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Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, where he continued his career. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Directors' Guild. Dassin received a Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film ''Du rififi chez les hommes''. He was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen for his film ''Never on Sunday'', and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his Broadway production of ''Illya Darling''. Biography Early life Julius Dassin was born on December 18, 1911, to Bertha Dassin (née Vogel) and Samuel Dassin, a barber, in Middletown, Connecticut. His parents were both Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Russian empi ...
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Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settlers as a town under its original Native American name, Mattabeseck, after the local indigenous people, also known as the Mattabesett. They were among the many tribes along the Atlantic coast who spoke Algonquian languages. The colonists renamed the settlement in 1653. When Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County was organized on May 10, 1666, Middletown was included within its boundaries. In 1784, the central settlement was incorporated as a city distinct from the town. Both were included within newly formed Middlesex County in May 1785. In 1923, the City of Middletown was consolidated with the Town, making the city limits extensive. Originally developed as a sailing port and then an industrial center on the Connecticut River, it is ...
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Yiddish Art Theatre
The Yiddish Art Theatre was a New York Yiddish theatre company of the 20th century. History The organization was founded in 1918 by actor and impresario Maurice Schwartz, to present serious Yiddish drama and works from world literature in Yiddish. At its opening on August 30, 1918, Schwartz's company was housed at the Irving Place Theatre in Union Square, Manhattan. Zalmen Zylbercweig (ed.),Moris (Avrom Moyshe), ''Leksikon fun yidishn teater'' exicon of the Yiddish Theatre(in Yiddish). Vol. 3. New York: Hebrew Actors' Union; Elisheva, 1959. cols. 2327-2368; here: 2334-2340. It performed there for three theater seasons. For the beginning of the 1921/1922 theater season the company moved to the Garden Theatre at Madison Avenue and 27th Street, where they remained on and off for the next four seasons, through spring 1925. It was at the Garden Theatre that Schwartz first billed the company as the Yiddish Art Theatre. Over these first years the company presented works by playwrights ...
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Borscht Circuit
The Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange, and Ulster counties in the U.S. state of New York, straddling both Upstate New York and the northern edges of the New York metropolitan area. A source interviewed by ''Time'' magazine stated that the visits to the area by Jewish families was already underway "as early as the 1890s ... Tannersville ... was 'a great resort of our Israelite brethren'...from the 1920s on here werehundreds of hotels". A 2019 review of the history is more specific: "in its heyday, as many as 500 resorts catered to guests of various incomes". These resorts, and also the Borscht Belt bungalow colonies, were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s. By the late 1950s, many began closing, with most gone by the 1970s, but some major resorts continued to operate, a few into the 1990s. Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel clos ...
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Radio-Keith-Orpheum
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their ...
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Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. While in his 20s, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of ''Macbeth'' with an entirely African-American cast and the political musical '' The Cradle Will Rock''. In 1937, he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including ''Caesar'' (1937), an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar''. In 1938, his radio anthology series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel ''The War of the Worlds'', which caused s ...
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Yiddish Theatre
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays. At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City. Yiddish theatre's roots include the often satiric plays traditionally performed during religious holiday of Purim (known as Purimshpils); other masquerades such as the Dance of Death; the singing of cantors in the synagogues; Jewish secular song and dramatic improvisation; exposure to the theatre traditions of various European countries, and the Jewish literary culture that ...
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Revolt Of The Beavers
''Revolt of the Beavers'' was a children's play put on by the Federal Theater Project by Oscar Saul and Louis Lantz. It was originally directed by Peter Hyun, but he was replaced when his actors refused to go Broadway with him, insisting on a name director. One critic described the play as "Marxism à la Mother Goose". The show ran at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City from May 20, 1937, to June 19 of that year. Jules Dassin and John Randolph were among the play's cast. The play involved a worker beaver named Oakleaf, who leads a revolt against "The Chief" Beaver who was exploiting the workers. Though the play was a fantasy fable intended for children, it was attacked by the HUAC for promoting Communist ideals. In October 2009, the play was re-written, adapted, and performed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as part of the University Theatre's 2009–10 season. The new adaptation was written and directed bJohn-Stuart Fauquetand Pete Rydberg and features an updated scrip ...
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The Emperor's New Clothes
"The Emperor's New Clothes" ( da, Kejserens nye klæder ) is a literary folktale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. The tale has been translated into over 100 languages.Andersen 2005a 4 "The Emperor's New Clothes" was first published with "The Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen, by C. A. Reitzel, on 7 April 1837, as the third and final installment of Andersen's ''Fairy Tales Told for Children''. The tale has been adapted to various media, and the story's title, the phrase "the Emperor has no clothes", and variations thereof have been adopted for use in numerous other works and as an idiom. Plot Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A ...
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Adelphi Theatre (New York City)
The Adelphi Theatre (1934–1940 and 1944–1958), originally named the Craig Theatre, opened on December 24, 1928. The Adelphi was located at 152 West 54th Street in Manhattan, with 1,434 seats. Internet Broadway Database''Adelphi Theatre''(Retrieved on November 30, 2007) The theater was taken over by the Federal Theater Project in 1934 and renamed the Adelphi. The theater was renamed the Radiant Center by The Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians in 1940. It was then the Yiddish Arts Theater (1943), and renamed the Adelphi Theater on April 20, 1944, when it was acquired by The Shubert Organization. It became a DuMont Television Network studio, known as the Adelphi Tele-Theatre in the 1950s. The "Classic 39" episodes of ''The Honeymooners'' were filmed in this facility by DuMont using their Electronicam system for broadcast on CBS later during the 1955–56 television season. The theater returned to legitimate use in 1957, was renamed the 54th Street Theater in 1958, and f ...
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Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution. The history of the CPUSA is closely related to the history of the Communists in the United States Labor Movement (1919–37), American labor movement and the history of communist parties worldwide. Initially operating underground due to the Palmer Raids which started during the First Red Scare, the party was influential in Politics of the United States, American politics in the first half of the 20th century and it also played a prominent role in the history of the labor movement from the 1920s through the 1940s, becoming known for Anti-racism, opposing racism and Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation after sponsoring the defense for the Scottsboro Boys in 1931. Its membership increased during the Great Depres ...
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Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24 (Black Thursday). It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. Devastating effects were seen in both rich and poor countries with falling personal income, prices, tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and ...
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Federal Theatre Project
The Federal Theatre Project (FTP; 1935–1939) was a theatre program established during the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depression as part of the New Deal 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 Flanagan was chosen to head the Federal Theatre Project. Although The Federal Theatre project consumed only 0.5% of the allocated budget from the WPA and was widely considered a commercial and critical success, th ...
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