The Great Dictator is a 1940 American anti-war political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, Chaplin made this his first true sound film.
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".
Cabaret is a 1972 American musical period drama film directed by Bob Fosse and written for the screen by Jay Presson Allen. It stars Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson, Fritz Wepper and Joel Grey. Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the presence of the growing Nazi Party, the film is an adaptation of the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret by Kander and Ebb, which was based on Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical novel The Berlin Stories (1945) as well as John Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera, which was itself adapted from Isherwood's novel. Multiple numbers from the stage score were used for the film, which also featured three other songs by Kander and Ebb, including two written for the adaptation.
Christa Winsloe, formerly Baroness Christa von Hatvany-Deutsch, was a German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor, best known for her play Gestern und heute, filmed in 1931 as Mädchen in Uniform and the 1958 remake. Winsloe was the first to write a play on female homosexuality in the Weimar Republic, yet without a "radical critique of the social discrimination of lesbian women."
Berthold Viertel was an Austrian screenwriter and film director, known for his work in Germany, the UK and the US.
Friedrich Hollaender was a German film composer and author.
In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash is a novel by American humorist Jean Shepherd first published in October 1966.
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." The novel's plot recounts factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons. The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's intimate friend during his sojourn and, after an unplanned pregnancy, she had a near-fatal abortion which the shy gay author facilitated.
The Berlin Stories is a 1945 omnibus by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood and consisting of the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The two novels are set in Jazz Age Berlin between 1930 and 1933 on the cusp of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. Berlin is portrayed by Isherwood during this chaotic interwar period as a carnival of debauchery and despair inhabited by desperate people who are unaware of the national catastrophe that awaits them.
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career.
Down There on a Visit is a novel written by the Anglo-American author Christopher Isherwood and published in 1962. The title refers to a jibe fired at Isherwood's protagonist by another character, Paul: "You know, you really are a tourist, to your bones," laughs Paul. "I bet you're always sending post cards with 'Down here on a visit' on them. That's the story of your life."
The World in the Evening by Christopher Isherwood is a quasi-fictional account of love, loss, and regret. As in many Isherwood novels, the main character is caught in a contest between his personal egoism and the needs of friends and lovers.
Mr Norris Changes Trains is a 1935 novel by the British writer Christopher Isherwood. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s, and the character of Mr Norris is based on Gerald Hamilton. In 1985 the actor David March won a Radio Academy Award for Best Radio Actor for his performance in a dramatisation of the novel for BBC Radio 4.
Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press, and commentators have described the novella as "one of Isherwood's most accomplished pieces of writing." The work was republished in the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and in the 1945 anthology The Berlin Stories.
My Life for Ireland is a Nazi propaganda movie from 1941 directed by Max W. Kimmich, telling a story of an Irish nationalist family and their involvement in the Irish struggle of independence over two generations. The movie was produced for Nazi-occupied Europe with the intent of challenging pro-British allegiances; yet in some cases it had the unintended effect of making audiences identify the Irish struggle with their own resistance against the Nazis.
Little Friend is a 1934 British drama film directed by Berthold Viertel and starring Matheson Lang, Nova Pilbeam and Lydia Sherwood. The film was based on a novel by Ernst Lothar and adapted for the screen by Margaret Kennedy and Christopher Isherwood. The score is by the Austrian composer then in exile Ernst Toch.
Jean Iris Ross Cockburn was a British journalist, political activist, and film critic. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she was a war correspondent for the Daily Express and is alleged to have been a press agent for Joseph Stalin's Comintern. A skilled writer, Ross worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker and her criticisms of early Soviet cinema were later described by scholars as ingenious works of "dialectical sophistry". Throughout her life, she wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for a number of disparate organisations such as the British Workers' Film and Photo League. She was a devout Stalinist and a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
I Am a Camera is a 1955 British comedy-drama film based on the 1945 book The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and the 1951 eponymous play by John Van Druten. The film is a fictionalized account of Isherwood's time living in Berlin between the World Wars. Directed by Henry Cornelius, from a script by John Collier, I Am a Camera stars Laurence Harvey as Isherwood and Julie Harris recreating her Tony Award-winning performance as Sally Bowles.
The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League was founded in Los Angeles in 1936 by Otto Katz and others to organize members of the American film industry to oppose fascism and Nazism. It was run by the American popular front, and it attracted broad support in Hollywood from both members and nonmembers of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). It ceased all anti-Nazi activities immediately upon the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939.
Mr Wilder and Me is a novel by Jonathan Coe, published in the UK by Viking Books on 5 November 2020. It is a historical novel set in the late 1970s, and tells the story of Hollywood director Billy Wilder's struggles to write, finance and shoot his penultimate film Fedora, as observed through the eyes of a young Greek interpreter. The novel contains a mixture of real and invented characters.
