American Masters Series. Documentary on Gene Kelly that gives insight into his dancing, how he formed a style (first "blue collar dancer") and developed different cinematique techniques, such as brilliantly shot dancing sequences.
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Stanley Tucci Jr. (/ˈtuːtʃi/ TOO-chee; Italian pronunciation: [ˈtuttʃi]; born November 11, 1960) is an American actor. Known as a character actor, he has played a wide variety of roles ranging from menacing to sophisticated. Tucci has earned numerous accolades, including six Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Tony Award. Tucci made his film debut in John Huston's Prizzi's Honour (1985) and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in films such as Deconstructing Harry (1997), Road to Perdition (2002), and The Terminal (2004). He made his directorial debut with the comedy Big Night (1996), which he also co-wrote and starred in. Following roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Julie & Julia (2009), Tucci was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Lovely Bones (2009). Tucci's other film roles include Burlesque (2010), Easy A (2010), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Margin Call (2011), The Hunger Games film series (2012–2015), Spotlight (2015), Supernova (2020), Worth (2021), and Conclave (2024). He has starred in numerous television series such as the legal drama Murder One (1995–1997), the medical drama 3 lbs (2006), Ryan Murphy's limited series Feud: Bette & Joan (2017), and the drama Limetown (2018). He played Stanley Kubrick in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). For his portrayal of Walter Winchell in the HBO film Winchell (1998), he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie. Since 2020, Tucci has voiced Bitsy Brandenham in the Apple TV+ animated series Central Park. From 2021 to 2022, he hosted the CNN food and travel documentary series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, for which he won two consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2003) and a Grammy Award for narrating the audiobook The One and Only Shrek! (2008). Description above from the Wikipedia article Stanley Tucci, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, and the likable characters that he played on screen. He starred in, choreographed, or co-directed some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s, until they fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. Kelly is best known today for his performances in films such as Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, On the Town (1949), which was his directorial debut, An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Brigadoon (1954), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Kelly made his film debut with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942), and followed by Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), Thousands Cheer (1943), The Pirate (1948), Summer Stock (1950), and Les Girls (1957) among others. After musicals he starred in two films outside the musical genre: Inherit the Wind (1960) and What a Way to Go! (1964). In 1967, he appeared in French director Jacques Demy's musical comedy The Young Girls of Rochefort opposite Catherine Deneuve. Kelly solo directed the comedy A Guide for the Married Man (1967) starring Walter Matthau, and later the extravagant musical Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand, recognized with an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Kelly co-hosted and appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1946), That's Entertainment! (1974), That's Entertainment, Part II (1976), That's Dancing! (1985), and That's Entertainment, Part III (1994). His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences. Kelly received an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements; the same year, An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors (1982) and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute. In 1999, the American Film Institute also ranked him as the 15th greatest male screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Description above from the Wikipedia article Gene Kelly, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Betsy Blair -December 11, 1923 – March 13, 2009) was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London. Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in 1940. There she met Gene Kelly. They were married the following year, when she was seventeen years old. The couple divorced sixteen years later, in 1957. After work in the theatre, Blair began her film career playing supporting roles in films such as A Double Life (1947) and Another Part of the Forest (1948). Her interest in Marxism led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Blair was blacklisted for some time, but resumed her career with a critically acclaimed performance in Marty (1955), winning a BAFTA Award and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She continued her career with regular theatre, film and television work until the mid 1990s.
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (born 1 July 1931) is a French-American actress, dancer and writer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards. Caron started her career as a ballerina. She made her film debut in the musical An American in Paris (1951), followed by roles in The Man with a Cloak (1951), Glory Alley (1952) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), before receving critical acclaim for her role as an orphan in Lili (also 1953), which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and garnered nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. As a leading lady, Caron went on to star in films such as The Glass Slipper, Daddy Long Legs (both 1955), Gigi (1958), Fanny (1961), both of which earned her Golden Globe nominations, Guns of Darkness (1962), The L-Shaped Room (both 1962), Father Goose (1964) and A Very Special Favor (1965). For her role of a single pregnant woman in The L-Shaped Room, Caron, in addition to receiving a second Academy Award nomination, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a second BAFTA Award. Caron's other roles include Is Paris Burning? (1966), That's Entertainment! (1974), The Man Who Loved Women, Valentino (both 1977), Damage (1992), Funny Bones (1995), Chocolat (2000) and Le Divorce (2003). In 2007, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performance of a child molestation victim in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Description above from the Wikipedia article Leslie Caron, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Cyd Charisse (born Tula Ellice Finklea; March 8, 1922 – June 17, 2008) was an American dancer and actress. After recovering from polio as a child and studying ballet, Charisse entered films in the 1940s. Her roles usually featured her abilities as a dancer, and she was paired with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly; her films include Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954), and Silk Stockings (1957). She stopped dancing in films in the late 1950s, but continued acting in film and television, and in 1992 made her Broadway debut. Description above from the Wikipedia article Cyd Charisse, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 – November 23, 2006) was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green lasted for six decades, during which time they collaborated with other leading entertainment figures such as the famed "Freed Unit" at MGM, Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein. Description above from the Wikipedia article Betty Comden,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Stanley Donen (April 13, 1924-February 23, 2019) was an American film director and choreographer hailed by David Quinlan as "the King of the Hollywood musicals". His most celebrated work was Singin' in the Rain (1952), which he co-directed with Gene Kelly. Description above from the Wikipedia article Stanley Donen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Nina Foch (born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock; April 20, 1924 – December 5, 2008) was a Dutch American actress. After signing a contract with Columbia Pictures at age 19, Foch became a regular in the studio's horror pictures and films noir before establishing herself as a leading lady in the mid-1940s through the 1950s, often playing roles as cool, aloof sophisticates. Her career spanned six decades, consisting of over 50 feature films and over 100 television appearances.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Douglas Fowley (born Daniel Vincent Fowley; May 30, 1911 – May 21, 1998) was an American movie and television actor in more than 240 films and dozens of television programs. Fowley is probably best remembered for his role as the frustrated movie director Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (1952), and for his regular supporting role as Doc Holliday in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville with her sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and "The Wizard of Oz". After fifteen years, Garland was released from the studio but gained renewed success through concert appearances and later a return to acting. Through a career, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. She received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award as well as a Grammy Award, and a Special Tony Award. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for "A Star is Born" (1954) and Best Supporting Actress for "Judgement at Nuremberg" (1961). At forty, she was the youngest recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American cinema.
Betty Garrett (May 23, 1919 - February 12, 2011) was an American actress, comedian, singer and dancer, who starred in several Hollywood musicals and stage roles. She was at the top of her game when the Communist scare in the 1950s brought her career to a screeching, ugly halt. She and her husband Larry Parks, an Oscar-nominated actor, were summoned by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and questioned about their involvement. As the drama played out, a very pregnant Garrett was never called to testify, but her husband was. With his admission of Communist Party membership from 1941-1945 and refusal to name names, he made it to the Hollywood Blacklist. After the incident, Garrett and Parks worked up nightclub singing/comedy acts along with appearing in legit plays. Although Parks never quite shook off the blacklist incident, he did win a role in John Huston's film, Freud (1962). Garrett went on to appear in roles in many television series.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Kathryn Grayson (February 9, 1922 – February 17, 2010) was an American actress and operatic soprano singer. From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a lead performer in such films as Thousands Cheer (1943), Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, and Show Boat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953) (both with Howard Keel). When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in Camelot (1962–1964). Later in the decade she performed in several operas, including La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jean Hagen (born Jean Shirley Verhagen, August 3, 1923 – August 29, 1977) was an American actress best known for her role as Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain (1952), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Hagen was also nominated three times for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Margaret Williams (1953–56) on the television series Make Room For Daddy. Her film debut was as a comical femme fatale in the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn 1949 classic Adam's Rib, directed by George Cukor. The Asphalt Jungle (1950) provided Hagen with her first starring role alongside Sterling Hayden. Hagen received excellent reviews playing "Doll" Conover, a woman who sticks by criminal Dix's side until the bitter end. She appeared too in the film noir Side Street (1950) playing a gangster's sincere but none-too-bright nightclub-singer girlfriend. Hagen is best remembered for her comic performance in Singin' in the Rain as the vain and talentless silent movie star Lina Lamont. She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for this memorable performance. By 1953, she had joined the cast of the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy. For her portrayal as the first wife of Danny Thomas, Hagen received three Emmy Award nominations, but after three seasons, she grew dissatisfied with the role and left the series. Thomas, who also produced the show, reportedly did not appreciate Hagen's departing the successful series, and her character was killed off rather than recast. This was the first TV character to be killed off in a family sitcom. Marjorie Lord was cast a year later as Danny's second wife and played opposite Thomas successfully for the remainder of the series. In 1957 Hagen co-starred in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Enough Rope for Two", portraying a woman who accompanies two thieves trying to retrieve stolen money from a desert mine shaft. She then appeared as Elizabeth in the 1960 episode "Once Upon a Knight" on CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson; and the following year she guest-starred on The Andy Griffith Show in the episode "Andy and the Woman Speeder". Although she made frequent guest appearances in various television series, Hagen was unable to successfully resume her film career in starring roles. After appearing with Fred MacMurray in the Disney comedy The Shaggy Dog (1959), Hagen for the remainder of her career played supporting roles, such as Marguerite LeHand, personal secretary to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960), and the friend of Bette Davis in Dead Ringer (1964). In the 1960s, Hagen's health began to decline and she spent many years hospitalized or under medical care. Much later, in 1976, she made a comeback of sorts playing character roles in episodes of the television series Starsky and Hutch and The Streets of San Francisco. She, however, made her final acting appearance the next year in the television movie Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn.
Margarita Carmen Cansino (October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987), known by her screen name Rita Hayworth, was an American film actress and dancer of Spanish Roma and Irish descent. After going through extensive white-washing procedures, she attained fame in the 1940s as the titular femme fatale in the film noir Gilda. Being one of the most popular stars of the era, she was the top pin-up girl for American soldiers during WWII and was nicknamed "The Love Goddess". She is listed as number 19 on the American Film Institute's 50 greatest female screen legends.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Michael Kidd (August 12, 1915 – December 23, 2007) was an American film and stage choreographer. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Kidd, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Johnnie Lucille Collier (April 12, 1923 – January 22, 2004), known professionally as Ann Miller, was an American dancer, singer and actress. She is best remembered for her work in the Classical Hollywood musical films of the 1940s and 1950s. At age 13 in 1936, Miller became a showgirl at the Bal Tabarin. She was hired as a dancer in the "Black Cat Club" in San Francisco (she reportedly told them she was 18). It was there that she was discovered by Lucille Ball and talent scout/comic Benny Rubin (although some sources say this occurred at Bal Tabarin). This led Miller to be given a contract with RKO in 1936 at the age of 13 (she had also told them she was 18, and apparently provided a fake birth certificate, procured by her father - with the name "Lucy Ann Collier") and she remained there until 1940. In 1941, she signed with Columbia Pictures, where, starting with Time Out for Rhythm, she starred in 11 B movie musicals from 1941 to 1945. In July 1945, with World War II still raging in the Pacific, she posed in a bathing suit as a Yank magazine pin-up girl. She ended her contract in 1946 with one "A" film, The Thrill of Brazil. The ad in Life magazine featured Miller's leg in a large, red, bow-tied stocking as the "T" in "Thrill". She finally hit her mark in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals such as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953). Miller was famed for her speed in tap dance. Studio publicists concocted press releases claiming she could tap 500 times per minute, but in truth, the sound of ultra-fast "500" taps was looped in later. Because the stage floors were waxed and too slick for regular tap shoes, she had to dance in shoes with rubber treads on the sole. Later she would loop the sound of the taps while watching the film and actually dancing on a "tap board" to match her steps in the film. Her film career effectively ended in 1956 as the studio system lost steam to television, but she remained active in the theater and on television. She starred on Broadway in the musical Mame in 1969, in which she wowed the audience in a tap number created just for her. In 1979 she astounded audiences in the Broadway show Sugar Babies with fellow MGM veteran Mickey Rooney, which toured the United States extensively after its Broadway run. In 1983, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. She appeared in a special 1982 episode of The Love Boat, joined by fellow showbiz legends Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Della Reese, Van Johnson and Cab Calloway in a storyline that cast them as older relatives of the show's regular characters. Her last stage performance was a 1998 production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, in which she played hardboiled Carlotta Campion and received rave reviews for her rendition of the song "I'm Still Here". For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Miller has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6914 Hollywood Blvd. In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her. To honor Miller's contribution to dance, the Smithsonian Institution displays her favorite pair of tap shoes, which she playfully nicknamed "Moe and Joe".
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Millard Mitchell (August 14, 1903 – October 13, 1953) was an American character actor whose credits include roughly thirty feature films and two television appearances. Born in Havana, Cuba, Mitchell appeared as a bit player in eight films between 1931 and 1936. He returned to film work in 1942 after a six-year absence. Between 1942 and 1953, Mitchell was a successful supporting actor. For his performance in the 1952 film, My Six Convicts, Millard Mitchell won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Mitchell is also known for his role as Col. Rufus Plummer in Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), as Gregory Peck's commanding officer in the war drama Twelve O'Clock High (1949), and as movie mogul "R. F. Simpson" in the musical comedy Singin' in the Rain (1952). Mitchell died at the age of fifty from lung cancer in Santa Monica, California and was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Description above from the Wikipedia article Millard Mitchell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Fayard Antonio Nicholas was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. He and his younger brother Harold Nicholas made up the Nicholas Brothers tap dance duo, who starred in the MGM musicals An All-Colored Vaudeville Show, Stormy Weather, The Pirate, and Hard Four. The Nicholas brothers also starred in the 20th Century-Fox musicals Down Argentine Way, Sun Valley Serenade, and Orchestra Wives. In 1932, when he was 18 and his brother was only 11, they became the featured act at Cotton Club in New York City. The brothers earned fame with a unique style of rhythm tap that blended "masterful jazz steps with daredevil athletic moves and an elegance of motion worthy of ballet". They appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and in London they worked with jazz choreographer Buddy Bradley. The performances led them to a career in film. Nicholas appeared in over 60 films, including the 1943 musical Stormy Weather with their signature staircase dance. His career was interrupted from 1943 to 1944 when he served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Nicholas achieved the rank of Technician fifth grade while in WWII. After his dance career ended, Nicholas and his wife, Katherine Hopkins Nicholas, embarked on a lecture tour discussing dance. In 2003, Nicholas served as "Festival Legend" at the third "Soul to Sole Tap Festival" in Austin, Texas. Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001.
Donald O’Connor (August 28, 1925 - September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer, and actor who came to fame in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule. He is best known today for his role in Singin' in the Rain.
Kenneth John "Kenny" Ortega (born April 18, 1950) is an American producer, director, and choreographer. He is known for directing the High School Musical trilogy and Michael Jackson's This Is It concert tour. Description above from the Wikipedia article Kenny Ortega, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-born American pianist, conductor, and composer. Starting by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Previn was involved in the music for over 50 films over his entire career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement). He had been the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds (April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words, and her breakout role was her first leading role, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), Bundle of Joy (1956 Golden Globe nomination), The Catered Affair (1956 National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Winner), and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her performance of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the Billboard music charts.[1] In 1959, she released her first pop music album, titled Debbie. She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other films include The Singing Nun (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), Charlotte's Web (1973), Mother (1996) (Golden Globe nomination), and In & Out (1997). Reynolds was also a cabaret performer. In 1979 she founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which still operates today. In 1969 she starred on television in the eponymous The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace's mother Bobbi on Will & Grace. At the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series. In 1988 she released her autobiography titled, Debbie: My Life. In 2013, she released a second autobiography, Unsinkable: A Memoir. Reynolds also had several business ventures, including ownership of a dance studio and a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and she was an avid collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She served as president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes. Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties. In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2016 she received the Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In the same year, a documentary about her life was released titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds; the film premiered on HBO on January 7, 2017. On December 28, 2016, Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following a medical emergency, which her son Todd Fisher later described as a "severe stroke". She died that afternoon, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.
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Phil Silvers (1911–1985) was an American entertainer and comedy actor. He is best known for starring in The Phil Silvers Show.
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers". His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (for his performance in From Here to Eternity). He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way". With sales of his music dwindling and after appearing in several poorly received films, Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971. Two years later, however, he came out of retirement and in 1973 recorded several albums, scoring a Top 40 hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980. Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally, until a short time before his death in 1998. Sinatra also forged a successful career as a film actor, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity, a nomination for Best Actor for The Man with the Golden Arm, and critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate. He also starred in such musicals as High Society, Pal Joey, Guys and Dolls and On the Town. Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Description above from the Wikipedia article Frank Sinatra, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Esther Jane Williams (August 8, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American competitive swimmer and actress. She set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team. Unable to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics because of the outbreak of World War II, she joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, where she took on the role vacated by Eleanor Holm after the show's move from New York City to San Francisco. While in the city, she spent five months swimming alongside Olympic gold-medal winner and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller. Williams caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer scouts at the Aquacade. After appearing in several small roles, and alongside Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film and future five-time co-star Van Johnson in A Guy Named Joe, Williams made a series of films in the 1940s and early 1950s known as "aquamusicals", which featured elaborate performances with synchronised swimming and diving. Every year from 1945 to 1949, Williams had at least one film among the 20 highest-grossing films of the year. In 1952, Williams appeared in her only biographical role, as Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman in Million Dollar Mermaid, which went on to become her nickname while she was at MGM. Williams left MGM in 1956 and appeared in a handful of unsuccessful feature films, followed by several extremely popular water-themed network television specials, including one from Cypress Gardens, Florida. Williams was also a successful businesswoman. Before retiring from acting, she invested in a "service station, a metal products plant, a manufacturer of bathing suits, various properties and a successful restaurant chain known as Trails." She lent her name to a line of swimming pools, retro swimwear, and instructional swimming videos for children, and served as a commentator for synchronized swimming at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Description above from the Wikipedia article Esther Williams, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn (July 27, 1916 – October 14, 1986) was an American character actor. His expressive face was his stock-in-trade; and though he rarely carried the lead role, he had prominent billing in most of his film and television roles. Description above from the Wikipedia article Keenan Wynn, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
