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Unfaithfully Yours (1948 Film)
''Unfaithfully Yours'' is a 1948 American screwball black comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée and Barbara Lawrence. The film is about a jealous symphony conductor who imagines three different ways to deal with the supposed infidelity of his beautiful wife—murder, forbearance, and a suicidal game of Russian roulette—during a concert of three inspiring pieces of classical music. At home, his attempts to bring any of his fantasies to life swiftly devolve into farce—underscored with humorous adaptations of the relevant music. In the end, the truth comes out, and love triumphs. Although the film, which was the first of two Sturges made for Twentieth Century-Fox, received mostly positive reviews, it was not successful at the box office. Plot Sir Alfred de Carter is a world-famous symphony conductor who returns from a visit to his native England and discovers that his rich and boring brother-in-law, August He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges (; born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the Academy Awards, Oscar for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Screenplay for the film ''The Great McGinty'' (1940), his first of three nominations in the category. Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such as Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Frank Capra) had directed films from their own scripts; however, Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel Stander
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television. He is best remembered for his role as majordomo Max on the 1980s mystery television series ''Hart to Hart''. Early life Lionel Stander was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Russian-Jewish immigrants, the eldest of three children. During his one year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he appeared in the student productions ''The Muse of the Unpublished Writer'', and ''The Muse and the Movies: A Comedy of Greenwich Village''. Career Stander's acting career began in 1928, as Cop and First Fairy in '' Him'' by E. E. Cummings, at the Provincetown Playhouse. He claimed that he got the roles because one of them required shooting craps, which he did well, and a friend in the company volunteered him. He appeared in a series of short-lived plays through the early 1930s, including ''The House Beautiful'', which Dorothy Parker famously deride ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ''Commedia'') and later christened by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to the most educated readers. His ''De vulgari eloquentia'' (''On Eloquence in the Vernacular'') was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as '' The New Life'' (1295) and ''Divine Comedy'' helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets ''Swan Lake'' and ''The Nutcracker'', the ''1812 Overture'', his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the ''Romeo and Juliet'' Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera ''Eugene Onegin''. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Poem
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''Tondichtung (tone poem)'' appears to have been first used by the composer Carl Loewe in 1828. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt first applied the term ''Symphonische Dichtung'' to his 13 works in this vein. While many symphonic poems may compare in size and scale to symphonic movements (or even reach the length of an entire symphony), they are unlike traditional classical symphonic movements, in that their music is intended to inspire listeners to imagine or consider scenes, images, specific ideas or moods, and not (necessarily) to focus on following traditional patterns of musical form such as sonata form. This intention to inspire listeners was a direct consequence of Romanticism, which encouraged literary, pictorial and dramatic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Femme Fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.Mary Ann Doane, ''Femme Fatales'' (1991) pp. 1–2 The term originates from the French phrase '' femme fatale'', which means 'deadly woman' or 'lethal woman'. A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, or sexual allure. In many cases, her attitude towards sexuality is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. Durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Wagner
Max Wagner (November 28, 1901 – November 16, 1975) was a Mexican-born American film actor who specialized in playing small parts such as thugs, gangsters, sailors, henchmen, bodyguards, cab drivers and moving men, appearing more than 400 films in his career, most without receiving screen credit.Erickson, HaBiography (Allmovie)/ref> In 1927, he was a leading witness in the well-publicized manslaughter trials of actor Paul Kelly and actress/screenwriter Dorothy Mackaye. Biography Wagner was one of five children, all boys, of William Wallace Wagner, a railroad conductor, and Edith Wagner, a writer who provided dispatches for the ''Christian Science Monitor'' during the Mexican Revolution. When he was 10 years old, his father was killed by rebels and the family moved to Salinas, California, where he met John Steinbeck, who became a lifelong friend. Steinbeck based the character of the boy in his novel ''The Red Pony'' on Wagner. Three of Wagner's brothers were working in Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Greig (actor)
Robert Greig (December 27, 1879 – June 27, 1958) was an Australian-American actor who appeared in more than 100 films between 1930 and 1949, usually as the dutiful butler. Born Arthur Alfred Bede Greig, he was the nephew of Australian politician and solicitor William Bede Dalley. He was commonly known as "Bob". Career Greig was born near Melbourne, in 1878. He married fellow actor Beatrice Denver Holloway in 1912. After a successful career in Melbourne, he and his wife sailed for the United States, and he made his Broadway debut in 1928 in an operetta, ''Countess Maritza''. His next production was the Marx Brothers' comedy ''Animal Crackers'', in which he portrayed "Hives" the butler. He reprised the role in the 1930 film version, which was his movie debut and set the pattern for much of his career, as he was often cast as a butler or other servant.Erickson, HaBiography (Allmovie)/ref> He performed in several other productions on Broadway, the last in 1938. Greig work ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgia Caine
Georgiana Caine (October 30, 1876 – April 4, 1964) was an American actress who performed both on Broadway and in more than 80 films in her 51-year career. Early career Born in San Francisco, California in 1876, the daughter of two Shakespearean actors, George Caine and the former Jennie Darragh, she travelled with them when they toured the country. Caine left school at the age of 17 to join a Shakespearean repertory company. She made her Broadway debut in 1899 as the star of the musical ''A Reign of Error''. Caine continued to perform continuously on Broadway as a star or featured performer, primarily in musicals, until the mid-1930s, including in George M. Cohan's ''Little Nellie Kelly'', as well as his ''Mary'', and '' The O'Brien Girls'',. She appeared in Franz Lehár's ''The Merry Widow'' both on Broadway and in London. Caine was often written about by theater columnists until the 1930s, when her star had started to fade. She made her last Broadway appearance i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torben Meyer
Torben Emil Meyer (1 December 1884 – 22 May 1975) was a Danish-American character actor who appeared in more than 190 films in a 55-year career. He began his acting career in Europe before moving to the United States. Early life Meyer was born in either CopenhagenAllan R. Ellenberger, ''Celebrities in Los Angeles Cemeteries: A Directory'', page 27, McFarland Publishing, 2001 or Aarhus, Denmark and began his career as a stage actor.Mette Hjort, Ursula Lindqvist, ''A Companion to Nordic Cinema'', page 408, Wiley, 2016 Starting in 1912 Meyer acted in 20 European silent movies, culminating with ''Don Quixote'' in 1926. He emigrated to the United States in 1927.Diane Kachar, David Goudsward, ''The Fly at 50: The Creation and Legacy of a Classic Science Fiction Film'' (Kindle), BearManor Media, 2015 Hollywood acting career Danish friends Benjamin Christensen and Jean Hersholt may have helped Meyer obtain his first roles in Hollywood films. For decades Meyer found roles playing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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