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Charlotte Greenwood
Frances Charlotte Greenwood (June 25, 1890 – December 28, 1977) was an American actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Greenwood started in vaudeville, and starred on Broadway, movies and radio. Standing almost six feet tall (some sources say 5'10"), she was best known for her long legs and high kicks. She earned the unique praise of being, in her words, the "...only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye." Theatre In 1913, Oliver Morosco cast her as Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo late in the run of L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's ''The Tik-Tok Man of Oz'' (better known in its novelization as ''Tik-Tok of Oz''). In 1916, Morosco commissioned a successful star vehicle stage play titled ''So Long Letty''. In 1919 Morosco brought her back in the sequel ''Linger Longer Letty''. This role made her a star; she reprised it in the 1929 movie of the same name. She appeared with actors including Charles Ruggles, Betty Grable, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Durante
James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as ''the schnozzola'' ( Italianization of the American Yiddish slang word ''schnoz'', meaning "big nose"), and the word became his nickname. Early life Childhood Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel. Early career Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shirley Jones
Shirley Mae Jones (born March 31, 1934) is an American actress and singer. In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as ''Oklahoma!'' (1955), ''Carousel'' (1956), and ''The Music Man'' (1962). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in ''Elmer Gantry'' (1960). She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series ''The Partridge Family'' (1970–1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy. Early life Jones was born on March 31, 1934, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Methodist parents Marjorie (née Williams), a homemaker, and Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. Jones' paternal grandfather came from Wales. She was named after child star Shirley Temple. Jones says that many people have incorrectly assumed that her middle name was named ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gordon MacRae
Albert Gordon MacRae (March 12, 1921 – January 24, 1986) was an American actor, singer and radio/television host who appeared in the film versions of two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals ''Oklahoma!'' (1955) and ''Carousel'' (1956) and who played the leading man opposite Doris Day in '' On Moonlight Bay'' (1951) and sequel '' By The Light of the Silvery Moon'' (1953). Early life Born in East Orange in Essex County in northeastern New Jersey, United States, to Scottish parents, MacRae graduated in 1940 from Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and he thereafter served as a navigator in IX Troop Carrier Command in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Before this, he attended Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York. Gordon was descended from the Clan MacRae. Career Singer MacRae was a baritone. Winning a contest enabled him to sing at the 1939 New York World's Fair with the Harry James and Les Brown orchestras. Broadway He made his Broadway deb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oklahoma! (1955 Film)
''Oklahoma!'' is a 1955 American musical film based on the 1943 musical of the same name by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was based on the 1931 play ''Green Grow The Lilacs'' written by Lynn Riggs. It stars Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones (in her film debut), Rod Steiger, Charlotte Greenwood, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, James Whitmore, and Eddie Albert. The production was the only musical directed by Fred Zinnemann. ''Oklahoma!'' was the first feature film photographed in the Todd-AO 70 mm widescreen process (and was simultaneously filmed in CinemaScope 35mm). Set in Oklahoma Territory, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams (Jones) and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain (MacRae) and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry (Steiger). A secondary romance concerns Laurey's friend, Ado Annie (Grahame), and cowboy Will Parker (Nelson), who also has an unwilling rival. A background theme is the territory's aspiration for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodgers And Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popular Broadway productions in the 1940s and 1950s initiated what is considered the "golden age" of musical theater. Gordon, John Steele''Oklahoma'!'. Retrieved June 13, 2010 Five of their Broadway shows, ''Oklahoma!'', '' Carousel'', '' South Pacific'', ''The King and I'' and ''The Sound of Music'', were outstanding successes, as was the television broadcast of ''Cinderella'' (1957). Of the other four shows that the team produced on Broadway during their lifetimes, ''Flower Drum Song'' was well-received, and none was an outright flop. Most of their shows have received frequent revivals around the world, both professional and amateur. Among the many accolades their shows (and film versions) garnered were thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Science
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church. It was founded in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book '' Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures'', which outlined the theology of Christian Science. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies. Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1879 to found the "Church of Christ (Scientist)"; the church would be reorganized under the name " Church of Christ, Scientist" in 1892. The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1894. Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Out Of This World (musical)
''Out of This World'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and the book by Dwight Taylor and Reginald Lawrence. The show, an adaptation of Plautus's comedy ''Amphitryon'', first opened on Broadway in 1950. Synopsis The Roman gods Mercury and Jupiter are in search of some entertainment of the human kind. The focus of their attention is a young bride, Helen, and her husband, Art. Mercury joins the two on their trip to Athens, intending to put himself between the blushing newlyweds. While the men are busy chasing Helen, the goddess Juno (Jupiter's wife) is playing games of her own, with inept gangster Nikki as her reluctant sidekick. Songs ;Act 1 *I Jupiter, I Rex – Jupiter and Ensemble *Use Your Imagination – Mercury and Helen *Hail, Hail, Hail – Vulcania, Mercury and Ensemble *I Got Beauty – Juno and Ensemble *Maiden Fair – Ensemble *Where, Oh, Where – Chloe and Dancer Boys and Girls *I Am Loved – Helen *They Couldn't Compare to You – Mercury, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes for him to practice law and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, ''Kiss Me, Kate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claudia Cassidy
Claudia Cassidy (1899 – July 21, 1996), was an influential, 20th-century American performing arts critic. She was a long-time critic for the ''Chicago Tribune.'' Starting in 1925 she was music and drama critic for The Journal of Commerce. She was so well known for giving caustic reviews to what she considered bad performances that she earned the nickname "Acidy Cassidy." Cassidy had a particular aversion to touring companies of Broadway shows. In music criticism, according to a 1993 article by the '' Chicago Reader'', Rafael Kubelik, was "practically hounded out of town" by Cassidy. Although she had a reputation for biting critique, Cassidy's enthusiasm may have been even more powerful. Her sustained praise for ''The Glass Menagerie'' over several columns is credited with rescuing the show from closing in tryouts and propelling it to move on to Broadway success. According to Philip Rose, ''A Raisin in the Sun'' became a hit after a surprise positive review from Cassid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic and commentator for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality. Woollcott was the inspiration for two fictional characters. The first was Sheridan Whiteside, the caustic but charming main character in the play ''The Man Who Came to Dinner'' (1939) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart,Oscar Levant, '' The Unimportance of Being Oscar'', Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 81. . later made into a film in 1942. The second was the snobbish, vitriolic columnist Waldo Lydecker in the novel Laura, later made into a film in 1944. Woollcott was convinced he was the inspiration for his friend Rex Stout's brilliant, eccentric detective Nero Wolfe, an idea that Stout denied. Early life and education Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was the youngest of five children of William and Frances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Agate
James Evershed Agate (9 September 1877 – 6 June 1947) was an English diarist and theatre critic between the two world wars. He took up journalism in his late twenties and was on the staff of ''The Manchester Guardian'' in 1907–1914. He later became a drama critic for '' The Saturday Review'' (1921–1923), ''The Sunday Times'' (1923–1947) and the BBC (1925–1932). The nine volumes of Agate's diaries and letters cover the British theatre of his time and non-theatrical interests such as sports, social gossip and private preoccupations with health and finances. He published three novels, translated a play briefly staged in London, and regularly published collections of theatre essays and reviews. Early years Agate, the eldest child of Charles James Agate (1832–1909), a wholesale linen draper, and Eulalie Julia ''née'' Young, was born in Pendleton, near Manchester, England.Ivor Brown, rev. Marc Brodi"Agate, James Evershed (1877–1947)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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