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James Curtis (biographer)
James Curtis is an American biographer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Curtis writes about important figures from the early days of film. Work Curtis's publications include biographies of comedian W. C. Fields, director and screenwriter Preston Sturges, director James Whale, production designer William Cameron Menzies, actor Spencer Tracy. and comedian Mort Sahl. Curtis spent six years researching and writing ''Spencer Tracy: A Biography'' (2011). Film critic Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fi ... praised the work, saying in his review, "It represents a high-water mark in this field: a scrupulously researched life story that is also well-written and completely absorbing, through 878 pages of text". He received the Special Jury Prize of the Theatre Libr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biographer
Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Biographers Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome, Au=Austria, AH=Austria/Hungary, Ca=Canada, En=England, Fl=Finland, Fr=France, Ge=Germany, Id=Indonesia, In=India, Ir=Ireland, Is=Israel, Jp=Japan, Nw=Norway, SA=South Africa, Sc=Scotland, SL=Sierra Leone, So=Somalia, Sp=Spain, Sw=Sweden, TT=Trinidad & Tobago, US=United States, Ve=Venezuela, Wl=Wales A–G *Hermann Abert (Ge, 1871–1927) – Robert Schumann, Niccolò Jommelli, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, W. A. Mozart *Alfred Ainger (En, 1837–1904) – Charles Lamb *Ellis Amburn (US, 1933–2018) – Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty and Janis Joplin *Rudolph Angermüller (Ge, born 1940) – Antonio Salieri, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, W. A. Mozart *Núria Añó (Sp. born 1973) – Salka Viertel *Marie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous U.S. state and the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated Administrative division, subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous Statistical area (United States), urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7million residents and the latter having over 9.6million. Sacramento, California, Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the List of largest California cities by population, most populous city in the state and the List of United States cities by population, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges (; born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the Academy Awards, Oscar for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Screenplay for the film ''The Great McGinty'' (1940), his first of three nominations in the category. Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such as Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Frank Capra) had directed films from their own scripts; however, Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Whale
James Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theatre director and actor, who spent the greater part of his career in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood. He is best remembered for several horror films: ''Frankenstein (1931 film), Frankenstein'' (1931), ''The Old Dark House (1932 film), The Old Dark House'' (1932), ''The Invisible Man (1933 film), The Invisible Man'' (1933) and ''Bride of Frankenstein'' (1935), all considered classics. Whale also directed films in other genres, including the 1936 Show Boat (1936 film), film version of the musical ''Show Boat''. Whale was born into a large family in Dudley, Worcestershire now Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. He discovered his artistic talent early on and studied art. With the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the British Army and became an officer. He was captured by the Germans and during his time as a prisoner of war he realised he was interested in drama. Following his release at the end ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Cameron Menzies
William Cameron Menzies (July 29, 1896 – March 5, 1957) was an American film production designer (a job title he invented) and art director as well as a film director and producer during a career spanning five decades. He began his career during the silent era, and later pioneered the use of color in film for dramatic effect. Early years Menzies was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Scots immigrant parents, Charles A. and Helen originally from Aberfeldy, Scotland. He studied at Yale and the University of Edinburgh and, after serving in the United States Army during World War I, he attended the Art Students League of New York. Career Menzies joined Famous Players-Lasky, later to evolve into Paramount Pictures, working in special effects and design. He soon worked on such films as ''Robin Hood'' (1922), '' The Thief of Bagdad'' (1924), '' The Bat'' (1926), '' The Dove'' (1927), '' Sadie Thompson'' (1928), and ''Tempest'' (1928). His contributions to '' The Dove'' (1927) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor. He was known for his natural performing style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor from nine nominations. During his career, he appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. His breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in ''The Last Mile'' caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in John Ford's ''Up the River'' (in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon Sahl (May 11, 1927 – October 26, 2021) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist, considered the first modern comedian. Sahl pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics using improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop. Sahl spent his early years in Los Angeles and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he made his professional stage debut at the hungry i nightclub in 1953. His popularity grew quickly, and after a year at the club he traveled the country doing shows at established nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses. In 1960 he became the first comedian to have a cover story written about him by ''Time'' magazine. He appeared on various television shows, played a number of film roles, and performed a one-man show on Broadway. Television host Steve Allen said that Sahl was "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy". His social satire performances broke new ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of film capsule reviews, ''Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide'', published annually from 1969 to 2014. Early life Maltin was born in New York City, the son of singer Jacqueline ( née Gould; 1923–2012) and Aaron Isaac Maltin (1915–2002), a lawyer and immigration judge. Maltin was raised in a Jewish family in Teaneck, New Jersey. He graduated from Teaneck High School in 1968. Career Maltin began his writing career at age 15, writing for ''Classic Images'' and editing and publishing his own fanzine, ''Film Fan Monthly'', dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood. After earning a journalism degree at New York University, Maltin went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, newspapers, and magazines, including ''Variety'' and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". In 1996, ''Entertainment Weekly'' recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including ''One Week'' (1920), '' The Playhouse'' (1921), '' Cops'' (1922), and ''The Electric House'' (1922). He then moved to feature-leng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Filmmaker's Life
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Biographers
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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