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Phil Silvers
Phil Silvers (born Phillip Silver; May 11, 1911 – November 1, 1985) was an American entertainer and comedic actor, known as "The King of Chutzpah". His career as a professional entertainer spanned nearly sixty years. Silvers achieved major popularity when he starred in ''The Phil Silvers Show'', a 1950s sitcom set on a United States Army, U.S. Army post in which he played Master Sergeant Ernest (Ernie) Bilko. He also starred in the films ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963) and ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (film), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' (1966). He was a winner of two Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on ''The Phil Silvers Show'' and two Tony Awards for his performances in ''Top Banana (musical), Top Banana'' and ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum''. He also wrote the original lyrics to the jazz standard Nancy (with the Laughing Face). Early life Born Philip Silver in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York, in the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behind New York County (Manhattan). Brooklyn is also New York City's most populous borough,2010 Gazetteer for New York State . Retrieved September 18, 2016. with 2,736,074 residents in 2020. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, Brooklyn is located on the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York (state)
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area. With 20.2 million people, it is the fourth-most-populous state in the United States as of 2021, with approximately 44% living in New York City, including 25% of the state's population within Brooklyn and Queens, and another 15% on the remainder of Long Island, the most populous island in the United States. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east; it has a maritime border with Rhode Island, east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the north and Ontario to the northwest. New York City (NYC) is the most populous city in the United States, and around two-thirds of the state's popul ... [...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] |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 and based in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was formed by Marcus Loew by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions, Louis B. Mayer Pictures into one company. It hired a number of well known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became Hollywood's most prestigious film studio, producing popular musical films and winning many Academy Awards. MGM also owned film studios, movie lots, movie theaters and technical production facilities. Its most prosperous era, from 1926 to 1959, was bracketed by two productions of ''Ben-Hur (1959 film), Ben Hur''. After that, it divested itself of the Loews movie theater chain, and, in the 1960s, diversified ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character Actor
A character actor is a supporting actor who plays unusual, interesting, or eccentric characters.28 April 2013, The New York Acting SchoolTen Best Character Actors of All Time Retrieved 7 August 2014, "..a breed of actor who has the ability to be almost unrecognizable from part to part, and yet play many, many roles convincingly and memorably. .." The term, often contrasted with that of leading actor, is somewhat abstract and open to interpretation. In a literal sense, all actors can be considered character actors since they all play "characters", but the term more commonly refers to an actor who frequently plays a distinctive and important supporting role. Character actors are generally well-known and recognizable by the audience (by appearance if not by name), even if they play different types of roles in different movies. A character actor may play characters who are very different from the actor's off-screen real-life personality, while in another sense a character actor may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strike Up The Band (film)
''Strike Up the Band'' is a 1940 American musical film produced by the Arthur Freed unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Busby Berkeley and stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in the second of a series of musicals they co-starred in, after ''Babes in Arms'', all directed by Berkeley. The story written for the 1927 stage musical '' Strike Up the Band'', and its successful 1930 Broadway revision, bear no resemblance to this film, aside from the title song. Plot Jimmy Connors (Mickey Rooney), a student at Riverwood High School, plays the drums in the school band but dreams of playing in a dance band. He and his “gal” Mary Holden (Judy Garland) sell the school principal on the idea of forming a dance orchestra and putting on a dance to raise money. The principal is initially doubtful but then agrees to buy the first ticket. The event is a success, and the school's debt for the instruments is paid off. Famous band leader Paul Whiteman (played by himself) sponso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ups And Downs (1937 Film)
''Ups and Downs'' (1937) is a short film directed by Roy Mack and starring Broadway dancer Hal Le Roy. It was released by Warner Bros. as part of its Broadway Brevities series of two-reel musical shorts, released in 1937 and 1938. The film was made in New York City, and was Bronx native June Allyson's first film for a major studio. Synopsis An elevator operator Harry Smith (Hal Le Roy), who works in a luxury hotel, courts the hotel president's daughter June Dailey (June Allyson). She is engaged to another, but when her fiance leaves on a business trip, Harry asks her to join him for dinner. During dinner, Harry is introduced to her father, who misinterprets Harry's remarks about elevators as being a tip to invest in the Upsadaisy Elevator Company. June's fiance returns and breaks off the engagement, thinking that his prospective father-in-law has lost everything on a worthless stock. However, the investment turns out to be wildly profitable, Harry and June are engaged, and the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack was not printed on the film itself, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at rpm (a speed first used for this system) and typically in diameter, would be played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film was being projected. It had a frequency response of 4300 Hz. Many early talkies, such as ''The Jazz Singer'' (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound". The "Vitaphone" trademark was later associated with cartoons and other short subjects that had optical soundtracks and did not use discs. Early history In the early 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects."Burlesque" ''Oxford English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, accessed 16 February 2011 The word derives from the Italian ', which, in turn, is derived from the Italian ' – a joke, ridicule or mockery. Burlesque overlaps in meaning with caricature, parody and travesty, and, in its theatrical sense, with extravaganza, as presented during the Victorian burlesque, Victorian era. "Burlesque" has been used in English in this literary and theatrical sense since the late 17th century. It has been applied retrospectively to works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Chaucer and William Shakespeare, Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics.Baldick, Chris [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gus Edwards (vaudeville)
Gustave Edwards (August 18, 1878 – November 7, 1945) was an American composer, songwriter and film director. He also was a vaudevillian, organised his own theatre companies and was a music publisher. Early life Edwards was the son of Morris and Johanna Simon. He was born Gustav Schmelowsky in Inowrazlaw, German Empire (present-day Inowrocław, Poland). His family boarded the steamship ''Spaarndam'' as steerage passengers; they arrived at the Port of New York on 29 July 1891 ending up in Williamsburg. During the day, he worked in the family cigar store, and in the evenings, he wandered looking for any sort of show business job. He found work as a singer at various lodge halls, on ferry boat lounges, in saloons, and even between bouts at the athletic clubs. As a very young boy, Edwards worked as a song plugger at Koster and Bial's, at Tony Pastor's theatre, and at the Bowery Theatre. In those old vaudeville days, song publishers would often hire a very young boy to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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