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Actors' Lab
The Actors' Laboratory Theatre was a politically active theatre company and acting school founded in January 1941 by Roman Bohnen, Jules Dassin, Dick Flake, Lloyd Bridges, Danny Mann, Jeff Corey, Mary Virginia Farmer and J. Edward Bromberg. During the Second World War, the Actor's Lab made multiple performances for servicemen, in association with the Hollywood Victory Committee. The Actor's Lab was originally above Sharkey's Bar at the corner of Franklin and Bronson Avenues in Hollywood. In 1943, the theatre moved to 1455 North Laurel Avenue, Hollywood, California. The Actors' Lab brought the ideas and acting techniques of New York's Group Theatre to California, and "prided itself on having opened its doors to students of all races." Hedda Hopper criticized the group for this opposition to racial segregation. The Actors' Lab was eventually denounced as a communist organization, and some of its members and former-members, including Lloyd Bridges and Morris Carnovsky, were blackli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Bohnen
Roman Aloys Bohnen (November 24, 1901 – February 24, 1949) was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the films ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), '' The Song of Bernadette'' (1943), and ''The Best Years of Our Lives'' (1946). Early life and education Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bohnen attended the University of Minnesota, where he was a cheerleader. He was the son of Karl Bohnen, a portrait painter. The family was financially hard-pressed during his youth. After graduating in 1923 with a B.A., Roman served his acting apprenticeship in theater companies in St. Paul and Chicago, eventually spending five years with the Goodman Theatre. At the Goodman, he met fellow actor Hildur Ouse, who became his wife. Career Group Theatre The Bohnens moved to New York City, where he made his Broadway debut in 1931 in ''As Husbands Go''. Bohnen, In the summer of 1932, at the behest of his friend from the Goodman Theatre Art Smith, he was invited to join the Group The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Da Silva
Howard Da Silva (born Howard Silverblatt, May 4, 1909 – February 16, 1986) was an American actor, director and musical performer on stage, film, television and radio. He was cast in dozens of productions on the New York stage, appeared in more than two dozen television programs, and acted in more than fifty feature films. Adept at both drama and musicals on the stage, he originated the role of Jud Fry in the original 1943 run of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''Oklahoma!'', and also portrayed the prosecuting attorney in the 1957 stage production of ''Compulsion''. Da Silva was nominated for a 1960 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his work in ''Fiorello!'', a musical about New York City mayor LaGuardia. In 1961, Da Silva directed ''Purlie Victorious'', by Ossie Davis. Many of his early feature films were of the noir genre in which he often played villains, such as Eddie Harwood in ''The Blue Dahlia'' and the sadistic Captain Francis Thompson in ''Two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Tarcai
Mary Tarcai (July 6, 1906 – September 22, 1979 in New York City) was an actress. She was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, emigrated to the United States with her family when she was a child and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career as an actress at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City and later taught there. Her background was in the Stanislavski method and in New York at the beginning of her career she worked with Isaac Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. After leaving the Neighborhood Playhouse she went to Atlantic City, where she started her own theater and produced her own shows. She then went to Los Angeles and worked with the Actors' Lab for seven years and also as an assistant to many film directors. Returning to New York in 1955, she began teaching acting, both at the Neighborhood Playhouse and privately. She was one of the first to teach classes centering on cold readings. Her students over the years included Shirley MacLaine, Florence Hende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Smith (actor)
Arthur Gordon Smith (March 23, 1899 – February 24, 1973) was an American stage, film, and television actor, best known for playing supporting roles in Hollywood productions of the 1940s. Life and career Born in Chicago, he was a member of the Group Theatre and performed in many of their productions, including '' Rocket to the Moon'', ''Awake and Sing!'', '' Golden Boy'' and ''Waiting for Lefty'', all by Clifford Odets; ''House of Connelly'' by Paul Green; and Sidney Kingsley's '' Men in White.'' The gray-haired actor usually played studious and dignified types in films, such as doctors or butlers. Smith appeared in many noirish films, including '' Body and Soul'' (1947) and ''In a Lonely Place'' (1950). He had a key role as a federal agent in 1947's ''Ride the Pink Horse'', starring and directed by Robert Montgomery. Two of these films, ''In a Lonely Place'' and ''Ride a Pink Horse'', were based on novels by Dorothy B. Hughes. Smith was one of the victims of the Hollyw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Phipps (actor)
William Edward Phipps (February 4, 1922 – June 1, 2018) was an American actor and producer, sometimes credited simply as William Phipps, known for his roles in films and on television. Early years Hometown Phipps grew up in St. Francisville, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was six years old. By the time he was in high school, he was using his stepfather's last name of Couch. He developed a love of acting at a young age and performed in several plays in grade school and high school. One of the plays in which he performed, during his junior year of high school in 1937, was ''Before Morning'', a 1933 play made into a film that same year. College After graduating from high school in 1939, he attended Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois, where he majored in accounting, was elected freshman class president and served as head cheerleader. After two years of college, he moved to Hollywood, to pursue a career in acting and resumed his original last name of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Nelson (actress)
Ruth Gloria Nelson (August 2, 1905 – September 12, 1992) was an American stage and film actress. She is known for her roles in films such as '' Wilson'', '' A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'', ''Humoresque'', '' 3 Women'', ''The Late Show'' and ''Awakenings''. She was the wife of John Cromwell, with whom she acted on multiple occasions. Early life Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Nelson was the daughter of Sanford Leroy Nelson and vaudeville actress Eva Mudge. She attended Immaculate Heart Convent School in Los Angeles, studying first with Daniel Frohman and then with Richard Boleslawski at the American Laboratory Theatre in New York City during the early 1920s. Career Nelson made her stage debut in New York on April 4, 1928 at the Laboratory Theatre under Boleslawski's direction, portraying the title character in Jean-Jacques Bernard's ''Martine''. Over the next two seasons, Nelson made two more appearances—in Checkhov's ''The Seagull'' and Vladimir Kirshon's ''Red Rust''—prior to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audie Murphy
Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was an American soldier, actor and songwriter. He was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of World War II. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition. Murphy was born into a large family of sharecroppers in Hunt County, Texas. After his father abandoned them, his mother died when he was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Murphy's older sister helped him to falsify docu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a major icon of pop culture. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her sixth on their list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Multiple film critics and media outlets have cited Monroe as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in a total of 12 foster homes and an orphanage; she married at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aline MacMahon
Aline Laveen MacMahon (May 3, 1899 – October 12, 1991) was an American actress. Her Broadway stage career began under producer Edgar Selwyn in ''The Mirage'' during 1920. She made her screen debut in 1931 and worked extensively in film, theater and television until her retirement in 1975. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in '' Dragon Seed'' (1944). Early life MacMahon was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, the only child of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie (née Simon) MacMahon. Her father was a telegraph operator, arbitrage broker and writer / editor in the Munsey publishing company, including their flagship title, ''Munsey's Magazine''. Aline's parents married on July 14, 1898, in Columbus, Ohio. Her father died on September 6, 1931. Her mother, an avid bell collector, died in 1984, just weeks before her 107th birthday. MacMahon first appeared on stage as early as 1905. That year the family moved to Brooklyn from Mc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fay Kanin
Fay Kanin (née Mitchell; May 9, 1917March 27, 2013) was an American screenwriter, playwright and producer. Kanin was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1979 to 1983. Biography Born Fay Mitchell in New York City to David and Bessie (née Kaiser) Mitchell, she was raised in Elmira, New York, where she won the New York State Spelling Championship at twelve and was presented with a silver cup by then Governor Franklin Roosevelt. She was encouraged to write for money by supplying small items to the ''Elmira Star Gazette''.Lefcourt. 2000. She was Jewish. In high school she wrote and produced a children's radio show; then on full scholarship, she attended the private, all-female Elmira College where she divided her studies between writing and acting as well as editing the yearbook. Fay's mother took her daughter to visit her grandmother in the Bronx, and it was there that she became devoted to the theater when she saw a matinée of '' Idiot's Delight'' s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell Johnson
Russell David Johnson (November 10, 1924 – January 16, 2014) was an American actor. He played Professor Roy Hinkley in ''Gilligan's Island'' and Marshal Gib Scott in ''Black Saddle''. Early life Johnson was born in Ashley, Pennsylvania, on November 10, 1924, to Russell Kennedy Johnson (1901–1932) and Marion Wenonah Smink Johnson (1902–1976). Johnson was the eldest of seven siblings: Kenneth W. Johnson (1925–2012), David Reed Johnson (1926–1976), Lois Marion Johnson (1927–1928), Lorraine Johnson Crosby (1928-2015), Marion Joan Johnson Reeves (1930–2010), and Paul Wesley Johnson (1932–1933). Their father died of pneumonia in December 1932, and Paul Wesley died not long after. Minnie Johnson later remarried, to Thomas S. Lewis. As a teenager, Johnson attended Girard College, a private boarding school for fatherless boys, located in Philadelphia. Military career After graduating from high school, Johnson enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces as an aviati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Lewis
Robert Alan Lewis (February 9, 1925 – April 28, 2020) was an American rock and roll and rhythm and blues singer, best known for his 1961 hit singles "Tossin' and Turnin'" and "One Track Mind". Biography Lewis was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and was raised in an orphanage. He learned to play the piano by age six, despite very poor eyesight. Adopted at age twelve, he moved to a foster home in Detroit, Michigan, but ran away at the age of 14. Bruce Eder, "Bobby Lewis: Biography", ''Allmusic.com'' Retrieved 29 April 2020 Growing up with the influences of the pioneer musicians until the advent of |
