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Avery Hopwood
James Avery Hopwood (May 28, 1882 – July 1, 1928) was an American playwright of the Jazz Age. He had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway in 1920. Early life Hopwood was born to James and Jule Pendergast Hopwood on May 28, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Cleveland's West High School in 1900. In 1901, he began attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. However, his family experienced financial difficulties, so for his second year he transferred to Adelbert College. He returned to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1903, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1905. Career Hopwood started out as a journalist for the ''Cleveland Leader'' as its New York correspondent, but within a year had his first play, ''Clothes'' (1906), produced on Broadway, with the aid of playwright Channing Pollock. Hopwood eventually became known as "The Playboy Playwright"Jim BeaveBiography for Avery Hopwoodat Internet Movie Database and specialized in comedies and far ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. maritime border with Canada, northeast of Cincinnati, northeast of Columbus, and approximately west of Pennsylvania. The largest city on Lake Erie and one of the major cities of the Great Lakes region, Cleveland ranks as the 54th-largest city in the U.S. with a 2020 population of 372,624. The city anchors both the Greater Cleveland metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton combined statistical area (CSA). The CSA is the most populous in Ohio and the 17th largest in the country, with a population of 3.63 million in 2020, while the MSA ranks as 34th largest at 2.09 million. Cleveland was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River by General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city was named ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several prominent films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's ''Lifeboat'' (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981. Bankhead was a member of the Bankhead and Brockman family, a prominent Alabama political family. Her grandfather and her uncle were U.S. senators, and her father was Speaker of the House of Representatives. Bankhead's support of liberal causes, including the budding civil rights movement, brought her into public conflict with her family and southern contemporaries, who championed white supremacy and racial segregation. She also supp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hazel Dawn
Hazel Dawn (born Henrietta Hazel Tout; March 23, 1890 – August 28, 1988) was an American stage, film and television actress, and violinist. She was born to a Mormon family in Utah, and studied music in Europe where her father was a missionary. Dawn rose to fame as a stage actress in Ivan Caryll's 1911 Broadway production of '' The Pink Lady'', which ran for over 300 performances and earned Dawn the eponymous nickname. She performed extensively on Broadway and began work in film in 1914, appearing in a total of 13 feature films. Dawn died at age 98 in New York City. Early life Dawn was born Henrietta Hazel Tout in Ogden, Utah, in 1890. She went to Wales with her family at the age of eight when her father served as a Mormon missionary there. Dawn studied violin and voice in London, Paris, and Munich. She especially was impressed by the attentiveness of teachers she studied under in Paris. Her sister, Nancy Tout, was an opera singer who sang with the Opera Comique in Paris. Career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilson Collison
Wilson Collison (November 5, 1893 – May 25, 1941) was a writer and playwright. Early years Wilson Collison was the son of John B. Collison, a clerk in the City Engineer's Office, and Mary E. Gardner. Wilson Collison abandoned plans to become a scientist when he found he preferred writing. Showing signs of early talent he was nine when a Columbus newspaper accepted one of his stories. His writing was largely self-developed, as he completed only one year of high school. He worked as a printer, a stenographer, an advertising writer, and as a clerk in the wholesale and retail drug business. Actor At 18 Collison became an actor with a repertory company that toured small towns in Michigan. He also was a vaudeville performer. Playwright and novelist Collison's fame as a playwright came in 1919, when ''Up in Mabel's Room'' became a Broadway hit. Collison was an $18-a-week clerk in a Columbus, Ohio drugstore when he turned out this first success, in collaboration with Otto Harbach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Getting Gertie's Garter (play)
''Getting Gertie's Garter'' is a Play (theatre), play written by Wilson Collison and Avery Hopwood. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway theatre, Broadway, where it opened at the New Victory Theater, Republic Theatre on August 1, 1921. Hazel Dawn played the role of Gertie. The play was a sex farce, but unlike most productions of its type, the setting was a hayloft instead of a bedroom. It was a success at the box office, running for 15 weeks with 120 performances on Broadway, then moving to touring companies. The play had tryouts starting in Brooklyn, then in Boston and Chicago under the reduced title of ''Gertie's Garter''. Dawn found her role unsatisfying due to its similarity to her part in ''Up in Mabel's Room (play), Up in Mabel's Room'', an earlier farce produced by Woods, but stuck with the show. She eventually left the Broadway production in September to take the lead in another Woods-produced farce, ''The Demi-Virgin''. Review Critic Dorothy Parker described the pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bat (1959 Film)
''The Bat'' is a 1959 American crime-mystery thriller starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. It is the fourth film adaptation of the story, which began as a 1908 novel ''The Circular Staircase'' by Mary Roberts Rinehart, which she later adapted (with Avery Hopwood) into the 1920 play '' The Bat''.Thompson, Nathanie"The Bat" (article)on TCM.com The first film version of the play was the 1926 American silent film '' The Bat''. The film version was adapted by playwright Crane Wilbur, who also directed. ''The Bat'' was distributed in 1959 on a double bill with the British Hammer film ''The Mummy''. Now in the public domain, ''The Bat'' is available for online download. Plot Mystery author Cornelia Van Gorder rents The Oaks, a summer home in a small town, from local bank president John Fleming. While on a hunting trip with his physician, Dr. Malcolm Wells, Fleming confesses to stealing over $1 million in negotiable securities from the bank. He offers to split the money with W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bat Whispers
''The Bat Whispers'' is a 1930 American pre-Code mystery film directed by Roland West, produced by Joseph M. Schenck, and released by United Artists. The film is based on the 1920 mystery play '' The Bat'', written by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, and is the second film version by the same director, previously adapted in 1926. An early talkie and one of the first widescreen films, West financed the cinematography, which required two cameramen and several techniques. It was considered a lost film for many years, but was restored from duplicate filmstock in 1988. Plot A mysterious criminal by the name of "The Bat" eludes police and then finally announces his retirement to the country. In the countryside near the town of Oakdale, news of a bank robbery in Oakdale has put Mrs. Van Gordner's maid, Lizzie, on edge. Van Gordner is leasing the house from Mr. Fleming, the Oakdale bank president, who is in Europe. The chief suspect in the bank robbery, a cashier, has disappe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bat (1926 Film)
''The Bat'' is a 1926 American silent comedy mystery film directed by Roland West and starring Jack Pickford and Louise Fazenda. The film is based on the 1920 Broadway hit play '' The Bat'' by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, which itself was an adaptation of Rinehart's 1908 mystery novel ''The Circular Staircase.'' ''The Bat'' has been cited as an early influence on the "slasher film" genre. Plot Gideon Bell, owner of the Favre Emeralds, receives a letter stating that the emeralds will be stolen at midnight by "the Bat", and that police will not be able to stop the robbery. The Bat, a figure dressed as a bat, murders Gideon and steals the emeralds. The Bat leaves a bat-shaped note for the chief of police to inform him that he will be traveling to the country. The Bat travels by car to a mansion built by Courtleigh Fleming, the president of the Oakdale Bank, who has recently been found dead in Colorado. The mansion is being rented for the summer by writer Cornelia V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie.Keating, H.R.F., ''The Bedside Companion to Crime''. New York: Mysterious Press, 1989, p. 170. Rinehart published her first mystery novel ''The Circular Staircase'' in 1908, which introduced the " had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the source of "the butler did it" plot device in her novel ''The Door'' (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines. Biography Rinehart was born Mary Ella Roberts in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh. A sister, Olive Louise, four years Mary's junior, would later gain recognition as an author of children's books and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. Her father was a frustrated inventor, and throughout he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bat (play)
''The Bat'' is a three-act play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood that was first produced by Lincoln Wagenhals and Collin Kemper in 1920. The story combines elements of mystery and comedy as Cornelia Van Gorder and guests spend a stormy night at her rented summer home, searching for stolen money they believe is hidden in the house, while they are stalked by a masked criminal known as "the Bat". The Bat's identity is revealed at the end of the final act. The play originated as an adaptation of Rinehart's 1908 mystery novel ''The Circular Staircase''. Rinehart and Hopwood altered the story to prepare it for Broadway, including adding the titular antagonist. The connection to the novel led to a legal dispute over film rights with the Selig Polyscope Company, producers of a 1915 film adaptation of the novel, also titled ''The Circular Staircase''. After previewing under the title ''A Thief in the Night'', the play opened as ''The Bat'' at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Ruggles
Charles Sherman Ruggles (February 8, 1886 – December 23, 1970) was an American comic character actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films, often in mild-mannered and comic roles. He was also the elder brother of director, producer, and silent film actor Wesley Ruggles (1889–1972). Career Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1886. Despite training to be a doctor, Ruggles soon found himself on the stage, appearing in a stock production of ''Nathan Hale'' in 1905. At Los Angeles's Majestic Theatre, he played Private Jo Files in L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's musical ''The Tik-Tok Man of Oz'' in 1913. He moved to Broadway to appear in '' Help Wanted'' in 1914. His first screen role came in the silent ''Peer Gynt'' the following year. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Ruggles continued to appear in silent movies, though his passion remained the stage, appearing in long-running productions such as ''The Passing Show ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ladies' Night (play)
''Ladies' Night'' (sometimes marketed as ''Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath'') is a three-act play originally written by Charlton Andrews and later reworked by Avery Hopwood. The play was a sex farce with part of the action set in a Turkish bath instead of a bedroom. A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where opened under the direction of Bertram Harrison on August 9, 1920 at the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre. ''Ladies' Night'' had a run of 375 performances with the final curtain falling in June 1921. It was revived on Broadway in adapted forms in 1945 and 1950. Plot Jimmy Walters is a married man who avoids many social events because of his strong reaction to women who wear modern fashions that expose their bodies. His wife, Dulcy, is annoyed by his behavior. Their friends – the couples Alicia and Fred, and Mimi and Cort – make fun of him. Fred and Cort believe they can cure his anxieties by taking him to a masquerade ball where he will see many women in scanty attire. On the sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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