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Actors' Laboratory Theatre
The Actors' Laboratory Theatre was a politically active theatre company and acting school founded in January 1941 by Roman Bohnen, Jules Dassin, Dick Flake, Lloyd Bridges, Danny Mann, Jeff Corey, Mary Virginia Farmer and J. Edward Bromberg. During the Second World War, the Actors' Lab made multiple performances for servicemen, in association with the Hollywood Victory Committee. The Actors' Lab was originally above Sharkey's Bar at the corner of Franklin and Bronson Avenues in Hollywood. In 1943, the theatre moved to 1455 North Laurel Avenue, Hollywood, California. The Actors' Lab brought the ideas and acting techniques of New York's Group Theatre to California, and "prided itself on having opened its doors to students of all races." Hedda Hopper criticized the group for this opposition to racial segregation. The Actors' Lab was eventually denounced as a communist organization, and some of its existing members and former members, including Jules Dassin, Lloyd Bridges and Morr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Bohnen
Roman Aloys Bohnen (November 24, 1901 – February 24, 1949) was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the films ''Of Mice and Men (1939 film), Of Mice and Men'' (1939), ''The Song of Bernadette (film), The Song of Bernadette'' (1943), and ''The Best Years of Our Lives'' (1946). Early life and education Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bohnen attended the University of Minnesota, where he was a cheerleader. He was the son of Karl Bohnen, a portrait painter. The family was financially hard-pressed during his youth. After graduating in 1923 with a B.A., Roman served his acting apprenticeship in theater companies in St. Paul and Chicago, eventually spending five years with the Goodman Theatre. At the Goodman, he met fellow actor Hildur Ouse, who became his wife. Career Group Theatre The Bohnens moved to New York City, where he made his Broadway theatre, Broadway debut in 1931 in ''As Husbands Go''. Bohnen, In the summer of 1932, at the behest of his frien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Lawrence
Marc Lawrence (born Max Goldsmith; February 17, 1910 – November 28, 2005) was an American character actor who specialized in underworld types. He has also been credited as F. A. Foss, Marc Laurence and Marc C. Lawrence. Early life Lawrence was born in New York City, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Minerva Norma (née Sugarman), and a Russian Jewish father, Israel Simon Goldsmith. He participated in plays in school, then attended the City College of New York. In 1930, he received a two-year scholarship to the repertory theater operated by Eva Le Gallienne. Career Lawrence's film debut came in 1933. His pock-marked complexion, brooding appearance, and New York street-guy accent made him a natural for heavies, and he would portray scores of gangsters and mob bosses over the next six decades. He was once informed by studio executive Harry Cohn that infamous mobster Johnny Roselli called Lawrence "the best hood in films". Lawrence himself added that many Italian hoods told h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances E
Frances is an English given name or last name of Latin origin. In Latin the meaning of the name Frances is 'from France' or 'the French.' The male version of the name in English is Francis. The original Franciscus, meaning "Frenchman", comes from the Franks who were named for the francisca, the axe they used in battle. Notable people and characters with the name include: People known as Frances * Frances, Countess of Périgord (died 1481) * Frances of Rome (1384–1440), Italian saint, mystic, organizer of charitable services and Benedictine oblate who founded a religious community of oblates * Frances (musician) (born 1993), British singer and songwriter People with the given name * Frances Abington (1737–1815), English actress * Frances Dorothy Acomb (1907–1984), American historian * Frances Alda (1879–1952), New Zealand-born, Australian-raised operatic lyric soprano * Frances Allitsen (1848–1912), English composer * Frances Allen (1932–2020), American compu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Volz
Herman Roderick Volz (1904–1990) was a Swiss-American painter, muralist, lithographer, set designer, decorative artist and ceramist. He was politically active, vocal and often made social statements through his imagery and he was especially taken by the industrial horizon of his adopted home of San Francisco Bay Area. Many of his art pieces done for the Federal Art Project (FAP), for example, were of men at work and of docks, piers, and railroad yards. Biography Herman Roderick Volz was born December 25, 1904, in Zürich, Switzerland. His first training was under the tutelage of his grandfather, a master in decorative arts. He then started his formal training at the Art und Gewerbeschule in Zürich, the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, and travelled for four years in France, Spain, Italy, Africa and Holland, eventually moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1933. By 1938 he became a US citizen. Early work During the Great Depression, Volz was appointed to the position of sup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Tarcai
Mary Tarcai (July 6, 1906 – September 22, 1979 in New York City) was an actress. She was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, emigrated to the United States with her family when she was a child and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career as an actress at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City and later taught there. Her background was in the Stanislavski method and in New York at the beginning of her career she worked with Isaac Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. After leaving the Neighborhood Playhouse she went to Atlantic City, where she started her own theater and produced her own shows. She then went to Los Angeles and worked with the Actors' Lab for seven years and also as an assistant to many film directors. Returning to New York in 1955, she began teaching acting, both at the Neighborhood Playhouse and privately. She was one of the first to teach classes centering on cold readings. Her students over the years included Shirley MacLaine, Florence Hen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Smith (actor)
Arthur Gordon Smith (March 23, 1899 – February 24, 1973) was an American stage, film, and television actor, best known for playing supporting roles in Hollywood productions of the 1940s. Life and career Born in Chicago, he was a member of the Group Theatre and performed in many of their productions, including '' Rocket to the Moon'', '' Awake and Sing!'', '' Golden Boy'' and '' Waiting for Lefty'', all by Clifford Odets; '' House of Connelly'' by Paul Green; and Sidney Kingsley's '' Men in White.'' The gray-haired actor usually played studious and dignified types in films, such as doctors or butlers. Smith appeared in many noirish films, including '' Body and Soul'' (1947) and '' In a Lonely Place'' (1950). He had a key role as a federal agent in 1947's '' Ride the Pink Horse'', starring and directed by Robert Montgomery. Two of these films, ''In a Lonely Place'' and ''Ride a Pink Horse'', were based on novels by Dorothy B. Hughes. Smith was one of the victims of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Phipps (actor)
William Edward Phipps (February 4, 1922 – June 1, 2018) was an American actor and producer, sometimes credited simply as William Phipps, known for his roles in films and on television. Early years Hometown Phipps grew up in St. Francisville, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was six years old. By the time he was in high school, he was using his stepfather's last name of Couch. He developed a love of acting at a young age and performed in several plays in grade school and high school. One of the plays in which he performed, during his junior year of high school in 1937, was ''Before Morning'', a 1933 play made into a film that same year. College After graduating from high school in 1939, he attended Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois, where he majored in accounting, was elected freshman class president and served as head cheerleader. After two years of college, he moved to Hollywood, to pursue a career in acting and resumed his original last name of Phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Nelson (actress)
Ruth Gloria Nelson (August 2, 1905 – September 12, 1992) was an American stage and film actress. She is known for her roles in films such as '' Wilson'', '' A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'', '' Humoresque'', ''3 Women'', '' The Late Show'' and '' Awakenings''. She was the wife of John Cromwell, with whom she acted on multiple occasions. Early life Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Nelson was the daughter of Sanford Leroy Nelson and vaudeville actress Eva Mudge. She attended Immaculate Heart Convent School in Los Angeles, studying first with Daniel Frohman and then with Richard Boleslawski at the American Laboratory Theatre in New York City during the early 1920s. Career Nelson made her stage debut in New York on April 4, 1928, at the Laboratory Theatre under Boleslawski's direction, portraying the title character in Jean-Jacques Bernard's ''Martine''. Over the next two seasons, Nelson made two more appearances—in Checkhov's ''The Seagull'' and Vladimir Kirshon's ''Red Rust''—p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audie Murphy
Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, and has been described as the most highly decorated enlisted soldier in U.S. history. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at age 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded. Murphy was born into a large family of Sharecropping, sharecroppers in Hunt County, Texas. After his father abandoned them, his mother died when he was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family. After th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe ( ; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 August 4, 1962) was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "Blonde stereotype#Blonde bombshell, blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) by Death of Marilyn Monroe, her death in 1962. Born in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage before marrying James Dougherty (police officer), James Dougherty at the age of 16. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After roles as a freelancer, she began a longer contract with Fox in 1951, becomi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aline MacMahon
Aline Laveen MacMahon (May 3, 1899 – October 12, 1991) was an American actress. Her Broadway stage career began under producer Edgar Selwyn in ''The Mirage'' during 1920. She made her screen debut in 1931, and worked extensively in film, theater, and television until her retirement in 1975. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in '' Dragon Seed'' (1944). Early life MacMahon was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, the only child of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie (née Simon) MacMahon. Her father was a telegraph operator, arbitrage broker, and writer/editor in the Munsey publishing company, including their flagship publication, '' Munsey's Magazine''. Aline's parents had married on July 14, 1898, in Columbus, Ohio. Her father died on September 6, 1931. Her mother, an avid bell collector, died in 1984, at age 106. MacMahon first appeared on stage as early as 1905. That year the family moved to Brooklyn from McKeesport, and A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fay Kanin
Fay Kanin (née Mitchell; May 9, 1917March 27, 2013) was an American screenwriter, playwright and producer. Kanin was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1979 to 1983. Biography Born Fay Mitchell in New York City to David and Bessie (née Kaiser) Mitchell, she was raised in Elmira, New York, where she won the New York State Spelling Championship at twelve and was presented with a silver cup by then Governor Franklin Roosevelt. She was encouraged to write for money by supplying small items to the ''Elmira Star Gazette''.Lefcourt. 2000. She was Jewish. In high school she wrote and produced a children's radio show; then on full scholarship, she attended the private, all-female Elmira College where she divided her studies between writing and acting as well as editing the yearbook. Fay's mother took her daughter to visit her grandmother in the Bronx, and it was there that she became devoted to the theater when she saw a matinée of '' Idiot's Delight'' s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
