The Auteurs Film & Cast Member Database
“William S. Burroughs ":http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/6777
Just a reminder: cast members profile images should be 400×475 … I will try to find some pics for JD, SY & EN :)
difficult to find actual preferred size. should I be editing them to get to 400 X 475? or is approximate fine?
difficult to find actual preferred size. should I be editing them to get to 400 X 475? or is approximate fine?
approximately’s fine, but it would surely help to get pictures in ‘portrait orientation’
Think more of F – K …
Picture & Info for Bette Davis
Picture:
Quote -
Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star.
Bio -
Often referred to as “The First Lady of the American Screen,” Bette Davis created a new kind of screen heroine. She was a liberated woman in an industry dominated by men. She was known as an actress that could play a variety of difficult and powerful roles, and because of this she set a new standard for women on the big screen. Independent off-screen as well, her battles with studio bigwigs were legendary. With a career spanning six decades, few in the history of film rival her longevity and appeal.
Bette Davis was born Ruth Davis on April 5, 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts. Just before her tenth birthday, Bette’s father, Harlow, left the family. Although she had little money, her mother, Ruthie, sent Bette and her sister to boarding school. Upon graduating Cushing Academy, Bette enrolled in John Murray Anderson’s Dramatic School. In 1929, she made her Broadway debut in “Broken Dishes.” She also landed a role in “Solid South.” In 1930, she moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal.
Six small films later, Bette’s contract with Universal was not renewed. She wanted to go back to Broadway, but a phone call from Warner Brothers quickly changed her mind. In 1932, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers. The film “The Man Who Played God” (1932) landed Bette on the path to stardom. She was a smash when she was lent out to RKO for the role of Mildred in “Of Human Bondage” (1934), her first critically acclaimed hit. Her role in “Dangerous” (1935) led to her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar. She became the first Warner Brothers actress to win the coveted award.
Despite her success, Warner Brothers continued to offer Bette unsatisfactory roles. In 1936, she challenged the studio by going to England to make pictures. Jack Warner sued her, and she was forced to honor her contract. Upon her return, however, Bette was offered a new contract and better roles. In 1939, Bette won her second Oscar for “Jezebel” (1938). She also received Oscar nominations the next five years in a row.
Although she earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, Bette set a new precedent for women. By 1942, she was the highest paid woman in America. Bette contributed to the war effort by helping to organize the Hollywood Canteen during World War II for soldiers passing through Los Angeles. Inspired by New York’s Stage Door Canteen, Bette transformed a once-abandoned nightclub into an inspiring entertainment facility. “There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them,” Bette later commented. In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, for running the Hollywood Canteen.
Bette made a roaring comeback with her role as Margo Channing in “All About Eve” (1950), and she received her eighth Academy Award nomination. Her career was resuscitated again in 1962 with “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Soon after, Bette began her second career as a horror maven and continued to welcome new opportunities with television appearances. In 1987, Bette played a blind woman in “The Whales of August,” co-starring Lillian Gish.
Davis’s personal life was as dramatic as her acting. She was married four times. She had a daughter, B.D., with her third husband, William Grant Sherry. She adopted two children, Margot and Michael, while married to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill.
With a career total of more than 100 films, Bette changed the way Hollywood looked at actresses. In 1977, she was the first woman to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also the first woman to be president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the age of 75, Bette had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. Nine days later, she suffered a stroke. Despite her failing health, she continued to act until her death. Bette passed away October 6, 1989 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
Michael Merrill, Bette’s son, and Kathryn Sermak, Bette’s personal assistant and friend, are now the executors of her estate. In her memory, they have created The Bette Davis Foundation, which provides financial assistance to promising young actors and actresses. Meryl Streep received the first Bette Davis Lifetime Achievement Award at Boston University in 1998. – bettedavis.com
Du-na Bae and Bae Doona should be merged. Both spellings are correct… it could even be Doona Bae.
Ji-hoon Jung and Rain shold be merged too, under Rain as it is his stage name.
Photo for Alec Guinness:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/SirAlecGuinness.jpg
Quote:
“Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn’t need one.”
Bio:
Of the great acting knights of the 20th century, none so whole-heartedly embraced the cinema as the chameleon Sir Alec Guinness. True, he began on the stage in 1934, having trained with the Fay Compton School (and privately with Martita Hunt), and would return to it regularly, with laudable results.
Prewar he joined the Old Vic, playing a wide range of supporting roles and a famous modern-dress Hamlet in 1938. After World War II service in the Royal Navy, he starred in such diverse plays as T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1950), Terence Rattigan’s Ross (1960) winning the Evening Standard Award for the title role, and as the blind protagonist of John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father (1971).
Household fame, though, came with films. An extra in Evensong (d. Victor Saville, 1934), he didn’t film again until his beautifully exact Herbert Pocket in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), followed by his controversially repulsive Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948) and the series of Ealing comedies with which, to this day, his name is most tenaciously associated. (Except of course by the very young who know him only as Obi-Wan in Star Wars (US, d. George Lucas, 1977), for which he famously took a percentage and needed never to work again.)
There are seven of these comedies, most memorable of which are the immaculate Kind Hearts and Coronets (d. Robert Hamer, 1949), in which he played eight members of a ducal family, The Lavender Hill Mob (d. Charles Crichton, 1951), as the mild bank clerk dreaming larcenously of gold bars, The Man in the White Suit (d. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951), as an inventor in the grip of an idée fixe, and The Ladykillers (d. Mackendrick, 1955), as the unctuous, snaggle-toothed leader of a gang of incompetent crooks. In 1989, he claimed never to feel comfortable playing characters too like himself, and most of these films allow physical disguise to complement the inner obsessions. His own physical appearance as a young man was pleasantly ordinary rather than glamorously film starrish.
Ealing made him one of the great character stars of British films, but there are other treasurable performances as well: on-the-make Denry in The Card (d. Ronald Neame, 1952); the Cardinal under interrogation in The Prisoner (d. Peter Glenville, 1955); the madly zealous Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (d. David Lean, 1957), for which he won the Oscar; the hard-drinking extroverted Jock in Tunes of Glory (d. Ronald Neame, 1960); and a touching Charles I in the underrated Cromwell (d. Ken Hughes, 1970).
There were miscalculations too; he would have agreed that the heroes of such romantic comedies as The Captain’s Paradise (d. Anthony Kimmins, 1952) and To Paris with Love (d. Robert Hamer, 1954) might have been better served by Rex Harrison and his six-film association with Lean came to an inglorious end with his black-face turn as Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Though there is a steady trickle of international films, dating back to The Swan (US, d. Charles Vidor, 1956), he remains an essentially British phenomenon. He continued to act almost until his death, submerging himself in an amazing array of characters. Despite being heaped with honours – CBE in 1955, knighthood in 1959, Companion of Honour in 1994, as well as numerous acting awards – he remained the most private of celebrities, keeping his real self for his real life.
He married actress Merula Salaman in 1938 and their son Matthew Guinness (b.1940) had small roles in a number of films, first playing his father as a boy in The Card.
Autobiographies: Blessings in Disguise (1985), My Name Escapes Me (1997). Biographies: Alec Guinness: The Films by Kenneth Von Gunden (1987).
-Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Cinema
Photo for Peter Cook, http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/24849:
http://homepage.mac.com/djjord/iblog/C1555525095/E20070207154551/Media/peter-cook.jpg
Quote:
“My biggest regret in life is saving David Frost from drowning.”-thinkexist.comBio:
Peter Cook (born in Torquay on 17 November 1937) was, without doubt, one of the most intelligent wits of his or any other generation. Yet despite his obvious talent, his film and television output was erratic at best. This is especially true in the decades following his 1960s creative peak, when projects became relatively sporadic and his behaviour increasingly unpredictable (Cook himself often admitted that his ambition ran out at the age of 24). Nevertheless, Cook’s legacy is some of the finest comedy to have been produced in Britain. His influence on the British comedy scene remains immense.
A child of the Cambridge Footlights, Cook came to prominence between 1960 and 1963 with Beyond the Fringe, the stage comedy revue featuring himself and fellow Oxbridge students Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.
The four ‘satirists’ (as they became labelled) moved into television with less than enthusiastically-received appearances in the first three episodes of the arts series Tempo (ITV, 1961-68), where they provided ‘satirical comment on the cultural scene’. They were to reprise sketches from the original revue itself in Beyond the Fringe (BBC, tx. 12/12/1964).
Cook more or less confirmed his leading satirist status, at least in London, with his co-founding of the Establishment Club in 1961 (it folded within two years) and his acquisition in 1962 of the majority shareholding in the magazine Private Eye (which he retained until his death).
On television, however, Cook’s satirical thunder was stolen by the success of That Was The Week That Was (BBC, 1962-63), launched while he was working in America He would only become familiar to a wider audience with his appearances, from late 1964, in sporadic episodes of On The Braden Beat (ITV, 1962-67) as his creation E.L. Wisty.
His television popularity was sealed by the success of Not Only… But Also (BBC, 1965-70), originally envisaged as a showcase solely for Dudley Moore but soon becoming a platform for the pair’s inspired comic chemistry. They won Society of Film and Television Arts awards in 1966 for their performances, and their ‘Pete ’n’ Dud’ sketches (at least those that survive) remain examples of television comedy at its best. Cook, not unnaturally, later looked back on these years as the happiest of his life.
Unlike Moore, Cook never capitalised on his television fame in the cinema, despite sporadic attempts with such vehicles as Bedazzled (d. Stanley Donen, 1967), co-starring Moore, and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (d. Kevin Billington, 1970). His quickwitted comic style was ill-served by the stop-start nature of the filmmaking process.
By the 1970s, his increasingly heavy drinking and his apparent antipathy to work gave the impression that his youthful promise was beginning to fade into indolence, as he drifted apparently aimlessly between projects mostly unworthy of his gifts. Particular low points were his hosting of both the short-lived chat show Where Do I Sit? (BBC, 1971) and pop music show Revolver (ITV, 1978), and his ill-fated venture into American sitcom with The Two of Us (CBS, 1981-82), where his unease with the scripts of other writers was palpable.
He was never to have a major television series of his own, largely maintaining a public presence over the ensuing years through chat show appearances, guest spots on variety shows, and sporadic work with Moore. The latter included an on-off world tour between 1971 and 1975 of their stage show Behind the Fridge (renamed Good Evening in America), sketches from which were televised as Excerpts from Behind the Fridge (BBC, tx. 7/3/1974). More controversial were the three notorious, obscenity-saturated ‘Derek and Clive’ recordings issued between 1976 and 1978.
The only notable television projects of his own were the sketch-based Peter Cook & Co. (ITV, tx. 14/9/1980) and A Life in Pieces (BBC, 1990-91), a series of five-minute programmes which saw him in his Arthur Streeb-Greebling persona.
Despite expressing a disinterest with both television and performing in his later years, he made a celebrated appearance in the 17 December 1993 episode of Clive Anderson Talks Back (C4, 1989-95), where, as sole guest, he was interviewed in the guise of four different characters. This appearance provided ample evidence that Cook’s improvisatory comic skills were, despite his professed disinterest, as sharp as ever.
He died from a gastrointestinal haemorrhage on 9 January 1995. The debate continues as to how far he truly fulfilled his potential.
-John Oliver, screenonline
Ron Howard, http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/11944
Photo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Ron_Howard.jpg
Quote:
“You reach a point where you say you’re not going to do juveniles any longer.”
-Answers.com
Bio:
Professionally, Ron Howard has come a long way from the tousle-haired, barefoot sheriff’s son who trod the byways of idyllic Mayberry to reside in the heady company of Hollywood’s most elite directors. Howard’s films are pure entertainment; they are well-crafted efforts, frequently technically challenging from a production standpoint, and aimed at mainstream audiences. Though some of his lesser works have been criticized for possessing formulaic scripts, Howard’s films approach even hackneyed subjects in fresh ways. Though he does not characterize himself as a risk taker, he loves the challenge of exploring different genres; therefore, his filmography includes B-movie actioners, domestic comedies, fantasies, sci-fi, suspense-thrillers, historical dramas, and big-budget action films.
The son of actors Rance and Jean Howard, he made his theatrical debut at age two in a Baltimore production of The Seven Year Itch. He made his screen debut at age five in the suspenseful political drama The Journey (1959). The youngster became a hot property after that and appeared in several features, including The Music Man and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (both 1962). Through this period his father was a strong ally who kept Howard from being exploited by filmmakers. In a November 1996 interview with the Detroit News, Howard describes an incident in which he was six years old and during rehearsal could not cry on cue (Howard doesn’t name the production), causing the director to threaten to flog him. Other children may have been terrified, but Howard felt secure because his father was on the set and would protect him. When producer Sheldon Leonard approached Rance Howard about casting Ronny (as he was billed during childhood) as Opie, the son of widowed sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), the elder Howard stipulated that his son be allowed time off for a normal childhood. It was as the mischievous but guileless Opie that Ronny Howard became famous. During the popular show’s long run, Howard occasionally appeared in other feature films.
While a series’ demise often signals the death of a child actor’s career, particularly if that child is obviously maturing, Howard managed the transition gracefully and continued working steadily. He was cast in a new television series, The Smith Family, in 1971 and starred opposite Henry Fonda, who became one of Howard’s mentors, encouraging Howard to strive for creative growth and to take periodic risks to keep himself vital. The series lasted one season, but again Howard landed on his feet, making a bigger name for himself starring as a callow youth in George Lucas’ smash hit American Graffiti (1973). The film spawned Garry Marshall’s long-running hit, the ’50s revival sitcom Happy Days (1974). Essentially reprising his role from the film, Howard (now billed as Ron Howard) starred as all-American youth Richie Cunningham. Again, Howard also worked simultaneously in films, notably in The Shootist (1976), where he played a teen who worshipped dying gunslinger John Wayne.
Though playing a teenager on the series, Howard was in his early twenties and felt it was time to follow his longtime dream of becoming a director. Producer Roger Corman, who had recently starred Howard in Eat My Dust! (1976), let Howard helm the similarly themed Grand Theft Auto (1977). Howard also co-wrote the screenplay with his father and starred in the film. While not exactly an original masterpiece, the film earned praise for its fast-paced, high-energy action scenes. After leaving Happy Days in 1980, he directed Bette Davis in a television movie, Skyward, and managed to earn the great lady’s respect with his filmmaking skills. Howard had his first big hit in 1982 with the black comedy Nightshift. It was to be the first of many instances in which he would work with producer Brian Grazer, who eventually became his partner and the co-founder of Howard’s production company, Imagine Films Entertainment (established in 1985), and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who formerly wrote for Happy Days.
Howard had even greater success with the Tom Hanks/Darryl Hannah vehicle Splash (1984), which launched Disney’s Touchstone Pictures and became the company’s most successful live-action film to date. He followed this up with sentimental favorite Cocoon (1985). Earlier that year Howard starred in an immensely popular television reunion movie, Back to Mayberry. He had his first misstep after hitting it big with Willow, a George Lucas-produced fantasy extravaganza that never clicked with audiences, though it has since developed a devoted cult following. During the early ‘90s, Howard went into a slump when a series of big-budget films such as Backdraft (1991) and Far and Away (1992) did relatively poorly with critics and viewers, but came back strongly with Apollo 13 (1995), a gripping account of a failed moon mission. A masterful blend of special effects wizardry (it contains the most realistic views of weightlessness on film), science, and human interest, Apollo 13 was a huge international hit, nominated for nine Oscars (it won for Best Sound and Best Editing), and earned Howard the coveted Director’s Guild Association Outstanding Feature Film Directorial Achievement Award, which puts him in league with such directors as John Ford, Billy Wilder, George Cukor, and Francis Ford Coppola.
In 1996, Howard attempted a new genre with the violent, bloody thriller Ransom, starring Mel Gibson. While an effective suspense thriller in it’s own right, Ransom didn’t darken Howard’s sensibilities in any permanent terms, and after a few stints as producer on both the small screen (Felicity, Sports Night and the silver screen (Inventing the Abbots (1997) and Beyond the Mat (1999)), Howard was back in the director’s chair for Ed TV in 1999. Though it was warmly recieved by critics and gained generally positive notice from those who saw it, Ed TV suffered immediate and fatal comparisons to the more popular and strikingly similar Jim Carrey vehicle, The Truman Show. Undaunted, Howard next teamed with the rubber-faced star of Truman for an imaginative and visually dazzling live-action adaptation of Theodore Geisel’s animated Christmas classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas. With it’s elaborate sets and costumes, as well as Carrey’s giddy performance as the grumpy green Grinch, many found the film an overblown expansion of the beloved children’s classic (though many were quick to single-out Carrey’s energetic portrayal of the Grinch as a entertainingly distracting highlight).
Once again turning back to reality after the marked departure of The Grinch, Howard helmed the sensitive real-life tale of paranoid schizophrenic mathematician turned Nobel Prize winnig genius John Forbes Nash Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001). With Russel Crowe essaying the role of Nash and Jennifer Connelly as his faithful and enduring wife, the film gained generally positive reception upon release, and only seemed to cement Howard’s reputation as one of the most versatile and gifted director’s of his generation as the filmt took the Best Picture award at both the that year’s Golden Globes and Oscars. Academy Award night proved to be an even bigger night for Howard as the film also took home awards for Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and, of course, Best Director.
Howard followed up his Oscar wins with the dark Western drama The Missing starring Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett. Unfortunately, neither critics or audiences were too fond of the over-long film. Lucky for Howard, his next project would see him re-team with A Beautiful Mind’s Russell Crowe. The Depression-era boxing film Cinderella Man starred Crowe as real-life boxer Jim Braddock and was released in 2005 to positive reviews and Oscar-buzz.
Next, he helmed the adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, casting his old Splash leading man Tim Hanks in the lead. The film was as big a worldwide success as the book that inspired it. Howard followed the massive success with an adaptation of Peter Morgan’s hit play Frost/Nixon. The film captured five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Editing, as well as a nod for Howard’s direction.
When not working, Howard spends time at his Connecticut home with his wife, former high school sweetheart Cheryl, and their four children — three of whom were named after the places in which they were conceived. Neither he nor his wife will permit the kids to become actors until they are fully grown.
http://www.allmovie.com/artist/ron-howard-94983/bio
Marty Feldman, http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/15091
Photo:
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k23/dblshell/MartyFeldman.jpg
Quote:
“Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.”
-Answers.com
Bio:
With his manic, bulbous-eyed visage (the result of an operation to correct a thyroid complaint when in his late twenties) and a crooked nose courtesy of too many youthful boxing bouts, Marty Feldman (born in London on 8 July 1934) possessed a unique comedic appearance, which, allied with a natural gift for comedy writing and performance, made him one of Britain’s most popular and influential (though now largely neglected) comedians of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Following a range of occupations after leaving school (including a lamentable attempt at being a jazz trumpeter), Feldman became part of the comedy act ‘Morris, Marty and Mitch’, with whom he made his television debut on 18 April 1955 in Showcase (BBC).
Those early years as a performer were not particularly successful, however, and it was as a comedy writer that Feldman made his name. Although he collaborated with Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney on Educating Archie (ITV, 1958-59), and on the radio version from which it derived, it was with Barry Took, whom he had first met in 1954 when both men were working in variety, that he was to forge the more fruitful writing partnership.
Beginning on radio in 1959, and in 1960 for television with some episodes of popular sitcom The Army Game (ITV, 1957-61), their prodigious writing partnership, encompassing both sitcoms and sketch material, endured until 1974, with the non-stop barrage of double entendres and risqué jokes of radio’s Round the Horne (BBC, 1965-68) their crowning achievement.
Feldman’s solo writing work in this period included a position as chief writer on The Frost Report (BBC, 1966-67), for which he co-wrote the celebrated ‘class’ sketch featuring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.
Although he held no great desire to return to performing, he was tempted back for At Last the 1948 Show (ITV, 1967), at the urging of fellow cast members John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Co-written by Feldman, the show’s bombardment of quick-fire, frequently surreal sketches not only laid the groundwork for Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) but brought Feldman himself to public attention.
The result was his own series, It’s Marty (BBC, 1968-69), a not always successful but often inspired mixture of studio-shot and filmed sketches, the latter (invariably shot silent) winning particular acclaim. The series won awards for its scripts (largely written by Feldman and Took) from both the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Society of Film and Television Arts in 1969, with Feldman also winning a Society of Film and Television Arts award for his performance.
It was followed by two comedy specials, Marty Amok (BBC, tx. 30/3/1970) and Marty Abroad (BBC, tx. 1/1/1971), and the series The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine (ITV, 1971-72), the latter winning the Golden Rose at Montreux in 1972.
With ambitions for film stardom, Feldman became convinced his future lay in America. Consequently, his next series, Marty Back Together Again (BBC, 1974), proved to be both his last for British television and his final collaborative work with Took.
His British feature film vehicle, Every Home Should Have One (d. Jim Clark, 1970) was crass and dull, and a deserved flop, despite being written by Feldman himself, together with Took and Denis Norden. His early work in America, however, promised greater things, with well-received appearances in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974) and Silent Movie (1976), the latter winning Feldman a Golden Globe nomination. However, aspirations for Hollywood success came crashing to earth when his two starring vehicles, The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) and In God We Trust (1980), both of which he also directed and co-wrote, were unmitigated disasters. For American television he also directed one episode of Mel Brooks’ short-lived When Things Were Rotten (ABC, 1975).
Feldman never achieved the same level of success in America he had enjoyed in Britain, and any remaining hopes of rectifying this were tragically dashed when he died from a heart attack in Mexico on 2 December 1982 while filming Yellowbeard (d. Mel Damski, 1982). He was 48.
John Oliver
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/560057/index.html
Harold Lloyd, http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/29766
Photo:
http://silentgents.com/Lloyd/Lloyd177.jpg
Quote:
“The man who tries to be funny is lost. To lose one’s naturalness is always to lose the sympathy of your audience.”-IMDb
Bio:
Harold Lloyd was born Burchard, Nebraska on April 20, 1893. He was the second son of James Darsie and Elizabeth Lloyd. His ambition to perform…
“… goes back to the first time I can remember knowing what an actor was. I never had any other idea. And when my family moved around, as it did frequently, I began to play in amateur theatricals. When I was only twelve years old, I was playing Little Abe in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
Stage roles in school productions led to work in stock theatrical productions. Harold was down to his last nickel in San Diego when the Edison Film Company came to town looking for extras. After shooting his four-second film debut as an Indian in “The Old Monk’s Tale,” Harold set his sights on a career in the movies and moved to Los Angeles.
Harold describes sneaking onto the Universal lot:
“The gatekeeper was a crabby old soul who let me understand that it would be a pleasure to keep me out. As I lurked about I noticed that at noon a crowd of actors and extras drifted out in make-up to eat at a lunch counter across the way, passing the gatekeeper without question each way. The next morning I brought a make-up box. At noon I dodged behind a billboard, made up, mingled with the lunch-counter press and returned with them through the gate without challenge.”
While working on the Universal lot, Harold met Hal Roach, (who would later produce the films of Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang comedies). When Roach formed his own company, Lloyd joined him. Early comic characters included, “Just Nuts,” “Willie Work,” and “Lonesome Luke,” all characters not very different from Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.
However, it wasn’t until Harold decided to transform his screen character into someone more like himself that his career took off. Harold was the first film comedian to portray a character that looked and acted like someone sitting in the audience – an average guy, the boy-next-door, an everyman. Luke’s ill-fitting tramp outfit was traded in for Harold’s own everyday clothes and a simple pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
With this “glass” character as Harold called it, He could experience the humor in everyday life. And, as an average fellow, Harold’s boy-next-door could have a romance. It was the beginning of romantic comedy in films.
As his new character grew more popular, the one-reel comedies became two-reels. It was during a photo shoot to promote his million-dollar two-reelers that Harold’s promising career came to an abrupt halt.
On a Sunday in August of 1919, Harold posed for a photographer. The set-up called for him to light a cigarette with a prop bomb — the round, black, type you might see in the cartoons. The bomb wasn’t a prop at all; it exploded in his hand. It ripped open the sixteen-foot ceiling and left Harold blind and with most of his right hand missing. Doctors told him he would never see again. His career was over.
But the doctors were wrong. Eventually, his sight did return, the scars healed, and a glove was crafted to hide his handicap from his public. The comedian, known for doing all his own daredevil stunts, felt his audience would be concerned for his safety and not laugh at the movie if they knew about his injury. So he wore the glove in every movie he ever made after the accident.
By 1922, the two reelers had become five reels and Harold Lloyd was making feature length comedies.
If the creation of the “glass” character was a turning point in his career, “Safety Last!” was another. Harold made several successful “thrill” comedies, short films where he found himself out on the ledge of tall building. But the feature length, “Safety Last!” surpassed all the shorter efforts. Harold recounts how he came upon the idea while walking down the street:
“One afternoon in downtown Los Angeles I stopped to watch Bill Strothers, who called himself the Human Spider, scale the sheer walls of a high office building. The higher he climbed the more nervous I grew, until, when he came to a difficult ledge twelve stories up, I had to cut around a corner out of sight of him and peek back to see if he was over the ledge. If it makes me this jumpy, what would it do to a picture audience, I asked myself.” “Safety Last!” was the story of an industrious fellow who climbed a skyscraper to win his girl. It’s the ultimate thrill comedy. Harold performed the hair-raising comedic stunt all by himself with only one complete hand. There were no fake backgrounds or computer graphics back in 1923. Strategic camera angles created the dizzy drops. At no time in filming could Harold have fallen more than three stories, but as Harold liked to remind his critics, “Who wants to fall three stories onto a mattress?”When the movie opened on April Fool’s Day in 1923 it was a huge success. Harold Lloyd was crowned ‘king of daredevil comedy.’
After filming “Safety Last!” Harold married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, and they raised three children together. Harold constructed an elaborate movie star home in Beverly Hills and called it, Greenacres.
By the mid 1920’s, Harold had left Roach and was producing all the films in which he starred. Of all the silent film comedians, Harold Lloyd was the most profitable. His films out grossed the movies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and he made more films than both of them put together.
With hits like, “The Freshman,” “The Kid Brother,” and “Speedy,” Harold Lloyd was the number one box office star two years in a row. In 1928, Variety proclaimed him the highest paid film star.
Harold was an innovator in the movie business. He pioneered new camera techniques and was one of the first filmmaker to preview his comedies to a test audience, and then re-shoot, re-cut and preview them again. At a time before unions, Harold paid his crew year-round, even when they weren’t shooting a film.
When talking pictures came along, Lloyd was one of the first filmmakers to embrace the new medium. “Welcome Danger” opened in 1929 and was Lloyd’s highest grossing film. Twelve days later the stock market crashed and country changed. Lloyd’s All-American go-getter no longer seemed in fashion to an audience struggling to survive the Depression. His sound films in the 1930s lacked the success of his earlier silent work.
In 1947 Harold made his last movie, “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock.” It was written and directed by Preston Sturges, and produced by Howard Hughes. As an actor-for-hire, Harold no longer had total control as he had back in the 1920’s and didn’t find the experience very rewarding. He had made 200 films since his four-second debut in 1913, and it was time to move on.
In 1949, Harold’s face graced the cover of TIME Magazine as the Imperial Potentate of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, their highest-ranking position. He devoted an entire year to visiting 130 temples across the country giving speeches for over 700,000 Shriners. The last twenty years of his life he worked tirelessly for the twenty-two Shriner Hospitals for Children and in the 1960’s, he was named President and Chairman of the Board.In addition to the Shrine, Harold had his hobbies. Whatever he put his mind to, he mastered: chess, bowling, microscopy, painting — Harold became a color expert and developed a color palette for artists. In the late 40s, Harold developed an interest in 3-D photography and traveled the world taking pictures. In the last twenty years of his life he amassed close to 300,000 stereo slides.
Throughout his long career, Harold received many tributes. He was the fifth film star to immortalize his hand and footprints in the pavement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and he has two stars on the “Walk of Fame.” The George Eastman House honored him twice for his work in movies, and in 1953, Harold received an honorary Academy Award for being a “Master Comedian and Good Citizen.” Over twenty years after his death, his bespectacled face appeared on a U.S postage stamp.
Harold Lloyd died in 1971 at his home in Beverly Hills, CA at the age of seventy-seven. After his death, his magnificent estate was run as a museum but the property was eventually auctioned off and subdivided. The house and six acres still remain. In 1984, Greenacres was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It’s not surprising that today the films of Harold Lloyd are being rediscovered. As Harold stated several years before he died,
“It has been amazing to me that these comedies can still strike a responsive note of laughter with audiences of all ages and in all parts of the world. Laughter is the universal language. It establishes a common identity among people—regardless of other differences. It is the sweetest sound in the whole world.”
http://www.haroldlloyd.com/news/bio.asp
Profile information for Laurie Anderson:
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“My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.”
Bio:
Laura Phillips “Laurie” Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American experimental performance artist and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s. Throughout the 1970s, Anderson did a variety of different performance-art activities. She became widely known outside the art world in 1981 when her single “O Superman” reached number two on the UK pop charts. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave.1
Anderson has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a talking stick, a six-foot-long batonlike MIDI controller that can access and replicate different sounds.2
On April 12, 2008, Anderson married longtime companion Lou Reed in a private ceremony in Boulder, Colorado.3
—Wikipedia
Profile Information for Béatrice Romand
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Bio
Béatrice Romand was born in Algeria, and moved to France with her parents when she was eight. She studied classical dance, art, and photography in Paris, where her photographs were exhibited. At the age of sixteen, she performed “Mauregard” for television under the direction of Claude de Givray.
She first attained real fame at the age of eighteen with her performance as Laura in Eric Rohmer’s “Claire’s Knee” (1970)—a role that quickly made her, in the words of one critic, the “symbol, argumentative and sexy,” of the intellectual youth of those years. She was awarded the prize of Most Promising Actress by the Arts Club of New York for her performance.
She has starred in many films (French, Italian, and English) and telefilms since that time. She has been directed by Joseph Losey, Claude Berri, Claude Faraldo, Carlo Lizzani, and Roy Boulting, and has co-starred with Michel Piccoli, Peter Sellars, Erland Josephson, Michael Caine, André Dussollier, and Glenda Jackson.
Béatrice Romand won the prize for Best Interpretation by an actress at the Venice Film Festival for her role as Sabine in Eric Rohmer’s “The Good Marriage” (1982). Her most recent performance in a Rohmer film was as Magali in “Tale of Autumn” (1998). There is an interview of Béatrice Romand and Marie Rivière, her co-star in “Autumn Tale,” in Les Cahiers du cinema No. 527, “En compagnie des femmes: rencontre avec Béatrice Romand et Marie Rivière.”
Béatrice Romand has directed a number of prize-winning short films and documentaries: “Who Knows How to Kiss Inside?” (1988, Special Prize, Jury Festival of Dunkerque), “The Expected Fiancée” (1995; CNC, Festival of Venice, Val de Loire; preview and soirée at the Cinemathèque Française and Les Cahiers du Cinema), She has produced or co-produced two films: “Florimont” and “Histories in Franche-Comté.” She is currently working on a longer film, “My Mother” (Pyramide Productions, Ministry of Culture, Limousin, France), which is in production.
She has acted in the theater, including a production by Peter Zadek at the Odeon Theater in Paris of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” in which she co-starred with Isabelle Huppert. She has returned to the boards with her “La Sachette,” a reading-interpretation of the mother of Esmeralda from Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris”. “La Sachette” has been acclaimed by audiences and critics internationally (France, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey). In 2002, she will take her reading-interpretation of “La Sachette” on tour to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and West Africa.
Béatrice Romand lives in Paris, France. – beatrice.romand.free.fr
Better Photo for The Last Remake of Beau Geste, http://www.theauteurs.com/films/15436
http://d2.ac-videos.myspacecdn.com/videos02/113/thumb1_8cc8fdac006c4fbeb44d10d3249a8091.jpg
Profile Information for Edward D. Wood Jr.
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One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.
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Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978), better known as Ed Wood, was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a run of cheap and poorly produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.
Wood’s popularity waned soon after his biggest “name” star, Béla Lugosi, died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi’s last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies and wrote pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. His posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time.1 The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following.
Following the publication of Rudolph Grey’s biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), Wood’s life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. Tim Burton’s biopic of the director’s life, Ed Wood, earned two Academy Awards. – wikipedia
A picture and quote for Joe Dallesandro
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Why does anyone have to say they’re gay or straight? Why does it matter?
Peter Sellers, http://www.theauteurs.com/cast_members/3087
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“There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed.”
Bio:
Peter Sellers, born into a touring theatrical family, became a “drummer, pianist and general funnyman” for RAF Gang Shows during the war. After demobilisation, he worked on radio as an impressionist, exhibiting the extraordinary vocal inventiveness that became one of his trademarks and was a cornerstone of radio’s highly popular The Goon Show (1952-60). Sellers made two Goon Show spin-off films, Down Among the Z Men (d. Maclean Rogers, 1952) and The Case of the Mukkinese Battlehorn (d. Joseph Sterling, 1956).
His other 1950s film parts were bewilderingly varied: timorous Teddy Boy in The Ladykillers (d. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955), fly Petty Officer in Up the Creek (d. Val Guest, 1958), aged, obfuscating Scottish accountant in The Battle of the Sexes (d. Charles Crichton, 1959), or Brummie villain in Never Let Go (d. John Guillermin, 1960), complemented by multiple roles in The Naked Truth (d. Mario Zampi, 1957) and The Mouse that Roared (d. Jack Arnold, 1960).
The role that confirmed his acting ability was Fred Kite, the Communist shop steward in I’m All Right Jack (d. John Boulting, 1959), where his brilliant performance captured both the vanity and poignancy of this ideologue and intellectual manqué. It was this mixture of sharp observation and pathos that characterised Sellers’ ordinary men with aspirations: the provincial librarian in Only Two Can Play (d. Sidney Gilliat, 1961), the idealistic vicar in Heavens Above! (d. John Boulting, 1963).
These qualities infused his most popular achievement, Inspector Clouseau, in five films beginning with The Pink Panther (d. Blake Edwards, 1963) through to Revenge of the Pink Panther (d. Edwards, 1978). In Clouseau, Sellers combined his vocal ingenuity and skill as a slapstick comedian, yet always retained an essential humanity through the inspector’s indefatigable dignity in the face of a hostile universe.
His other performance which endures in the memory was the triple role in Dr Strangelove (d. Stanley Kubrick, 1963), as the well-meaning US President, unflappable RAF group-captain and the nightmarish Dr Strangelove himself, the government’s adviser on nuclear warfare, who is unable to control his own body, the black gloved hand always trying to make a Nazi salute, expressing an ineradicable desire to dominate and destroy.
Always restless, insecure and self-critical, Sellers sought to play romantic roles as in The Bobo (d. Robert Parrish, 1967) or Hoffman (d. Alvin Rakoff, 1970), but was always more successful in parts that sent up his own vanities and pretensions, as with the TV presenter and narcissistic lothario in There’s a Girl in My Soup (d. Roy Boulting, 1970). Sellers’ career meandered in the 1970s; only his role as the humble gardener turned guru in Being There (US, d. Hal Ashby, 1979) showed the range of his talent.
He was married to actresses Britt Ekland (his second) and Lynne Frederick (his fourth).
Biographies: Peter Sellers by Alexander Walker (1981), Peter Sellers: A Film History by Michael Starr (1991).
Andrew Spicer, Encyclopedia of British Cinema
Profile Picture for Tab Hunter
Profile Picture for Barbara Eden
Profile Picture for Lou Costello
Profile Picture for Rodney Dangerfield
Profile Picture for Bertolt Brecht
Profile Picture for Barbra Streisand
Rutger Hauer should be added to the cast of
Sin City
Batman Begins
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
And here is a picture and quote for Rutger
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Good guy’ or ‘bad guy’, hero or anti hero; doesn’t matter to me, what role I play, only the character have something magical.
Agatha Christie should be added as a writer for Murder on the Orient Express
A picture and quote for Agatha
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Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
~ Profile info for Iciar Bollain
~ Profile Picture
http://www.peliculas.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/iciar-bollain.jpg
~ Biography
Born in Madrid in 1967, Iciar Bollain has worked as leading actress in selected films like El sur (1983) by ‘Victor Erice’ , Malaventura (1988) by ‘Manuél Gutiérrez Aragón’ , Un paraguas para tres (1992) by Felipe Vega, Land and Freedom (1995) by Ken Loach, Leo (2000) by ‘Jose Luis Borau’_, (Best Actress nomination Goya Spanish Academy Awards)Nos miran (2002), or La noche del hermano (2005). She is a partner of film company _Producciones La Iguana S.L. [es ] _ , writing and directing since then both documentaries and fiction films. In 1995 she wrote and directed her feature film debut, Hola, ¿estás sola? (1995) awarded among others with Best New Director and Audience Award in Valladolid International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Directorial Debut by the Spanish Film Academy. The film became one of Spain’s 1996 box office hits. Flores de otro mundo (1999) co-written with award winning novelist Julio Llamazares, was her second feature film and was awarded at Cannes Film Festival 1999, Best Film in the International Critics’ Week. The film was theatrically released in Spain during May 1999 and it became an acclaimed audience’s and critics’ choice. Te doy mis ojos (2003) (Take my eyes), was her following film as writer and director, winner of 7 Goyas Spanish Academy Awards, including Best Film, among many other international awards. Her next feature film is Mataharis (2007), world premiere September 2007. (imbd)
~ Profile info for Zhang Lu
~ Profile Picture
http://www.koreanmovie.com/upfile/photo_photo/simg/photo14743.jpg
~ Biography
ZHANG Lu was born in 1962 in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. In
2001, he directed his first short film ‘Eleven’(2001), which was selected for many
international film festivals including the Venice International Film Festival; Short Film
Competition, the Busan Asian Short Film Festival and the Toronto International Film
Festival. His first feature film ‘Tang Poetry’(2004) was selected for the Locarno
International Film Festival in 2004, and his next film ‘Grain in Ear’(2005) won the New
Currents Award at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2005. After that, he directed
‘Hyazgar’(2007). Filmed in the Mongolian desert, it tells the story of a mother and son
who have escaped from North Korea. Also completed in 2007 was the short film ‘Fact’.
His recent films ‘Chongqing’(2008) and ‘Iri’(2008) are currently planned to be
released, and he is now preparing for his new film ‘Dooman River’ about a boy
who escaped from North Korea and a Korean-Chinese girl. ZHANG Lu also produced
‘Life Track’(2007), directed by JIN Guang Hao, which won the New Currents Award
at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2007, and ‘Routine Holiday’(2008), directed
by LI Hong Qi, which was selected for the Pusan International Film Festival in 2008.
( http://ppp.asianfilmmarket.org/eng/database/view_ppp_history.asp?order_year=2008&idx=317&no=10 )
Profile Information for Frank Sinatra
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I’m a performer. I’m better in the first take.
Bio:
Whether he was called “The Voice,” “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” or “The Chairman of the Board,” Frank Sinatra’s nicknames all conveyed the adulation and respect reserved for a man who was commonly thought of as the best American popular singer of the 20th century. Sinatra’s voice, whether manifested in song or spoken word, caressed the ears of many a listener for more than five decades. Sinatra’s legacy — countless songs and more than 70 films — continue to ensure him the kind of popularity that has reached beyond the grave to elevate him past the status of mere icon to that of cultural institution.
Born Francis Albert Sinatra on December 12, 1915, Sinatra grew up poor in Hoboken, NJ. After working for a newspaper, he organized the Hoboken Four, a singing group. He got his first break when he won first prize on radio’s “Major Bowes Amateur Hour,” and went on to perform in nightclubs and on radio. Sinatra then landed the job of vocalist with the Harry James band, and later switched to Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. It was during his tenure with Dorsey’s group that Sinatra made his first two films in uncredited roles as a singer in the bands in Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942).
In 1942, Sinatra’s attempt to become a solo artist met with great success, especially in the hearts, minds, and ears of many American women and girls, who flocked to his performances with a fervor that would be replicated two decades later with the arrival of the Beatles. Soon, Sinatra was the “dream-date” idol of millions of American girls and, for several years, was enormously popular on-stage in addition to other venues, including radio, records, and nightclubs. To complement his popularity as a singer, Sinatra began acting, playing in a number of light musical films throughout the ’40s. His first real acting role came in Higher and Higher (1943); other notable movies from this period in his career included Take Me out to the Ballgame (1949), co-starring Gene Kelly and Esther Williams, and On the Town, also made in 1949 and co-starring Kelly, who co-directed the picture with Stanley Donen.
Sinatra suffered a career setback in 1952 when his vocal cords hemorrhaged and he was dropped by MCA, the monolithic talent agency. Having established a shaky screen career, he fought back and landed the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953) after begging Columbia for the part and then agreeing to take it for a mere 8,000 dollars. His performance won him the 1954 Best Supporting Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe, and, in the process, resuscitated his faltering career. Sinatra appeared in several more movies in the ’50s, receiving a 1956 Best Actor Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for his portrayal of a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). In addition, he took home a Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey (1957). Soon Sinatra was back on top as a performer, earning the nickname “The Chairman of the Board.”
Sinatra continued to do frequent film work, making a screen appearance with his Rat Pack colleagues Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in Ocean’s Eleven (1960). Most notably, Sinatra gave a subtle, troubled portrayal of the haunted Captain Bennett Marco in John Frankenheimer’s Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate. His last role was as an aging detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). Sinatra also appeared on various television shows during the ’80s and went on to have hit records as late as the early ’90s. His four wives included actresses Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, and he fathered actor/singers Frank Sinatra Jr. and Nancy Sinatra, as well as another daughter, Tina. Sinatra died of a heart attack on May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles. He is buried in Palm Springs, – All Movie Guide
“Mythology was the result of a polytheist society, today the oracle of my film who tells people their future clashes with Church dogma.”
BIO
Bertrand was born September 11, 1968, in Nice, France.
Bertrand Bonello trained as a classical musician and played in an orchestra, accompanying Carole Laure and Françoise Hardy, among others, on tours and in the recording studio. He composed music for short films (including his own) as well as for commercials. His first feature film was Quelque Chose d’Organique (Something Organic) (1998), a co-production of France and Canada which was presented at the Berlin Festival (Panorama). Bonello moved to Montreal, Canada in 1991. He lives between Paris and Montreal.
Le Pornographe (2001) won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Tiresia (2003) was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
His work has been associated with the New French Extremity.
“I’m attracted to stories about young people and youth culture in general”
BIO
Alexis Dos Santos grew up in Patagonia. He studied architecture and acting in Buenos Aires before moving to London to train as a director at the National Film and Television School. He returned to Patagonia to make his debut feature. Glue premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, winning the MovieZone Award-the first of 15 international awards. Unmade Beds, his second film, was written under the auspices of a Cinefondation writing residency in Paris.
Venus Sands
Brigid Berlin
Can’t really find a bigger picture