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Simon And Laura
''Simon and Laura'' is a 1955 British comedy film directed by Muriel Box and starring Peter Finch and Kay Kendall. Play Satirising the early days of BBC Television, ''Simon and Laura'' focuses on an argumentative theatrical couple called Simon and Laura Foster; they've been together for some 20 years and are given a new lease of life when playing a faux-harmonious version of 'themselves' in a daily soap opera filmed in their own home. Presented by H M Tennent Ltd, the play began a provincial tour at the Opera House Manchester on 30 August 1954, subsequently opening at the Strand Theatre in London's West End on 25 November. Directed by Murray Macdonald, it starred Roland Culver, Coral Browne, Ian Carmichael, Dora Bryan, Ernest Thesiger and Esma Cannon, with settings designed by Alan Tagg. According to Frances Stephens, editor of ''Theatre World'', "''Simon and Laura'' has as its amusing central theme the guying of television family serials and the author is well served by the ver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Box
Violette Muriel Box, Baroness Gardiner, (22 September 1905 – 18 May 1991) was an English screenwriter and director, Britain's most prolific female director, having directed 12 feature films and one featurette. Her screenplay for ''The Seventh Veil'' (co-written with husband Sydney Box) won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Life and career Born Violette Muriel Baker in Tolworth, Surrey, in 1905, and educated at Surbiton High School. After her attempts at acting and dancing proved fruitless, she accepted work as a continuity girl for Associated British Picture Corporation, British International Pictures. In 1935, she met and married journalist Sydney Box, with whom she collaborated on nearly forty plays with mainly female roles for amateur theatre groups. Their production company, Verity Films, first released short wartime propaganda films, including ''The English Inn'' (1941), her first directing effort, after which it branched into fiction. The couple achieved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esma Cannon
Esma Ellen Charlotte Littmann (née Cannon) (27 December 1905 – 18 October 1972), credited as Esme or Esma Cannon, was a diminutive () Australian-born character actress and comedian, who moved to Britain in the early 1930s. Although she frequently appeared on television in her latter years, Cannon is best remembered as a film actress, with a lengthy career in British productions from the 1930s to the 1960s. Career After early experience at Minnie Everett's School of Dancing in Sydney, Cannon began acting on the stage at the age of four in ''Madama Butterfly''. She appeared in productions for both the J. C. Williamson and Tait companies – including the early prominent role of Ruth Le Page in ''Sealed Orders'' at the Theatre Royal in 1914, and played Baby in an adaptation of ''Seven Little Australians'' the same year. She was given children's parts well into adulthood. In an interview with the ''Australian Women's Weekly'' published in 1963, she claimed it was the theatrical i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35 mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954. Paramount never used anamorphic processes such as 2.55: 1, CinemaScope but refined the quality of its flat widescreen system by orienting the 35 mm negative horizontally in the camera gate and shooting onto a big area, which yielded the finer-grained projection print. As finer-grained film stocks appeared on the market, VistaVision became obsolete. Paramount dropped the format just after seven years, although for 40 more years the format was used by some European and Japanese producers for movies, and by USA movies such as the first three ''Star Wars'' films for high-resolution special effects sequences. In many ways, VistaVision became the testing ground for every cinematography idea that evolved into 70 mm IMAX and OMNIMAX film formats in the 1970s. Both IMAX and OMNIMAX are oriented sideways, like Vist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julie Harris (American Actress)
Julia Ann Harris (December 2, 1925August 24, 2013) was an American actress. Renowned for her classical and contemporary stage work, she received five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play. Harris debuted on Broadway in 1945, against the wishes of her mother, who wanted her to be a society debutante. Harris was acclaimed for her performance as an isolated 12-year-old girl in the 1950 play ''The Member of the Wedding'', a role she reprised in the 1952 film of the same name, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1951, her range was demonstrated as Sally Bowles in the original production of ''I Am a Camera'', for which she won her first Tony award. She subsequently appeared in the 1955 film version. Harris gave acclaimed performances in films including '' The Haunting'' (1963), and '' Reflections in a Golden Eye'' (1967), in which she played opposite Marlon Brando. In addition to her Tony award for ''I Am a Camera'' (1951), she won Tonys for '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen Dillon
Carmen Dillon (25 October 190812 April 2000) was an English film art director and production designer who won an Oscar for the Olivier version of ''Hamlet'' (1948). Life Dillon was born in Hendon to Irish-born Joseph Thomas Dillon and his wife Teresa. She was one of six children, for whom their Catholic parents paid to be well educated. Carmen went to the New Hall Convent School in Chelmsford. The elder brother died during World War one, one sister became a nun and another brother emigrated. Carmen and her sisters Teresa and Agnes Dillon (known as Una) were left to fulfil their parent's ambitions for them.Jean H. Cook, ‘Dillon, Agnes Joseph Madeline na(1903–1993)’, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200accessed 11 April 2017/ref> Dillon initially worked as an architect and designer, and was invited to design the cover for the newly formed Electrical Association for Women. However in 1934 she was invited to join t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thora Hird
Dame Thora Hird (28 May 1911 – 15 March 2003) was an English actress and comedian, presenter and writer. In a career spanning over 70 years, she appeared in more than 100 film and television roles, becoming a household name and a British institution. A three-time winner of the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, she won for '' Talking Heads: A Cream Cracker Under the Settee'' (1988), '' Talking Heads: Waiting for the Telegram'' (1998) and '' Lost for Words'' (1999). Her film credits included ''The Love Match'' (1955), '' The Entertainer'' (1960), '' A Kind of Loving'' (1962) and ''The Nightcomers'' (1971). Early life and career Hird was born on 28 May 1911 in the Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe to James Henry Hird and Jane Mary (née Mayor). Her family background was largely theatrical: her mother had been an actress, while her father managed a number of entertainment venues in Morecambe, including the Royalty Theatre, where Hird made her first appearance, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Denham
William Maurice Denham OBE (23 December 1909 – 24 July 2002) was an English character actor who appeared in over 100 films and television programmes in his long career. Family Denham was born on 23 December 1909 in Beckenham, Kent, the son of Eleanor Winifred (née Lillico) and Norman Denham. He was the third child of four: Norman Keith (1907), Winifred Joan (1908), and Charles (1915). He was educated at Tonbridge School and trained as a lift engineer. Like fellow actor James Robertson Justice, he played amateur rugby for Beckenham RFC. In 1936, he married Elizabeth Dunn, with whom he had two sons and a daughter: Christopher (born 1939), Timothy (born 1946) and Virginia (born 1948). Elizabeth died in 1971. He was awarded the OBE in 1992. He died on 24 July 2002, aged 92 at Denville Hall in North London. Career Denham eventually became an actor in 1934, and appeared in live television broadcasts as early as 1938, continuing to perform in that medium until 1997. Denha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Pavlow
Muriel Lilian Pavlow (27 June 1921 – 19 January 2019) was an English actress. Her mother was French and her father Russian. Film and television career Muriel was born in Lewisham, south-east London, to Boris Pavlov, a Russian émigré and salesman, and his wife (Swiss-French) Germaine. They changed their name to Pavlow to sound more British. She grew up in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and was educated at Colne Valley school in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and in Lausanne. Pavlow began work as a child actress with John Gielgud and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. She started acting at an early age and her first, brief, film appearance came at the age of 13 in the Gracie Fields morale-boosting musical ''Sing As We Go'' (1934). In December 1937, at sixteen, she played the role of Gretel in a BBC Television production of ''Hansel and Gretel'', a pioneer BBC television broadcast. She was able to claim, when in her 90s, that she had made the earliest TV ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On Such A Night (1955 Film)
''On Such a Night'' is a 1955 British short semi-documentary film directed by Anthony Asquith which lists 1955 as year of release which offers a snap-shot of the Glyndebourne opera house in the 1950s, including extracts from ''Le nozze di Figaro'', and a fictional first visit to the opera house by an American. The film was "very discreetly aimed at potential American audiences fascinated by British eccentricities". Background It was filmed at Pinewood Studios and Lewes railway station on 28 May to 12 June 1955, with the operatic excerpts on 6 June 1955. After a private viewing on 25 October that year, the first public showing was on 24 November 1955 at the Gaumont Haymarket cinema, London, on a bill with ''Simon and Laura''.Julia Aries. The Story of On Such a Night. Booklet essay for the DVD ''On Such a Night'', 2010. Synopsis An American tourist (David Knight) has been persuaded by to visit Alfriston but is bemused by what he witnesses at Victoria Station when people in evenin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Deep Blue Sea (play)
''The Deep Blue Sea'' is a British stage play by Terence Rattigan from 1952. Rattigan based his story and characters in part on his secret relationship with Kenny Morgan, and the aftermath of the end of their relationship. The play was first performed in London on 6 March 1952, directed by Frith Banbury, and won praise for actress Peggy Ashcroft, who co-starred with Kenneth More. In the US, the Plymouth Theater staged the play in October 1952, with Margaret Sullavan. The play with Sullavan subsequently transferred to Broadway, with its Broadway premiere on 5 November 1953, and running for 132 performances. Prior to Rattigan's coding of his relationship with Morgan into the heterosexual relationship between Hester and Freddie, his first draft of the play more specifically treated the relationship between the lead characters as a homosexual relationship, and also hinted that the reason for the striking off of Miller, the ex-doctor in the play, from the medical register was Mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan (10 June 191130 November 1977) was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background.Geoffrey Wansell. ''Terence Rattigan'' (London: Fourth Estate, 1995); He wrote ''The Winslow Boy'' (1946), '' The Browning Version'' (1948), '' The Deep Blue Sea'' (1952) and ''Separate Tables'' (1954), among many others. A troubled homosexual who saw himself as an outsider, Rattigan wrote a number of plays which centred on issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships, or a world of repression and reticence. Early life Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington,Wansell, p. 13. London, of Irish extraction. He had an elder brother, Brian. They were the grandsons of Sir William Henry Rattigan, a notable India-based jurist and later a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for North-East Lanarkshire. His father was Frank Rattigan CMG, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Googie Withers
Georgette Lizette Withers, CBE, AO (12 March 191715 July 2011), known professionally as Googie Withers, was an English entertainer who was a dancer and actress with a lengthy career spanning some nine decades in theatre, film, and television. She was a well-known actress and star of British films during the Second World War and postwar years. She often starred in British productions, primarily in films with actor and producer John McCallum, whom she married, and together they emigrated in the late 1950s to her husband's native Australia, where they became best known in theatre, although she would play prison governor Faye Boswell in the TV series ''Within These Walls'' during the 1970s and continued to feature in films. Biography Withers was born in Karachi, British India (now Pakistan), to Edgar Withers, a captain in the Royal Navy, and a mother of Dutch French German descent, Lizette Wilhelmina Katarina.Brian McFarlane, ''Assured lady of the screen took no nonsense'', obi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
