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Bessie (film)
''Bessie'' is an HBO TV film about the American blues singer Bessie Smith, and focuses on her transformation as a struggling young singer into "The Empress of the Blues". The film is directed by Dee Rees, with a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois. Queen Latifah stars as Smith, and supporting roles are played by Michael Kenneth Williams as Smith's first husband Jack Gee, and Mo'Nique as Ma Rainey. The film premiered on May 16, 2015. By the following year ''Bessie'' was the most watched HBO original film in the network's history. The film was well received critically and garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Television Movie. Synopsis Bessie Smith (Queen Latifah) is a young singer from Chattanooga, Tennessee. She and her siblings are orphaned when their parents, William and Laura, die, leaving their oldest sister, Viola (Khandi Alexander), to raise them. Viola is abusive and vicious and Bessie's childhood is unhappy. She along wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dee Rees
Diandrea Rees (born February 7, 1977) is an American screenwriter and director. She is known for her feature films '' Pariah'' (2011), '' Bessie'' (2015), ''Mudbound'' (2017), and '' The Last Thing He Wanted'' (2020). Rees has also written and directed episodes for television series including ''Empire'', ''When We Rise'', and '' Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams''. Rees is the first black woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for ''Mudbound''. She has also received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, and won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film for ''Bessie''. Early life and education Rees was born in 1977 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was a police officer and her mother was a scientist at Vanderbilt University. Rees attended local schools and college at Florida A&M University. After graduating from bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HBO Films
HBO Films (formerly called HBO Premiere Films and HBO Pictures) is an American production and distribution company, a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. The division produces fiction and non-fiction works, primarily for distribution to their own customers, though recently the company has been funding theatrical releases. HBO Films slates three or four films per year and develops most them internally with theatrical films being distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Background After or around 1978, HBO was involved into preproduction financing films for exclusive pay-TV rights, which is risky as the films could be unpopular while alienated movie studios. The original Silver Screen Partners, L.P. was organized by Roland W. Betts, New York film investment broker to fund movies for HBO in 1982. The limited partnership sold through E.F. Hunton were oversubscribe and raised $83 million. HBO made a 50% guarantee on their investment for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hammond (producer)
John Henry Hammond II (December 15, 1910 – July 10, 1987) was an American record producer, civil rights activist, and music critic active from the 1930s to the early 1980s. In his service as a talent scout, Hammond became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century popular music. He is the father of blues musician John P. Hammond. Hammond was instrumental in sparking or furthering numerous musical careers, including those of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Babatunde Olatunji, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Freddie Green, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Russell, Jim Copp, Asha Puthli, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Mike Bloomfield. He is also largely responsible for the revival of delta blues artist Robert Johnson's music. Early years and family Hammond was born in New York, christened John Henry Hammond Jr., although both his father and grandfather shared the same name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucille Bogan
Lucille Bogan (born Lucile Anderson; April 1, 1897August 10, 1948) was an American classic female blues singer and songwriter, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. Music critic Ernest Borneman noted that Bogan was one of "the big three of the blues", along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Many of Bogan's songs have been recorded by later blues and jazz musicians. Many of her songs were sexually explicit, and she is generally considered to have been a "dirty blues" musician. In 2022, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Life and career She was born Lucile Anderson, the daughter of Gussie and Wylie Anderson. According to some sources, she was born in Amory, Mississippi, but according to her entry in the 1900 census her birthplace was Birmingham, Alabama. In 1914, she married Nazareth Lee Bogan, a railwayman, and gave birth to a son, Nazareth Jr., in either 1915 or 1916. She later divorced Bogan and married James Spencer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24 (Black Thursday). It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. Devastating effects were seen in both rich and poor countries with falling personal income, prices, tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rum-running
Rum-running or bootlegging is the illegal business of smuggling alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term ''rum-running'' is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; ''bootlegging'' is applied to smuggling over land. It is believed that the term ''bootlegging'' originated during the American Civil War, when soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by concealing pint bottles within their boots or beneath their trouser legs. Also, according to the PBS documentary ''Prohibition'', the term ''bootlegging'' was popularized when thousands of city dwellers sold liquor from flasks they kept in their boot legs all across major cities and rural areas. The term ''rum-running'' was current by 1916, and was used during the Prohibition era in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims,and abortion providers The Klan has existed in three distinct eras. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-progressivism. The first Klan used terrorism—both physical assault and murder—against politically active Black people and their allies in the Southern United States in the late 1860s. The third Klan used murders and bombings from the late 1940s to the early 1960s to achieve its aims. All three movements have called for the "purification" of Ame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the Graphophone#Commercialization, American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Laboratory and Bureau#Commercialization of phonograph patents, Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1991, its recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records International, CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, alongside former longtime rival RCA Records, as well as Arista Records and Epic Records. Artists who have recorded for Columbia include AC/DC, Adele, Aerosmith, Julie And ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Swan Records
Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. (Broome Special Phonograph Records was the first to be owned and operated by African Americans). Black Swan was established to give African Americans a label that would give them more creative liberties. Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of historic jazz and blues recordings. History Black Swan's parent company, Pace Phonograph Corporation, was founded in March 1921 by Harry Pace and was based in Harlem. The new production company was formed after Pace's music publishing partnership with W. C. Handy, Pace & Handy, had dissolved. Black Swan, which sought to specialize in classical recordings, served as an investment opportunity for the Talented Tenth. As recognized by Thomas Brothers, "luminaries like Jack Nail and James Weldon Johnson served on the Black Swan board ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee's fourth-largest city and one of the two principal cities of East Tennessee, along with Knoxville. It anchors the Chattanooga metropolitan area, Tennessee's fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area, as well as a larger three-state area that includes Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama. Chattanooga was a crucial city during the American Civil War, due to the multiple railroads that converge there. After the war, the railroads allowed for the city to grow into one of the Southeastern United States' largest heavy industrial hubs. Today, major industry that drives the economy includes automotive, advanced manufacturing, food and beverage production, healthcare, insurance, tourism, and back office ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primetime Emmy Award For Outstanding Television Movie
This is a list of the winners of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Made for Television Movie, which is awarded since 1992. The category was originally called Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special. In 1991, Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special category was merged with Outstanding Miniseries category to form Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special and Miniseries and the number of nominations increased from five to six. For this year, two miniseries had competed with four "made for television movies". The following year, 1992, the new category was split to re-form the Outstanding Miniseries and Outstanding Made for Television Movie categories. In 2011, the category was merged with the Outstanding Limited Series category to create the Outstanding Miniseries or Movie category. However, in 2014, the decision was reversed, and the separate Miniseries and Television Movie categories were reinstated. Rules were also changed in 2019 requiring at least a 75-minute runtime for movies to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primetime Emmy Awards
The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime Emmys are presented in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming. The award categories are divided into three classes: the regular Primetime Emmy Awards, the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards to honor technical and other similar behind-the-scenes achievements, and the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards for recognizing significant contributions to the engineering and technological aspects of television. First given out in 1949, the award was originally referred to as simply the " Emmy Award" until the International Emmy Award and the Daytime Emmy Award were created in the early 1970s to expand the Emmy to other sectors of the television industry. The Primetime Emmy Awards generally air every September, on th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
