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- Jay Adler was born on 26 September 1896 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Killing (1956), Cry Danger (1951) and The Big Combo (1955). He died on 23 September 1978 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
The actor and Broadway director Luther Adler was born into a Yiddish theatrical dynasty. One of the six children born to Jacob P. and Sara Adler, he made his debut in the world in New York City, originally billed as Lutha J. Adler. His full siblings Charles, Jay, Julia, and Stella (the famous acting teacher) as well as his half-siblings Celia and Abram Adler all appeared on Broadway, and his father Jacob, the biggest star of the Yiddish-language theater, was considered one of the great American actors.
The Yiddish theater was an important cultural venue in the days when the millions of Jewish immigrants in the greater metropolitan New York area spoke Yiddish as their first (and sometimes only) language. People who trained and appeared in the Yiddish theater were instrumental in the development of the modern American theater and film, and some, including Sidney Lumet, are still active in the 21st century. It was in this cultural milieu that Luther and his siblings got their grounding in acting and the theater.
Jacob Adler owned and operated his own stage in New York's Lower East Side, and Luther began appearing in the family productions at the age of five with the Adler production of "Schmendrick." He made his official debut as an actor at the age of 13 at his father's theater and his Broadway debut at the the age of 18. Billed as Lutha Adler, he appeared in the Provincetown Players' production of Theodore Drieser's "The Hand of the Potter" in December 1921 at the Provincetown Playhouse,
Adler's first Broadway hit was "Humoresque" in 1923, and he appeared regularly in top productions throughout the '20s, including "Street Scene" (1929) and "Red Dust" (1929). Along with his sister 'Stella Adler", Luther Adler was one of the original members of the Group Theatre acting company, which was formed in 1931 by Harold Clurman (his future brother-in-law), Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. Others who would make their bones in the company were Elia Kazan, Julius "John" Garfield, Howard Da Silva, Franchot Tone, John Randolph, Will Geer, Clifford Odets and Lee J. Cobb.
The Group Theatre was dedicated to bringing realism to the American stage and was instrumental in introducing the Stanislavsky technique into American acting. Most members were leftists if not communists, and the collective wanted to produce plays dealing with social issues. For the Groupe Theatre, Adler appeared in "Night Over Taos" (1932), "Success Story" (1933), "Alien Corn" (1933) and two seminal works of the American stage written by Odets: "Awake and Sing!" (1935) and "Golden Boy" (1937). He played opposite leading ladies Katharine Cornell in "Alien Corn" (1933), his sister Stella in "Gold Eagle Guy "(1934), "Awake and Sing!" and "Paradise Lost" (both 1935), and Frances Farmer in "Golden Boy" (1937).
His appearance as the urban ethnic boxer Joe Bonaparte in Odets' "Golden Boy" arguably was his greatest role, but when the film was made in 1939, he was passed over for the improbably cast Wlliam Holden, a white-bread WASP. Although Adler appeared in many motion pictures, his reputation would remain primarily that of a stage actor.
Adler became a director on Broadway in 1942, though his first staging, "They Should Have Stayed in Bed", was a flop, lasting but 11 performances. He next directed Ben Hecht's pro-Israel propaganda play "A Flag is Born" in 1946, starring the great Paul Muni, a graduate of the Yiddish theater, and newcomer Marlon Brando, an Irish-American born-Protestant who had been trained by his sister Stella. The play, which raised money for Jewsh refugees from the Holocaust seeking sanctuary in Palestine, was a hit, running for 120 performances. He also directed "Angel Street" (1955) and "A View from the Bridge" (1960). He last appeared on Broadway as a replacement in the long running "Fiddler on the Roof."
Adler made his movie debut in Lancer Spy (1937), but he never became a star in that medium. His best roles like "Golden Boy" and "Humoresque" were taken by other actors, including Group Theatre alumnus John Garfield. He had memorable supporting turns in the noir classic D.O.A. (1949), in Joseph Losey's remake of M (1951), in Paul Muni's last film The Last Angry Man (1959), in the Holocaust drama The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), and as Paul Newman's mobster uncle in Absence of Malice (1981). He also worked frequently on television.
From 1938 until 1947, Adler was married to the actress Sylvia Sidney. They had one child, a son, Jacob. Luther Adler died in Kutztown, Pennsylvania on December 8, 1984. He was 81 years old.- Actress
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Stella Adler was born on February 10, 1901, in New York, the youngest daughter of the Yiddish theater actors, Jacob P. Adler and Sarah Adler, who founded an acting dynasty. In addition to her parents, Stella's family included her siblings Charles Adler, Jay Adler, Julia and Luther Adler, all of whom appeared on Broadway. Stella made her debut at the age of four in the family-owned theater in the play "Broken Hearts". At the age of 18, she made her London debut as "Naomi" in "Elisa Ben Avia", in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York. Stella then spent the next 10 years treading the boards in vaudeville and Yiddish language theaters throughout North and South America and Europe. In all, she appeared in 100 plays.
Adler was widely acclaimed in the Yiddish theater, but she wanted to break out of that theatrical ghetto and play a wider variety of roles on the legitimate stage and in Hollywood. What was constant in Adler's 83-year-long career was her intense dedication to broadening the level of artistry in the theater.
She made her Broadway debut as a replacement in Carl Kapek's "The World We Live In". (Her official debut as a member of the original company was in "The Straw Hat" on Oct 14, 1926). After its run played out, she joined the acting school run by Richard Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya, the American Laboratory. Both Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya were former members of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.
While married to Horace Eleaschreff, Adler met Harold Clurman, who would become her second husband and one of the co-founders of The Group Theatre, in 1924 (They would marry 19 years later). In this period, she met another future Group Theatre co-founder, Lee Strasberg, at the Actor's Laboratory when she participated in classes there in 1928. Along with Cheryl Crawford, Clurman and Strasberg founded the Group Theatre in 1931. It became arguably the most influential theater group in 20th century America, at least in terms of its influence on acting by introducing the teaching of Konstantin Stanislavski's System to the American stage. Its aim was the championing of realism and it is credited with bringing naturalism into the American theater. Clurman and Strasberg invited Adler to become a founding member of the Group Theatre. The Utopian political ideals that were central to the idea of the Group Theatre did not appeal to Adler, nor did the cooperative focus of the company, but she did join after being promised leading roles and because she supported Clurman's vision of the theater as an art form. It was with the Group Theatre that Stella played some of her more acclaimed roles, including "Sarah Glassman" in "Success Story", "Bessie Berger" in "Awake and Sing" and "Clara" in "Paradise Lost".
In 1934, she took a leave of absence from the Group Theatre and traveled to Russia to study for five weeks in Moscow Art Theatre, and in private sessions with the great man himself, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." Adler was among few American actors, such as Michael Chekhov and Richard Boleslawski to study privately with Stanislavsky. In August 1934, she returned from Russia, and made a presentation of what she learned from Stanislavski, then she began teaching acting classes to members of The Group Theatre troupe, including the actors Elia Kazan, Sanford Meisner and Robert Lewis. Meisner and Lewis would go on to be the most influential acting teachers in America after Adler herself and Strasberg. Kazan, who would go on to become the greatest theatrical director in 20th century American theater, also had a huge impact on American acting by championing what became known in the vernacular as "The Method", which was closely related to Adler's teaching. Kazan's exposure to Konstantin Stanislavski's System via Adler was highly influential in his work.
Stella Adler, being the most experienced of the Group Theatre actors, had not accepted Lee Strasberg's idiosyncratic version of Stanislavski's System, which Strasberg interpreted as "method" and shifted its goals to memory exercises. "The (memory) emphasis was the sick one" in Strasberg's "method", said Stella Adler, as it made acting under Strasberg increasingly painful for her. Feeling uncomfortable with the Group Theatre members, many of whom were also Communist Party members, Adler left the company in 1937 to conquer Hollywood. According to her later student and friend, Marlon Brando, she had a bad nose job to camouflage her looks, so hell-bent was she on conquering the movies as she had the stage. She was not to succeed.Adler spent six years as an associate producer at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, at which she acted in movies under the name "Stella Ardler."
She did not achieve the quality of roles or the acclaim that she had in the theater, and she eventually returned to the stage in the early 1940s, acting and directing on Broadway and in London. Adler also began to teach at German émigré Erwin Piscator's acting workshop at the New School for Social Research, where she mentored the young Marlon Brando. She married Clurman in 1943. At its core, the theatrical experience is rooted in the willing suspension of disbelief, with an audience willingly ignoring the fact that it is watching a synthetic entertainment in a highly unrealistic venue. Such is the power of good theater to draw the audience into the world created upon the stage that this suspension of disbelief not only occurs, but that it, as an art form, provides an immediacy that other more "realistic" forms such as movies or television cannot provide. Adler believed that "the theater exists 99% in the imagination" and it was this belief that was the foundation of her philosophy and instruction.
Drawing on Stanislavski's System, Adler made it the bedrock of her technique that an actor's primary concern was with the emotional origins of the script. An actor (and acting student) must search between the lines of the script for the playwright's important, but unspoken, messages. To tap into this vein and bring forth the real meaning in a character, an actor needed both imagination and the ability to open oneself up emotionally. Essentially, Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience. Konstantin Stanislavski taught her that "the source of acting is imagination and the key to its problems is truth, truth in the circumstances of the play."
It was a fortuitous occasion when Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School and came into Stella Adler's orbit. The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture as it was through Brando that "The Method" was introduced into the American theater and movies. It would dominate American acting for more than half-a-century and is still the dominant paradigm now, over sixty years since Adler tutored Brando.
"The Method" as taught by Adler and other Group Theater alumni was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. The extraordinarily sensitive and intelligent Brando was the ideal student due to the prodigious talent he could yoke to the harness of technique that was "The Method". Adler took pride of place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from a fairly ignorant Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Aside from acting, Adler directed two plays on Broadway, "Manhattan Nocturne" during the 1943-44 season, and "Sunday Breakfast" in 1952. Her last appearance as an actress on the Broadway stage was in the revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1946.
Stella Adler left the faculty of the New School in 1949 to establish her own acting school, the Stella Adler Theatre Studio (which would be renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting before taking its final name, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting). She developed a curriculum from her wide knowledge and experience, combining her understanding of Konstantin Stanislavski's System with the techniques and traditions of the Yiddish theater, The Group Theatre, Broadway and Hollywood. In addition to acting technique, the school offered workshops in play analysis, character, and scene preparation; the students gleaned on-stage experience by performing scenes and plays before invited audiences. Among the alumni of her school were Marlon Brando (chairman of the board of the school until his death), Warren Beatty (who has taken over the position), Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.
Adler taught script analysis at Yale for a year and half. Courses for advanced students and professionals were added to the curriculum of her own school, including rehearsal technique and script analysis. Due to her reputation and connections, the school was able to attract distinguished lecturers, including Sir John Gielgud and Arthur Laurents.
Stella Adler was a major inspiration to her students. Her mantra was, "You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors - because your souls are not used up by life". Adler is still, more than a decade after her death, viewed as one of the foremost influences on contemporary acting.
Adler divorced Clurman in 1960, after 17 years of marriage. Subsequently, she married Mitchell Wilson, whom she remained married to until his death in 1973. She did not remarry.
Stella Adler died on December 21, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. She was 91 years old.- Actress
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Dianna Elise Agron was born in Savannah, Georgia to Mary and Ronald Agron and grew up in a middle-class family in Savannah before moving to Texas and, later, San Francisco, California, because her father was a general manager for Hyatt. Dianna and her brother Jason were raised Jewish and she graduated from Burlingame High School with honors.
While Dianna was growing up, she spent much of her time performing. She began dancing at age three, focusing mainly on jazz and ballet; she later began hip-hop dancing. She also appeared in many local musical-theater productions.
After graduating from high school, Dianna decided to pursue acting as a career and began appearing in commercials and television shows including CSI: NY (2004), Numb3rs (2005), Veronica Mars (2004), and Heroes (2006). In 2009, she won the role of high-school cheerleader Quinn Fabray on the FOX television series Glee (2009). Since the hit television show's premiere on May 19th, 2009, she and her castmates have received critical praise for well as her fellow cast mates, have received critical praise for their incredible work. In addition to her work on, Glee (2009), Dianna has ventured into films, such as Burlesque (2010), where she had the opportunity to star alongside Christina Aguilera, Cher, and Stanley Tucci, and the action thriller I Am Number Four (2011). There is no doubt that her beautiful talent will shine for years to come.- Actress
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Pamela Adlon comes from an acting family and began her career in television in 1983. She has appeared in many popular TV shows, including as a voice actress in a number of animated TV series including, most famously, King of the Hill (1997) for which she won an Emmy for her role as Bobby Hill.Voice of Bobby Hill- Actor
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Bandleader who had several big instrumental hits in 1960s with his band, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. First big hit was "The Lonely Bull" in 1963. He and the Brass followed that with other big hits like "Tijuana Taxi", "Spanish Flea" (familiar to some as "the Dating Game song"), "A Taste of Honey", and "Zorba the Greek". It wasn't until he decided to try a vocal that he finally hit #1 on the Billboard charts with "This Guy's in Love With You" in 1968. After the breakup of the Tijuana Brass, Alpert was out of the public eye until his comeback album, Rise, hit the charts in 1979. That album produced his first instrumental #1, "Rise". After several mediocre attempts after that, Alpert laid low and then resurfaced in 1987 with a more modern jazz/funk sound with "Keep Your Eye on Me".- Director
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Wesley Meyer Archer is an American animation director and storyboard artist from Houston, Texas who is known for directing episodes of animated shows such as Rick & Morty, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, The Goode Family, Starship Regulars, Allen Gregory, Zombie College, Supermodels, Futurama, Bob's Burgers and Disenchantment. He graduated from CalArts.- Producer
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Allan Arkush was born on 30 April 1948 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He is a producer and director, known for Heroes (2006), Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) and Crossing Jordan (2001).- Actress
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Eleanor Audley was an American actress, with a distinctive voice that helped her find work as a voice actress in radio and animation. She is primarily remembered as the first actress to voice Lady Tremaine and Maleficent, two of the most memorable Disney villains.
Audley's real name was Eleanor Zellman, and she was from New York City. She was Jewish, but little is known about her family background and she apparently never married.
She made her acting debut in 1926, aged 20, at the Broadway production of "Howdy, King". She remained primarily a theatrical actress through the 1920s and the 1930s. During the 1940s, Audley started playing a number of prominent roles in radio serials. Among them was mother-in-law Leticia Cooper in "My Favorite Husband" (1948-51), receptionist Molly Byrd in "The Story of Dr. Kildare" (1949-51), and neighbor, Elizabeth Smith in "Father Knows Best" (1949-54).
Audley was hired by Disney to play the role of wealthy widow Lady Tremaine in the animated feature film "Cinderella" (1950). Audley was also used as the live-action model of the character, and her facial features were used by the animators who designed the character. In the film, Lady Tremaine is depicted as the abusive stepmother of Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods) and the domineering mother of Anastasia Tremaine (voiced by Lucille Bliss) and Drizella Tremaine (voiced by Rhoda Williams). The film was a box office hit, and its profits helped rescue the Disney studio from a financial decline that had lasted for almost a decade.
For the rest of the decade, Audley appeared regularly in supporting roles in film, and guest roles in television. She returned to animation when hired to voice the evil fairy Maleficent in "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). As before, Audley was also used as a live-action model for the character. During the film's production, Audley was struggling with tuberculosis, While nominally the villain, Maleficent received more screen-time in the finished film than titular protagonist Princess Aurora (voiced by singer Mary Costa).
"Sleeping Beauty" had box office receipts of more than $51 million in the U.S. and Canada, against a budget of $6 million. It finished the year second in ticket sales, behind the number one film, "Ben-Hur." Audley was not invited to voice other villains. The film earned critical and popular acclaim through later re-releases, and Maleficent has been revived many times by Disney. But never with her original voice actress.
In the 1960s, Audley played supporting roles in then-popular television series. Among her most prominent roles were Irma Lumpkin in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", Peggy Billings in "The Dick Van Dyke Show", Millicent Schuyler-Potts in "The Beverly Hillbillies" , Aunt Martha in "Mister Ed", Jenny Teasley in "Pistols 'n' Petticoats", Eunice Douglas in "Green Acres", and Beatrice Vincent in "My Three Sons".
Audley worked with Disney again to voice psychic medium Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Leota is depicted as a ghost who communicates with the living, and other actresses have since voiced the character.
Her long career ended prematurely in the 1970s, due to increasingly poor health. She lived in retirement until her death in 1991, at the age of 86. The cause of death was respiratory failure. Audley was interred at the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her character of Madame Leota received its own tombstone in 2001. The epitaph reads: "Dear sweet Leota, beloved by all. In regions beyond now, but having a ball."- Cute, tiny, and prolific little old lady character actress Frances Bay worked constantly in both films and TV shows alike after making her debut at the age of 59 in life with a small part in the comedy Foul Play (1978) in 1978.
She frequently portrayed eccentric elderly women and good-hearted grandmothers in all kinds of pictures and television programs. Frances acted several times for David Lynch: she's Kyle MacLachlan's sweet doddery aunt in Blue Velvet (1986), a gruff, profane whorehouse madam in Wild at Heart (1990), and the spooky Mrs. Tremond in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990) and its spin-off feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). Frances popped up in two movies for director Stuart Gordon: she's a kind witch in The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) and a fortune teller in Edmond (2005).
Other notable film roles include a snippy librarian in The Attic (1980), a mysterious blind nun in the offbeat Nomads (1986), another librarian in In the Mouth of Madness (1994), and Adam Sandler's loving grandmother in the hit comedy Happy Gilmore (1996). Frances had the unique distinction of guesting on the final episodes of the TV shows Happy Days (1974), Who's the Boss? (1984), and Seinfeld (1989).
Among the many TV series Bay had guest spots on are Charmed (1998), ER (1994), Matlock (1986), The X-Files (1993), Murder, She Wrote (1984), The Commish (1991), L.A. Law (1986), Hill Street Blues (1981), Touched by an Angel (1994), The Golden Girls (1985), and Amazing Stories (1985).
She won a Gemini Award for her performance in the Disney TV program Avonlea (1990). Frances was also in the music video for Jimmy Fallon's "Idiot Boyfriend." In addition to her substantial movie and TV credits, Bay also acted in both Off-Broadway stage productions and regional theater; these plays include "Finnegan's Wake," "Grease," "Genuis," "The Caucasion Chalk Circle," "Number Our Days," "Uncommon Women," "Sarcophagus," and "The Pleasure of His Company." Frances won two DramaLogue Awards and was nominated for a Los Angeles Dramatic Critics' Award.
In 2002 Bay was the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident which resulted in having part of her right leg amputated. Her husband Charles sadly died in 2002 as well.
In real life Frances Bay was a very practical and unassuming woman with an avid love for jazz music. - Actor
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A bold, innovative, avant-garde figure in theatre who helped revolutionized the style of playwriting and acting in the 1950s and 1960s, actor/writer/producer/directer Julian Beck was certainly a odd-looking sort with his baleful, hollow eyes, stark and skullish features and near-bald dome capped by long fringes of stringy hair along the side. He could have easily given inspiration to the creepy look Richard O'Brien gave his bizarre character in "The Rocky Horror Show."
Born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City, Julian was the son of Irving, a businessman, and Mabel Lucille (Blum) Beck. Educated at the College of the City of New York, he briefly attended Yale University, but then abandoned it to pursue writing and art. An abstract expressionist painter in the 1940s, his life's destiny was forever changed after meeting his future wife, actress/writer/director Judith Malina, in 1943. His passions swiftly centered around the likes of hers -- the theatre -- and together they co-founded The Living Theatre in 1947, which would base itself in New York City. Their subsequent contributions propelled the off-off-Broadway movement and the vision of performance art. Julian would continue to work with the Living Theater up until his death nearly forty years later.
The group strongly reflected the ideals of another theatre revolutionary, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), who embraced the Theatre of Cruelty and sought to jar its audiences out of their own complacency. The plays were presented in various venues, chiefly in the couple's own home when it couldn't financial keep up a theatre space. The Living Theatre also spread its philosophy throughout the world, performing extensively in non-traditional places such as street corners and prisons. In one performance piece, from Jack Gelbert's "The Connection," the drama about drug addiction had its actors playing junkies and wandering about the audience shouting expletives while demanding money for a fix. They were among the first to import the plays of Bertolt Brecht and Jean Cocteau, as well as modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. Their productions could be undeniably repelling or imaginative and often involved collective improvisation. It took on an anarcho-pacifist point of view while celebrating the uninhibited use of drugs, hallucinogens, crude language and anything else under the kitchen sink in order to send home its political intent or shock effect. One of their their most controversial works was "Paradise Now" (1968), a free-form denouncement of American life that involved nudity and audience participation. Other productions include "The Brig" (1963), "In the Jungle of the Cities" (1960), The Brig (1963), "Frankenstein" (1968) and Antigone (1968). Their work often led to their frequent arrests for anything from indecent exposure to drug possession.
The Living Theater moved out of New York for a time in 1974 due to tax problems and a sensationalistic trial that Beck and Malina lost. Besides his theatre work, Beck published several volumes of poetry reflecting his left-wing, anarchist beliefs, two non-fiction books and a handful of experimental and mainstream films. His intense, imposing acting style was captured vividly in films, such as his sadistic gangster in The Cotton Club (1984) and his creepy, spectral stranger in Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), a rare major role that ended up becoming his final movie.
Diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1983, he died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City while filming the afore-mentioned movie at the age of 60 on September 14, 1985. He was survived by his wife, a brother, and two children, Garrick and Isha.- Writer
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Renowned composer ("West Side Story", "Candide", "On The Town"), conductor, arranger, pianist, educator, author, TV/radio host, educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University (BA) with Walter Piston. Edward Burlingame Hill and A. Tillman Merritt. He studied piano with Helen Coates, Heinrich Gebhard and Isabelle Vengerova, at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, and at the Berkshire Music Center with Serge Koussevitzky (and became an assistant to Koussevitzky). He was assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1943-1944, and conductor of the New York Symphony, 1945-1948.
He was music advisor to the Israel Philharmonic from 1948-1949, and a member of the faculty at the Berkshire Music Center from 1948 (though he did take leaves of absence), and head of the conducting department there in 1951. He was Professor of Music at Brandeis University, 1951-1956; and co-conductor of the New York Philharmonic, 1957-1958, and music director there after 1958. He won an Emmy award for his televised Young People's Concerts. He was guest conductor of symphony orchestras in the USA and Europe, and conducted the Israel Philharmonic seven times between 1947 and 1957. He toured the US with Koussevitzky in 1951, and was the first American to conduct at the La Scala Opera House in Milan, in 1953. He was awarded the Sonning Prize in Denmark, and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
He joined ASCAP in 1944, and his chief musical collaborators included Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Latouche, and Stephen Sondheim. His song compositions include "New York, New York", "Lonely Town", "Some Other Time", "I Can Cook, Too", "I Get Carried Away", "Lucky to Be Me", "Ohio", "A Quiet Girl", "It's Love", "A Little Bit in Love", "Wrong Note Rag", "Glitter and Be Gay", "El Dorado", "The Best of All Possible Worlds", "Maria", "Tonight", "Something's Coming", "I Feel Pretty", "Cool", "America", and "Gee, Officer Krupke".- Writer
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Attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) as a playwriting major. Barbara Bosson (his second wife), Michael Tucker, Bruce Weitz and Charles Haid were classmates; he and Tucker drove cross-country to Hollywood for full-time jobs at Universal, where Bochco would remain for 12 years.
In 1978, he moved to MTM Enterprises, who after several attempts gave him carte Blanche to create a show similar to Fort Apache the Bronx (1981) (Hill Street Blues (1981)). In 1985, MTM fired him, in part for his inability to keep HSB on budget. After creating L.A. Law (1986) and Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989) for NBC, he struck a $15M deal with ABC in 1987 to create 10 series pilots over 10 years.Creator of “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”- Actress
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Natalie Burn is an accomplished actress of Ukrainian heritage, now holding American citizenship. She boasts a distinguished career, marked by her commitment to excellence in the performing arts. Natalie is proud to be a lifetime member of The Actors Studio and an active member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
In her latest project, "Til Death Do Us Part," which was released in AMC theaters nationwide, Natalie received critical acclaim for her portrayal as a runaway bride in danger. Several reviewers and articles like Hollywood Reporter, CBS News and LA Times praised Burn's ability to do her own stunts as well as her dramatic performance alongside esteemed actors Cam Gigandet and Jason Patric. Her recent credits encompass a range of notable productions, including Warner Brothers' DC Comic film "Black Adam," starring Dwayne Johnson, and "The Enforcer," opposite Antonio Banderas and Kate Bosworth. She shone in "The Expendables 3" alongside Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mel Gibson. Her upcoming film, "The Movers," features Academy Nominee Terence Howard and Jena Malone.
Natalie's television work includes co-starring roles in the Amazon Prime Emmy Award-winning Limited Drama Series "Studio City," which earned her an Indie Series Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and the Lifetime Original movie "Vanished: Search for My Sister.
Also recognized for her exceptional skills in martial arts, Natalie has starred in several action movies across industry legends like Bruce Willis and Jason Statham. Recently, she commanded the screen as the lead in the action-packed thriller "Acceleration," alongside Dolph Lundgren and Sean Patrick Flanery. Later this year she can be seen starring in the upcoming medieval epic "The Last Redemption."
In addition to her acting prowess, Natalie is a classically trained ballet dancer, having graduated from The Royal Ballet School in London and Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Fluent in four languages, she brings a global perspective to her artistic endeavors.
As a producer, Natalie owns two production companies, 7Heaven Productions and Born To Burn Films, with a track record of producing a dozen successful films to date and several more in pre-production.
Driven by a desire to inspire and empower women in the entertainment industry worldwide, Natalie Burn sets a high standard as a role model for artistic excellence and professionalism.- Producer
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Mark Cuban was born July 31, 1958 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Shirley (Feldman) and Norton Cuban, an automobile upholsterer. His family, of Eastern European Jewish descent, was originally named Chabenisky. Mark graduated from Indiana University in 1981 with a degree in Business. After college, he moved to Dallas, Texas and created a computer consulting business called "MicroSolutions" which transformed him into a millionaire when he sold the business to CompuServe in 1990. In 1995, Mark and his business partner Todd Wagner began working on an idea (that later became known as Broadcast.com) in order to stream live events over the Internet. This innovative duo sold their company to Yahoo.com in 1999 for billions of dollars in Yahoo! stock. Mr. Cuban went on to purchase the NBA's Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise for $285 million on January 14, 2000, dramatically changing the team for the better. Mark's brilliant ability to lead this organization and mold the Mavericks into an evolving superior force led the team to reach the NBA Finals in 2006 for the first time in franchise history.
Beyond that, Cuban launched the high-definition television network "HDNet" in September of 2001 with Philip Garvin. HDNet provides the highest level of digital broadcast quality available. Mark and Todd Wagner established a media company named "2929" with holdings that cover many aspects of entertainment. This includes film production companies HDNet Films and 2929 Productions, movie distributor Magnolia Pictures, home video distributor Magnolia Home Entertainment, the Landmark Theatres chain, and a stake in Lions Gate Entertainment.
Mr. Cuban is famous for his bold, unambiguous views and mindset, which has a great deal to do with his perpetual success. He continues to challenge the status quo in the worlds of media and technology. In 2005, Mark announced he was financially backing the underdog in a U.S. Supreme Court "peer-to-peer" file-sharing case. Also in 2005, Cuban experimented with a "day-and-date" model when he produced the film Bubble (2005) which was released simultaneously across theatrical, television and home video platforms. His stated goal of collapsing the traditional release windows was intended to give consumers the choice in terms of exactly how they might be interested in viewing a film.
It's impossible to truly know what Mark Cuban will create, produce, buy, or sell next, but you can bet it will be considered "genius" just like the man himself.- Actor
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Michael Cudlitz was born on 29 December 1964 in Queens, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), The Walking Dead (2010) and Sex Drive (2008). He is married to Rachael Cudlitz. They have two children.- Director
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Jules Dassin was an Academy Award-nominated director, screenwriter and actor best known for his films Rififi (1955), Never on Sunday (1960), and Topkapi (1964).
He was born Julius Samuel Dassin on 18 December 1911, in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. He was one of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Samuel Dassin and Berthe Vogel. Young Dassin grew up in Harlem, and he attended Morris High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1929. After taking acting classes in Europe, he returned to New York. In 1934, he became and actor with the ARTEF Players (Arbeter Teater Farband), and was a member of the troupe until 1939. Dassin played character roles in Yiddish, mainly in the plays by Sholom Aleichem. But upon discovering "that an actor I was not," he switched to directing and writing. At that time, he joined the Communist Party of the United States, but left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a pact with Adolf Hitler.
Dassin came to Hollywood in 1940, and was an apprentice to directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. In 1941, he made his directorial debut at MGM with adaptation of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Dassin's best directorial works for Hollywood include such criminal dramas as Brute Force (1947) starring Burt Lancaster; The Naked City (1948), one of the first police dramas shot on the streets of New York; and Night and the City (1950) starring Richard Widmark as a hustler in London who is caught up in his own schemes. While he was assigned by producer Darryl F. Zanuck to make the film, Dassin was accused of affiliation with the Communist Party in his past. Zanuck advised Dassin to "shoot the expensive scenes first, to hook the studio" so the film was finished and released in 1951. Dassin was reported to HUAC in a 1951 testimony by directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle. That was enough to sink his career in Hollywood. Dassin was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1952 and eventually became blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
He left the United States for France in 1953 and struggled during his first years in Paris. He was not fluent in French, and his connections were limited. However, Dassin's low-budget film, Rififi (1955), famous for its long heist sequence that was free of dialog, won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. There, he met the Greek actress Melina Mercouri. Later, Dassin co-starred opposite Mercouri in his film Never on Sunday (1960), which won the Best Film Award at Cannes in 1960. At that time, the anti-Communist witch hunt in America was fading, and Dassin was accepted again. He received two Academy Award-nominations for directing and screen-writing for Topkapi (1964), starring Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, and Peter Ustinov. Dassin also served as member of jury at the Cannes and several other international film festivals.
Jules Dassin was married twice. He had three children with his first wife, violinist Beatrice Launer. His son, Joe Dassin, was a popular French singer in the 1960s and '70s, with such hits as "Bip Bip," "L'Eté Indien" and "Aux Champs-Èlysées." In 1966, Jules Dassin married Mercouri, an ardent anti-fascist who lost her Greek citizenship for opposing the junta, and the couple was living in Manhattan, remaining very active in their efforts to restore democracy in Greece during the dictatorship of the Colonels. After 1974, the couple returned to Greece, Mercouri became a member of the Greek Parliament, and Culture Minister of Greece. While living in Athens, Dassin was active in the effort to bring the 2500-year-old Elgin marbles of the Parthenon back to Athens from their current location at the British Museum in London. In this and other humanitarian causes, Dassin followed the last will of his late wife.
Jules Dassin died of complications caused by a flu, on April 1, 2008, at age 96, at Hygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece. He is survived by two daughters and grandchildren.- Actor
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A native of San Francisco, Dimitri Diatchenko attended Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts. After high school, he attended Stetson University in Deland, Florida where he was a scholarship music student, majoring in classical guitar. After completing the Bachelors program, he matriculated to Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida where he continued with his acting and music studies in the Masters program. His first acting experience was as the lead in the play, Foxfire, by Hume Cronin, where he played the country music star, Dillard Nations. Diatchenko continued to develop his acting skills both on stage and on camera in Florida-based projects from 1990 - 1996, while studying with Ken Stilson and George Judy. Some of these projects include the award-winning short films, Third on a Match, Used Cars and Goiter Boy. . In April of 1996, as Dimitri was graduating with his Masters degree from Florida State University, he landed a small role as a Navy Seal in Ridley Scott's Demi Moore starer G.I. Jane. After that break, Diatchenko moved out to Los Angeles and officially started his professional acting career. In addition to his acting, Diatchenko continues to perform as a master classical guitarist. As a soloist, he has four guitar CDs in release. His original composition for solo guitar, entitled, "Tango en Paraiso" is featured on the soundtrack for his film, Remarkable Power. Mel Bay Publications has published this piece in "Master Anthology of New Classic Guitar Solos, Vol. 1." Dimitri has also performed on the soundtrack of the film he co-stars in, Clubhouse and performs his arrangement of Hungarian Dance No. 5 by J. Brahms with a Django gypsy jazz treatment in the film, Repossessed.- Voiceover artist par excellence Hal Douglas was born Harold Cone on September 1, 1924 in Stamford, Connecticut. The son of Samuel and Miriam Levenson Cone, Hal and his brother Edwin were primarily raised by their grandparents Sarah and Tevya Levenson after their mother died when Hal was only nine. (Their father later remarried.) Douglas trained as a pilot and served three years in the Navy during World War II. Hal wrote fiction in his spare time and upon finishing his tour of duty enrolled on the G.I. Bill at the University of Miami, where he studied acting. He changed his last name to Douglas after moving to New York and began supplementing his slight income from acting gigs with voiceover and announcer work on both radio and television. Hal soon became one of the most sought after (and instantly recognizable) vocal talents for commercials and lead-ins for TV shows. Douglas worked steadily out of New York and not only continued to lend his distinctive gravelly baritone to television, but also narrated the occasional documentary and countless film trailers in a diverse array of genres. Hal was still working two years prior to his death from pancreatic cancer at age 89 at his home in Lovettsville, Virginia on March 7, 2014. He's survived by his wife of forty-three years, Ruth Francis Douglas; their daughter Sarah Douglas; and two sons from a previous marriage, Jon and Jeremy.
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Francine Joy "Fran" Drescher was born on September 30, 1957 in Queens, New York City, New York to Sylvia Drescher, a bridal consultant & Mort Drescher, a naval systems analyst. Fran attended Hillcrest High School in New York with another now-famous name, Ray Romano. She was a studious girl and was quite popular. In fact, at age fifteen, she'd met the man she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with. That man was Peter Marc Jacobson. Her first break was in the unforgettable movie, Saturday Night Fever (1977) with John Travolta. She continued to play small roles in movies, until she came up with the idea for The Nanny (1993). She was visiting a friend in England and came up with the plot line. The Nanny (1993) became an instant success, and so did Fran. Since then, she has been in films such as The Beautician and the Beast (1997) (which she also produced) and Picking Up the Pieces (2000) co-starring Woody Allen. Fran has since divorced her husband Jacobson. She is a cancer survivor and an inspiration to women everywhere.- Music Artist
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Robert Allen Zimmerman was born 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota; his father Abe worked for the Standard Oil Co. Six years later the family moved to Hibbing, often the coldest place in the US, where he taught himself piano and guitar and formed several high school rock bands. In 1959 he entered the University of Minnesota and began performing as Bob Dylan at clubs in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The following year he went to New York, performed in Greenwich Village folk clubs, and spent much time in the hospital room of his hero Woody Guthrie. Late in 1961 Columbia signed him to a contract and the following year released his first album, containing two original songs. Next year "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" appeared, with all original songs including the 1960s anthem "Blowin' in the Wind." After several more important acoustic/folk albums, and tours with Joan Baez, he launched into a new electric/acoustic format with 1965's "Bringing It All Back Home" which, with The Byrds' cover of his "Mr Tambourine Man," launched folk-rock. The documentary Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (1967) was filmed at this time; he broke off his relationship with Baez and by the end of the year had married Sara Dylan (born Sara Lowndes). Nearly killed in a motorcycle accident 29 July 1966, he withdrew for a time of introspection. After more hard rock performances, his next albums were mostly country. With his career wandering (and critics condemning the fact), Sam Peckinpah asked him to compose the score for, and appear in, his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) - more memorable as a soundtrack than a film. In 1974 he and The Band went on tour, releasing his first #1 album, "Planet Waves". It was followed a year later by another first-place album, "Blood on the Tracks". After several Rolling Thunder tours, the unsuccessful film Renaldo and Clara (1978) and a divorce, he stunned the music world again by his release of the fundamentalist Christrian album "Slow Train Coming," a cut from which won him his first Grammy. Many tours and albums later, on the eve of a European tour May 1997, he was stricken with histoplasmosis (a possibly fatal infection of the heart sac); he recovered and appeared in Bologna that September at the request of the Pope. In December he received the Kennedy Center Award for artistic excellence.- Actress
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Taissa Farmiga is an American actress, and the younger sister of Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga, who is 21 years her senior. She was born in Readington Township, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian-born parents Michael and Lubomyra (Spas) Farmiga.
Unlike her older sister, Taissa initially had no interest in becoming an actor. However, she was persuaded to make her acting debut in Vera's directorial debut film Higher Ground (2011). Also playing the lead, Vera wanted to cast someone who was physically similar to play the younger version of her character. Taissa was 15 years old and, apart from a second grade school play, had no previous acting experience. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Taissa's performance received critical acclaim. It was after Sundance that Taissa officially decided to pursue acting. At age 16, she landed a leading role as Violet Harmon in the Fox horror series American Horror Story (2011).
Farmiga has since starred in films from a range of genres, including Sofia Coppola's crime film The Bling Ring (2013), Jorge Dorado's psychological thriller Anna (2013), Todd Strauss-Schulson's horror comedy The Final Girls (2015), Hannah Fidell's romantic drama 6 Years (2015), Ti West's western In a Valley of Violence (2016), and Warren Beatty's comedy-drama Rules Don't Apply (2016).- Actress
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Vera Farmiga is an American actress who has received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Up in the Air (2009) and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in Bates Motel (2013) and When They See Us (2019).
She was born Vera Ann Farmiga, the second of seven children, on August 6, 1973, in Clifton, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian parents. She did not speak English until the age of six, and was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic home of her mother, Luba (Spas), a schoolteacher, and her father, Michael Farmiga, a computer systems analyst. Her younger sister is actress Taissa Farmiga, who is 21 years her junior. Young Vera was a shy, nearsighted girl, who played piano and folk danced with a Ukrainian touring company in her teens.
In 1991, she graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Farmiga initially dreamed of becoming an optometrist, but she later changed her mind and studied acting at Syracuse University's School of Performing Arts, graduating in 1995. The following year, she began her professional acting career, making her Broadway debut as an understudy in the play "Taking Sides". Her stage credits included performances in "The Tempest", "Good", "The Seagull", and in a well-reviewed off-Broadway production of "Second-Hand Smoke" (1997). That same year, she made her television debut as the female lead, opposite a then-unknown Heath Ledger, in Fox's adventure series Roar (1997).
In 1998, Farmiga made her big screen debut in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), then played the daughters of Christopher Walken in The Opportunists (1999) and Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (2000). She starred as a working-class mother struggling to keep her life and marriage together while hiding her drug addiction in Down to the Bone (2004), for which she was awarded Best Actress from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Farmiga's acting talent shone in a range of characters, from her role as a senator's daughter in The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the wife of a mobster in Running Scared (2006), a humorous prostitute in Breaking and Entering (2006), and a police psychiatrist in The Departed (2006).
In 2010, Farmiga received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Up in the Air (2009). In 2011, she made her directorial debut with the drama Higher Ground (2011), in which she also appeared in the leading role. Although the film had a limited release, Farmiga's direction and performance received attention at several festivals. In 2013, she began starring in the drama thriller series Bates Motel (2013), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the first season. In 2019, she received a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination, this time in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie category, for her role in the drama miniseries When They See Us (2019).
Farmiga was formerly married to actor Sebastian Roché, whom she met during production of Roar (1997). The two eloped to the Bahamas after the series ended in 1997. They separated and subsequently divorced in 2004. On September 13, 2008, she married musician Renn Hawkey, with whom she has two children, son Fynn McDonnell (b. 2009) and daughter Gytta Lubov Hawkey (b. 2010). Farmiga lives with her family in Hudson Valley, New York. Her other activities, outside her acting profession, include reading, playing piano, boxing, jujitsu, and spending time with her pet angora goats.- Actor
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Mark Feuerstein got his break-through on television as a recurring character on the daytime soap opera Loving (1983). Most of the people in his family are lawyers. He was a high school state championship wrestler. He enjoys mountain-biking, wrestling, dancing (hip-hop to salsa) and jogging.
He got the nickname "Chaplin" on the set of Giving It Up (1999) because of his uncanny knack of physical comedy. He even had a physical slapstick back-and-forth with Mel Gibson a year later on the set of What Women Want (2000).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Totie Fields was born on 7 May 1927 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. She was an actress, known for That's Life (1968), Medical Center (1969) and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967). She was married to George William Johnston. She died on 2 August 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.