The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the film industry. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The Academy Awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment industry in the United States and worldwide. The Oscar statuette depicts a knight rendered in the Art Deco style.
Morgan Freeman is an American actor, producer, and narrator. He is known for his distinctive deep voice and various roles in a wide variety of film genres. Throughout his career spanning over five decades, he has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018.
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American filmmaker and actor. Lee's work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. He has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, a Student Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards. He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, the Academy Honorary Award in 2019, and a Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center as well as the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and filmmaker. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Ruggles of Red Gap is a 1935 American comedy western film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, and ZaSu Pitts and featuring Roland Young and Leila Hyams. It was based on the best-selling 1915 novel by Harry Leon Wilson, adapted by Humphrey Pearson, with a screenplay by Walter DeLeon and Harlan Thompson. It is the story of a newly rich American couple from the West who win a British gentleman's gentleman in a poker game.
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
Jerome Silberman, known professionally as Gene Wilder, was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker. He was known mainly for his comedic roles, but also for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), as well as with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). He also starred in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972).
The Man with No Name is the antihero character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" of Italian Spaghetti Western films: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He is recognizable by his poncho, brown hat, tan cowboy boots, fondness for cigarillos, and the fact that he rarely talks.
Leila Hyams was an American film and stage actress, model, and vaudevillian, who came from a show business family. Her relatively short film career began in 1924 during the era of silent films and ended in 1936. The blonde blue-eyed ingenue and leading lady appeared in more than 50 film roles and remained a press favourite, with numerous magazine covers.
2010: The Year We Make Contact is a 1984 American science fiction film written, produced, shot and directed by Peter Hyams. It is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and is based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1982 sequel novel, 2010: Odyssey Two. The film stars Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban and John Lithgow, along with Keir Dullea and Douglas Rain of the cast of the previous film.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) was an English director and filmmaker. Popularly known as the "Master of Suspense" for his use of innovative film techniques in thrillers, Hitchcock started his career in the British film industry as a title designer and art director for a number of silent films during the early 1920s. His directorial debut was the 1925 release The Pleasure Garden. Hitchcock followed this with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, his first commercial and critical success. It featured many of the thematic elements his films would be known for, such as an innocent man on the run. It also featured the first of his famous cameo appearances. Two years later he directed Blackmail (1929) which was his first sound film. In 1935, Hitchcock directed The 39 Steps; three years later, he directed The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.
Battle for Life is a nature documentary series made from 1932 until 1934 by Horace Woodard and Stacy Woodard, The short films include the 1935 Oscar award-winning City of Wax, about honey bees. The one-reel short films were released by Educational Pictures. A homemade camera setup for closeups was used. The Woodards followed the series with another series titled Struggle to Live.
Sir Peter Robert Jackson is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster remake film King Kong (2005), the World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021). He is the fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
Variety is an American media company owned by Penske Media Corporation. The company was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added Daily Variety, based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. Variety.com features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and features, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905.
Submarine Alert is a 1943 American film directed by Frank McDonald, produced by Pine-Thomas Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Richard Arlen, Wendy Barrie, Nils Asther, Roger Pryor, Marc Lawrence and Ralph Sanford.
Wonder of Women is a 1929 American pre-Code drama film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Lewis Stone, Leila Hyams, and Peggy Wood. It was nominated for Best Writing at the 2nd Academy Awards.
Roger Pryor was an American film actor.
People Will Talk is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Alfred Santell and written by Herbert Fields. The film stars Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, Leila Hyams, Dean Jagger, Ruthelma Stevens, and Cecil Cunningham. The film was released on May 24, 1935, by Paramount Pictures.
The Branded Sombrero is a 1928 American silent adventure film directed by Lambert Hillyer and written by Lambert Hillyer and James Kevin McGuinness. The film stars Buck Jones, Leila Hyams, Jack Baston, Stanton Heck, Francis Ford and Josephine Borio. The film was released on January 8, 1928, by Fox Film Corporation.
Leila McIntyre was an American actress and vaudeville performer.
