Eric Sykes was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor, and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus, and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series.
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
Sorrell Booke was an American actor who performed on stage, screen, and television. He acted in more than 100 plays and 150 television shows, and is best known for his role as corrupt politician Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard.
The Happiest Millionaire is a 1967 American musical film starring Fred MacMurray, based upon the true story of Philadelphia millionaire Anthony Drexel Biddle. The film, featuring music by the Sherman Brothers, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design by Bill Thomas. The screenplay by A. J. Carothers was adapted from the play, based on the book My Philadelphia Father by Cordelia Drexel Biddle. Walt Disney acquired the rights to the play in the early 1960s. The film was the last live-action musical Disney produced before his death.
Martin Henry Balsam was an American actor who had a prolific career in character roles in film, in theatre, and on television. An early member of the Actors Studio, he began his career on the New York stage, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Robert Anderson’s You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running (1968). He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in A Thousand Clowns (1965).
John Keith Vernon was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada. He was best known for playing Dean Wormer in Animal House, the Mayor in Dirty Harry and Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Kenneth Griffith was a Welsh actor and documentary filmmaker.
Sydney Woodrow Parfrey was an American film and television actor from the 1950s to the early 1980s. He is often remembered as "one of TV's great slimeball villains".
Blue Collar is a 1978 American crime drama film directed by Paul Schrader in his directorial debut. Written by Schrader and his brother Leonard, the film stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. The film is both a critique of union practices and an examination of life in a working-class Rust Belt enclave.
Another You is a 1991 American comedy film directed by Maurice Phillips and produced and written by Ziggy Steinberg. The film stars Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Mercedes Ruehl, Vanessa Williams and Kevin Pollak. The film was released in the United States on July 26, 1991.
Insult comedy is a comedy genre in which the act consists mainly of offensive insults usually directed at the audience or other performers. Typical targets for insult include people in the show's audience, the town hosting the performance, or the subject of a roast. An insult comedian often maintains a competitive and interactive relationship with his or her audience. The style has been described as "festive abuse". The style can be distinguished from an act based on satire, or political humor. Insult comedy is often used to deflect or silence hecklers even when the rest of the show is not focused on it.
The Secret Six is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film starring Wallace Beery as "Slaughterhouse Scorpio", a character very loosely based on Al Capone, and featuring Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau and Ralph Bellamy. The film was written by Frances Marion and directed by George W. Hill for MGM.
John Norton was an English-born Australian journalist, editor and member of the New South Wales Parliament. He was a writer and newspaper proprietor best known for his Sydney newspaper Truth. Norton was arguably one of Australia's most controversial public figures ever.
Drum Beat is a 1954 American CinemaScope Western film in WarnerColor written and directed by Delmer Daves and co-produced by Daves and Alan Ladd in his first film for his Jaguar Productions company. Ladd stars along with Audrey Dalton, Charles Bronson as Captain Jack, and Hayden Rorke as President Ulysses S. Grant.
Race Street is a 1948 American crime film noir directed by Edwin L. Marin. The drama features George Raft, William Bendix and Marilyn Maxwell. It was one of several collaborations between Raft and Marin.
Beyond Mombasa is a 1956 British/American Technicolor adventure film starring Cornel Wilde and Donna Reed. It was directed by George Marshall, set in Kenya and filmed there and at a London studio.
RKO Radio Pictures's Laddie is a 1940 American drama film starring Tim Holt, Virginia Gilmore and Joan Carroll and directed by Jack Hively. It is the third film adaptation based on Gene Stratton-Porter's novel, Laddie, A True Blue Story (1913), and previously had been filmed in 1926 and by RKO in 1935.
Edgar Norton was an English-born American character actor.
Black Diamonds is a 1940 American drama film directed by Christy Cabanne and starring Richard Arlen, Andy Devine, and Kathryn Adams. The film was released on July 19, 1940.
No Sudden Move is a 2021 American period crime thriller film directed, photographed and edited by Steven Soderbergh, produced by Casey Silver and written by Ed Solomon. The film features an ensemble cast including Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Brendan Fraser, Kieran Culkin, Noah Jupe, Craig Grant, Julia Fox, Frankie Shaw, Ray Liotta, Matt Damon and Bill Duke. No Sudden Move had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 18, 2021, and was released in the United States on July 1, 2021, by HBO Max. The film received positive reviews from critics with praise for Soderbergh's direction and the performances of the cast.
