Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor and film director with a career spanning 60 years, during which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice. He is regarded as arguably the greatest and most influential actor in 20th-century film. Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the civil rights movement and various Native American movements. Having studied with Stella Adler in the 1940s, he is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting, derived from the Stanislavski system, to mainstream audiences.
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The film was suggested by "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November–December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, but the screenplay by Budd Schulberg is directly based on his own original story. The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.
Kim Hunter was an American film, theatre, and television actress. She won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, each as Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as Stella Kowalski in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire. Decades later, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on the soap opera The Edge of Night. She also portrayed the character of chimpanzee Zira in the first three installments of the original film adaptation Planet of the Apes.
Muriel Teresa Wright was an American actress. She was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress: in 1941 for her debut work in The Little Foxes, and in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver, winning for the latter. That same year, she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Pride of the Yankees, opposite Gary Cooper. She is also known for her performances in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is the recipient of an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands is a retired American actress, whose career in film, stage, and television has spanned over six decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations with her late actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night (1977). She is also known for her performances in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), and her son, Nick Cassavetes' film, The Notebook (2004). In 2021, The New Yorker said, “The most important and original movie actor of the past half century-plus is Gena Rowlands.” In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances.
Marie Louise Cruz, known as Sacheen Littlefeather, is an Apache actress and activist for Native American rights. On March 27, 1973, she represented Marlon Brando at the 45th Academy Awards to decline the Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather. The favorite to win, Brando boycotted the ceremony in protest of Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans and to draw attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee. During her speech, the audience response to Brando's boycotting was divided between jeers and applause.
Sally Margaret Field is an American actress and director. She is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for a Tony Award, and two British Academy Film Awards.
Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican actress, dancer, and singer. Her career has spanned over 70 years; her notable acting work includes supporting roles in the musical films Singin' in the Rain (1952), The King and I (1956) and West Side Story (1961), as well as a 1971 to 1977 stint on the children's television series The Electric Company, and a supporting role as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo on the HBO series Oz from 1997 to 2003. Her other notable films include Popi (1969), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Four Seasons (1981), I Like It Like That (1994) and the cult film Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). She voiced the titular role of Carmen Sandiego in Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? from 1994 to 1999. For theater, she is best known for her role as Googie Gomez in The Ritz.
Katherine Marie Helmond was an American actress. Over her five decades of television acting, she was known for her starring role as ditzy matriarch Jessica Tate on the sitcom Soap (1977–1981) and her co-starring role as feisty mother Mona Robinson on Who's the Boss? (1984–1992). Helmond also appeared in a 1993 episode of The Upper Hand, the British version of Who's the Boss?. She also played Doris Sherman on Coach and Lois Whelan on Everybody Loves Raymond. She also appeared as a guest on several talk and variety shows.
Cloris Leachman was an American actress and comedienne whose career spanned more than seven decades. She won many accolades, including eight Primetime Emmy Awards from 22 nominations, making her the most nominated and, along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, most awarded actress in Emmy history. She won an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Daytime Emmy Award.
Margaret Leighton, CBE was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included in Anatole de Grunwald's The Winslow Boy (1948). For The Go-Between (1971), she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Martha Hyer was an American actress. She is best remembered for her role as Gwen French in Some Came Running (1958), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her autobiography, Finding My Way: A Hollywood Memoir, was published in 1990.
Christina Pickles is a British-American actress. She is known for her role as Nurse Helen Rosenthal in the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), for which she received five nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She is also known for her recurring role as Judy Geller on the NBC sitcom Friends (1994–2003), for which she was nominated for the 1995 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Nina Foch was a Dutch-born American actress and director who later became an instructor in both subjects. Her career spanned six decades, consisting of over 50 feature films and over 100 television appearances. She was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. Foch established herself as a dramatic actress in the late 1940s, often playing cool, aloof sophisticates.
Jocelyn Brando was an American actress and writer. She is best known for her role as Katie Bannion in the film noir The Big Heat (1953).
The 27th Academy Awards honored the best films released in 1954. The Best Picture winner, On the Waterfront, was produced by Sam Spiegel and directed by Elia Kazan. It had twelve nominations and eight wins, matching two other films, Gone with the Wind (1939) and From Here to Eternity (1953), though those each had thirteen nominations.
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.
Marie Mireille Enos is an American actress. Drawn to acting from a young age, she graduated in performing arts from Brigham Young University, where she was awarded the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship. Having made her acting debut in the 1994 television film Without Consent, she has since received nominations for a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Emmy Award.
Julia Garner is an American actress. She is known for her role as Ruth Langmore in the Netflix crime drama series Ozark (2017–present), for which she has won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Garner also had roles in the FX drama series The Americans (2015–18), the Netflix miniseries Maniac (2018), and the Bravo true crime series Dirty John (2018–19).
