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20,000 Years In Sing Sing
''20,000 Years in Sing Sing'' is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film set in Sing Sing Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Ossining, New York, starring Spencer Tracy as an inmate and Bette Davis as his girlfriend. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and based upon the nonfiction book ''Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing'', written by Lewis E. Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing from 1920 to 1941. The film was remade by First National Pictures as ''Castle on the Hudson'' in 1940, starring John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, and Pat O'Brien. Plot Cocky Tommy Connors (Spencer Tracy) is sentenced from 5 to 30 years in Sing Sing for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. His associate, Joe Finn (Louis Calhern), promises to use his contacts and influence to get him freed long before that, but his attempt to bribe the warden to provide special treatment is met with disdain and failure. Connors makes trouble immediately, but several months confined to his cell changes his attitude somew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz ( ; born Manó Kaminer; since 1905 Mihály Kertész; hu, Kertész Mihály; December 24, 1886 April 10, 1962) was a Hungarian-American film director, recognized as one of the most prolific directors in history. He directed classic films from the silent era and numerous others during Hollywood's Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age, when the studio system was prevalent. Curtiz was already a well-known director in Europe when Warner Bros. invited him to Hollywood in 1926, when he was 39 years of age. He had already directed 64 films in Europe, and soon helped Warner Bros. become the fastest-growing movie studio. He directed 102 films during his Hollywood career, mostly at Warners, where he directed ten actors to Oscar nominations. James Cagney and Joan Crawford won their only Academy Awards under Curtiz's direction. He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for the first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis. He himself ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drama Film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, teen drama, and comedy-drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject-matter, or else they qualify the otherwise serious tone of a drama with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline. All forms of cinema or television that involve fictional stories are forms of drama in the broader sense if their storytelling is achieved by means of actors who represent ( mimesis) characters. In this broader sense, drama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grant Mitchell (actor)
John Grant Mitchell Jr. (June 17, 1874 – May 1, 1957) was an American actor. He appeared on Broadway from 1902 to 1939 and appeared in more than 125 films between 1930 and 1948. Early years Mitchell was born John Grant Mitchell Jr. on June 17, 1874, in Columbus, Ohio, the only son of American Civil War general John G. Mitchell. His paternal grandmother, Fanny Arabella Hayes, was the sister of President Rutherford B. Hayes. He attended Yale University, where he served as feature editor of campus humor magazine ''The Yale Record''. Like his father, he became an attorney, graduating from the Harvard Law School. However, by his mid-to-late 20s, he tired of his legal practice and turned a long term dream into a reality by becoming an actor on Broadway. He played lead roles in plays such as ''It Pays to Advertise'', ''The Whole Town's Talking'', ''The Champion'', and ''The Baby Cyclone''. Mitchell was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter). Stage Mitc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Byron
Arthur William Byron (April 3, 1872 – July 16, 1943) was an American actor. who played a mixture of British and American roles in films. Early years Byron was the son of actors Kate Crehan and Oliver Doud Byron. He was a nephew of the stage actress Ada Rehan, his maternal aunt. Career Byron started his theatrical career in February 1889 at the age of 17 with his father's dramatic company. In 1939 he celebrated his 50 years in showbusiness. He appeared in more than 300 plays and played with stars like Maxine Elliott, Ethel Barrymore, John Gielgud, Katherine Cornell, Maude Adams and Minnie Maddern Fiske. He was the founder and one-time president of The Actors' Equity Association and he also served as an officer of The Lambs and the Actor's fund of America. Byron appeared many times at the Lakewood Playhouse in Maine. Personal life and death Byron was married to Kathryn Keyes, and they had two daughters and a son. He died of a heart ailment, from which he suffered for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Row
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting Capital punishment, execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ("being on death row"), even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a Capital punishment in the United States#Capital crimes, capital offense in U.S. state, states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and ''habeas corpus'' procedures, which may continue for several decades. Opponents of capital punis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electric Chair
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890. The electric chair has been used in the United States and, for several decades, in the Philippines. While death was originally theorized to result from damage to the brain, it was shown in 1899 that it primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and eventual cardiac arrest. Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. While some states still maintain electrocution as a legal method of ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warren Hymer
Edgar Warren Hymer (February 25, 1906 – March 25, 1948) was an American theatre and film actor. Early life He was born in New York City. His father, John Bard Hymer (1875/1876 – 1953) was a playwright (with nine Broadway plays to his credit, according to the Internet Broadway Database), vaudeville writer and actor, while his mother, Eleanor Kent, was an actress. Career He appeared in 129 films between 1929 and 1946, as well as the 1928 Broadway play ''The Grey Fox.'' Despite his typical screen persona as an unsophisticated tough guy with a Brooklyn accent, he actually attended Yale University. In the late 1930s, Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn had him removed from the studio after he showed up for work drunk. Hymer responded by breaking into Cohn's office and urinating on his desk. Cohn then blackballed him in the film industry, making it hard for him to find work. Death He died in Los Angeles, California, reportedly of a "stomach ailment" at age 42 in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyle Talbot
Lyle Florenz Talbot (born Lisle Henderson, also credited Lysle Talbot; February 8, 1902 – March 2, 1996) was an American stage, screen and television actor. His career in films spanned three decades, from 1931 to 1960, and he performed on a wide variety of television series from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. Among his notable roles on television was his portrayal of Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor Joe Randolph, a character he played for ten years on the ABC sitcom ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. Talbot began his film career under contract with Warner Bros. during the early years of the sound era. Ultimately, he appeared in more than 175 productions with various studios, first as a young matinee idol, then as the star of many B movies, and later as a character actor. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat O'Brien (actor)
William Joseph Patrick O'Brien (November 11, 1899 – October 15, 1983) was an American film actor with more than 100 screen credits. Of Irish descent, he often played Irish and Irish-American characters and was referred to as "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence" in the press. One of the best-known screen actors of the 1930s and 1940s, he played priests, cops, military figures, pilots, and reporters. He is especially well-remembered for his roles in ''Knute Rockne, All American'' (1940), ''Angels with Dirty Faces'' (1938), and '' Some Like It Hot'' (1959). He was frequently paired onscreen with Hollywood star James Cagney. O'Brien also appeared on stage and television. Early life O'Brien was born in 1899 to an Irish-American Catholic family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. All four of his grandparents had come from Ireland. The O'Briens were originally from County Cork. His grandfather, Patrick O'Brien, for whom he was named, was an architect who was killed while trying to break up a sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Sheridan
Clara Lou "Ann" Sheridan (February 21, 1915 – January 21, 1967) was an American actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in the films ''San Quentin'' (1937) with Humphrey Bogart, ''Angels with Dirty Faces'' (1938) with James Cagney and Bogart, '' They Drive by Night'' (1940) with George Raft and Bogart, ''City for Conquest'' (1940) with Cagney and Elia Kazan, ''The Man Who Came to Dinner'' (1942) with Bette Davis, ''Kings Row'' (1942) with Ronald Reagan, ''Nora Prentiss'' (1947), and ''I Was a Male War Bride'' (1949) with Cary Grant. Early life Clara Lou Sheridan was born in Denton, Texas, on February 21, 1915, the youngest of five children (Kitty, Pauline, Mabel and George) of George W. Sheridan and Lula Stewart (née Warren). According to Sheridan, her father was a grandnephew of Civil War Union general Philip Sheridan. She was active in dramatics at Denton High School and at North Texas State Teachers College. She also sang with the college's stage band and p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Garfield
John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in New York City. In the early 1930s, he became a member of the Group Theatre (New York), Group Theater. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner Bros.' stars. He received Academy Awards, Academy Award nominations for his performances in ''Four Daughters'' (1938) and ''Body and Soul (1947 film), Body and Soul'' (1947). Called to testify before the U.S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), he denied Communist Party USA, communist affiliation and refused to "name names", effectively ending his film career. Some have alleged that the stress of this persecution led to his premature death at 39 from a heart attack. Garfield is acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method acting, Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. Early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castle On The Hudson
''Castle on the Hudson'' (UK title: ''Years Without Days'') is a 1940 American film noir drama (film and television), drama directed by Anatole Litvak and starring John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, and Pat O'Brien (actor), Pat O'Brien. A thief is sent to Sing Sing Prison, where he is befriended by the reform-minded warden. The film was based on the book ''Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing'', written by Lewis E. Lawes, on whom the warden (played by O'Brien) in the film was based. ''Castle on the Hudson'' was actually a remake of an earlier Spencer Tracy prison film, ''20,000 Years in Sing Sing'' (1932), also based on Lawes's book. Plot Tommy Gordan (John Garfield), a cocky, arrogant career thief, is finally nailed by New York City authorities after pulling a big heist. He is sentenced to a minimum seven years at the state prison in Ossining (village), New York, Ossining, aka Sing Sing, on the shores of the Hudson River. There, he meets prison warden Walter Long (Pat O'Brien (actor), Pat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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