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Noel Francis
Biography
Noel Francis was born in Temple, Texas in 1906. By age 20 she was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, working opposite the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. Eventually Fox scouts noticed her and in 1929 she was signed to a Hollywood contract. Because of her Follies background, Fox intended to develop Noel as a musical and dance star. Unfortunately, musicals were on the wane at the time (they did rebound) and her contract was dropped. Luckily, she was picked up by Warner Brothers, and featured in a number of films that had her portraying the tough talking, sassy female connected to gangsters, convicts, and other underworld types, so popular with the movie going public then and now.
Noel was rarely given the lead female role, though she worked near the top with some of the era's best actors in films that included Smart Money (1931), in which she is a scheming blonde helping Edward G. Robinson lose his money, and Blonde Crazy (1931), where her target is James Cagney. Her most noted performance was in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), working with Paul Muni in one of his strongest performances. However, perhaps because of being typecast, she found herself in "B" productions after 1932, though one was as the lead female, in Mayfair Picture Corporation's 1934 What's Your Racket?, opposite Regis Toomey.
Needing work, Noel returned to Broadway, but couldn't resume her career there, and returned to Hollywood to make three final films with Buck Jones, including Stone of Silver Creek (1935), in which she used her Broadway musical expertise to play a saloon singer. Between 1929 and 1937 Noel made 47 films.
She died October 30, 1959 in Los Angeles, California.
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Lívia Inhudes
Biography
Lívia Inhudes Rossetto, better known as Lívia Inhudes, is a Brazilian actress and influencer. She gained knowledge in 2013, when she played the character Vivi in the Version of Chiquititas.
She gained national prominence for playing Vivi, one of the protagonists of the Remake of Chiquititas in 2013 on SBT. In 2020, she played the character Tammy in the soap opera Run For Your Lives on Rede Globo. She will debut in 2023, the film An Unforgettable Year - Summer, in which she will be the protagonist.
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Zoe Caldwell
Biography
Zoe Ada Caldwell OBE (14 September 1933 – 16 February 2020) was an Australian-born actress. She was a four-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actress in a Play for Slapstick Tragedy (1966), and Best Actress in a Play for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), Medea (1982), and Master Class (1996). Her film appearances include The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Birth (2004), and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011).
She was also known for providing the voice of the Grand Councilwoman in the Lilo & Stitch franchise and in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Zoe Caldwell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Athmane Ariouet
Biography
Athmane Ariouet (Arabic: عثمان عريوات) born September 24, 1948 in M'doukal, Algeria is an Algerian actor from a Chaoui family. He played in several Algerian historical, social, comedic and dramatic films. Awarded several times during a career spanning more than five decades, he is considered one of the greatest Algerian actors such as Hassan El Hassani, Rouiched, Hadj Abderrahmane among others.
It was at the age of 15, in 1963, that he began his experience in theater and cinema, discovering Molière. This native of M’doukel, the land of Mustapha Kouici and Ahmed Aroua, he knew/knows that art is a serious matter. He did not let himself be intoxicated by his first successes, he decided to follow training at the Algiers Conservatory from 1969 to 1972. He learned the secrets of diction, the different processes of commedia dell'arte made essentially of improvisation, bodily expression, but especially Stanislavski's techniques. Thus, he will meet the big names of theater, Keltoum, Rouiched, Mustapha Kazdarli, Hassan el Hassani, Taha el Amiri, Hadj Omar, Allal el Mouhib or Mustapha Kateb. He never imagined rubbing shoulders with these giants of dramatic art and cinema.
Ariouet chooses his directors, his productions and the subjects covered, it is not easy, theater and cinema are, for him, serious affairs: “I prefer to stay without acting than to get involved in roles and work of 'a low level as we see, unfortunately, today. I am for quality works and leveling down revolts me.” He is also comfortable with certain actors like Salah Aougrout, Lakhdar Boukhers, Hamid Achouri, Antar Hellal or Allaoua Djermani, but, of course, he really liked working with the veterans who allowed him to learn the profession more. We cannot fail to learn alongside Hadj Omar, Allel el Mouhib or Hadj Abderrahmane.
Athmane Ariouet, whose eclecticism is the fundamental mark of his theatrical and cinematographic experience, moves with disconcerting ease from the tragic style to the comedy of situations or morals. In 2004, he retired from the theater after his film "Chronique des Années Pub" in which he encountered financial difficulties as well as a ban on theatrical release. However, in 2017, during the forum of the daily El Moudjahid, the former Minister of Culture Azzedine Mihoubi announced that “the film was in the editing phase” and finally released in 2018.
In July 2020, Ariouet received the “Achir” rank national merit medal under the direction of President of the Republic Abdelmadjid Tebboune. In January 2021, after 20 years of absence from the screen, Athmane Ariouet reconnected with the public by launching his Instagram account. In April 2023, Brahim Irban said in a podcast that the actor refused the sum of 3,000,000 Algerian Dinars for a photo shoot with a costume for a billboard requested by an advertising agency, although he lives normally, as a man of the people, preferring a simple life, commenting that his "Art is priceless".
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Ahmed Ben Bella
Biography
Ahmed Ben Bella (Arabic: أحمد بن بلة), born officially on December 25, 1916 in Maghnia near Tlemcen in Oranie, in the northwest of Algeria (then French departments), and died on April 11, 2012 in Algiers, is a fighter for Algerian independence and an Algerian statesman. He was head of government from 1962 to 1963 and then the first president of the Republic from 1963 to 1965.
Ben Bella is one of the nine "historical leaders" of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action (CRUA), at the origin of the National Liberation Front (FLN), an Algerian independence party. He was arrested during the Algerian War but took part in the country's independence at the head of the FLN and became the first President of the Algerian Republic on September 15, 1963, a position he combined with that of Prime Minister. He held the latter position from September 27, 1962.
He was overthrown by the coup d'état of June 19, 1965 led by his Deputy Prime Minister, Colonel Houari Boumédiène. He was forced into exile from 1980 to 1990 after having been imprisoned since the coup d'état.
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Travilla
Biography
The man who draped a fringed Idaho potato sack on Marilyn Monroe for a famous snapshot - proving that she looked good in anything - was born on Catalina Island off the California coast on March 22 1920. He studied at the Chouinard School of Art in L.A., showing a precocious talent for drawing fashion design from an early age. By the time he was sixteen, he made money by selling sketches of costume designs for showgirls he had studied at burlesque houses.
Found unfit for wartime duties due to flat feet, William Travilla made his way to Hollywood and signed his first contract as costume designer at Columbia in 1941. However, during his two-year tenure he received rather few assignments and left disillusioned. Little work came his way during the next few years, until, in 1946, he was spotted in a nightclub (selling travel sketches of the South Pacific) by the actress Ann Sheridan, who became an instant admirer of his work. Sheridan persuaded Travilla to become her personal costume designer at Warner Brothers. This didn't quite come to pass, though he did design her gowns for Nora Prentiss (1947). More importantly, he notched up his first major success by winning the Academy Award for the lavish and colourful costumes of Adventures of Don Juan (1948) in conjunction with Leah Rhodes and Marjorie Best. After his three year contract was up, Travilla went on to 20th Century Fox, for what would become the most productive period of his career in the film business. At the same time, he set up his own high end fashion salon, Travilla Inc., in Los Angeles, creating several collections of elegant, award-winning designs.
Travilla dressed many established stars, from Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, to Loretta Young. However, he is chiefly remembered for the iconic gowns, designed for Marilyn Monroe's famous hourglass shape in eight of her most popular films. These include her sexy satin number from How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), the gold lame dress with the sun ray pleats glimpsed in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and, subsequently, at the 1953 Photoplay Awards (over Travilla's objections); and, of course, the white cocktail dress famously uplifted above the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch (1955). One of three versions of the latter sold at auction for $ 4.6 million in 2011. Despite their close working relationship, Travilla later went on record describing Marilyn on a personal level as 'childlike' and plagued by feelings of inadequacy.
After his contract with Fox expired in 1956, Travilla tended to his own exclusive label, designing a collection of ready-to-wear 'California' fashion. In the 1960's, he continued to freelance, working primarily for television. He showed off a young Connie Sellecca to great effect in a murder mystery revolving around the fashion industry, fittingly titled She's Dressed to Kill (1979). Ever synonymous with a bygone era of glamour, he went on to win two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Costume Design for The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980) and for Dallas (1978). An exhibition of his personal collection, under the auspices of his longtime collaborator William Sarris, went on a world tour in 2008.
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Paul Rudish
Biography
A 20-year animation veteran, Rudish helped develop and direct hit series’ “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “Samurai Jack,” and “The Powerpuff Girls” for Cartoon Network. He served as art director on “Star Wars: Clone Wars” and was co-creator of “Sym-Bionic Titan.”
Rudish’s additional credits include development on “Spaced Out” and storyboarding Disney XD’s”Tron: Uprising.”
Rudish grew up on a small horse and goat farm in Raymore, Missouri. He was mentored and inspired by his father, Rich Rudish, an illustrator and director at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri.
Rudish graduated from Cal Arts with a degree in Animation. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
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Christopher DeFaria
Biography
Christopher "Chris" DeFaria born San Francisco, California is an American film producer and production manager of such films as Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Gravity (2013) and Happy Feet Two (2011).
As a child, he was a voice actor playing the part of Peppermint Patty in five Peanuts specials: It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969), Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971), There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973), and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973). He voiced Peppermint Patty in the second Peanuts film, Snoopy, Come Home (1972). He voiced Pig-Pen in A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969).
He is a graduate of UCLA, a member of the AMPAS and WGA and a founding member of FilmAid International.
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Jorge Honik
Biography
Jorge Silvio Honik, (Argentina, 1940). From an early age to literature, alternating narrative with playwriting. Having completed his university studies in Pharmacy, he traveled extensively through Europe, Africa, Asia and America, alternating periods of settlement with others of transit, a ten-year journey whose memory, transformed and distorted by the myths and obsessions that animate all fiction, forms the living matter of a good part of both his narrative and his films.
Throughout this trajectory, the super 8 camera, initially intended for mere visual recording, gradually became, in view of the creative possibilities it offered, the simile of a pen, no longer intended for description and narration through words but using the power, vibration and dazzle of the image, or more precisely of its primordial source: light.
He finally settled in the Patagonian Andes, first in San Carlos de Bariloche and finally in El Bolsón, where he has been living for about three decades. Since then, he has been a teacher in the arts and exact sciences, an activity he alternates with cinema, literature, theater and music. In addition to literary awards, publications at provincial and national level and an anthology of his short stories published by the Fondo Editorial Rionegrino, he has coordinated film workshops in secondary schools in Río Negro, one of the productions of these workshops having received first prize in the First Biennial of Young Art (San Carlos de Bariloche, 1993).
Considered one of the founding referents of Argentine experimental cinema, Honik is the director of Gaudí asesinado por un tranvía (1968), Komik (1969), Un paseo (1969), El inmortal (1970), Passacaglia y Fuga (1974) and Sueños impresos en acetato (1969-1981).
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