|
Sapphire Films
Sapphire Films Ltd. was a British television production company, active in the 1950s. Amongst their best-known series are ''The Adventures of Robin Hood,'' ''The Adventures of Sir Lancelot'', '' The Buccaneers'', and '' The Four Just Men'' produced for ITC Entertainment and screened on ITV in the UK, as well as being syndicated in the United States. Sapphire Films was founded by producer Hannah Weinstein with initial funds from the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo .... Weinstein hired nearly two-dozen blacklisted American writers to script ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (and later '' The Four Just Men'') under pseudonyms, and instituted elaborate security measures to ensure that the writers' true identities remained secr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hannah Weinstein
Hannah Weinstein ( Dorner; June 23, 1911 – March 9, 1984) was an American journalist, publicist and left-wing political activist who moved to Britain and became a television producer. She is best remembered for having produced ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' television series in the mid-to-late 1950s. Early life Born to a Jewish family in New York City, After graduating with a degree in journalism from New York University, Weinstein worked for the '' New York Herald Tribune'' from 1927. In 1937, she left the newspaper to join Fiorello H. La Guardia's mayoral campaign in New York City. She was also involved in the presidential campaigns of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Wallace. With Ring Lardner Jr., she wrote speeches for Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles during this period. Exile In 1950, Weinstein began her film career in Paris having left the US to avoid the rise of anticommunism, as typified by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In 1952, after settli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion.Diggs-Brown, Barbara (2011''Strategic Public Relations: Audience Focused Practice''p. 48 In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries. The availability of various types of archival st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Adventures Of Robin Hood (series)
''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' is a British television series comprising 143 half-hour, black and white episodes broadcast weekly between 1955 and 1959 on ITV. It starred Richard Greene as the outlaw Robin Hood, and Alan Wheatley as his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The show followed the legendary character Robin Hood and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest and the surrounding vicinity. While some episodes dramatised the traditional Robin Hood tales, most were original dramas created by the show's writers and producers. The programme was produced by Sapphire Films Ltd for ITC Entertainment, filmed at Nettlefold Studios with some location work, and was the first of many pre-filmed shows commissioned by Lew Grade. In 1954, Grade was approached by American producer Hannah Weinstein to finance a series of 39 half-hour episodes, at a budget of £10,000 an episode, of a series she wished to make called ''The Adventures of Robin Hood''. She had already signed Richard Greene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot
''The Adventures of Sir Lancelot'' is a British television series first broadcast in 1956, produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and screened on the ITV network. The series starred William Russell as the eponymous Sir Lancelot, a Knight of the Round Table in the time of King Arthur at Camelot. In the United States, it was originally broadcast on NBC from 1956 to 1957. Its success on the network led to it becoming the first British television series to have entire episodes filmed in colour, with the last fourteen of the thirty half-hour episodes being shot on colour stock, although they were seen in colour only in the US. (Although the BBC's 1954 TV series ''Zoo Quest'' pre-dated ''The Adventures of Sir Lancelot'' use of colour film stock by two years, this was only for the location work whilst the studio links were captured by monochrome video cameras). As was common with other British television series of the time, the programme employed several American screenw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Buccaneers (TV Series)
''The Buccaneers'' was a 1956 Sapphire Films television drama series for ITC Entertainment, broadcast by CBS in the US and shown on ATV and regional ITV companies as they came on air during the infancy of ITV in the UK. Starring Robert Shaw as Dan Tempest, the series, aimed at children, followed the adventures of Tempest and his crew of former pirates as they made their way across the seven seas in ''Sultana''. This series was one of several swashbuckling adventure series produced during this period by or for Lew Grade's ITC. Production notes The series ran for 39 half-hour black-and-white episodes and was produced by Hannah Weinstein and Sidney Cole for Sapphire Films Limited. The episodes were made at Nettlefold Studios at Walton-on-Thames using two studios with seven or eight standing sets. A real schooner was based at Falmouth, Cornwall and a faithful reproduction of part of it in a studio corner.Margaret Cohen feature in TV Times 21 September 1956 page 33 Rupert Evans, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Four Just Men (TV Series)
''The Four Just Men'' is a 1959 television series produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment. It was broadcast for one season of 39 half-hour monochrome episodes. Plot The series, based on a sequence of novels by Edgar Wallace including a 1905 novel titled '' The Four Just Men'', presents the adventures of four men who first meet while Allied soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, tasked with the dangerous job to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. In England in 1959 the men are contacted by telegram by their commanding officer, Colonel Cyril Bacon. to meet again. Col. Bacon died a week before, but has left a recorded message for the men. He has also left a will that his money be used by the four men to fight for justice and against tyranny. They operate from different countries: Jeff Ryder is a professor of law at Columbia University in New York City, Tim Collier is an American reporter based in Paris, Ben Manfred is a crusading independent MP who works from Lond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in production and distribution of television programmes. History Incorporated Television Programme Company Television mogul Lew Grade set up the Incorporated Television Programme Company (ITP) with Prince Littler and Val Parnell in 1954. Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's new ITV network, the company failed to win a contract when the Independent Television Authority felt that doing so would give too much control in the entertainment business to the Grade family's companies (which included large talent agencies and theatre interests) although the ITA said that ITP were free to make their own programmes which they could sell to the new network companies. ITP put most of the production budget into producing one show, ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (ITV, 1955–59). However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ITV Network
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was for four decades a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel. The ITV network is a separate entity from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004. ITV plc holds the Channel 3 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution. The history of the CPUSA is closely related to the history of the Communists in the United States Labor Movement (1919–37), American labor movement and the history of communist parties worldwide. Initially operating underground due to the Palmer Raids which started during the First Red Scare, the party was influential in Politics of the United States, American politics in the first half of the 20th century and it also played a prominent role in the history of the labor movement from the 1920s through the 1940s, becoming known for Anti-racism, opposing racism and Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation after sponsoring the defense for the Scottsboro Boys in 1931. Its membership increased during the Great Depres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hollywood Blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying employment to entertainment industry professionals believed to be or to have been Communists or sympathizers. Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios. This was usually done on the basis of their membership in, alleged membership in, or sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional investigations into the party's activities. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit or easily verifiable, as it was the result of numerous individual decisions by the studios and was not the result of official legal action. Neverthel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Adventures Of Robin Hood (TV Series)
''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' is a British television series comprising 143 half-hour, black and white episodes broadcast weekly between 1955 and 1959 on ITV. It starred Richard Greene as the outlaw Robin Hood, and Alan Wheatley as his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The show followed the legendary character Robin Hood and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest and the surrounding vicinity. While some episodes dramatised the traditional Robin Hood tales, most were original dramas created by the show's writers and producers. The programme was produced by Sapphire Films Ltd for ITC Entertainment, filmed at Nettlefold Studios with some location work, and was the first of many pre-filmed shows commissioned by Lew Grade. In 1954, Grade was approached by American producer Hannah Weinstein to finance a series of 39 half-hour episodes, at a budget of £10,000 an episode, of a series she wished to make called ''The Adventures of Robin Hood''. She had already signed Richard Green ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sword Of Freedom
''Sword of Freedom'' was a 1958 drama adventure series for a family audience. Like several of its predecessors (most notably ''The Adventures of Robin Hood''), it was produced by Sapphire Films for ITC Entertainment and fitted into the same swashbuckler genre as previous productions. It ran for 39 half-hour monochrome episodes. Plot Marco del Monte is a young Republican artist living in sixteenth century Renaissance Florence. The city is ruled by the tyrant Duke de Medici. Marco's girlfriend is Angelica, a beautiful former pickpocket. Sandro is Marco's friend and confidant. Machiavelli is the Duke's advisor, and Captain Rodrigo is the head of the Medici forces. The series depicts the struggles of the Republicans to combat the attempts of the Duke to strengthen his position and make himself a dictator. Cast and characters * Edmund Purdom as Marco del Monte * Adrienne Corri as Angelica * Roland Bartrop as Sandro * Martin Benson as the Duke de Medici * Kenneth Hyde as Machiavel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Communist Party USA")
