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The Nitwits
''The Nitwits'' is a 1935 American comedy film directed by George Stevens from a screenplay written by Fred Guiol and Al Boasberg, based on a story by Stuart Palmer. Released by RKO on June 7, 1935, the film stars the comedy duo of Wheeler & Woolsey (Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey), with featured roles being filled by Fred Keating, Betty Grable, Evelyn Brent and Erik Rhodes. Fred Keating replaced Lionel Atwill, who later played the villain in the 1946 remake, '' Genius at Work''. Plot Cigar-stand attendants Johnny ( Wheeler) and Newton ( Woolsey) get mixed up in a murder investigation at a radio station. Cast * Bert Wheeler as Johnny * Robert Woolsey as Newton * Fred Keating as William Darrell * Betty Grable as Mary Roberts * Evelyn Brent as Alice Lake * Erik Rhodes as George Clark * Hale Hamilton as Winfield Lake * Charles C. Wilson as Police Captain Jennings * Arthur Aylesworth as Lurch * Willie Best as Sleepy * Lew Kelly Lew Kelly (August 24, 1879 – June ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Stevens
George Cooper Stevens (December 18, 1904 – March 8, 1975) was an American film director, film producer, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.Obituary ''Variety Obituaries, Variety'', March 12, 1975, page 79. Films he produced were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture six times while he had five nominations as Academy Award for Best Director, Best Director, winning twice. Among his most notable films are ''Swing Time (film), Swing Time'' (1936), ''Gunga Din (film), Gunga Din'' (1939) and the five movies for which he was nominated for Best Director: ''The More the Merrier (film), The More the Merrier'' (1943); ''A Place in the Sun (1951 film), A Place in the Sun'' (1951), for which he won the Best Director Oscar; ''Shane (film), Shane'' (1953), ''Giant (1956 film), Giant'' (1956), for which he won the Best Director Oscar, and ''The Diary of Anne Frank (1959 film), The Diary of Anne Frank'' (1959). Biography Film career Stevens was born on December 18, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erik Rhodes (actor, Born 1906)
Erik Rhodes (born Ernest Sharpe; February 10, 1906 – February 17, 1990) was an American film and Broadway singer and actor. He is best remembered today for appearing in two classic Hollywood musical films with the popular dancing team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: ''The Gay Divorcee'' (1934) and ''Top Hat'' (1935). Early years Rhodes was born Earnest R. Sharpe at El Reno, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest A. Sharpe. He attended Central High School and the University of Oklahoma. While he was a student at the university, he earned a scholarship that enabled him to spend a year in New York studying voice. During World War II, Rhodes was a language specialist in the intelligence service of the Army Air Force. Career Rhodes started performing on the Broadway stage in ''A Most Immoral Lady'' (1928) using his birth name, Ernest R. Sharpe. This was followed by two musicals, ''The Little Show'' (1929) and ''Hey Nonny Nonny!'' (1932). He first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Comedy Films
American comedy films are comedy films produced in the United States. The genre is one of the oldest in American cinema; some of the first silent movies were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. With the advent of sound in the late 1920s and 1930s, comedic dialogue rose in prominence in the work of film comedians such as W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. By the 1950s, the television industry had become serious competition for the movie industry. The 1960s saw an increasing number of broad, star-packed comedies. In the 1970s, black comedies were popular. Leading figures in the 1970s were Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. One of the major developments of the 1990s was the re-emergence of the romantic comedy film. Another development was the increasing use of " gross-out humour". History 1895–1930 Comic films began to appear in significant numbers during the era of silent films, roughly 1895 to 1930. The visual humour of many of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Black-and-white Films
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1935 Comedy Films
Events January * January 7 – Italian premier Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval conclude Franco-Italian Agreement of 1935, an agreement, in which each power agrees not to oppose the other's colonial claims. * January 12 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to successfully complete a solo flight from Hawaii to California, a distance of 2,408 miles. * January 13 – A plebiscite in the Saar (League of Nations), Territory of the Saar Basin shows that 90.3% of those voting wish to join Germany. * January 24 – The first canned beer is sold in Richmond, Virginia, United States, by Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. February * February 6 – Parker Brothers begins selling the board game Monopoly (game), Monopoly in the United States. * February 13 – Richard Hauptmann is convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. in the United States. * February 15 – The discovery and clinical development of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RKO Pictures Films
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1935 Films
The following is an overview of 1935 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths. The cinema releases of 1935 were highly representative of the early Golden Age period of Hollywood. This period was punctuated by performances from Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and the first teaming of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. A significant number of productions also originated in the UK film industry. Top-grossing films (U.S.) The top ten 1935 released films by box office gross in North America are as follows: Events * February 22 – '' The Little Colonel'' premieres starring Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore and Bill Robinson, featuring famous stair dance with Hollywood's first interracial dance couple * February 23 – Gene Autry stars as himself as the Singing Cowboy in the serial ''The Phantom Empire''. He would later be voted the number one Western star from 1937 to 1942. * February 27 – Seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lew Kelly
Lew Kelly (August 24, 1879 – June 10, 1944) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1928 and 1944. He was born Louis Kelly in St. Louis, Missouri, and died in Los Angeles, California. Selected filmography * ''Barnum Was Right'' (1929) * ''The Woman Racket'' (1930) * '' I Take This Woman'' (1931) * '' The Devil Plays'' (1931) * ''Lady and Gent'' (1932) * ''The Devil Horse'' (1932) * ''Vanity Street'' (1932) * ''Laughter in Hell'' (1933) * '' State Trooper'' (1933) * '' The Meanest Gal in Town'' (1934) * '' What's Your Racket?'' (1934) * '' One in a Million'' (1934) * ''The Lady in Scarlet'' (1935) * ''Mississippi'' (1935) * '' Three of a Kind'' (1936) * ''Winds of the Wasteland'' (1936) * '' Lady Luck'' (1936) * ''Wanted! Jane Turner'' (1936) * ''It Happened Out West'' (1937) * '' Lawless Valley'' (1938) * ''Three Texas Steers'' (1939) * ''The Little Foxes'' (1941) * ''Spook Louder ''Spook Louder'' is a 1943 short subject direc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willie Best
William Best (May 27, 1913 – February 27, 1962), known professionally as Willie Best or Sleep n' Eat, was an American television and film actor. Best was one of the first African American film actors and comedians to become well known. In the 21st century, his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films. Of the 124 films he appeared in, he received screen credit in at least 77, an unusual feat for an African American bit player. Stage A native of Sunflower, Mississippi, Best reached Hollywood as a chauffeur for a vacationing couple. He decided to stay in the region and began his performing career with a traveling show in southern California. He was regularly hired as a character actor in Hollywood films after a talent scout discovered him on stage. Motion pictures Willie Best appeared in more than one hundred films of the 1930s and 1940 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Aylesworth
Arthur Preston Aylesworth (August 12, 1883 – June 26, 1946) was an American stage and film actor. Early years Aylesworth was born in Apponaug, Rhode Island, to a military family; his father and his grandfather graduated from the United States Military Academy. Aylesworth himself attended the academy for two years. Career Aylesworth's Broadway debut came in ''Over Night'' (1911). His other Broadway appearances included the musical ''Follow Thru'' (1929), and his last show there was ''Yankee Point'' (1942). He was on the stage for over a quarter of a century and acted in many productions. In the 1930s, he became a contract player at Warner Brothers working in character actors, often uncredited. Aylesworth played in over 130 films almost exclusively from the early 1930s onwards. His grave is located at Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. Selected filmography * ''Over Night'' (1915) * '' The Key'' (1934) * ''Midnight Alibi'' (1934) * '' The Dragon Murder Case'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles C
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was ''Churl, Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinisation of names, Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as ''Carolus (other), Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch language, Dutch and German language, German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hale Hamilton
Hale Rice Hamilton (February 28, 1880 – May 19, 1942) was an American actor, writer and producer. Biography Hamilton was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1880. (His birth year is sometimes listed as either 1879 or 1883.) Hamilton's Broadway debut was in ''Don Caesar's Return'' (1901). He was married to three actresses, Jane Oaker, Myrtle Tannehill, and Grace La Rue. Tannehill sued Hamilton, accusing him of being lured away from her by La Rue.''Silent Film Necrology'' 2nd edition p. 223 c.2001 by Eugene M. Vazzana He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1942 in Hollywood, California. Selected filmography *''Her Painted Hero'' (1915, Short) - A Matinee Idol *'' The Winning of Beatrice'' (1918) - Robert Howard *''Opportunity'' (1918) - Anthony Fry *''Five Thousand an Hour'' (1918) - Johnny Gamble *''The Return of Mary'' (1918, Writer) *'' Johnny-on-the-Spot'' (1919) - Johnny Rutledge *'' That's Good'' (1919) (with Grace La Rue) - Marcellus Starr *''After His Own Heart'' (1919) - Thoma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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