|
1888 - The Roundhay Garden Scene, shot in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Le Prince, is credited as the first film. It is recorded at a groundbreaking 20 frames per second and is the earliest surviving film. Thomas Edison describes the concept of the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device. 1889 - Eastman Kodak is the first company to begin commercial production of film on a flexible transparent base, celluloid. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film are made in Hyde Park, London by William Friese Greene. LIST YEARS IN FILMS FILM Magic Lantern List of Black and White Films |
|
Garson Kanin (November 24, 1912 – March 13, 1999) was an American writer and director of plays and films. Born in Rochester, New York, he is most notable for
his first film A Man to Remember (1938), listed as one of the best top ten films in 1938 by The New York Times.
writing, in collaboration with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon (whom he married in 1942), the classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film comedies, the 1949 Adam's Rib and the 1952 Pat and Mike, both directed by George Cukor.
writing and staging the 1946 play Born Yesterday, which ran for 1642 performances; and with George Cukor helped work out the screenplay of the 1950 film adaptation (see Garson Kanin's "Hollywood" page 326).
directing the 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank, which ran for 717 performances.
directing the 1964 musical Funny Girl, which ran for 1348 performances.
He was a colleague of Thornton Wilder, who mentored him, and an admirer of the work of Frank Capra. Kanin said "I'd rather be Capra than God, if there is a Capra."
In 1990, the widower Kanin married the actress Marian Seldes, who survives him. Kanin died at age 86 in New York City of undisclosed causes.
He and Katharine Hepburn were the only witnesses to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's wedding in California.
He is quoted in saying "When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt" Read more Born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, Sicily, Capra moved to the United States in 1903 with his father Salvatore, his mother Rosaria Nicolosi and his siblings Giuseppa, Giuseppe, and Antonia. In California they met up with Benedetto Capra, (the oldest sibling) and settled in Los Angeles, California, where, in 1918, Frank Capra graduated from Throop Institute (later renamed the California Institute of Technology) with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering. On October 18, 1918, he joined the United States Army. While at the Presidio, he got Spanish influenza and was discharged on December 13. In 1920, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, registering his name as Frank Russell Capra. Like other prominent directors of the 1930s and '40s, Capra began his career in silent films, initially as a "prop man" and worked his way up to the director's chair, notably by directing and writing silent film comedies starring Harry Langdon and the Our Gang kids. In 1930 Capra went to work for Mack Sennett and then moved to Columbia Pictures where he formed a close association with screenwriter Robert Riskin (husband of Fay Wray) and cameraman Joseph Walker. In 1940, however, Sidney Buchman replaced Riskin as writer. For the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were originally offered the roles, but each felt that the script was poor, and Loy described it is one of the worst she had ever read, later noting that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she and Montgomery were offered. After Loy, Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also each rejected the part.[3] Constance Bennett wanted to, but only if she could produce it herself. Then Bette Davis wanted the role,[4] but she was under contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner refused to loan her to Columbia Studios.[5] Capra was unable to get any of the actresses he wanted for the part of Ellie Andrews, partly because no self-respecting star would make a film with only two costumes. Harry Cohn suggested Claudette Colbert to play the lead role. Both Capra and Clark Gable enjoyed making the movie, Colbert did not. After the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Capra directed a steady stream of films for Columbia intended to be inspirational and humanitarian. The best known are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the original Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life. His ten-year break from screwball comedy ended with the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. Among the actors who owed much of their early success to Capra were Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant and Donna Reed. Capra credited Jean Arthur as "my favorite actress". Capra's films in the 1930s enjoyed success at the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five top Oscars, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. In 1936, Capra won his second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and in 1938 he won his third Best Director Oscar in just five years for You Can't Take It with You which also won Best Picture. In addition to his three directing wins, Capra received directing nominations for three other films (Lady for a Day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life). He was also host of the 8th Academy Awards ceremony on 5 March 1936. Although these films, written by individuals on the political left, tend to exude the spirit of the New Deal, Capra himself was a conservative Republican who hated President Franklin D. Roosevelt (never voting for him), admired Franco and Mussolini, and later during the McCarthy era served as a secret FBI informer. Read more Valentino was born to Marie Berthe Gabrielle Barbin (1856 - 1919), who was French, and Giovanni Antonio Giuseppe Fidele Guglielmi (1853-1906), an Italian veterinarian. He had an older brother, Alberto (1892-1981), a younger sister, Maria, and an older sister Beatrice who died in infancy. In 1913 Valentino left for the United States, following the advice of his friend Domenico Savino. He arrived in New York City on December 23, 1913. After exhausting a small family legacy, he endured a spell of poverty during which he supported himself with odd jobs such as bussing tables in restaurants, and gardening. Eventually he found work as a taxi dancer and instructor, and later as an exhibition dancer. He gained attention for his rendition of the Argentine tango. Valentino joined an operetta company that traveled to Utah where it disbanded. From there he traveled to San Francisco where he met the actor Norman Kerry, who convinced him to try a career in cinema, still in the silent movie era. In 1919, after small parts in a dozen films (in which he typically played "heavies" and gangsters), he married Jean Acker, a part-Cherokee film starlet (who was later revealed to be a lesbian). Their marriage was rumored never to have been consummated - Acker reportedly locked him out of their hotel room on their wedding night - and despite Valentino's efforts at a reconciliation, the two separated shortly afterward, and were divorced in 1922. Valentino with the Arabian Stallion Jadaan. Publicity photo for Son of the Sheik, 1926 Valentino with the Arabian Stallion Jadaan. Publicity photo for Son of the Sheik, 1926 Rudolf and Natacha, his second wife. Portrait by James Abbe. Rudolf and Natacha, his second wife. Portrait by James Abbe. Valentino met screenwriter June Mathis who had been impressed by his role as a "cabaret parasite" in The Eyes of Youth. She suggested to the director Rex Ingram that Valentino be cast as one of the male leads in his next film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Released in 1921, the film was a commercial and critical success, and made Valentino a star, earning him the nickname "Tango Legs." It also led to his iconic role in The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik. Valentino first met Natacha Rambova (a costume designer and art director who was a protégé and possibly the lover of actress Alla Nazimova), on the set of Uncharted Seas in 1921. The two also worked together on the Nazimova production of Camille, by which time they were romantically involved. They married on May 13, 1922, in Mexicali, Mexico. This resulted in Valentino being jailed for bigamy, since his divorce from Acker was not finalized; California law at the time required that divorcing couples wait a full year before remarrying. Valentino and Rambova remarried a year later. Blood and Sand, released in 1922, and co-starring Lila Lee and the popular silent screen vamp Nita Naldi, further established Valentino as the leading male star of his time. However, in 1923, a dispute with Paramount Pictures resulted in an injunction which prohibited Valentino from making films with other producers. To ensure that his name remained in the public eye, Valentino, following the suggestion of his manager George Ullman, embarked on a national dance tour, sponsored by a cosmetics company, Mineralava, with Rambova, a former ballerina, as his partner. During this time he also traveled to Europe and had a memorable visit to his native town. Back in the United States, he was criticized by his fans for his newly cultivated beard and was forced to shave it off. In New York City on May 14, 1923, he made his first and last record, consisting of "Valentino's renditions" of Amy Woodforde-Finden's Kashmiri Song featured in The Sheik and Jose Padilla's "El Relicario," used in Blood and Sand. Read more Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, also known as Fatty Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933), was an American silent film comedian. Arbuckle is noted as one of the most popular actors of his era, but he is best remembered for a heavily publicized criminal prosecution that ended his career. Although he was acquitted by a jury with a written apology, the trial's scandal ruined the actor, who would not appear on screen again for another 10 years. Born in Smith Center, Kansas, to Mollie and William Goodrich Arbuckle, he had several years of Vaudeville experience, including work at Idora Park in Oakland, California. One of his earliest mentors was comedian Leon Errol. He began his film career with the Selig Polyscope Company in July 1909. Arbuckle appeared sporadically in Selig one-reelers until 1913, moved briefly to Universal Pictures and became a star in producer-director Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops comedies. On August 6, 1908 he married Araminta Estelle Durfee (1889-1975), the daughter of Charles Warren Durfee and Flora Adkins. Durfee starred in many early comedy films under the name Minta Durfee, often with Arbuckle. Despite his size Arbuckle was physically adept and agile. His comedies are noted as rollicking and fast-paced, have many chase scenes and feature sight gags. Arbuckle was fond of the famous "pie in the face," a cliché that has come to signify silent film comedy in general. The earliest known use of this gag was in the June 1913 Keystone one-reeler A Noise from the Deep starring Arbuckle and frequent screen partner Mabel Normand (Note, the first known "pie in the face" on screen is Ben Turpin's Mr. Flip in 1909. However, the oldest known thrown "pie in the face" is Normand ). While Normand is said to have thrown the first pie onscreen, a Hollywood legend of uncertain provenance recounts that Arbuckle created this gag after encountering Pancho Villa's army on the Rio Grande during a Vaudeville appearance in El Paso: While the Arbuckles were picnicking on the river, they and Villa's men playfully threw fruit at each other across the river. Roscoe is said to have knocked one of the men off his horse with a bunch of bananas, to Pancho's extreme amusement. Arbuckle disliked his screen nickname, which he had been given because of his substantial girth. However, the name Fatty (big buster) identifies the character Arbuckle portrayed onscreen (usually a naive hayseed), not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a biological female the character was named "Miss Fatty" (as in the film Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers). Hence, Arbuckle discouraged anyone from addressing him as "Fatty" offscreen. Arbuckle gave Buster Keaton his first film-making work in his 1917 short, The Butcher Boy. They soon became screen partners, with deadpan Buster soberly assisting wacky Roscoe in his crazy adventures. When Arbuckle was promoted to feature films, Keaton inherited the short-subject series, which launched his own career as a comedy star. Arbuckle and Keaton's close friendship never wavered, even when Arbuckle was beset by tragedy at the zenith of his career and through the depression and downfall that followed. In his autobiography Keaton described Arbuckle's playful nature and his love of practical jokes, including several elaborately constructed schemes the two successfully pulled off at the expense of various Hollywood studio heads and stars. At the height of his career, Arbuckle was under contract to Paramount Studios for $1 million a year, the first such documented salary paid by a Hollywood studio. He worked hard for the money, filming three feature films simultaneously. On September 3, 1921 Arbuckle took a break from his hectic film schedule and drove to San Francisco with two friends, movie directors Lowell Sherman and Fred Fischbach. The three checked into the St. Francis Hotel, decided to have a party and invited several women to their suite. During the carousing a 24-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe became seriously ill and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication. Rappe died three days later of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. Rappe's companion at the party, Maude Delmont, claimed Arbuckle had pierced Rappe's bladder while raping her. Accusations arose that Arbuckle had become carried away and tried to use a Coca-Cola or Champagne bottle to simulate sex with Rappe, which led to the injuries. Arbuckle was confident he had nothing to be ashamed of and denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later made a statement to the police in an attempt to get money from Arbuckle's attorneys, and the matter soon spun out of her control. Roscoe Arbuckle's career is cited by many film historians as one of the great tragedies of Hollywood. His trial was a major media event and stories in William Randolph Hearst's nationwide newspaper chain were written to make Arbuckle appear guilty. The resulting scandal destroyed his career and his personal life. Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death and studio executives ordered Arbuckle's industry friends not to publicly speak up for him. Charlie Chaplin was in England at the time. Buster Keaton did make a public statement in support of Arbuckle, calling Roscoe one of the kindest souls he had known. After two trials resulted in hung juries the third ended in an acquittal and a written apology from the jury. The Arbuckle case was one of four major Paramount-related scandals of the period. In 1920 Olive Thomas died after drinking a large quantity of medication meant for her husband (matinee idol Jack Pickford) which she had mistaken for water. In 1922 the murder of director William Desmond Taylor effectively ended the careers of actresses Mary Miles Minter and former Arbuckle screen partner Mabel Normand and in 1923 actor/director Wallace Reid's drug addiction resulted in his death. The scandals caused by these tragedies rocked Hollywood, leading to calls for reform of the "indecency" being "promoted" by motion pictures and resulted in the Production Code, which set standards for behavior depicted in Hollywood films. The Hays Office banned all of Arbuckle's films, although Will H. Hays later acknowledged that Arbuckle could be allowed to work in Hollywood. Ironically one of the few Arbuckle feature-length films known to survive is Leap Year, one of two finished films Paramount held from release during the scandal. It was eventually released in Europe but was never theatrically released in the United States or Britain. Read more Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, a successful urologist from Virginia, and Katharine Martha Houghton. Hepburn's father was a staunch proponent of publicizing the dangers of venereal disease in a time when such things were not discussed. Hepburn's mother campaigned for equal rights for women, and co-founded Planned Parenthood with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. The Hepburns demanded frequent familiar discussions on these topics and more, and as a result the Hepburn children were well versed in social and political issues. The Hepburn children were never asked to leave a room no matter what the topic of conversation was. Once a very young Katharine Hepburn even accompanied her mother to a suffrage rally. The Hepburn children, at their parents' encouragement, were unafraid of expressing frank views on various topics, including sex. "We were snubbed by everyone, but we grew quite to enjoy that," Hepburn later said of her unabashedly liberal family, who she credited with giving her a sense of adventure and independence. Her father insisted that his children be athletic, and encouraged swimming, riding, golf and tennis. Hepburn, eager to please her father, emerged as a fine athlete in her late teens, winning a bronze medal for figure skating from the Madison Square Garden skating club, shooting golf in the low eighties, and reaching the semifinal of the Connecticut Young Women's Golf Championship. Hepburn especially enjoyed swimming, and regularly took dips in the frigid waters that fronted her bayfront Connecticut home, generally believing that "the bitterer the medicine, the better it was for you." She continued her brisk swims well into her 80s. Hepburn would come to be recognized for her athletic physicality — she fearlessly performed her own pratfalls in films such as Bringing up Baby, which is now held up as an exemplar of screwball comedy. On 3 April 1921, while visiting friends in Greenwich Village, Hepburn found her older brother Tom (born 8 November 1905), whom she idolized, hanging from the rafters of the attic by a rope, dead of an apparent suicide. Her family denied that it was self-inflicted, arguing that he had been a happy boy. They insisted that it must have been an experimentation gone awry. It has also been speculated that the boy was trying to carry out a trick that he had seen in a play with Katharine. Hepburn was devastated by his death and sank into a depression. She shied away from children her own age and was mostly schooled at home. For many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until she wrote her autobiography, Me: Stories of my Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date. She was educated at the Kingswood-Oxford School before going on to attend Bryn Mawr College, where it was rumored she was expelled for smoking and breaking curfew, receiving a degree in history and philosophy in 1928, the same year she had her debut on Broadway after landing a bit part in Night Hostess. A banner year for Hepburn, 1928 also marked her nuptials to socialite businessman Ludlow ("Luddy") Ogden Smith, whom she had met while attending Bryn Mawr and married after a short engagement. Hepburn and Smith's marriage was rocky from the start — she insisted he change his name to S. Ogden Ludlow so she would not be confused with well-known musician Kate Smith. They were divorced in Mexico in 1934. Fearing that the Mexican divorce was not legal, Ludlow got a second divorce in the United States in 1942 and a few days later he remarried. Although their marriage was a failure, Katharine Hepburn often expressed her gratitude toward Ludlow for his financial and moral support in the early days of her career. "Luddy" continued to be a lifelong friend to her and the Hepburn family. On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Old Saybrook, Connecticut home when the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly escaped before the home was washed away. Read more |
Post-Vaudeville: some of the most prominent vaudevillians continued the migration to cinema, though others found that the gifts that had so delighted live audiences did not translate well into different media. Some performers whose eclectic styles did not conform well to the greater intimacy of the screen, like Bert Lahr, fashioned careers out of combining live performance, radio and film roles. Many others later appeared in the Catskill resorts that constituted the "Borscht Belt". And many simply retired from performance and entered the workaday world of the middle class, that group that vaudeville, more than anything else, had helped to articulate and entertain.
Yet vaudeville, both in its methods and ruling aesthetic, did not simply perish but rather resounded throughout the succeeding media of film, radio and television. The screwball comedies of the 1930s, those reflections of the brief moment of cinematic equipoise between dialogue and physicality, reflect the more madcap comedic elements of some vaudeville acts (e.g., The Three Keatons). In form, the television variety show owed much to vaudeville, riding the multi-act format to success in shows such as "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar and, of course, The Ed Sullivan Show. Even today, performers such as Bill Irwin, a Macarthur Fellow and Tony Award-winning actor, are frequently lauded as "New Vaudevillians".
References to vaudeville and the use of its distinctive argot continue throughout Western popular culture. Terms as “a flop” (an act that does badly), for example, have entered into accepted usage in the American idiom. Many of the most common performance techniques and "gags" of vaudeville entertainers are still seen on television and on film. Vaudeville, like its dime museum and variety theatre forebearers, also continued and solidified a strong American absorption with foreign entertainers.
Read more
PYGMALION:
Act One:
Covent Garden - 11.15p.m. A group of people are sheltering from the rain. Amongst them are the silly, shallow, social climbing Eynsford-Hills, consisting of mother and daughter, Clara. Freddy Eynsford-Hill enters after being unable to find a cab to take them home. He is a weak and ineffectual character. His sister bullies him, and enjoys seeing him look ridiculous. As he goes off once again to find a cab, he bumps into a flower girl, Eliza. Her flowers drop into the mud of Covent Garden, the flowers she needs to survive in her poverty-stricken world. Shortly they are joined by a gentleman, Colonel Pickering. While Eliza tries to sell flowers to the Colonel, a bystander informs her that a man is writing down everything she says. The man is Professor Henry Higgins. A row occurs when Higgins tells people where they were born, which creates both amazement and irritation. One man accuses Higgins of coming from Hanwell Insane Asylum. It becomes apparent that he and Colonel Pickering have a shared interest in phonetics. Indeed, Pickering has come from India to meet Higgins and Higgins was planning to go to India to meet Pickering. Higgins tells Pickering that he could turn the flower girl into a duchess. These words of bravado spark an interest in Eliza, who would love to make changes in her life and become more mannerly, even though, to her, it only means working in a flower shop. At the end of the act, Freddy returns after finding a taxi, only to find that his mother and sister have gone and left him with the cab. The streetwise Eliza takes the cab from him, using the money that Higgins tossed to her out of pity, leaving him on his own.
Act Two:
Higgins' Laboratory - Next Day. As Higgins demonstrates his equipment to Pickering, the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, tells him that a young girl wants to see him. She is shown up, and to his disappointment it is Eliza. He has no interest in her, but she says she wants to pay to have lessons, so she can talk like a lady in a flower shop. Higgins claims that he could turn her into a duchess. Pickering makes a bet with him on his claim, and says that he will pay for her lessons. She is sent off to have a bath. Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins that he must behave himself in the young girl's presence. He must stop swearing, and improve his table manners. He is at a loss to understand why she should find fault with him. Then Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father, appears with the sole purpose of getting money out of Higgins. He has no interest in his daughter in a paternal way. He sees himself as member of the undeserving poor, and means to go on being undeserving. He has an eccentric view of life, brought about by a lack of education and an intelligent brain. He is also aggressive, and when Eliza, on her return, sticks her tongue out at him, he goes to hit her, but is prevented by Pickering. The scene ends with Higgins telling Pickering that they really have got a difficult job on their hands.
Act Three:
Mrs Higgins' drawing room. Henry tells his mother he has a young 'common' whom he has been teaching. Mrs Higgins is not very impressed with her son's attempts to win her approval because it is her 'at home' day, in which she is entertaining visitors. The visitors are the Eynsford-Hills. Henry is rude to them on their arrival. Eliza enters and soon falls into talking about the weather and her family. The humour stems from the knowledge the audience have of Eliza, of which the Eynsford-Hills are curiously ignorant. When she is leaving, Freddy Eynsford-Hill asks her if she is going to walk across the park, to which she replies; " Walk! Not bloody likely..." (This is the most famous line from the play, and, for many years after, to use the word 'bloody' was known as a pygmalion.) After she and the Eynsford-Hills leave, Henry asks for his mother's opinion. She says the girl is not presentable, and she is very concerned about what will happen to the girl; but neither Higgins nor Pickering understand her, and leave feeling confident and excited about how Eliza will get on. This leaves Mrs Higgins feeling exasperated, and she says "Men! Men!! Men!!!"
Act Four:
Higgins' laboratory - The time is midnight, and Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza have returned from the ball. Pickering congratulates Higgins on winning the bet. As they retire to bed, Higgins asks where his slippers are, and on returning to his room Eliza throws them at him. The remainder of the scene is about Eliza not knowing what she is going to do with her life, and Higgins not understanding her difficulty. Higgins says she could get married, but Eliza interprets this as selling herself like a prostitute. "We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road." Finally she returns her jewellery to Higgins, including the ring he had given her, as though she is cutting her ties with him, but retrieves it from the hearth.
Act Five:
Mrs Higgins' drawing room. Higgins and Pickering are perturbed at discovering that Eliza has walked out on them. Doolittle returns now dressed in wedding attire and transformed into the middle class in which he feels '..intimidated..'. The scene ends with another confrontation between Higgins and Eliza, which is basically a repeat of the previous act. The play ends with everyone leaving to see Doolittle married, and Higgins leaves on his own.
Despite the intense central relationship between Eliza and Henry, the original play ends with her leaving to marry the eager young Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay[1] for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.
Some subsequent adaptations have changed this ending. Despite Shaw's insistence that the original ending remain intact, director Gabriel Pascal provided a more ambiguous end to the 1938 film: instead of marrying Freddy, Eliza apparently reconciles with Henry in the final scene, leaving open the possibility of their marriage. The musical version My Fair Lady and its 1964 film have similarly happy endings.
Read more: Pygmalion(play)
Read more: Pygmalion(film)
|
HelloDolly |
