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Ray Ellis
Ray Ellis (July 28, 1923 – October 27, 2008) was an American record producer, arranger, conductor, and saxophonist. He was responsible for the orchestration in Billie Holiday's ''Lady in Satin'' (1958). Biography Raymond Spencer Ellis was born in Philadelphia. He arranged many hit records in the 1950s and 1960s. Included are classics such as "A Certain Smile" and "Wild is the Wind" by Johnny Mathis, "Broken Hearted Melody" by Sarah Vaughan, and " Standing on the Corner" by the Four Lads. In 1970, he produced Emmylou Harris' debut LP ''Gliding Bird''. Ellis' work encompassed all areas of music, from records to film, commercials, and television. In the early 1960s, Ellis had a contract to produce his own easy listening record albums with RCA Victor, MGM, and Columbia, the most popular probably being ''Ellis in Wonderland''. His television credits include theme music for ''NBC News At Sunrise'' with Connie Chung and the background and incidental music for the first season ...
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out conce ...
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Connie Chung
Constance Yu-Hwa Chung (born August 20, 1946) is an American journalist. She has been an anchor and reporter for the U.S. television news networks NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Some of her more famous interview subjects include Claus von Bülow and U.S. Representative Gary Condit, whom Chung interviewed first after the Chandra Levy disappearance,
and basketball legend after he went public about being HIV-positive. In 1993, she became the second woman to co-anchor a network newscast as part of ''''.


Early life and education

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Fabulous Funnies
''Fabulous Funnies'' is a 1978–1979 American animated children's show produced for Saturday morning television by Filmation. The show aired for one season from September 9, 1978, to December 1, 1978, on NBC, airing 13 episodes. The show was an anthology of stories based on American comic strips, including '' Broom Hilda'', ''Alley Oop'', '' The Captain and the Kids'', '' Nancy'', ''Emmy Lou'' and (for one episode) ''Tumbleweeds''. The character designs closely mimicked the comic strips, so the animators had to animate in several different styles for the program. It was noted by critics that the show's comic potential was blunted by NBC's demand that the show promote pro-social messages for the child audience. This was especially noticeable when rowdy characters like the Katzenjammer Kids were obliged to spread messages of politeness and restraint. The ''Los Angeles Times'' called the show's moralizing "heavy-handed." The Fantastic Funnies In 1980, CBS released a special cal ...
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The New Adventures Of Flash Gordon
''The New Adventures of Flash Gordon'', also known as ''The Adventures of Flash Gordon'', is a 1979-1982 animated television series. The series is actually called ''Flash Gordon'' but the expanded title is used in official records to distinguish it from previous versions. Filmation produced the series in 1979, partly as a reaction to the mammoth success of ''Star Wars'' in 1977. The series was an homage to the original ''Flash Gordon'' comic strip and featured many of the original characters, including Flash's girlfriend Dale Arden, and the scientist Hans Zarkov. The series is still regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations, and one of Filmation's finest overall efforts. The basic story follows Flash and his companions as they travel to Mongo, where they are forced into battle by its ruler, Ming the Merciless, his daughter Princess Aura, and his army of Metal Men. To help their cause the heroes lead the formation of an alliance beginning with King Thun, leader of the Lion ...
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Jason Of Star Command
''Jason of Star Command'' is a 1978-1979 live action television series by Filmation. The series revolves around the exploits of space adventurer Jason (Craig Littler) and his colleagues, including Professor E.J. Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) and the pocket robot "Wiki" (formally W1K1). The series also stars Sid Haig as the evil Dragos, and, in the first season, James Doohan. ''Jason'' was inspired by Filmation's 1977 live-action show ''Space Academy'', and used the same robot, Peepo. Overview Season 1 Its first season, which was a segment of '' Tarzan and the Super 7'', was done in the style of the movie serials of the past, telling a single overall story with 16 "chapters" of approximately 15 minutes' length, each ending in a cliffhanger. The second season was a stand-alone, half-hour series. Filmation would later revisit the serial format with both their rendition of ''The New Adventures of Flash Gordon'' and "The Great Space Chase" segment of '' The New Adventures of Mighty ...
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Space Academy
''Space Academy'' is an American science fiction television series produced by Filmation that originally aired Saturday mornings on the CBS television network, from September 10 to December 17, 1977. (Repeats ran on and off until September 1, 1979.) A total of 15 half-hour episodes were made. Cast The program starred veteran actor Jonathan Harris, best known as Dr. Zachary Smith of ''Lost in Space;'' co-starring were Pamelyn Ferdin, Ric Carrott, Maggie Cooper, Brian Tochi, Ty Henderson, and Eric Greene. The program featured a pint-sized robot called "Peepo", a radio-controlled machine voiced by Erika Scheimer talking through a pitch-shifter with regenerative delay. Ferdin and Tochi had been among the child actors who played a group of children orphaned by an evil being masquerading as an angel in the 1968 ''Star Trek'' episode '' And the Children Shall Lead''. Guest stars included Lawrence "Larry" Dobkin; Dena Dietrich ("Mother Nature" in the Chiffon margarine TV commercials ...
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Ark II
''Ark II'' is an American live-action science fiction television series, aimed at children, that aired on CBS from September 11 to December 18, 1976, (with reruns continuing through November 13, 1977 and reruns returning from September 16, 1978, through August 25, 1979) as part of its weekend line-up. Only 15 half-hour episodes were ever produced. The program's central characters were created by Martin Roth; Ted Post helped Roth develop its core format. Series overview The opening titles for each episode, as narrated first by executive producer Lou Scheimer (using his then uncredited pseudonym Erik Gunden), then by the voice of Terry Lester, who portrayed Jonah, summarized the show's backstory: ''Ark II'' had a racially mixed cast starring Terry Lester as Ark II's commander, Jonah, Jean Marie Hon as Ruth, José Flores as Samuel, and a chimpanzee named Moochie (owned and trained by Darrell Keener) responding to the name of Adam (voiced by Lou Scheimer). The show's premise was ...
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Filmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live-action programming for television from 1963 until 1989. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1962. Filmation's founders and principal producers were Lou Scheimer, Hal Sutherland, and Norm Prescott. Background Lou Scheimer and Filmation's main director Hal Sutherland met in 1957 while working at Larry Harmon Pictures on the made-for-TV ''Bozo'' and ''Popeye'' cartoons. Eventually Larry Harmon closed the studio by 1961. Scheimer and Sutherland went to work at a small company called True Line, one of whose owners was Marcus Lipsky, who then owned Reddi-wip whipped cream. SIB Productions, a Japanese firm with U.S. offices in Chicago, approached them about producing a cartoon called ''Rod Rocket''. The two agreed to take on the work and also took on a project for Family Films, owned by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, for ten short animated films based on the ...
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Norm Prescott
Norman Prescott (January 31, 1927 – July 2, 2005) was co-founder and executive producer at Filmation Associates, an animation studio he created with veteran animator Lou Scheimer. Life and career Born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, his real name was Norman Pransky. His father Edward was a tailor and a shirt-maker. A graduate of Boston Latin School and Boston University, he began his career as a disc jockey. His first radio job, c. 1947, was at WHEB in Portsmouth NH. In 1948 he joined WHDH, and in October 1950, he became program director at station WORL. He briefly worked in New York at WNEW, before relocating to WBZ radio in late 1955; in 1956, he became one of the "Live Five" after WBZ dropped its syndicated NBC programming and went on the air with live disc jockeys. In the summer of 1959, he left radio and went to work for Joseph E. Levine's Embassy Pictures Corporation, serving as vice president of music, merchandising and post-production. He, Lou Scheimer and ...
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NBC Chimes
The NBC chimes are a sequence of three tones played on National Broadcasting Company (NBC) broadcasts. Originally developed in 1927 as seven notes, they were standardized to the current three-note version by the early 1930s, and possibly as early as 1929. The chimes were originally employed as an audible programming cue, used to alert network control engineers and the announcers at NBC's radio network affiliates. They soon became associated with NBC programming in general, and are an early example of an "interval signal" used to help establish a broadcaster's identity with its audience. In 1950 the NBC chimes became the first "purely audio" service mark granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Nearly ninety years after their introduction, they continue to be used as an audio signature by the NBC TV network and its affiliates, and also on the NBC Sports Radio network and at the opening of the hourly NBC News Radio broadcasts. Definition The NBC chimes sound mark is curren ...
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Godspell
''Godspell'' is a musical composed by Stephen Schwartz with book by John-Michael Tebelak. The show is structured as a series of parables, primarily based on the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with music mostly set to lyrics from traditional hymns, with the passion of Christ appearing briefly near the end. ''Godspell'' began as a project by drama students at Carnegie Mellon University and then moved to the off-off-Broadway theater La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. The show was rescored for an off-Broadway production, which opened on May 17, 1971, and became a long-running success. Many productions have followed worldwide, including a 2011 Broadway revival. An abbreviated one-act version of the musical designed for performers aged 18 and under also exists, titled ''Godspell Junior''. Several cast albums have been released over the years. " Day by Day", from the original cast album, reached #13 on the '' Billboard'' pop singles chart in the summ ...
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Stephen Schwartz (composer)
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz (born March 6, 1948) is an American musical theater lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over five decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as ''Godspell'' (1971), ''Pippin'' (1972), and ''Wicked'' (2003). He has contributed lyrics to a number of successful films, including ''Pocahontas'' (1995), ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1996), ''The Prince of Egypt'' (1998, music and lyrics), and '' Enchanted'' (2007). Schwartz has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, three Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and has been nominated for six Tony Awards. He received the 2015 Isabelle Stevenson Award, a special Tony Award, for his commitment to serving artists and fostering new talent. Early life and education Schwartz was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Sheila Lorna (née Siegel), a teacher, and Stanley Leonard Schwartz, a businessman. He grew up in the Williston Park area of Nassau County, New York, where he gra ...
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