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Tsuru Aoki
was a Japanese stage and screen actress whose career was most prolific in the United States during the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1920s. Aoki may have been the first Asian actress to garner top billing in American motion pictures. Life and career Born in Tokyo, Aoki came to California in 1899 with her uncle, Otojirō Kawakami, his geisha wife, Kawakami Sadayakko, and Otojirō's troupe of actors. At their first stop in San Francisco, Tsuru performed with the troupe and assisted Sadayakko at a Palace Hotel tea ceremony where attendees raved over her "diminutive daintiness." But when the troupe ran into severe financial difficulties, Otojirō made arrangements to have Tsuru adopted by Toshio Aoki, a sketch artist for a local newspaper.Joseph L. Anderson, ''Enter a Samurai: Kawakami Otojirō and Japanese Theatre in the West'', 2 v. (Tucson: Wheatmark, 2011), 1: 65, 88. According to Anderson, Aoki was an old friend of an American missionary couple the Kawakamis had ...
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Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents ; the city proper has a population of 13.99 million people. Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, the prefecture forms part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and is the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. Originally a fishing village named Edo, the city became politically prominent in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was one of the most populous cities in the world with a population of over one million people. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, which was renamed "Tokyo" (). Tokyo was devastate ...
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The Wrath Of The Gods (1914 Film)
''The Wrath of the Gods'' is a 1914 American silent drama film directed by Reginald Barker and starring Sessue Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki, Frank Borzage, Thomas Kurihara and Henry Kotani. This was the first feature film appearance of Hayakawa and the directorial debut of Barker. The film is based on an American sailor who comes to the Yamaki family after his ship is wrecked in the ocean. The sailor (Borzage) falls in love with the daughter (Aoki) of the family, unaware of the fact that she is cursed by God, such that if she marries, a nearby volcano will erupt and destroy the entire island on which the family lives. Writer and producer Thomas H. Ince got the idea for the film from the volcanic eruption on the island of Sakura-Jima in 1914. Hayakawa was paid $500 a week, the highest paid of any Asian stars at the time. Filming started on January 27, 1914 and was completed on February 13. The film was released to a warm reception on June 7 after a large-scale publicity campaign. The ...
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Dagmar Godowsky
Mercedes Dagmar Godowsky (November 24, 1897 – February 13, 1975) was an American silent film actress. Biography Mercedes Dagmar Godowsky was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 24, 1897, the daughter of Polish-Jewish composer Leopold Godowsky and Frederica "Frieda" Saxe (1870–1933), who was of German descent, although she later claimed she was born in Vilna, Russian Empire (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) in her autobiography, ''First Person Plural''. She had an older sister, Vanita Hedwig (1892–1961), and two younger brothers, Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Gutram "Gordon" (1905–1932), who was born in Berlin. In November 1914, the family immigrated from Liverpool, England to Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Her Hollywood film career spanned the years from 1919 through 1926. She played in ''A Sainted Devil'' (1924) with Rudolph Valentino and ''The Story Without a Name'' (1924). The latter co-starred Tyrone Power Sr. and Louis Wolheim. Among her other film credits are ...
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Jane Wolfe
Sarah Jane Wolfe (March 21, 1875 – March 29, 1958) was an American silent film character actress who is considered an important female figure in magick. She was a friend and a colleague of Aleister Crowley and a founding member of Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis in Southern California. Early life Wolfe was born in the tiny Pennsylvania borough of St. Petersburg in Clarion County. She came from Pennsylvania Dutch stock. Her name at birth was Sarah Jane Wolfe but when she later went on the stage, she adopted the single name of Jane. She was the middle child, her older brother John was born in the previous year and her sister, Mary K., was born a year and a day later, the same year that their father died. John spent many years in Montana but Wolfe and Mary K. were closely associated through much of their lives. Wolfe loved her grandfather Bill and snuggled him whenever she could. He was a very busy man as he raised nearly all the family. Her grandmother worked hard in the ...
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Jack Holt (actor)
Charles John Holt, Jr. (May 31, 1888 – January 18, 1951) was an American motion picture actor who was prominent in both silent and sound movies, particularly Westerns. Early life Holt was born in 1888 in the Fordham section of The Bronx, New York, the son of an Episcopal priest at St. James Church. When in Manhattan, he attended Trinity School. He was accepted into the Virginia Military Institute in 1909, but expelled for misbehavior in his second semester there. Following Holt's father's death, the family moved to New York City, where Jack, his mother, and brother Marshall lived with his married sister, Frances. Holt worked at various jobs including construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad's tunnel under the Hudson River and being a "surveyor, laborer, prospector, trapper, and stagecoach driver, among many other jobs" during an almost six-year stay in Alaska. Military service Holt was prevented from serving in World War I because of "chronic foot problems" that resulte ...
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Marin Sais
Marin Sais (born Mae Smith; August 2, 1890 – December 31, 1971) was an American actress whose career was most prolific during the silent film era of the 1910s and 1920s. Sais' acting career spanned over four decades and she is possibly best recalled for appearing in Western themed films. Early life and career Born in San Rafael, California into a family that was allegedly descended from one of the earliest Spanish families to settle in California, Marin Sais began her acting career as a teenager after travelling to New York City where she appeared in vaudeville. In 1910, at the age of twenty, Sais made her screen debut for New York City's Vitagraph Studios in the short film adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Twelfth Night'' opposite the notable actors Florence Turner and Julia Swayne Gordon. Sais would go on to star in a number of well-received comedy shorts for Kalem Company opposite actors Ruth Roland, Marshall Neilan and Edward Coxen. In 1911, Sais made her first appe ...
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The Breath Of The Gods
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ...
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Sidney McCall
Sidney McCall (March 8, 1865January 11, 1954), born Mary McNeill, later Mary McNeil Fenollosa, was an American novelist and poet. Several of her novels were adapted into films. Biography McCall was born Mary McNeill (later dropping one of the l's) in Wilcox County, Alabama, to William Stoddard McNeill, a Confederate Army lieutenant from Mobile, Alabama, and Laura Sibley. McCall was the oldest of five children. At the age of 18 she married Ludolph Chester who died two years later. She later married Ledyard Scott in Tokyo. However, the marriage was not a happy one and she divorced Scott and returned to the United States in 1892. In 1895 she married Ernest Fenollosa, an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy. Selected works * ''Out of the Nest: A Flight of Verses'' (1899) poetry, under her own name * ''Truth Dexter'' (1901) novel, as Sidney McCall * ''Hiroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow and Rain'' (1901) essay, under her own name ...
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The Dragon Painter
''The Dragon Painter'' is a 1919 English language silent romance drama film. It is based on the novel of the same name, written by Mary McNeil Fenollosa. It stars Sessue Hayakawa as a young painter who believes that his fiancée (played by Hayakawa's wife Tsuru Aoki), is a princess who has been captured and turned into a dragon. It was directed by William Worthington and filmed in Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, and in the Japanese Tea Garden in Coronado, California. ''The Dragon Painter'' was restored in 1988 by the American Film Institute with the George Eastman House and MoMA. In 2014, the film was added to the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot Tatsu (Hayakawa) lives within the mountains of Hakawa, Japan, creating a series of paintings and disposing of them upon completion, shouting to the gods to return his fiancée, a princess who he believed was turned into a dragon. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Kano Inda ...
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William Worthington (actor)
William Worthington (April 8, 1872 in Troy, New York – April 9, 1941 in Beverly Hills, California) was an American silent film actor and director. Career Worthington became interested in the performing arts when he began his career as an opera singer and stage actor. He entered films with a lead role in 1913, and one of his more notable films was Damon and Pythias in 1914. From 1917 to 1925, William concentrated on directing films and was the head of a film production firm called Multicolor, which was bought by Cinecolor in 1932. He was active in films up until his death in 1941. Filmography Actor * ''The Old Clerk'' (1913) * ''The Restless Spirit'' (1913, Short) as A Stranger * ''The Passerby'' (1913, short) as Mr. Klein * ''Forgotten Women'' (1913, short) as The Reveller * '' Back to Life'' (1913, short) as The Gambler * ''The Barrier of Bars'' (1913, short) * ''The Dread Inheritance'' (1913, short) as The Doctor * ''Risen from the Ashes'' (1914, short) * ''Samson'' (19 ...
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Tsuru Aoki By Albert Witzel
Tsuru (鶴) is the Japanese word for crane. It may refer to: * Tsuru (name), a Japanese name *Tsuru, Yamanashi, a city in Japan **Tsuru University, located in the city * Tsuru Shima, a uninhabited island in Okayama Prefecture, Japan *Nissan Sentra The Nissan Sentra is a series of automobiles manufactured by the Japanese automaker Nissan since 1982. Since 1999, the Sentra has been categorized as a compact car, while previously it occupied the subcompact class. Until 2006, Sentra was a reba ..., a car formerly marketed in Mexico as the Tsuru See also * Tsurui, a village in Hokkaido {{disambiguation, geo ...
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