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Oklahoma! (1955 Film)
''Oklahoma!'' is a 1955 American musical film based on the 1943 musical of the same name by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was based on the 1931 play ''Green Grow The Lilacs'' written by Lynn Riggs. It stars Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones (in her film debut), Rod Steiger, Charlotte Greenwood, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, James Whitmore, and Eddie Albert. The production was the only musical directed by Fred Zinnemann. ''Oklahoma!'' was the first feature film photographed in the Todd-AO 70 mm widescreen process (and was simultaneously filmed in CinemaScope 35mm). Set in Oklahoma Territory, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams (Jones) and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain (MacRae) and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry (Steiger). A secondary romance concerns Laurey's friend, Ado Annie (Grahame), and cowboy Will Parker (Nelson), who also has an unwilling rival. A background theme is the territory's aspiration for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Zinnemann
Alfred ''Fred'' Zinnemann (April 29, 1907 – March 14, 1997) was an Austrian Empire-born American film director. He won four Academy Awards for directing and producing films in various genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir and play adaptations. He made 25 feature films during his 50-year career. He was among the first directors to insist on using authentic locations and for mixing stars with civilians to give his films more realism. Within the film industry, he was considered a maverick for taking risks and thereby creating unique films, with many of his stories being dramas about lone and principled individuals tested by tragic events. According to one historian, Zinnemann's style demonstrated his sense of "psychological realism and his apparent determination to make worthwhile pictures that are nevertheless highly entertaining." Among his films were ''The Search'' (1948), '' The Men'' (1950), '' High Noon'' (1952), ''From Here to Eternity'' (1953), ''Oklahoma!'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Surtees (cinematographer)
Robert L. Surtees (August 9, 1906 – January 5, 1985) was an American cinematographer who won three Academy Awards for the films ''King Solomon's Mines'', ''The Bad and the Beautiful'' and the 1959 version of '' Ben-Hur''. Surtees worked at various studios, including Universal, UFA, Warner Brothers, and MGM, lighting for notable directors Howard Hawks, Mike Nichols, and William Wyler, gaining him a reputation as one of the most versatile cinematographers of his time. Early life and education Robert L. Surtees was born in Covington, Kentucky, on August 9, 1906. He grew up in Ohio where he got a job as a photographer and retoucher at a portrait studio in Cincinnati. Surtees then moved to New York City for a year to study photography, but always had a goal of becoming a cinematographer."Robert Surtees Obituary." ''American Cinematographer'' (March 1985): 101. Print. Career With an intention to attend college, Surtees moved to California in 1925. Roy C. Hunter at Universal offered h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CinemaScope
CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter. Its creation in 1953 by Spyros P. Skouras, the president of 20th Century Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal 2.55:1, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1.37:1 ratio. Although the technology behind the CinemaScope lens system was made obsolete by later developments, primarily advanced by Panavision, CinemaScope's anamorphic format has continued to this day. In film-industry jargon, the shortened form, 'Scope, is still widely used by both filmmakers and projectionists, although today it generally refers to any 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, or 2.55:1 presentation or, sometimes, the use of anamorphic lensing or projection in general. Bausch & Lomb won a 1954 Oscar for its development of the CinemaScope l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35 mm film. For television, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was in fullscreen 4:3 (1.33:1). Largely between the 1990s and early 2000s, at varying paces in different nations, 16:9 (1.78:1) widescreen TV displays came into increasingly common use. They are typically used in conjunction with high-definition television (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD players and other digital television sources. With computer displays, aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also referred to as widescreen. Widescreen computer displays were previously made in a 16:10 aspect ratio (e.g. 1680 × 1050), but now are usually 16:9 (e.g. 1920 × 1080). Film History Widescreen was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
70 Mm Film
70 mm film (or 65 mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge for motion picture photography, with a negative area nearly 3.5 times as large as the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As used in cameras, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65 mm film is printed on film. The additional 5 mm contains the four magnetic strips, holding six tracks of stereophonic sound. Although later 70 mm prints use digital sound encoding (specifically the DTS format), the vast majority of existing and surviving 70 mm prints pre-date this technology. Each frame is five perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. However, the use of anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 lenses squeezes the image into an ultra-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio. To this day, Ultra Panavision 70 produces the widest picture size in the history of filmmaking; surpassed only by Polyvision, which was only used for 1927's Napoleon. With regard to exhibition, 70 mm fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Todd-AO
Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953 by Mike Todd and Robert Naify, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. For more than five decades, it was the worldwide leader in theater sound. The company now operates one facility in the Los Angeles area. Todd-AO is also the name of the widescreen, 70 mm film format that was developed by Mike Todd and the Naify brothers, owners of United Artists Theaters in partnership with the American Optical Company in the mid-1950s. Todd-AO had been founded to promote and distribute this system. History Todd-AO began as a high resolution widescreen film format. It was co-developed in the early 1950s by Mike Todd, a Broadway producer, and United Artists Theaters in partnership with the American Optical Company in Buffalo, New York. It was developed to provide a high definition single camera widescreen process to compete with Cinerama, or as characterized by its creator, "Cinerama o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green Grow The Lilacs (play)
''Green Grow the Lilacs'' is a 1930 play by Lynn Riggs named for the popular folk song of the same name.''Green Grow The Lilacs: A Play'' Lynn Riggs, Samuel French Inc., 1931 . It was performed 64 times on , opening at the Guild Theatre on Janua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Play (theatre)
A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between characters and intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from London's West End and Broadway in New York City – which are the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world – to regional theatre, to community theatre, as well as university or school productions. A stage play is a play performed and written to be performed on stage rather than broadcast or made into a movie. Stage plays are those performed on any stage before an audience. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term "play" can refer to both the written texts of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. Comedy Comedies are plays which are designed to be humorous. Comedies are often filled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) director in the musical theater for almost 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. He is best known for his collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, as the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include ''Oklahoma!'', '' Carousel'', '' South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. Described by Stephen Sondheim as an "experimental playwright", Hammerstein helped bring the American musical to new maturity by popularizing musicals that focused on stories and character rather than the lighthearted entertainment that the musical had been known for beforehand. He also collaborated with Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote ''Show Boat''), Vincent Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers". The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if a live audience were watching. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. With the advent of sound in the late 1920s, musicals gained popularity with the public and are exemplified by the films of Busby Ber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RKO Radio Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastmancolor
Eastmancolor is a trade name used by Eastman Kodak for a number of related film and processing technologies associated with color motion picture production and referring to George Eastman, founder of Kodak. Eastmancolor, introduced in 1950, was one of the first widely successful "single-strip colour" processes, and eventually displaced the more cumbersome Technicolor. Eastmancolor was known by a variety of names such as DeLuxe Color, Warnercolor, Metrocolor, Pathécolor, Columbiacolor, and others. For more information on Eastmancolor, see * Eastman Color Negative (ECN, ECN-1 and ECN-2), the photographic processing systems associated with Eastmancolor negative motion picture stock, and intermediate motion picture stocks (including interpositive and internegative stocks) * Eastman Color Positive (ECP, ECP-1 and ECP-2), the photographic processing systems associated with Eastmancolor positive print motion picture stock for direct projection * Color motion picture film, for background ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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