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The Gentle Sex
''The Gentle Sex'' is a 1943 United Kingdom, British black-and-white romantic comedy-drama war film, film director, directed and narrated by Leslie Howard (actor), Leslie Howard. It was film producer, produced by Concanen Productions, Two Cities Films, and Derrick de Marney. ''The Gentle Sex'' was Howard's last film before his death. Synopsis The documentary-drama follows seven women from different backgrounds who meet at an Auxiliary Territorial Service training camp. "Gentle" British girls, they are now doing their bit to help out in World War II: driving lorries and manning ack-ack batteries. Leslie Howard provides slightly sarcastic narration throughout the film. The girls are allowed to socialise at organised dances with local male troops. Music is contemporary (big band swing) and dancing includes the jitterbug. Several of the girls find romance. The narrator points out that "war is never kind to lovers". Cast Best source is aBFI ATS volunteers * Joan Gates as Gwen Hayde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 18931 June 1943) was an English actor, director and producer.Obituary ''Variety Obituaries, Variety'', 9 June 1943. He wrote many stories and articles for ''The New York Times'', ''The New Yorker'', and ''Vanity Fair (magazine), Vanity Fair'' and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s. Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind'' (1939). He had roles in many other films, often playing the quintessential Englishman, including ''Berkeley Square (1933 film), Berkeley Square'' (1933), ''Of Human Bondage (1934 film), Of Human Bondage'' (1934), ''The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934 film), The Scarlet Pimpernel'' (1934), ''The Petrified Forest'' (1936), ''Pygmalion (1938 film), Pygmalion'' (1938), ''Intermezzo (1939 film), Intermezzo'' (1939), ''"Pimpernel" Smith'' (1941), and ''The First of the Few'' (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Director
A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design and all the creative aspects of filmmaking. The film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions and stay within the budget. There are many pathways to becoming a film director. Some film directors started as screenwriters, cinematographers, producers, film editors or actors. Other film directors have attended a film school. Directors use different approaches. Some outline a general plotline and let the actors improvise dialogue, while others control every aspect and demand that the actors and crew follow instructions precisely. Some directors also write thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miles Malleson
William Miles Malleson (25 May 1888 – 15 March 1969) was an English actor and dramatist, particularly remembered for his appearances in British comedy films of the 1930s to 1960s. Towards the end of his career he also appeared in cameo roles in several Hammer horror films, with a fairly large role in ''The Brides of Dracula'' as the hypochondriac and fee-hungry local doctor. Malleson was also a writer on many films, including some of those in which he had small parts, such as '' Nell Gwyn'' (1934) and '' The Thief of Bagdad'' (1940). He also translated and adapted several of Molière's plays (''The Misanthrope'', which he titled ''The Slave of Truth'', ''Tartuffe'' and '' The Imaginary Invalid''). Biography Malleson was born in Avondale Road, South Croydon, Surrey, England, the son of Edmund Taylor Malleson (1859-1909), a manufacturing chemist, and Myrrha Bithynia Frances Borrell (1863-1931), a descendant of the numismatist Henry Perigal Borrell and the inventor Francis Macer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Welchman
Harry Welchman (24 February 1886 – 3 January 1966) was an English star of musical theatre. He made several appearances in non-musical plays, but was remembered as, in the words of ''The Times'', "perhaps the most popular musical comedy hero on the London stage in the years between the wars.""Mr Harry Welchman", ''The Times'', 4 January 1966, p. 10 Welchman was primarily a stage performer, but he made nineteen films between 1915 and 1954, some of them musical and others straight drama. Early life and career Welchman was born at Barnstaple, Devon, the son of an Army colonel. He was educated at Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he was a sporting boy, playing, as he said, "all the games", including hockey at county level. On leaving school at the age of eighteen he joined a touring musical comedy company led by Ada Reeve.Parker, pp. 977–978 When he was twenty he was spotted while playing in Christmas pantomime by the impresario Robert Courtneidge, under whose management he beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elliott Mason
Elliott Mason (29 January 1888 – 20 June 1949) was a British stage and film actress. She was sometimes credited as Elliot Mason. After making her screen debut in the 1935 comedy ''The Ghost Goes West'', Mason appeared regularly in supporting roles for the next decade. She worked on several films made at Ealing Studios including ''The Ghost of St. Michael's'', where her seemingly respectable character turns out to be a German spy, and ''Turned Out Nice Again'' in which she plays a domineering mother-in-law.Barr p.192 Her final appearance was in the 1946 prisoner-of-war drama ''The Captive Heart ''The Captive Heart'' is a 1946 British war drama, directed by Basil Dearden and starring Michael Redgrave. It is about a Czechoslovak Army officer who is captured in the Fall of France and spends five years as a prisoner of war, during which ti ...''. Filmography References Bibliography * Barr, Charles. ''Ealing Studios''. University of California Press, 1998. External links * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Laurie
John Paton Laurie (25 March 1897 – 23 June 1980) was a Scottish actor. In the course of his career, Laurie performed on the stage and in films as well as television. He is perhaps best remembered for his role in the sitcom ''Dad's Army'' (1968-1977) as Private Frazer, a member of the Home Guard. Laurie appeared in scores of feature films with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and Laurence Olivier, generally playing memorable small or supporting roles rather than leading ones. As a stage actor, he was cast in Shakespearean roles and was a speaker of verse, especially of Robert Burns. Early life John Paton Laurie was born on 25 March 1897 in Dumfries, Dumfriesshire to William Laurie (1856–1903), a clerk in a tweed mill and later a hatter and hosier, and Jessie Ann Laurie (''née'' Brown; 1858–1935). Laurie attended Dumfries Academy (a grammar school at the time), before abandoning a career in architecture to serve in the First World War as a member of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Jerrold
Mary Jerrold (4 December 1877 – 3 March 1955) was an English actress. She was married to actor Hubert Harben, and mother of actress Joan Harben and celebrity chef Philip Harben. She made her London stage debut as Prudence Dering in ''Mary Pennington Spinster'' (1896); and played Martha Brewster for three and a half years in the original West End production of '' Arsenic and Old Lace'', opening in 1942. In 1922, in a stage production of Jane Austen's ''Pride and Prejudice'', Jerrold became one of the oldest actresses cast as Elizabeth Bennet, at age 44. In the play, she acted opposite her husband, cast as Mr. Collins. She appeared in Molly Keane's '' Ducks and Drakes'' in 1941. In 1946 she starred in the West End melodrama '' But for the Grace of God'' by Frederick Lonsdale. In 1951 she played the lead role in Kenneth Horne's comedy '' And This Was Odd'' at the Criterion Theatre. In 1953 she appeared in ''A Day by the Sea'' by N.C. Hunter. Partial filmography * ''Disraeli'' (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Waring
Barbara Waring ( Barbara Alice Waring Gibb; 1 August 1911 – April 1990) was an English actress, screenwriter, and playwright. Biography Barbara Alice Waring Gibb was born on 1 August 1911 in Kent, England, the daughter of Dr. J. A. Gibb.Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and was an actress in the 1930s and 1940s. In the late 1930s she married Laurence A. Evans, a theatrical agent. They divorced and in 1947 she married the Hon. Geoffrey Cunliffe, son of Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe, and Edith Cunningham Boothby, and Chairman of British Aluminium. In 1963, she wrote the script for ''Two by the Sea'' and in 1974 that for ''Easter Tells Such Dreadful Lies''. In 1967, she wrote the play ''The Jaywalker'', performed at Coventry Cathedral with music by Duke Ellington. She died in April 1990, aged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jitterbug
Jitterbug is a generalized term used to describe swing dancing. It is often synonymous with the lindy hop dance but might include elements of the jive, east coast swing, collegiate shag, charleston, balboa and other swing dances. Swing dancing originated in the African-American communities of New York City in the early 20th century. Many nightclubs had a whites-only or blacks-only policy due to racial segregation, however the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem had a no-discrimination policy which allowed whites and blacks to dance together and it was there that the lindy hop dance flourished, started by dancers such as George Snowden and Frank Manning. The term jitterbug was originally a ridicule used by black patrons to describe whites who started to dance the lindy hop, as they were dancing faster and jumpier than was intended, like "jittering bugs", although it quickly lost its negative connotation as the more erratic version caught on. Both the lindy hop and the "jitterbug" became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 18931 June 1943) was an English actor, director and producer.Obituary ''Variety'', 9 June 1943. He wrote many stories and articles for ''The New York Times'', ''The New Yorker'', and '' Vanity Fair'' and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s. Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in ''Gone with the Wind'' (1939). He had roles in many other films, often playing the quintessential Englishman, including ''Berkeley Square'' (1933), ''Of Human Bondage'' (1934), ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' (1934), ''The Petrified Forest'' (1936), ''Pygmalion'' (1938), ''Intermezzo'' (1939), '' "Pimpernel" Smith'' (1941), and ''The First of the Few'' (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for ''Berkeley Square'' and ''Pygmalion''. Howard's World War II activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies—two years after hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ack-ack
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, subsurface ( submarine launched), and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries, the main effort has tended to be homeland defence. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence, as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight. In some countries, such as Britain and Germany during the Second World War, the Soviet Union, and modern NATO and the United States, ground-based air defence and air defence aircraft h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
