Wake Island is a 1942 American action drama war film directed by John Farrow, written by W. R. Burnett and Frank Butler, and starring Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Barbara Britton, and William Bendix. The film tells the story of the United States military garrison on Wake Island and the onslaught by the Japanese following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Roger William Corman is an American film director, producer, and actor. He has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of low-budget cult films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Isadore "Dore" Schary was an American playwright, director, and producer for the stage and a prolific screenwriter and producer of motion pictures. He directed just one feature film, Act One, the film biography of his friend, playwright and theater director Moss Hart. He became head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and replaced Louis B. Mayer as president of the studio in 1951.
Anthony Mann was an American film director and stage actor, best remembered for his work in the film noir and Westerns genres. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton. He directed films for a variety of production companies, from RKO to MGM, and worked with many major stars of the era. He made several Westerns with James Stewart, such as Winchester '73 (1950), and he was the director of the medieval epic El Cid (1961), working with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. He also directed the big-budget film Cimarron (1960), which starred Glenn Ford and Maria Schell.
Charles Vidor was a Hungarian film director. Among his film successes are The Bridge (1929), The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942), The Desperadoes (1943), Cover Girl (1944), Together Again (1944), A Song to Remember (1945), Over 21 (1945), Gilda (1946), The Loves of Carmen (1948), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Swan (1956), The Joker Is Wild (1957), and A Farewell to Arms (1957).
John Derek was an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer and photographer. He appeared in such films as Knock on Any Door, All the King's Men, and Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950). He was also known for launching the career of his fourth wife, Bo Derek.
Jon Hall was an American film actor known for playing a variety of adventurous roles, as in 1937's The Hurricane, and later when contracted to Universal Pictures, including Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man's Revenge and six movies he made with Maria Montez. He was also known to 1950s fans as the creator and star of the Ramar of the Jungle television series which ran from 1952 to 1954. Hall directed and starred in two 1960s sci-fi films in his later years, The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).
John Howard Payne was an American film actor who is mainly remembered from film noir crime stories and 20th Century Fox musical films, and for his leading roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the NBC Western television series The Restless Gun.
Philip Yordan was an American screenwriter of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s who produced several films. He acted as a front for blacklisted writers although his use of surrogate screenwriters predates the McCarthy era. His actual contributions to the scripts he is credited with writing is controversial and he was known to some as a credit-grabber. Born to Polish immigrants, he earned degrees from both University of Illinois and Chicago-Kent College of Law. He said "I enjoyed reading, and thought that I would write because I hated the idea of a job, of having to go down to an office. The magazine Esquire rejected some short stories with the comment, "Your prose is stilted, but your dialogue is excellent. What don't you try writing plays?""
Jeff Richards was an American minor league baseball player with the Portland Beavers, who later became an actor. He was sometimes credited as Dick Taylor and Richard Taylor.
Roger Lamport Treat was an American sportswriter and novelist. As a newspaper columnist, he was a vocal critic of segregation policies in baseball and American football. Treat also edited a major reference work on football, first published in 1952.
Naftuli Hertz "Nathan" Juran was an American film art director, and later film and television director. As an art director, he won the Oscar for Best Art Direction in 1942 for How Green Was My Valley, along with Richard Day and Thomas Little. His work on The Razor's Edge in 1946 also received an Academy nomination. In the 1950s, he began to direct, and was known for science fiction and fantasy films such as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. He was also the brother of quality guru Joseph M. Juran.
In Love and War is a 1958 CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color film set in World War II, directed by Philip Dunne. It is based on the 1957 novel The Big War by Anton Myrer. Myrer was a former Marine wounded during the Second Battle of Guam in 1944.
Charles H. Schneer was an American film producer, best known for working with Ray Harryhausen, the specialist known for his work in stop motion model animation.
Anton Olmstead Myrer was a United States Marine Corps veteran and a best-selling author of American war novels that accurately and sensitively depict the lives of United States Army officers while in combat and in peace time. His 1968 novel, Once An Eagle, written at the peak of the Vietnam War, is required reading for all Marines and is frequently used in leadership training at West Point. The novel, considered a classic of military literature and a guide to honorable conduct in the profession of arms, has been compared favorably to Leo Tolstoy's magnum opus War and Peace. Eight years after publication, Once an Eagle was made into a television mini-series starring Sam Elliott. Glenn Ford played a supporting character.
Seton Ingersoll Miller was an American screenwriter and producer. During his career, he worked with film directors such as Howard Hawks and Michael Curtiz. Miller received two Oscar nominations and won once for Best Screenplay for fantasy romantic comedy film Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) along with Sidney Buchman.
Yellowstone Kelly is a 1959 American Western film based upon a novel by Heck Allen with a screenplay by Burt Kennedy starring Clint Walker as Luther Sage "Yellowstone" Kelly, and directed by Gordon Douglas. The film was originally supposed to be directed by John Ford with John Wayne in the Clint Walker role but Ford and Wayne opted to make The Horse Soldiers instead.
Charles Marquis Warren was an American motion picture and television writer, producer, and director who specialized in Westerns. Among his notable career achievements were his involvement in creating the television series Rawhide and his work in adapting the radio series Gunsmoke for television.
Once an Eagle is a 1968 war novel by American author Anton Myrer. A No. 1 New York Times Bestseller, Once an Eagle has been a favorite of American military men and women since its writing. The novel tells the story of Sam Damon, career Army officer, from his initial enlistment to his rise to general officer rank. Myrer wrote his novel to warn against ambition without principle and the military-industrial complex. Sam Damon and Courtney Massengale are the vehicles for this warning. Damon is an honorable soldier who rises in rank by success in field command. He is a soldier of character with his men's welfare in mind. Massengale has no honor and rises in rank through staff positions by cunning and political connections. He is driven by lust for power and cares nothing for the welfare of soldiers. A television miniseries based on the book was aired on NBC in 1976, with actor Sam Elliott portraying Sam Damon. The book appears on the Commandant's required reading list for all Staff Sergeants and Gunnery Sergeants in the United States Marine Corps, and frequently serves as a text for cadets in leadership classes at West Point.
Patricia Schartle Myrer (1923–2010) was an editor, literary agent and publishing executive based in New York City. She was editor-in-chief of Appleton-Century-Crofts publishing. She eventually became president of McIntosh & Otis literary agency. She married novelist Anton Myrer in 1970. Some of the authors she represented were Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Highsmith and Eleanor Hibbert. She retired in 1984 and died in 2010.
