Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
Only includes names with the selected topics
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
1-9 of 9
- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
ANN RONELL was one of the few early song writers who wrote both the words and the music, beginning in 1930 with BABY'S BIRTHDAY PARTY. That led to many "kiddie" -style tunes, such as MICKEY MOUSE AND MINNIE'S IN TOWN and IN A SILLY SYMPHONY. A graduate of prestigious Radcliffe College, she taught music, coached singers, and played rehearsal piano for Broadway shows. She later scored music for films, composed ballet music, and created librettos for operas. WILLOW WEEP FOR ME became a jazz piano standard.- Bobby Watson's acting career began in the late 19th Century, in Springfield, Illinois. At age 10 he had the peanut concession on Saturday afternoons at Springfield's only dance hall, the Olympic Theatre. By age 12 he graduated to the evening concession, and joyously studied the travelling variety acts that came through the town. When he was 15, the theatre manager offered him a chance to show what he had learned from watching all the acts. His first performance consisted of two comedic impressions, the first was a blackface act and the second was a drunken Irishman. Bobby was immediately put on the Olympic payroll. A travelling medicine show, called "Kickapoo Remedies Show" (a name W.C. Fields might have used with good effect), came through Springfield and the owner of the Kickapoo medicine show took Watson out of Springfield to perform with him all over the mid west. Apparently unafraid of criticism, Watson performed the female role "Rosalind" by William Shakespeare, and the comedy mold was cast. From then on, Watson was often, but not exclusively, cast as an effeminate or unathletic character. While in Chicago, he was offered a job with Gus Edwards' shows in New York's Martinique Hotel and Coney Island, Brooklyn. While entertaining the crowds at Coney Island, the Broadway producers Cohan and Harris hired him to replace Frank Craven in the 1918 musical "Going Up." From that point on, he was destined to remain as one of the worthwhile "finds" of the theatre, and subsequently, films. A big break came in 1919 in the form of an original musical "Irene" (songs by Joseph McCarthy & Harry Tierney) with Edith Day. Watson became one of the most beloved characters in the show, portraying a popular male modiste (dressmaker) nicknamed "Madame Lucy." The show was a huge success, and a few years later he appeared in a revival of it with Irene Dunne, with whom he would be reunited in the film "The Awful Truth" (1937). He appeared in another Cohan musical show, "The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly" in 1923, and shortly thereafter he was approached with film offers. Bobby Watson is one of those versatile actors every filmgoer has seen many times playing memorable character parts. Beginning in 1942, Watson was cast as Adolf Hitler in more films than any other actor. The list of titles includes "Hitler: Dead or Alive," "The Hitler Gang," "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "That Nazty Nuisance." Since his earliest films, he portrayed all kinds of roles; interior decorator, radio announcer, hotel manager, a dance director, a band leader, dress maker, detective, and even a diction coach (uncredited) in "Singin' in the Rain."
- One of the bright lights of the 1930s musical stage, actress/singer Doris Carson was the granddaughter of "The Ravels," a popular 19th century vaudeville team, and was the daughter of character actor James B. Carson. Her career started when she understudied Ruby Keeler in Florenz Ziegfeld Jr's musical "Show Girl" (1929) with music by the Gershwins. A two-week substitution for Miss Keeler led to important roles in Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" (1930), Kern & Harbach's "The Cat and the Fiddle" (1931) and Rodgers & Hart's "On Your Toes" (1936) in which she played Frankie Frayne. In London's West end she appeared in Cole Porter's "Nymph Errant" (1933). In 1940 Carson appeared with Edward Everett Horton in "Springtime for Henry," directed by Henry Levin at the Bass Rocks Theatre in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Although she was a favorite on Broadway, she never succeeded in the film industry.
- The Four Eton Boys were educated in small towns near St. Louis, where they all gained dramatic experience in amateur productions. Charlie and Jack Day toured the country for nine years as acrobats, playing the Palace Theatre on Broadway nine times in a single year. In 1923 the introduction of their songs in their act was so successful that they were booked at every variety theatre on Broadway, appeared in the musical comedy Rufus Lemaire's Affairs, and were featured in a two-reel comedy film. After singing with the Four Rajahs and announcing at station KMOX, St. Louis, Art Gentry joined the quartet as lead. Earl Smith left vaudeville in the Middle West for New York night club work, joining the Day brothers at the Nut Club. A popular CBS feature, the Eton Boys enlivened Borden's Forty-Five Minutes in Hollywood and were heard in the Columbia Varieties program. They made Paramount and Warner shorts and toured the Loews Circuit. They recorded for Columbia records and in 1935, they joined the cast of Johnny Green's weekly series, the Socony Sketch Book.
- Producer
- Director
- Cinematographer
When Mr. Waller died, "Variety" remembered him as the developer of Cinerama. Many years before that, he directed a series of excellent short subjects for Paramount Studios, where he also oversaw the photographic research and special effects department. No one who has seen the Paramount film shorts of Phil Spitalny, Ina Ray Hutton, Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington will forget Waller's winning style of presentation. He developed "Vitarama" for the 1939 World's Fair in New York, which was the prototype for Cinerama.- Additional Crew
John L. Wildberg was a copyright attorney-turned producer, whose most successful show; "Anna Lucasta" was produced in 1944. With Cheryl Crawford he co-produced the first revival of "Porgy and Bess" (1942) and "One Touch of Venus" (1943). Married many times, in 1950 his fifth wife took an overdose of sedatives and died in bed next to her husband. Wildberg had many business ventures in London, and eventually moved there in 1951.- Writer
- Music Department
- Composer
Kay Swift is better known for her decade-long involvement with George Gershwin than she is for her own musical contributions to the American Songbook. After George's death, she was sought after far more as an expert on his work than for her own original musical compositions. Though many people believe that she made this choice, she had a great deal of regret that her career was always second to his, and much as she wished for work, she never had few of the kind of opportunities that would have resulted in a bigger catalog bearing her name. Gershwin dedicated his "Songbook" to her. He suggested that her maiden name, Swift, with the nickname "Kay," which originated with him, would be the perfect name for her as a songwriter. Trained as a classical musician, with a great deal of talent both as a performer and as a composer, she only began to write popular show tunes with his encouragement.
In 1930, Kay and her husband James Paul Warburg (of the banking Warburgs) wrote the first successful musical show of the 1930s, Fine and Dandy (with a book by Donald Ogden Stewart) starring Joe Cook. (Warburg wrote under the name "Paul James" so that his father's banking associates wouldn't become alarmed.) This song was preceded by many revue songs, including "Can't We Be Friends?" from the 1929 Schwartz-Dietz revue The Little Show. Her musical and personal relationship with George Gershwin was so significant that her handwritten comments and notation can be found on pages of the original manuscript to Porgy and Bess. For ten years she and George were intimate, and it is certain, after some frustrations in Hollywood, he was about to return to her in New York before his untimely death in 1937. After George's death, she completed many of George's works (from memory) and wrote down complete works that otherwise would have been lost. Her second Broadway score (words and music) was for Cornelia Otis Skinner's one-woman show Paris '90. Even into her 90s, Swift was the last knowledgeable living person who could play Gershwin music the way George played it. Her apartment in Manhattan was the ultimate destination for Gershwin scholars. She was a consultant for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Let 'Em Eat Cake production in 1983 and also for the recordings of conductor and Gershwin scholar Michael Tilson Thomas.- Costume Designer
- Art Department
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Tony Award winning theatrical set and costume designer. Career of fifty years, included Garrick Gaieties Two for the Show, Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, 1936, Dubarry was A Lady, Jumbo, Billy Rose's Aquacade, Diamond Horseshoe Revue, Casa Manana, Lend An Ear, Call Me Madam, and Sugar Babies.- Sheila Barrett's legitimate debut came in the "Greenwich Village Follies." She was an attractive and clever monologist and comedienne, and played many supper clubs doing her comic impressions of "The Southern Girl," "The Chorus Girl", Greta Garbo and others. In 1940 she recorded for the short-lived Schirmer Record Company, whose producer, Gus Schirmer, Jr. wrote special material for her act. In March 1940 Barrett performed for President and Mrs Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the President's mother) at a Cabinet Dinner. Although she made very few screen appearances, on stage she appeared in "Experience Unnecessary," "Thumbs Up" and her "One Woman Show" in 1962. She died at age 71 in St. Clare's Hospital New York.