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Babes In Arms (film)
''Babes in Arms'' is the 1939 American film version of the 1937 coming-of-age Broadway musical of the same title. Directed by Busby Berkeley, it stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, and features Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, June Preisser, Grace Hayes, and Betty Jaynes. It was Garland and Rooney's second film together as lead characters after their earlier successful pairing in the fourth of the Andy Hardy films. The film concerns a group of youngsters trying to put on a show to prove their vaudevillian parents wrong and make it to Broadway. The original Broadway script was significantly revamped, restructured, and rewritten to accommodate Hollywood's needs. Almost all of the Rodgers and Hart songs from the Broadway musical were discarded. Plot In 1921, vaudeville performer Joe Moran (Winninger) announces the birth of a son, but after the advent of talking pictures in 1928, vaudeville fails. His son Michael "Mickey" Moran (Rooney) writes songs, and Patsy Barton (Garland) sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley (born Berkeley William Enos; November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976) was an American film director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeley's works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances. Early life Berkeley was born in Los Angeles, California, to Francis Enos (who died when Busby was eight) and stage actress Gertrude Berkeley (1864–1946). Among Gertrude's friends, and a performer in Tim Frawly's Stock company run by Busby Berkeley's father, were actress Amy Busby from whom Berkeley gained the appellation "Buzz" or "Busby" and actor William Gillette, then only four years away from playing Sherlock Holmes. Whether he was actually christened Busby Berkeley William Enos,Spivak, Jeffrey, ''Buzz, The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley'' (University Press of Kentucky, 2010), pp. 6–7. or Berkeley William Enos, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Edens
Roger Edens (November 9, 1905 – July 13, 1970) was a Hollywood composer, arranger and associate producer, and is considered one of the major creative figures in Arthur Freed's musical film production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the "golden era of Hollywood". Early career and work with Judy Garland Edens was born in Hillsboro, Texas. His parents were of Scots-Irish ancestry. He was a piano accompanist for ballroom dancers before becoming a musical conductor on Broadway. He went to Hollywood in 1932 along with his protégée Ethel Merman, writing and arranging material for her films at Paramount. In 1935 he joined MGM as a musical supervisor and occasional composer and arranger, notably of music for Judy Garland. He also appeared on screen opposite Eleanor Powell in a cameo in '' Broadway Melody of 1936''. Arthur Freed, producer of musicals at MGM, was impressed by Edens and soon made him integral to his production team, which was rapidly growing and featured many of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Hardy
Andrew "Andy" Hardy is a fictional character best known for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer series of 16 films in which he was played by Mickey Rooney. The films were released from 1937 to 1946, except for a final one made in 1958 in an unsuccessful attempt to continue the series. Hardy and others initially appeared in the 1928 play ''Skidding'' by Aurania Rouverol. Early films in the series were about the Hardy family as a whole, but later entries focused on the character of Andy Hardy. Rooney was the only member of the ensemble to appear in all 16 films. The Hardy films, which were enormously popular in their heyday, were sentimental comedies, celebrating ordinary American life. Theatre The Hardy family first appeared in Aurania Rouverol's play ''Skidding'', which debuted on May 21, 1928, at the Bijou Theatre and ran until July 1929. The original cast included Carleton Macy as Judge Hardy, Charles Eaton as Andy, Joan Madison as Myra, and Marguerite Churchill as Marion. Samuel Marx re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betty Jaynes (actress)
Betty Jaynes (born Betty Jayne Schultz, February 12, 1921 – November 22, 2018) was an American operatic singer and B-movie actress from the late 1930s to mid-1940s. Early years The daughter of Louis C. Schultz and Stella Schultz, Jaynes was born in Greeneville, Tennessee, but she attended the Starrett School for Girls in Chicago. She has a brother, Robert, and two sisters, Lorraine and Marion. Career Jaynes made her concert debut when she was 15, performing with pianist Janet Gunn at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. At the same age, she made a "sensational debut" with the Chicago City Opera Company in ''La boheme''. In a ''Life'' magazine article, she said she would "quit school and consider movies." Her radio debut also occurred when she was 15, as she sang on '' The Ford Sunday Evening Hour'' on CBS in January 1937. On December 9, 1936, Probate Judge John F. O'Connell in Chicago approved Jaynes' contracts with MGM and a concert booking company. Her status as a minor required cour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
June Preisser
June Preisser (June 26, 1918 – September 19, 1984) was an American actress, popular in musical films during the late 1930s and through the 1940s, many of which capitalized on her skills as an acrobat. Life and career Born June 26, 1918 in New Orleans, Preisser was one of six children. As a child, she was underweight and began going to an athletic club in an attempt to build strength and gain weight. It was there that Preisser and her sister Cherry learned acrobatics in which they excelled. Their mother was keen to have them follow a career in show business, especially when their father died suddenly, leaving the family with few options to make a living. When Preisser was nine years old, an actor noticed the two sisters performing acrobatics on a sidewalk near their home, and his interest led to their working in vaudeville and later for the Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and 1936. The Preisser sisters were successful in the United States, and performed in Europe, including for G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Kibbee
Guy Bridges Kibbee (March 6, 1882 – May 24, 1956) was an American stage and film actor. Early years Kibbee was born in El Paso, Texas. His father was editor of the '' El Paso Herald-Post'' newspaper, and Kibbee learned how to set type at age 7. At the age of 14, he ran away to join a traveling show. His younger brother was actor Milton Kibbee. Career Kibbee began his entertainment career on Mississippi riverboats. He became an actor in traveling stock companies. He began to lose his hair at 19. In his early days on stage, he was a romantic leading man. In 1930, he made his debut on Broadway in the play ''Torch Song'', which won acclaim in New York and attracted the interest of Hollywood. Shortly afterwards, Paramount Pictures signed Kibbee, and he moved to California. He later became part of Warner Bros.'s stock company, contract actors who cycled through different productions in supporting roles. Kibbee's specialty was daft and jovial characters; he is perhaps best rememb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Winninger
Charles J. Winninger (May 26, 1884 – January 27, 1969) was an American stage and film actor, most often cast in comedies or musicals. Life and career Winninger was born in Athens, Wisconsin, the son of Rosalia (Grassler) and Franz Winninger. His parents were Austrian immigrants. He began as a vaudeville actor. His most famous stage role was as Cap'n Andy Hawks in the original production of ''Show Boat'', the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical classic, in 1927. He played the role in the 1932 stage revival and the 1936 film version of the show. He became so identified with the role and with his persona as a riverboat captain that he played several variations of the role, notably on the radio program ''Maxwell House Show Boat'', which was clearly inspired by the Broadway musical. Winninger's pre-Code film career includes '' Night Nurse'', a 1931 drama about two girls being systematically starved to death by the family chauffeur. Winninger portrays a kindly physician who a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Coming-of-age Stories
Coming-of-age stories focus on the growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood, or "coming of age", and span a variety of media, including literature, theatre, film, and video games. In literature * The ''Telemachy'' in Homer's ''Odyssey'' (8th century BC) * ''Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'', by Ibn Tufail (12th century) * ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'', by Henry Fielding (1749) * ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', by Laurence Sterne (1759) * ''Candide'', by Voltaire (1759) * ''Northanger Abbey'', by Jane Austen (1817) * ''Oliver Twist'', by Charles Dickens (1837–1839) * ''Great Expectations'', by Charles Dickens (1860–1861) * ''Little Women'', by Louisa May Alcott (1868–1869) * ''Little Men'', by Louisa May Alcott (1871) * ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'', by Mark Twain (1876) * ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', by Mark Twain (1884–1885) * ''The Jungle Book'' by Rudyard Kipling (1894) * ''The Red Badge of Courage'', by Stephen Crane (18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loews Cineplex Entertainment
Loews Cineplex Entertainment, also known as Loews Incorporated, is an American theater chain operating in North America. From 1924 until 1959, it was also the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM). The company was originally called "Loew's," after the founder, Marcus Loew. In 1969, when the Tisch brothers acquired the company, it became known as "Loews." The company merged with Canadian-based Cineplex Odeon Corporation in 1998, only to become bankrupt in 2001. The company merged with AMC Theatres on January 26, 2006, while the Canadian operations merged with Cineplex Galaxy in 2003. The Loews Theatres name was used until 2017 when AMC simplified their branding to focus on three main lines: AMC, AMC Classic and AMC Dine-In after their purchase of Carmike Cinemas. Prior to the discontinuation, Loews Cineplex operated its theatres under the Loews Theatres, Cineplex Odeon, Star Theatres and Magic Johnson Theatres brands. Its corporate offices were located in New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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