Goldie Jeanne Hawn is an American actress. She rose to fame on the NBC sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968–1970), before going on to receive the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Cactus Flower (1969).
Jessica Phyllis Lange is an American actress. She is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having received two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with five Golden Globe Awards and one Screen Actors Guild Award.
Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American film noir drama film directed by Alexander Mackendrick, starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner, and written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, and Mackendrick from the novelette by Lehman. The shadowy noir cinematography filmed on location in New York City was shot by James Wong Howe. The picture was produced by James Hill of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists. The supporting cast features Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols, Joe Frisco, Edith Atwater, David White, and Emile Meyer. The musical score was arranged and conducted by Elmer Bernstein and the film also features jazz performances by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Mary Grant designed the costumes.
Jessie Alice Tandy was an English actress. Tandy appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, also winning for The Gin Game and Foxfire. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Nobody's Fool. At 80, she became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.
The Elephant Man is a 1980 biographical drama film based on the life of Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man who lived in London in the late 19th century. The film was directed by David Lynch, produced by Mel Brooks and Jonathan Sanger, and starred John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Michael Elphick, Hannah Gordon, and Freddie Jones. The Elephant Man is generally regarded as one of Lynch's more accessible and mainstream works, alongside The Straight Story (1999).
Luise Rainer was a German-American-British film actress. She was the first thespian to win multiple Academy Awards, and the first to win back-to-back; at the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her 105th birthday, she was the longest-lived Oscar recipient, a superlative that has not been exceeded, as of 2024.
Anne Bancroft was an American actress. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.
Frances Elena Farmer was an American actress. She appeared in over a dozen feature films over the course of her career, though she garnered notoriety for sensationalized accounts of her life, especially her involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals and subsequent mental health struggles.
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948. He returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- to mid-1950s, William Inge.
Susan Blakely is an American actress. She is best known for her leading role in the 1976 ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, for which she received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and an Emmy nomination for Best Actress. Blakely also has appeared in films including The Towering Inferno (1974), Report to the Commissioner (1975), Capone (1975), The Concorde ... Airport '79 (1979) and Over the Top (1987).
Golden Boy is a drama by Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced on Broadway by The Group Theatre in 1937. Odets' biggest hit was made into a 1939 film of the same name, starring William Holden in his breakthrough role, and also served as the basis for a 1964 musical with Sammy Davis, Jr.
Wild in the Country is a 1961 American musical-drama film directed by Philip Dunne and starring Elvis Presley, Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, and Millie Perkins. Based on the 1958 novel The Lost Country by J. R. Salamanca, the screenplay concerns a troubled young man from a dysfunctional family who pursues a literary career. The screenplay was written by playwright Clifford Odets.
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American stage, film, and television actress. Thought to be the next Hepburn-type ingenue, she was nominated for a Tony Award at age 18, playing the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank. She appeared on the covers of LIFE and Newsweek in 1955. A close friend of Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton, she wrote two best-selling tell-all books. Her later career primarily consisted of slasher and horror films, followed by TV roles, by the 1980s.
Jessica Raine is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Jenny Lee in the television series Call the Midwife (2012–2014) and Verity Lambert in the television film An Adventure in Space and Time (2013). Raine portrayed Catherine Parr in Becoming Elizabeth, a historical drama featuring Elizabeth I as a teenager.
The Country Girl is a 1950 dramatic play by American playwright Clifford Odets which was subsequently adapted as a film of the same name in 1954, starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly.
Christopher Pennock was an American actor.
Night Music is a 1940 play by Clifford Odets. Written in 1939 and produced by the Group Theatre, the play was a commercial failure, closing after 20 performances.
Eric Lee Bergren was an American screenwriter.
