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The Frank Sinatra Show (1957 TV Series)
''The Frank Sinatra Show'' is an ABC variety and drama series, starring Frank Sinatra, premiering on October 18, 1957, and last airing on June 27, 1958. Summary This was Sinatra's second attempt at a television series, his first was '' The Frank Sinatra Show'' on CBS Television between 1950–1952. The series was originally slated to consist of thirteen variety episodes, thirteen dramas starring Sinatra, and ten dramas hosted by Sinatra, filmed at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood rather than broadcast live. Sinatra was paid $3 million for the series, and granted near total artistic freedom. The drama segments of the show fared less well against the variety episodes in ratings and the final total was fourteen live variety shows, eight filmed variety shows, four dramas starring Sinatra, and six dramas hosted by Sinatra. Rather than 36 episodes for the season, ABC cut its losses and reduced the total number to 32. Sinatra hated rehearsing, and tried to make eleven shows in fif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice. In some musical contexts, a performance or composition may be to some extent improvised. For instance, in Hindustani classical music, the performer plays spontaneously while following a partially defined structure and using characteristic motifs. In modal jazz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman (born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann, January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American actress and singer, known for her distinctive, powerful voice, and for leading roles in musical theatre.Obituary ''Variety'', February 22, 1984. She has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage". Over her distinguished career in theater she became known for her performances in shows such as ''Anything Goes'', '' Annie Get Your Gun'', ''Gypsy'', and '' Hello, Dolly!'' She is also known for her film roles in ''Anything Goes'' (1936), ''Call Me Madam'' (1953), ''There's No Business Like Show Business'' (1954), and ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963). Among many accolades, she received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in ''Call Me Madam'', a Grammy Award for ''Gypsy'' and Drama Desk Award for '' Hello, Dolly!'' Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm" (from ''Girl Crazy''); ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Johnson
Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson was described as the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness" which made him a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s and 1950s, playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor, or bomber pilot who used to live down the street" in MGM films during the war years, with such films as ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'', ''A Guy Named Joe'', and '' The Human Comedy''. He made occasional World War II films through the end of the 1960s, and he played a military officer in one of his final feature films in 1992. At the time of his death in 2008, he was one of the last surviving matinee idols of Hollywood's "golden age".Aljean, Harmetz (August 12, 2008)"Van Johnson, Film Actor, Is Dead at 92"''The New York Times''. Retrieved December 13, 2008. Early life Johnson was born i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shirley Jones
Shirley Mae Jones (born March 31, 1934) is an American actress and singer. In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as ''Oklahoma!'' (1955), ''Carousel'' (1956), and ''The Music Man'' (1962). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in ''Elmer Gantry'' (1960). She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series ''The Partridge Family'' (1970–1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy. Early life Jones was born on March 31, 1934, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Methodist parents Marjorie (née Williams), a homemaker, and Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. Jones' paternal grandfather came from Wales. She was named after child star Shirley Temple. Jones says that many people have incorrectly assumed that her middle name was named ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeannie Carson
Jeannie Carson (born Jean Shufflebottom; 23 May 1928) is a British-born retired comedian, actress, singer and dancer. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Early life Born to show business parents, Carson was born as Jean Shufflebottom in Pudsey, West Riding of Yorkshire. In her early British films, she performed under the name Jean Carson, but later changed her given name to "Jeannie" to avoid confusion with the similarly named American actress Jean Carson. Acting career Carson acted in ''Love from Judy'' in London. After producer Max Liebman saw her in that production, he signed her to a contract to appear on television in the United States, starting with a six-episode color version of the Broadway musical '' Best Foot Forward''. In January 1953 she released her first recording on the newly formed Philips label "Barrels and Barrels of Roses". In 1956, she starred in her own series ''Hey, Jeannie!'', which aired on CBS. The series lasted one season before being cance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jo Stafford
Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song " You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart, and the first by a female artist to do so. Born in remote oil-rich Coalinga, California, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age 12. While still at high school, she joined her two older sisters to form a vocal trio named the Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film. In 1938, while the sisters were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox's production of ''A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keely Smith
Dorothy Jacqueline Keely (March 9, 1928The reference work ''The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet'' gives Smith's date of birth as March 9, 1932. – December 16, 2017), professionally known as Keely Smith, was an American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist. Smith married Prima in 1953. The couple were stars throughout the entertainment business, including stage, television, motion pictures, hit records, and cabaret acts. They won a Grammy in 1959, its inaugural year, for their smash hit, "That Old Black Magic", which remained on the charts for 18 weeks. Early years Smith was born in Norfolk, Virginia; her ancestry was Irish and Cherokee. Jesse Smith, her stepfather, was a carpenter, and her mother took in laundry to earn money to buy gowns for Smith to wear when she performed. Career When Smi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Prima
Louis Leo Prima (December 7, 1910 – August 24, 1978) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and trumpeter. While rooted in New Orleans jazz, swing music, and jump blues, Prima touched on various genres throughout his career: he formed a seven-piece New Orleans-style jazz band in the late 1920s, fronted a swing combo in the 1930s and a big band group in the 1940s, helped to popularize jump blues in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s, and performed frequently as a Vegas lounge act beginning in the 1950s. From the 1940s through the 1960s, his music further encompassed early R&B and rock 'n' roll, boogie-woogie, and Italian folk music, such as the tarantella. Prima made prominent use of Italian music and language in his songs, blending elements of his Italian and Sicilian identity with jazz and swing music. At a time when ethnic musicians were discouraged from openly stressing their ethnicity, Prima's conspicuous embrace of his Sicilian ethnicity opened the doors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality, and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1940s. She rose to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. She achieved even greater success a decade later, in television, mainly as the host of a series of variety programs for the Chevrolet automobile company. After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman, and both Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own. She became the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of 80 charted popular hits, spanning 1940–1957, and after appearing in a handful of feature films, she went on to a four-decade career in American television. She starred in her own music and variety shows from 1951 through 1963 and hosted two talk shows in the 1970s. ''TV Guide'' ranked her at number 16 on their list of the top 50 television stars of all time. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erin O'Brien (actress)
Erin O'Brien (January 17, 1934May 20, 2021) was an American actress and singer, active during the mid-twentieth century and best known as the leading lady of arguably the first made-for-TV movie, '' Girl on the Run'', which also served as the pilot for the television series ''77 Sunset Strip'' written by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., which played briefly in theaters before airing on television on October 10, 1958. Early years The daughter of a milk delivery man, Vincent O'Brien, and his wife, Betty, she was the oldest of 14 siblings, with seven sisters and six brothers. She was born in Hollywood, grew up in Long Beach, California, and was a graduate of St. Anthony High School. At the age of 15, O'Brien had a notable encounter singing to Helen Keller, who was staying temporarily at a nunnery in Pasadena, California. One account of that encounter states, "The sister surrounding Keller's bed encouraged a frightened O'Brien to continue inging Finally Keller re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter. Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, appearing in such hit films as ''Picnic'' (1955), ''The Man with the Golden Arm'' (1955) and '' Pal Joey'' (1957). She is widely known for her performances as Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller ''Vertigo'' (1958) with James Stewart. The film had mixed reviews from critics upon release, but is now recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. Other notable films include ''Bell, Book and Candle'' (1958), '' Strangers When We Meet'' (1960) and ''Of Human Bondage'' (1964). Although still young, Novak withdrew from acting by 1966 and has only sporadically worked in films since. She appeared in ''The Mirror Crack'd'' (1980), and had a regular role on the primetime series ''Falcon Crest'' (1986–1987). [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Lawford
Peter Sydney Ernest Lawford ( Aylen; 7 September 1923 – 24 December 1984) was an English-American actor.Obituary ''Variety'', 26 December 1984. He was a member of the " Rat Pack" and the brother-in-law of US president John F. Kennedy and senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. From the 1940s to the 1960s, he was a well-known celebrity and starred in a number of highly acclaimed films. In later years, he was noted more for his off-screen activities as a celebrity than for his acting; it was said that he was " famous for being famous". Early life Born in London in 1923, he was the only child of Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford, KBE (1865–1953) and May Sommerville Bunny (1883–1972). At the time of Peter's birth, however, his mother was married to Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Ernest Vaughn Aylen D.S.O, one of Sir Sydney's officers, while his father was married to Muriel Williams. At the time, May and Ernest Aylen were living apart. May confessed to Aylen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
