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Evelyn Ellis
Evelyn Ellis (February 2, 1894 – June 5, 1958) was an American character actress of stage and film. Devoting herself to the theatre, her film roles were few, but she appeared in films including ''The Joe Louis Story'' and ''The Lady from Shanghai''. Toward the end of her career, Miss Ellis, as she was referred to in the press also directed a few theater plays, including an all-black Broadway production of ''Tobacco Road''. The ''Baltimore Afro American'' newspaper in its issue in October 26, 1929, described her as a “quiet and unassuming young lady with a very charming personality". Early life Evelyn Ellis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 2, 1894. Not much is known about her early life and introduction to acting, but she became a prominent actor within the black community starting in 1919 until 1955. Ellis made her theatrical debut at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in a production of ''Othello'' in 1919. She then moved to Broadway, making her debut in th ...
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Porgy (play)
''Porgy: A Play in Four Acts'' is a play by Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward, adapted from the short novel by DuBose Heyward. It was first produced by the Theatre Guild and presented October 10, 1927 – August 1928 at the Guild Theatre in New York City. Featuring a cast of African Americans at the insistence of its authors—a decision unusual for its time—the original production starred Frank Wilson, Evelyn Ellis, Jack Carter, and Rose McClendon. ''Porgy'' marked the Broadway directing debut of Rouben Mamoulian. The play ran a total of 55 weeks in New York, and the original cast toured the United States twice and performed for 11 consecutive weeks in London. The play tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black beggar who lives in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It relates his efforts to rescue Bess, the woman he loves, from Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and a drug dealer called Sporting Life. The play is the basis of the libretto of the opera ''Porg ...
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Tobacco Road (play)
''Tobacco Road'' is a play by Jack Kirkland first performed in 1933, based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell. The play ran on Broadway for a total of 3,182 performances, surpassing ''Abie's Irish Rose'' to become the longest-running play in history at the time. As of 2018, it was still the 19th longest-running Broadway show in history, as well as being the second-longest running non-musical ever on Broadway. Productions ''Tobacco Road'' opened on Broadway at the Theatre Masque (now the John Golden Theatre) on December 4, 1933, transferred to the 48th Street Theatre (demolished in 1955), where it ran from July 16, 1934 through September 1934, and then moved to the Forrest Theatre (now the Eugene O'Neill Theatre) where it ran until May 31, 1941 for a total of 3,182 performances. It was revived three times on Broadway: *From September 5 through October 3, 1942, at the Forrest Theatre *September 4 through October 30, 1943, at the Ritz Theatre *March 6 throug ...
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American Stage Actresses
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * B ...
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African-American Actresses
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West/Central African with some European descent; some also have Native American and other ancestry. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-iden ...
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Actresses From Boston
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), literally "one who answers".''Hypokrites'' (related to our word for hypocrite) also means, less often, "to answer" the tragic chorus. See Weimann (1978, 2); see also Csapo and Slater, who offer translations of classical source material using the term ''hypocrisis'' (acting) (1994, 257, 265–267). The actor's interpretation of a rolethe art of actingpertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. This can also be considered an "actor's role," which was called this due to scrolls being used in the theaters. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. Formerly, in ancient Greece and the medieval world, and in England at the time of Willi ...
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1958 Deaths
Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, the first to use powered vehicles. ** Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls to Earth from its orbit, and burns up. * January 13 – Battle of Edchera: The Moroccan Army of Liberation ambushes a Spanish patrol. * January 27 – A Soviet-American executive agreement on cultural, educational and scientific exchanges, also known as the " Lacy–Zarubin Agreement", is signed in Washington, D.C. * January 31 – The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit. February * February 1 – Egypt and Syria unite, to form the United Arab Republic. * February 6 – Seven Manchester United footballers are among the 21 people killed in the Munich air disaster in West G ...
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1894 Births
Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States. * January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs .... * February 12 ** French anarchist Émile Henry (anarchist), Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty. ** The barque ''Elisabeth Rickmers'' of Bremerhaven is wrecked at Haurvig, Denmark, but all crew and passengers are saved. * February 15 ** In Korea, peasant unrest erupts in the Donghak Peasant ...
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Florence Mills
Florence Mills (born Florence Winfrey; January 25, 1896 – November 1, 1927), billed as the "Queen of Happiness", was an American cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian. Life and career Florence Mills (Florence Winfrey) was born a daughter of formerly enslaved parents Nellie (Simon) and John Winfrey in 1896 in Washington, D.C. She began performing as a child. At the age of six she sang duets with her two older sisters, Olivia and Maude. They eventually formed a vaudeville act, calling themselves the Mills Sisters."Early Days Desperate, Says Flo", ''Pittsburgh Courier'', February 28, 1925, p. 14. The act did well, appearing in theaters along the Atlantic seaboard. Florence's sisters eventually quit performing, but Florence stayed with it, determined to pursue a career in show business. She joined Ada Smith, Cora Green, and Carolyn Williams in the Panama Four, which had some success. She then joined a traveling Black show, the Tennessee Ten, and in 1917 she met the dance director a ...
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Abbie Mitchell
__NOTOC__ Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bess'' in 1935, and was also the first to record " Summertime" from that musical. Biography Mitchell was the mixed-race daughter of an African-American mother and a Jewish-German father from New York City's Lower East Side.D. C. Hine, ed., ''Black Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia''. Carlson Publishing Inc., 1993. . She was reared by a maternal aunt, Alice Payne, in Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended a Catholic convent school.Abbie Mitchell
, in ''Notable Black American Women'', Book 1. Gale Research, 1992.
Mitchell never completed her formal schooling in Baltimore. Following the dea ...
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Will Rogers Memorial Hospital
Will Rogers Memorial Hospital is a historic tuberculosis sanatorium located at Saranac Lake in Essex County, New York. It was built in 1928 as the National Vaudeville lodge by the National Vaudeville Artists Association, who previously sent patients to the Kennedy Cottage. It is a three-story, "T" shaped, steel frame and reinforced concrete structure above a raised basement. It is faced in stucco and decorative half-timber framing in the Tudor Revival style. It features asymmetrical massing, a three-story polygonal tower with a hexagonal roof, and three story pavilions with recessed sleeping porches. It was named in honor of entertainer Will Rogers (1879-1935) in 1936 and provided unconventional tubercular treatment to entertainment industry patients from 1936 to 1975. It also was open as a night club but when casinos were voted down in New York, it was closed. Then it was open as an apartment house. It stood abandoned for years slowly deteriorating. It was briefly used ...
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Interrupted Melody
''Interrupted Melody'' is a 1955 biographical musical film, filmed in CinemaScope and Eastman Color, directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Glenn Ford, Eleanor Parker, Roger Moore, and Cecil Kellaway. The film was produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Jack Cummings from a screenplay by Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence, Sonya Levien, and William Ludwig. It tells the story of Lawrence's rise to fame as an opera singer and her subsequent triumph over polio, with her husband's help. The operatic sequences were staged by Vladimir Rosing, and Eileen Farrell provided the singing voice for Parker. Plot The story traces Marjorie's (Eleanor Parker) long, hard road to the top, her success on two continents, and her turbulent marriage to American doctor Thomas King (Glenn Ford). While touring South America in 1941, Lawrence is stricken with polio, which not only abruptly stops her career but briefly robs her of the will to live. With her husband's help, she makes a triumphant return ...
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