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After The Thin Man
''After the Thin Man'' is a 1936 American murder mystery comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring William Powell, Myrna Loy and James Stewart. A sequel to the 1934 feature ''The Thin Man'', the film presents Powell and Loy as Dashiell Hammett's characters Nick and Nora Charles. The film also features Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Jessie Ralph, Alan Marshal and Penny Singleton (billed under her maiden name as Dorothy McNulty). Plot Nick and Nora Charles return from vacation on New Year's Eve to their home in San Francisco, where Nora's stuffy family expects the couple to join them for a formal dinner. Nick is disliked by Nora's aunt Katherine, the family matriarch, as his immigrant heritage and experience as a "flatfoot" are considered beneath Nora's station. Nora's cousin Selma tells Nora that her husband Robert has been missing for three days. David Graham is Selma's earlier fiancé and an old friend of Nora's family. He offers to pay Robert $25,000 to leave and g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunt Stromberg
Hunt Stromberg (July 12, 1894 – August 23, 1968) was a film producer during Hollywood's Golden Age. In a prolific 30-year career beginning in 1921, Stromberg produced, wrote, and directed some of Hollywood's most profitable and enduring films, including '' The Thin Man'' series, the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald operettas, '' The Women'', and ''The Great Ziegfeld'', which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1936. Early career Hunt Stromberg was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1894. Leaving a career as a newspaper reporter and sports writer for the ''St. Louis Times'', he followed an advertising friend into the motion picture industry prior to World War I, becoming publicity director for the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in New York. In 1918, the company sent Stromberg to California, where he developed an interest in filmmaking; by 1919 he had become the personal representative of industry pioneer Thomas H. Ince, and by 1921 he had written, produced and directed his fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the oldest genres in film and it is derived from the classical comedy in theatre. Some of the earliest silent films were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. When sound films became more prevalent during the 1930s, comedy films took another swing, as laughter could result from burlesque situations but also dialogue. Comedy, compared with other film genres, puts much more focus on individual stars, with many former stand-up comics transitioning to the film industry due to their popularity. In '' The Screenwriters Taxonomy'' (2017), Eric R. Williams contends that film genres are fundamentally based upon a film's atmosphere, character, and story. Therefore the labels "drama" and "comedy" ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maude Turner Gordon
Maude Turner Gordon (November 10, 1868 – January 12, 1940) was an American actress who appeared in 81 films between 1914 and 1938. Biography Born in Franklin, Indiana, Gordon was the daughter of Alexander and Nancy Wright Turner. She was educated in the schools in Franklin. In the early 1900s, Gordon performed in repertory theatre with the Neill Stock Company in California. She appeared in a number of Broadway productions from 1908 to 1925 including: ''Glorious Betsy'', ''The American Maid'', ''A Full House'', ''Elsie'', and ''Big Boy''. She appeared onstage in ''Mrs. Holmes, Detective'', which was produced by her own company. Her elder sisterEmma Harper Turner served as Grand President of Pi Beta Phi, from 1890 to 1893. Another sister, Nelle Turner, was a member of Pi Beta Phi fraternity for women. Family She eloped and married John C. Gordon on December 19, 1885, in Johnson County, Indiana. Their daughter, Dorothy, an alumna of the Fauquier Institute of Warrenton, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skippy (dog)
Skippy (also known as Asta, 1931–1951) was a Wire Fox Terrier dog actor who appeared in dozens of movies during the 1930s. Skippy is best known for the role of the pet dog "Asta" in the 1934 detective comedy ''The Thin Man'', starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, and for his role in the 1938 comedy ''Bringing Up Baby'', starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Due to the popularity of ''The Thin Man'' role, Skippy is sometimes credited as Asta in public and in other films. Career Skippy was trained by his owners Henry East and Gale Henry East, and also by Frank Weatherwax, and assistant trainers Rudd Weatherwax, and Frank Inn. In 1936, Skippy and several other movie dogs were profiled in the book ''Dog Stars of Hollywood'' by Gertrude Orr. At the time Skippy was said to be four and a half years old, giving him a birth year of 1931–32. He was said to be one of the most intelligent of animal stars then working in pictures. In addition to verbal commands, he also worked ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Fix
Peter Paul Fix (March 13, 1901 – October 14, 1983) was an American film and television character actor who was best known for his work in Westerns. Fix appeared in more than 100 movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career between 1925 and 1981. Fix was best known for portraying Marshal Micah Torrance, opposite Chuck Connors's character in ''The Rifleman'' from 1958 to 1963. He later appeared with Connors in the 1966 Western film '' Ride Beyond Vengeance'' and ''The Time Tunnel'' episode, ""End of the World". Early life and military service Paul Fix was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York, to Wilhelm Fix, a brewmaster, and the former Louise C. Walz, though some sources say he was born Paul Fix Morrison. His mother and father were German immigrants who had left their Black Forest home and arrived in New York City in the 1870s. Following the United States' entry into World War I in April 1917, Fix joined the National Guard, initially serving at Peekskill, New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Zucco
George Zucco (11 January 1886 – 27 May 1960) was a British character actor who appeared in plays and 96 films, mostly American-made, during a career spanning over two decades, from the 1920s to 1951. In his films, he often played a suave villain, a member of nobility, or a mad doctor. Early life and family Zucco was born in Manchester, Lancashire, on 11 January 1886. His mother Marian (née Rintoul) ran a dressmaking business; it is claimed she was a former lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, but this is untrue, as the honour was only accessible to titled ladies of high rank (duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, and baronesses). His father, George De Sylla Zucco, was a Greek merchant from Corfu who became a naturalised British subject in 1865. Zucco debuted on the Canadian stage in 1908 in a stock theater company. In 1910, he entered the United States for the first time from Canada, bound for Seattle, Washington, where he soon appeared in plays such as '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Levene
Sam Levene (born Scholem Lewin; August 28, 1905 – December 28, 1980) was a Russian Empire-born American Broadway, film, radio, and television actor and director. In a career spanning over five decades, he appeared in over 50 comedy and drama theatrical stage productions and acted in over 50 films across the United States and abroad. Early life Levene was born as Scholem Lewin in Russia, the youngest of five children by a dozen years. He immigrated to the United States when he was two years old. He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Avenue D and 8th Street and attended Public School 64. Levene, who would have been a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in 1923, dropped out. He also failed to qualify for the school's dramatic society. Since he had been in the class of Broadway for over five decades, the illustrious dropout was given a special award, his Stuyvesant High School diploma, in a 1976 ceremony held at the New York's Princeton Club. Levene's father, who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AFI Catalog Of Feature Films
The ''AFI Catalog of Feature Films'', also known as the ''AFI Catalog'', is an ongoing project by the American Film Institute (AFI) to catalog all commercially-made and theatrically exhibited American motion pictures from the birth of cinema in 1893 to the present. It began as a series of hardcover books known as ''The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures'', and subsequently became an exclusively online filmographic database. Each entry in the catalog typically includes the film's title, physical description, production and distribution companies, production and release dates, cast and production credits, a plot summary, song titles, and notes on the film's history. The films are indexed by personal credits, production and distribution companies, year of release, and major and minor plot subjects. To qualify for the "Feature Films" volumes, a film must have been commercially produced either on American soil or by an American company. In accordance with the Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leadership The institute is composed of leaders from the film, entertainment, business, and academic communities. The board of trustees is chaired by Kathleen Kennedy and the board of directors chaired by Robert A. Daly guide the organization, which is led by President and CEO, film historian Bob Gazzale. Prior leaders were founding director George Stevens Jr. (from the organization's inception in 1967 until 1980) and Jean Picker Firstenberg (from 1980 to 2007). History The American Film Institute was founded by a 1965 presidential mandate announced in the Rose Garden of the White House by Lyndon B. Johnson—to establish a national arts organization to preserve the legacy of American film heritage, educate the next generation of filmmake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and ''Baghdad by the Bay''. San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penny Singleton
Penny Singleton (born Mariana Dorothy McNulty, September 15, 1908 – November 12, 2003) was an American actress, singer, dancer and labor leader. During her 60-year career on stage, screen, radio and television, Singleton appeared as the comic-strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 motion pictures from 1938 until 1950 and the popular '' Blondie'' radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetson in the animated series ''The Jetsons'' from 1962 to 1963. Behind the scenes, Singleton served two terms as president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, and testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1962 on the union's treatment of women variety workers. Early life Singleton was born in Philadelphia to Bernard J. "Benny" McNulty and Mary Dorothy McNulty. She began performing professionally as a child, and only completed sixth grade in her schooling. Career Singleton sang at a silent movie theater, and toured in vaudeville ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
