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George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film. Early life and education Devine was born in Hendon, London to Georgios Devine (son of an Irish father and a Greek mother) and a Canadian mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady (from Vancouver). His father was a clerk in Martins Bank. Ruth Devine became mentally unstable after her son's birth, and his parents' marriage, deeply unhappy throughout his early childhood, had broken down by the time he was in his early teens. At this time he was sent to Clayesmore School, an independent boys' boarding school founded by his uncle Alexander "Lex" Devine, who took his nephew under his wing hoping that he would take over the running of the school. In 1929, Devine went to Oxford University to read for a degree in history at Wadham College. It was at Oxford that his interest in theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophie Harris
Audrey Sophia "Sophie" Harris (2 July 1900 – 10 March 1966) was an English award winning theatre and opera costume and scenic designer. Biography Born in Hayes, Kent, the third child and first daughter of William Birkbeck Harris, a Lloyds Insurance clerk, and his wife Kathleen Marion Carey. With her younger sister Margaret "Percy" Harris she studied at The Chelsea Illustrators Studio in London. A fellow student was Elizabeth Montgomery, and the three formed a theatre design partnership known as Motley Theatre Design Group. The first full-scale production on which they worked was ''Romeo and Juliet'' for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), John Gielgud's début as a director. The great success of this led to an invitation from Gielgud to design Gordon Daviot's ''Richard of Bordeaux'', which opened at the New Theatre in St Martins Lane, London, in February 1933. The production was a huge success, achieving cult status, with playgoers queuing round the block ever ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Jacques Saint-Denis (13 September 1897 – 31 July 1971), ''dit'' Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theatre director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theatre from the 1930s on. Life and career Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who had founded the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1913. Saint-Denis was exposed to theatre early in his life. He joined Copeau's troupe in 1919, after their return from New York City, where they had performed for two years. Saint-Denis was greatly influenced by Copeau's approach to theatre taught at his Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, which embraced not only the play on stage but also the actor training itself. He soon became Copeau's right-hand man, like Charles Dullin or Louis Jouvet before him. Together with other members of the troupe of the Vieux-Colombier, he followed his uncle to Burgundy in 1924, where they formed a new troupe that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises thirteen Regular Army regiments, the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and five Army Reserve regiments. History Formation to 1799 Artillery was used by the English army as early as the Battle of Crécy in 1346, while Henry VIII established it as a semi-permanent function in the 16th century. Until the early 18th century, the majority of British regiments were raised for specific campaigns and disbanded on completion. An exception were gunners based at the Tower of London, Portsmouth and other forts around Britain, who were controlled by the Ordnance Office and stored and maintained equipment and provided personnel for field artillery 'traynes' that were organised as needed. These personnel, responsible in peacetime for maintaining the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sondheim Theatre
The Sondheim Theatre (formerly the Queen's Theatre) is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue on the corner of Wardour Street in the City of Westminster, London. It opened as the Queen's Theatre on 8 October 1907, as a twin to the neighbouring Hicks Theatre (now the Gielgud Theatre) which had opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W. G. R. Sprague. The theatre was Grade II listed by English Heritage in June 1972. In 2019 the theatre's name was changed from the Queen's to the Sondheim Theatre (after Stephen Sondheim) after a 20 week refurbishment. The theatre reopened on 18 December 2019. History The original plan was to name the venue the ''Central Theatre''. However, after lengthy debate, it was named the Queen's Theatre and a portrait of Queen Alexandra was hung in the foyer. The first production at the Queen's Theatre was a comedy by Madeleine Lucette Ryley called ''The Sugar Bowl''. Although it was poorly received and ran for only 36 perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rebecca (novel)
''Rebecca'' is a 1938 Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier. The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character. A bestseller which has never gone out of print, ''Rebecca'' sold 2.8 million copies between its publication in 1938 and 1965. It has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, including a 1939 play by du Maurier herself, the film '' Rebecca'' (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the 2020 remake directed by Ben Wheatley for Netflix. The novel is remembered especially for the character Mrs Danvers, the West Country estate Manderley, and its opening line: "Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Plot While working as the companion to a rich American woman on holiday in Monte Carlo, the unnamed narrator, a naïve young woman in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daphne Du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was George du Maurier, a writer and cartoonist. Although du Maurier is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but they have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels '' Rebecca'', '' Frenchman's Creek'', ''My Cousin Rachel'' and ''Jamaica Inn'', and the short stories " The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall, where most of her works are set. As her fame increased, she became more reclusive. Biography Early life Daphne du Maurier was born at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), and ''A Passage to India'' (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of two Charles Dickens novels, '' Great Expectations'' (1946) and '' Oliver Twist'' (1948), as well as the romantic drama ''Brief Encounter'' (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's '' In Which We Serve'', which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with '' Summertime'' in 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film ''Ryan's Daughter'' led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Expectations
''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after ''David Copperfield'', to be fully narrated in the first person.''Bleak House'' alternates between a third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, but the former is predominant. The novel was first published as a serial (literature), serial in Dickens's weekly periodical ''All the Year Round'', from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. ''Great Expectations'' is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (1949), in which he played nine different characters, ''The Lavender Hill Mob'' (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and '' The Ladykillers'' (1955). He collaborated six times with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in '' Great Expectations'' (1946), Fagin in '' Oliver Twist'' (1948), Col. Nicholson in ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Prince Faisal in ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), and Professor Godbole in ''A Passage to India'' (1984). In 1970 he played Jacob Marley's ghost in Ronald Neame's '' Scrooge''. He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's origi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jocelyn Herbert
Jocelyn Herbert RDI (22 February 1917 – 6 May 2003) was a British stage designer. Early life Born in London the second of the four children of playwright, novelist, humorist and parliamentarian A. P. Herbert (1890–1971), through her father she had contact with artists, writers and stage people. She began her artistic training in Paris under the painter André Lhote (1885–1962). She then continued her education at the Slade School of Art, London where she trained in theatre design before joining the London Theatre Studio in 1936 where her theatre designs were used in the Studio's theatrical experiments. It was here that she was taught by Margaret Harris and Sophie Harris of the Motley Theatre Design Group. World War II (1939–45) interrupted this final stage of training, leading Herbert to concentrate on her family life. The Royal Court Theatre and George Devine Herbert's professional career began in 1956 when she joined George Devine's English Stage Company. Devin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Theatre Studio
The London Theatre Studio was a drama school, drama and design school in Upper Street, Islington, London, from 1936 to 1939. It was directed by the French actor and director Michel Saint-Denis. The school was the first in England to teach theatrical design as well as drama. It was closed at the beginning of the World War II, Second World War, and after the war its director and other instructors returned to teaching drama and design in other places. Background In 1929, with the support of Jacques Copeau, his uncle, Michel Saint-Denis and other members of Copeau's company moved to Paris and established the ''Compagnie des Quinze'', a company of actors, in which Saint-Denis put into effect the innovative teaching methods of Copeau. This folded in 1934, and in 1935 Saint-Denis moved to London, where the next year he founded the London Theatre Studio with George Devine, Marius Goring, and Glen Byam Shaw. with a conversion of the building designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
