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Just Imagine
''Just Imagine'' is a 1930 American pre-Code science fiction musical-comedy film, directed by David Butler. The film is known for its art direction and special effects in its portrayal of New York City in an imagined 1980. ''Just Imagine'' stars El Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Garrick and Marjorie White. The "man from 1930" was played by El Brendel, an ethnic vaudeville comedian of a forgotten type: the Swedish immigrant. The film starts with a preamble showing life in 1880, where the people believed themselves the "last word in speed". It switches to 1930, with the streets crowded with automobiles and lined with electric lights and telephone wires. It then switches to 1980, where the tenement houses have morphed into 250-story buildings, connected by suspension bridges and multi-lane elevated roads. Plot In 1980, J-21 (John Garrick) sets his aircraft on "hover" mode in New York, lands and converses with the beautiful LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan). He describes how th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Butler (director)
David Butler (December 17, 1894 – June 14, 1979) was an American actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and television director. Biography Butler was born in San Francisco, California. His mother was actress Adele Belgrade, and his father was actor and director Fred J. Butler. His first acting roles were playing extras in stage plays. He later appeared in two D.W. Griffith films: ''The Girl Who Stayed Home'' and '' The Greatest Thing in Life''. He also appeared in the 1927 Academy-Award winning film '' 7th Heaven''. The same year, Butler made his directorial debut with ''High School Hero'', a comedy for Fox. During Butler's nine-year tenure at Fox, he directed over 30 films, including four Shirley Temple vehicles. Butler's last film for Fox, ''Kentucky'', won Walter Brennan an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Butler worked with Bing Crosby in '' Road to Morocco'' and '' If I Had My Way''. He directed many films starring Doris Day, including '' It's a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivan Linow
Ivan Linow (born Jānis Linaus; November 21, 1888 – November 11, 1940), also known as Jack Linow, was a Latvian-born American wrestler, who became a character actor in American films during the silent and early sound film eras. Biography Born in Latvia on November 21, 1888, Linow began wrestling in the United States in 1918. Between 1918 and 1933, he participated in 92 matches, with a record of 38 wins and 23 losses. Linow's monikers in the ring were "the Cossack" and the "Russian Man-Eater". During his wrestling career, he faced other notable wrestlers of that era, such as Joe Stecher and Ed Lewis. Using his popularity as a wrestler, Linow entered the film industry during the 1920s, his first film being ''Cappy Ricks'' (1921). In his fifteen-year acting career, he appeared in over forty films in supporting and bit parts. While appearing in films, Linow continued his wrestling career. In his final match in July 1931, under the pseudonym Jack Leon, he defeated Young Sandow. Li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mischa Auer
Mischa Auer (born Mikhail Semyonovich Unkovsky (Михаил Семёнович Унковский; 17 November 1905 – 5 March 1967) was a Russian-born American actor who moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s. He first appeared in film in 1928. Auer had a long career playing in many of the era's best known films. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1936 for his performance in the screwball comedy ''My Man Godfrey'', which led to further zany comedy roles. He later moved into television and acted in films again in France and Italy well into the 1960s. Early life Auer was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His name is usually seen as Mischa Ounskowsky, Mischa being the German transliteration of Misha (the diminutive form of Mikhail), and Ounskowsky being the French transliteration of his surname. Auer's father was a Russian naval officer whose own mother was the daughter of Hungarian-born violinist Leopold Auer Auer's mother was Nadine Pelikan. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ''Pongo'', orangutans were originally considered to be one species. From 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (''P. pygmaeus'', with three subspecies) and the Sumatran orangutan (''P. abelii''). A third species, the Tapanuli orangutan (''P. tapanuliensis''), was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids (gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans) between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago. The most arboreal of the great apes, orangutans spend most of their time in trees. They have proportionally long arms and short legs, and have reddish-brown hair covering their bodies. Adult males weigh about , while f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martian
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the predominant genre depicting Mars was utopian fiction. Contemporaneously, the mistaken belief that there are canals on Mars emerged and made its way into fiction. ''The War of the Worlds'', H. G. Wells' story of an alien invasion of Earth by sinister Martians, was published in 1897 and went on to have a large influence on the science fiction genre. Life on Mars appeared frequently in fiction throughout the first half of the 1900s. Apart from enlightened as in the utopian works from the turn of the century, or evil as in the works inspired by Wells, intelligent and human-like Martians also began to be depicted as decadent, a portrayal that was popularized by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the ''Barsoom'' series and adopted by Leigh Brackett amon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dirigible
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early dirigibles, the lifting gas used was hydrogen, due to its high lifting capacity and ready availability. Helium gas has almost the same lifting capacity and is not flammable, unlike hydrogen, but is rare and relatively expensive. Significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only available for airships in that country. Most airships built since the 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air.A few airships after World War II used hydrogen. The first British airship to use helium was the ''Chitty Bang Bang'' of 1967. The envelope of an airship may form the gasbag, or it may contain a number of gas-filled cells. An airship also has engines, crew, and optionally also payload accommodation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a large impact feature. Days and seasons on Mars are comparable to those of Earth, as the planets have a similar rotation period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth (August 11, 1867 – December 30, 1943) was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer. Early life Bosworth was born on August 11, 1867, in Marietta, Ohio. His father was a sea captain in the Civil War. When Bosworth was 12 years old, he ran away to sea. In June 1885, he was on shore leave in San Francisco when an opportunity arose for him to join McKee Rankin's stage company. That led to a theatrical career for him. Career Thinking he would like to become a landscape painter, a friend suggested that he work as a stage manager to raise the money to study art. Acting on his friend's advice, Bosworth obtained a job with McKee Rankin as a stage manager at the California Theatre in San Francisco. Earning some money, he undertook the study of painting. Eventually, he was pressed into duty as an actor in a small part with three lines. Though he botched the lines, he was given other small roles. Bosworth was eighteen years old, and on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Highball
A highball is a mixed alcoholic drink composed of an alcoholic base spirit and a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic mixer, often a carbonated beverage. Examples include the Seven and Seven, Scotch and soda, gin and tonic, screwdriver (a.k.a. vodka and orange), fernet con coca, Tom Collins, and rum and Coke (a.k.a. ''Cuba libre''). A highball is typically served over ice in a large straight-sided highball glass or Collins glass. Highballs are popular in Japan, often made with Japanese whisky as a haibōru (ハイボール), or mixed with shōchū as a chūhai (チューハイ). Various mixers can be specified by suffixing with -hai (〜ハイ), as in oolong highball (ウーロンハイ, ūron-hai). Etymology The name may refer to the practice of serving drinks in tall glasses, on the dining cars of trains powered by steam locomotives, where the engine would get up to speed and the ball that showed boiler pressure was at its high level, known as "highballing". Alterna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Albertson
Francis Healey Albertson (February 2, 1909 – February 29, 1964) was an American actor who had supporting roles in films such as ''It's a Wonderful Life'' (1946) and ''Psycho (1960 film), Psycho'' (1960). Early life Albertson was a native of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, the first child of Frank (or Francis) B. and Mary ( Healey) Albertson. He spent his childhood first in nearby Frazee, Minnesota, Frazee, and later in Puyallup, Washington. As a young man in Los Angeles, he worked as a laboratory assistant in a photographic shop, which resulted in contacts leading to his acting career.''Pasadena Star-News'', March 3, 1964, p. 16 Career Albertson made well over 100 appearances (1923–1964) in movies and television. In his early career he often sang and danced in such films as ''Just Imagine'' (1930) and ''A Connecticut Yankee'' (1931). He was featured in ''Alice Adams'' (1935) as the title character's brother, and in Room Service (1938 film), ''Room Service'' (1938) he p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Thomson (actor)
Charles Kenneth Thomson (January 7, 1899 – January 26, 1967) was an American character actor active on stage and on film during the silent and early sound film eras. Early years Born in Pittsburgh, Thomson was the son of Edith Taylor Thomson, a concert manager, who raised him alone after his father died when Kenneth was seven years old. As a youth, he worked as a copy boy at the ''Pittsburgh Leader'' and helped to distribute publicity material for concerts that his mother arranged. Later, he worked for a steel company and an insurance company During World War I, Thomson was in the United States Marine Corps, with his service including being a gunner on the U. S. Frederick cruiser. At the war's end, he went to the Norfolk Navy Yard until he was discharged. After returning to Pittsburgh, he re-enrolled at Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT), He acted in plays at the institute and graduated from CIT's Drama School, Career After graduation from CIT, Thomson worked as an extra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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