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Hall Johnson
Francis Hall Johnson (March 12, 1888 – April 30, 1970) was an American composer and arranger of African-American spiritual music. He is one of a group—including Harry T. Burleigh, R. Nathaniel Dett, and Eva Jessye—who had great success performing African-American spirituals. Early years Francis Hall Johnson was born on March 12, 1888, the fourth of six children of Alice Virginia Sansom and William Decker Johnson, who was a bishop in the AME Church. Johnson received an extensive education. He attended the private, all-black Knox Institute and earned a degree from Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. He also attended Atlanta University, the Juilliard School, Hahn School of Music, and the University of Pennsylvania. As a boy, Johnson was tutored on piano by his older sister, and he taught himself to play the violin after hearing a violin recital given by Joseph Henry Douglass, grandson of Frederick Douglass. Career Johnson's debut as a professional violinist o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Will Marion Cook
William Mercer Cook (January 27, 1869 – July 19, 1944), better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director.Riis, Thomas (2007–2011)Cook, Will Marion ''Grove Music Online.'' Oxford Music Online. Retrieved 2011-09-16. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra (Southern Syncopated Orchestra) to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as '' Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk'' (1898) and ''In Dahomey'' (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States. Cook served as musical director of the George Walker-Bert Williams Company, working with the comedy partners on ''Clorindy,'' ''In Dahomey,'' and several other musical successes. Early life Will Marion Cook ('' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned and nominations by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the List of films considered the best, greatest films ever by the American Film Institute. Disney was the first person to be nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories. Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lost Horizon (1937 Film)
''Lost Horizon'' is a 1937 American adventure drama fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay by Robert Riskin is based on the 1933 novel of the same name by James Hilton. The film exceeded its original budget by more than $776,000 and took five years to earn back its cost. The serious financial crisis it created for Columbia Pictures damaged the partnership between Capra and studio head Harry Cohn, as well as the friendship between Capra and Riskin. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot It is 1935. Before returning to Britain to become the new Foreign Secretary, writer, soldier, and diplomat Robert Conway has one last task in China, rescuing 90 westerners in the city of Baskul. He flies out with the last few evacuees, just ahead of armed revolutionaries. Unbeknownst to the passengers, the pilot has been for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-born American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the " American Dream personified".Freer 2009, pp. 40–41. Capra became one of America's most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar wins from nine nominations in other categories. Among his leading films were ''It Happened One Night'' (1934), ''Mr. Deeds Goes to Town'' (1936), '' You Can't Take It with You'' (1938), and '' Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' (1939). During World War II, Capra served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the ''Why We Fight'' seri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Golden Gate International Exposition
The Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) (1939 and 1940), held at San Francisco's Treasure Island, was a World's Fair celebrating, among other things, the city's two newly built bridges. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. The exposition opened from February 18, 1939, through October 29, 1939, and from May 25, 1940, through September 29, 1940. History The idea to hold a World's Fair to commemorate the completion of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge started from a letter to '' The San Francisco News'' in February 1933. Architects W.P. Day and George Kelham were assigned to consider the merits of potential sites around the city, including Golden Gate Park, China Basin, Candle Stick Point, and Lake Merced. By 1934, the choice of sites had been narrowed to the areas adjoining the two bridges: either "an island built up from shallow water" north of Yerba Buena Island which would go on to be named Treasure Island, or the P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal. The WPA's first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion (about $15 per person in the U.S., around 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. The largest single project of the WPA was the Tennessee Valley Authority. At its peak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Theater Project
The Federal Theatre Project (FTP; 1935–1939) was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ... to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists, writers, directors, and theater workers. National director Hallie Flanagan shaped the FTP into a federation of regional theaters that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation in new forms and techniques, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time. As a drama professor at Vassar college, Hallie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Run, Little Chillun
''Run, Little Chillun'' or ''Run Little Chillun'' is a folk opera written by Hall Johnson. According to James Vernon Hatch and Leo Hamalian, it is one of the most successful musical dramas of the Harlem Renaissance. It was the first Broadway show directed by an African-American. Development ''Run, Little Chillun'' or ''Run Little Chillun'' (the original score did not include the comma) is a folk opera play, or musical drama, written by Hall Johnson. The script was first published in 1996. Plot The play contrasts pagan and Christian religious traditions among Blacks in the American South. Productions The show premiered in 1933 on Broadway and ran for four months and 126 performances. It was revived in 1935–1937 by the Federal Theater Project and ran for two years in Los Angeles. It was directed by Clarence Edouard Muse. It was produced in 1939 in San Francisco at the Golden Gate International Exposition. In 1943 it was revived on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre. It wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Green Pastures (film)
''The Green Pastures'' is a 1936 American film depicting stories from the Bible as visualized by black characters. It starred Rex Ingram (in several roles, including " De Lawd"), Oscar Polk, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. It was based on the 1928 novel ''Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun'' by Roark Bradford and the 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Marc Connelly. ''The Green Pastures'' was one of only six feature films in the Hollywood Studio era to feature an all-black cast, though elements of it were criticised by civil rights activists at the time and subsequently. Plot summary An elderly black woman reads from the Book of Genesis to a group of six young children in her house. She answers their questions about God and creation. One of the girls starts to visualise heaven... We enter the pearly gates to an all-black heaven, with winged angels sitting on clouds. The Lord, Jehovah, appears dressed in a black double-breasted jacket. He is given a cup of custar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Green Pastures
''The Green Pastures'' is a play written in 1930 by Marc Connelly adapted from ''Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun'' (1928), a collection of stories written by Roark Bradford. The play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930. It had the first all-black Broadway cast. The play and the film adaptation were generally well received and hailed by white drama and film critics. African-American intellectuals, cultural critics, and audiences were more critical of white author Connelly's claim to be presenting an authentic view of black religious thought. The play portrays episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a young African-American child in the Great Depression-era Southern United States, who interprets ''The Bible'' in terms familiar to her. Following Bradford's lead, Connelly set the biblical stories in New Orleans and in an all-black context. He diverged from Bradford's work, however, in enlarging the role of the character "De Lawd" (God), played on s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Connelly
Marcus Cook Connelly (December 13, 1890 – December 21, 1980) was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930. Biography Connelly was born to actor and hotelier Patrick Joseph Connelly and actress Mabel Fowler Cook in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His father died in 1902. Connelly attended Trinity Hall boarding school in Washington, Pennsylvania, after which he began collecting money for ads in ''The Pittsburgh Press'' to help to support his mother. He began writing plays at the age of five. His initial newspaper job led to Connelly's working as an Associated Press cub reporter, after which he became a junior reporter for ''The Pittsburgh Gazette Times''. Eventually he began writing a humor column for that newspaper. He also became a journalist for the ''Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph'' until he moved to New York City. In 1919 he joined the Algonquin Round Table. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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