Gloria Gaynor is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits "I Will Survive" (1978), "Let Me Know " (1979), "I Am What I Am" (1983), and her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974).
State Fair (1933) is an American pre-Code comedy-drama film directed by Henry King and starring Janet Gaynor, Will Rogers, and Lew Ayres. The picture tells the story of a farm family's multi-day visit to the Iowa State Fair, where the parents seek to win prizes in agricultural and cooking competitions, and their teenage daughter and son each find unexpected romance. Based on the bestselling 1932 novel by Phil Stong, this was the first of three film versions of the novel released to theaters, the others being the movie musicals State Fair (1945) starring Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews, and State Fair (1962) starring Ann-Margret and Pat Boone.
The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film directed and co-written by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from the semi-autobiographical 1966 novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. The film's ensemble cast includes Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybill Shepherd. Set in a small town in northern Texas from November 1951 to October 1952, it is a story of two high-school seniors and long-time friends, Sonny Crawford (Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Bridges).
The Poor Little Rich Girl is a 1917 American comedy-drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur. Adapted by Frances Marion from the 1913 play by Eleanor Gates. The Broadway play actually starred future screen actress Viola Dana. The film stars Mary Pickford, Madlaine Traverse, Charles Wellesley, Gladys Fairbanks and Frank McGlynn Sr.
Rio Bravo is a 1959 American Western film directed and produced by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ward Bond. Written by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, based on the short story "Rio Bravo" by B. H. McCampbell, the film stars Wayne as a Texan sheriff who arrests the brother of a powerful local rancher for murder and then has to hold the man in jail until a U.S. Marshal can arrive. With the help of a "cripple", a drunk and a young gunfighter, they hold off the rancher's gang. Rio Bravo was filmed on location at Old Tucson Studios outside Tucson, Arizona, in Technicolor.
The Autochrome Lumière was an early color photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907. Autochrome was an additive color "mosaic screen plate" process. It was the principal color photography process in use before the advent of subtractive color film in the mid-1930s.
Bellbird is an Australian soap opera serial set in a small fictional Victorian rural township of the show's title. The series was produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at its Ripponlea TV studios in Elsternwick, Melbourne, Victoria. The opening title sequence was filmed at Daylesford, Victoria.
El Mariachi is a 1992 Spanish-language American independent neo-Western film and the first part of the saga that came to be known as Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy. It marked the feature-length debut of Rodriguez as writer and director. The Spanish language film was shot with a mainly amateur cast in the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico across from Del Rio, Texas, the home town of leading actor Carlos Gallardo as the title character. The US$7,225 production was originally intended for the Mexican home-video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film and bought the American distribution rights. Columbia eventually spent $200,000 to transfer the print to film, to remix the sound, and on other post-production work, then spent millions more on marketing and distribution.
King of Jazz is a 1930 American pre-Code musical color film starring Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. The film title refers to Whiteman's popular cultural appellation. At the time the film was made, "jazz", to the general public, meant jazz-influenced syncopated dance music heard on phonograph records, on radio broadcasts, and in dance halls. In the 1920s Whiteman signed and featured white jazz musicians including Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and others.
The Big Trail is a 1930 American pre-Code Western early widescreen film shot on location across the American West starring 23-year-old John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh.
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress.
Mom and Dad is a feature-length 1945 film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation film maker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre of "sex hygiene" films. Although it faced numerous legal challenges and was condemned by the National Legion of Decency, it became one of the highest-grossing films of the 1940s.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American epic pre-Code anti-war film based on the 1929 Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander. It is the first Best Picture winner based on a novel.
Charlotte Ganahl Walker was a Broadway theater actress.
Sheldon Dick (1906–1950) was an American publisher, literary agent, photographer, and filmmaker. He was a member of a wealthy and well-connected industrialist family, and was able to support himself while funding a series of literary and artistic endeavors. He published a book by poet Edgar Lee Masters, and made a documentary about mining that has been of interest to scholars. Dick is best known for the photographs he took on behalf of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, and for the violent circumstances of his death.
The Jenkins Orphanage, now officially known as the Jenkins Institute For Children, was established in 1891 by Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins in Charleston, South Carolina. Jenkins was a businessman and Baptist minister who encountered street children and decided to organize an orphanage for young African Americans.
The Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) is an independent 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2002 by film archivist and University of Texas at Austin professor Caroline Frick, PhD. TAMI's mission is to preserve, study, and exhibit Texas film heritage. The organization has three main projects: the TAMI Online Collection, the Texas Film Round-Up, and Teach Texas. Its offices are located in Austin, Texas.
Melton Barker was an itinerant filmmaker who produced and directed numerous films with his company, Melton Barker Juvenile Productions, from the 1930s though the 1970s. These films were shot across the United States with casts of children who each paid a fee for the opportunity to star in the two-reel shorts.
The Augustas is a home movie made by Scott Nixon, a traveling insurance agent from Augusta, Georgia and an avid member of the Amateur Cinema League who enjoyed recording his life and travels on film. It lasts approximately 16 minutes.
Beginning in the early days of silent films Itinerant filmmakers traveled across the USA to make their movies on location with “home talent.” They capitalized on the public’s desire to see themselves and/or their children in the movies. The filmmakers hoped to cash in on the vanity of politicians, high-society types and prominent businessmen and their families. They would pay a small fee to be in the movie and townspeople would pay to watch their neighbors in the film. It was also common for the local chamber of commerce to pay the production expenses and choose the backdrop and locations for filming. Many times it was promised that the film would be shown around the country, enticing the viewers to come and visit the places they saw. The film would then be returned to the Chamber after its run. They often filmed the same characters in the same story over and over, only changing the cast in each city. Sometimes the title would change leading people to think their particular film was unique. These itinerant films were popular in the silent era, but in some cases they were still operating into the 1970s. Several people made careers out of making itinerant films.
