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1-50 of 87
- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
William Friese-Greene was a prolific English inventor and professional photographer born in Bristol, England. He studied at the Queen Elizabeth's Hospital school. In 1871, he was apprenticed to the Bristol photographer Marcus Guttenberg, but later successfully went to court to be freed early from the indentures of his seven-year apprenticeship. He married the Swiss, Helena Friese, on 24 March 1874 and, in a remarkable move for the era, decided to add her maiden name to his surname. In 1876, he set up his own studio in Bath and, by 1881, had expanded his business, having more studios in Bath, Bristol and Plymouth. In Bath he came into contact with John Arthur Roebuck Rudge, a scientific instrument maker, who built what he called the Biophantic Lantern, which could display seven photographic slides in rapid succession, producing the illusion of movement. Friese-Greene was fascinated by the machine and worked with Rudge on a variety of devices over the 1880s, various of which Rudge called the Biophantascope. Moving his base to London in 1885, Friese-Greene realised that glass plates would never be a practical medium for continuously capturing life as it happens. Hence he began experiments with the new Eastman paper roll film before turning his attention to experimenting with celluloid as a medium for motion picture cameras. In 1888, he had some form of moving picture camera constructed, the nature of which is not known. On 21 June 1889, he was issued patent no. 10131 for a motion-picture camera, in collaboration with a civil engineer, Mortimer Evans. It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using paper and celluloid film. In 1890 he developed a camera with Frederick Varley to shoot stereoscopic moving images. This ran at a slower frame rate, and although the 3D arrangement worked, there are no records of projection. He worked on a series of moving picture cameras into 1891, but although many individuals recount seeing his projected images privately, he never gave a successful public projection of moving pictures. His experiments with motion pictures were to the detriment of his other business interests and in 1891 he was declared bankrupt. From 1904 he lived in Brighton and, in 1905, he patented a two-colour moving picture system using prisms. Eventually, the arrival of the war and personal poverty meant there was nothing more to be done with colour for some years. On 5 May 1921, Friese-Greene, then a largely forgotten figure, attended a stormy meeting of the cinema trade at the Connaught Rooms in London to discuss the current poor state of British film distribution. Disturbed by the tone of the proceedings, Friese-Greene got to his feet to speak. The chairman asked him to come forward onto the platform to be heard better, which he did, appealing for the two sides to come together. Shortly after returning to his seat, he collapsed. People went to his aid and took him outside, but he died almost immediately of heart failure.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Jay Hunt was born on 4 August 1855 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a director and actor, known for The Black Sheep of the Family (1916), What Love Can Do (1916) and The Promise (1917). He was married to Florence Hale. He died on 18 November 1932 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
James Williamson was born on 8 November 1855 in Kirkaldy, Scotland, UK. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Attack on a China Mission (1900), Stop Thief! (1901) and Spring Cleaning (1903). He died on 18 August 1933 in Richmond, Surrey, England, UK.- Jacob Adler, the legendary "Great Eagle"' ("adler" is the German word for "eagle") of the Yiddish theater, was one of the great American stage actors, ranking with Edwin Booth, John Barrymore and Marlon Brando. Adler also is famous as the patriarch of an acting dynasty that stretched over 100 years from the late 19th century to the 21st and was essential to the evolution of the American theater from melodrama to a new heights of realism and seriousness. Adler's life story not only elucidates the Golden Age of the Yiddish theater but is a testament to the survival of a culture in a world where many elements threatened to extirpate it.
Adler was born in Odessa in Imperal Russia on February 12, 1855 and was stricken with the theatrical bug as a teenager. He joined a Yiddish theatrical company, the Rosenberg Troupe, in the 1870s. The Rosenberg Troupe was one of three Yiddish theatrical companies in Russia, the other two being Goldfaden's Troupe and Sheikevitch's Troupe. During his theatrical apprenticeship with Rosenberg, Jacob Adler proved himself to be an outstanding actor and a superb dancer but a bust as a balladeer. His poor singing thus cut off the lucrative operetta field for him. He compensated by becoming a great actor.
Adler gained experience as a member of the Rosenberg Troupe, touring Imperial Russia and putting on shows in Yiddish speaking communities. His first wife, Sonia Oberlander, was a member of the troupe. Adler was mentored by the eponymous head of the Troupe.
Jacob Adler became famous in the Polish and Russian Yiddish communities by playing the title role in Karl Gutzkow's drama, "Uriel de Acosta". Acosta (1585-1640) was a marrano (a Christianized Jew of medieval Spain) who fought for enlightenment in the Jewish community of Holland, which was under Spanish suzerainty. The play was hugely popular, but the popularity of the Yiddish theater and its tackling of serious, didactic fare rather than melodramas and musicals beloved by the masses made it suspect as a subversive influence.
The "modern" Yiddish theater can be seen as evolving out of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) rather than from the religious Purimspiel. The unenlightened and viciously anti-semitic Russian oligarchy launched a series of pogroms in the 1880's that almost wiped out Jewish culture in Russia. Jews started emigrating from Russia en masse, with whole villages sometimes uprooting and leaving for more hospitable climes such as North America. Jewish culture was dealt a further blow when Czar Alexander III issued a ukase banning the Yiddish theater. Jacob Adler had no choice but to leave Russia; he emigrated to England at the end of November 1883.
Adler caught on as an actor with 'Dramatic Clubs'. In London, the Odessa-born Adler had a hit with the play "The Odessa Beggar." He had an even bigger hit in Schiller's "The Robber," which brought him international fame. However, after six years in England, Adler decided to emigrate to the United States of America, moving to the great melting pot that was New York City. In his memoirs (written in Yiddish), Adler recalled that "...when I came to America in 1889, I was already known by the proud name 'Nesher Hagadol' ('The Great Eagle') and was an actor famous throughout the Yiddish theatrical world."
In the Big Town, The Great Eagle starred in various Yiddish theaters on Second Avenue in the Bowery, the "Jewish Broadway." There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in the New York Metropolitan Area in the Gay Nineties, and many spoke Yiddish as their first or only language. The theater was their major entertainment form in an era in which there was no radio, let alone television. It was not unusual for an impoverished Jewish family to spend half of its week's wages wrestled from laboring in Lower East Side sweatshops at a night at the theater. Adler was successful enough to be able to open his own theater in the Bowery, the Union Theater on Broadway and Eighth Street. (He also later opened the National in the same area.)
Adler focused on producing dramatic plays as he was not successful in operettas and had a didactic bent. He wanted the theater to be socially significant rather than remain just a vehicle for vulgar entertainment like the melodramas beloved by the Jewish denizens of the Lower East Side. Adler linked up with playwright Jacob Gordin and revolutionized the Yiddish Theater, and, a generation later, American theater as a whole.
Gordin wrote "Sibina", "The Wild Man", and "The Yiddish King Lear", Adler's greatest triumph. First assaying the role in November 1891, King Lear brought Adler even greater fame and solidified his reputation a great actor. Sara Heine Adler, his second wife, said of the night he first took the stage as Lear: "He was not an actor that night, but a force."
The great success of Ader in Gordin's Lear represented the incorporation of the world classical canon into the American (and international) Yiddish theater. It also meant that "better" or more high-brow theater targeting the Yiddish-speaking Jewish audience could thrive. It had been an axiom that the 'Shund' tradition of Jewish Broadway, a focus on sensational melodrama, was the vehicle for success as it attracted the Jewish masses. The undisputed champion of the 'Shund' tradition was Boris Thomashefsky, who had mocked "The Great Eagle" as he had been more financially successful with his cheap melodramas than Adler was with his more prestigious theatrical offerings.
However, with King Lear, Adler had not only an artistic triumph but a great financial success. Jacob Adler had made the "Jewish Broadway" safe for "better theater." A similar process would happen in the 1930s and 1940s when the Group Theatre, a company that included two of his children and which had roots in the quality Yiddish theater Adler had pioneered, would revolutionize the Great White Way of Old Broadway itself with a socially conscious "better theater". Jacob's daughter Stella Adler, the Yiddish- and Group Theatre-affiliated actress who became a premier acting coach in the US, said about her father's success with The Yiddish King Lear that "The whole profession caught fire. Good theater apparently could 'make it'... Every actor wanted to play Gordin. Every actor wanted to play the classics, and the people came."
Adler achieved even greater success when, in 1903, he trod the boards on Broadway as Shylock in a production of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." He had another supreme triumph, humanizing a character that until then had been a one-dimensional, stereotypical villain, nearly always played by a gentile in a red fright wig.
In 1910, Adler made his first and only feature film for the Selig movie studio, "Michael Strogoff" an adaptation of Jules Verne's adventure story directed by J. Searle Dawley. The movie was one of the first full-length adaptations of a Verne work. "Michael Strogoff" was a first rate production with lavish production values, which were unusual for a movie from the Selig studio, but which bears testimony to the fame and respect Adler engendered. The film was notable for its climax, which entailed the burning of a Siberian city.
Adler' wrote his memoirs in Yiddish, which were published in the Yiddish-language socialist newspaper 'Die Varheit' ('The Truth') from 1916-19. Adler fell ill in 1922, and though he recovered, his illness had aged him and sapped his powers. When he returned to front his theater before the adoring crowds, putting back on the grease-paint to play in Gordin's drama "The Stranger", he was a success, but had clearly lost the stamina necessary for the stage. He died on April 1, 1926 in New York City, aged 81.
His second wife Sara Heine Adler, herself a great actress who regaled a young Marlon Brando with tales of her late husband and his acting philosophy that had a great influence on the tyro thespian, died in 1953. They had brought into being an acting dynasty, most notable in the successes of their son, Luther, and their daughter, Stella. Stella's grandson David Oppenheim is an actor who runs the influential acting school she founded.
Jacob Adler's legacy was to effect the transformation of the Yiddish Theater into quality theater. His son Luther and daughter Stella, as members of the Group Theatre, an organization with roots firmly planted in the Yiddish theater, helped do the same to Broadway in the 1930s. He also helped influence a new generation of actors who came to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably Paul Muni, who started in the Yiddish theater, which largely died out even before the Holocaust due to assimilation, the decline of Yiddish as a living language among American Jews, and the competition posed by radio and movies as a new form of cheap entertainment.
The nearly 70-year-old Adler, in the last chapter of his memoirs, explained the significance of the Yiddish theater and its enduring legacy: "Only dipped in blood and lit with tears of a living witness can the world understand how, with our blood, with our nerves, with the tears of our sleepless nights, we built the theater that stands today as a testament to our people." - Eugene V. Debs was born on 5 November 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. He was married to Kate Metzel. He died on 20 October 1926 in Elmhurst, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
- Cinematographer
Charles Sutton was born on 17 March 1855 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was an actor and cinematographer, known for The Cub Reporter (1912), Pardners (1917) and Vanity Fair (1915). He was married to Mary Isabella Bailey. He died on 20 July 1935 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.- Arthur Wing Pinero was born on 24 May 1855 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Mid-Channel (1920), Bonds of Love (1919) and The Gay Lord Quex (1917). He was married to Myra Holme. He died on 23 November 1934 in London, England, UK.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Effie Ellsler was born on 17 September 1855 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Daddy Long Legs (1931), The Actress (1928) and The Lady of Scandal (1930). She was married to Frank Weston. She died on 8 October 1942 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Thomas Commerford was born on 1 August 1855 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Ex-Convict (1913), Frauds (1915) and The Hobo's Rest Cure (1912). He died on 17 February 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Elisabeth Christensen was born on 24 November 1855 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was an actress, known for Häxan (1922), Møllerens Datter (1912) and Et pokkers Pigebarn (1912). She died on 29 July 1923 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
- Charlie Siringo was born on 7 February 1855 in Matagorda County, Texas, USA. He died on 18 October 1928 in Altadena, California, USA.
- C.M. Ackerman was born on 17 March 1855 in Germany. He was an actor, known for The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1914), Little Miss Make-Believe (1914) and Gwendolin (1914). He was married to Wilhelmine Anna Boley. He died on 15 December 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
- American novelist Edgar Evertson Saltus was born in New York City in 1855. His family had been in New York City for quite some time--his ancestor, Adm. Kornelis Evertson of the Dutch Navy, had led the expedition that captured New York from the British in 1673.
Saltus got his schooling in New York City and attended Yale University in 1876, but left after a year. He spent several years traveling around Europe. He returned to the US and attended Columbia University, where he obtained a law degree (although he never practiced law). His first published work was a biography of 'Honore de Balzac', "Balzac", in 1884. "The Philosophy of Disenchatment", which came out the next year, was an account of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and his school.
His first novel was "Mr. Incoul's Misadventure" in 1887, and was well received. He turned out several more works over the next few years, both fiction and non-fiction (his 1893 book "Imperial Purple", a study of Roman emperors, was a favorite of US President 'Warren G. Harding'). He is also thought to have written several "potboilers" under other names, including such works as "The Lovers of the World" and "The Great Battles of All Nations".
Married three times--the last to the woman who wrote his biography--he died in 1921 in New York City after a long illness. - Marie Corelli was born on 1 May 1855 in London, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Leaves From Satan's Book (1920), The Sorrows of Satan (1926) and The Treasure of Heaven (1916). She died on 21 April 1924 in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK.
- Charles Beetham was born on 16 December 1855 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Man from Snowy River (1920), A Daughter of Australia (1922) and Tall Timber (1926). He died on 28 July 1937 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
- Jorge Bonsor was born on 30 March 1855 in Lille, France.
- James O. Barrows was born on 29 March 1855 in Copperopolis, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Tomboy (1924), The Signal Tower (1924) and The Goose Woman (1925). He died on 7 December 1925 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Composer, songwriter ("Sleep"), conductor, organist, teacher and publisher. Adam Geibel came to the United States and was educated at the Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind in Philadelphia (where he later would teach piano, violin, harmony and composition over a seventeen-year career). He studied music with David Wood and earned an honorary Music Degree from Temple University. Between 1885 and 1925 he was chief organist for the John Stetson Mission Sunday School, and he founded a publishing company. Joining ASCAP, his chief musical collaborators included Earl Burtnett and Richard Buck, and his other popular-song and sacred compositions include "Kentucky Babe", "Evening Bells", "The Nativity", "The Incarnation", "Light Out of Darkness", "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus", "Some Day He'll Make It Plain", and "Let the Gospel Light Shine Out".- Raymond Blathwayt was born on 25 February 1855 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Great Moment (1921), Wild Honey (1922) and Sacred and Profane Love (1921). He died on 10 December 1935 in Bromley, Kent, England, UK.
- Herbert Kelcey was born on 10 October 1855 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Sphinx (1916) and After the Ball (1914). He was married to Effie Shannon. He died on 10 July 1917 in Bayport, Long Island, New York, USA.
- Elwyn Alfred Barron was born on 6 March 1855 in Lima, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for The House of Silence (1918). He died on 28 September 1929 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
- Composer
- Music Department
Michele Esposito was born on 29 September 1855 in Castellammare di Stabia, Campania, Italy. Michele was a composer, known for The Post-Bag (1938). Michele died on 26 November 1929 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.- Clementine Plessner was born on 7 December 1855 in Vienna, Austrian Empire [now Austria]. She was an actress, known for Taras Bulba (1924), Kaliber fünf Komma zwei (1920) and Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1918). She died on 27 February 1943 in Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia [now Terezín, Czech Republic].
- Paul Deschanel was born on 13 February 1855 in Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium. He was married to Germaine Brice de Ville. He died on 28 April 1922 in Paris, France.
- Eduard von Keyserling was born on 2 May 1855 in Tels-Paddern, Kurland, Russia. He was a writer, known for The Treehouse, Comédie d'été (1989) and Die Galgenbrücke (1989). He died on 28 September 1918 in Munich, Germany.