Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film, and television star, during her 60-year professional career she was known for her strong, realistic screen presence and versatility. She was a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra, and made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television.
Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies. He appeared in such films as Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris, where he played the lead role; Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas; Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle; The Sheik with Rudolph Valentino; Morocco with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper; and A Star Is Born with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was nominated for an Academy Award for The Front Page in 1931.
William Franklin Holden was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973). Holden starred in some of Hollywood's most popular and critically acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), Picnic (1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Wild Bunch (1969) and Network (1976). He was named one of the "Top 10 Stars of the Year" six times, and appeared as 25th on the American Film Institute's list of 25 greatest male stars of Classical Hollywood cinema.
Ball of Fire is a 1941 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The Samuel Goldwyn Productions film concerns a group of professors laboring to write an encyclopedia and their encounter with a nightclub performer who provides her own unique knowledge. The supporting cast includes Oscar Homolka, S. Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, and Dan Duryea.
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.
Sam Jaffe was, at different points in his career in the motion picture industry, an agent, a producer, and a studio executive.
The Mark of Zorro is a 1940 American black-and-white swashbuckling film released by 20th Century-Fox, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, and starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Basil Rathbone. The supporting cast features Eugene Pallette, Gale Sondergaard, and Robert Lowery. The film is based on the novel The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, originally published in 1919 in five serialized installments in All-Story Weekly, which introduced the masked hero Zorro; the story is set in Southern California during the early 19th century. After the enormous success of the silent 1920 film adaptation, the novel was republished under that name by Grosset & Dunlap. The Mark of Zorro was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The film was named to the National Film Registry in 2009 by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant", and to be preserved for all time.
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.
Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an American film and theater director.
Edward Santree Brophy was an American character actor and comedian, as well as an assistant director and second unit director during the 1920s. Small of build, balding, and raucous-voiced, he frequently portrayed dumb cops and gangsters, both serious and comic.
Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born American actor and singer on the stage and in films, radio and television.
Clash by Night is a 1952 American film noir drama directed by Fritz Lang and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe and Keith Andes. The film is based on the 1941 play by Clifford Odets, adapted for the screen by writer Alfred Hayes. It is the first major film to credit Monroe before the title, albeit with fourth billing.
Reginald Lawrence Knowles, better known as Patric Knowles, was an English film actor. Born in Horsforth, West Riding of Yorkshire, he made his film debut in 1932, and played either first or second film leads throughout his career. He appeared in films from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The Man with a Cloak is a 1951 American film noir crime-thriller-drama directed by Fletcher Markle and starring Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Calhern, and Leslie Caron, and based on "The Gentleman from Paris", a short story by John Dickson Carr.
Golden Boy is a 1964 musical with a book by Clifford Odets and William Gibson, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse.
The Flanagan Boy is a 1953 British film noir directed by Reginald Le Borg. It was made by Hammer Film Productions and stars Barbara Payton, Tony Wright, Frederick Valk and Sid James. It was based on the 1949 novel of the same name by Max Catto.
To Please a Lady is a 1950 American romance film produced and directed by Clarence Brown, and starring Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. The climactic race scene was shot at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The Night Walker is a 1964 American psychological horror film directed and produced by William Castle, written by Robert Bloch, and starring Robert Taylor, Judith Meredith, Lloyd Bochner and Barbara Stanwyck in her final film role. It follows the wife of a wealthy inventor who is plagued by increasingly disturbing nightmares, which escalate after her husband's death. It was the final black and white film made by Universal Pictures.
Golden Gloves is a 1940 American crime film directed by Edward Dmytryk.
The Blue Light Theater Company was an off-Broadway theater company located in New York City primarily active in the late 1990s through 2001 and notable for the many celebrated actors associated with the company, including Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup, Marisa Tomei, and Marsha Mason, as well as many who have since gone on to have notable careers including Josh Radnor, T.R. Knight, Chris Messina, and Matthew Saldivar. Actor/ Artistic-Director Greg Naughton, and Darice O'Mara, Assistant to Paul Newman, founded Blue Light in 1995 with the stated mission of producing challenging, primarily larger-cast plays that would bring up-and-coming actors together with veteran artists in a spirit of apprenticeship. They began as an itinerant theater troupe, renting theaters from such venues as Primary Stages, HERE Arts Center, the Classic Stage Company, and Atlantic Theatre Company, before settling in for two seasons at the 55th Street Theatre and their final two seasons in the McGinn-Cazale Theatre. Mandy Greenfield joined as Blue Light’s producing manager in 1998. She and Peter Manning are credited with the artistic direction and selection of Blue Light’s final season, when Mr. Naughton took a sabbatical.
