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Million Dollar Legs (1932 Film)
''Million Dollar Legs'' is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy film starring Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields, directed by Edward F. Cline, produced by Herman J. Mankiewicz (co-writer of '' Citizen Kane'') and B.P. Schulberg, co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film was inspired by the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, California. Plot While visiting the mythical country of Klopstokia on business, brush salesman Migg Tweeny (Jack Oakie) collides with a young woman (Susan Fleming) on the street and the two fall instantly in love. Her name is Angela—all the women in Klopstokia are named Angela, and the men are named George—and she is the daughter of Klopstokia's president (W.C. Fields), whose country is bankrupt, and who relies upon his great physical strength to dominate a cabinet that is conspiring to overthrow him. Tweeny, hoping to win the hand of the president's daughter in marriage, presents him with a plan to remedy Klopstoki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Fleming
Susan Fleming (February 19, 1908 – December 22, 2002) was an American actress and the wife of comic actor Harpo Marx and sister in law to Groucho, Chico, Zeppo and Gummo. Fleming was known as the "Girl with the Million Dollar Legs" for a role she played in the W. C. Fields film '' Million Dollar Legs'' (1932). Her big stage break, which led to her Hollywood career, was as a Ziegfeld girl, performing in '' Rio Rita''. Career Fleming was from New York City and went to school in Forest Hills, Queens. After starring in the Ziegfeld Follies productions on Broadway, she started appearing in movies with '' The Ace of Cads'', in which she appeared under the name Suzanne Fleming. One of her earliest film roles was a starring role in ''The Range Feud'' as Judy Walton, the love interest of John Wayne. Fleming combined her dancing and cinematic interests in the 1932 movie '' Million Dollar Legs'', in which she played the daughter of W. C. Fields's character. As part of a publicity stun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Herbert
Hugh Herbert (August 10, 1885 – March 12, 1952) was an American motion picture comedian. He began his career in vaudeville and wrote more than 150 plays and sketches. Career Born in Binghamton, New York, Herbert attended Cornell University. As an actor, he "had many serious roles, and for years was seen on major vaudeville circuits as a pathetic old Hebrew." The advent of talking pictures brought stage-trained actors to Hollywood, and Hugh Herbert soon became a popular movie comedian. His screen character was usually absent-minded and flustered. He would flutter his fingers together and talk to himself, repeating the same phrases: "hoo-hoo-hoo, wonderful, wonderful, hoo hoo hoo!" So many imitators (including Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy and Etta Candy in the Wonder Woman comic book series) copied the catchphrase as "woo woo" that Herbert himself began to use "woo woo" rather than "hoo hoo" in the 1940s. Herbert's earliest movies, like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duck Soup (1933 Film)
''Duck Soup'' is a 1933 American pre-Code musical black comedy film written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, directed by Leo McCarey. Released theatrically by Paramount Pictures on November 17, 1933, it starred the Marx Brothers ( Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo in his final Marx Brothers’ movie) and also featured Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern, Raquel Torres and Edgar Kennedy. It was the last of five Marx Brothers movies released by Paramount Pictures. Groucho plays the newly installed president of the mythical country of Freedonia. Zeppo is his secretary, while Harpo and Chico are Sylvanian spies. Relations between Groucho and the Sylvanian ambassador deteriorate during the film, and they go to war at the conclusion. Compared to the Marx Brothers' previous films, ''Duck Soup'' was a box office disappointment, though not entirely a "flop" as is sometimes reported. The film opened to mixed reviews, although th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marlene Dietrich
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's ''The Blue Angel'' (1930) brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She starred in many Hollywood films, including six iconic roles directed by Sternberg: ''Morocco'' (1930) (her only Academy Award nomination), ''Dishonored'' (1931), '' Shanghai Express'' and ''Blonde Venus'' (both 1932), ''The Scarlet Empress'' (1934) and '' The Devil Is a Woman'' (1935), '' Desire'' (1936) and ''Destry Rides Again'' (1939). She successfully traded on her glamorous persona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s. Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaist artists expressed their discontent toward violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with radical left-wing and far-left politics. There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife (letter-opener) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or ''surreality.'' It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media. Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and '' non sequitur''. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatism" Breton speaks of in the first Surrealist Manifesto), with the works themselves being secondary, i.e. artifacts of surrealist experimentation. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Denby (film Critic)
David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist. He served as film critic for '' The New Yorker'' until December 2014. Early life and education Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B. A. from Columbia University in 1965, and a master's degree from its journalism school in 1966. Career Journalism Denby began writing film criticism while a graduate student at Stanford University's Department of Communication. He began his professional life in the early 1970s as an adherent of the film critic Pauline Kael—one of a group of film writers informally, and sometimes derisively, known as "the Paulettes." Denby wrote for '' The Atlantic Monthly'', the ''Boston Phoenix'', and ''New York'' before arriving at ''The New Yorker''; his first article for the magazine was published in 1993, and beginning in 1998 he served as a staff writer and film critic, alternating his critical duties week by week with Anthony Lane. Denby participated in the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' critics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''New York Times'' reporter, and debuted on February 21, 1925. Ross wanted t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tribeca
Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and Chambers Street. By the 2010s, a common marketing tactic was to extend Tribeca's southern boundary to either Vesey or Murray streets to increase the appeal of property listings. The neighborhood began as farmland, then was a residential neighborhood in the early 19th century, before becoming a mercantile area centered on produce, dry goods, and textiles, and then transitioning to artists and then actors, models, entrepreneurs and other celebrities. The neighborhood is home to the Tribeca Festival, which was created in response to the September 11 attacks, to reinvigorate the neighborhood and downtown after the destruction caused by the terrorist attacks. Tribeca is part of Manhattan Community District 1, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital media, digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as ''The Daily (podcast), The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (publisher), George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked List of newspapers by circulation, 18th in the world by circulation and List of newspapers in the United States, 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is Public company, publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 189 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Gilbert
William Gilbert Barron (September 12, 1894 – September 23, 1971), known professionally as Billy Gilbert, was an American actor and comedian. He was known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows beginning in 1929. Career Early life and vaudeville career The child of singers with the Metropolitan Opera, he was born in a dressing room at the Hopkins Opera House in Louisville, Kentucky. Gilbert began working in vaudeville at the age of 12, and later played in burlesque on the Columbia and Mutual wheels. Big break in films Gilbert was spotted by Stan Laurel, who was in the audience of Gilbert's show ''Sensations of 1929''. Laurel went backstage to meet Gilbert and was so impressed by him he introduced him to comedy producer Hal Roach. Gilbert was employed as a gag writer, actor and director, and at the age of 35 he appeared in his first film for the Fox Film Corporation in 1929. Gilbert broke into comedy s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Taggart
Ben Taggart (April 5, 1889 – May 17, 1947) was an American actor. Taggart's stage experience began in Seattle, and he went on to play leading roles in Washington, Portland, San Francisco, Trenton, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. He was described as "an adept comedian as well as a delineator of the more serious parts." Selected filmography His first movie was ''The Woman Next Door'' in 1915;(24 July 1915)Taggart in Kleine's "Woman Next Door" ''The Moving Picture World'' from 1931 to 1945 he appeared in a number of minor uncredited roles. Credited roles include: * ''The Woman Next Door'' (1915) - Tom Grayson * ''The Fixer'' (1915) - Mr. William Fowler * '' The Sentimental Lady'' (1915) - Tom Woodbury * ''She'' (1917) - Leo Vincey * '' Oh, Boy!'' (1919) - Charles Hartley * ''The Hidden Light'' (1920) - Victor Bailey * '' Mammy'' (1930) - Sheriff (uncredited) * '' Kick In'' (1931) - Detective Johnson (uncredited) * ''Newly Rich'' (1931) - Mr. Black (uncredited) * '' Smart Money'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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