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Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Both Mankiewicz and Welles would go on to receive the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. He was previously a Berlin correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, assistant theater editor at The New York Times, and the first regular drama critic at The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott said that Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York".
Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American filmmaker, actor, and producer, as well as a former aviator who served as an officer in the United States Air Force and Polish Air Force. In film, his most famous work was the 1933 movie King Kong, and he is credited as co-inventor of the Cinerama film projection process. He was awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1952 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Before entering the movie business, Cooper had a distinguished career as the founder of the Kościuszko Squadron during the Polish–Soviet War and was a Soviet prisoner of war for a time. He got his start in with film as part of the Explorers Club, traveling the world and documenting adventures. He was a member of the board of directors of Pan American Airways, but his love of film took priority. During his film career, he worked for companies such as Pioneer Pictures, RKO Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1925, he and Ernest B. Schoedsack went to Iran and made Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, a documentary about the Bakhtiari people.
Cat People is a 1942 American supernatural horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced for RKO by Val Lewton. The film tells the story of Irena Dubrovna, a newly married Serbian fashion illustrator obsessed with the idea that she is descended from an ancient tribe of Cat People who metamorphose into black panthers when aroused. When her husband begins to show interest in one of his coworkers, Irena begins to stalk her. The film stars Simone Simon as Irena, and features Kent Smith, Tom Conway, and Jane Randolph in supporting roles.
Val Lewton was a Russian-American novelist, film producer and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s. His son, also named Val Lewton, was a painter and exhibition designer.
Mark Robson was a Canadian-American film director, producer, and editor. Robson began his 45-year career in Hollywood as a film editor. He later began working as a director and producer. He directed 34 films during his career, including Champion (1949), Bright Victory (1951), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), Peyton Place (1957), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Von Ryan's Express (1965), Valley of the Dolls (1967), and Earthquake (1974).
Norman Krasna was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director who penned screwball comedies centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's Princess O'Rourke, which he also directed.
Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-American import-export company. Robertson-Cole began distributing films in the United States that December and opened a Los Angeles production facility in 1920. Late that year, R-C entered into a working relationship with East Coast financier Joseph P. Kennedy. A business reorganization in 1922 led to its assumption of the FBO name, first for all its distribution operations and ultimately for its own productions as well. Through Kennedy, the studio contracted with Western leading man Fred Thomson, who grew by 1925 into one of Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of several silent screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified.
Robert Fellows or Robert M. Fellows was an American film producer who was once a production partner with John Wayne and later with Mickey Spillane.
Myles Connolly was an American writer and a Hollywood screenwriter/producer.
In the Name of the Law is a 1922 American silent melodrama directed by Emory Johnson. FBO released the film in August 1922. The film's "All-Star" cast included Ralph Lewis, Johnnie Walker, and Claire McDowell. The cast also included Johnson and his wife, Ella Hall. Emilie Johnson, Johnson's mother, wrote both the story and screenplay. In The Name of the Law was the first picture in Johnson's eight-picture contract with FBO.
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name. Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.
Freckles is a 1935 American drama film directed by Edward Killy and William Hamilton from a screenplay written by Dorothy Yost, adapted by Mary Mayes from Gene Stratton-Porter's 1904 novel of the same name. Two earlier adaptations of Stratton-Porter's novel had been produced, the first by Paramount in 1917, and the second in 1928 by FBO, both were also titled Freckles. This 1935 version was released by RKO Radio Pictures on October 4, and stars Tom Brown, Virginia Weidler, and Carol Stone.
Hugh Trevor was an American actor whose short career began at the very end of the silent era in 1927. He would appear in nineteen films in the scant six years during which he was active. He did not fare well with the advent of talking pictures, and retired from the industry in 1931. His life was cut short when he unexpectedly died from complications following appendectomy surgery in 1933.
Bert Gilroy was an American film producer of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Arizona in 1899, he began his Hollywood career behind the scenes on the 1926 silent film Pals in Paradise. In 1934, he began producing by overseeing short films for RKO Radio Pictures with Bandits and Ballads, a musical short. After four years of producing shorts, he would be given a chance at producing a full-length feature at RKO, with the western film, Gun Law. Later that year he would produce Painted Desert, a remake of the 1931 film The Painted Desert for which he was the assistant director, and was memorable as containing the first speaking role for Clark Gable. During the decade he was active, he would produce over 150 short and feature films. His feature films would overwhelmingly consist of westerns, many of which would star RKO's leading western star of the 1930s, Tim Holt. Gilroy spent almost his entire career at RKO studios, after its creation in 1929. His last credited film on which he was an associate producer on in 1946, Hollywood Bound was a compilation of three 1930s Betty Grable RKO short subjects that was released by Astor Pictures.
Charles R. Rogers, was an American film producer whose career spanned both the silent and sound film eras. Rogers began his career on the 1924 silent film, A Cafe in Cairo, produced by the short-lived Hunt Stromberg Productions. After Stromberg ceased productions in 1925, Rogers would found his own independent company, Charles R. Rogers Productions. He would also produce for major studios such as RKO Radio Pictures, Universal, and United Artists. The pinnacle of his career would be from 1936 to 1938 when he was chosen as the vice-president in charge of production for Universal Pictures. He died as the result of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1957.
Arthur T. Horman was an American screenwriter whose career spanned from the 1930s to the end of the 1950s. During that time he wrote the stories or screenplays for over 60 films, as well as writing several pieces for television during the 1950s.
Lee Marcus, also known as Lee S. Marcus, was an American film producer of the 1930s and 1940s. During his fifteen-year career he produced over 85 films, most of them between 1934 and 1941 while he was at RKO Studios. Prior to his production career, Marcus worked for FBO and then RKO as a sales executive, reaching the level of vice president in both organizations. At RKO, he was head of production of the studio's b-films during the late 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s. He was also responsible for producing what many consider to be the first film noir, 1940's Stranger on the Third Floor.
Ardel Wray was an American screenwriter and story editor, best known for her work on Val Lewton's classic horror films in the 1940s. Her screenplay credits from that era include I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man and Isle of the Dead.
The Mailman is a 1923 American silent melodrama directed by Emory Johnson. FBO released the film in December 1923. The film's "All-Star" cast included Ralph Lewis, Johnnie Walker, and Virginia True Boardman. Emilie Johnson, Johnson's mother, wrote both the story and screenplay. The Mailman was the fourth film in Johnson's eight-picture contract with FBO.
The Non-Stop Flight is a 1926 American silent melodrama directed by Emory Johnson. FBO released the film in March 1926. The film's "All-Star" cast included Knute Erickson and Marcella Daly. Emilie Johnson, Johnson's mother, wrote both the story and screenplay. The Non-Stop Flight was the eighth and final film in Johnson's eight-picture contract with FBO.
References
- 1 2 "Charles Kerr". American Film Institute. Retrieved November 19, 2014.
