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Top Banana (musical)
''Top Banana'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft which premiered on Broadway in 1951. The show was written as a star vehicle for comedian Phil Silvers, who played the host of a television variety show program. Silvers won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical in 1952. Production The musical opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on November 1, 1951, and closed on October 4, 1952, after 350 performances. The original cast co-starred Rose Marie, Lindy Doherty, Jack Albertson, Bob Scheerer and Ted "Sport" Morgan. Produced by Paula Stone and Mike Sloane, the musical was directed by Jack Donohue and choreographed by Ron Fletcher,Hischak, Thomas "'Top Banana' Stage and Film"''Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When It Went to Hollywood'' (2004), Scarecrow Press, , p. 258 with vocal arrangements and direction by Hugh Martin, musical direction by Harold Hasting, and orchestrations b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs. He is best known as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, but he also composed music, and was a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as songs written by others from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s. Mercer's songs were among the most successful hits of the time, including " Moon River", " Days of Wine and Roses", " Autumn Leaves", and "Hooray for Hollywood". He wrote the lyrics to more than 1,500 songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Oscar nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Early life Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia, where one of his first jobs, aged 10, was sweeping floors at the original 1919 location of Leopold's Ice Cream. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studio was premised on allowing actors to control their own interests, rather than being dependent upon commercial studios. UA was repeatedly bought, sold, and restructured over the ensuing century. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the studio in 1981 for a reported $350 million ($ billion today). On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a controlling interest in entertainment companies One Three Media and Lightworkers Media, then merged them to revive United Artists' television production unit as United Artists Media Group (UAMG). However, on December 14 of the following year, MGM wholly acquired UAMG and folded it into MGM Television. United Artists was again revived in 2018 as United Artists Digital Studios. Mirror, the joint distribution ventur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in Midtown Manhattan. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. The awards were founded by theatre producer and director Brock Pemberton and are named after Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress, producer and theatre director who was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing. The trophy consists of a spinnable medallion, with faces portraying an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks, mounted on a black base with a pewter swivel. The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the off ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fozzie Bear
Fozzie Bear is a Muppet character best known as the insecure and comedically fruitless stand-up comic on ''The Muppet Show.'' Fozzie is an orange-brown bear who often wears a brown pork pie hat and a pink and white polka dot necktie. The character debuted on ''The Muppet Show'', as the series' resident comedian, a role where he uses the catchphrase "Wocka wocka!" to indicate that he'd completed a joke. He was often the target of ridicule, particularly from balcony hecklers Statler and Waldorf. Fozzie was performed by Frank Oz until 2001, after which Eric Jacobson became the character's principal performer. History The origin of Fozzie's name has been traditionally thought to be a pun of performer Frank Oz's name (F.Oz). It was also believed that the character was actually named after Al Fuzzie, the mascot of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority in the mid-1970s; Henson's wife, Jane, was a member of the sorority. However, Oz confirmed on Twitter in 2018 that Fozzie was named after Franz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Muppet Show
''The Muppet Show'' is a sketch comedy television series created by Jim Henson and featuring the Muppets. The series originated as two pilot episodes produced by Henson for ABC in 1974 and 1975. While neither episode was moved forward as a series and other networks in the United States rejected Henson's proposals, British producer Lew Grade expressed enthusiasm for the project and agreed to co-produce ''The Muppet Show'' for the British channel ATV. Five seasons, totalling 120 episodes, were broadcast on ATV and other ITV franchises in the United Kingdom and in later first-run syndication in the US from 1976 to 1981. The programme was produced and recorded at ATV Elstree Studios, England. ''The Muppet Show'' is presented as a variety show, featuring recurring sketches and musical numbers interspersed with plotlines taking place backstage and in other areas of the venue. Within its context, Kermit the Frog (performed by Henson) acts as showrunner and host, who tries to mainta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texaco Star Theater
''Texaco Star Theater'' was an American comedy-variety show, broadcast on radio from 1938 to 1949 and telecast from 1948 to 1956. It was one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, remembered as the show that gave Milton Berle the nickname "Mr. Television". The classic 1940–1944 version of the program, hosted by radio's Fred Allen, was followed by a radio series on ABC (the former NBC Blue) in the spring of 1948. When Texaco (now Chevron Corporation) first took it to television on NBC on June 8, 1948, the show had a huge cultural impact. Once Texaco ended its sponsorship in 1953, the show became known as ''The Milton Berle Show'' for its final few seasons. Radio The roots of ''Texaco Star Theater'' were in a 1930s radio hit, ''Ed Wynn, the Fire Chief'', featuring the manic "Perfect Fool" in a half-hour of vaudevillian routines interspersed with music. Wynn's ratings began to slide and the comedian lapsed amidst personal and professional crises, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milton Berle
Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; ; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's ''Texaco Star Theatre'' (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV. Early life Milton Berle was born into a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 W. 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. His given name was Mendel Berlinger, but he chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1872–1938), was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954), changed her name to Sandra Berle when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethan Mordden
Ethan Mordden (born 1947) is an American author and musical theater researcher. Biography Mordden was born and raised in Pennsylvania, Venice, Italy, and on Long Island, New York. He is a graduate of Friends Academy and the University of Pennsylvania. He first sought a career in show business, working as music director on off-Broadway and in regional theatre, and enrolling in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop run by Lehman Engel. As both composer and lyricist, Mordden wrote musicals based on William Shakespeare's ''Measure For Measure'' and on Max Beerbohm's ''Zuleika Dobson'', but he ultimately ended up earning his living as a writer of English prose. In the 1970s, he was assistant editor to Dorothy Woolfolk on DC Comics such as ''The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love''. Works His stories, novels, essays, and non-fiction books cover a wide range of topics including the American musical theater, opera, film, and, especially in his fiction, the emergence and developmen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life (magazine)
''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography, and was one of the most popular magazines in the nation, regularly reaching one-quarter of the population. ''Life'' was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the most notable writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in ''The New Yorker'') of plays and movies currently running in New York City, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his time." Atkinson became a ''Times'' theater critic in the 1920s and his reviews became very influential. He insisted on leaving the drama desk during World War II to report on the war; he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his work as the Moscow correspondent for the ''Times''. He returned to the theater beat in the late 1940s, until his retirement in 1960. Biography Atkinson was born in Melrose, Massachusetts to Jonathan H. Atkinson, a salesman statistician, and Garafelia Taylor. As a boy, he printed his own newspaper (using movable type), and planned a career in journalism. He attended Harvard University, where he began writing for the ''Boston Herald.''"Atkinson, (Justin) Brooks." The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Ed. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joey Faye
Joey Faye (born Joseph Antony Palladino, July 12, 1909 or 1910 or 1902– April 26, 1997) was an American comedian and actor. Born in New York City, he gained fame as a comic in vaudeville and claimed that he created two of vaudeville's more renowned pieces of business, "Floogle Street" (a.k.a. "Susquehana Hat Company") and "Slowly I Turned". In addition to an active career in vaudeville and the legitimate theater, he appeared in many movies and TV shows. Broadway The Republic Theatre was the site of Faye's New York stage debut at age 21. During World War II, he entertained Allied military personnel in Africa and Europe as part of a troupe headed by Marlene Dietrich. Faye playesecond banana(the second-ranking comedian in a show) to Phil Silvers in two Broadway shows, ''High Button Shoes'' and '' Top Banana''. He also appeared in the 1954 film. In a Broadway career that stretched between the late 1930s and the early 1990s, he appeared in 17 shows altogether, including ''Room Serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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