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Rich Little's Christmas Carol
''Rich Little's Christmas Carol'', broadcast in Canada as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a TV special that premiered on CBC Television in December 1978, and in the United States on Home Box Office (HBO) on December 16, 1979. It was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1978. It starred Rich Little in a one-man performance with impersonations of his characters playing the parts in Charles Dickens' famous 1843 holiday story, '' A Christmas Carol''.December 1979 HBO Program Guide (''The China Syndrome'' on cover), page 12 Little played the following celebrities: * W. C. Fields as Ebenezer Scrooge § *Paul Lynde as Bob Cratchit * Johnny Carson as Fred * Laurel and Hardy as the two solicitors § *Richard Nixon as Jacob Marley * Humphrey Bogart as the Ghost of Christmas Past § * Groucho Marx as Fezziwig § * James Stewart as Dick Wilkins * Peter Falk as Columbo/the Ghost of Christmas Present *Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker/Mrs. Cratchit *Truman Capote as Tiny Tim *Peter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rich Little
Richard Caruthers Little (born November 26, 1938) is a Canadian-American Impressionist (entertainment), impressionist and voice actor. Sometimes known as the "Man of a Thousand Voices", Little has recorded nine comedy albums and made numerous television appearances, including three HBO specials. Early life Little was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the middle of three sons. His father, Lawrence Peniston Little, was a surgeon who served as a lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II and then worked for the Veterans Affairs Canada, Department of Veterans’ Affairs until his death in 1959. His mother, Elizabeth Maud (née Wilson), was a housewife. A third-generation Canadian, he is descended from English people, English stock on his father's side and Irish people, Irish on his mother's. On his mother's side, he is descended from John Willson, who was Speaker (politics), Speaker of the 5th Parliament of Upper Canada in the 1820s. His pate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbo (TV Series)
''Columbo'' () is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Columbo (character), Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. After two pilot episodes in 1968 and 1971, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of ''The NBC Mystery Movie''. ''Columbo'' then aired less frequently on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from 1989 to 2003. Columbo is a shrewd but inelegant Blue-collar worker, blue-collar homicide detective whose trademarks include his rumpled beige raincoat, unassuming demeanor, cigar, old Peugeot 403 car, love of chili con carne, and Unseen character, unseen wife (whom he mentions frequently). He often leaves a room only to return with the catchphrase "Just one more thing" to ask a critical question. The character and show, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, popularized the inverted detective story format (sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem"). This ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Videotape
Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassette recorders (VCRs) and camcorders. Videotapes have also been used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram. Because video signals have a very high bandwidth, and stationary heads would require extremely high tape speeds, in most cases, a helical-scan video head rotates against the moving tape to record the data in two dimensions. Tape is a linear method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape that is not already against the heads. The early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high-quality random-access video recording media such as hard disks and flash memory. Since then, videotape has been increasingly relegated to archival and si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American entertainer who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a long pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated summation "''Well!''" His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny portrayed himself as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and claimed perpetually to be 39 years of age. Early life Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago, Illinois, on February 14, 1894, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky (1864–1946) and Emma Sachs Kubelsky (1869–1917), sometimes called "Naomi". Meyer was a saloon ow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wayne
Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films made during Hollywood's Golden Age, especially in Western and war movies. His career flourished from the silent era of the 1920s through the American New Wave, as he appeared in a total of 179 film and television productions. He was among the top box-office draws for three decades, and he appeared with many other important Hollywood stars of his era. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Wayne as one of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema. Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, but grew up in Southern California. After losing his football scholarship to the University of Southern California from a bodysurfing accident, he began working for the Fox Film Corporation. He appeared mostly in small parts, but his first leading role came in Raoul Wal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Burns
George Burns (born Nathan Birnbaum; January 20, 1896March 9, 1996) was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer, and one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, radio, film and television. His arched eyebrow and cigar-smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three-quarters of a century. He and his wife Gracie Allen appeared on radio, television and film as the comedy duo Burns and Allen. At the age of 79, Burns experienced a sudden career revival as an amiable, beloved and unusually active comedy elder statesman in the 1975 film ''The Sunshine Boys'', for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Burns was only a Tony Award shy of being one of the few EGOT award recipients in the American entertainment industry, winning an Emmy, a Grammy, and an Oscar. Burns became a centenarian in 1996, continuing to work until just weeks before his death of cardiac arrest at his home in Beverly Hills, shortly after his hundr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Mason
James Neville Mason (; 15 May 190927 July 1984) was an English actor. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films included ''The Seventh Veil'' (1945) and ''The Wicked Lady'' (1945). He starred in ''Odd Man Out'' (1947), the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. Mason starred in such films as George Cukor's '' A Star Is Born'' (1954), Alfred Hitchcock's ''North by Northwest'' (1959), Stanley Kubrick's ''Lolita'' (1962), Warren Beatty's '' Heaven Can Wait'' (1978), and Sidney Lumet's ''The Verdict'' (1982). He also starred in a number of successful British and American films from the 1950s to the early 1980s, including: '' The Desert Fox'' (1951), ''Julius Caesar'' (1953), ''Bigger Than Life'' (1956), ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' (1954), ''Journey to the Center of the Earth'' (1959), ''Georgy Girl'' (1966), and '' The Boys from Bra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella ''A Christmas Carol''. The Ghost is one of three spirits which appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption. Following a visit from the ghost of his deceased business partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge receives nocturnal visits by three Ghosts of Christmas, each representing a different period in Scrooge's life. The shrouded, ominous and silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is Scrooge's last visitor, and shows him a vision of a Christmas Day in the near future after his own death. Background By early 1843, Dickens had been affected by the treatment of the poor, and in particular the treatment of the children of the poor after witnessing children working in appalling conditions in a tin mine and following a visit to a ragged school. Indeed, Dickens himself had experienced poverty as a boy when he was forced to work in a blacking factory after his father's impr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inspector Clouseau
Inspector Jacques Clouseau (), later granted the rank of Chief Inspector, is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' farcical ''The Pink Panther'' series. He is portrayed by Peter Sellers in the original series, and also by Alan Arkin in the 1968 film ''Inspector Clouseau'' and, in a cameo, by Roger Moore (credited as Turk Thrust II) in the 1983 film ''Curse of the Pink Panther''. In the 2006 remake and its 2009 sequel, Clouseau is portrayed by Steve Martin. Clouseau's likeness also appears in the Pink Panther animated cartoon shorts and segments, where he is known as simply "the Inspector". More recent animated depictions from the 1970s onward were redesigned to more closely resemble Sellers, and later Martin. Character Overview Clouseau is an inept and incompetent police detective in the French Sûreté, whose investigations quickly turn to chaos. His absent-mindedness almost always leads to destruction of property: while interviewing witnesses in ''The Pink Panther St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8 September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series ''The Goon Show'', featured on a number of hit comic songs and became known to a worldwide audience through his many film roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in '' The Pink Panther'' series. Born in Southsea, Portsmouth, Sellers made his stage debut at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, when he was two weeks old. He began accompanying his parents in a variety act that toured the provincial theatres. He first worked as a drummer and toured around England as a member of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA). He developed his mimicry and improvisational skills during a spell in Ralph Reader's wartime Gang Show entertainment troupe, which toured Britain and the Far East. After the war, Sellers made his radio debut in ''ShowTime'', and eventually became a regular performer on vario ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol)
:; Timothy "Tiny Tim" Cratchit is a fictional character from the 1843 novella ''A Christmas Carol'' by Charles Dickens. Although seen only briefly, he is a major character, and serves as an important symbol of the consequences of the protagonist's choices. Character overview Tiny Tim is the young, ailing son of Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge’s underpaid clerk. When Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present he is shown just how ill the boy really is (the family cannot afford to properly treat him on the salary Scrooge pays Cratchit). When visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge sees that Tiny Tim has died. This, and several other visions, led Scrooge to reform his ways. At the end of the story, Dickens makes it explicit that Tiny Tim does not die, and Scrooge becomes a "second father" to him. In the story, Tiny Tim is known for the statement, "God bless us, every one!" which he offers as a blessing at Christmas dinner. Dickens repeats the phrase at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truman Capote
Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella '' Breakfast at Tiffany's'' (1958) and the true crime novel ''In Cold Blood'' (1966), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas. Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother, and multiple migrations. He had discovered his calling as a writer by the time he was eight years old, and he honed his writing ability throughout his childhood. He began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of " Miriam" (1945) attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf and resulted in a contract to write the novel '' Other Voices, Other Rooms'' (1948). Capote earned the most fame with '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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