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Avalon (Al Jolson Song)
"Avalon" is a 1920 popular song written by Al Jolson, Buddy DeSylva and Vincent Rose referencing Avalon, California. It was introduced by Jolson and interpolated in the musicals '' Sinbad'' and ''Bombo.'' Jolson's recording rose to number two on the charts in 1921. The song was possibly written by Rose, but Jolson's popularity as a performer allowed him to claim composer co-credit. Originally, only Rose and Jolson were credited, and DeSylva's name was added later. A popular jazz standard, the song has been recorded by many artists, including Cab Calloway (1934), Coleman Hawkins (1935) and Eddie Durham (1936). The Benny Goodman Quartet played the song in their famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. The tune remains popular in the gypsy jazz repertoire, having been performed by Wawau Adler and others. The tune's opening melody resembles a part of Giacomo Puccini's aria ''E lucevan le stelle'', from the opera ''Tosca'', but in the major key. Puccini's publishers sued the song's co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Jolson
Al Jolson (born Eizer Yoelson; June 9, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-American Jews, Jewish singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer." Jolson was known for his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach" towards performing, as well as for popularizing many of the songs he sang. Jolson has been referred to by modern critics as "the king of blackface performers." Although best remembered today as the star of the first talking picture, ''The Jazz Singer'' (1927), he starred in a series of successful musical films during the 1930s. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with ''The Jolson Story'' (1946), in which Larry Parks played Jolson, with the singer dubbing for Parks. The formula was repeat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
E Lucevan Le Stelle
"" ("And the stars were shining") is a romantic aria from the third act of Giacomo Puccini's opera ''Tosca'' from 1900, composed to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is sung in act 3 by Mario Cavaradossi (tenor), a painter in love with the singer Tosca, while he waits for his execution on the roof of Castel Sant'Angelo. Written in B minor, it is one of the most famous opera arias. The vocal range extends from F 3 to A4. The aria is considered part of the spinto tenor repertoire. The aria is introduced by a somber clarinet solo. The incipit of the melody (heard in outline earlier in the act, as the sky lightens and the gaoler prepares for the execution) is repeated on the lines "" ("Oh, sweet kisses and languorous caresses"), and also restated in forte in the closing bars of the opera, as Tosca jumps from the ramparts. Libretto Plagiarism suit In 1920, the stage performer Al Jolson, together with Buddy DeSylva and Vincent Rose, wrote a popular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
It's A Wonderful Life
''It's a Wonderful Life'' is a 1946 American Christmas by medium#Films, Christmas Fantasy film, fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet ''The Greatest Gift'', which Philip Van Doren Stern self-published in 1943 and is in turn loosely based on the 1843 Charles Dickens novella ''A Christmas Carol''. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life), George Bailey, a man who has given up his personal dreams in order to help others in his community and whose thoughts of suicide on Christmas Eve bring about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he touched and what the world would be like if he did not exist. Theatrically, the film's break-even point was $6.3 million, about twice the production cost, a figure it did not come close to achieving on its initial release. Because of the film's disappointing sales, Capra was seen by some stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gogi Grant
Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg (September 20, 1924 – March 10, 2016), known professionally as Gogi Grant, was an American pop singer. She is best known for her No. 1 hit in 1956, "The Wayward Wind". Life and career Grant was born Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eldest of six children of Russian Jewish parents, Rose (née Jacobson) and Alexander Arinsberg. At the age of 12, she moved to Los Angeles, where she attended Venice High School. In California, she won a teenage singing contest and appeared on television talent shows. She worked as a car saleswoman in the early 1950s. In 1952 she began to record, using first the name "Audrey Brown" and later "Audrey Grant". She was given the name "Gogi" by Dave Kapp, the head of Artists and Repertory at RCA Victor, who liked to patronize a restaurant called Gogi's LaRue. (Another source says that Grant asked Kapp, "What is a Gogi?" She continued, "His answer was, 'Darned if I know, I dreamed it last night.'") In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Blyth
Ann Marie Blyth (born August 16, 1928) is an American retired actress and singer. For her performance as Veda in the 1945 Michael Curtiz film ''Mildred Pierce'', Blyth was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, and became the earliest surviving Academy Award nominee upon the death of Angela Lansbury in October 2022. Life and career Early life Anne Marie Blythe (she later dropped the "e" from her first name and surname) was born in Mount Kisco, New York, on August 16, 1928. After her father left the family, she, her elder sister (Dorothy), and their mother moved to a walk-up apartment on East 31st Street in New York City, where her mother took in ironing. ''Watch on the Rhine'' Blyth performed on children's radio shows in New York for six years, making her first appearance when she was five. When she was nine, she joined the New York Children's Opera Company. Her first acting rol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Helen Morgan Story
''The Helen Morgan Story'', released in the UK as ''Both Ends of the Candle'', is a 1957 American biographical film directed by Michael Curtiz starring Ann Blyth and Paul Newman. The screenplay by Oscar Saul, Dean Riesner, Stephen Longstreet, and Nelson Gidding is based on the life and career of torch singer/actress Helen Morgan, with fictional touches liberally added for dramatic purposes. This turned out to be Blyth's final film role. Another version of Morgan's life story, '' Helen Morgan'', was produced as a live television drama on '' Playhouse 90'', with Polly Bergen as Morgan. Despite requests to delay the television version, it aired five months before the release of the motion picture. Plot Helen Morgan begins her career as a Chicago carnival dancer. She catches the eye of fast-talking, double-dealing Larry Maddux, whose promotion catapults her to fame as a Broadway performer in ''Show Boat'' and a headliner in her own nightclub. Helen is involved in two romantic re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rose Of Washington Square
''Rose of Washington Square'' is a 1939 American musical drama film, featuring the already well-known popular song with the same title. Set in 1920s New York City, the film focuses on singer Rose Sargent and her turbulent relationship with con artist Barton DeWitt Clinton, whose criminal activities threaten her professional success in the Ziegfeld Follies. Although the names of the principal characters were changed, the plot was inspired by vaudeville entertainer Fanny Brice's career and marriage to gambler Nicky Arnstein (both the film's title song and " My Man" were closely associated with Brice), and Brice sued 20th Century Fox for $750,000. The studio settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Written by Nunnally Johnson (who co-produced with Darryl F. Zanuck) and directed by Gregory Ratoff, it stars Alice Faye, Tyrone Power and Al Jolson, with a supporting cast that includes William Frawley, Joyce Compton, Hobart Cavanaugh, Moroni Olsen, Charles Lane, and Louis Prima. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Janie (1944 Film)
''Janie'' is a 1944 film directed by Michael Curtiz based on a 1942 Broadway play by Josephine Bentham and Herschel V. Williams Jr. The play was adapted from Benthams's 1940 novel by the same name. Plot Janie is a free-spirited teenage girl living in a small town. World War II brings the establishment of an army camp nearby, which is opposed by her father, the local newspaper publisher. Janie and her bobby soxer friends have their hearts set afire by the prospect of so many young soldiers so close. She enjoys dating an Army man, which makes her younger local boyfriend jealous. Cast * Joyce Reynolds as Janie Conway * Robert Hutton as Pfc. Dick Lawrence * Edward Arnold as Charles Conway * Ann Harding as Lucille Conway * Alan Hale as Professor Reardon * Robert Benchley as John Van Brunt * Clare Foley as Elsbeth Conway * Barbara Brown as Thelma Lawrence * Hattie McDaniel as April * Richard Erdman as Scooper Nolan * Jackie Moran as Mickey the Sailor * Ann Gillis as Paula Rainey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
You Said A Mouthful
''You Said a Mouthful'' is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Lloyd Bacon and written by Robert Lord and Bolton Mallory. The film stars Joe E. Brown, Ginger Rogers, Preston Foster, Allen Hoskins, Harry Gribbon, Edwin Maxwell and Sheila Terry. The film was released by Warner Bros. on December 8, 1932. Plot Joe Holt works for the Armstrong Rubber Goods company and believes that he has invented an unsinkable bathing suit. His colleagues mock Joe behind his back and fool him into thinking that his boss likes the swimsuit idea. Joe travels to California to inherit his aunt's fortune, which he intends to use to finance the manufacture of his swimsuit. However, his aunt died broke. Joe befriends a servant's son, Sam Wellington, and together take a boat to Santa Catalina Island. Socialite Alice Brandon mistakes Joe for a famous swimmer with his same name. She has just parted ways with channel swimmer Ed Dover and wants Ed to lose an upcoming channel race, so she persu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casablanca (film)
''Casablanca'' is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) or helping her husband (Henreid), a Czech resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on '' Everybody Comes to Rick's'', an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson. Warner Bros. story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to purchase the film rights to the play in January 1942. Brothers Julius and Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script. However, despite studio resistance, they left to work on Frank Capra's ''Why We Fight'' series early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
As Time Goes By (song)
"As Time Goes By" is a jazz song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became famous when it was featured in the 1942 Warner Bros. film ''Casablanca'', performed by Dooley Wilson as Sam. The song was voted No. 2 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film (only surpassed by " Over the Rainbow" by Judy Garland). The song has since become the signature tune of Warner Bros. and used as such in the production logos at the beginning of many Warner Bros. films since January 16, 1998 with ''Fallen'' as part of the 75th-anniversary opening montage before the feature presentation trailers for the movie theatre chains and the main on-screen logo since February 12, 1999 with ''Message in a Bottle'', as well as the closing logos to most Warner Bros. Television Studios shows since fall 2003 with ''Two and a Half Men'', and preexisting shows also switching over from a previous theme that had been used since 1994. The song was covered by Jimmy Durante, L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dooley Wilson
Arthur "Dooley" Wilson (April 3, 1886 – May 30, 1953) was an American actor, singer and musician who is best remembered for his portrayal of Sam in the 1942 film ''Casablanca (film), Casablanca''. In that romantic drama, he performs its theme song "As Time Goes By (song), As Time Goes By". Wilson was a drummer and singer who led his own band in the 1920s, touring nightclubs in London and Paris. In the 1930s he took up acting, playing supporting roles onstage on Broadway theatre, Broadway and in a series of modest films. His role in ''Casablanca'' was by far his most prominent, but his other films included ''My Favorite Blonde'' (1942) with Bob Hope, ''Stormy Weather (1943 film), Stormy Weather'' (1943) with Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers, and the Western ''Passage West (1951 film), Passage West'' (1951). Early life and career Arthur Wilson was born in Tyler, Texas, the youngest of five children. At age seven, the year of his father's death, he began to earn a living by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
