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Phone Call From A Stranger
''Phone Call from a Stranger'' is a 1952 American film noir drama film directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the 1950 novelette of the same name by I. A. R. Wylie. The film centers on the survivor of an aircraft crash who contacts the relatives of three of the victims he came to know on board the flight. The story employs flashbacks to relive the three characters' pasts. At the 13th Venice International Film Festival, the film earned Negulesco a nomination for the Golden Lion, while Johnson was nominated for the Golden Osella for Best Original Screenplay. Plot After his wife Jane (Helen Westcott) admits to an extramarital affair, Iowa attorney David Trask (Gary Merrill) abandons her and their daughters and heads for Los Angeles. His flight is delayed, and while waiting in the airport restaurant he meets a few of his fellow passengers. Troubled alcoholic Dr. Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), haunted by his responsibility for a car accide ...
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Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco (born Ioan Negulescu; – 18 July 1993) was a Romanian-American film director and screenwriter.Oliver, Myrna"Jean Negulesco 1900–1993 ''The Los Angeles Times'', 22 July 1993. He first gained notice for his film noirs and later made such notable films as '' Johnny Belinda'' (1948), ''How to Marry a Millionaire'' (1953), ''Titanic'' (1953), and '' Three Coins in the Fountain'' (1954). He was called "the first real master of CinemaScope". Biography Early life Born in Craiova, Negulesco was the son of a hotel keeper and attended Carol I High School. When he was 15, he was working in a military hospital during World War I. Georges Enesco, the Romanian composer, came to play the violin to the war wounded; Negulesco drew a portrait of him, and Enesco bought it. Negulesco decided to be a painter and studied art in Bucharest. Negulesco went to Paris in 1920, and enrolled in the Académie Julian. He sold one of his paintings to Rex Ingram. America In 1927, he visite ...
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Flashback (narrative)
A flashback (sometimes called an analepsis) is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started. In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma". Flashbacks are important in film noir and melodrama films. In films and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert the v ...
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Douglas DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with conventional landing gear, powered by two radial piston engines of . (Although most DC-3s flying today use Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines, many DC-3s built for civil service originally had the Wright R-1820 Cyclone.) The DC-3 has a cruising speed of , a capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, and a range of , and can operate from short runways. The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental United States from New York to Los An ...
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Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ...
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Craig Stevens (actor)
Craig Stevens (born Gail Shikles Jr.; July 8, 1918 – May 10, 2000) was an American film and television actor, best known for his starring role on television as private detective ''Peter Gunn'' from 1958 to 1961. Early life Stevens was born in Liberty, Missouri, to Marie and Gail Shikles."Fourteenth Census of United States: 1920"
Liberty Township, Clay County, Missouri, enumeration date January 3, 1920. ; retrieved October 11, 2017.
His father was a high school teacher in Liberty and later an elementary school principal in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied

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District Attorney
In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a local government area, typically a county or a group of counties. The exact name and scope of the office varies by state. Alternative titles for the office include county attorney, solicitor, or county prosecutor. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case against an individual suspected of breaking the law, initiating and directing further criminal investigations, guiding and recommending the sentencing of offenders, and are the only attorneys allowed to participate in grand jury proceedings. The prosecutors decide what criminal charges to bring, and when and where a person will answer to those charges. In carrying out their duties, prosecutors have the authority to investigate persons, grant immunity to witnes ...
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Ted Donaldson
Ted Donaldson (born August 20, 1933 in New York City) is an American former child actor. Early years Born in Brooklyn, New York, Donaldson was the son of singer-composer Will Donaldson and Will's wife, Jo. His mother died when he was years old. His stepmother was radio organist and composer Muriel Pollock. He attended the Professional Children's School in New York City. Career Donaldson began his acting career in December 1937 when he appeared in an NBC radio show. In 1941, he played Tiny Tim in a week-long serialized version of Dickens' ''A Christmas Carol'' that was presented on ''Wheatena Playhouse''. From 1949 to 1954, he played Bud, the son of Robert Young's character in the radio version of ''Father Knows Best''. He was offered the same role on the television version of the series, but turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to be typed. I didn't want to be a 21-year-old playing a 15- or 16-year-old kid. I wanted to do other things." As an adult, he called that "one of ...
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Beatrice Straight
Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 – April 7, 2001) was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner as well as an Emmy Award nominee. Straight made her Broadway debut in ''The Possessed'' (1939). Her other Broadway roles included Viola in ''Twelfth Night'' (1941), Catherine Sloper in ''The Heiress'' (1947) and Lady Macduff in '' Macbeth'' (1948). For her role as Elizabeth Proctor in the production of ''The Crucible'' (1953), she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. For the satirical film ''Network'' (1976), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance is the shortest ever to win an Academy Award for acting, at five minutes and two seconds of screen time. She also received an Emmy Award nomination for the miniseries ''The Dain Curse'' (1978). Straight also appeared as Mother Christophe in '' The Nun's Story'' (1959) and Dr. Mar ...
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Hugh Beaumont
Eugene Hugh Beaumont (February 16, 1909 – May 14, 1982) was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series '' Leave It to Beaver'', originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963; and as private detective Michael Shayne in a series of low-budget crime films in 1946 and 1947. Early life Beaumont was born in Lawrence, Kansas, to Ethel Adaline Whitney and Edward H. Beaumont, a traveling salesman whose profession kept the family on the move. After graduating from the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the class of 1930, he attended the University of Chattanooga, where he played football. He later studied at the University of Southern California and graduated with a master of theology degree in 1946. Career Beaumont began his career in show business in 1931 by performing in theaters, nightclubs, and radio. He began acting in motion pictures in 1940, appearing in over three dozen films. Many of those roles were bit parts and minor ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Iowa
Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana; its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy transitioned to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, information technology, biotechnology, and green energy production. Iowa is the 26th most extensive in total area and the 31st most populous of the 50 U.S. states, with a populat ...
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Helen Westcott
Helen Westcott (born Myrthas Helen Hickman, January 1, 1928 – March 17, 1998) was an American stage and screen actress and former child actress. She is best known for her work in ''The Gunfighter'' (1950). Early years Westcott was the daughter of singer Hazel Beth McArthur and Warner Bros. studio actor Gordon Westcott. Her father died when Helen was seven years old, in 1935. When she was two, Westcott appeared in vaudeville with her mother. At age seven, she began a nine-year run playing the daughter on stage in a production of ''The Drunkard'' in Los Angeles. Westcott attended Los Angeles City College. Film When Westcott was 4 years old, she appeared in a series of short films. At 5, she appeared in the full-length ''Thunder Over Texas''. She appeared opposite Gregory Peck in the western classic ''The Gunfighter'' released in 1950. She was also known in part for her role in Charles Lamont's 1953 comedy horror film '' Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde''. ...
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