Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films.
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad and commonly known as Moscow 1980, were an international multi-sport event held from 19 July to 3 August 1980 in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present-day Russia. The games were the first to be staged in an Eastern Bloc country, as well as the first Olympic Games and only Summer Olympics to be held in a Slavic language-speaking country. They were also the only Summer Olympic Games to be held in a socialist state until the 2008 Summer Olympics held in China. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC Presidency of Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, before he was succeeded by Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Edward Francis Cline was an American screenwriter, actor, writer and director best known for his work with comedians W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood, California.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.
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".
Lyda Roberti was an American singer and stage and film actress.
The Power and the Glory is a 1933 pre-Code film starring Spencer Tracy and Colleen Moore, written by Preston Sturges, and directed by William K. Howard. The picture's screenplay was Sturges' first script, which he delivered complete in the form of a finished shooting script, for which he received $17,500 and a percentage of the profits. Profit-sharing arrangements, now a common practice in Hollywood, were then unusual and gained Sturges much attention.
William Gilbert Barron, known professionally as Billy Gilbert, was an American actor and comedian. He was known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows beginning in 1929.
A script doctor is a writer or playwright hired by a film, television, or theatre production company to rewrite an existing script or improve specific aspects of it, including structure, characterization, dialogue, pacing, themes, and other elements.
Charlie Hall was an English film actor. He is best known as the "Little Nemesis" of Laurel and Hardy. He performed in nearly 50 films with them, making Hall the most frequent supporting actor in the comedy duo's productions.
Bruce Bennett was an American film and television actor who prior to his screen career was a highly successful college athlete in football and in both intercollegiate and international track-and-field competitions. In 1928 he won the silver medal for the shot put at the Olympic Games held in Amsterdam. Bennett's acting career spanned more than 40 years. He worked predominantly in films until the mid-1950s, when he began to work increasingly in American television series.
If I Had a Million is a 1932 American pre-Code Paramount Studios anthology film starring Gary Cooper, George Raft, Charles Laughton, W. C. Fields, Jack Oakie, Frances Dee and Charlie Ruggles, among others. There were seven directors: Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman Z. McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, and H. Bruce Humberstone. Lubitsch, Cruze, Seiter, and Humberstone were each responsible for a single vignette, Roberts and McLeod directed two each, and Taurog was in charge of the prologue and epilogue. The screenplays were scripted by many different writers, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz making a large contribution. The film is based on the 1931 novel Windfall by Robert Hardy Andrews.
The Big Broadcast of 1936 is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and is the second in the series of Big Broadcast movies. The musical comedy starred Jack Oakie, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman, The Nicholas Brothers, Lyda Roberti, Wendy Barrie, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, Akim Tamiroff, Amos 'n' Andy, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Argentinian tango singer Carlos Gardel.
Dancers in the Dark is a 1932 American pre-Code film about a taxi dancer, a big band leader, and a gangster.
Mitchell Lewis was an American film actor whose career as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player encompassed both silent and sound films.
Colleen is a 1936 American romantic musical comedy film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, and Joan Blondell. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. and was the seventh and final picture starring both Keeler and Powell.
Harry James Holman was an American actor. He appeared in approximately 130 films from 1923 to 1947.
Million Dollar Legs is a 1939 American comedy film starring Betty Grable, Jackie Coogan, John Hartley and Donald O'Connor.
Gordon De Main was an American film actor. He was leading man for the New York–based Excelsior company in the early 1910s, and was later a supporting actor in many films, particularly Westerns.
Matty Kemp was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 50 films between 1926 and 1943.
