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Reckless (1935 Film)
''Reckless'' (also known as ''Born Reckless'' and ''Hard to Handle'') is a 1935 American musical film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone, and May Robson. David O. Selznick wrote the story, using the pseudonym Oliver Jeffries, basing it loosely on the scandal of the 1931 marriage between torch singer Libby Holman and tobacco heir Zachary Smith Reynolds, and his death by a gunshot wound to the head.Sragow 2013, p. 220. Plot Musical stage star Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow), jailed for reckless driving, is bailed out by her friend, sports promoter and gambler Ned Riley (William Powell), to headline a charity event. However, she finds that all the seats have been bought by wealthy Bob Harrison Jr. (Franchot Tone), president and only member of S.A.M.L. (the Society for the Admiration of Mona Leslie). Mona begins dating Bob, with Ned's approval. Mona's Granny (May Robson) tells Ned that her granddaughter would break it off if he asked her to. N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming (February 23, 1889 – January 6, 1949) was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind'', for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director, and ''The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), The Wizard of Oz'' (both 1939). Fleming has those same two films listed in the top 10 of the American Film Institute's 2007 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. Biography Early life Fleming was born at the Banbury Ranch near what is now La Cañada Flintridge, California, the son of Eva (née Hartman) and William Richard Lonzo Fleming. Career He served in the photographic section for the United States Army during World War I, and acted as chief photographer for President Woodrow Wilson in Treaty of Versailles, Versailles, France. Beginning in 1918, Fleming taught at and headed Columbia University's School of Military Cinematography, traini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nat Pendleton
Nathaniel Greene Pendleton (August 9, 1895 – October 12, 1967) was an American Olympic wrestler, film actor, and stage performer. His younger brother, Edmund J. Pendleton (1899-1987), was a well-known music composer and choir master and organist for the American Church in Paris. Early life and wrestling career Nat Pendleton was born as Nathaniel Greene Pendleton in 1895 in Davenport, Iowa to Adelaide E. and Nathaniel G. Pendleton, who was reportedly a descendant of American Revolutionary general Nathanael Greene."Nat Pendleton, Movie Character Actor, Dies", ''Los Angeles Times'', October 13, 1967, section II, p. 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Nat studied at Columbia University, where he began his wrestling career and served as captain of the school's team in that sport. He was twice Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) champion in 1914 and 1915. Chosen to compete on the United States wrestling team at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford launched a publicity campaign and built an image as a nationally-known flapper by the end of the 1920s. By the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money. By the end of the 1930s, she was labeled "box office poison". After an absence of nearly two years fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Val Lewton
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Russian-American novelist, film producer and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s. His son, also named Val Lewton, was a painter and exhibition designer. Early life Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Hofschneider or Leventon (russian: link=no, Владимир Иванович Левентон, uk, Володимир Іванович Левентон, both with surname Leventon) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Anna "Nina" Leventon, a pharmacist's daughter. The family converted to Christianity.''Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows'', 2007 documentary by Martin Scorsese He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova. His mother left his father and moved to Berlin, taking their two children with her. In 1909, they emigrated to the United States as second cabin class passengers on boa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Barry
Philip Jerome Quinn Barry (June 18, 1896 – December 3, 1949) was an American dramatist best known for his plays ''Holiday (play), Holiday'' (1928) and ''The Philadelphia Story (play), The Philadelphia Story'' (1939), which were both made into films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Biography Early life Philip Barry was born on June 18, 1896, in Rochester, New York to James Corbett Barry and Mary Agnes Quinn Barry. James died from appendicitis a year after Philip's birth, and the family's marble-and-tile business faltered from then on. His oldest brother, Edmund, who was 16 at the time, left school to take over the business and became a father figure for Philip. Barry's play ''The Youngest'', written when he was 28, is an autobiographical account of his family history following his father's death. In 1910, at the age of 14, Barry discovered that a New York State interpretation of his father's will entitled him to a share of his father's estate that eventually left him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (; February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for ''A Letter to Three Wives'' (1949) and ''All About Eve'' (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylized mise en scène. Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and as a writer and producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before getting a chance to direct at 20th Century Fox. Over six years, he made 11 films for Fox. During his over 40-year career in Hollywood, Mankiewicz wrote 48 screenplays. He also produced more than 20 films, including '' The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Goldwyn Follies
''The Goldwyn Follies'' is a 1938 Technicolor film written by Ben Hecht, Sid Kuller, Sam Perrin and Arthur Phillips, with music by George Gershwin, Vernon Duke, and Ray Golden, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Sid Kuller. Some sources credit Kurt Weill as one of the composers, but this is apparently incorrect. ''The Goldwyn Follies'' was the first Technicolor film produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The movie, which features Adolphe Menjou, Vera Zorina, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy (ventriloquist), Charlie McCarthy), Andrea Leeds, Kenny Baker (American performer), Kenny Baker, Ella Logan, Helen Jepson, Bobby Clark (comedy actor), Bobby Clark and the Ritz Brothers, depicts a movie producer who chooses a simple girl to be "Miss Humanity" and to critically evaluate his movies from the point of view of the ordinary person. The style of the film is very similar to other musical film, musicals of its era, including the "Gold Diggers" series and others. The film is an effective satire on Hol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suzy (1936 Film)
''Suzy'' is a 1936 American drama film directed by George Fitzmaurice and starring Jean Harlow, Franchot Tone and Cary Grant. The film was partially written by Dorothy Parker, based on a novel by Herbert Gorman. The Academy Award-nominated theme for ''Suzy'', "Did I Remember?", was sung by Virginia Verrill (uncredited). Plot In 1914, American showgirl Suzanne Trent (Jean Harlow) is in London, hoping to meet and marry a man with money. She tells her friend Maisie (Inez Courtney) she can charm any man she chooses into marrying her, and then learn to love him. She sets her sights on Terry Moore (Franchot Tone), an Irishman she sees in a borrowed Rolls-Royce. She soon learns he is not wealthy, but he has a respectable job and good prospects, being an engineer, inventor, and pilot. They quickly fall in love and marry. But then they stumble on a German plot, and her husband is shot by a mysterious woman (Benita Hume), who leaves immediately. The landlady arrives moments later and hyste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Verrill
Catherine Virginia Verrill ( November 20, 1916 – January 18, 1999) was a singer in the era of old-time radio and big bands. Her work included providing the off-screen singing voices for some female film stars. Early years Verrill was born Catherine Virginia Verrill in Santa Monica, California. Her mother, Aimee McLean Verrill, was active in vaudeville. At 5 months of age, Verrill appeared with her mother in her act. Verrill's family was friends with orchestra leader Paul Whiteman, who had Virginia sing on his bandstand when she was 3 years old. She attended Hollywood's John Marshall High School. (Another source says that she graduated from Hollywood High School.) Radio By the time she was 13, Verrill was singing on local stations, with her debut coming on KMPC in 1932. In 1934, she sang with David Brockman and the KHJ orchestra on ''California Melodies'', which originated at KHJ and was carried on the CBS network. Early in 1935, columnist Walter Winchell reported that Verr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allen 'Farina' Hoskins
Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to: Buildings * Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee * Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas * Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence * Allen House (other) * Allen Power Plant (other) Businesses *Allen (brand), an American tool company *Allen's, an Australian brand of confectionery *Allens (law firm), an Australian law firm formerly known as Allens Arthur Robinson *Allen's (restaurant), a former hamburger joint and nightclub in Athens, Georgia, United States *Allen & Company LLC, a small, privately held investment bank *Allens of Mayfair, a butcher shop in London from 1830 to 2015 *Allens Boots, a retail store in Austin, Texas * Allens, Inc., a brand of canned vegetables based in Arkansas, US, now owned by Del Monte Foods * Allen's department store, a.k.a. Allen's, George Allen, Inc., Philadelphia, USA People * Allen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Ames
Leon Ames (born Harry L. Wycoff;U.S. Federal Census for 1910 for Fowler, Center Township, Benton County, State of Indiana, access via Ancestry.com January 20, 1902 – October 12, 1993) was an American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing father figures in such films as ''Meet Me in St. Louis'' (1944) with Judy Garland as one of his daughters, '' Little Women'' (1949), '' On Moonlight Bay'' (1951), and '' By the Light of the Silvery Moon'' (1953). The fathers whom Ames portrayed were often somewhat stuffy and exasperated by the younger generation, but ultimately kind and understanding. Probably his best-known purely dramatic role was as DA Kyle Sackett in the crime film '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'' (1946). Early years Leon Ames was born on January 20, 1902, in Portland, Indiana, son of Charles Elmer Wycoff and his wife Cora Ames De Moss (Ames) Some sources list his original last name as "Wykoff" or "Waycoff", and in his early films, he acted under t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nina Mae McKinney
Nina Mae McKinney (June 12, 1912 – May 3, 1967) was an American actress who worked internationally during the 1930s and in the postwar period in theatre, film and television, after beginning her career on Broadway and in Hollywood. Dubbed "The Black Garbo" in Europe because of her striking beauty,Bourne, Stephen. ''Nina Mae McKinney: the Black Garbo''. BearManor Media, 2011. McKinney was both one of the first African-American film stars in the United States and one of the first African-Americans to appear on British television. Biography Early life McKinney was born June 12, 1912, in Lancaster, South Carolina, to Georgia Crawford and Hal Napoleon McKinney. Shortly after McKinney's birth, her mother often hid from her abusive husband in the house of Colonel Leroy Springs (of Springs Industries), for whom she worked as a domestic. By 1920, Crawford relocated to Savannah, Georgia, to work as a cook for Cynthia Withers, her daughter Irene, and other white lodgers. McKinney s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
