|
David Wood (actor)
David Bernard Wood OBE (born 21 February 1944) is an English actor, author, composer, director, magician and producer. ''The Times'' called him "the National Children's Dramatist". In 1979, he joined Bernard Cribbins, Maurice Denham, and Jan Francis in a reading of ''The Hobbit'' for the BBC Television show '' Jackanory. Early life Wood was born on 21 February 1944 in Sutton, Surrey. He was educated at Chichester High School for Boys and Worcester College, Oxford. Stage work Along with John Gould, he founded the Whirligig Theatre, a touring children's theatre company. His most famous story, ''The Gingerbread Man'' (1976), has been all across the world since its premiere at the Towngate Theatre in Basildon. Wood, FilmFair, and Central adapted the musical into an animated children's television series. The adaptation, also called ''The Gingerbread Man'', aired on ITV in 1992. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2004 Queen's Birthday Hono ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FilmFair
FilmFair was a British production company and animation studio that produced children's television series, animated cartoons, educational films, and television advertisements. The company made numerous stop motion films using puppets, clay animation, and cutout animation. History Foundation FilmFair was founded in 1959 by American animator Gus Jekel in Los Angeles, California. After working with Walt Disney Productions and other Hollywood animation studios in the 1930s, Jekel incorporated FilmFair because he wanted the freedom to create live action work as well. The studio was in Animation Alley, a stretch of Cahuenga Boulevard that runs through Studio City in northern Los Angeles. Jekel's company produced television advertisements—some animated, others live action—and was extremely successful; even Disney was a client. In the late 1960s, Jekel asked an English colleague, Graham Clutterbuck, to start a European office for FilmFair. Clutterbuck had been producing and coordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swallows And Amazons
''Swallows and Amazons'' is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome and first published on 21 July 1930 by Jonathan Cape. Set in the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, the book introduces the main characters of John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker (Swallows); as well as their mother, Mary; and their baby sister, Bridget (nicknamed Vicky). We also meet Nancy and Peggy Blackett (Amazons); their uncle Jim (James Turner), commonly referred to as Captain Flint; and their widowed mother, Molly Blackett. It is the first book in the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series, followed by '' Swallowdale''. At the time, Ransome had been working as a journalist with the ''Manchester Guardian'', but decided to become a full-time author rather than go abroad as a foreign correspondent. He did continue to write part-time for the press, however. The book was inspired by a summer spent by Ransome teaching the children of his friends, the Altounyans, to sail. Three of the Altou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and ''Swallows and Amazons'' is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake. He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service, while he was also suspected by MI5 of being a Soviet spy. Early life Ransome was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851–1897) and his wife Edith Ransome (née Baker Boulton) (1862–1944). Arthur was the eldest of four children: he had two sisters Cecily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swallows And Amazons (1974 Film)
''Swallows and Amazons'' is a 1974 British film adaption of the 1930 novel of the same name by Arthur Ransome. The film, which was directed by Claude Whatham and produced by Richard Pilbrow, starred Virginia McKenna and Ronald Fraser, and a young Zanna Hamilton. Its budget was provided by Nat Cohen of EMI Films who had funded the successful 1970 film ''The Railway Children''.Tim Devlin. "A day in the life of Swallows and Amazons." Times ondon, England20 June 1973: 12. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 July 2012. Plot During the school holidays, the Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger; the ''Swallows'') are staying at a farm near a lake in the Lake District. They sail a borrowed dinghy named ''Swallow'', and camp on an island in the lake that they call ''Wild Cat Island. They meet two local girls Nancy and Peggy Blackett, who sail a dinghy named ''Amazon'' and live in ''Beckfoot'' a house up the nearby Amazon River. The ''Amazons'' (the Blackett girls; they call ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screenplay
''ScreenPlay'' is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993. Background After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, feature length filmed dramas, including ''ScreenPlay''. Various writers and directors were utilized on the series. Writer Jimmy McGovern was hired by producer George Faber to pen a series five episode based upon the Merseyside needle exchange programme of the 1980s. The episode, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, was entitled ''Needle'' and featured Sean McKee, Emma Bird, and Pete Postlethwaite''.'' The last episode of the series was titled "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" and featured Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson, who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie. Some scenes were shot a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
By Jeeves
''By Jeeves'', originally ''Jeeves'', is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and lyrics and book by Alan Ayckbourn. It is based on the series of novels and short stories by P. G. Wodehouse that centre around the character of Bertie Wooster and his loyal valet, Jeeves. Premiering on April 22, 1975, at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, the show flopped initially, running for only a month. After an extensive rewrite, the show was produced in 1996 in both London and America, and premiered on Broadway in 2001. 1975: ''Jeeves'' Background and production Tim Rice conceived the idea of turning P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories into a musical. Originally, he was to work with his then-partner, Andrew Lloyd Webber, but Rice backed out of the project.Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works – Walsh, Michael (1989, revised and expanded, 1997),P.82, Abrams: New York Eventually Lloyd Webber teamed up with famed British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, and the two of them began work wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit '' Relatively Speaking'' opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include ''Absurd Person Singular'' (1975), ''The Norman Conquests'' trilogy (1973), '' Bedroom Farce'' (1975), ''Just Between Ourselves'' (1976), '' A Chorus of Disapproval'' (1984), ''Woman in Mind'' (1985), ''A Small Family Business'' (1987), '' Man of the Moment'' (1988), ''House'' & ''Garden'' (1999) and ''Private Fears in Public Places'' (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948), is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from '' Cats,'' "The Music of the Night" and " All I Ask of You" from ''The Phantom of the Opera'', "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from ''Evita'', and " Any Dream Will Do" from '' Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.'' In 2001, ''The New York Times'' referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him the "fifth most powerful person in British culture" in 2008, lyricist Don Black writing "Andrew more or less single-ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aces High (film)
''Aces High'' is a 1976 war film starring Malcolm McDowell, Peter Firth, Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward. The film, which is an Anglo-French production, is based on the 1928 play ''Journey's End'' by R. C. Sherriff with additional material from the memoir ''Sagittarius Rising'' by Cecil Lewis. It was directed by Jack Gold. The screenplay was written by Howard Barker. ''Aces High'' turns the trench warfare of ''Journey's End'' into the aerial battles fought above the Western Front by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in 1917. The film covers a week of a squadron where the high death rate puts an enormous strain on the surviving pilots. Many characters and plot lines are loosely based on those of ''Journey's End'': the idealistic new officer who is killed at the end, and whose sister is the girlfriend of his tough but alcoholic commanding officer, the kindly middle-aged second-in-command (known as "Uncle" by the younger officers) who is killed on a dangerous intelligence-gathering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film '' if....'', which won the ''Palme d'Or'' at Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and marked Malcolm McDowell's cinematic debut. He is also notable, though not a professional actor, for playing a minor role in the Academy Award-winning 1981 film ''Chariots of Fire''. McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, '' Never Apologize''. Early life Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born in Bangalore, South India, where his father had been stationed with the Royal Engineers, on 17 April 1923. His father Captain (later Major General) Alexander Vass Anderson was a British Army officer who had been born in North India, and his mother Estelle Bell Gasson was born in Queenstown, South Africa, the daughter of a wool merch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITV (TV Network)
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was for four decades a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel. The ITV network is a separate entity from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004. ITV plc holds the Channel 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
