raphaelson was also Ernst Lubitsch's favorite screenwriter.
Samson Raphaelson considered Suspicion to be "in many ways my best screenplay." Raphaelson also co-wrote Lubitsch's only sound-era drama Broken Lullaby (The Man I Killed, 1932). Though praised by playwright Robert E. Sherwood as "the best talking picture that has yet been seen and heard," the film was a box office flop. Aside from his more popular work, Raphaelson also wrote the college fight song for the University of Illinois in 1921. Titled, "Fight, Illini!: The Stadium Song" the music was composed by Rose J. Oltusky.
In 1977 the Writers Guild of America Awards granted him the "Laurel" for lifetime achievement. He taught playwriting at Columbia University until the last years of his life. His wife Dorshka (Dorothy Wegman) (1904-2005) was the author of 'Morning Song' and, until her death in 2005, was the second oldest surviving Ziegfeld Follies dancer. His nephew is filmmaker Bob Rafelson, and his grandson is photographer Paul Raphaelson.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Samson Raphaelson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Laraine Day
Biography
Laraine Day, born La Raine Johnson, was a major movie star of the 1940s and '50s. Raised in Utah as part of a prominent Mormon family, she came to Hollywood as a young woman, and made her film debut with an uncredited role in Stella Dallas. Before she was famous she also played the birth-mother of Tarzan and Jane's adopted son "Boy" in Tarzan Finds a Son. Her break came in 1939, with the wildly popular "Dr Kildare" sequels. Day played Kildare's nurse and love interest in the third through ninth Kildare movies, until her character married the doctor in Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day. As Mrs Kildare, she was written out of the next, and last, Kildare feature.
In 1942, she starred with Ayres again in the underrated axe murder melodrama Fingers at the Window. Over subsequent decades, her memorable films included the flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback drama The Locket, the gangster comedy Mr Lucky, and the campy paranoia piece I Married A Communist. She was among the all-star passengers in the overwrought airliner-in-peril drama The High and the Mighty, and in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent it was Day who encouraged Joel McCrea to give his stirring report of the air raid at the film's climax Hitchcock's thinly-veiled plea for America to enter World War II. When television became a viable income source, Day found the small screen more inviting and less time-consuming than making movies, and she became primarily a TV actress. She had a 15-minute series of uplifting vignettes called Daydreaming with Laraine, and another 15-minute daily celebrity chat show called The Laraine Day Show. Married to New York Giants manager Leo Durocher, Day became one of TV's first female sports reporters when she hosted Day with the Giants, an early 1950s baseball talk show with Giants' players that aired on New York City's Channel 11. Her last film was a low-budget thriller, The Third Voice, in 1960, but she continued taking occasional guest roles on TV series Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Murder, She Wrote, etc. through the mid-1980s. Following her retierment she spent the remainder of her life active in the Mormon church, Republican politics, and various charity related work. Upon the death of her third husband Michael Grilikhes in March 2007 she moved back to her native Utah where she died that November at age 87. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, CA.
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Pierre Watkin
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Frank Watkin (December 29, 1889 – February 3, 1960) was an American character actor in many films, serials, and television series from the 1930s through the 1950s, especially westerns. He is perhaps best remembered for being the father of Eleanor Twitchell, the lady who captures Lou Gehrig's heart in Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Watkin was born in Sioux City, Iowa. In the 1920s, he had his own theatrical troupe, the Pierre Watkin Players. In 1927, the group moved its headquarters from Sioux Falls to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Watkin portrayed Perry White in both of the Superman serials of the late 1940s, which starred Kirk Alyn as the title character and Noel Neill as Lois Lane.
Watkin played a few different characters in the television series Adventures of Superman, in which John Hamilton played Perry White. He was set to reprise his role as the editor of The Daily Planet in a revival of the series in 1959, as Hamilton had died in the interim since the cancellation of the original series. However, series star George Reeves also died in the summer of 1959, and those plans ended. Watkin himself died six months later.
He also cast in 1955 in the episode "Joey and the Gypsies" of the NBC children's western series Fury. Watkin guest starred in the CBS western series Brave Eagle. He was cast twice each on the ABC/Warner Brothers series, Cheyenne (as Harvey Sinclair in "The Law Man") and Annie Oakley (as the Reverend Mills in the 1956 episode "The Reckless Press"). In 1958, Watkin portrayed Dr. Breen of Samaritan Hospital in the episode "San Francisco Story" of Rex Allen's syndicated western series, Frontier Doctor.
During the first season of CBS's Perry Mason from 1957 to 1958, Watkin appeared in three episodes as Judge Keetley. He was also cast during the 1950s on The Range Rider, Tales of the Texas Rangers, in three episodes of the western aviation adventure series Sky King, and five times on The Jack Benny Program.
Watkin played the part of Colonel Duncan in the 1958 episode "Decoy" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Colt .45.
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Bon Scott
Biography
Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott (9 July 1946 – 19 February 1980) was an Australian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, best known for being the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980.
Scott was born in Forfar in Angus, Scotland, and spent his early years in Kirriemuir. He moved to Australia with his family in 1952 at the age of six, living in Melbourne for four years before settling in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Scott formed his first band, The Spektors, in 1964 and became the band's drummer and occasional lead vocalist. He performed in several other bands including The Valentines and Fraternity before replacing Dave Evans as the lead singer of AC/DC in 1974. AC/DC's popularity grew throughout the 1970s, initially in Australia, and then internationally. Their 1979 album Highway to Hell reached the top 20 in the United States, and the band seemed on the verge of a commercial breakthrough. However, on 19 February 1980, Scott died after a night out in London. AC/DC briefly considered disbanding, but the group recruited vocalist Brian Johnson of the British glam rock band Geordie. AC/DC's subsequent album, Back in Black, was released only five months later, and was a tribute to Scott. It went on to become the second-best-selling album in history.
In the July 2004 issue of Classic Rock, Scott was rated as number one in a list of the "100 Greatest Frontmen of All Time". Hit Parader ranked Scott as fifth on their 2006 list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Vocalists of all time.
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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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Clark Gable
Biography
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an American film actor. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time.
Gable's most famous role was Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later performances were in Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance.
During his long film career, Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy was with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer in three. Gable was often named the top male star in the mid-30s, and was second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Clark Gable, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Fulvio Cecere
Biography
Fulvio Cecere is an American actor. Born to Italian parents, he attended Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, but after one year he realized that acting, not law, was his true calling Cecere works in a variety of places, moving around between Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York all year. He played the part of freelance detective Fred Durkin in the A&E Network's original film The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery(2000) and the series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–2002). He also portrayed Lt. Thorne in Battlestar Galactica, Agent Sandoval in Dark Angel (2000–2002), and had recurring roles in TV series including Tarzan, Tilt, Blade and Intelligence. His work in feature films includes roles in Paycheck, Assault on Precinct 13, Cinderella Man, The Tortured, and Watchmen.
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Kumi Mizuno
Biography
Kumi Mizuno (水野久美 Mizuno Kumi), born Maya Igarashi (五十嵐麻耶 Igarashi Maya), is a Japanese actress. Despite the large number of films she appeared in early on in her career, Mizuno is best known for her roles in Toho's 1960's kaiju films Matango, Frankenstein vs. Baragon, Invasion of Astro-Monster, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, and The War of the Gargantuas. Her most iconic role is undoubtedly that of the Xilien agent Namikawa in Invasion of Astro-Monster. She became such a cult figure among kaiju fans that Toho brought her back in 2002 to play a role in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and again in 2004 for Godzilla: Final Wars. Mizuno also appeared in Toho's 2009 stage adaptation of its 1960 science fiction film The Human Vapor.
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Quincy Jones
Biography
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing Lesley Gore's major pop hits of the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie in the same time period. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of popstar Michael Jackson's most successful albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.
In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each. In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.
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Joan Cusack
Biography
Joan Cusack (born October 11, 1962) is an American actress. She is the daughter of Nancy (née Carolan) and Dick Cusack. Her father was an advertising executive, writer and actor, and her mother was a math teacher. Her siblings - Susie Cusack, John Cusack, Ann Cusack and Bill Cusack also act. Her family is of Irish descent.
Raised in Evanston, Illinois, Cusack was actively encouraged to explore her creativity by her parents, and as a child she joined the Piven Theater Workshop. She went on to learn and perform improvisation at the Story Theater and The Ark. Later she attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English. Whilst at university, Cusack took some small film roles, but her big break came after graduation, when she joined the cast of the legendary Saturday Night Live. However, she only stayed for a season before moving on to explore other projects. In 1987, she produced a memorable turn in the acclaimed Broadcast News (1987), and she was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Working Girl (1988). Other notable films include Addams Family Values (1993), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and In & Out (1997), which earned her a second Oscar nomination. She also provided, superbly, the voice of Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl in Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010). On television, she scored a role on Shameless, with her work garnering her an Emmy nomination.
Joan Cusack is married to an attorney, Dick Burke. They have two sons - Dylan and Miles.
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