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Roy Webb
Royden Denslow Webb (October 3, 1888 – December 10, 1982) was an American film music composer. Webb has hundreds of film music credits to his name, mainly with RKO Pictures. He is best known for film noir and horror film scores, in particular for the films of Val Lewton. Biography Born in Manhattan, New York, Webb orchestrated and conducted for the Broadway stage before moving to Hollywood in the late 1920s to work as music director for Radio Pictures, later RKO Pictures. He remained at RKO until 1955, then worked freelance for several years, scoring several episodes of ''Wagon Train''. Webb is credited as composer or arranger on more than 200 films, and received Academy Award nominations for '' Quality Street'' (1937), ''My Favorite Wife'' (1940), ''I Married a Witch'' (1942), ''Joan of Paris'' (1942), ''The Fallen Sparrow'' (1943), ''The Fighting Seabees'' (1944), and '' The Enchanted Cottage'' (1945). His piano concerto from ''The Enchanted Cottage'' was performed by the Los ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Music
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers under the guidance of or in collaboration with the film's director or producer and are then most often performed by an ensemble of musicians – usually including an orchestra (most likely a symphony orchestra) or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – known as playback singers – and recorded by a sound engineer. The term is less frequently applied to music written for other media such as live theatre, television and radio programs, and video game, and said music is typically referred to as either the soundtrack or incidental music. Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constantin Bakaleinikoff
Constantin Romanovich Bakaleinikov (also spelled Bakaleynikov and Bakaleinikoff; russian: Константин Романович Бакалейников; 26 April 1896 – 3 September 1966) was a Russian-born composer who worked in Hollywood, California. Life and career Bakaleinikoff was from a large musical family. His brothers were Nikolai Bakaleinikov ( flautist, composer and conductor), Vladimir Bakaleinikov ( violist, composer and conductor), and Mikhail (Mischa) Bakaleinikoff (composer). He studied at the Moscow Conservatory. Following the Russian revolution he migrated to the United States of America with his brother Mischa. Constantin Bakaleinikoff (pronounced back-a-LAIN-a-koff) worked as a conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic before beginning his Hollywood career as a freelance composer. At the 1927 premiere of Director Cecil B. DeMille's ''The King of Kings'' at Hollywood's famed Grauman's Chinese Theater, which was hosted by D.W. Griffith and speakers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylvia Scarlett
''Sylvia Scarlett'' is a 1935 American romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on '' The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett'', a 1918 novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s. Hepburn plays the title role of Sylvia Scarlett, a female con artist masquerading as a boy to escape the police. The success of the subterfuge is in large part due to the transformation of Hepburn by RKO makeup artist Mel Berns. This film was the first pairing of Grant and Hepburn, who later starred together in ''Bringing Up Baby'' (1938), ''Holiday'' (1938), and '' The Philadelphia Story'' (1940). Grant's performance as a dashing rogue sees him incorporate a Cockney accent and remains widely considered the first time Grant's famous personality began to register on film. (Grant used the Cockney accent in only a few other films, notably 1939's ''Gunga Din'', 1943's '' Mr. Lucky' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Down To Their Last Yacht
''Down to Their Last Yacht'' is a 1934 comic adventure produced and distributed by RKO Pictures. Plot After the stock market crash of 1929, the Colt-Stratton family is forced to rent their yacht to the nouveau riche at the behest of Nella Fitzgerald (Polly Moran), including gambler Barry Forbes ( Sidney Blackmer) and his sidekick Freddy Finn (Sterling Holloway). When Freddy rigs the yacht's roulette wheel to respond to his saxophone, he is caught, but moments later, Captain "Sunny Jim" Roberts (Ned Sparks) runs the yacht aground on the South Sea Island of Malakamokolu, ruled by Queen Malakamokalu (Mary Boland), a white woman, who takes the passengers as forced labor. Tiring them, she offers to release them if Barry stays to marry her. However, once she hears Freddy play his saxophone, she falls in love with him and plans to blow up the yacht with a bomb. Barry manages to rescue the passengers, not the boat, and they accept their new home in the tropics. Cast * Mary Boland as Que ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Our Betters
''Our Betters'' is a 1933 American pre-Code satirical comedy film directed by George Cukor and starring Constance Bennett, Anita Louise and Gilbert Roland. The screenplay by Jane Murfin and Harry Wagstaff Gribble is based on the 1917 play of the same title by Somerset Maugham. Tommy Atkins worked as assistant director, while the sets were designed by the art director Van Nest Polglase. Plot Just after her wedding, American hardware heiress Pearl Saunders overhears her husband, Lord George Grayston, telling his mistress that he only married her for her money. Disillusioned, she grows hard and cynical. Five years later, she has made herself a force among the British upper class with her parties. Among her friends are divorced Duchess Minnie, gossip-loving Thornton Clay, philanthropic Princess Flora, and Arthur Fenwick, her wealthy and adoring lover. Arthur discreetly provides her with a much-needed regular allowance, as her now absent husband has squandered most of her fortune. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinerama
Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. The trademarked process was marketed by the Cinerama corporation. It was the first of a number of novel processes introduced during the 1950s, when the movie industry was reacting to competition from television. Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening. The Cinerama projection screen, rather than being a continuous surface like most screens, is made of hundreds of individual vertical strips of standard perforated screen material, each about inch (~22 mm) wide, with each strip angled to face the audience, so as to prevent light scattered from one end of the deeply curved screen from reflecting across the screen and washing out the image on the opposite end. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
This Is Cinerama
''This Is Cinerama'' is a 1952 American documentary film directed by Mike Todd, Michael Todd, Jr., Walter A. Thompson and Fred Rickey and starring Lowell Thomas. It is designed to introduce the widescreen process Cinerama, which broadens the aspect ratio so that the viewer's peripheral vision is involved. ''This Is Cinerama'' premiered on September 30, 1952, at the Broadway Theatre in New York City. Synopsis The film begins in black and white and the standard Academy ratio as travel writer and newscaster Lowell Thomas appears to discuss the evolution of film entertainment, from the earliest cave paintings designed to suggest movement to the introduction of color and sound. At the conclusion of the 12-minute lecture, Thomas speaks the words "This is Cinerama" and the screen expands into the full Cinerama 2.65:1 aspect ratio and full color as a series of vignettes, narrated by Thomas, begins. The film includes point-of-view scenes of the Atom Smasher roller coaster at Rockaw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Magnificent Ambersons
''The Magnificent Ambersons'' is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, the second in his ''Growth'' trilogy after ''The Turmoil'' (1915) and before ''The Midlander'' (1923, retitled ''National Avenue'' in 1927). It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into the 1925 silent film ''Pampered Youth''. In 1942 it was again made into a movie, written and directed by Orson Welles, though the released version was edited against Welles wishes. Much later, in 2002, came a TV adaptation based on Welles' screenplay. Plot summary The story is set in a largely-fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place. The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socioeconomic change in Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. An Academy Award-winner (for '' The Devil and Daniel Webster'', 1941; later renamed ''All That Money Can Buy''), Herrmann mainly is known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously '' Psycho'', ''North by Northwest'', '' The Man Who Knew Too Much'', and ''Vertigo''. He also composed scores for many other films, including '' Citizen Kane'', '' Anna and the King of Siam'', ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'', ''The Ghost and Mrs. Muir'', '' Cape Fear'', ''Fahrenheit 451'', and ''Taxi Driver''. He worked extensively in radio drama (composing for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs, including Rod Serling's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made. The ''Sight & Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For 50 consecutive years, it stood at number 1 in the British Film Institute's '' Sight & Sound'' decennial poll of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Mankiewicz and Welles. ''Citizen Kane'' is praised for Gregg Toland's cinematography, Robert Wise's editing, Bernard Herrmann's music, and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting. The quasi-biograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roar, Lion, Roar
"Roar, Lion, Roar" is the primary fight song of Columbia University. It was originally titled "Bold Buccaneers" and was written with different lyrics for the 1923 Varsity Show ''Half Moon Inn'' by Columbia undergraduates Corey Ford and Morris W. Watkins, and alumnus Roy Webb. In order to compete in the Columbia Alumni Federation's contest to find a school fight song the same year, Ford wrote a new set of lyrics that would become "Roar, Lion, Roar". The title references Columbia's mascot, the Columbia Lion. Lyrics The original lyrics are: Today the song is almost always performed with only the second stanza. "Bold Buccaneers" The 1923 Varsity Show, ''Half Moon Inn'', was based on characters from ''The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.'' by Washington Irving, including Rip Van Winkle and Hendrick Hudson, the historical explorer for whom the Hudson River is named and who discovered Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay on his ship, the ''Halve Maen'' ("Half Moon"). The play fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
