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1-7 of 7
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
One of the most powerful men in Hollywood during the 1920's, Benjamin Percival Schulberg began his career as a reporter on the streets of New York. He had his first fling with the film industry after being hired as an assistant editor for a movie magazine. This work later enticed him to write several screenplays of his own, having joined the publicity department of a small studio, William Swanson's Rex (which, in June 1912, was absorbed into Universal). Schulberg then moved on to Famous Players as head of publicity, and, in 1919, founded his own production company, Preferred Pictures. Having secured a prestige signing of the actor Lon Chaney, Schulberg first hit the big time with the oriental drama Shadows (1922). However, his greatest coup as an independent producer was to discover and promote the 'It Girl', 18-year old red-head Clara Bow, who became the definitive 'jazzbaby' of the 1920's. Having acquired the right for the risqué novel by Percy Marks about jazz and flappers, he starred Clara in The Plastic Age (1925). In the same picture, he also introduced an unknown actor named Luis Alonso, who was destined for stardom under the name Gilbert Roland.
Unable to compete with the majors, Preferred Pictures filed for bankruptcy in 1925. However, the immense box-office success of "The Plastic Age" prompted Adolph Zukor at Paramount to offer Schulberg the position of head of the West Coast studios (while William LeBaron presided over the Eastern unit) and vice-president in charge of production, working directly under Jesse L. Lasky. Moving to Paramount, he took his company and Clara Bow with him. During his tenure between 1925 and 1932, Schulberg became one of the most popular and creative producers in the business. He was instrumental in making Paramount the leading film company in Hollywood during the 20's, by recruiting top directors, like Josef von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch and William A. Wellman. He was also in the forefront of technical innovation and helped the studio make a smooth transition from silent to sound films. Alas, Clara Bow, whom he had touted as the 'Anna Held of the Talkies', failed to make the grade, despite attempts to change her image. As a result, she left Paramount in 1931. The following year, Schulberg himself was ousted from his position during a studio-wide purge, which also claimed Lasky and head of sales Sidney Kent.
Schulberg continued on as an independent producer, with Paramount's B-unit and with Columbia, but with little financial or artistic success. Among the films he made during this period, only a few stand out, notably the comedy Three Cornered Moon (1933) and the crime drama Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), which first introduced the corpulent, sedentary detective in the shape of actor Edward Arnold. Disenchanted, Schulberg retired in 1943, lamenting an 'indifferent and forgetful industry'.- Chicago gangster George "Bugs" Moran was born to French immigrants on August 21, 1893 as Adelard Cunin in St. Paul, MN. He left St. Paul at age 19 and moved to Chicago, where he soon hooked up with several of the city's street gangs and got a taste of the criminal underworld. He took to it readily, and before he was 21 he had been jailed three times.
Moran, like most gang bosses of the 1920s, came into his own with the advent of Prohibition in 1920. He became the head of a very successful bootlegging outfit known as the North Side Gang. In that capacity he came into conflict with Chicago mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio, who only used violence when absolutely necessary, worked out an agreement with Moran and another gangster, Charles Dion O'Bannion, but that didn't last too long. Moran and O'Bannion detested Capone, often calling him by his nickname "Scarface"--Capone was extremely sensitive about the big knife scar on his face and was known to have killed men who used that nickname in his presence--and O'Bannion eventually paid the price for his defiance of Torrio and Capone: he was assassinated by Capone/Torrio gunmen. Moran attended O'Bannion's funeral--as did Capone and Torrio--and vowed to avenge his friend's murder.
Moran's mob, and the remnants of O'Bannion's gang, engaged in a bloody war with the Torrio/Capone outfit. They tried to kill both Torrio and Capone, once when Capone was spotted getting out of his car on the street and another time when he and his associates were dining in a restaurant. Capone escaped both attempts uninjured, but Torrio was not so luckily. A carload of Moran's gunmen spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire, hitting Torrio at least five times. He survived, but shortly afterward decided to retire and turned over the reins to Capone.
Capone and Moran eventually reached a truce, of sorts. While there were no bloody gun battles as there had been in the past, the two continued to take potshots at each other--Moran would hijack some of Capone's bootlegging trucks, Capone would burn down one of Moran's legitimate businesses, etc. However, it wasn't long before this escalated into full-scale violence, and Moran had several of Capone's friends and associates killed. Two of them were Antonio Lombardo and "Patsy" Lolordo, who had been longtime friends of Capone. He vowed to wipe out Moran once and for all. To that end, he engineered an elaborate assassination plot against Moran and his mob at their headquarters on Clark Street in Chicago. On Feb. 14, 1929, Capone sent a squad of killers dressed as police, complete with police car, to the building, expecting to find Moran and his gang there. Unfortunately, they mistook one of Moran's gangsters for him, not realizing that Moran was in fact walking toward the building when he saw the "police car" outside of it, and he turned around and walked away. Capone's killers lined up the seven men they found in the building and machine-gunned them to death, an incident that became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Moran, when asked by reporters who he thought was behind it, replied, "Nobody but Capone kills like that". His organization remained intact, but when Prohibition was repealed, his gang's fortunes declined, and a few years later Moran decided to leave Chicago. He didn't completely forgo the gangster life, however. In 1936, seven years after the St. Valentine's massacre, a hitman named Jack McGurn--aka "Machine Gun" McGurn--who was widely suspected of being the main triggerman in the massacre was murdered in a bowling alley by a squad of gunmen, and a valentine's card was left near his body. A rhort rhyming limerick about McGurn was also left with the body, and since both Moran and his mentor O'Bannion were known to favor pranks and limericks, it was widely assumed that it was Moran who had McGurn killed as payback for the 1929 killings.
Moran's fortunes declined in the 1930s. He spent several stretches in prison, for relatively penny-ante crimes like mail fraud and robbery. He was eventually sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Federal Prison on a bank-fraud charge, and it was in Leaenworth that he died of lung cancer on Feb. 25, 1957. He was buried in the pauper's section of the prison cemetery. - Actress
Juana Mansó was born in 1872 in Madrid, Spain. She was an actress, known for Barrio (1947), That Man from Tangier (1953) and El negro que tenía el alma blanca (1951). She died on 25 February 1957 in Madrid, Spain.- Henri Herpin was born in 1874 in Lille, Nord, France. Henri died on 25 February 1957 in Paris, France.
- Ada Cristina Almirante was born on 10 May 1884 in Verona, Italy. She was an actress, known for La riva dei bruti (1931), Il richiamo del cuore (1930) and La vacanza del diavolo (1931). She was married to Giacomo Almirante. She died on 25 February 1957 in Milan, Italy.
- Byron Robinson was born on 20 January 1900 in Longview, Texas, USA. He was an editor, known for Gorilla Ship (1932), Anybody's Blonde (1931) and The Shadow (1937). He died on 25 February 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Songwriter ("In the Cool of Evening"), producer, author, director and artist, educated at the University of Detroit and the Detroit Art School. He was an early designer of sheet music covers. In 1907 he came to New York, and designed and directed an act for Lillian Russell. In 1912, he became the chief writer and assistant to Florenz Ziegfeld, lasting to 1926. He composed Broadway stage scores and sketches for thirteen editions of the "Ziegfeld Follies" and two editions of "Ziegfeld's 9 O'Clock Revue", "No Foolin'", and "Zig-Zag" (in London), and he originated and directed eleven editions of the "Ziegfeld Midnight Frolics". He produced and directed the musicals "Yours Truly" and "Take the Air" (for which he also composed the score). He was president of the Catholic Actors Guild, and won an NAACC award. Joining ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, he became an ASCAP director in 1920, lasting to 1957. He served as ASCAP's president from 1924 to 1941. His chief musical collaborator was David Stamper, and he also worked with Rudolf Friml, Jerome Kern, Mischa Elman, Augustus Thomas, Werner Janssen, James Hanley, Ray Hubbell, Victor Herbert and Louis Hirsch. His song compositions include "Daddy Has a Sweetheart (and Mother Is Her Name)", "Hello, Frisco", "Have a Heart", "Hello, My Dearie", "Tulip Time", "Sally, Won't You Come Back?", "Sweet Sixteen", "Sunshine and Shadows", "The Love Boat", "My Rambler Rose", "'Neath the South Sea Moon", "Lovely Little Melody", "No Foolin'", "Florida, the Moon and You", "Some Boy", and "Garden of My Dreams".