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Val Lewton
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Russian-American novelist, film producer, and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s. His son, also named Val Lewton, was a painter and exhibition designer. Lewton was born in Yalta, Imperial Russia, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1909. He began his career as a writer, producing novels, including the best-selling pulp novel ''No Bed of Her Own''. Lewton worked as a writer and publicist for MGM before being named head of RKO's horror unit in 1942. His first production, '' Cat People'', became a top moneymaker for RKO that year. Lewton produced several successful films, often writing the final draft of the screenplays himself. He gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson and worked with Boris Karloff, who credited Lewton with saving his career. After leaving RKO, Lewton worked for Paramount and MGM, producing various ...
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Yalta
Yalta (: ) is a resort town, resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea. It serves as the administrative center of Yalta Municipality, one of the regions within Crimea. Yalta, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, and is considered part of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. However, it is controlled de facto by Russia, which Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea in 2014 and regards the town as part of the Republic of Crimea (Russia), Republic of Crimea. According to the most recent census, its population was The city is located on the site of the ancient Greece, ancient Greek colony of Yalita ( ). It is said to have been founded by Greek settlers who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black Sea, surrounded by the mountain range Ai-Petri. It has a humid subtropical climate and is surrounded by numerous vin ...
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Darien, Connecticut
Darien ( ) is a coastal town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. With a population of 21,499 and a land area of just under , it is the smallest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Connecticut), Gold Coast. Situated on the Long Island Sound between the cities of Stamford, Connecticut, Stamford and Norwalk, Connecticut, Norwalk, Darien is a commuter town for New York City. There are two railroad stations in Darien, Noroton Heights station, Noroton Heights and Darien station, Darien, linking the town to Grand Central Terminal. History According to early records, the first clearings of land were made by men from the New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven and Wethersfield, Connecticut, Wethersfield colonies and from Norwalk, Connecticut, Norwalk in about 1641. It was not until 1739, however, that the Middlesex Society of the Town of Stamford, Connecticut, Stamford built the first community church, now the First Congregational Church of Darien, which stands on the original site ...
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Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur (; ; November 12, 1904 – December 19, 1977) was a French-American filmmaker, active during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known as an auteur of stylish and atmospheric genre films, many of them for RKO Pictures, including the horror films '' Cat People'', ''I Walked with a Zombie'', and '' The Leopard Man'', and the classic film noir ''Out of the Past''. He is also known for directing '' Night of the Demon'', which was released by Columbia Pictures. Life Born in Paris, France, Tourneur was the son of Fernande Petit and film director Maurice Tourneur.Earnshaw 2004, p. 102. At age 10, Jacques moved to the United States with his father. He started a career in cinema while still attending high school as an extra and later as a script clerk in various silent films. Both Maurice and Jacques returned to France after his father worked on the film '' The Mysterious Island'' in 1925. Tourneur died in 1977, aged 73, in Bergerac, Dordogne, France. Career Tourneur be ...
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Story Editor
Story editor is a job title in motion picture and television production, also sometimes called supervising producer. The responsibilities of the story editor vary depending on the production; this article describes the duties the role most commonly has. Live action The story editor has many responsibilities, including finding new script/breakdown writers, developing stories with writers, and ensuring that scripts are suitable for production. The story editor will work closely with the writer on each draft of their story and script, giving the writer feedback on the quality of their work, suggesting improvements that can be made while also ensuring that practical issues, like continuity and correct running time, are adhered to. When a script is past due, multiple people may write an act. Many primetime series have an executive story editor and a story editor. Marc Abrams of the TV series '' The Bernie Mac Show'' said, "As you go from show to show you learn that each has its own ...
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Gone With The Wind (film)
''Gone with the Wind'' is a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara ( Vivien Leigh), the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, following her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), and her subsequent marriage to Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The film had a troubled production. The start of filming was delayed for two years until January 1939 because Selznick was determined to secure Gable for the role of Rhett, and filming concluded in July. The role of Scarlett was challenging to cast, and 1,400 unknown women were interviewed for the part. Sidney Howard's original screenpl ...
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A Tale Of Two Cities (1935 Film)
''A Tale of Two Cities'' is a Historical fiction, historical novel published in 1859 by English author Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. As Dickens's best-known work of historical fiction, ''A Tale of Two Cities'' is said to be one of the List of best-selling books, best-selling novels of all time. In 2003, the novel was ranked 63rd on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The novel has been adapted for film, television, radio, and the stage, and has continued to influence popular culture. Synopsis Book the First: Recalled to Life Opening lines Dickens opens the novel with a sentence that has become famous:It was the best of times, it was the ...
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David O
David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the Kings of Israel and Judah, third king of the Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy), United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate a victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase (), which is translated as "Davidic line, House of David" by most scholars. The Mesha Stele, erected by King Mesha of Moab in the 9th century BCE, may also refer to the "House of David", although this is disputed. According to Jewish works such as the ''Seder Olam Rabbah'', ''Seder Olam Zutta'', and ''Sefer ha-Qabbalah'' (all written over a thousand years later), David ascended the throne as the king of Judah in 885 BCE. Apart from this, all that is known of David comes from biblical literature, Historicity of the Bible, the historicit ...
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Taras Bulba
''Taras Bulba'' (; ) is a romanticized historical novella set in the first half of the 17th century, written by Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). It features elderly Zaporozhian Cossack Taras Bulba and his sons Andriy and Ostap. The sons study at the Kiev Academy and then return home, whereupon the three men set out on a journey to the Zaporizhian Sich (the Zaporizhian Cossack headquarters, located in southern Ukraine) where they join other Cossacks and go to war against Poland. The story was initially published in 1835 as part of the ''Mirgorod'' collection of short stories, but a much expanded version appeared in 1842 with some differences in the storyline. The 1842 text was described by the twentieth-century critic as a "paragon of civic virtue and a force of patriotic edification", contrasting it with the rhetoric of the 1835 version with its "distinctly Cossack jingoism". Inspiration The character of Taras Bulba, the main hero of this novel, is a composite of several histo ...
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Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works " The Nose", " Viy", "The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as " Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol used the technique of defamiliarization when a writer presents common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so that the reader can gain new perspectives and see the world differently. His early works, such as '' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in contemporary Russia (''The Government Inspector'', '' Dead Souls''), although Gogol also enjoyed the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I who liked his work. The novel '' Taras Bulba'' (1835), the play ''Marriage'' (1842) ...
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Novelization
A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book, or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent of home video, but continue to find commercial success as part of marketing campaigns for major films. They are often written by accomplished writers based on an early draft of the film's script and on a tight deadline. History and purpose Novelizations of films began to be produced in the 1910s and 1920s for silent films such as '' Les Vampires'' (1915–16) and '' London After Midnight'' (1927). One of the first films with spoken dialogue to be novelized was '' King Kong'' (1933). Film novelizations were especially profitable during the 1970s before home video became available, as they were then the only way to re-experience popular movies other than television airing or a rerelease in theaters. The novelizations of '' Star Wars'' (1977 ...
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Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters; October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American actress, particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in screwball comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised in Los Angeles by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in '' A Perfect Crime'' (1921). Eager to become an actress, she signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but mainly played bit parts and was dropped after a year. Her career came close to ending shortly before her 19th birthday when a shattered windshield from a car accident left a scar on her face, but she overcame this challenge and appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett from 1927 to 1929, and then began appearing in feature films such as ''High Volta ...
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Clark Gable
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901November 16, 1960) was an American actor often referred to as the "King of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". He appeared in more than 60 Film, motion pictures across a variety of Film genre, genres during a 37-year career, three decades of which he spent as a Leading actor, leading man. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gable as the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, seventh greatest male screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema. Gable won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Frank Capra's ''It Happened One Night'' (1934) and earned nominations in the same category for portraying Fletcher Christian in Frank Lloyd's ''Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film), Mutiny on the Bounty'' (1935) and Rhett Butler in Victor Fleming's ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind'' (1939). For his Comedy, comedic performances in George Seaton's ''Teacher's Pet (1958 film), Teacher's Pet'' (1958) and Walter Lang's ''But Not for Me (fil ...
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