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Linda de Suza
Biography
Teolinda Joaquina de Sousa Lança ( 22 February 1948 – 28 December 2022), better known as Linda de Suza, was a Portuguese Lusophone and Francophone singer and best-selling author. She was described by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa as "a French icon of Portuguese migration".
Linda de Suza was born in Beringel, Beja (Alentejo), in southern Portugal. Suza left her homeland for France in the 1970s and started to work in menial jobs.
In the late 1970s, she managed to record music albums. Her works such as Tiroli-Torola, La fille qui pleurait, Un Enfant peut faire le monde, and L'Étrangère drew a large audience in France. She topped her success with her performance at Paris Olympia.
Linda de Suza sang fado, folk, ballads and popular songs in both French and Portuguese and was nicknamed "Amália of France" after Amália Rodrigues, to whom she paid tribute in her song "Amália". Amália Rodrigues, known as "Rainha do Fado" ("Queen of Fado") paved the way for Linda de Suza, Tonicha, Lenita Gentil, Cândida Branca Flor, Dulce Pontes, Mariza and Mísia, among other well known Portuguese and Portuguese-descended singers.
In 1984, Linda de Suza published her autobiography La Valise en Carton ("The Cardboard Suitcase"). The book was also published the same year in Portugal, as A Mala de Cartão. Her book was followed by a number of novels. La Valise en carton was adapted into a cinema-film miniseries in 1988. All were successful.
Linda de Suza died in France from complications of COVID-19 on 28 December 2022, aged 74.
Source: Article "Linda de Suza" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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Cody Rhodes
Biography
Cody Garrett Runnels Rhodes is an American professional wrestler and actor, currently signed to WWE on the Raw brand. The son of Dusty Rhodes and half-brother of Dustin Rhodes, he first rose to prominence in WWE from 2006 to 2016 as Cody Rhodes and Stardust, winning multiple tag titles and two Intercontinental Championships. After leaving WWE, he competed in ROH, NJPW, TNA, and the independents, capturing the ROH World, IWGP U.S., and NWA World Heavyweight Championships. A founding Executive Vice President of AEW in 2019, he became the inaugural three-time AEW TNT Champion before returning to WWE at WrestleMania 38 in 2022.
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Etta Lee
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Etta Lee (born Etta Lee Frost, 1906 – 1956) was an American silent film actress. Lee was born on September 12, 1906, in Kauai, Hawaii. She was of Chinese and French descent; her father was a Chinese medical doctor and her mother was of French ancestry. She grew up in California and went on to get her degree in education at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Lee moved back to Hawaii to be a teacher, before returning to Los Angeles to begin her career as an actress.
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Joe Romersa
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Joseph M. Romersa (born July 27, 1956 in California) is an American song writer, drummer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound engineer and vocalist.
While many know him from his singing and lyric writing on the "Silent Hill" game series, many people also know him from his former group "Soy Cowboy", which can only half-accurately be described as a "Thai-Western" band.
During his long career, Joe has also worked with such other musicians as John Prine (where he was given a Grammy for participating as Recording engineer, and drums on Prine's 1991 Grammy winning album The Missing Years which won for best contemporary folk album), and Carlene Carter, eden ahbez, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Laurence Juber, Bonnie Raitt, Bette Midler, David Lindley, Whoopi Goldberg, Poco, Thin White Rope, Bruce Springsteen, Angelyne, Havana, The Dickies, Melanie, The Lettermen, Peaches, Miki Howard, John Klemmer, Iron Butterfly, Egyptian Lover, Bitch, Dave Edmunds, Freddy Cannon, Don Julian & the Larks, Mary Wells, Big Mama Thornton, The Coasters, and Bob Dylan whom he has several humorous stories about. Joe also won an Electronic Music Award in 1973. He is also known for his voice-over work in several Japanese anime projects.
Joe currently lives in California, and still produces music at Shadow Box Studios.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Joe Romersa, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Suimenkul Chokmorov
Biography
Suimenkul Chokmorov (November 9, 1939 – September 26, 1992) was a Kyrgyz Soviet actor and painter who became one of the most recognizable faces of the Kyrgyz Miracle cinema wave during the 1960s and 1970s. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1981.
Born in the village of Chong-Tash, Chokmorov initially pursued a career in the fine arts, graduating from the Leningrad Academy of Arts in 1964. He shifted to acting in his late twenties, making his film debut in Bolotbek Shamshiyev's A Shooting at the Karash Pass (1968). His screen presence and minimalist acting style quickly made him a frequent collaborator for leading Central Asian directors.
Chokmorov starred in several high-profile adaptations of Chingiz Aitmatov's literary works, including Jamilya (1968), The Ferocious One (1973), and The Red Apple (1975). He also appeared in regional action-dramas such as The Seventh Bullet (1972) and gained international exposure by playing a supporting role in Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar-winning Soviet-Japanese co-production Dersu Uzala (1975).
Throughout his career, Chokmorov balanced his work between film sets and his art studio, continuing to paint portraits and landscapes alongside his cinematic activities until his death in 1992.
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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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Germaine Acogny
Biography
Germaine Acogny (born 1944), is a Senegalese dancer and choreographer. She is responsible for developing "African Dance", as well as the creation of several dance schools in both France and Senegal. She has been decorated by both countries, including being an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and a Knight of the National Order of the Lion.
Born in Benin in 1944 to a Senegalese civil servant, Germaine Acogny was also a descendant of the Yoruba people through her grandmother. When she was 10, the family moved to Dakar, Senegal, where she spent the remainder of her childhood. After showing a natural ability in dancing, she decided to pursue this as a career, moving to France in the 1960s to study modern dance and ballet.
Upon her return to Senegal, she began to teach dance locally, both privately and as part of the local secondary education system. During this period she developed a new style, which she would later call the "African dance". After choreographing dance to the poem Femme Noir, Femme Nu, she came to the attention of the author - President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal. After realising they had similar aspirations for African identity and culture, he sent her to work with choreographer Maurice Béjart in Brussels, Belgium. With the assistance of Senghor and Béjart, she founded Mudra Afrique, a school of dance in 1977.
While Béjart initially set the curriculum, which included Acogny's modern dance techniques. He eventually recruited more dance teachers from the United States and attempted to take over Acogny's portion of the curriculum; she confronted him and demanded she was made the sole director of the school instead. He agreed, and she combined the work of the foreign teachers with her own within the school. She continued to develop the African dance as an ongoing hybrid between modern western styles and traditional African techniques. In 1980, she wrote and published Danse Africaine (African Dance), which set the standard for Senegalese dance. She left Mudra Afrique in 1982.
Three years later, she founded Studio Ecole Ballet Theatre in Toulouse, France, alongside her husband Helmut Vogt. She returned to Senegal to in 1995, and opened the dance school l'Ecole des Sables there three years later. She involved the local villagers in the performances, with the studio set in the open air overlooking the ocean. Around the same time as the new school opened, she began collaborating with overseas choreographers such as Susanne Linke and Kota Yamasaki to with on her company Jant-Bi to develop three hour dances for evening performances. Between 1997 and 2000, she was the Artistic Director of the Dance section of the Paris-based Afrique en Creation.
On February 17, 2021, she received the Golden Lion for Dance by the Venice Biennale.
Source: Article "Germaine Acogny" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Jack Sher
Biography
John Jacob Sher (16 March 1913 – 23 August 1988) was an American newspaper columnist, songwriter, film director, film writer, and producer.
Born in Minneapolis, Sher wrote for several magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Redbook, Radio Mirror, Reader's Digest, and Collier's. He also had been a columnist for the New York Reporter, and from 1937 to 1940 Screen & Radio Weekly, a nationally syndicated Sunday supplement published by the Detroit Free Press.
Sher wrote a number of films for Audie Murphy, including in 1959, The Wild and the Innocent, which he also directed. In the 1979 remake for TV, The Kid from Left Field, Gary Coleman (1968–2010), who starred in the series, accepted the NAACP Image Award for Best Children's Special of Episode in a Series. Sher's 1971–1972 television play, Goodbye, Raggedy Ann was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama – Original Teleplay.
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Yves Simon
Biography
Yves Simon (born 3 May 1944 in Choiseul, Haute-Marne) is a French singer and writer. He has published over 30 books and released about twenty albums.
Simon was born in 1944, in the old clergy house of Choiseul, France. His father was a rail worker in Contrexéville, and his mother was a waitress, and later a nurse. His parents gave him a diatonic accordion when he was eight years old. As a teen, he was the guitarist of a band based in Nancy, called "Korrigans nancéens".
In a television interview, he recalled having been fascinated at the age of 16 by the singer Salvatore Adamo, who has at the age of 17 just won the final of a competition and realised his dream of becoming a writer and singer.
He went to school in Mirecourt and, after having passed his baccalauréat, he enrolled at the faculté de lettres in Nancy. He then moved to Paris where he enrolled in university and in a preparatory class at the lycée Voltaire to gain a place at the IDHEC. After gaining his BA, he left Paris to explore Europe and the United States.
In 1967, he recorded three singles (Ne t'en fais pas petite fille, T'as pas changé tu sais, and Ne t'en fais pas petite fille). In 1969, he recorded La Planète endormie. These recording remained relatively little-known, despite the success of Ne t'en fais pas petite fille.
At the same time as this, he wrote several novels. In 1971, he published En couleur and L'homme arc-en-ciel, which were met with success. He also worked for the magazine Actuel and for the radio station Europe 1.
Simon came to wide attention in 1972 with the release of Les Gauloises Bleues. After this, he was booked as the opening act for major artists such as Georges Brassens. His 1973 album, Au pays des merveilles de Juliet, won the prestigious 'Grand Prix de l'Académie du disque'. Respirer chanter was a success in 1974.
He retired from live concerts in 1977, but continued to release successful albums displaying a wide range of musical influences. In 1977, his soundtrack to Diane Kurys's film Diabolo Menthe was well received. His album USA-USSR (1983) met with success, and Liaisons was a hit in 1988. He also made some live concert appearances in Japan in 1982 and in France in 2007.
Simon's first best-selling novel was Océans in 1983. In 1991, Simon won the Prix Médicis, for his novel La Dérive des sentiments. His novel Le Prochain amour (1997) became successful, and a short story collection, Un instant de bonheur, published in 1998, won the 'Grand Prix de la chanson de l'Académie française'.
In his later career, Simon continued to compose music, but at a less regular rate, preferring to devote more time to his writing. In 1999 he released Intempestives, produced with Michel Cœuriot. The album is characterised by orchestral arrangements, and a mixture of rock, classical, and Arabian influences. His lyrics also became more engaged with real world events. He told the story of Afghan women imprisoned by the Taliban in Kabul in Les Souffrantes and defended the criminal Florence Rey in Pardonnez. He described life in the banlieues in Des cités des pleurs, speaks of dialogue between the East and the West. Other songs are more personal, such as Je te prie d'oublier. Je me souviens is an hommage to Georges Perec. ...
Source: Article "Yves Simon (singer)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Eizo Kaimai
Biography
Eizo Kaimai (Kaimai Eizō, 1929 - April 24, 2020) was a Japanese businessman and modeler. He began working for Toho on many of their early Tokusatsu productions, and was first employed as a modeler on the original Godzilla suit for "Godzilla" (1954). He would go on to do modeling work on the first five Godzilla sequels, as well as many of Toho's other special effects films like "Rodan" (1956), "Mothra" (1961), and "Frankenstein vs. Baragon" (1965), to name a few. In 1966, one year after working on his last Godzilla film, Kaimai left Toho to instead found his own company, Kaimai Productions. In the years following, Kaimai also did modeling for rival studio Daiei's Gamera film series, and many of Tsuburaya Productions' special effects television series, most notably, Ultraman. This continued into the early 1980's with his final work being "Ultraman 80" (TV 1980-1981). Kaimai passed away on April 24, 2020, due to leukemia. At 90 years old, Kaimai was the oldest surviving creator of Godzilla, and played major roles in the legacy of other giants of special effects cinema.
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