Namesakes of buildings on the Paramount Studios lot
Paramount memorialized these people by naming buildings on the lot after them. Stars are listed first, followed by behind-the-scenes creative people, then studio administrators.
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- Producer
- Actress
- Production Manager
The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" (Hunt) and Henry Durrell "Had" Ball. Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise". She entered a dramatic school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too shy". She found some work modeling for Hattie Carnegie's and, in 1933, she was chosen to be a "Goldwyn Girl" and appear in the film Roman Scandals (1933).
She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in Top Hat (1935), followed. Eventually, she received starring roles in B-pictures and, occasionally, a good role in an A-picture, like in Stage Door (1937) or The Big Street (1942). While filming Too Many Girls (1940), she met and fell madly in love with a young Cuban actor-musician named Desi Arnaz. Despite different personalities, lifestyles, religions and ages (he was six years younger), he fell hard, too, and after a passionate romance, they eloped and were married in November 1940. Lucy soon switched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she got better roles in films such as Du Barry Was a Lady (1943); Best Foot Forward (1943) and the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Without Love (1945). In 1948, she took a starring role in the radio comedy "My Favorite Husband", in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. In 1950, CBS came knocking with the offer of turning it into a television series. After convincing the network brass to let Desi play her husband and to sign over the rights to and creative control over the series to them, work began on the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time.
With I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi promoted the 3-camera technique now the standard in filming sitcoms using 35mm film (the earliest known example of the 3-camera technique is the first Russian feature film, "Defence of Sevastopol" in 1911). Desi syndicated I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball was the first woman to own her own studio as the head of Desilu Productions.
Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, age 77, of an acute aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, CA.A building, park and bungalow on the RKO/Desilu side of the lot.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence. Her often absentee and brutish father could not or did not provide and her schizophrenic mother tried to slit Clara's throat when the girl spoke of becoming an actress. Bow, nonetheless, won a photo beauty contest which launched her movie career that would eventually number 58 films, from 1922 to 1933.
The movie It (1927) defined her career. The film starred Clara as a shopgirl who was asked out by the store's owner. As you watch the silent film you can see the excitement as she prepared for her date with the boss, her friend trying hard to assist her. She used a pair of scissors to modify her dress to try to look "sexier." The movie did much to change society's mores as there were only a few years between World War I and Clara Bow, but this movie went a long way in how society looked at itself. Clara was flaming youth in rebellion. In the film she presented a worldly wisdom that somehow sex meant having a good time. But the movie shouldn't mislead the viewer, because when her boss tries to kiss her goodnight, she slaps him. At the height of her popularity she received over 45,000 fan letters a month. Also, she was probably the most overworked and underpaid star in the industry. With the coming of sound, her popularity waned. Clara was also involved in several court battles ranging from unpaid taxes to being in divorce court for "stealing" women's husbands. After the court trials, she made a couple of attempts to get back in the public eye. One was Call Her Savage (1932) in 1932. It was somewhat of a failure at the box office and her last was in 1933 in a film called Hoopla (1933).
She then married cowboy star Rex Bell at 26 and retired from the film world at 28. She doted on her two sons and did everything to please them. Haunted by a weight problem and a mental imbalance, she never re-entered show business. She was confined to sanitariums from time to time and prohibited access to her beloved sons. She died of a heart attack in West Los Angeles, on September 26, 1965 at age 60. Today she is finding a renaissance among movie buffs, who are recently discovering the virtues of silent film. The actress who wanted so much to be like the wonderful young lady in It (1927) has the legacy of her films to confirm that she was a wonderful lady and America's first sex symbol.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Maurice Chevalier's first working job was as an acrobat, until a serious accident ended that career. He turned his talents to singing and acting, and made several short films in France. During World War I he enlisted in the French army. He was wounded in battle, captured and placed in a POW camp by the Germans. During his captivity he learned English from fellow prisoners. After the war he returned to the film business, and when "talkies" came into existence, Chevalier traveled to the US to break into Hollywood. In 1929 he was paired with operatic singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald to make The Love Parade (1929). Although Chevalier was attracted to the beautiful MacDonald and made several passes at her, she rejected him firmly, as she had designs on actor Gene Raymond, who she eventually married. He did not take rejection lightly, being a somewhat vain man who considered himself quite a catch, and derided MacDonald as a "prude". She, in turn, called him "the quickest derrière pincher in Hollywood". They made three more pictures together, the most successful being Love Me Tonight (1932). In the late 1930s he returned to Europe, making several films in France and England. World War II interrupted his career and he was dogged by accusations of collaboration with the Nazi authorities occupying France, but he was later vindicated. In the 1950s he returned to Hollywood, older and gray-headed. He made Gigi (1958), from which he took his signature songs, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and "I Remember it Well". He also received a special Oscar that year. In the 1960s he made a few more films, and in 1970 he sang the title song for Walt Disney's The Aristocats (1970). This marked his last contribution to the film industry.- Actor
- Stunts
- Producer
Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two-reeler by the independent producer Hans Tiesler . Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings (1927), It (1927), and other films.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
Bing Crosby was born Harry Lillis Crosby, Jr. in Tacoma, Washington, the fourth of seven children of Catherine (Harrigan) and Harry Lincoln Crosby, a brewery bookkeeper. He was of English and Irish descent. Crosby studied law at Gonzaga University in Spokane but was more interested in playing the drums and singing with a local band. Bing and the band's piano player, Al Rinker, left Spokane for Los Angeles in 1925. In the early 1930s Bing's brother Everett sent a record of Bing singing "I Surrender, Dear" to the president of CBS. His live performances from New York were carried over the national radio network for 20 consecutive weeks in 1932. His radio success led Paramount Pictures to include him in The Big Broadcast (1932), a film featuring radio favorites. His songs about not needing a bundle of money to make life happy was the right message for the decade of the Great Depression. His relaxed, low-key style carried over into the series of "Road" comedies he made with pal Bob Hope. He won the best actor Oscar for playing an easygoing priest in Going My Way (1944). He showed that he was indeed an actor as well as a performer when he played an alcoholic actor down on his luck opposite Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954). Playing golf was what he liked to do best. He died at age 74 playing golf at a course outside Madrid, Spain, after completing a tour of England that had included a sold-out engagement at the London Palladium.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program).
He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
A storybook hero, the original screen cowboy, ever forthright and honest, even when (as was often the case) he played a villain, William S. Hart lived for a while in the Dakota Territory, then worked as a postal clerk in New York City. In 1888 he began to study acting. In 1899 he created the role of Messala in "Ben-Hur", and received excellent reviews for his lead part in "The Virginian" (1907). His first film was a two-reeler, His Hour of Manhood (1914). In 1915 he signed a contract with Thomas H. Ince and joined Ince's Triangle Film Company. Two years later he followed Ince to Famous Players-Lasky and received a very lucrative contract from Adolph Zukor. His career began to dwindle in the early 1920s due to the publicity surrounding a paternity suit against him, which was eventually dismissed. He made his last film, Tumbleweeds (1925), for United Artists and retired to a ranch in Newhall, CA. By that time audiences were more interested in the antics of a Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson than the Victorian moralizing of Hart. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, NY.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents to the USA in 1908. After some years onstage as a dancer and comedian, he made his first film appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) singing "Thanks for the Memory", which became his signature tune.
In partnership with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, he appeared in the highly successful "Road to ..." comedies (1940-52), and in many others until the early 1970s. During World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars he spent much time entertaining the troops in the field. For these activities and for his continued contributions to the industry he received five honorary Academy Awards.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926 - August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis. In addition to the duo's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis was also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). Lewis won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and Venice Film Festival, and he had two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Jerry died on August 20, 2017, in Las Vegas.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood boys by a film director, Carole was signed to a one-picture contract in 1921 when she was 12. The film in question was A Perfect Crime (1921). Although she tried for other acting jobs, she would not be seen onscreen again for four years. She returned to a normal life, going to school and participating in athletics, excelling in track and field. By age 15 she had had enough of school, though, and quit. She joined a theater troupe and played in several stage shows, which were for the most part nothing to write home about. In 1925 she passed a screen test and was signed to a contract with Fox Films. Her first role as a Fox player was Hearts and Spurs (1925), in which she had the lead. Right after that film she appeared in a western called Durand of the Bad Lands (1925). She rounded out 1925 in the comedy Marriage in Transit (1925) (she also appeared in a number of two-reel shorts). In 1926 Carole was seriously injured in an automobile accident that resulted in the left side of her face being scarred. Once she had recovered, Fox canceled her contract. She did find work in a number of shorts during 1928 (13 of them, many for slapstick comedy director Mack Sennett), but did go back for a one-time shot with Fox called Me, Gangster (1928). By now the film industry was moving from the silent era to "talkies". While some stars' careers ended because of heavy accents, poor diction or a voice unsuitable to sound, Carole's light, breezy, sexy voice enabled her to transition smoothly during this period. Her first sound film was High Voltage (1929) at Pathe (her new studio) in 1929. In 1931 she was teamed with William Powell in Man of the World (1931). She and Powell hit it off and soon married, but the marriage didn't work out and they divorced in 1933. No Man of Her Own (1932) put Carole opposite Clark Gable for the first and only time (they married seven years later in 1939). By now she was with Paramount Pictures and was one of its top stars. However, it was Twentieth Century (1934) that showed her true comedic talents and proved to the world what a fine actress she really was. In 1936 Carole received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress for My Man Godfrey (1936). She was superb as ditzy heiress Irene Bullock. Unfortunately, the coveted award went to Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which also won for Best Picture. Carole was now putting out about one film a year of her own choosing, because she wanted whatever role she picked to be a good one. She was adept at picking just the right part, which wasn't surprising as she was smart enough to see through the good-ol'-boy syndrome of the studio moguls. She commanded and received what was one of the top salaries in the business - at one time it was reported she was making $35,000 a week. She made but one film in 1941, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). Her last film was in 1942, when she played Maria Tura opposite Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Tragically, she didn't live to see its release. The film was completed in 1941 just at the time the US entered World War II, and was subsequently held back for release until 1942. Meanwhile, Carole went home to Indiana for a war bond rally. On January 16, 1942, Carole, her mother, and 20 other people were flying back to California when the plane went down outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. All aboard perished. The highly acclaimed actress was dead at the age of 33 and few have been able to match her talents since.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Gaetano Alfonso "Guy" Crocetti, an Italian immigrant and barber, and his Ohio-born wife, Angela (Barra) Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. Martin came up the hard way, with such jobs as a boxer ("Kid Crochet"), a steel mill worker, a gas station worker and a casino croupier/dealer. In 1946, Martin got his first ticket to stardom, as he teamed up with another hard worker who was also trying to succeed in Hollywood: Jerry Lewis. Films such as At War with the Army (1950) sent the team toward super-stardom. The duo were to become one of Hollywood's truly great teams. They lasted 11 years together, and starred in 16 movies. They were unstoppable, but personality conflicts broke up the team. Even without Lewis, Martin was a true superstar.
Few thought that Martin would go on to achieve solo success, but he did, winning critical acclaim for his role in The Young Lions (1958) with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Some Came Running (1958), with Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. Movies such as Rio Bravo (1959) brought him international fame. One of his best remembered films is in Ocean's Eleven (1960), in which he played Sam Harmon alongside the other members of the legendary Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Martin proved potent at the box office through the 1960s, with films such as Bells Are Ringing (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), again with Rat Pack pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra. During much of the 1960s and 1970s, his film persona of a boozing playboy prompted a series of films as secret agent Matt Helm and his own television variety show. Airport (1970) followed, featuring Martin as a pilot. He played a phony priest in The Cannonball Run (1981).
In 1965, Martin explored a new method for entertaining his fans: Television. That year he hosted one of the most successful TV series in history: The Dean Martin Show (1965), which lasted until 1973. In 1965, it won a Golden Globe Award. In 1973, he renamed it "The Dean Martin Comedy Hour", and from 1974 to 1984 it was renamed again, this time "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts". It became one of the most successful TV series in history, skewering such greats as Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, James Stewart, George Burns, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and Joe Namath.
His last public role was a return to the stage, for a cross-country concert tour with Davis and Sinatra. He spoke affectionately of his fellow Rat Packers. "The satisfaction that I get out of working with these two bums is that we have more laughs than the audience has", Martin said. After the 1980s, Martin took it easy until his son, Dean Paul Martin, was killed in a plane crash in March 1987.
Devastated by the loss, from which he never recovered, he walked out on a reunion tour with Sinatra and Davis. Martin spent his final years in solitude, out of the public light. A heavy smoker most of his life, Martin died on Christmas Day 1995 at age 78 from complications to lung cancer.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The zaniest of all madcap comedy teams were the Marx Brothers, namely Groucho (aka Julius Henry), Chico (aka Leonard), and Harpo (aka Adolph). There were also Zeppo (aka Herbert) -- who featured in their early comedies as a straight man and later became a theatrical agent -- and Gummo (aka Milton), who eschewed the entertainment industry for a career in business. Though the Marxes were born in New York, their father Simon (nicknamed 'Frenchie') originally hailed from Germany. He was a clothing cutter, who (according to Groucho) had lofty aspirations of becoming a tailor. He later changed his name to Sam. Their mother came from Alsace-Lorraine and was a noted beauty named Minnie Schoenberg. The brothers were raised in the Jewish faith and grew up in a poor Manhattan neighbourhood of mostly Italian and German immigrants on East 93rd Street.
Groucho Marx was the first to enter show business as a boy soprano with the Gus Edwards show 'Boys and Girls'. His first 'proper job' was on Coney Island, singing a song while sitting on a keg of beer. This earned him a dollar. Chico Marx became a piano salesman at Shapiro and Bernstein. In 1908, Minnie, whose parents had once operated a travelling theatrical troupe, organised Groucho, Harpo Marx, Gummo Marx and a kid named Lou Levy into a musical act on vaudeville. They became known as the Four Nightingales. With further additions, this expanded into the Six Mascots by 1912. The Marxe's uncle, a well-established German-born comic and vaudevillian named Al Shean, began to refine the show business personae of the brothers and also contributed to writing their first successful skit. Groucho now started walking with a loping stoop and became verbose. Harpo donned a red wig and became a mute. Chico wore a pointy hat and adopted an Italian accent. Their growing success on the vaudeville circuit led to a sojourn in England in the early 20s where they appeared in a musical revue entitled On the Balcony. In 1924, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo achieved their first major breakthrough on Broadway in the comedy musical I'll Say She Is. Groucho, playing Napoleon Bonaparte, sported his painted on moustache for the first time on the big stage (the cigar came later). In 1925, the Marxes headlined with their own material in The Cocoanuts which later also became their first talking picture.
The brothers (after 1933 minus straight man Zeppo Marx) went on to star in another dozen motion pictures. These included Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933) (for Paramount) and A Night at the Opera (1935),A Day at the Races (1937) (arguably their best), At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940) and The Big Store (1941) (for MGM). By the early 30s, their on- screen characters had become fully-fledged. Few directors could fully contain (or control) them, though some did better than others. Groucho pretty much dominated (and chewed) the scene as the garrulous master of barbed insults and double entendres (he also wrote or co-wrote most of the gags and one-liners). His characters had memorable names like Hugo Z. Hackenbush, J. Cheever Loophole and Rufus T. Firefly. Chico was slow-witted and somewhat shady, playing the piano with his inimitable style during musical interludes. Finally, child-like Harpo, eating plates, drinking ink and chasing girls (and, of course, playing the harp). Matronly Margaret Dumont, often on the receiving end of Groucho's jokes, remained mostly stoic, never quite 'getting it'.
Their uniquely anarchic style of comedy has remained popular to this day, neatly summed up by Fiorello (Chico) pointing out to Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho) in A Day at the Races that in a Marx Brothers contract "There ain't no Sanity Clause".
."Marx Brothers Building" for all four brothers- Actor
- Soundtrack
As a kid trying to negotiate his way through various gang territories to a floating crap game or a new pool hall where he was not yet known as a hustler, Leonard (Chico) Marx learned to fake several accents. Because he later employed an Italian accent in the Marx Brothers' act, people assumed his name was pronounced "Cheeko." Instead, Leonard was dubbed "Chicko" for his other consuming passion, women (or "chicks"), at which he was more successful than gambling, but when a typesetter dropped the "k" out of his name, the brothers let it stay as Chico. Chico was the brother who guided the Marxes to stardom. He took over the act's managment (amicably) from their mother, Minnie, and through audacity and charm, Chico secured the Brothers their first international (London) booking, their first Broadway show and their MGM contract with Irving Thalberg, among other successes.- Actor
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With poofy, curly red hair, a top hat and a horn, the lovable mute was the favorite of the Marx Brothers. Though chasing women was a favorite routine of his in the movies, Harpo was a devoted father and husband. He adopted the mute routine in vaudeville and carried it over to the films. Harpo was an accomplished self-taught harpist whose musical numbers would many times bring tears to the eyes of the audience of an otherwise hilarious movie.- Actor
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The bushy-browed, cigar-smoking wise-cracker with the painted-on moustache and stooped walk was the leader of The Marx Brothers. With one-liners that were often double entendres, Groucho never cursed in any of his performances and said he never wanted to be known as a dirty comic. With a great love of music and singing (The Marx Brothers started as a singing group), one of the things Groucho was best known for was his rendition of the song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."- Actor
- Soundtrack
The youngest of The Marx Brothers, Zeppo was put into the role of the straight man after his brother Gummo left the act. Zeppo also acted as an understudy to all three of his brothers, and he has been said to have played Grouchos part better than Groucho himself. After playing small parts in the first five Marx Brothers movies, Zeppo felt his talent wasn't being used to its full extent and left the act to join Gummo as an agent. Somewhat of a mechanical whiz, Zeppo invented a wristwatch that would monitor the pulse rate of cardiac patients, and his company, Marman Products, produced clamping devices which were used in the first atomic bomb raids over Japan in 1945. Zeppo died on November 30, 1979, from cancer.- Actor
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Ray Milland became one of Paramount's most bankable and durable stars, under contract from 1934 to 1948, yet little in his early life suggested a career as a motion picture actor.
Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones in the Welsh town of Neath, Glamorgan, to Elizabeth Annie (Truscott) and Alfred Jones. He spent his youth in the pursuit of sports. He became an expert rider early on, working at his uncle's horse-breeding estate while studying at the King's College in Cardiff. At 21, he went to London as a member of the elite Household Cavalry (Guard for the Royal Family), undergoing a rigorous 19-months training, further honing his equestrian skills, as well as becoming adept at fencing, boxing and shooting. He won trophies, including the Bisley Match, with his unit's crack rifle team. However, after four years, he suddenly lost his means of financial support (independent income being a requirement as a Guardsman) when his stepfather discontinued his allowance. Broke, he tried his hand at acting in small parts on the London stage.
There are several stories as to how he derived his stage name. It is known, that during his teens he called himself "Mullane", using his stepfather's surname. He may later have suffused "Mullane" with "mill-lands", an area near his hometown. When he first appeared on screen in British films, he was billed first as Spike Milland, then Raymond Milland.
In 1929, Ray befriended the popular actress Estelle Brody at a party and, later that year, visited her on the set of her latest film, The Plaything (1929). While having lunch, they were joined by a producer who persuaded the handsome Welshman to appear in a motion picture bit part. Ray rose to the challenge and bigger roles followed, including the male lead in The Lady from the Sea (1929). The following year, he was signed by MGM and went to Hollywood, but was given little to work with, except for the role of Charles Laughton's ill-fated nephew in Payment Deferred (1932). After a year, Ray was out of his contract and returned to England.
His big break did not come until 1934 when he joined Paramount, where he was to remain for the better part of his Hollywood career. During the first few years, he served an apprenticeship playing second leads, usually as the debonair man-about-town, in light romantic comedies. He appeared with Burns and Allen in Many Happy Returns (1934), enjoyed third-billing as a British aristocrat in the Claudette Colbert farce The Gilded Lily (1935) and was described as "excellent" by reviewers for his role in the sentimental drama Alias Mary Dow (1935). By 1936, he had graduated to starring roles, first as the injured British hunter rescued on a tropical island by The Jungle Princess (1936), the film which launched Dorothy Lamour's sarong-clad career. After that, he was the titular hero of Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) and, finally, won the girl (rather than being the "other man") in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy Easy Living (1937). He also re-visited the tropics in Ebb Tide (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938) and Tropic Holiday (1938), as well as being one of the three valiant brothers of Beau Geste (1939).
In 1940, Ray was sent back to England to star in the screen adaptation of Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears (1940), for which he received his best critical reviews to date. He was top-billed (above John Wayne) running a ship salvage operation in Cecil B. DeMille's lavish Technicolor adventure drama Reap the Wild Wind (1942), besting Wayne in a fight - much to the "Duke's" personal chagrin - and later wrestling with a giant octopus. Also that year, he was directed by Billy Wilder in a charming comedy, The Major and the Minor (1942) (co-starred with Ginger Rogers), for which he garnered good notices from Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. Ray then played a ghost hunter in The Uninvited (1944), and the suave hero caught in a web of espionage in Fritz Lang's thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).
On the strength of his previous role as "Major Kirby", Billy Wilder chose to cast Ray against type in the ground-breaking drama The Lost Weekend (1945) as dipsomaniac writer "Don Birnam". Ray gave the defining performance of his career, his intensity catching critics, used to him as a lightweight leading man, by surprise. Crowther commented "Mr. Milland, in a splendid performance, catches all the ugly nature of a 'drunk', yet reveals the inner torment and degradation of a respectable man who knows his weakness and his shame" (New York Times, December 3, 1945). Arrived at the high point of his career, Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, as well as the New York Critic's Award. Rarely given such good material again, he nonetheless featured memorably in many more splendid films, often exploiting the newly discovered "darker side" of his personality: as the reporter framed for murder by Charles Laughton's heinous publishing magnate in The Big Clock (1948); as the sophisticated, manipulating art thief "Mark Bellis" in the Victorian melodrama So Evil My Love (1948) (for which producer Hal B. Wallis sent him back to England); as a Fedora-wearing, Armani-suited "Lucifer", trawling for the soul of an honest District Attorney in Alias Nick Beal (1949); and as a traitorous scientist in The Thief (1952), giving what critics described as a "sensitive" and "towering" performance. In 1954, Ray played calculating ex-tennis champ "Tony Wendice", who blackmails a former Cambridge chump into murdering his wife, in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954). He played the part with urbane sophistication and cold detachment throughout, even in the scene of denouement, calmly offering a drink to the arresting officers.
With Lisbon (1956), Ray Milland moved into another direction, turning out several off-beat, low-budget films with himself as the lead, notably High Flight (1957), The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962). At the same time, he cheerfully made the transition to character parts, often in horror and sci-fi outings. In accordance with his own dictum of appearing in anything that had "any originality", he worked on two notable pictures with Roger Corman: first, as a man obsessed with catalepsy in The Premature Burial (1962); secondly, as obsessed self-destructive surgeon "Dr. Xavier" in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)-the Man with X-Ray Eyes, a film which, despite its low budget, won the 1963 Golden Asteroid in the Trieste Festival for Science Fiction.
As the years went on, Ray gradually disposed of his long-standing toupee, lending dignity through his presence to many run-of-the-mill television films, such as Cave in! (1983) and maudlin melodramas like Love Story (1970). He guest-starred in many anthology series on television and had notable roles in Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) and the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) (as Quorum member Sire Uri). He also enjoyed a brief run on Broadway, starring as "Simon Crawford" in "Hostile Witness" (1966), at the Music Box Theatre.
In his private life, Ray was an enthusiastic yachtsman, who loved fishing and collecting information by reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In later years, he became very popular with interviewers because of his candid spontaneity and humour. In the same self-deprecating vein he wrote an anecdotal biography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", in 1976. A film star, as well as an outstanding actor, Ray Milland died of cancer at the age of 79 in March 1986.- Actress
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Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater companies. At some point, at her devout maternal grandmother's insistence, when young Gladys was seriously ill with diphtheria, she received a Catholic baptism and her middle name was changed to "Marie".
In 1907, she adopted a family name Pickford and joined the David Belasco troupe, appearing in the long-running The Warrens of Virginia". She began in films in 1909 with the 'American Mutoscope & Biograph [us]', working with director D.W. Griffith.
For a short time in 1911, to earn more money, she joined the IMP Film Co. under Carl Laemmle. She returned to Biograph in 1912, then, in 1913 joined the Famous Players Film Company under Adolph Zukor. She then joined First National Exhibitor's Circuit in 1918. In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and then-future husband, Douglas Fairbanks.A building and an adjacent parking lot.- Actress
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Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on going into show business. After her formal education in the Chicago school system and elsewhere, she began work in a department store as a salesclerk. In 1915, at the age of 18, she decided to go to a Chicago movie studio with an aunt to see how motion pictures were made. She was plucked out of the crowd, because of her beauty, to be included as a bit player in the film The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915). In her next film, she was an extra also, when she appeared in At the End of a Perfect Day (1915). After another uncredited role, Gloria got a more substantial role in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). In 1916, she first appeared with future husband Wallace Beery. Once married, the two pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to the film colony of Hollywood. Once out west, Gloria continued her torrid pace in films. She seemed to be in hit after hit in such films as The Pullman Bride (1917), Shifting Sands (1918), and Don't Change Your Husband (1919). By the time of the latter, Gloria had divorced Beery and was remarried, but it was not to be her last marriage, as she collected a total of six husbands. By the middle 1920s, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. It has been said that Gloria made and spent over $8 million in the '20s alone. That, along with the six marriages she had, kept the fans spellbound with her escapades for over 60 years. They just couldn't get enough of her. Gloria was 30 when the sound revolution hit, and there was speculation as to whether she could adapt. She did. In 1928, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role of Sadie Thompson in the film of the same name but lost to Janet Gaynor for 3 different films. The following year, she again was nominated for the same award in The Trespasser (1929). This time, she lost out to Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (1930). By the 1930s, Gloria pared back her work with only four films during that time. She had taken a hiatus from film work after 1934's Music in the Air (1934) and would not be seen again until Father Takes a Wife (1941). That was to be it until 1950, when she starred in Sunset Blvd. (1950) as Norma Desmond opposite William Holden. She played a movie actress who was all but washed up. The movie was a box office smash and earned her a third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, but she lost to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950). The film is considered one of the best in the history of film and, on June 16, 1998, was named one of the top 100 films of all time by the American Film Institute, placing 12th. After a few more films in the 1950s, Gloria more or less retired. Throughout the 1960s, she appeared mostly on television. Her last fling with the silver screen was Airport 1975 (1974), wherein she played herself. Gloria died on April 4, 1983, in New York City at the age of 84. There was never anyone like her, before or since.- Actor
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Hollywood's original Latin Lover, a term that was invented for Rudolph Valentino by Hollywood moguls. Alla Nazimova's friend Natacha Rambova (nee Winifred Hudnut) became romantically involved with Rudy and they lived together in her bungalow from 1921 (during the filming of Camille) until they eloped to Mexico on May 13, 1922 believing that his divorce from Jean Acker was official. After their re-marriage two years later she left him because he signed a contract that barred her from being involved in his pictures and wasn't allowed on set. She went to Nice to live with her parents and never entered their new mansion, Falcon Lair. He began to date sexy Pola Negri and was also linked to Vilma Banky. While he was touring to promote his last film, an editorial in the Chicago Tribune accused him of "effeminization of the American male". He defended his manhood by challenging the article's writer to a boxing match; it never took place, but another writer for the paper did enter the ring on behalf of the author who would not be named, and Valentino defeated him. He died shortly afterward while he was in New York attending the premiere of his last film. He collapsed in his hotel on August 15, 1926 and died on August 23, after an operation that led to an infection. 80,000 mourners nearly caused a riot at his New York funeral. Another funeral followed in California.- Actress
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Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part in Night After Night (1932), her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong (1933) was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee (1940) with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette (1977), which also came from a play. She died on November 22, 1980.- Producer
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His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his stage debut in 1900. For twelve years he was actor/manager of his mother's theatrical company. In 1913, Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and DeMille formed the Lasky Film Company (which years later evolved into Paramount Pictures), and the next year went west to California and produced the successful six reeler, The Squaw Man (1914), of historical significance as the first feature length film produced in Hollywood. He championed the switch from short to feature-length films and is often credited with making Hollywood the motion picture capital of the world. Rather than putting his money into known stars, he emphasized production values. He also developed stars, notably Gloria Swanson. He produced and directed 70 films and was involved in many more. Many of his films were romantic sexual comedies (he is supposed to have believed that Americans were curious only about money and sex). His best-known were biblical/religious epics: Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). From 1936 to 1945 he hosted and directed the hour-long "Lux Radio Theatre", which brought the actors and stories of many movies to the airwaves and further established him as the symbol of Hollywood. He appeared as himself in the classic Sunset Blvd. (1950) with his former star Gloria Swanson as the fictitious disturbed former silent film actress Norma Desmond. His niece Agnes de Mille was the acclaimed choreographer of both the original Broadway production and film version of Oklahoma! (1955).- Producer
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Max Fleischer was an American animator, inventor, and film producer from Krakow. As an inventor, Fleischer is primarily known for inventing the rotoscope, an animation technique that allowed animators to draw realistic images and movements, based on live-action images. He later co-founded the short-lived animation studio Fleischer Studios (1929-1942), and served as the studio head for its entire history. The studio was primarily known for creating short film featuring the animated characters Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, and Bimbo the Dog. It also introduced the first animated adaptations of both Popeye and Superman. Fleischer lost control over his studio to Paramount Pictures, though he would continue to work in animation for decades.
In 1883, Fleischer was born to a Jewish family in Krakow, Austria-Hungary. His father was the tailor Aaron Fleischer, and his mother was the housewife Malka "Amelia" Palasz. The Fleischer family emigrated to the United States in 1887, settling in New York City. Aaron became an exclusive tailor to high society clients, and the family enjoyed a middle-class life for about a decade. Aaron lost control over his tailor shop in the late 1890s, forcing the family to move to an impoverished section of Brooklyn.
Fleischer received commercial art training at the Cooper Union, a private college located at Cooper Square in New York City. He received formal art training at the Art Students League of New York. His teacher there was the Canadian painter George Bridgman (1864-1943). Fleischer also received further education at "Mechanics and Tradesman's School".
After completing his education, Fleischer was hired as an errand boy by the newspaper "The Brooklyn Daily Eagle" (1841-1955, 1960-1963). He remained there for years, working variously as a photographer, a photoengraver, and a staff cartoonist. He initially drew only single-panel editorial cartoons. He later created the satirical comic strips "Little Algie" and "S.K. Sposher, the Camera Fiend".
Fleischer left the newspaper c. 1905, in order to work as a technical illustrator for the Electro-Light Engraving Company in Boston. In 1909, he was hired as a catalog illustrator for the Crouse-Hinds Company. In 1910, he was hired as an art editor by the magazine "Popular Science". By 1914, the first commercially produced animated short films appeared in movie theaters. The characters; movements were generally "stiff and jerky", and so Fleischer started working on a method to trace images from a live-action film. He worked on his rotoscope from 1914 to 1916, and was granted a patent for the invention in 1917. This allowed the production of realistic animation.
Fleischer partnered up with his brother Dave Fleischer, to produce the animated film series "Out of the Inkwell" (1918-1929). It included 62 animated films, mostly featuring Koko the Clown as the protagonist. The character was inspired by Dave's previous job as a clown at Coney Island. The selling point of the series were the on-screen interactions between live-action artists and their pen and ink creations. The Fleischer brothers were eventually able to hire the experienced animator Dick Huemer, who produced more fluid animation for their films.
In 1924, Fleischer and a number of partners co-founded the film company Red Seal Pictures Corporation, which owned 36 theaters on the East Coast of the United States. One of Fleischer's partners was the inventor Lee de Forest (1873-1961). De Forest was working on a method to produce sound-on-film recordings for films. Fleischer gained access to de Forest's Phonofilm process, and went to work in creating animated short films with sound. The first of them was "My Old Kentucky Home" (1926), which also featured the first use of lip-synch in animation. Fleischer eventually worked on 19 early sound films, but the Red Seal went bankrupt in 1927.
From 1927 to 1929, the Fleischer brothers had a brief business partnership with film producer Alfred Weiss. They agreed to produce animated short films for Paramount Pictures, which would serve as their distributor. The partnership dissolved due to the mismanagement of Weiss, but the Fleischer brothers would maintain a working relationship with Paramount for the following 15 years.
In 1929, Fleischer co-founded the Fleischer studios. The company's staff initially set up operations at the Carpenter-Goldman Laboratories in Queens. Only 8 months later, they moved to a new location in Broadway. This would remain their main headquarters until 1938.Fleischer and his staff started work on the film series "Screen Songs" (1929-1938). It featured sing-along animated shorts, teaching the lyrics of various songs to the audience. The short films featured performances by popular musicians of the 1930s, such as Lillian Roth, Ethel Merman, and Cab Calloway.
The short film "Dizzy Dishes" (1930) introduced the character of Betty Boop, a caricature of a Jazz Age flapper. She quickly became a recurring character, and served initially as an imitation of real-life singer Helen Kane (1904-1966). Betty was a hit with the audience, and she was granted her own film series in 1932. She starred in 90 films between 1932 and 1939, and had guest-star roles in other 36 films between 1930 and 1933. She was the most popular character of the Fleischer Studios, regarded as the first "sex symbol" on the animated screen.
In late 1932, Fleischer licensed the rights to the comic strip character Popeye the Sailor. The character was granted a film series of his own, appearing in 109 short films between 1933 and 1942. The series introduced animated adaptation of several comic strip characters from the series "Thimble Theatre" (1919-1994), such as the damsel-in-distress Olive Oyl, the muscular bully Bluto, and the gluttonous scam artist J. Wellington Wimpy. The characters became household names, with Popeye himself said to surpass Mickey Mouse in popularity by the end of the 1930s.
Due to a business deal, the Fleischer Studios acquired much of its funding from a long-term partnership with Paramount Pictures. At times when Paramount itself was facing financial problems, the studio found itself suffering from a lack of funding. Fleischer was initially unable to secure rights to the innovative three-color Technicolor process in 1932. The studio introduced its first color cartoons in 1934, but had to use the limited two-color processes of Cinecolor (red and blue) and Two-Color Technicolor (red and green). They introduced their first film in three-color Technicolor in 1936. By that point, the rival studio Walt Disney Animation Studios was considered to be more innovative in its uses of color animation.
In the mid-1930s, Fleischer patented the use of three-dimensional effects in animation. He promoted these under the name the "Stereoptical Process". The process was used to great effect in the featurettes "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" (1936) and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves" (1937). Max Fleischer started petitioning Paramount to fund an animated feature film, but their executives were doubtful of its commercial value. Following the box office success of the animated feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), Fleischer received sufficient funding to work on his own feature film.
In 1938, the Fleischer Studios moved its headquarters to Miami, Florida. The studio staff started working on "Gulliver's Travels" (1939), the second American animated feature film to be produced. During its production, the personal relationship between brothers and business partners Max and Dave Fleischer deteriorated. Max reportedly disapproved of Dave's love life, and attempted to end one of Dave's romantic relationships. The film was eventually completed and grossed more than $3 million dollars at the American box office.
To Max Fleischer's disappointment, the Fleischer Studios found itself in debt due to their first feature film. Paramount received a lion's share of the profits from the American box office, and the animation studio had no rights to any profits from the film's releases in foreign markets. In addition, Paramount penalized the animation studio with the debt of 350,000 dollars. The film had exceeded its original budget, and this violated a contract agreement with Paramount. The Fleischer Studios were now indebted to their distributor.
In 1940, Fleischer Studios introduced three new animated series: "Gabby", "Animated Antics", and "Stone Age Cartoons". "Gabby" was a spin-off from "Gulliver's Travels" , featuring the adventures of the film's town crier. "Animated Antics" was an anthology series, often featuring supporting characters from "Gulliver's Travels". "Stone Age Cartoons" featured a surprisingly modern take on Stone Age life, and has been cited as a precursor to "The Flintstones". All three series were regarded as commercial failures, generating little interest from exhibitors.
In search for a more viable series, Fleischer licensed to the superhero character Superman. The studio created a short-lived series for the character, releasing 9 short films between 1941 and 1942. It was the character's first animated adaptation, and featured more technically complex elements than most of its contemporaries in animation. Each episode had a budget of about 50,000 dollars, twice the budget of the typical Popeye cartoon in the same period. Frustrated that they had to animate the character leaping from place to place (as in the comics), the Fleischer brothers came up with the idea that Superman could fly on his own. The high cost of the series turned out to be a problem, but the series was popular.
Meanwhile, the Fleischer brothers were working on their second animated feature, at the request of Paramount. The film in question was "Mr. Bug Goes to Town", a tale of anthropomorphic insects. It was scheduled for release in early December 1941, but its release was postponed for months due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Theater owners showed only a limited interest in the film, and it turned out to be a box office bomb.
With the Fleischer Studios heavily in debt to Paramount and Dave Fleischer having already resigned, Paramount decided to claim ownership over the animation studio and its characters. Max Fleischer was forced to resign, while the studio was re-organized into the Paramount subsidiary Famous Studios (1942-1967). The most notable character of the new studio was Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Fleischer was briefly out of work. He subsequently was hired as the head of the animation department for "The Jam Handy Organization", a Detroit-based company owned by film producer (1886-1983). Fleischer primarily worked on animated training films for the Army and Navy during World War II. He continued working for Handy until 1953. His most notable film for this entire period was "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1948), the first animated adaptation of a 1939 Christmas story by Robert L. May. Fleischer personally directed the film.
In 1953, Fleischer was hired as a production manager by Brayco. It was a company which primarily produced filmstrips from the late 1960s to its closing in 1963. It had formed as a corporate successor to the animation studio Bray Productions (1912-1928), where Fleischer had briefly worked in his early career.
In 1955, Fleischer won a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. They had the rights to re-release most of his former films, but the court decided that they did not have the right to remove Fleischer's name from the film credits. In 1958, Fleischer and his new partner Hal Seeger (1917-2005) founded the minor animation studio "Out of the Inkwell Films". They had the intention to revive "Out of the Inkwell" as a television series. They eventually produced 100 color episodes of the new series, released from 1960 to 1961. Due to his failing health, Fleischer decided against appearing in person in the live-action segments.
For most of the 1960s, Fleischer made efforts to reclaim ownership over Betty Boop, his most popular character. Paramount had sold its rights to the character in 1958, but the courts were unable to decide which person or company held the exclusive rights to the character.
In 1967, Fleischer and his wife Essie retired to the Motion Picture Country House, a retirement community for film industry people. The retirement community was located at the southwest end of the San Fernando Valley, and had been operational since 1942. In September 1942, Fleischer died there, due to "arterial sclerosis of the brain". He was 89-years-old at the time of his death, having survived several of his former partners and employees.
Fleischer's animated works eventually found a new audience in animation fans who regard them as an alternative to Walt Disney's works, and who often find them to be more appealing to older audiences. Works of the Fleischer Studios have also been popular with animation historians, which regard them highly for their innovations. Fleischer remains one of the most famous animated film producers of the 20th century, but his reputation mostly endures due to the cult following of some of his characters.- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
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Edith Head was born on 28 October 1897 in San Bernardino, California, USA. She was a costume designer and actress, known for Sabrina (1954), All About Eve (1950) and Roman Holiday (1953). She was married to Wiard Ihnen and Charles Head. She died on 24 October 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at night. In 1911 he joined the Deutsches Theater of famous director/producer/impresario Max Reinhardt, and was able to move up to leading acting roles in a short time. He took an extra job as a handyman while learning silent film acting at Berlin's Bioscope film studios. The next year he launched his own film career by appearing in a series of comedies showcasing traditional ethnic Jewish slice-of-life fare. Finding great success in these character roles, Lubitsch turned to broader comedy, then beginning in 1914 started writing and directing his own films.
His breakthrough film came in 1918 with The Eyes of the Mummy (1918) ("The Eyes of the Mummy"), a tragedy starring future Hollywood star Pola Negri. Also that year he made Carmen (1918), again with Negri, a film that was commercially successful on the international level. His work already showed his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in not only comedy but historical drama. The year 1919 found Lubitsch directing seven films, the two standouts being his lavish Passion (1919) with two of his favorite actors--Negri (yet again) and Emil Jannings. His other standout was the witty parody of the American upper crust, The Oyster Princess (1919) ("The Oyster Princess"). This film was a perfect example of what became known as the Lubitsch style, or the "Lubitsch Touch", as it became known--sophisticated humor combined with inspired staging that economically presented a visual synopsis of storyline, scenes and characters.
His success in Europe brought him to the shores of America to promote The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) ("The Loves of Pharaoh") and he become acquainted with the thriving US film industry. He soon returned to Europe, but came back to the US for good to direct new friend and influential star Mary Pickford in his first American hit, Rosita (1923). The Marriage Circle (1924) began Lubitsch's unprecedented run of sophisticated films that mirrored the American scene (though always relocated to foreign or imaginary lands) and all its skewed panorama of the human condition. There was a smooth transition between his silent films for Warner Bros. and the sound movies--usually at Paramount--now embellished with the flow of speech of Hollywood's greats lending personal nuances to continually heighten the popularity at the box office and the fame of Lubitsch's first-rate versatility in crafting a smart film. There was a mix of pioneering musical films and some drama also through the 1930s. The of those films resulted in Paramount making him its production chief in 1935, so he could produce his own films and supervise production of others. In 1938 he signed a three-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox.
Certainly two of his most beloved films near the end of his career dealt with the political landscape of the World War II era. He moved to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), a fast-paced comedy of "decadent" Westerners meeting Soviet "comrades" who were seeking more of life than the mother country could--or would--offer. During the war he directed perhaps his most beloved comedy--controversial to say the least, dark in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way--but certainly a razor-sharp tour de force in smart, precise dialog, staging and story: To Be or Not to Be (1942), produced by his own company, Romaine Film Corp. It was a biting satire of Nazi tyranny that also poked fun at Lubitsch's own theater roots with the problems and bickering--but also the triumph--of a somewhat raggedy acting troupe in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Jack Benny's perfect deadpan humor worked well with the zany vivaciousness of Carole Lombard, and a cast of veteran character actors from both Hollywood and Lubitsch's native Germany provided all the chemistry needed to make this a classic comedy, as well as a fierce statement against the perpetrators of war. The most poignant scene was profoundly so, with Felix Bressart--another of Reinhardt's students--as the only Jewish bit player in the company. His supreme hope is a chance to someday play Shylock. He gets his chance as part of a ruse in front of Adolf Hitler's SS bodyguards. The famous soliloquy was a bold declaration to the world of the Axis' brutal inhumanity to man, as in its treatment of and plans for the Jewry of Europe.
Lubitsch had a massive heart attack in 1943 after having signed a producer/director's contract with 20th Century-Fox earlier that year, but completed Heaven Can Wait (1943). His continued efforts in film were severely stymied but he worked as he could. In late 1944 Otto Preminger, another disciple of Reinhardt's Viennese theater work, took over the direction of A Royal Scandal (1945), with Lubitsch credited as nominal producer. March of 1947, the year of his passing, brought a special Academy Award (he was nominated three times) to the fading producer/director for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures." At his funeral, two of his fellow directorial émigrés from Germany put his epitaph succinctly as they left. Billy Wilder noted, "No more Lubitsch." William Wyler answered, "Worse than that - no more Lubitsch films."- Writer
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While in junior high school, he became interested in science fiction, and years later while reading a copy of 'Astounding Stories' when he was working as an airline pilot, he decided to give it up and become a writer. He moved West and joined the Los Angeles police force to gain experience that would help him toward a writing career in Hollywood. He began selling scripts for television shows such as 'Dragnet' and 'Naked City'. He was head writer on 'Have Gun Will Travel' for two years, winning the 'Writer's Guild Award' for 'Best Script'. He created and produced 'The Lieutenant' followed by 3 years of the 'Star Trek' television series and produced the films 'Pretty Maids All in a Row', the first 'Star Trek' film and was executive consultant on the following two.- Writer
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Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWI. Upon his return to Maison Desti, he invented a kissproof lipstick, Red-Red Rouge, in 1920. Shortly after his first marriage, his mother demanded that he return control of the company to her. Kicked out of Maison Desti, he turned to inventing. A tickertape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, an automobile and an airplane were among his some of his commercially unsuccessful inventions. He began writing stories and, while recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, wrote his first play, "The Guinea Pig". In financial trouble over producing his plays, he moved to Hollywood in 1932 to make money. It wasn't long before he became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his work and wanted to direct the scripts he wrote. Paramount gave him this chance as part of a deal for selling his script for The Great McGinty (1940), at a cheap price. The film's success launched his career as writer/director and he had several hits over the next four years. That success emboldened him to become an independent filmmaker, but that did not last long--he had a string of commercial failures and acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist. He moved to France to make what turned out to be his last movie, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955). He died at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City, in 1959.- Director
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Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. His father, a former soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, could not support his family in either city; Sternberg remembered him only as "an enormously strong man who often used his strength on me." Forced by poverty to drop out of high school, von Sternberg worked for a time in a Manhattan store that sold ribbons and lace to hat makers. A chance meeting in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, led to a new career in the cleaning and repair of movie prints. This job provided an entrée to the film production industry, then flourishing in Fort Lee, New Jersey. As an apprentice film-maker, from around 1916 to the early 1920s, von Sternberg developed a lasting contempt for most of the directors and producers he worked for (an exception was Emile Chautard, who acted in some of Sternberg's films of the 1930s), and was sure that he could improve on their products. Staked to a few thousand dollars -- even then an absurdly small budget -- von Sternberg proved himself right with The Salvation Hunters (1925), which became a critical and financial hit. For the next couple of years he seesawed between acclaim and oblivion, sometimes on the same project (for instance, he received the rare honor of directing a film for Charles Chaplin, but it was shelved after only one showing and later disappeared forever). His commercial breakthrough was Underworld (1927), a prototypical Hollywood gangster film; behind the scenes, von Sternberg successfully battled Ben Hecht, the writer, for creative control. With The Last Command (1928), starring the equally strong-willed Emil Jannings, von Sternberg began a period of almost a decade as one of the most celebrated artists of world cinema. Both his film career and his personal life were transformed in the making of The Blue Angel (1930). Chosen by Jannings and producer Erich Pommer to make Germany's first major sound picture, von Sternberg gambled by casting Marlene Dietrich, then obscure, as Lola Lola, the night-club dancer who leads Jannings' character into depravity. The von Sternberg-Dietrich story, both on-screen (he directed her in six more movies) and off (he became one of her legions of lovers, more in love with her than most) is a staple of film histories. His films of the mid-'30s are among the most visionary ever made in Hollywood, but in spite of their visual sumptuousness, contemporary audiences found them dramatically inert. The films' mediocre box office and a falling-out with Ernst Lubitsch, then head of production at Paramount Pictures (Sternberg's employer), meant that after The Devil Is a Woman (1935) he would never again have the control he needed to express himself fully. In his sardonic autobiography, he more or less completely disowned all of his subsequent films. In spite (or perhaps because) of his truncated career and bitter personality, von Sternberg remains a hero to many critics and filmmakers. His best films exemplify the proposition, as he put it, that in any worthwhile film the director is "the determining influence, and the only influence, despotically exercised or not, which accounts for the worth of what is seen on the screen."- Producer
- Additional Crew
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Legendary producer Hal B. Wallis was born in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles when he was in his early 20s. He got a job managing a theater owned by Warner Bros., and his success at the job caught the eye of studio head Jack L. Warner, who gave him a job in the studio's publicity department. Within a few months Wallis had worked his way up to head of the department. He was named studio manager in 1928 and production manager shortly thereafter, but was pushed aside by another legendary producer, future 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1933 Zanuck left Warner and Wallis moved back to his old position. He oversaw the production of many of Warners' most famous films, including Little Caesar (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1942). In 1944 Wallis left Warner and formed his own production company, and achieved even more success, being responsible for such films as The Rose Tattoo (1955), Becket (1964), and a string of Elvis Presley movies, most of which were economically produced and all of which made a fortune. Wallis' last picture was the John Wayne western Rooster Cogburn (1975).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre (with whom he shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. (Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981.- Producer
Barney Balaban was born in 1887. He was a producer. He died in 1971.Studio president - 1936 to 1964- Charlie Bluhdorn was born on 20 September 1926 in Vienna, Austria. He was a producer, known for Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969). He was married to Yvette Le Marrec. He died on 20 February 1983 in the Dominican Republic.Founder of Gulf+Western
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Sherry was born in Chicago and pursued an acting career after graduating from Northwestern University. After appearing in two films, Loving (1970) and Rio Lobo (1970), Sherry decided to leave the acting field. In 1974, Sherry joined Talent Associates, as an executive in charge of development. In 1975 she joined MGM as an executive story editor. Three years later, she was appointed vice president in charge of production at Columbia. With the success that she achieved with a number of profitable movies, she was hired as President of 20th Century-Fox. In 1984, she joined Stanley R. Jaffe to form the independent production company, named Jaffe-Lansing. When Jaffe was appointed president of Paramount Communications in 1990, Sherry became Chairman of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group.- Additional Crew
- Producer
Lasky, one of the first pioneers of the Hollywood film industry and its first genuine 'mogul', was not only a consummate showman and entrepreneur, but a jack-of-all-trades. Born in San Francisco in September 1880, the son of a shoe salesman, he attended high school in San Jose and held down his first job at seventeen as a reporter for the San Francisco Post. He supplemented his scant income by moonlighting as a cornettist at local theatres. In 1899, he became infected with the prevailing gold fever and joined the rush to Alaska. He found no gold, but instead lost his own money. The next ten years saw him playing his cornet in Honolulu as the only white musician in the Royal Hawaiian Band, and then forming a vaudeville double act with his sister Blanche, touring on the East Coast and in Europe. By 1911, Lasky had established himself in New York. Already corpulent, balding, and wearing his trademark rimless glasses, looking every inch the promoter, Lasky started to produce musicals and comedy sketches for vaudeville. He also set up his own nightclub in New York, but it turned out a financial fiasco to the tune of $100,000. Having befriended the actor and writer Cecil B. DeMille, Lasky then decided to make his fortune in the burgeoning film industry.
In 1913, along with DeMille and his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later to become Samuel Goldwyn), Lasky established the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company with a starting capital of $26,500. His first feature was to be an epic western, The Squaw Man (1914), acquired for the then-princely sum of $15,000. It was to be filmed not at the regular facilities at Ft. Lee, New Jersey, but - for added realism - on location out west. Once arrived at their destination, Flagstaff, Arizona, Lasky and his companions found themselves in the middle of an old-fashioned range war between cattlemen and sheepmen. They wisely decided to keep on going and ended up in the small Californian town of Hollywood, where they rented a barn at the corner of Vine and Selma Street for $75 a month.
Production on the first ever feature shot in Hollywood began with one barn, one truck and a single camera (operated by Oscar Apfel) in January 1914. 'The Squaw Man' was a huge financial success, enabling Lasky to contract several new stars, including Blanche Sweet, Wallace Reid and Ina Claire. In 1915, he scooped his competitors again, by signing popular opera diva Geraldine Farrar to a three-picture deal for a fee of $20,000, a house (complete with servants), a chauffeur-driven limousine and a private railway carriage for her trip from, and back to, the Big Apple. At this time, the company counted among its regular roster, five directors, five cinematographers and some eighty contract players. All output was released through the Paramount Pictures Corporation, which had been formed by Adolph Zukor in partnership with Lasky, Goldfish and West Coast theatre proprietor W.W. Hodkinson. In 1916, Lasky merged with Zukor's Famous Players to become Famous Players Lasky (re-formed as Paramount in 1927), serving as vice president in charge of production under Zukor . In this capacity, he imprinted his artistic vision on much of the studio's output during the silent era, signing Rudolph Valentino for The Sheik (1921), discovering Maurice Chevalier in 1929, and so on. His input was also reflected in Paramount's overall predilection for adventure films and romances with a continental flavour. Paramount emerged from the silent era as the pre-eminent studio in Hollywood with the most cosmopolitan roster of stars and directors. Lasky himself became enormously wealthy, amassing a fortune estimated somewhere between $12 and $20 million - and losing it all during the Wall Street Crash.
Under pressure from the IRS and back-stabbed by his own personal assistant, Lasky was eventually ousted from his executive position at Paramount in 1932. Unsettled, he worked as an independent producer for Fox, then Warner Brothers and RKO. There was also a short-lived partnership with Mary Pickford in 1935, and, between 1938 and 1940, he produced his own radio talent show, 'Gateway to Hollywood'. During his final creative spell at Warners, he produced three seminal motion pictures: Sergeant York (1941), The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) and Rhapsody in Blue (1945). For the last few years of his life, he was virtually unemployed. In 1957, Lasky finally returned to Paramount to work on a project which was to settle his dept with the IRS. He never completed it, dying in January 1958, almost forgotten by the industry he helped to create.- Additional Crew
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Adolph Zukor was a poor Hungarian immigrant when he arrived in the United States in 1889. He tried his hand in the fur trade (starting as a sweeper for $2 a week pay) and proved his entrepreneurial acumen by steady advancement, eventually setting up successful businesses in New York and Chicago. By the time he reached thirty, he had already amassed a considerable personal fortune. As early as 1903, Zukor astutely forecast the prospective financial rewards to be made from the burgeoning celluloid medium. Within a decade, he became heavily involved in the independent production of 'flickers', setting up penny arcades with nickelodeons and shooting galleries. In partnership with Marcus Loew, Zukor soon operated a major chain of cinemas. In 1912, he acquired the American rights to a popular French four-reel feature film, Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912), starring Sarah Bernhardt. The picture premiered at New York's Lyceum Theatre and its inevitable box office success led Zukor to challenge the notion -- commonly held by thespians of the period -- that motion pictures were inferior to the stage and were 'beneath' stage actors. In short order, he succeeded in persuading important Broadway-based stars like Minnie Maddern Fiske and James K. Hackett to join his Famous Players Film Company (set up in partnership with Loew Enterprises and veteran impresario Daniel Frohman). Other big names soon followed: Marie Doro, Pauline Frederick, Henry Ainley, Florence Reed, to name but a few. The undisputed star on the Famous Players roster, however, was Mary Pickford -- signed for two years in August 1916.
Four days after Pickford signed her contract, Zukor inaugurated the forthcoming wave of Hollywood mergers by combining his interests with those of pioneer producer Jesse L. Lasky to create Famous Players-Lasky. Several other companies -- Morosco, Bosworth and Pallas -- were also acquired. The distribution chain Paramount Pictures Corporation, jointly created by Zukor and Lasky in 1914, served to ensure nationwide distribution (more than a hundred additional cinemas were purchased near the end of the decade, including prestige venues such as the Rialto and Rivoli on Broadway). By 1919, Zukor effectively dominated the film industry in America. At least half of the major stars in the business were on his payroll. Realart Pictures Corporation was added to the mix as an outlet for second features while the A-grade output was released through Artcraft. Two production facilities were in place, one in Hollywood, the other, Astoria Studios, in New York. A partnership between Zukor and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst also resulted in the formation of Cosmopolitan Productions (as a vehicle for films starring Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies). In 1924, Zukor's theatres began to proliferate even in Europe with the opening of the Paris Paramount and the London Plaza. Zukor further cemented this preeminent position in the industry by promoting the practice of 'block-booking'. This was a way of coercing independent theatre owners who wished to exhibit the films of a bankable box office star to also take a package -- sight unseen -- which was bound to include much of the lesser Realart product.
Between 1920 and 1923, Paramount averaged an annual profit of $4.5 million. By 1930, that figure had risen to $18.4 million. Wile this was largely the result of clever marketing and effective distribution, Zukor's shrewd, multifarious financial machinations had also contributed greatly to that success. He was not particularly concerned with film making itself, other than the monetary aspects (a long-standing dispute between Zukor and Cecil B. DeMille over budgets and salary demands led to Paramount's premier director departing the company in 1925). The artistic impetus for Paramount's rise to preeminence in the 20's was provided by the likes of Lasky and the creative genius of B.P. Schulberg (an independent producer with a keen eye for talent, hired in 1926 to head the West Coast studios as vice president in charge of production). Zukor, conversely, rarely left New York (except for a brief visit West in 1936 to help restructure the company).
In 1932, Paramount went bankrupt and declared a $ 15.8 million deficit. Chiefly to blame for this decline was an over-expansion propelled by Zukor himself, in particular the acquisition of the Publix theatre chain which had been bought with Paramount stock -- stock rendered all but worthless after the Wall Street Crash. Heads rolled, including those of Schulberg, sales chief Sidney Kent, and, ultimately, Lasky. Zukor, the consummate survivor, remained in place as company president until 1936, thereafter holding the position of chairman of the board and chairman emeritus until his death at the extraordinary age of 103. He went on to preside over a revitalised and profitable organisation (though no longer the industry leader it had been the 1920's -- a mantle now held by MGM). During the 1940's, Paramount showed record profits ($39.2 million in 1946)), a trend which continued through the 50's.
Zukor was described as mild-mannered, lean and aquiline in appearance, a reserved man who did not make friends easily. He also had a reputation for ruthlessness, which people like Samuel Goldwyn and Lewis J. Selznick could certainly attest to. Above all, he was a shrewd financier, never more than a self-proclaimed merchant with a 'calculated vision' who 'looked ahead a little and gambled a lot'.