|
Official Films
Official Films, Incorporated (Inc.) was founded by Leslie Winik in 1939 to produce educational shorts. Soon, after buying some negatives of public-domain Keystone Chaplin films, the company found itself in the 16mm/8mm home movie business. It obtained several dozen cartoons from Ub Iwerks and Van Beuren. Six ''Flip the Frog'' cartoons were released from the Iwerks studios (Castle Films would later license the Iwerks ComiColor films). These kept the original series and film titles. Official Films retitled the Van Beuren cartoons and changed the name of Cubby Bear to "Brownie Bear". The human Tom and Jerry characters were renamed " Dick and Larry" to avoid confusion with MGM's cat and mouse characters Tom and Jerry. In addition to cartoons, Official offered sports films, newsreels (as the "News Thrills" series), and specialties including a souvenir film of the 1939 New York World's Fair (which remained available until 1980). Another Official perennial, also in continual release unt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1948 Official Films
Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British Railways. * January 4 – Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming an independent republic, named the ''Union of Burma'', with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President, and U Nu its first Prime Minister. * January 5 ** Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (''Tournament of Roses Parade'' and the ''Rose Bowl Game''). ** The first Kinsey Reports, Kinsey Report, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'', is published in the United States. * January 7 – Mantell UFO incident: Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object. * January 12 – Mahatma Gandhi begins his fast-unto-death in Delhi, to stop communal violence during the Partition of India. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", " Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", " Am I Blue?", " Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Early life Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896 (some sources incorrectly state her birth year as 1900) as a result of the rape of her teenaged African-American mother, Louise Anderson (1881–1962), by 17 year old John Wesley (or Wesley John) Waters (1878–1901), a pianist and family acq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Krazy Kat
''Krazy Kat'' (also known as ''Krazy & Ignatz'' in some reprints and compilations) is an US, American newspaper comic strip, by cartoonist George Herriman, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It first appeared in the ''New York Journal-American, New York Evening Journal'', whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run. The characters had been introduced previously in a side strip with Herriman's earlier creation, ''The Dingbat Family''. The phrase "Krazy Kat" originated there, said by the mouse by way of describing the cat. Set in a dreamlike portrayal of Herriman's vacation home of Coconino County, Arizona, ''Krazy'' mixture of offbeat surrealism, innocent playfulness and poetic, idiosyncratic language has made it a favorite of comics aficionados and art critics for more than 80 years.Shannon.McDonnell/O'Connell/De Havenon 26. The strip focuses on the curious relationship between a guileless, carefree, simple-minded cat named Krazy and a sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Downs
John Morey Downs (October 10, 1913 – June 6, 1994) was an American child actor, singer, and dancer. He began his career as a child actor, most notably playing Johnny in the ''Our Gang'' short series from 1923 to 1926. He remained active in films, television, and theatre up through the early 1960s. Early life Downs was born in New York City on October 10, 1913. His father was Lt. Morey Downs, a naval aviator with the U.S. Navy. When he was 8 years old the family moved to San Diego due to his father's transfer. Johnny's mother took him to Hollywood for an audition with the Hal Roach Studios. He appeared in a silent film, then was cast as Johnny in the ''Our Gang'' series. He was a regular in the series from 1923 until 1927, appearing in 24 episodes. Adult career Outgrowing the ''Our Gang'' series at the age of 14, he and fellow ''Our Gang'' alumnus Mary Kornman performed on college campuses and the vaudeville circuit, where he polished his singing and dancing skills. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Kennedy (actor)
Thomas Aloyisus Kennedy (July 15, 1885 – October 6, 1965) was an American actor known for his roles in Hollywood comedies from the silent days, with such producers as Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, mainly supporting lead comedians such as the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mabel Normand, Shemp Howard, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges. Kennedy also played dramatic roles as a supporting actor. Career For over 50 years, from 1915 to 1965, he appeared in over 320 films and television series, often uncredited. His first film was a short black and white comedy ''His Luckless Love''. He was in all nine Torchy Blane films as Gahagan, the poetry-spouting cop whose running line was, "What a day! What a day!" He continued making films right up until his death, his last film being a Western titled ''The Bounty Killer'' (1965). Tom Kennedy has been erroneously listed in several film sources as the brother of slow-burning comedian Edgar Kennedy. Though the two men were not related, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Arthur
Johnny Arthur (born John Lennox Arthur Williams; May 20, 1883 – December 31, 1951) was an American stage and motion picture actor. Early years Born in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, Arthur was a veteran of twenty-five years on stage before he made his screen debut in 1923's ''The Unknown Purple''. Arthur's screen personality was nebulous enough to allow him to play the romantic lead in the Lon Chaney vehicle '' The Monster'' (1925). Talkie era With the coming of sound, Arthur developed his first comedic image, an effeminate character in films such as ''The Desert Song'' (1929), '' She Couldn't Say No'' (1930), '' Penrod and Sam'' (1931) and ''The Ghost Walks'' (1934). When the Production Code took effect on July 1, 1934, the overtly homosexual characters played by Arthur were toned down in Hollywood movies. He spent the rest of the 1930s playing fussy characters. This served him well in low-budget films like ''The Natzy Nuisance'', ''Ellis Island'' and ''Danger on the Air'', as wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charley Chase
Charles Joseph Parrott (October 20, 1893 – June 20, 1940), known professionally as Charley Chase, was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director. He worked for many pioneering comedy studios but is chiefly associated with producer Hal Roach. Chase was the elder brother of comedian/director James Parrott. Life and career Born Charles Joseph Parrott in Baltimore, Maryland, Charley Chase began performing in vaudeville as a teenager and started his career in films by working at the Christie Film Company in 1912. He then moved to Keystone Studios, where he began appearing in bit parts in the Mack Sennett films, including those of Charlie Chaplin. By 1915 he was playing juvenile leads in the Keystones, and directing some of the films as Charles Parrott. His Keystone credentials were good enough to get him steady work as a comedy director with other companies; he directed many of Chaplin imitator Billy West's comedies, which featured a young Oliver Hardy as villain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". In 1996, ''Entertainment Weekly'' recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including ''One Week'' (1920), '' The Playhouse'' (1921), '' Cops'' (1922), and ''The Electric House'' (1922). He then moved to feature-leng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Brendel
Elmer Goodfellow "El" Brendel (March 25, 1890 – April 9, 1964) was an American vaudeville comedian turned movie star, best remembered for his dialect routine as a Swedish immigrant. His biggest role was as "Single-0" in the sci-fi musical ''Just Imagine'' (1930), produced by Fox Film Corporation. His screen name was pronounced "El Bren-DEL". Early life He was born on March 25, 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to an Irish mother and German immigrant father. Brendel, unlike his stage and film character, was not Swedish. He spoke standard American English without a trace of any other accent. He attended the University of Pennsylvania. He entered vaudeville in 1913 as a German dialect comedian and married his vaudeville partner. Due to anti-German sentiment brought about by the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, Brendel developed a new character, one he would portray on stage and in films for the rest of his career: a good-natured, simple Swede, often called "Oley," "Ole," or "Ol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Clyde
Andrew Allan Clyde (March 25, 1892 – May 18, 1967) was a Scottish-born American film and television actor whose career spanned more than four decades. In 1921 he broke into silent films as a Mack Sennett comic, debuting in ''On a Summer Day''. He was the fifth of six children of theatrical actor, producer and manager John Clyde. Clyde's brother David and his sister Jean also became screen actors. Although Andy Clyde's movie career spanned 45 years, he may be best known for his work as California Carlson in the Hopalong Cassidy movie series. He is also known for roles in two television series: the farmer Cully Wilson in CBS's '' Lassie'' and as the neighbor George MacMichael on ABC's ''The Real McCoys''. Early years At age 19, he toured Scotland with Durward Lely & Company, playing Connor Martin in the romantic Irish musical costume drama The Wearin’ o’ the Green. In 1912, Clyde first came to the United States on tour in the Graham Moffat Players, playing the part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony. On June 19, 1918, brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and their business partner Joe Brandt founded Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation, which would eventually become Columbia Pictures. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name on January 10, 1924 (operating as Columbia Pictures Corporation until December 23, 1968) went public two years later and eventually began to use the image of Columbia, the female personification of the United States, as its logo. In its early years, Columbia was a minor player in Hollywood, but began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra. With Capra and others such as the most successful two reel comedy series The Three Stooges, Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imogene Coca
Imogene Coca (born Emogeane Coca; November 18, 1908 – June 2, 2001) was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on ''Your Show of Shows''. Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and wished to have a serious career in music and dance, graduating to decades of stage musical revues, cabaret and summer stock. In her 40s, she began a celebrated career as a comedian on television, starring in six series and guest starring on successful television programs from the 1940s to the 1990s. She was nominated for five Emmy Awards for ''Your Show of Shows'', winning Best Actress in 1951 and singled out for a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1953. Coca was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1978 for ''On the Twentieth Century'' and received a sixth Emmy nomination at the age of 80 for an episode of ''Moonlighting''. She possessed a rubbery face capable of the broadest expressions — ''Life'' magazine compared her to Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Tom Kennedy (actor)")
.png "Click for more on -> Columbia Pictures")
