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Limelight (1952 Film)
''Limelight'' is a 1952 American comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin, based on a novella by Chaplin titled ''Footlights''. The score was composed by Chaplin and arranged by Ray Rasch. The film stars Chaplin as a washed-up comedian who saves a suicidal dancer, played by Claire Bloom, from killing herself, and both try to get through life; additional roles are provided by Nigel Bruce, Sydney Earl Chaplin, Wheeler Dryden, and Norman Lloyd, with an appearance from Buster Keaton. In dance scenes, Bloom is doubled by Melissa Hayden. Upon the film's release, critics' reception was divided; it was heavily boycotted in the United States because of Chaplin's alleged communist sympathies, and failed commercially. However, the film was re-released in the United States in 1972, which included its first screening in Los Angeles. This allowed the decades-old film to be in contention for the 45th Academy Awards where Chaplin won his only competiti ... [...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] |
Wheeler Dryden
George Dryden Wheeler Jr. (31 August 1892 – 30 September 1957), known better as Wheeler Dryden, was an English-born American actor and film director. He was the son of Hannah Chaplin and music hall entertainer Leo Dryden, and younger half-brother of actors Sir Charlie and Sydney Chaplin. He moved to the United States in 1918, joining his mother and two half-brothers. He worked as an actor and director, sometimes assisting Charlie Chaplin. He was married for a time and was the father of Spencer Dryden, who became a rock musician with prominent American bands and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Life and career He was born as George Dryden Wheeler Jr. in London, the youngest of three boys born to Hannah Hill Chaplin, and the son of Leo Dryden, a music hall entertainer. While George was an infant, his father removed him from his mentally troubled mother, who was committed to a mental asylum for a time. He grew up estranged from her and his two older half-brot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinephiles and public and academic libraries. Criterion has helped to standardize certain aspects of home-video releases such as film restoration, the letterboxing format for widescreen films and the inclusion of bonus features such as scholarly essays and commentary tracks. Criterion has produced and distributed more than 1,000 special editions of its films in VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats and box sets. These films and their special features are also available via an online streaming service that the company operates. History The company was founded in 1984 by Robert Stein, Aleen Stein and Joe Medjuck, who later were joined by Roger Smith. In 1985, the Steins, William Becker and Jonathan B. Turell f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Spencer Chaplin III
Charles Spencer Chaplin III (May 5, 1925 – March 20, 1968), known professionally as Charles Chaplin Jr., was an American actor. He was the elder son of Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey, and is known for appearing in 1950s films such as ''The Beat Generation'' and ''Fangs of the Wild''. Early life Chaplin was born in Beverly Hills, California. He was the elder son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. His half-siblings from his father's last marriage to Oona O'Neill are Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette, and Christopher. His elder half-brother, Norman, died as an infant. As young children, he and his younger brother, Sydney, were used as pawns in their mother's bitter divorce from Charlie Chaplin, during which a lot of the couple's "dirty linen" was aired in public, sensational divorce hearings. Following the divorce, the brothers were raised by their mother and maternal grandmother until the mid-1930s, when they began to make frequent visi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Chaplin (actor)
Michael John Chaplin (born March 7, 1946) is an American actor born in Santa Monica, California. He is the second child and eldest son from Charlie Chaplin's fourth and final marriage, to Oona O'Neill. He was first married to the writer Patrice Chaplin, with whom he has two sons. He later married Patricia Betaudier, a painter and the daughter of Trinidian painter Patrick Betaudier. He has five children with her, including actresses Carmen Chaplin and Dolores Chaplin. In the mid-1960s Chaplin signed a book contract with British publisher Leslie Frewin to publish his autobiography ''I Couldn't Smoke The Grass On My Father's Lawn'', which was ghostwritten with Tom Merrin and Charles Hamblett. This was a teenage hippie-memoir of drugs and rebellion against a world-famous father. Before its release Chaplin filed an injunction to prevent publication, arguing that it would have a detrimental effect on himself and his family. The injunction was set aside by judges for the Court of Appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josephine Chaplin
Josephine Hannah Chaplin (born March 28, 1949) is an American actress and the daughter of filmmaker 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 consider ... and his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill. She had a featured role in Pier Paolo Pasolini's ''The Canterbury Tales (film), The Canterbury Tales'' (1972) as Merchant's Tale, May, the adulterous wife of the elderly Sir January. Personal life Chaplin had a son, Julien Ronet, by French actor Maurice Ronet, with whom she lived until his death in 1983. Chaplin was married to Greek furrier Nicholas Sistovaris; the couple have one child, Charly. Chaplin married Jean-Claude Gardin in 1989, with whom she has a son, Arthur. They stayed married until Gardin's death in 2013. Filmography * ''Limelight (1952 film), Limelight'' (1952) as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin (born July 31, 1944) is an American actress. She is the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, the first of eight children with his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill. After beginnings in dance and modeling, she turned her attention to acting, and made her English-language acting debut (and came to prominence in what would be a Golden Globe-nominated role) in her portrayal of Tonya in David Lean's ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965). She made her Broadway acting debut in Lillian Hellman's ''The Little Foxes'' in 1967, and played the role of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti in Raúl Araiza's '' Nefertiti and Akhenaton'' (1973) alongside famous Egyptian actor Salah Zulfikar. Chaplin received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's '' Nashville'' (1975). She received a BAFTA nomination for her role in ''Welcome to L.A.'' (1976). She played her grandmother Hannah Chaplin in the biopic ''Chaplin'' (1992) for which she received her third Golden Globe nomination. Chaplin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snub Pollard
Harold Fraser (9 November 1889 – 19 January 1962), known professionally as Snub Pollard, was an Australian-born vaudevillian, who became a silent film comedian in Hollywood, popular in the 1920s. Career Born in Melbourne, Australia, on 9 November 1889, Pollard began performing with Pollard's Lilliputian Opera Company at a young age. Like many of the actors in the popular juvenile company, he adopted Pollard as his stage name.Another well-known performer in the company, Daphne Trott also did so. They were not related. The company ran several highly successful professional children's troupes that traveled Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1908, Harry Pollard joined the company tour to North America. After the completion of the tour, he returned to the US. By 1915 he was regularly appearing in uncredited roles in movies, for example, Charles Epting notes that Pollard can clearly be seen in Chaplin's 1915 short '' By the Sea''. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Mudie
Leonard Mudie (born Leonard Mudie Cheetham; April 11, 1883April 14, 1965) was an English character actor whose career lasted for nearly fifty years. After a successful start as a stage actor in England, he appeared regularly in the US, and made his home there from 1932. He appeared in character roles on Broadway and in Hollywood films. Life and career Early years Leonard Mudie Cheetham was born in Cheetham Hill, a suburb of Manchester, England, the son of Thomas Hurst Cheetham and Lucy Amy Mudie. He made his stage debut with Annie Horniman's company at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester in 1908. He remained with the company for several seasons, in a wide range of roles including Humphrey in ''The Knight of the Burning Pestle'', Verges in ''Much Ado About Nothing'', Alan Jeffcoate in the première of '' Hindle Wakes'', Joseph Surface in ''The School for Scandal'', Gordon Jayne in ''The Second Mrs. Tanqueray'' and Walter How in '' Justice''. In ''The Manchester Guardian'', James Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benefit Concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a type of musical benefit performance (e.g., concert, show, or gala) featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Benefit concerts can have both subjective and concrete objectives. Subjective objectives include raising awareness about an issue such as misery in Africa (such as Live 8) and uplifting a nation after a disaster (such as America: A Tribute to Heroes). Concrete objectives include raising funds (such as Live Aid) and influencing legislation (such as Live 8 or Farm Aid). The two largest benefit concerts of all time, in size, were the Live 8 and the Live Earth events, which both attracted billions of spectators. Scholars theorize that the observed increase on concert size since the Live Aid is happening because organizers strive to make their events as big as the tragedy at hand, thus hoping to gain legitimization that wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limelight Promo Crop
Limelight (also known as Drummond light or calcium light)James R. Smith (2004). ''San Francisco's Lost Landmarks'', Quill Driver Books. is a type of stage lighting once used in theatres and music halls. An intense illumination is created when a flame fed by oxygen and hydrogen is directed at a cylinder of quicklime (calcium oxide), which can be heated to before melting. The light is produced by a combination of incandescence and candoluminescence. Although it has long since been replaced by electric lighting, the term has nonetheless survived, as someone in the public eye is still said to be "in the limelight". The actual lamps are called "limes", a term which has been transferred to electrical equivalents. History Discovery and invention The limelight effect was discovered in the 1820s by Goldsworthy Gurney, based on his work with the "oxy-hydrogen blowpipe", credit for which is normally given to Robert Hare. In 1825, a Scottish engineer, Thomas Drummond (1797–184 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cult Following
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. A film, book, musical artist, television series, or video game, among other things, is said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fanbase. A common component of cult followings is the emotional attachment the fans have to the object of the cult following, often identifying themselves and other fans as members of a community. Cult followings are also commonly associated with niche markets. Cult media are often associated with underground culture, and are considered too eccentric or anti-establishment to be appreciated by the general public or to be widely commercially successful. Many cult fans express their devotion with a level of irony when describing entertainment that falls under this realm, in that something ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
