James Neville Mason was an English actor. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films included The Seventh Veil (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He starred in Odd Man Out (1947), the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film.
Kenneth "Ken" Barlow is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by William Roache. He was created by Tony Warren as one of Coronation Street's original characters and December 2020 marked Ken's 60th anniversary onscreen. He debuted in the soap's first episode on 9 December 1960. Having appeared in the role continuously since that date, Roache is the longest-serving actor in a televised soap opera, and was honoured at the 2010 Guinness World Records ceremony for the achievement, having surpassed actor Don Hastings from the American soap opera As the World Turns, who previously held this title. Roache stated in 2010 that he had no plans to leave the role and would remain in Coronation Street for as long as the producers would have him. In November 2020, Roache was again presented with the Guinness World Record for the longest-serving TV soap star in the world for his six decades in Coronation Street.
Babette Louisa Valerie Hobson was a British actress whose film career spanned the 1930s to the early 1950s. Her second husband was John Profumo, a British government minister who became the subject of the Profumo affair in 1963.
Noah Baumbach is an American filmmaker. He is known for making light comedies set in New York City and his works are inspired by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Wes Anderson, Adam Driver, and his wife, Greta Gerwig.
Barbara Lee Payton was an American film actress best known for her stormy social life and battles with alcohol abuse and drug addiction. Her life has been the subject of several books, including her autobiography I Am Not Ashamed (1963). Also, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story (2007) by John O'Dowd, L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes and Bad Times (2005) by John Gilmore and B Movie: A Play in Two Acts (2014) by Michael B. Druxman. She married five times.
Rachel Gurney was an English actress. She began her career in the theatre towards the end of World War II and then expanded into television and film in the 1950s. She remained active, mostly in television and theatre work, into the early 1990s. She is best remembered for playing the elegant Lady Marjorie Bellamy in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs.
The Neanderthal Man is a 78-minute, 1953 American black-and-white science fiction film produced independently by Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen, as Global Productions Inc., from their own original screenplay.
Laurie Strode is a character from the Halloween series. She first appeared in Halloween (1978) as a high school student who becomes targeted by serial killer Michael Myers, in which she was portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis. Created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, Laurie appeared in nine of thirteen films in the series. The character has subsequently been represented in various other media, including novels, video games, and comic books.
Ae Fond Kiss... is a 2004 romantic drama film directed by Ken Loach, and starring Atta Yaqub and Eva Birthistle. The title is taken from a Scottish song by Robert Burns, the complete line being "Ae Fond Kiss, and then we sever..."
Appointment in London is a 1953 British war film set during the Second World War and starring Dirk Bogarde. The film was directed by Philip Leacock and based on a story by John Wooldridge, who as an RAF bomber pilot flew 108 operational sorties over Europe. Wooldridge, who after the war established himself as a successful film composer before his untimely death in a car accident, also wrote the film score and participated in writing the screenplay for Appointment in London.
Reginald Warren Chetham-Strode, MC was an English author and playwright. He wrote several plays, including the West End hit The Guinea Pig (1946), which was turned into a film in 1948. He also wrote screenplays for several films between 1935 and 1951, including Odette (1950).
Best Friends is a 1982 American romantic comedy film starring Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn. It is based on the true story of the relationship between its writers Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin. The film was directed by Norman Jewison.
Mandy Miller is an English former child actress who made a number of films in the 1950s. She is also remembered for her recording of the 1956 song "Nellie the Elephant".
The Interrupted Journey is a 1949 British thriller film directed by Daniel Birt and starring Valerie Hobson, Richard Todd, Christine Norden and Tom Walls. The railways scenes were shot at Longmoor in Hampshire. The film includes a train crash occurring after someone pulls the emergency cord, as had happened in the Winsford train crash the previous year.
The Voice of Merrill is a 1952 British mystery film directed by John Gilling and starring Valerie Hobson, James Robertson Justice and Edward Underdown. It was written by Gilling, Gerald Landeau and Terence Austin. The film was made by Tempean Films, the company owned by the film's producers Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker, which between the late 1940s and the late 1950s specialised in turning out low-budget B-movies as unpublicised second-features for the UK cinema market. On its release however, The Voice of Merrill was recognised by its distributors, Eros Films, as unusually sophisticated and stylish for a B-movie, and was elevated to the status of co-feature in cinemas. It was released in the USA the following year under the title Murder Will Out.
Chris Pappas is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by James Mason. Mason originally read for the role of Andrew Robinson, before he was called back to audition for Chris three days later. He was told during the audition that the character would be gay. He began filming his first scenes in October 2009, and he made his first appearance during the episode broadcast on 25 February 2010. Executive producer Susan Bower said the character was created because of requests from young viewers in the Neighbours website's online forums. The character's sexuality storyline was also based on the real life experiences of the show's writers. Chris became the first prominent, regular male homosexual character in the show's twenty-five-year history. He was the second ongoing homosexual character overall, following Lana Crawford's introduction in 2004.
Victor Eugene Heerman was an English-American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. After writing and directing short comedies for Mack Sennett, Heerman teamed with his wife Sarah Y. Mason to win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women in 1933. He is probably best-known to film buffs as director of the Marx Brothers' second film, Animal Crackers (1930). He and Mason were the first screenwriters involved in early, never-produced scripts commissioned for what would become MGM's Pride and Prejudice.
The Day the Loving Stopped is a 1981 American made-for-television drama film directed by Daniel Mann. Based on a novel by Julie Autumn List, the film stars Dennis Weaver and Valerie Harper as a couple whose divorce upsets their two daughters, portrayed by Dominique Dunne and Ally Sheedy.
Background is a 1950 play by the British writer Warren Chetham-Strode. It examines the effect on the children of a married couple going through a divorce.
