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- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Conrad Veidt attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, and graduated without a diploma in 1912, last in his class of 13. Conrad liked animals, theater, cinema, fast cars, pastries, thunderstorms, gardening, swimming and golfing. He disliked heights, flying, the number 17, wearing ties, pudding and interviews. A star of early German cinema, he became a sensation in 1920 with his role as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in Robert Wiene's masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Other prominent roles in German silent films included Different from the Others (1919) and Waxworks (1924). His third wife, Ilona (nicknamed Lily), was Jewish, although he himself wasn't. However, whenever he had to state his ethnic background on forms to get a job, he wrote: "Jude" (Jew). He and Lily fled Germany in 1933 after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, and he became a British citizen in 1939. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle personally chose Veidt to play Dracula in a film to be directed by Paul Leni based on a successful New York stage play: "Dracula". Ultimately, Bela Lugosi got the role, and Tod Browning directed the film, Dracula (1931). In his last German film, F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (1932), Veidt sang a song called "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay." Although the record was considered a flop in 1933, the song became a hit almost 50 years later, when, in 1980, DJ Terry Wogan played it as a request on the Radio 2 breakfast show. That single playing generated numerous phone calls, and shortly thereafter the song appeared on a British compilation album called "Movie Star Memories" - a collection of songs from 1930s-era films compiled from EMI archives. The album was released by World Records Ltd., and is now out of print but can still be ordered online ("Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay" is track 4 on side 2). Veidt appeared in Germany's first talking picture, Bride 68 (1929), and made only one color picture, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), filmed in England and Hollywood. His most famous role was as Gestapo Maj. Strasser in the classic Casablanca (1942); although he was not the star of the picture, he was the highest paid actor. He died while playing golf, and on the death certificate his name is misspelled as "Hanz Walter Conrad Veidt". Because he had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany, there was no official announcement there of his death. His ex-wife, Felicitas, and daughter Viola, in Switzerland, heard about it on the radio.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Leslie Howard Steiner was born in London to Lilian (Blumberg) and Ferdinand "Frank" Steiner. His father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and his English mother was of German Jewish and mostly English descent. Leslie went to Dulwich College, then worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World War I, when he went into the army. In 1917, diagnosed as shell-shocked, he was invalided out and advised to take up acting as therapy. In a few years, his name was famous on the stages of London and New York. He made his first movie in 1914: (The Heroine of Mons (1914)). He became known as the perfect Englishman (slim, tall, intellectual, and sensitive), a part that he played in many movies which set women to dreaming about him. His first sound movie came out in 1930: Outward Bound (1930), an adaptation of the stage play in which he starred. In Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931) and Smilin' Through (1932), he played the Englishman role to the hilt. His screen persona could perhaps best be summed up by his role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), a foppish society gentleman.
It was Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get the role of Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), a role that Bogart had played in the stage production. As he became more successful, he also became quite picky about which roles he would do, and usually performed in only two films a year. In 1939, he played the character that will always be associated with him, that of Ashley Wilkes, the honor-bound, disillusioned intellectual Southern gentleman, in Gone with the Wind (1939).
However, war clouds were gathering over England, and he devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. He died in 1943, when the KLM plane he was in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.- An extremely versatile character actor and originator of several memorable characterizations in the horror film genre, Dwight Frye had a notable theatrical career in the 1920s, moving from juvenile parts to leads before entering film. A favorite actor of Broadway theatrical producer-director Brock Pemberton, he originated the part of "the Son" in his hit 1922 production of Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author". Pemberton would continue to employ Frye in Broadway productions throughout the decade. Cast with Bela Lugosi in a 1926 production of "The Devil and the Cheese", he ultimately appeared in at least two Lugosi films.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his memorable, impassioned portrayals of real estate agent-cum-madman Renfield in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and Fritz the sadistic hunchbacked lab-assistant in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), the industry seemed determined to typecast Frye, and his film career would be marked with frustration. The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) offered him billing second only to that of villain Erich von Stroheim, but all too soon, he was consigned to playing a lackluster array of crazies, spies, red herrings, grasping heirs and bit parts. He occasionally returned to the stage in comedies, musicals, and thrillers such as "Night Must Fall" and a stage version of "Dracula".
Frye was perplexed to find that his versatility in the theatre went unnoticed in Hollywood, where he was relegated to lunatic roles and often had his parts severely cut. Indeed, in Son of Frankenstein (1939) his role was deemed as unnecessary when an abrupt switch was made from Technicolor to black-and-white after his scenes were shot.
Dwight Frye, a devout Christian Scientist, had concealed a heart-condition from his friends and family. After the outbreak of WWII, unable to enlist, he worked nights (between films and local theatre-productions) as a draftsman for the Lockheed Aircraft Co. An uncanny physical resemblance to then-Secretary of War Newton Baker led his to being signed to a substantial role in Wilson (1944), directed by Henry King, based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but Frye succumbed to a heart-attack on a crowded bus a few days after being cast while returning home from a movie with his son. He was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. - Arthur Byron was born on 3 April 1872 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Mummy (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Marie Galante (1934). He was married to Kathryn Byron and Lillian Hall (actress). He died on 17 July 1943 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
For the better part of his career, Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke lived up to his sobriquet "One-Take Woody" by steadfastly adhering to his credo of shooting each scene as quickly and efficiently as possible. Over his 25-year career, he economically directed over 90 diverse entertainments, which not only saved the studios vast amounts of money but turned out to be some of the most interesting motion pictures created during this period.
Van Dyke's father, a lawyer, died within days of his birth. By the time he was three Woody and his mother were forced to tread the boards of repertory theatre to make a living. When he hit his teens he had a succession of outdoor jobs, including lumberjack, gold prospector, railroad man and even mercenary. In 1916 he was hired by the legendary D.W. Griffith as one of a group of "assistants" (others included Erich von Stroheim and Tod Browning) to work on the picture Intolerance (1916). After that, his rise was truly meteoric. Within a year Woody was directing his own films, beginning with The Land of Long Shadows (1917). A later western, The Lady of the Dugout (1918), featured a 'genuine' former Wild West outlaw, the self-promoting teller of tall tales, Al J. Jennings. After enlistment in World War I, Woody returned to Hollywood in the 1920s to direct further westerns, beginning with some Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson features at Essanay and later Tim McCoy programmers (once, in 1926, he directed two features simultaneously). Woody was perhaps the first filmmaker to make westerns that strayed from the stereotypical jaundiced pro-white man view in favor of a more sympathetic portrayal of the American Indian on screen.
Woody's "One-Take" nickname came about as a result of filming world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey in Daredevil Jack (1920). Dempsey invariably flattened his opponents with the first punch, so it became imperative to have the scene "in the can" on the first take. As a result, Woody was much in demand throughout the decade for "quota quickie" westerns and serials. Under contract to MGM in 1928, he accompanied documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty to Polynesia to collaborate on the feature White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), taking over direction entirely when Flaherty fell ill. The success of the picture led to the thematically similar The Pagan (1929), shot in Tahiti with Ramon Novarro. This was in turn followed by the epic Trader Horn (1931), filmed on location in remote parts of Kenya and Tanganyika. Driven to the point of physical exhaustion by the swashbuckling director, the 200-strong crew virtually transformed the wilderness, creating, as it were, a live set, replete with exotic animals and plant life to capture unprecedented footage. In fact, there was so much excess footage after release of "Trader Horn" that much of it was incorporated into Woody's next project, the seminal Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), which set the bar for later entries into the Edgar Rice Burroughs cycle. After another flirt with danger, filming Eskimo (1933) in the remote Bering Strait, Woody settled down to less life-threatening assignments.
During the next few years, Woody Van Dyke showed his remarkable flair and versatility. After being Oscar-nominated for The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), he directed William Powell and Myrna Loy in their first outing together in Manhattan Melodrama (1934) (most famous as the film seen by infamous bank robber and killer John Dillinger just before he was shot to death by the FBIl). He followed this with the stylish and witty thriller The Thin Man (1934) (filmed in true Woody-style in 16 days) and its three sequels, teaming Powell and Loy in one of Hollywood's most successful partnerships. After these hugely popular movies, Woody proved to be equally adept at musicals, directing yet another dynamic duo, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, in the operettas Rose-Marie (1936), Sweethearts (1938) and Naughty Marietta (1935). Never turning down an assignment, he also handled family fare (Andy Hardy, Dr.Kildare), social (The Devil Is a Sissy (1936)) and historical dramas (the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938) with Norma Shearer).
Unquestionably, one of the highlights of Van Dyke's career as a director was the first true "disaster movie", San Francisco (1936), for which he elicited rich, natural characterizations from his cast for 97 minutes. He then re-created the 1906 earthquake in the remaining 20-minute finale, achieving a realism that has rarely been matched and never surpassed. He was nominated for Academy Awards for both "The Thin Man" and "San Francisco", but lost out on both occasions.
A colorful, larger-than-life character, his "shoot-from-the-hip" camera style was at times criticized by his peers. Conversely, he was much respected by actors, frequently giving breaks to unemployed performers by using them in his films, and appreciated by the studios by consistently coming in on or under budget. In addition, he was known as a "film doctor", who would be called upon to re-shoot individual scenes with which the studio was dissatisfied (a noted example being for The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)), or, alternatively, to shoot additional scenes that were deemed necessary for continuity.
Like some of his peers, Woody could be an autocrat who rarely brooked arguments and was known to greet the mighty Louis B. Mayer himself with "Hi, kid". He became ill during the filming of Dragon Seed (1944). Diagnosed with heart disease and cancer, he committed suicide in February 1943.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Gustav von Seyffertitz was born on 4 August 1863 in Haimhausen, Dachau, Bavaria [now Bavaria, Germany]. He was an actor and director, known for Sherlock Holmes (1922), Shanghai Express (1932) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He was married to Katharina Hoffmann, Eugenie von Mink, Toni Creutzburg, Nelly Thorne and Frieda. He died on 25 December 1943 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Sergei Rachmaninoff (also spelled Rachmaninov) was a legendary Russian-American composer and pianist who fled Russia after the Communist revolution of 1917, and became one of the highest paid concert stars of his time, and one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century.
He was born Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov on April 2, 1873, on a large estate near Novgorod, Russia. He was the fourth of six children born to a noble family, and lived in a family estate, where he enjoyed a happy childhood. Rachmaninoff studied music with his mother from age 4; continued at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and continued at the Moscow Conservatory with professors Arensky, Taneyev and Tchaikovsky. He graduated in 1892, winning the Great Gold Medal for his new opera "Aleko."
He was highly praised by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , who promoted Rachmaninov's opera to the Bolshoi Theater in 1893. But the disastrous premiere of his 1st Symphony, poorly conducted by A. Glazunov, coupled with his distress over the Russian Orthodox Church's pressure against his marriage, caused him to suffer from depression, which interrupted his career for three years until he sought medical help in 1900. He had a three-month treatment by hypnotherapist, Dr. Dahl, aimed at overcoming his writer's block. Upon his recovery, Rachmaninov composed his brilliant 2nd Piano Concerto, and made a comeback with successful concert performances. From 1904 to 1906 he was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. From 1906 to 1909, Rachmaninoff lived and worked in Dresden, Germany. There he composed his 2nd Symphony.
In 1909, Sergei Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States having composed the 3rd Piano Concerto as a calling card. He appeared as a soloist with Gustav Mahler conducting the New York Philharmonic. His further work on merging Russian music with English literature culminated in his adaptation of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe into choral symphony, "The Bells," which Rachmaninov considered to be among the best of his works. In 1915 he wrote the choral masterpiece: "All-Night Vigil" (also known as the Vespres), fifteen anthems expressing a plea for peace at a time of war. The terror of Russian Revolution and the destruction of his estate forced him to emigrate. On December 23, 1917, Rachmaninov left Russia on an open sledge carrying only a few books of sheet music.
As a pianist, Sergei Rachmaninov made over a hundred recordings and gave over one thousand concerts in America alone between 1918 and 1943. His concert performances were legendary, and he was highly regarded as a virtuoso pianist with unmatched power and expressiveness. Rachmaninoff's technical perfection was legendary. His large hands were able to span a twelfth, that is an octave and a half or, for example, a stretch from middle C to high G. Rachmaninoff was highly regarded for accuracy on the piano keyboard, which he achieved through arduous practice by repeating difficult passages many times in a very slow tempo. In many of his original compositions, Sergei Rachmaninoff used musical allusions ranging from folk songs to oriental music and jazz. Unusually wide chords and deeply romantic melody lines were characteristic of his compositions. Besides his own music, he often performed pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin , Franz Liszt and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
In 1931, Rachmaninov signed a letter condemning the Soviet regime, that was published in the New York Times. There was retaliation immediately, and his music was condemned by the Soviets as "representative of decadent art." However, the official censorship in the Soviet Union could not stop the popularity of Rachmaninov's music in the rest of the world. During the 1930s and 1940s, he remained one of the highest paid concert stars.
During the 1930s, Rachmaninoff shared his time between Europe and America, because he was booked for numerous live performances in major cultural centers on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1932, Rachmaninoff with his family moved to his newly built Villa 'Senar' on Lake Luzern. There he replicated the layout of his estate that was destroyed by Russian revolution of 1917. The villa became a new home for the family and a center of cultural life, as Rachmaninoff was visited by notable musicians, such as Horowitz, writers, such as Bunin, and even Maharaja with family from India. For his guests, Rachmaninoff often played his music on the new concert grand piano that was presented to him by Hamburg Steinway company. Using that piano, Rachmaninoff composed his famous Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini in 1934. In 1939, with the onset of World War 2, Rachmaninoff left Europe and moved to America for good.
At his home on Elm Drive in Beverly Hills, Rachmaninoff had two Steinway pianos which he played together with Vladimir Horowitz and other entertainers. His love of fast cars was second to music, and led him to occasional fines for exceeding the speed limit. Since he bought his first car in 1914, Rachmaninov acquired a taste for fast cars, buying himself a new car every year. His generosity was legendary. He gave away 5000 dollars to Igor Sikorsky to start an American helicopter industry. He paid for Vladimir Nabokov and his family relocation from Paris to New York. He sponsored Michael Chekhov and introduced him to Hollywood.
Sergei Rachmaninoff gave numerous charitable performances, and donated large sums of money to fighting against the Nazis during WWII. He became a US citizen in 1943, just a few weeks before his death. In his last recital, in February, 1943, Rachmaninov played Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, featuring the famous "Funeral march." The New York Times obituary of March 28, 1943, stated that Sergei V. Rachmaninoff, pianist, composer and conductor, who for fifty years had been a leader in the music world on two continents, died today at his Beverly Hills home of complications resulting from pneumonia and pleurisy, which twice had caused him to cancel recitals here this month.
Rachmaninoff was survived by his wife and two daughters who arranged for his burial in Kensico Cemetery, New York. Over the years, Soviet and Russian authorities made numerous claims to re-bury the composer in Moscow, Russia, but the Rachmaninoff family successfully opposed due to the fact that Sergei Rachmaninoff made his choice to be a citizen of the United States.- Actor
- Director
- Editor
Magnus Stifter was born on 23 January 1878 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was an actor and director, known for Der rote Henker (1920), Othello (1922) and Der Graf von Essex (1922). He died on 8 September 1943 in Vienna, Austria.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Montague Love - certainly an intriguing name - but his own - started his working life as a newspaper man in London. His primary expertise centered on being a field illustrator and cartoonist who covered the Boer War (1899-1902). His realistic battle sketches gained him popularity among readers, but he was bound for a different career. He decided to become an actor. A robust man with a massive head of noble bearing and brooding lower lip, these were ingredients well suited to this goal. Love honed basic stage talents in London, and then made an early departure for the US in 1913 with a road-company production of Cyril Maude's "Grumpy." An early stop was Broadway, and he returned many times to appear in a laundry list of important plays from 1913 to 1934.
Silent film studios of the early days were originally based in the East, and Love started his film career at World Studios, New Jersey in 1914. His silent career alone was prodigious-nearly a hundred films. His look and bearing were perfect for authoritative figures. And, though certainly taking on a whole spectrum of roles (sultan, native chiefs, many a doctor and military officer, among many others) he became famous for his bad guy characterizations through the 1920s. Some historians credit him as the best villain of the silent era.
In 1926 he was nemesis to Rudolf Valentino in The Son of the Sheik (1926) and 'John Barrymore' in Don Juan (1926). The latter movie had the particular fame of sporting the longest sword duel in silent history between Love's Count Giano Donati and Barrymore's Don Juan. The fight filming was unique and realistic with middle and close shots looking directly at the individual combatants-with the appropriate blood in their eyes. The duel was all the more complex choreography for being one with swords and daggers (historically correct but rarely seen in film history). But Love was just as effective as the Roman centurion in The King of Kings (1927) by 'Cecil B DeMille'. Starting with Synthetic Sin (1929), Love's movies followed the trend of an increasing number of silent films using recorded music and some snatches of dialogue or background sound with the several incipient audio systems. Some movies originally issued as silent were released again with the process added. `Sin' was one of 11 films of 1929 featuring Love given the semi-sound treatment. The last of these was Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1929), very loosely adapted to the point of being hokey, but one of the first films also using the primitive two-color process.
Love had a commanding, puckered-lip British delivery of speech which he could believably weld to any part, but it particularly fit characters of authority, as in the silent era. Into the 1930s, these were increasingly benign rather than despotic-always colonels and generals, prime ministers, American presidents - even Zorro's father. Perhaps his best known character tour de force displaying his genuine acting power was his Henry VIII in Prince and the Pauper (1937). It is hard to forget him in purple as the Bishop of the Black Canons in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Sometimes, as with other veteran character actors, his roles were almost as featured extra-but his very costumed presence was all that was needed to lend realism. A very apt example was his Detchard, noble henchmen to 'Raymond Massey', in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), in which he has little more than one line. He was still in demand in the early 1940s - ten roles in 1940 alone. But these slowed into the war years. By his passing in 1943, an actor who was considered as noble on screen as off, he had lent his voice as well as virtuoso acting skills to eighty-one additional films.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lynne Overman was born on 19 September 1887 in Maryville, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Union Pacific (1939), She Loves Me Not (1934) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942). He was married to Emily Helen Drange and Sylvia Antoinette Hazette. He died on 19 February 1943 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Tully Marshall intended to pursue a legal career, until he tried a dramatic course at Santa Clara University. He started stage work in San Francisco in 1883 and moved to New York in 1887, where he played in various roles on Broadway and on the road. After a few small parts in films he was given the role of the High Priest of Babylon in the D.W. Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). One of his finest roles in silents was that of an old frontiersman in another classic, The Covered Wagon (1923).
When sound arrived Marshall was very much in demand and worked for nearly every major studio. His last film was Behind Prison Walls (1943). He died on March 10, 1943, after a 60-year career in entertainment. - Nikola Tesla (28 June 1856 - 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related poly-phase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the poly-phase system which that company eventually marketed.
Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first-ever exhibited. Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.
After Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. He died in New York City in January 1943. Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the Tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s. - Actor
- Writer
Wade Boteler was born on 3 October 1888 in Santa Ana, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Green Hornet (1940), The Mandarin Mystery (1936) and The Green Hornet Strikes Again! (1940). He was married to Ellen Evelyn James. He died on 7 May 1943 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Spencer Charters was a burly, moon faced man who got his start in the theater where he basically stayed until 1930. Thereafter, he quickly launched a career as a character actor in movies. His specialty was a lower-to-middle-class worker, and he portrayed many types, including judges, doctors, clerks, managers, jailers, etc. Charters was a busy man, with over 200 parts from 1930 to 1943. By the late 1930s, Charters was feeling the effects of advancing age, and was unable to play more than short bit parts. He ended his life in 1943 via sleeping pills and carbon monoxide poisoning.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Thomas Waller was born in 1904. He was one of the most important pianist in the history of jazz. He studied piano with James P. Johnson, one of the masters of the stride piano in the 1920s. Fats began recording his first piano solos in 1923. He worked in the revue "Hot Chocolates" in the late 1920s as a composer. Along with Duke Ellington, he is one of the most prolific composers in jazz. His best songs are, "Ain't Misbehavin' ", "Honeysuckle Rose", "Black and Blue", "Blue Turned Grey Over You" and "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now". He formed his own group in 1934, Fats Waller and his Rhythm, and recorded many records for RCA Victor. Two of his most notable film appearances were in Stormy Weather (1943) and King of Burlesque (1936). He died in 1943 on a train during a trip to California. He was just 39 years old.- Donald Haines was born on 9 May 1919 in Seward County, Nebraska, USA. He was an actor, known for Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941), That Gang of Mine (1940) and Kidnapped (1938). He died on 20 February 1943 in North Africa.
- Additional Crew
- Director
- Writer
Max Reinhardt was from an Austrian merchant family (surname officially changed from the family name Goldmann to Reinhardt in 1904), and even as a boy, after his family moved to Vienna, he haunted the "Hofburg Theater" and tried to see every play. In 1890 he studied at the Sulkowsky Theater in Matzleinsdorf and started acting in Vienna and later at the "Stadtheater" in Salzburg with duties as an assistant director. But by 1894 he was invited to Berlin by Otto Brahm, director, critic, and theater manager. And that was an important juncture. Brahm had founded the "Free Stage" (1890), a theater company crusading for realism in German theater by providing a forum for so-called banned plays - the iconoclastic works, such as, those of Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy. The result was the opening of German state theater to the corpus of the modern stage by 1894. Brahm became director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and there Reinhardt cut his teeth on the full theater experience, not simply acting alone, although he was much applauded for his convincing specialty of playing old men.
In 1901 Reinhardt co-founded his own - sort of avant garde - cabaret "Schall und Rauch" (Sound and Smoke) for experimental theater. It was renamed "Kleines Theater" (Small Theater) in 1902, a place for contemporary plays accented with the sort of spirit confined to cabaret entertainment. He then opened and managed his own theater "Neues Theater", now called the "Berliner Ensemble", from 1902 to 1905. These were all a part of his evolving philosophy of the harmony of stage design, costumes, language, music, and choreography as a whole unified artwork, Gesamtkunstwerk. He was influenced by several figures, August Strindberg for one, but most significantly by Richard Wagner and his operatic ideal that the director must pull together all aspects of art in his production. Reinhardt's infusion gave new dimensions to German theater. After producing more than fifty plays at Neues Theater, wherein he always found somebody to donate the money for productions, he was asked to take the helm of Deutsches Theater in Berlin for Brahm in 1905. At Deutsches Theater he embarked on big theater, employing the whole physical theater space for productions and often even spreading scenes into the audience as a means of fusing actors and audience in a total theater experience. Here was something different - making theater a democratic institution - after all the audience was the means of generating the money to do more. And Reinhardt was never avant garde enough to disdain making profit when it finally came knocking. He staged truly gargantuan productions of epic pageantry and lighting with stark colors for various dramatic effects. He staged one of his most famous early productions, his first rendition of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a wooded forest revolving stage - turning to reveal progressive new scenes. He became famous for realistic direction of huge crowd and mob scenes.
He built the smaller Kammerspiele, a theater near Deutsches Theater in 1906. At this latter theater Reinhardt developed "Kammerspiel" theater, chamber dramas in a minimalist and naturalistic style. This followed from his expressionist influences which defied the realist dictum (though he would look to realism as well in the mix to appropriately stage some of his most ambitious efforts) and sought out more personal, expressive, and emphatic ways of coaxing the elements of theater from the conventional objective into palpable subjectivity. This all opened Reinhardt to even more experimental ideas in staging with sometimes nightmarish and vivid lighting techniques. He began introducing the expressionist plays to the German-speaking public. And he also opened a famous acting school which would function for decades turning out many of Germany's great actors and actresses. In addition there was a acting troupe that played in neutral areas of Europe during World War I. On the bill was always a cycle of Shakespeare plays. Reinhardt did everything in a big way and to accommodate a growing enthusiastic theater-going public he had expanded with a chain of theaters throughout Germany. He would manage thirty theaters and acting companies in all.
Reihardt fulfilled another of his ideals, and that was of finding the 'perfect playhouse' as a means of complementing the content and experience of a play. In 1919 he opened an enormous arena theater, the "Grosses Schauspielhaus", (Great Playhouse), but known as the "Theatre of the Five Thousand", which included a large revolving stage. Many of his biggest productions were done here, including Shakespeare and Greek plays. In the 1920s he built the two Boulevard Theaters on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. And yet, the privations of post-war Germany and the perennial anti-Semitic undercurrent caused a gradual loss of his big audiences. In 1920 Reinhardt went back to Salzburg and established the Salzburg Festival with composer Richard Strauss and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Annually he enjoyed staging the most apropos of morality plays, the medieval "Everyman", with the biggest set he could muster as a backdrop-the Austrian Alps in the open air before the Salzburg Cathedral. From 1924 he became director of the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and renewed his Berlin popularity with a new theater called "Komoedie". His output was no less than astounding. Whereas a theater director today would not commit himself beyond two or three productions in a year, Reinhardt averaged twenty in his first twelve years. Between 1916 and 1917 he produced 48 - his highest output. Although he did few films, he was very interested in the potential of the medium. He directed four silent movies starting in 1910. One of these was the filming of one his favorite pantomime plays "The Miracle".
Reinhardt was a titan of influence and inspiration on a whole generation of theater and film directors in Germany-many who spread the word to the rest of the world. His disciples included: F.W. Murnau, Paul Leni, Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle , and Otto Preminger. His staging of crowds and use of lighting were frequently appropriated by the great silent filmmakers of the Weimar Republic, including 'Fritz Lang' and Murnau. And he profoundly influenced the expressionist movement in German film. He also influenced many actors with his techniques of developing expressive characterizations and movement-many would eventually come to New York and Hollywood. But by 1933 Hitler had come to power, and Reinhardt found himself falling victim to the same methods of attrition as other German Jews. So-called assimilative families of ethnic mixtures, whether high or low, were increasing placed in the same category as ethnic Jews. His theaters were `appropriated' one-by-one by the government and later his considerable properties confiscated. Later in 1933 he moved back to Austria to the "Theater in der Josefstadt" in Vienna (where Preminger had quickly become a director), hoping his native land could resist the Nazi machine. But the same pressures enveloped him there. He left for a last theater tour of Europe and arrived in America in 1934. "Midsummer" had a special significance for Reinhardt. The play was his continued inspiration of a world without ideologies - a utopia - as the theater itself was a haven from the harsh realities of the world and of the individual. The audience learned something, but they also could steep themselves without taxing imagination in the illusion of theater. "Midsummer" was always a work-in-progress for him - he had staged it twelve times up to 1934, and in fact had already brought it to Broadway in late 1927. And that was not his first trip to the US, having started presenting plays as producer, director, or writer since early 1912 there (he did ten productions in all to 1943).
He came to Hollywood in 1934 with his fame preceding him. His last tour through Europe had included lavish productions in Florence (1933) and a"Midsummer" at Oxford (1934). He offered to do the same in Hollywood at an ideal outdoor stage-the Hollywood Bowl. But the bowl had to go - it was removed to provide a view of a "forest" up the hillside - a "forest" that required tons of dirt hauled in especially for its planting, Reinhardt and his design staff erected a 250-foot wide, 100-foot deep stage. Also included was a pond and a suspension bridge or trestle constructed from the hills in back to the stage to be lined with torchbearers - with real flaming torches - for the wedding procession inserted between Acts IV and V. This lavish production included a ballet corps, children playing faeries, and hundreds of extras. The 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland was at Mills College in Oakland, participating in a school "Midsummer" production where in attendance was none other than Max Reinhardt himself. He was so impressed with her that he picked her for his extravaganza. Along with other Hollywood actors, was 14 year old veteran of the cinema 'Mickey Rooney', added to the cast as Puck. Another new arrival from Austria was classical opera composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, musical collaborator of Reinhardt's from Vienna. Reinhardt cabled his friend to come over and help him by doing the orchestrations of Felix Mendelssohn's famous 1843 music for the Hollywood Bowl production. It was a night to remember - even for Jack L. Warner - who was not always sure of what he was seeing. But it was enough to sign Reinhardt to direct a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) which began shooting in December of 1934. De Havilland was back to start her film career-Rooney for another memorable part. Otherwise, it was new cast headed by Hollywood stars 'Dick Powell' and James Cagney and boasting the best actors from Warner's impressive stock company of players. Since Reinhardt did not know Hollywood filmmaking, Warner assigned a co-director, William Dieterle, Reinhardt's acting then directing protege, from the Deutsches Theater days in Berlin. Dieterle, the disciple, had directed in Germany since 1923 and then came to Hollywood to become one of the studio's most reliable new directors. It was the beginning of Korngold's screen career as a film composer when he was hired to do the film score, an arrangement based on Mendelssohn's music used at the Bowl. But he actually mixed in much more of a variety of the composer's music to fit the play. Warner's laid down 1.5 million dollars and had its top technical staff step up to the challenge. But all-most of all, Reinhardt - was on a bit of a learning curve. Reinhardt was allowed the liberty of long play-like rehearsals instead of rehearsing scene by scene. Reinhardt's early over-emphasized stage acting directions were recalled by Cagney, who noted the actors often stood around on the sidelines whispering to one another, "Somebody ought to tell him." It was the politic Dieterle who did - setting his old master straight as to the subtle wonders of the microphone and sound film techniques. Shakespeare's lines were cut for public consumption, but there was so much to see - who would notice. In Depression era America the movie theater had taken the place of Reinhardt's all encompassing theater as a haven - and that was certainly fine with him. And here was a feast for starving souls. Reinhardt's multi-faceted approach to theater shone in all its entertaining best-through Warner stage design efficiency. There was the realist extravagance in forested backdrops, but the wonderful ballet of the coming of night with dancer Nini Theilade was distilled expressionism. Other ballet sequences featuring the fairies-children and adults - were choreographed by 'Bronislava Nijinska' (the great Nijinsky's sister). Reinhardt conjured all his and the camera's magic to create the summation of a lifetime of stagecraft. His imaginative wizardry with lighting put the remarkable glow on the faces of Cagney and his motley peasant comrades as they rehearsed - on the dancing faeries in their sequins - on the enchanted sparkle of shimmering (painted and tensiled) woods and veiled atmosphere that awaited the gaiety of Titania and the black looks of King Oberon. Everything of British and German folklore was thrown in for good measure - from gossamer English faeries and magic animals to rather frightening, rubber-masked dwarfs dressed as Teutonic gnomes and goblins. Reinhardt fuzzed and gauzed the camera lens and even put scintillating borders and covers of various sorts on the camera cowling to frame some faerie scenes as if from a Victorian painting by English artists Richard Dadd and Joseph Noel Paton-obvious influences. The movie was not a box office success, but it was Hollywood history-salute to Shakespeare? - certainly - but more so, a great event of melting pot talent and modern film making that was Hollywood coupled with profound European stage traditions that began with Max Reinhardt. He - by the way - did no more films, perhaps deciding that the real challenge was still the stage. But this one record on sound film measures the genius of the man of theater and gives today a glimpse of his creative powers and something of what his stage productions were like. He was more interested in continuing working on-stage as a director and producer, but he did not forsake Hollywood. With his second wife actress 'Helene Thimig', from a famous Viennese acting family, he split his time between the coasts. He found a Hollywood-based theater workshop and an acting school in New York. All of Reinhardt's productions were tallied - just from 1905 to 1930 - and found to total 23,374 performances of 452 plays - and still a little short. His wide-eyed exuberance for spreading out a great show was indicative of the child in Max Reinhardt. He betrayed that very comparison unashamedly: "Theater is the happiest haven for those who have secretly put their childhood in their pockets, so that they can continue to play to the end of their days."- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
George Cooper was born on 12 December 1892 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Unholy Night (1929), The Barrier (1926) and The Eternal Three (1923). He was married to Edwina. He died on 9 December 1943 in Sawtelle, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Hobart Bosworth--pioneering movie director, writer, producer and actor--was born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth on August 11, 1867, in Marietta, OH. He was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New World, on his mother's side. Bosworth was always proud of his lineage.
After his mother died his father remarried and the young Hobart took a dislike to his stepmother. Convinced that he was "ill used and cruelly treated," as he told an interviewer in 1914, he ran away from home for to New York City. He signed on as a cabin boy on the clipper ship "Sovereign of the Seas" and was soon out at sea.
After his first voyage, a five-month affair that took him from New York to San Francisco, he spent his wages on candy. Sleeping it off on a bench in the park in back of Trinity Church, the young boy did not know that the organ music he was listening to as he dozed was being played by his very own uncle. A Captain Roberts, who found stevedore work for the lad, told him of his uncle's presence in San Francisco. He continued as a sailor, as the sea was in his family's blood, eventually spending three years at sea. "All my people were of the sea and my father was a naval officer," he told an interviewer. He spent 11 months on an old-fashioned whaler plying the Arctic region, then was employed doing odd jobs in San Francisco. After turns as a semi-professional boxer and wrestler, Bosworth tried ranching in Southern California and Mexico, where he learned to become an expert horseman. Finally, his interest in art led him to the stage.
Thinking he'd like to become a landscape painter, a friend suggested that Bosworth work as a stage manager to raise the money to study art. Acting on his friend's advice, Bosworth obtained a job with McKee Rankin as a stage manager at the California Theatre in San Francisco. With the money he made, he undertook the study of painting. Eventually he was pressed into duty as an actor with a small part with three lines. Though he botched the lines, he was given other small roles. Bosworth was 18 years old and on the cusp of a life in the theater.
He signed on with Louis Morrison to be part of a road company for a season as both an actor and as Morrison's dresser, playing William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" and "Measure for Measure" (during his time with the company, Hobarth and another writer wrote a version of "Faust" that Morrison used for 20 years in repertory). By 1887 he was acting at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, and became proficient enough on stage to give Shakespearean recitals in costume the following year. He had acted almost all of the famous characters in the Shakespearean canon by the time he was 21 years old, though he admitted that he was the worst Macbeth ever.
Bosworth eventually wound up in Park City, UT, where he was forced to work in a mine, pushing an ore wagon in order to raise money. He escaped the pits to tour with magician Hermann the Great as the conjurer's assistant for a tour through Mexico. For the first time in eleven years, the 21-year-old Bosworth met his father. Hobarth recalled, "[H]e looked at me and said 'Hum! I couldn't lick you now, son.'" They never met again.
Bosworth arrived back in New York in December 1888, and was hired by Augustin Daly to play Charles the Wrestler in "As You Like It." He did so well in the role that Daly kept him on. Bosworth remained with Daly's company for 10 years, in which he played mostly minor parts. Seven times while he was with the company it made foreign tours, playing in Berlin, Cologne, London, Paris and other European cities.
Eventually, being kept in small parts eroded his confidence, and Bosworth left Daly to sign on with Julia Marlowe, who cast him in leads in Shakespearean plays. Just as Bosworth began to taste stage stardom in New York, he was struck down with tuberculosis, a very serious ailment in the 19th century. Bosworth was forced to give up the stage, as he was not allowed to toil indoors. Though he made a rapid recovery, he returned to the stage too quickly and suffered a relapse. For the rest of his working life he had to balance his acting with periods of rest so as to keep his T.B. under control.
Bosworth re-established himself as a lead actor on the New York stage, appearing opposite the famous actress Minnie Maddern Fiske (Mary Augusta Davey) in the 1903 Boradway revival of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler." He also appeared that year on the Great White Way as the lead in "Marta of the Lowlands," which was produced by Harrison Grey Fiske, Mrs. Fiske's husband. The role propelled him to Broadway stardom. However, he was forced again to give up the stage when he lost 70 pounds in ten weeks.
Moving to Tempe, AZ, to partake of the salubrious climate improved his chances of battling T.B., and eventually he got the disease under control. While he was not actually an invalid, he was forced to live like one and remain in a warm climate lest he suffer a relapse. The T.B. robbed him of his voice, but since he was no longer on stage, it didn't matter. There was a new medium for actors: motion pictures. Bosworth moved to San Diego, which had a reputation of having the most perfect climate in the continental United States, and in 1908 was contracted to make a film by the Selig Polyscope Co. Shooting was to be down in the outdoors, and he did not have to use his voice, which was in a poor condition. The arrangement was perfect for him. "I believe, after all, that it is the motion pictures that have saved my life," he recounted less than a decade later. "How could I have lived on and on, without being able to carry out any of my cherished ambitions? What would my life have meant? Here, in pictures, I am realizing my biggest hopes." Signing with Selig, Bosworth eventually spearheaded the movie company's move to Los Angeles. He is widely credited with being the star of the first movie made on the West Coast. Due to his role in pioneering California for the film industry, Bosworth often was referred to as the "Dean of Hollywood." He wrote the scenarios for the second and third pictures he acted in, and directed the third. According to his own count, he eventually wrote 112 scenarios and produced 84 pictures for Selig. Bosworth was attracted to Jack London's work due to his out-of-doors filming experience and the requirements of his health, which obviated acting in studios. "In all my reading I have never come across better material for motion picture plays than Jack London's stories, and I hope to go right through the whole lot."
In 1913 he formed his own company, Hobart Bosworth Productions Co., to produce a series of Jack London melodramas. He produced, directed and starred in the company's first picture, playing Wolf Larsen in The Sea Wolf (1913), with London himself appearing as a sailor. The movie was released in the U.S. by W.W. Hodkinson Corp. D.W. Griffith also released a Jack London picture earlier that year, Two Men of the Desert (1913), but Bosworth followed up "The Sea Wolf" with The Chechako (1914), with Jack Conway playing the lead as Smoke Bellew, the title character of the eponymous London novel the movie is based on. "The Chechako" and some of the subsequent Boswoth-London pictures were distributed through Paramount, the releasing arm of Famous Players-Lasky.
Conway also starred in the Bosworth-directed follow-up The Valley of the Moon (1914), in which Bosworth had a supporting role. He also appeared as an actor in John Barleycorn (1914), which he co-directed with J. Charles Haydon. He produced, directed, wrote and acted in Martin Eden (1914) and An Odyssey of the North (1914), playing the lead in the latter, which was released by Paramount. He finished up the series by producing, directing and playing the lead in the two-part "Burning Daylight" series: Burning Daylight: The Adventures of 'Burning Daylight' in Alaska (1914) and Burning Daylight: The Adventures of 'Burning Daylight' in Civilization (1914), both of which were released by Paramount.
Bosworth hooked up with the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Co., making its Los Angeles facility on North Occidental Boulevard his headquarters. Subsequently Bosworth Inc. and Oliver Morosco Photoplay were absorbed by Paramount in 1916. Between 1913 and 1921 Hobart Bosworth Productions produced a total of 31 pictures, most of which starred Bosworth. The company ceased operations after producing The Sea Lion (1921).
The merger with Paramount ended the period in Bosworth's creative life where he was a major force in the motion picture industry, which was undergoing changes as the industry matured and solidified. He directed his last picture even before the merger, The White Scar (1915), which he also wrote and starred in for Universal Film Manufacturing Co. After his own production company wound up, Hobart Bosworth began playing supporting roles as an actor. He divorced his first wife, Adele Farrington, in 1919, the year after their son George was born.
He survived the transition to sound. Aside from appearing in Warner Bros.' showcase film Show of Shows (1929), his talking picture debut proper was in the short subject A Man of Peace (1928) for Vitaphone, while his first sound feature was Vitaphone's Ruritania drama General Crack (1929), starring John Barrymore.
Though he appeared in small roles in A-list films, including some classics, Bosworth primarily made his living as a prominently billed character actor in "B" westerns and serials churned out by Poverty Row studios. In his roles in A and B pictures, he typically was typecast as a fatherly type, such as dads, clergymen, judges, governors and the like, though occasionally he got to play a heavy. His most memorable roles included playing John Gilbert's father in both King Vidor's classic The Big Parade (1925) and Clarence Brown's A Woman of Affairs (1928), and Conrad Nagel's father in Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930). He also appeared in the Al Jolson vehicle Mammy (1930), directed by Michael Curtiz, and in the Little Rascals' only feature film, General Spanky (1936) (a flop).
In addition to Vidor, Brown and Curtiz, Bosworth worked with other great directors, including Ernst Lubitsch (in support of John Barrymore in Eternal Love (1929)), D.W. Griffith (playing Gen. Robert E. Lee in Abraham Lincoln (1930)), 'Frank Capra' (in Dirigible (1931)) and Lady for a Day (1933)) and John Ford (headlining Hearts of Oak (1924), starring in Hangman's House (1928) and playing the Chaplain in support of Will Rogers in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)).
Bosworth had a featured role in the early science-fiction movie Just Imagine (1930) and played Chingachgook in support of star Harry Carey's Hawkeye in Mascot Pictures' serial The Last of the Mohicans (1932). As the sound era wore on, he was reduced to bit parts, frequently uncredited, in such A-pictures as the W.C. Fields comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932) and the Errol Flynn western They Died with Their Boots On (1941). He kept working until the year before his death, appearing in six films in 1942, including an uncredited bit role as a clergyman in support of Barbara Stanwyck in The Gay Sisters (1942), his penultimate picture. His last film was Universal Pictures' western Sin Town (1942), starring Constance Bennett and Broderick Crawford, which was advertised with the intriguing tagline "The Glory Hole of the Booming Oil Towns!"
Altogether, Hobart Bosworth acted in over 250 movies from 1908 to 1942, directed 44 known pictures from 1911 to 1915, and wrote 27 & produced 11 known pictures from 1911 to 1921. His actual count might be hundreds more.
Hobart Bosworth, the "Dean of Hollywood," died on December 30, 1943 of pneumonia in Glendale, CA. He was 76 years old. He was survived by his second wife, Cecile, and his son George.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Ray portrayed simple unaffected country bumpkins in silent rural melodramas. Unfortunately, Ray let Hollywood turn him into a headstrong egotist. Alienating most producers, he put up his own money to finance a major feature called The Courtship of Myles Standish (1923). The film was a miserable failure that wiped out Ray's fortune. Comeback attempts were hampered by the advent of the sound picture.- Although Frank Nitti has gotten the reputation over the years as the right-hand man of gangster Al Capone and a feared killer in his own right, this has actually proven not to be the case. Although Nitti and Capone were as youths in New York City both members of the Five Points Gang--one of the most notorious of the city's many violent street gangs at the turn of the century--they apparently were in the gang at different times and didn't know each other. It wasn't until Nitti later moved to Chicago, where Capone was already established as a major gangland figure, that the two became acquainted. Nitti ran a barber shop from where he peddled bootleg liquor and where various denizens of the neighborhood would fence stolen property. He had a knack for smuggling whiskey from Canada to Chicago and distributing it throughout the city, a talent that brought him to Capone's attention. He was subsequently brought into the Capone mob, where he did indeed become "Big Al's" right-hand man. When Capone went to prison for income-tax evasion in 1929, Nitti was installed as head of the Capone mob by Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, who was the real power in Chicago's gangland hierarchy. Nitti's position was solely as a frontman, to take the spotlight off Ricca and the other gangsters who actually ran things; he had no real power and his "orders" were usually countermanded by Ricca, who--unlike Nitti--was a member of the Commission, a "board of directors" of Mafia crime families.
Nitti did manage to get into trouble on his own, though. In late December of 1932 he had a run-in with a gangster named Ted Newberry, who was running what used to be the George Moran (aka "Bugs" Moran) / Charles Dion O'Bannion gang. Newberry, it was rumored, had Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak on his payroll and vowed to get Nitti. Shortly afterward two Chicago detectives showed up at Nitti's office, sent there by Cermak to arrest him, and a few minutes later a gunfight erupted, during which one of the detectives was shot in the hand and Nitti himself was badly wounded and almost died; he spent several months in the hospital. When he recovered he was put on trial for the attempted murder of the officers. However, at the trial it came out that the detectives had been paid to assassinate Nitti, although it wasn't determined by whom, and that the officer who was shot had actually deliberately shot himself in the hand so as to provide an excuse to kill Nitti, who was in fact unarmed. He was acquitted of the charges.
In 1943 two Chicago mobsters were indicted for labor racketeering in a scheme to take over several Hollywood labor unions and extort money from the movie studios in exchange for labor peace. They were tried and found guilty, but instead of going to prison they made a deal to inform on their gangland bosses, among whom were Nitti and Ricca, who were soon indicted. Ricca and the other mobsters ordered Nitti to take the blame for the scheme, since the two gangsters who turned on them were Nitti's men. Nitti, who had served 18 months in prison in the early 1930s for income tax evasion, was extremely claustrophobic and the thought of spending several years in a small prison cell was too much for him to bear. He refused the order to take the rap for them all, and a violent argument ensued between Nitti and the other gangsters. The next day Nitti went for a walk along the railroad tracks near his home, and as several railroad employees working nearby were looking at him, he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Tyler Brooke was born on 6 June 1886 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Madam Satan (1930) and Playboy of Paris (1930). He was married to Myrtle Laurine Neil, Laruna Wolcott and Elizabeth Bauland. He died on 2 March 1943 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- David Bacon was born on 24 March 1914 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Masked Marvel (1943), The Boss of Big Town (1942) and Someone to Remember (1943). He was married to Greta Keller. He died on 13 September 1943 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Harry Baur was born on 12 April 1880 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Un carnet de bal (1937), The Golem: The Legend of Prague (1936) and Les Misérables (1934). He was married to Rika Radifé and Rose Grane. He died on 8 April 1943 in Paris, France.
- Writer
- Art Department
Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, mycologist and conservationist. She is famous for writing children's books with animal characters such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Potter was born in Kensington, London. Her family was quite rich. She was educated by governesses. She did not have many friends, but she had many pets, including Benjamin and Peter, two rabbits. She spent her holidays in Scotland and the Lake District. There, she began to learn to love nature, plants, and animals, which she carefully painted.
When she was around 30, Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It was very popular. She also became engaged to her publisher Norman Warne. Her parents became angry and separated with her because of this. They did not want her to marry someone who was socially lower than her. However, Warne died before he and Potter could marry.
Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full time. She did not have to ask her parents for money anymore because she had money from her books. In time, she bought Hill Top Farm and more land. In her forties, she married William Heelis, a local solicitor. She also began raising sheep and became a farmer, though she continued writing. She published 23 books.
Potter did not have any children. She died of heart disease and pneumonia in Near Sawrey, Lancashire on 22 December 1943. Almost all of her money was left to the National Trust. Her books continue to sell well around the world, in many different languages. Her widower died in August 1945.