|
Maurice Elvey
Maurice Elvey (11 November 1887 – 28 August 1967) was one of the most prolific film directors in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year. He also produced more than fifty films - his own as well as films directed by others.Rachael Low:''The History of British Film (Volume 3): The History of the British Film 1914 - 1918'' Linked 2015-03-18 Biography Born William Seward Folkard in Stockton-on-Tees, he ran away from home at the age of nine, seeking his fortune i ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stockton-on-Tees
Stockton-on-Tees, often simply referred to as Stockton, is a market town in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, England. It is on the northern banks of the River Tees, part of the Teesside built-up area. The town had an estimated population of 84,318 in 2011. It is included in the Tees Valley mayoralty. The borough had a population of approximately , at the ONS The Tees was straightened in the early 1800s for larger ships to access the town. The ports have since relocated closer to the North Sea and ships are no longer able to sail from the sea to the town due to the Tees Barrage, which was installed to manage tidal flooding. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, on which coal was ferried to the town for shipment, served the port during early part of the Industrial Revolution. The railway was also the world's first permanent steam-locomotive-powered passenger railway. History Etymology ''Stockton'' is an Anglo-Saxon place name with the common ending ''ton' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, " J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the ''Mary Celeste''. Name Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Petula Clark
Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15 November 1932) is an English singer, actress, and composer. She has one of the longest serving careers of a British singer, spanning more than seven decades. Clark's professional career began during the Second World War as a child entertainer on BBC Radio. In 1954 she charted with "The Little Shoemaker", the first of her big UK hits, and within two years she began recording in French. Her international successes have included " ''Prends mon coeur''", "Sailor" (a UK number one), "Romeo", and " Chariot". Hits in German, Italian and Spanish followed. In late 1964 Clark's success extended to the United States with a four-year run of career-defining, often upbeat singles, many written or co-written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent. These songs include her signature song " Downtown", "I Know a Place", " My Love", " A Sign of the Times", " I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Who Am I", " Colour My World", " This Is My Song" (by Charles Chaplin), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Neame
Ronald Neame CBE, BSC (23 April 1911 – 16 June 2010) was an English film producer, director, cinematographer, and screenwriter. Beginning his career as a cinematographer, for his work on the British war film ''One of Our Aircraft Is Missing'' (1943) he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Special Effects. During a partnership with director David Lean, he produced ''Brief Encounter'' (1945), '' Great Expectations'' (1946), and '' Oliver Twist'' (1948), receiving two Academy Award nominations for writing. Neame then moved into directing, and some notable films included, ''The Man Who Never Was'' (1956), which chronicled Operation Mincemeat, a British WWII deception operation, '' The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' (1969), which won Maggie Smith her first Oscar, and the action-adventure disaster film '' The Poseidon Adventure'' (1972). He also directed ''I Could Go On Singing'' (1963), Judy Garland's last film, and '' Scrooge'' (1970), starring Albert Finney. For his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lean
Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), and ''A Passage to India'' (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of two Charles Dickens novels, '' Great Expectations'' (1946) and '' Oliver Twist'' (1948), as well as the romantic drama ''Brief Encounter'' (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's '' In Which We Serve'', which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with '' Summertime'' in 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film ''Ryan's Daughter'' led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carol Reed
Sir Carol Reed (30 December 1906 – 25 April 1976) was an English film director and producer, best known for ''Odd Man Out'' (1947), '' The Fallen Idol'' (1948), ''The Third Man'' (1949), and '' Oliver!'' (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director. ''Odd Man Out'' was the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. ''The Fallen Idol'' won the second BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The British Film Institute voted ''The Third Man'' the greatest British film of the 20th century. Early life and career Carol Reed was born in Putney, southwest London.Philip Kem"Reed, Carol (1906-1976)" ''Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Director'', reprinted at BFI Screenonline. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography' has Wandsworth, London as Reed's place of birth. He was the son of actor-producer Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his mistress, Beatrice May Pinney, who later adopted the surname of Reed. He was educated at The King's School, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fay Wray
Vina Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was a Canadian/American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film ''King Kong (1933 film), King Kong''. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed one of the early "scream queens". After appearing in minor film roles, Wray gained media attention after being selected as one of the "WAMPAS Baby Stars" in 1926. This led to her being contracted to Paramount Pictures as a teenager, where she made more than a dozen feature films. After leaving Paramount, she signed deals with various film companies, being cast in her first horror film roles, in addition to many other types of roles, including in ''The Bowery (1933 film), The Bowery'' (1933) and ''Viva Villa'' (1934), both of which starred Wallace Beery. For RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., Wray starred in the film she is most identified with, ''King Kong'' (1933) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Banks
Leslie James Banks CBE (9 June 1890 – 21 April 1952) was an English stage and screen actor, director and producer, now best remembered for playing gruff, menacing characters in black-and-white films of the 1930s and 1940s, but also the Chorus in Laurence Olivier's wartime version of ''Henry V''. Early life and career Leslie Banks was born in West Derby, Liverpool, Lancashire, to George and Emily (''née'' Dalby) Banks. He attended school at Glenalmond College in Scotland, and later studied at Keble College, Oxford with the intention of becoming a parson, but decided against this. He joined Frank Benson's company, and made his acting debut in October 1911 at the town hall in Brechin, playing Old Gobbo in ''The Merchant of Venice''. He then toured the United States and Canada with Henry V. Esmond and Eva Moore in 1912 and 1913. Returning to London, he appeared for the first time on the West End stage at the Vaudeville Theatre on 5 May 1914, as Lord Murdon in ''The Dangerous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alastair Sim
Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE (9 October 1900 – 19 August 1976) was a Scottish character actor who began his theatrical career at the age of thirty and quickly became established as a popular West End performer, remaining so until his death in 1976. Starting in 1935, he also appeared in more than fifty British films, including an iconic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella '' A Christmas Carol'', released in 1951 as ''Scrooge'' in Great Britain and as ''A Christmas Carol'' in the United States. Though an accomplished dramatic actor, he is often remembered for his comically sinister performances. After a series of false starts, including a spell as a jobbing labourer and another as a clerk in a local government office, Sim's love of and talent for poetry reading won him several prizes and led to his appointment as a lecturer in elocution at the University of Edinburgh in 1925. He also ran his own private elocution and drama school, from which, with the help of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Rains
William Claude Rains (10 November 188930 May 1967) was a British actor whose career spanned almost seven decades. After his American film debut as Dr. Jack Griffin in ''The Invisible Man'' (1933), he appeared in such highly regarded films as ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938), '' Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' (1939), '' The Wolf Man'' (1941), ''Casablanca'' and ''Kings Row'' (both 1942), '' Notorious'' (1946), ''Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), and ''The Greatest Story Ever Told'' (1965). He was a Tony Award-winning actor and was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Rains was considered to be "one of the screen's great character stars" From McFarlane's ''Encyclopedia of British Film'', London: Methuen/BFI, 2003, p.545 who was, according to the ''All-Movie Guide'', "at his best when playing cultured villains". During his lengthy career, he was greatly admired by many of his acting colleagues, such as Bette Davis, Vincent Sherman, Ronald Neame, Al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields (born Grace Stansfield; 9 January 189827 September 1979) was an English actress, singer, comedian and star of cinema and music hall who was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. She was known affectionately as ''Our Gracie'' and ''the Lancashire Lass'' and for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John (OStJ) in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1979. Life and work Early life Fields was born Grace Stansfield, a daughter of Frederick Stansfield (1874–1956) and his wife Sarah Jane 'Jenny' Stansfield née Bamford (1879–1953), over a fish and chip shop owned by her grandmother, Sarah Bamford, in Molesworth Street, Rochdale, Lancashire. Her great-grandfather, William Stansfield (b.1805), of Hebden Bridge, Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benita Hume
Benita Hume (14 October 1907 – 1 November 1967) was an English theatre and film actress. She appeared in more than 40 films between 1925 and 1955. Life and career She was married to film actor Ronald Colman from 1938 to his death in 1958; they were the parents of a daughter, Juliet. She starred with Colman in both versions of the situation comedy ''The Halls of Ivy'', an NBC Radio programme (1950–1952) and a CBS Television show (1954–1955). She also made occasional guest appearances with her husband on ''The Jack Benny Show'' on radio, where the Colmans were portrayed as Benny's long-suffering next-door neighbours, a role they reprised once on his television show. After Ronald Colman's death, she married actor George Sanders in 1959 and they remained together until her death in 1967. Sanders originally was signed to play Sheridan Whiteside in the musical ''Sherry!'' but when Hume became terminally ill with cancer, he withdrew from the project.James Lipton. ''Inside In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Stockton-on-Tees")
