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Olga James
Olga James (born February 16, 1929) is an American singer and actress best known for her role in the film ''Carmen Jones'' (1954). Her later acting credits include a role in the Broadway musical ''Mr. Wonderful'' and a reoccurring role on ''The Bill Cosby Show''. James was married to jazz musician Julian "Cannonball" Adderley from 1962 until his death in 1975. Life and career James was born in Washington, D.C. on February 16, 1929. Her father was a saxophonist and her mother was a dancer on the Chitlin Circuit. Her parents separated during her childhood and her mother remarried. James was raised by her grandparents until she was admitted into Juilliard in New York City, then she went to live with her mother in Newark, New Jersey. At Juilliard, James befriended singer Leontyne Price. Although James studied opera, she preferred to sing Mozart art songs, German lieder, and French chansons. Through networking at Juilliard, she was hired for her first professional role in 1952 as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Washington, D
Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on Washington, D.C. * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States Washington may also refer to: Places England * Washington, Tyne and Wear, a town in the City of Sunderland metropolitan borough ** Washington Old Hall, ancestral home of the family of George Washington * Washington, West Sussex, a village and civil parish Greenland * Cape Washington, Greenland * Washington Land Philippines *New Washington, Aklan, a municipality *Washington, a barangay in Catarman, Northern Samar *Washington, a barangay in Escalante, Negros Occidental *Washington, a barangay in San Jacinto, Masbate *Washington, a barangay in Surigao City United States * Washington, Wisconsin (other) * Fort Washington (other) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Saints In Three Acts
''Four Saints in Three Acts'' is an opera composed in 1928 by Virgil Thomson, setting a libretto written in 1927 by Gertrude Stein. It contains about 20 saints and is in at least four acts. It was groundbreaking in form, content, and for its all-black cast, with singers directed by Eva Jessye, a prominent black choral director, and supported by her choir."Eva Jessye" ''Eva Jessye Collection,'' African American Music Collection, University of Michigan, accessed December 4, 2008 Thomson suggested the topic, and the libretto as delivered can be read in Stein's collected works. The opera features two 16th-century Spanish saints—the former mercenary and the mystic |
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Taylor Davis
Frances Taylor Davis (September 28, 1929 – November 17, 2018) was an American dancer and actress who was a member of the Katherine Dunham Company, and the first African American ballerina to perform with the Paris Opera Ballet. Credited as Elizabeth Taylor, she had roles in the Broadway musicals ''Mr. Wonderful'', '' Shinbone Alley'', and was an original cast member of ''West Side Story''. Taylor also appeared in the Off-Broadway productions of ''Carmen Jones'' and ''Porgy and Bess''. At the peak of her career, she left Broadway to marry jazz musician Miles Davis. Life and career Early life Taylor was born on September 28, 1929 in Chicago, Illinois. Taylor grew up in the Rosenwald Courts in Chicago. Her father worked at the post office. She began dancing classical ballet at the age of 8, and by the age of 16 she was performing '' Swan Lake''. Her instructor encouraged her to audition for the Edna McRae School of the Dance where she became the only African American stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sammy Davis Jr
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director. At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities.Sammy Davis Jr. Biography Biography.com. Retrieved June 6, 2013.< ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abe Saperstein
Abraham Michael Saperstein (; July 4, 1902 – March 15, 1966) was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily before those sports were racially integrated. Saperstein revolutionized the game of basketball and took the Globetrotters from an unknown team touring small farm towns in the Midwestern United States during the height of the Great Depression to a powerhouse that went on to beat the best team in the all-white National Basketball Association. He also introduced the three-point shot, which went on to become a mainstay of modern basketball. Saperstein was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971 and, at , is its shortest male member. In 1979, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and 2005 was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Early life Saperstein was born in the East End of London, England ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (; born 1 July 1931) is a French-American actress and dancer. She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards. She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Caron began her career as a ballerina. She made her film debut in the musical ''An American in Paris'' (1951), followed by roles in ''The Man with a Cloak'' (1951), ''Glory Alley'' (1952) and ''The Story of Three Loves'' (1953), before her role of an orphan in ''Lili'' (also 1953), which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and garnered nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. As a leading lady, Caron starred in films such as '' The Glass Slipper'' (1955), '' Daddy Long Legs'' (1955), '' Gigi'' (1958), '' Fanny'' (1961), both of which earned her Golden Globe nominations, ''Guns of Darkness'' (1962), ''The L-Shaped Room'' (1962), '' Fathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harlem Globetrotters
The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, and comedy in their style of play. Created in 1926 by Tommy Brookins in Chicago, Illinois, the team adopted the name ''Harlem'' because of its connotations as a major African-American community. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 countries and territories, mostly against deliberately ineffective opponents, such as the Washington Generals (1953–1995, since 2015) and the New York Nationals (1995–2015). The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown", and their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named "Globie". The team is owned by Herschend Family Entertainment. History The Globetrotters originated on the South Side of Chicago in 1926, where all the original players were raised. The Globetrotters began as the Savoy Big Five, one of the premier attractions of the Savoy Ballroom, opened in January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album '' Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, " Jump in the Line", and " Jamaica Farewell". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including ''Carmen Jones'' (1954), '' Island in the Sun'' (1957), and ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959). Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical Western canon, canon; the "Habanera (aria), Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger ( , ; 5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austrian-American theatre and film director, film producer, and actor. He directed more than 35 feature films in a five-decade career after leaving the theatre. He first gained attention for film noir mysteries such as '' Laura'' (1944) and ''Fallen Angel'' (1945), while in the 1950s and 1960s, he directed high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these later films pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with themes which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (''The Man with the Golden Arm'', 1955), rape (''Anatomy of a Murder'', 1959) and homosexuality (''Advise & Consent'', 1962). He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. He also had several acting roles. Early life Preminger was born in 1905 in Wischnitz, Bukovina, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine), into a Jewish family. His parents were Josefa (née Fraenke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
