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Cora Witherspoon
Cora Witherspoon (January 5, 1890 – November 17, 1957) was an American stage and film character actress whose career spanned nearly half a century. She began in theatre where she remained rooted even after entering motion pictures in the early 1930s. As Witherspoon’s career progressed, she carved a niche playing haughty society women or harridan housewives such as Princess Lina in Ferenc Molnár's 1928 play ''Olympia,'' or Agatha Sousè, W.C. Fields’ domineering spouse in the 1940 film ''The Bank Dick''. John Springer and Jack Hamilton, authors of ''They Had Faces Then: Super Stars, Stars, and Starlets of the 1930s'' (1974), wrote that "Witherspoon was blessed with a face that might have been drawn by one of those cartoonists who specialize in dealing with the war between men and women." Early life She was born in New Orleans, to Cora S. Bell and Henry Edgeworth Witherspoon. Her father was an assistant surgeon with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nueva Orleans) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, most populous city in Louisiana and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States. Serving as a List of ports in the United States, major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast region of the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for its Music of New Orleans, distinctive music, Louisiana Creole cuisine, Creole cuisine, New Orleans English, uniq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton (23 November 1884 – 4 September 1979) was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the US, he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G. Wodehouse and Fred Thompson, with whom he wrote 21 and 14 shows respectively, and the American playwright George Middleton, with whom he wrote ten shows. Among his other collaborators in Britain were George Grossmith Jr., Ian Hay and Weston and Lee. In the US, he worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Kalmar and Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein II. Bolton is best known for his early work on the Princess Theatre musicals during the First World War with Wodehouse and the composer Jerome Kern. These shows moved the American musical away from the traditions of European operetta to small scale, intimate productions with what the ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Popular Music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame X (1937 Film)
''Madame X'' is a 1937 American drama film, a sanitized remake of several Pre-Code films of the same name.''Harrison's Reports'' film review; October 16, 1937, p. 166 It was directed by Sam Wood, with additional direction by Gustav Machatý (uncredited). The film is based on the 1908 play by French playwright Alexandre Bisson (1848–1912). Plot A woman who cheated on her loving husband is thrown out of her home by said husband. Twenty years later, she finds herself accused of murder for saving her son, who does not know who she is, as he was raised without her. He finds himself defending her without knowing her background. Cast * Gladys George as Jacqueline Fleuriot, aka Miss Pran and Madame X * Warren William as Bernard Fleuriot * John Beal as Raymond Fleuriot * Reginald Owen as Maurice Dourel * William Henry as Hugh Fariman, Jr. * Henry Daniell as Lerocle * Phillip Reed as Jean Rochin * Lynne Carver as Helene * Emma Dunn as Rose, Fleuriot's housekeeper * Ruth Hussey as Anne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piccadilly Jim (1936 Film)
''Piccadilly Jim'' is a 1936 romantic comedy film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. The film is based on the 1917 novel '' Piccadilly Jim'' written by P. G. Wodehouse. Plot In London, American caricaturist Jim Crocker ( Robert Montgomery) is a popular man-about-town, known by his pen name 'Piccadilly Jim'. He supports his father James (Frank Morgan), an out-of-work actor with a great admiration for Shakespeare, but also with an inability to remember lines from the Bard's work. Most characters in the film describe James as a ham. Jim lives with his impeccable valet, Bayliss (Eric Blore). Jim is happy when he finds out that his father is to be engaged to Eugenia Willis (Billie Burke), until Eugenia's overbearing married sister, Nesta Pett (Cora Witherspoon), refuses to give permission for the marriage because she has doubts about James' sincerity and financial background. One morning, James tries to introduce the Petts to his son, whom he describes as an artist; but Jim, who has staye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Powell
William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the ''The Thin Man (film), Thin Man'' series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for ''The Thin Man (film), The Thin Man'' (1934), ''My Man Godfrey'' (1936), and ''Life with Father (film), Life with Father'' (1947). Early life Born in Pittsburgh in 1892, William Powell was the only child of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, who worked as an accountant."Obituaries: William Powell, star of 'Thin Man' films", ''Chicago Tribune'', March 6, 1984, p. N6. Retrieved via ProQuest Historical Newspapers through subscription access at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, January 31, 2022. In 1907, young William moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow 22 on its greatest female screen legends of classical Hollywood cinema list. Harlow was first signed by business magnate Howard Hughes, who directed her first major role in '' Hell's Angels'' (1930). After a series of critically failed films, and Hughes' loss of interest in her career, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought out Harlow's contract in 1932 and cast her in leading roles in a string ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libeled Lady
''Libeled Lady'' is a 1936 screwball comedy film starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy, written by George Oppenheimer, Howard Emmett Rogers, Wallace Sullivan, and Maurine Dallas Watkins, and directed by Jack Conway (film-maker), Jack Conway. This was the fifth of fourteen films in which Powell and Loy were teamed. ''Libeled Lady'' was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was remake, remade in 1946 as ''Easy to Wed'' with Esther Williams, Van Johnson, and Lucille Ball. Plot Wealthy Connie Allenbury is falsely accused of breaking up a marriage and sues the ''New York Evening Star'' newspaper for $5 million for libel. Warren Haggerty, the managing editor, turns in desperation to former reporter and suave ladies' man Bill Chandler for help. Bill's scheme is to maneuver Connie into being alone with him when his wife shows up, so that the suit will have to be dropped. Bill is not married, so Warren volunteers his long-suffering fiancée ... [...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] |
Tarnished Lady
''Tarnished Lady'' is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by George Cukor and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Clive Brook. The screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart is based on his short story, ''A Story of a New York Lady''. Plot Nancy Courtney, a once wealthy socialite, has had to struggle to maintain a facade of prosperity ever since her father's death. Although she loves writer DeWitt Taylor, who is indifferent to amassing a fortune, her mother urges her to marry stockbroker Norman Cravath instead. Nancy acquiesces to her mother's wishes but, despite the fact her new husband does everything he can to please her, she is miserable in her marriage. Meanwhile, DeWitt has begun romancing Norman's former girl friend Germaine Prentiss, Nancy's long-time rival. She realizes DeWitt's relationship with Germaine is changing him into a social climber. Unaware Norman's firm has just been barred from the stock market and he is facing financial ruin, Nancy tells her husband she is le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles MacArthur
Charles Gordon MacArthur (November 5, 1895 – April 21, 1956) was an American playwright, screenwriter and 1935 winner of the Academy Award for Best Story. Life and career MacArthur was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the sixth of seven children of stern evangelist William Telfer MacArthur and Georgiana Welsted MacArthur. He early developed a passion for reading. Declining to follow his father into ministry, he moved to the Midwest and soon became a successful reporter in Chicago, working for the ''Chicago Tribune'' and ''Chicago Daily News''. MacArthur joined the United States Army for World War I, and served in France as a private assigned to Battery F, 149th Field Artillery, a unit of the 42nd Division. He recounted his wartime experience in 1919's ''A Bug's-Eye View of the War''. After the war, he wrote several short stories, two of which, "Hang It All" (1921) and "Rope" (1923), were published in H. L. Mencken's ''The Smart Set'' magazine. Eventually he settled in New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht (; February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A successful journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. After graduating from high school in 1910, Hecht ran away to Chicago, where, in his own words, he "haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops." In the 1910s and 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. In the late 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, ''The Front Page'', became a Broadway hit. The ''Dictionary of Literary Biography – American Screenwriters'' calls him "one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Front Page
''The Front Page'' is a Broadway comedy about newspaper reporters on the police beat. Written by former Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it was first produced in 1928 and has been adapted for the cinema several times. Plot The play's single set is the dingy press room of Chicago's Criminal Courts Building, overlooking the gallows behind the Cook County Jail. Reporters from most of the city's newspapers are passing the time with poker and pungent wisecracks about the news of the day. Soon they will witness the hanging of Earl Williams, a white man and supposed Communist revolutionary convicted of killing a black policeman. Hildy Johnson, cocky star reporter for the ''Examiner'', is late. He appears only to say goodbye; he is quitting to get a respectable job and be married. Suddenly the reporters hear that Earl Williams has escaped from the jail. All but Hildy stampede out for more information. As Hildy tries to decide how to react, Williams comes in through the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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