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Konrad Bercovici
Konrad Bercovici (1882–1961) was an American writer. Life and career Born in Romania, into a non-observing Jewish family, in 1882, Konrad Bercovici grew up chiefly in Galaţi. His family was polyglot, teaching their children Greek, Romanian, French and German, and they mixed freely with Greeks, Romanians, Russians, Turks, Jews, and Roma that moved throughout Dobrudja and the Danubian Delta region. According to his autobiography, Bercovici especially developed a close connection with local Roma through contact with his Roma nursemaid, her family, and the Roma with whom his father traded horses. The family remained in Romania until his father died from injuries sustained during anti-Semitic riots in Galaţi when Bercovici was 11. After his father's death, most of the family emigrated to Paris. Konrad worked there during preparations for the 1900 World's Fair, and his education was influenced by witnessing public debates and recriminations surrounding the Dreyfus Affair. Bercovi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konrad Bercovici
Konrad Bercovici (1882–1961) was an American writer. Life and career Born in Romania, into a non-observing Jewish family, in 1882, Konrad Bercovici grew up chiefly in Galaţi. His family was polyglot, teaching their children Greek, Romanian, French and German, and they mixed freely with Greeks, Romanians, Russians, Turks, Jews, and Roma that moved throughout Dobrudja and the Danubian Delta region. According to his autobiography, Bercovici especially developed a close connection with local Roma through contact with his Roma nursemaid, her family, and the Roma with whom his father traded horses. The family remained in Romania until his father died from injuries sustained during anti-Semitic riots in Galaţi when Bercovici was 11. After his father's death, most of the family emigrated to Paris. Konrad worked there during preparations for the 1900 World's Fair, and his education was influenced by witnessing public debates and recriminations surrounding the Dreyfus Affair. Bercovi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romani People
The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with significant concentrations in the Americas. In the English language, the Romani people are widely known by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered pejorative by many Romani people due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity as well as its historical use as a racial slur. For versions (some of which are cognates) of the word in many other languages (e.g., , , it, zingaro, , and ) this perception is either very small or non-existent. At the first World Romani Congress in 1971, its attendees unanimously voted to reject the use of all exonyms for the Romani people, including ''Gypsy'', due to their aforementioned negative and stereotypical connotations. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Roma originated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Nizer
Louis Nizer (February 6, 1902 – November 10, 1994) was a Jewish-American trial lawyer based in New York City. He was the senior partner of the law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. In addition to his legal work, Louis Nizer was an author, artist, lecturer, and advisor. Early life The son of Joseph and Bella Nizer, he was born in London, before coming to the United States as a child. His father was the founder of a Brooklyn dry-cleaning business. As a youth, he sang in the choir of renowned cantor Josef “Yossele” Rosenblatt then, at age 10, began public speaking. Nizer "attributed his later fame as an orator and toastmaster to the lessons he learned as a socialist soapbox speaker." He won a government citation for his patriotic speeches during Broadway show intermissions for Liberty Bond drives during World War I. He was a graduate of Columbia College, where he was coxswain for the rowing team, and played on the handball team. He joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Dictator
''The Great Dictator'' is a 1940 American anti-war political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, Chaplin made this his first true sound film. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring condemnation of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis. At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany and neutral during what were the early days of World War II. Chaplin plays both leading roles: a ruthless fascist dictator and a persecuted Jewish barber. ''The Great Dictator'' was popular with audiences, becoming Chaplin's most commercially successful film. Modern critics have praised it as a historically significant film, one of the greatest comedy films ever made and an important wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include ''Sister Carrie'' (1900) and ''An American Tragedy'' (1925). Early life Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, to John Paul Dreiser and Sarah Maria (née Schanab).Finding aid to thTheodore Dreiser papersat thUniversity of Pennsylvania Libraries/ref> John Dreiser was a German immigrant from Mayen in the Rhine Province of Prussia, and Sarah was from the Mennonite farming community near Dayton, Ohio. Her family disowned her for converting to Roman Catholicism in order to marry John Dreiser. Theodore was the twelfth of thirteen children (the ninth of the ten surviving). Paul Dresser (1857–1906 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including '' The Thief of Bagdad'', ''Robin Hood'', and '' The Mark of Zorro'', but spent the early part of his career making comedies. Fairbanks was a founding member of United Artists. He was also a founding member of The Motion Picture Academy and hosted the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. With his marriage to actress and film producer Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became 'Hollywood royalty', and Fairbanks was referred to as "The King of Hollywood", a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable. Though he was considered one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the 1910s and 1920s, Fairbanks's career rapidly declined with the advent of the "talkies". His final film was ''The Private Life of Don Juan'' (1934). Early life Fairbanks was born Douglas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Pickford
Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios and United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Pickford is considered to be one of the most recognisable women in history. Cited as "America's Sweetheart" during the silent film era, she is named on the list of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars as the 24th top female stars from the Classical Hollywood Cinema era and the "girl with the curls", Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before age nine. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he was a reporter for a few months for ''The Kansas City Star'' before leaving for the Italian Front (World War I), Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I. In 1918, he was se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel ''The Sun Also Rises'': "You are all a lost generation." In a more general sense, the Lost Generation is considered to be made up of individuals born between 1883 and 1900. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Western members of the Lost Generation grew up in societies which were more literate, consumerist and media-saturated than ever before, but which also tended to maintain strictly conservative social values. Young men of the cohort were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Spain
Spaniards in New York City originally settled in Little Spain,( es, Pequeña España) a Spanish-American neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, during the 20th century. History "Little Spain" was situated on 14th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. A very different section of Chelsea existed on a stretch of 14th Street often referred to by residents as ''Calle Catorce'' ("Street Fourteen") or as "Little Spain". The Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe (No. 229) was founded in 1902, when Spaniards started to settle in the area. Although the Spanish business have given way to such nightclubs as Nell's and Oh Johnny on the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, the Spanish food and gift emporium known as Casa Moneo has been at 210 West 14th since 1929. In 2010 the documentary ''Little Spain'', directed and written by Artur Balder, was filmed in New York City. The documentary pulled together for first time an archive that reveals the untold history of the Spa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
