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Sydney Walker
Sydney Walker (May 5, 1921 – September 30, 1994) was an American character actor of stage and screen and voice artist, with a career that spanned over five decades. Early life Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Walker developed an interest in drama from attending films as a child. He was especially enamored of death scenes, sometimes enacting them to entertain others. When he was 15, he began acting in little theater productions. He gained more experience through an apprenticeship with the Hedgerow Theatre in Pennsylvania. He left there to serve in World War II and then returned. He developed his skills further by studying at the Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Art in Paris, focusing on pantomime and singing. Career Walker was primarily a stage actor. After he studied in Paris, he performed at the Pasadena Playhouse and La Jolla Playhouse. His professional debut was in 1960 and he featured in twenty-eight Broadway plays between 1961 and 1973. In 1967, he was nominated for a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love Story (1970 Film)
''Love Story'' is a 1970 American romantic drama film written by Erich Segal, who was also the author of the best-selling 1970 novel of the same name. It was produced by Howard G. Minsky and directed by Arthur Hiller and starred Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal, alongside John Marley, Ray Milland, and Tommy Lee Jones in his film debut in a minor role. The film is considered one of the most romantic by the American Film Institute (No. 9 on the list) and is one of the highest-grossing films of all time. It was followed by a sequel, ''Oliver's Story'' (1978), starring O'Neal with Candice Bergen. Plot Oliver Barrett IV, heir of an American upper-class East Coast family, attends Harvard College where he plays ice hockey. He meets Jennifer "Jenny" Cavilleri, a quick-witted, working-class Radcliffe College student of classical music; they fall in love despite their differences. At Cornell, Oliver loses his temper during the hockey game, and Harvard loses to Cornell, 4-3. His father dri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The National Health (play)
''The National Health'' is a 1969 British play by Peter Nichols. Reminiscent of the ''Carry On'' film series, this black comedy with tragic overtones focuses on the appalling conditions in an under-funded National Health Service hospital, which are contrasted comically with a ''Dr. Kildare''-style soap opera airing on the ward television. History Originally titled ''The End Beds'', the play – based on Nichols' time in hospitals where he received treatment for a collapsed lung – originally was written for television, but the playwright received no enthusiastic response from anyone to whom he submitted it. When Kenneth Tynan and Laurence Olivier approached him to write a play for the National Theatre, Nichols offered them the slightly revised work, retitled ''The National Health''. It premiered at The Old Vic in 1969 and proved to be a critical and commercial success, named Best New Play by the ''Evening Standard''. The BBC then asked Nichols if he would adapt the play for a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, ''Liza of Lambeth'' (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End theatre, West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories. Maugham's novels after ''Liza of Lambeth'' include ''Of Human Bondage'' (1915), ''The Moon and Sixpence'' (1919), ''The Painted Veil (novel), The Painted Veil'' (1925), ''Cakes and Ale'' (1930) and ''The Razor's Edge'' (1944). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Christmas Carol
''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas Carol'' recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. Dickens wrote ''A Christmas Carol'' during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as Christmas cards and Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Conservatory Theater
The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The American Conservatory Theater was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by theatre and opera director William Ball in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Mellon University. Ball presented twenty-seven fully staged productions in rotating repertory, in two different theaters – the Geary Theater and the Marines Memorial Theatre – during the first 40-week season. A.C.T.'s original twenty-seven member acting company featured René Auberjonois, Peter Donat, Richard Dysart, Michael Learned, Ruth Kobart, Paul Shenar, Charles Siebert, Ken Ruta, and Kitty Winn among others. Ball's mid-1970s productions of Shakespeare's ''Taming of the Shrew'', starring Marc Singer, and Rostand's ''Cyrano de Bergerac'', starring Pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Phil Silvers Show
''The Phil Silvers Show'', originally titled ''You'll Never Get Rich'', is a sitcom which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959. A pilot titled "Audition Show" was made in 1955, but it was never broadcast. 143 other episodes were broadcast – all half-an-hour long except for a 1959 one-hour live special. The series starred Phil Silvers as Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko of the United States Army. The series was created by Nat Hiken and won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Comedy Series. The show is sometimes titled ''Sergeant Bilko'' or simply ''Bilko'' in reruns, and it is very often referred to by these names, both on-screen and by viewers. The show's success transformed Silvers from a journeyman comedian into a star and writer-producer Hiken from a highly regarded behind-the-scenes comedy writer into a publicly recognized creator. Production By 1955, the American television business was already moving westward to Los Angeles, but Nat Hiken insisted on filming the series in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guiding Light (1970–79)
''Guiding Light'' (known as ''The Guiding Light'' before 1975) is an American radio and television soap opera. It is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the third longest-running drama in television in American history. ''Guiding Light'' aired on CBS for 57 years between June 30, 1952, and September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio between January 25, 1937, and June 29, 1956. With 72 years of radio and television runs, ''Guiding Light'' is the longest running soap opera, ahead of ''General Hospital'', and is the fifth-longest running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program ''Grand Ole Opry'' (first broadcast in 1925), the BBC religious program ''The Daily Service'' (1928), the CBS religious program ''Music and the Spoken Word'' (1929), and the Norwegian children's radio program ''Lørdagsbarnetimen'' (1924–2010) have been on the air longer. When the show debuted on radio in 1937, it centered on Reverend John Rut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soap Opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers.Bowles, p. 118. The term was preceded by "horse opera", a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns. BBC Radio's ''The Archers'', first broadcast in 1950, is the world's longest-running radio soap opera. The longest-running current television soap is '' Coronation Street'', which was first broadcast on ITV in 1960, with the record for the longest running soap opera in history being held by '' Guiding Light'', which began on radio in 1937, transitioned to television in 1952, and ended in 2009. A crucial element that defines the soap opera is the open-ended serial nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. One of the defining features that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Alber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Getting Even With Dad
''Getting Even with Dad'' is a 1994 American comedy film starring Macaulay Culkin and Ted Danson. Plot Timmy Gleason is the estranged son of ex-con Ray Gleason and has been living with his aunt Kitty and her fiancée Wayne since the death of his mother some years earlier. Ray works in a bakery designing cakes. When Kitty goes on her honeymoon with new husband Wayne, she dumps Timmy on a reluctant Ray, leaving him to look after his son in San Francisco for the next week. Timmy is hoping to spend time with his father, but is largely ignored by Ray, who is the midst of planning a rare-coin heist with his two cronies Bobby and Carl. The robbery is successful, but Timmy learns of it and hides the stolen coins from them. He uses it to blackmail Ray into spending time with him, promising that he will return the coins afterwards. Thus father and son spend the next few days fishing, playing miniature golf and visiting amusement parks, with an amiable Carl and angry Bobby tagging along. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the ''Home Alone'' film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films '' My Girl'' (1991), '' The Good Son'' (1993), ''The Nutcracker'' (1993), ''Getting Even with Dad'' (1994), ''The Pagemaster'' (1994), and '' Richie Rich'' (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show ''Will & Grace'' and a role in the film '' Party Monster''. He wrote an autobiography, ''Junior'', which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in '' American Horror Story: Double Feature'', the tenth season ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan (born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra; November 19, 1961) is an American actress. She began her acting career in 1981 when she made her acting debut in the drama film ''Rich and Famous''. She later joined the cast of the CBS soap opera ''As the World Turns'' in 1982. Subsequently, she began to appear in supporting roles in films during the mid-1980s like box office hit ''Top Gun'', achieving recognition in independent films such as ''Promised Land'' (1987) before her performance in the Rob Reiner-directed romantic comedy '' When Harry Met Sally...'' (1989) brought her widespread attention and her first Golden Globe nomination. Ryan subsequently established herself, both nationally and internationally, as one of the most successful actresses in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly in romantic comedy films such as ''When Harry Met Sally'' (1989), '' Joe Versus the Volcano'' (1990), ''Sleepless in Seattle'' (1993), ''French Kiss'' (1995), ''You've Got Mail'' (1998), an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
