Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born filmmaker and screenwriter. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades,and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards,a BAFTA Award,the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart,Ingrid Bergman,and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II,it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid),a Czechoslovak resistance leader,escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's,an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains,Conrad Veidt,Sydney Greenstreet,Peter Lorre,and Dooley Wilson.
Detour is a 1945 American independent film noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. The screenplay was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney (uncredited) from Goldsmith's 1939 novel of the same title,and released by the Producers Releasing Corporation,one of the so-called Poverty Row film studios in mid-20th-century Hollywood. The film,which today is in the public domain and freely available for viewing at various online sources,was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2018. In April that year,the 4K restoration premiered in Los Angeles at the TCM Festival. A Blu-Ray and DVD was released in March 2019 from the Criterion Collection. In 1992,Detour was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally,historically,or aesthetically significant".
Edgar Georg Ulmer was a Jewish-Moravian,Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions,eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC',due to his extremely prolific output for the Poverty Row studio. His stylish and eccentric works came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement. Ulmer's most famous productions include the horror film The Black Cat (1934) and the film noir Detour (1945).
Howard E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.
Wheeler Winston Dixon is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history,theory and criticism. His scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut,Jean-Luc Godard,American experimental cinema and horror films. He has written extensively on numerous aspects of film,including his books A Short History of Film and A History of Horror. From 1999 through the end of 2014,he was co-editor,along with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster,of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is regarded as a top reviewer of films. In addition,he is notable as an experimental American filmmaker with films made over several decades,and the Museum of Modern Art exhibited his works in 2003. He taught at Rutgers University,The New School in New York,the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands,and as of May 2020,is the James E. Ryan professor emeritus of film studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
People on Sunday is a 1930 German silent drama film directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer from a screenplay by Robert and Curt Siodmak. Curt was the younger brother of Robert Siodmak. The film follows a group of residents of Berlin on a summer's day during the interwar period. Hailed as a work of genius,it is a pivotal film in the development of German cinema and Hollywood. The film features the talents of Eugen Schüfftan (cinematography),Billy Wilder (story) and Fred Zinnemann.
Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was also the writer and director of The Sun Island,a documentary essay film about his grandfather,the architect Martin Elsaesser. He was married to scholar Silvia Vega-Llona.
Bart Lytton ( was an American business executive,Democratic Party fundraiser,writer,public relations executive and philanthropist. He was a founder of Lytton Financial Corporation,one of the five largest savings and loans in the United States with $700 million in assets.
Isle of Forgotten Sins is an American South Seas adventure film released on August 15,1943 by PRC,with Leon Fromkess in charge of production,directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and featuring top-billed John Carradine and Gale Sondergaard,whose performance in one of 1936's Academy Award for Best Picture nominees,Anthony Adverse,earned her the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
New Objectivity was an art movement that emerged in Germany in the early 1920s as a counter to expressionism. The term applies to a number of artistic forms,including film.
Leo Erdody was an American film composer of Hungarian descent. He studied music in Germany,and later went to Hollywood,scoring his first film in 1921. He later joined Producers Releasing Corporation and scored several films for them. For his work on Minstrel Man,he was a nominee for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Gary Don Rhodes is an American writer,filmmaker,and film historian. His work encompasses research on early 20th century films and key figures including filmmakers and actors involved in the process. Rhodes is notably recognized for his contribution to classic horror films and his biographical works on Bela Lugosi. In addition to his academic pursuits,he has contributed to the filmmaking domain through the creation of documentaries and mockumentaries. Rhodes holds a tenured faculty position in film studies at Queen's University Belfast.
The Geisha and the Samurai is a 1919 German silent film directed by Carl Boese.
The Wife of Monte Cristo is a 1946 American historical adventure film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring John Loder,Lenore Aubert and Fritz Kortner. The film is a inspired by the novel The Count of Monte Cristo and features its protagonist Edmond Dantès. It was made and distributed by Producers Releasing Corporation,on a higher budget than was usual for the studio which focused on cheap second features. It was successful at the box office.
Thunder Over Texas is a 1934 American populist contemporary Western film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer under the alias Joen Warner and produced by two nephews of Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle,Arthur and Max Alexander's Poverty Row Beacon Productions. The film's story was written by Shirley Ulmer under the name of Sherle Castle. Shirley was then married to Max Alexander but would soon leave Max to marry Edgar with the result that Lammele blacklisted Ulmer from Hollywood. The film was shot in Kernville,California.
Casablanca is an American drama series,based on the 1942 film of the same name set in the genre of spying and intrigue during World War II. Five episodes were filmed but,following its NBC premiere on April 10,1983,and two additional installments on April 17 and 24,it was taken off the air. The two remaining unaired episodes were ultimately scheduled four months later,during summer programming,and shown on August 27 and September 3.The show was the second attempt at a TV series based on the movie;the first was a 1955 show starring Charles McGraw as Rick Blaine that was also short lived,lasting only 10 episodes longer than the five of this one.
Teresa Alcocer was a prolific Spanish film editor who worked in the industry from the 1940s through the 1990s.
Shirley Kassler Ulmer was an American screenwriter.
Lea Noemi,also known as Lea Eisenberg (1883–1973) was a Yiddish actress,who performed at the Yiddish Art Theater alongside Maurice Schwartz.
