Pascal Lainé

Pascal Lainé is a French writer born in 1942 in Anet (Eure-et-Loir).

He studied philosophy at l'École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and began his career as a teacher first at the Lycée technique de Saint-Quentin and later at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He then became a professor in 1974 at the Institut universitaire de technologie in Villetaneuse. He currently serves as an administrator at the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (SACD).

Awarded both the Prix Médicis (1971 for l'Irrévolution) and the Goncourt (1974 for La Dentellière), Pascal Lainé has published over twenty novels and has written for television, theater and film.

Lainé discovered Dumas and Hugo as he recovered from childhood illnesses and he aspired to that kind of voluminous writing. But he focused on philosophy and history in school, becoming an avid student of Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. He was also drawn to Marxism (both by conviction and a desire to rile his parents) and he chose Russian as his second foreign language, permitting him to read Chekhov and Dostoyevsky in the original.

With Rimbaud, he discovered the "fireworks" of poetry, and in Mallarmé he discovered the pleasure of deciphering a text and studying its structure. He is also fascinated by Witold Gombrowicz: "I felt with this joker, this aristocratic Rabelais an instant kinship. He taught me that a writer gives up his homeland and is always a foreigner wherever he finds himself."

Julius W. Hobson

Julius W. Hobson was the People's Party Vice Presidential candidate in 1972. Benjamin Spock was the People's Party Presidential candidate. They polled 0.1014% of the popular vote and no electoral votes.

Hobson was also a "key early founder" of the D.C. Statehood Party. In 1971, he ran as a member of the party to be the District's delegate to the House of Representatives but lost to Democrat Walter E. Fauntroy. Hobson was elected in 1974 as one of the at-large members of the Council of the District of Columbia at its creation, and he served in that position until his death in 1977. virus.

Rossano Brazzi

Rossano Brazzi was an Italian actor.

Brazzi was born in Bologna and attended San Marco University, in Florence, Italy, a city in which he lived since age 4. He made his film debut in a 1939 Italian film.

Brazzi had an extensive filmography, much of it in Italian and French films, but the film that propelled him to international fame was Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), a Hollywood blockbuster, followed by the leading male role in David Lean's romance Summertime (1955). Other Brazzi's notable roles include an early Hollywood part in Little Women (1948), as well as visible roles in The Story of Esther Costello (1957), South Pacific (1958), The Barefoot Contessa, The Light in the Piazza (1962), and as the murdered "Roger Beckermann" in The Italian Job. In 1966, he starred in the family feature, The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.

In 1940, Brazzi married baroness Lidia Bertolini (1921-1981), to whom he stayed married until her death. The couple had no children. In 1982, he married the German Ilse Fischer. There were no children from the marriage. Brazzi died in Rome on Christmas Eve 1994 at the age of 78, from a neural

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor.

After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart also turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. He had been acclaimed for his performance in the play, and his friend Leslie Howard saw to it that he reprised his role in the 1936 film version. Despite rave reviews, Bogart was typecast as a gangster in B-movies. His breakthrough came in 1941, with High Sierra (though he still played a criminal) and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca finally raised him to the peak of his profession and at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other triumphs followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Key Largo (1948), opposite his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award (for Best Actor); and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Altogether, he appeared in 75 feature motion pictures.

Donald Crisp

Donald George Crisp was an Academy Award winning English film actor. He was also an early motion picture scriptwriter, producer and director.

Donald Crisp was born George William Crisp in London, England, at the family home in Bow (historically known as Stratford) on July 27, 1882. Some sources say he was born in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, Scotland in 1880, but U.S. Census records indicate the London birthplace and date are correct. He was one of eight children (four boys and four girls) born to James and Elizabeth Crisp. He was educated at the University of Oxford and allegedly at Eton College, though the Eton archivist denies this.

Prior to graduation, Crisp served as a trooper in the 10th Hussars in the Boer War. This experience, among other things, allowed him to cross paths with a young Winston Churchill just at the start of Churchill's long political career. According to family memories, Donald's brother-in-law James Needham provided him with the fare to travel to America in 1906.

Crisp claimed to be Scottish for his entire career. While on the boat coming to America, Crisp's singing talents during a ship's concert caught the attention of opera impresario John C. Fisher, who immediately offered him a job with his company. It was while touring with the company in the United States and Cuba that Crisp first became interested in pursuing a career in the theatre. By 1910, Crisp, now using the name Donald (he retained George as a middle name), was working as a stage manager for the renowned entertainer, composer, playwright, and director George M. Cohan. It was during this time he met and became friends with soon-to-be legendary director D.W. Griffith, himself a former stage actor, who was looking to direct films. When Griffith went to seek his fortune in Hollywood in 1912, Crisp accompanied him.

From 1908 to 1930, Crisp, in addition to directing dozens of films, also appeared in nearly 100 silent films, many in bit or small parts. One notable exception was his casting by Griffith as General Ulysses S. Grant in Griffith's landmark film Birth of a Nation in 1915. Another was his acclaimed role in the 1919 film Broken Blossoms as the brutal and abusive father "Battling Burrows" opposite Lillian Gish.

Crisp worked as an assistant to Griffith for several years and learned much during this time from Griffith, an early master of movie story telling who was influential in advancing a number of early techniques, such as cross cutting in editing his films. This experience fostered a similar passion in Crisp to become a director in his own right. His first directing credit was Little Country Mouse, made in 1914. Owing to the assembly line manner in which films were made in the early years of movie making, many directors (and actors) would find themselves turning out a dozen or more films in a single year. Over the next fifteen years, Crisp directed some 70 films in all, most notably The Navigator (1924) with Buster Keaton and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) with Douglas Fairbanks.

When asked later by an interviewer why he eventually gave up directing and returned full time to acting, Crisp commented that directing had become extremely wearisome because he was so often called upon, if not forced, to do favors for studio chiefs by agreeing to employ their relatives in his films. His final directorial effort was the 1930 film The Runaway Bride starring Mary Astor.

While pursuing a dual career in acting and directing, Crisp managed to serve in the war effort against Germany and her allies during the First World War (1914-1918). Between working for Griffith, other producers, and his many acting roles, Crisp managed to return to England where he served in the army intelligence section. During the Second World War (1939-1945), Crisp again answered the call to duty at a time when his acting career was at its peak. This time, he served in U.S. Army Reserves, where he rose to the rank of colonel.

With the advent of sound in films, Crisp abandoned directing and devoted himself entirely to acting after 1930. He became a much sought after character actor. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he appeared in a wide range of roles alongside some of the era's biggest stars, including Katharine Hepburn in The Little Minister (1934), Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in That Certain Woman (1937), Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1939), Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk (1940), and Gregory Peck in The Valley of Decision (1945).

A versatile supporting actor, Crisp could be equally good in either lovable or sinister roles. During the same period he was playing loving father figures or charming old codgers in classic films like National Velvet and Lassie Come Home, he also turned in an acclaimed performance as Commander Beach, the tormented presumptive grandfather in Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944). Undoubtedly, however, Crisp's most memorable role was as the taciturn but loving father in How Green Was My Valley directed by John Ford. The film received ten Oscar nominations, winning five, including Best Picture with Crisp winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1941.

Crisp eventually became one of the more wealthy members of the film industry. His "banker's sobriety", extensive contacts, and clarity of thought allowed him to make good investments, particularly in the real estate market. He continued to appear in films throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s. During more than half century as an actor in both the early silent and later the sound era, he appeared in as many 400 short reel and feature length productions. His final screen role was as Grandpa Spencer opposite Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara in the 1963 film Spencer's Mountain. This film, adapted from the novel by Earl Hamner was the basis for the popular television series The Waltons which would premier a decade later in 1972.

Crisp was in his eighties by the time he quit acting entirely, continuing to work long after financially necessary simply because he enjoyed it. He was married twice. He was divorced from his first wife in 1919. He later married film screenwriter Jane Murfin, whom he divorced in 1944. Crisp died in 1974, a few months short of his 92nd birthday, due to complications from a series of strokes.

Larry Semon

Larry Semon was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter during the silent film era. During that era, Semon was considered a "Comedy King", but is now mainly remembered for working with both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy) before they started working together.

He is also sometimes noted for directing (as well as appearing in) Wizard of Oz, a 1925 silent film that had a slight influence on the more famous 1939 MGM talkie version.

Born in West Point, Mississippi, Semon was the son of a vaudeville magician, Zera the Great, while his mother worked as his assistant. Along with his older sister, Semon joined his parents' act until his father's death. After completing his education in Savannah, Georgia, Semon moved to New York where he worked for The New York Sun and later, The New York Morning Telegraph, as a cartoonist and graphic artist. While working as a artist, Semon appeared in monologues in vaudeville where he attracted the attention of Vitagraph Studios. In 1915, he was offered a contract with the company.

After signing with Vitagraph, Semon worked behind the scenes as a scenario writer, director, and film producer for actor Hughie Mack's films. He occasionally cast himself in bit parts in the films he worked on before Mack signed on with another studio. When Mack left Vitagraph, Semon began playing the lead roles. He usually played a white-faced goof in derby hat and overalls, who would enter any given setting (a bakery, a restaurant, a construction site, a prison camp, etc.) and cause chaos, with people being covered with debris, and property being destroyed. His short slapstick comedies were made and released quickly and prolifically, making Semon very familiar to moviegoers.

As his fame grew, the films expanded from one to two reels each, and Semon was given a free hand in making them. This became a dangerous policy, because Semon became notorious for being expensive and extravagant: his two-reel comedies could easily cost more than an average five-reel feature film. A former cartoonist, Semon staged similarly cartoony sight gags, using elaborate special effects. No gag was too big for Semon. He loved chase sequences involving airplanes (sometimes using three in a film) exploding barns, falling water towers, auto wrecks and/or explosions, and liberal use of substances in which to douse people. A typical Semon comedy might involve barrels of flour, soot, ink, jam, mud pits, etc.

In The Bell Hop, a man sleeping under the spray of a malfunctioning fountain imagines he's swimming in the ocean, and in his sleep he dives off the bed, through the floor, and into a tremendous vat of paint standing in the lobby below. Oliver Hardy recalled in an interview that Semon, when staging his comedy short The Sawmill in a lumber camp, would not use traditional, painted stage sets. Instead, Semon insisted on building permanent log cabins, complete with modern conveniences. The production budget soared, and his bosses at Vitagraph Studios finally demanded that Semon become his own producer and underwrite his productions personally.

Semon tried to reverse his financial problems by entering the more lucrative field of feature films. He produced and starred in a few features in the mid-twenties, but by 1927 he was back in short subjects, released through Educational Pictures. After filing for bankruptcy in 1928, Semon returned to vaudeville. While traveling on the vaudeville circuit, he suffered a nervous breakdown and went back to Los Angeles.

After returning to Los Angeles, Semon was sent to a sanatorium in Victorville, California where, on October 8, 1928, he died of pneumonia and tuberculosis

Pat O'Malley

James Patrick O'Malley was an English singer and character actor, who appeared in many American films and television programs during the 1940s–1970s, using the stage name J. Pat O'Malley. He also appeared on the Broadway stage in Ten Little Indians (1944) and Dial M for Murder. A New York Times drama critic praised O'Malley's performance in Ten Little Indians, calling him "a rara avis, a comedian who does not gauge the success of his efforts by the number of laughs he induces at each performance".

O'Malley began his entertainment career in 1925 as a recording artist and then as principal singer with Jack Hylton and his Orchestra in the United Kingdom from 1930 to 1933. Known at that time as Pat O'Malley, he recorded over 400 popular songs of the day. O'Malley began a solo recording career in 1935 in parallel with his work with Hylton. At the end of 1935, Hylton and O'Malley went to the U.S. to record with a band composed of American musicians, thus emulating Ray Noble and Al Bowlly. The venture was short-lived but O'Malley remained in the United States.

Now known as J. Pat O'Malley, he had a long and varied acting career including the film Lassie Come Home in 1943 as "Hynes" and later in Walt Disney's Spin and Marty hit television serials as the always-faithful "Perkins" (1955–1957). In 1959–1960, O'Malley starred eight times as Judge Caleb Marsh in the ABC western series Black Saddle starring Peter Breck as a gunslinger-turned-lawyer, with Russell Johnson as a peace officer. In 1960, O'Malley guest starred on the short-lived The Tab Hunter Show sitcom on NBC and on ABC's The Law and Mr. Jones legal drama with James Whitmore and Conlan Carter.

In 1961, he guest starred in ABC's drama Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Maxwell as the owner of a diner in a fictitious small Colorado town. O'Malley appeared in 1962 on CBS's Twilight Zone episode called "The Fugitive". In the 1962–1963 season, he guest starred twice on both Gene Kelly's ABC's Going My Way, about a Roman Catholic priest in New York City, and on the CBS anthology The Lloyd Bridges Show. O'Malley and Spring Byington starred in an episode of Jack Palance's ABC circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth, which aired in the 1963—1964 season.

In the 1964–1965 season, O'Malley appeared as a handyman on the ABC's sitcom Wendy and Me with costars George Burns, Connie Stevens, Ron Harper, and James T. Callahan. He guest starred in 1965 in Christopher Jones's ABC western, The Legend of Jesse James, and in 1966 in Jack Sheldon's CBS's short-lived unconventional sitcom Run, Buddy, Run. O'Malley also appeared occasionally as "Vince" in the 1966 ABC comedy/western series The Rounders, with Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne, and Chill Wills.

In 1969, O'Malley portrayed Carol Brady's (Florence Henderson) father in the premiere episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch. He made several appearances in the television series Maude, as Hermione Baddeley's beau, from 1973-1975. He appeared in a cameo on NBC's Emergency! in its third season.

Walt Disney also engaged O'Malley to provide voices for animated films such as the Cockney coster in the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" sequence in Mary Poppins 1964 and the role of Colonel Hathi and the vulture Buzzie in The Jungle Book in 1967. His voice can also be heard in Alice in Wonderland (1951), in which he performs all character voices in the "Walrus and Carpenter" segment, and the role of the Colonel and Jasper in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction in several roles including the original voice of the Pirate Captain dunking the magistrate into the well.

In 1982, O'Malley made his final television appearance on Taxi.

O'Malley died from cardiovascular disease in San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California, shortly before what would have been his 81st birthday.

Douglass Montgomery

Douglass Montgomery was an American film actor.

He was known in his earlier films as Kent Douglass.

He appeared as a ruggedly handsome fair-haired man, often slightly naive. He started his career in Hollywood, often playing the second male lead. Montgomery moved to Britain in the 1940s and made films there. He returned to the USA and appeared in a number of TV shows.

He died of cancer in Norwalk, Connecticut on 23 July 1966.

Barry Sullivan

Barry Sullivan was an American movie actor who appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Born in New York City, the seventh son of a seventh son, Sullivan fell into acting when in college playing semi-pro football. During the later depression years, Sullivan was told that because of his 6'3" stature and rugged good looks he could "make money" simply standing on a Broadway stage. This began an extremely successful career on Broadway culminating in his 1954 portrayal of Captain Queeg in " The Caine Mutiny Court- Martial."

One of Sullivan's most memorable roles was playing a movie director in The Bad and the Beautiful opposite Kirk Douglas. Sullivan starred in movies with Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, and most of the forties and fifties leading ladies. Sullivan toured the US with Bette Davis in theatrical readings of the poetry of Carl Sandburg and starred opposite her in the 1951 film Payment on Demand.

In 1950, Sullivan appeared in the film A Life of Her Own and replaced Vincent Price in the role of Leslie Charteris' Simon Templar on the NBC Radio show The Saint. Unfortunately, Sullivan only lasted two episodes before the show was cancelled, and then resurrected five weeks later with Vincent Price once again playing the starring role.

In 1960, Sullivan played frontier sheriff Pat Garrett opposite Clu Gulager as outlaw Billy the Kid in the western television series The Tall Man (although the series ran for seventy-five half-hour episodes, the one in which Garrett kills Billy was never filmed). He also cameoed in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) as John Chisum, but his scene was excised from the release print (though later restored to the film). He had a featured role in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man Book II. IN additional to The Tall Man, Sullivan starred in two other television series Harbor Master and The Road West.

Sullivan guest starred in many series, including The Reporter, The Love Boat, Little House on the Prairie, and McMillan and Wife. Sullivan also starred in many Hallmark Hall of Fame specials including a highly acclaimed production of "The Price" opposite George C. Scott. Sullivan was consistently in demand for the entirety of his career. His acting career spanned romantic leading man roles to villains and finally to character roles.

In his later years, Sullivan had roles in the films, Oh God with George Burns and Earthquake, where he shared scenes with Ava Gardner.

Gary Cooper

Frank James “Gary” Cooper was an American film actor and iconic star. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, individualistic, emotionally restrained, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made. His career spanned from 1925 until shortly before his death, and comprised more than one hundred films.

During his lifetime, Cooper received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning twice, for Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Honorary Award in 1961 from the Academy.

Cooper was born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana, one of two sons of a Bedfordshire, England, farmer turned American lawyer and judge, Charles Henry Cooper, and Kent, England-born Alice (née Brazier) Cooper. His mother hoped for their two sons to receive a better education than that available in Montana and arranged for the boys to attend Dunstable Grammar School in Bedfordshire, England between 1910 and 1913. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Mrs. Cooper brought her sons home and enrolled them in a Bozeman, Montana, high school.

When he was 13, Cooper injured his hip in a car accident. He returned to his parents' ranch near Helena to recuperate by horseback riding at the recommendation of his doctor. Cooper studied at Iowa's Grinnell College until the spring of 1924, but did not graduate. He had tried out, unsuccessfully, for the college's drama club. He returned to Helena, managing the ranch and contributing cartoons to the local newspaper. In 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles. Gary, unable to make a living as an editorial cartoonist in Helena, joined them, moving there that same year, reasoning that he "would rather starve where it was warm, than to starve and freeze too."

Failing as a salesman of electric signs and theatrical curtains, as a promoter for a local photographer and as an applicant for newspaper work in Los Angeles, Cooper found work as an actor in 1925. He earned money as an "extra" in the motion picture industry, usually cast as a cowboy. He is known to have had an uncredited role in the 1925 Tom Mix Western, Dick Turpin. The following year, he had screen credit in a two-reeler, Lightnin' Wins, with actress Eileen Sedgewick as his leading lady.

After the release of this short film, he accepted a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. He changed his name to Gary in 1925, following the advice of casting director Nan Collins, who felt it evoked the "rough, tough" nature of her native Gary, Indiana.

"Coop", as he was called by his peers, went on to appear in over 100 films. He became a major star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, in 1929. The lead in the screen adaptation of A Farewell to Arms (1932) and the title role in 1936's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town furthered his box office appeal. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the role of Rhett Butler in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind. When Cooper turned down the role, he was passionately against it. He is quoted as saying, "Gone with the Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his nose, not me". Alfred Hitchcock wanted him to star in Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942). Cooper later admitted he had made a "mistake" in turning down the director. For the former film, Hitchcock cast look-alike Joel McCrea instead.

In 1942, he won his first Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as the title character in Sergeant York. Alvin York refused to authorize a movie about his life unless Gary Cooper portrayed him.

In 1953, Cooper won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon, considered his finest role. Ill with an ulcer, he wasn't present to receive his Academy Award in February 1953. He asked John Wayne to accept it on his behalf, a bit of irony in light of Wayne's stated distaste for the film.

Cooper continued to appear in films almost to the end of his life. Among his later box office hits was his portrayal of a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War in William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion in 1956. His final motion picture was a British film, The Naked Edge (1961), directed by Michael Anderson. Among his final projects was narrating an NBC documentary, The Real West, in which he helped clear up myths about famous Western figures.
In April 1960 Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had spread to his colon. It then spread to his lungs and then, to his bones.

Cooper was too ill to attend the Academy Awards ceremony in April 1961, so his close friend James Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the next day newspapers all over the world ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer". One month later Cooper was dead, six days after his 60th birthday.

Roland Giraud

Roland Giraud, born in Rabat (Morocco) on 14 February 1942, is a French actor.

He begins to take over the theater in 60 years. He entered the troupe Coluche in 1971 and this time it binds the troupe of Splendid.

He obtained his first film role in 1974 with Michel Audiard in Bons baisers ... à lundi . to Monday.

It has a growing reputation with Papy fait de la résistance. Then, three men and a cradle of Coline Serreau in fact one of the most popular of 80 years.

Robert Vaughn

Robert Francis Vaughn is an American Academy Award-nominated actor noted for stage, film and television work. He is perhaps best known as suave spy Napoleon Solo in the popular 1960's TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., along with his villainous performance as Ross Webster in Superman III, and most recently in the hit British drama, Hustle, while continuing to be a popular television actor.

Vaughn was born in New York City to showbiz parents Marcella Frances (née Gaudel), a stage actress, and Gerald Walter Vaughn, a radio actor. He was raised in an Irish Catholic family. His parents separated when he was young, with Vaughn and his mother relocating to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he attended North High School and later enrolled in the University of Minnesota as a journalism major. He quit after a year and moved to Los Angeles, California. He enrolled in Los Angeles City College, then transferred to Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, where he earned his Master's degree in theater. Continuing his higher education even through his successful acting career, Vaughn earned a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Southern California, in 1970, publishing his dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting in 1972.

Vaughn made his television debut on the November 21, 1955 "Black Friday" episode of the American TV series Medic, the first of more than 200 episodic roles by mid-2000. His first movie appearance was as an uncredited extra in The Ten Commandments (1956), playing a golden calf idolater and also visible in a scene in a chariot behind that of Yul Brynner. Vaughn's first credited movie role came the following year in the Western Hell's Crossroads (1957), in which he played the real-life Bob Ford, the killer of outlaw Jesse James.

Vaughn's first notable appearance was in The Young Philadelphians (1959) for which he was nominated for a Supporting Actor Academy Award. Next he appeared as gunman Lee in The Magnificent Seven (1960), a role he essentially reprised 20 years later in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), both films being adaptations of filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese samurai epic, Seven Samurai. Vaughn played a different role, Judge Oren Travis, on the 1998-2000 syndicated TV series The Magnificent Seven. Vaughn is the only surviving member of the title cast of the original 1960 film (although Eli Wallach, who portrayed the villain Calvera, is still living).

In the 1963-1964 season, Vaughn appeared in The Lieutenant as Captain Raymond Rambridge alongside Gary Lockwood, the Marine second lieutenant at Camp Pendleton. His dissatisfaction with that role led him to request a series of his own. Earlier, Vaughn had guest starred on Lockwood's ABC series Follow the Sun.

From 1964 to 1968 he starred as "Napoleon Solo" in the television series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement), with British co-star David McCallum playing his fellow agent Illya Kuryakin. This production spawned a spin-off show, large amounts of merchandising and overseas theatrical movies of re-edited episodes. In the year the series ended Vaughn landed a large role playing an ambitious Californian politician in the film Bullitt starring Steve McQueen.

Vaughn continued to act, in television and in mostly B movies. He starred in two seasons of the Gerry Anderson detective series The Protectors in the early 1970s, and a decade later starred with friend George Peppard in the final season of The A-Team. According to Dirk Benedict, Vaughn was actually added to the cast of that show because of his friendship with Peppard. It was hoped Vaughn would help ease tensions between Mr. T and Peppard.

In 2004, after a string of guest roles on series such as Law & Order, in which he had a recurring role during season eight, Vaughn experienced resurgence. He began co-starring in the British series Hustle, made for the channel BBC One, which was also broadcast in the United States on the cable network AMC. In the series Vaughn plays elder-statesman con artist Albert Stroller, a father figure to a group of younger grifters. In September 2006, he guest-starred in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Vaughn became a spokesman in a set of generic advertisements for various law firms around the U.S. A television commercial features Vaughn urging injured complainants to "...tell the insurance companies you mean business."

Vaughn also appeared as himself narrating and being a character in a radio play broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2007 about making a film in Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the Russian invasion of 1968. Frequent references are made to his playing Napoleon Solo and the character's great spying abilities.

André Jolivet

André Jolivet was a French composer. Known for his devotion to French culture and musical thought, Jolivet's music draws on his interest in acoustics and atonality as well as both ancient and modern influences in music, particularly on instruments used in ancient times. He composed in a wide variety of forms for many different types of ensembles.

Plate of André Jolivet, situated at 59 Rue de Varenne, 75007 ParisBorn in Paris to artistic parents (one a painter, one a pianist), Jolivet was encouraged by them to become a teacher, going to teachers' college and teaching primary school in Paris (taking three years in between to serve in the military). However, he eventually chose to instead follow his own artistic ambitions and take up first cello and then composition. He first studied with Paul Le Flem, who gave him a firm grounding in classical forms of harmony and counterpoint. After hearing his first concert of Arnold Schoenberg he became interested in atonal music, and then on Le Flem's recommendation became the only European student of Edgard Varèse, who passed on his knowledge of musical acoustics, atonal music, sound masses, and orchestration. In 1936 Jolivet founded the group La jeune France along with composers Olivier Messiaen, Daniel-Lesur and Yves Baudrier, who were attempting to re-establish a more human and less abstract form of composition. La jeune France developed from the avant-garde chamber music society La spirale, formed by Jolivet, Messiaen, and Lesur the previous year.

Jolivet's aesthetic ideals underwent many changes throughout his career. His initial desire as an adolescent was to write music for the theatre, which inspired his first compositions, including music for a ballet. Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas and Maurice Ravel were to be his next influences after hearing a concert of their work in 1919; he composed several piano pieces while training to become a teacher before going to study with Le Flem. Schoenberg and Varèse were strongly evident in his first period of maturity as a composer, during which his style drew heavily upon atonality and modernistic ideas. Mana (1933), the beginning of his "magic period", was a work in six parts for piano, with each part named after one of the six objects Varèse left with him before moving to the United States. Jolivet's intent as a composer throughout his career was to "give back to music its original, ancient meaning, when it was the magical, incantatory expression of the religious beliefs of human groups." Mana, even as one of his first mature works, is a reflection of this; Jolivet considered the sculptures as fetish objects. His further writing continues to seek the original meanings of music and its capacity for emotional, ritual, and celebratory expression.

In 1945 he published a paper declaring that "true French music owes nothing to Stravinsky", though both composers drew heavily upon themes of ancient music in their work; Jolivet and La jeune France rejected neoclassicism in favor of a less academic and more spiritual style of composition. Later, during World War II, Jolivet shifted away from atonality and toward a more tonal and lyrical style of composition. After a few years of working in this more simplistic style, during which time he wrote the comic opera Dolorès, ou Le miracle de la femme laide (1942) and the ballet Guignol et Pandore (1943), he arrived at a compromise between this and his earlier more experimental work. The First Piano Sonata, written in 1945, shows elements of both these styles.

Finally realizing his youthful ambition to write for the theatre, Jolivet became the musical director of the Comédie Française in 1945, a post he held until 1959. While there he composed for plays by Molière, Racine, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Claudel, scoring 14 works in total. He also continued to compose for the concert hall, often inspired by his frequent travels around the world, adapting texts and music from Egypt, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into his distinctly French style.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Jolivet wrote several concertos for a variety of instruments including trumpet, piano, flute, harp, bassoon, percussion, cello, and violin. These works, while highly regarded, all demand virtuosic technical skill from the performers. Jolivet is also one of the few composers to write for the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, completing a concerto for it in 1947, 19 years after the instrument's invention. Jolivet founded the Centre Français d'Humanisme Musical at Aix-en-Provence in 1959, and in 1961 went to teach composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He died in Paris, leaving unfinished his opera Le soldat inconnu.

Octave Mannoni

Octave Mannoni was a French psychoanalyst and author. After spending more than twenty years in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he, inspired by Lacan, published several psychoanalytic books and articles. Arguably his most well-known work, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, deals with colonization and the psychology of the colonizer and the colonized. The book was later criticized by writers such as Frantz Fanon.

Philippe Meyer

Philippe Meyer, is a journalist, chronicler, a humorist, a writer, a man of French radio and television. Meyer animated "the next time I'll sing it” on France Inter and L'Esprit public on France Culture until the summer of 2017.

Meyer was born on December 25, 1947 in Germersheim, Germany.  In 1965 Meyer began studying law and sociology in Nanterre. During his studies, he worked as an educator in a juvenile crime prevention club in Paris. In Nanterre, he chaired the strike committee in November 1967, in which he managed to bring together unionized students (led by Yves Stourdzé and Jean-François Godchau) and non-union members. In May 1968, he and Paul Ricœur, emblematic figure of the reform of the University, led a group of activists of Christian origin and members of an action committee which became the movement "We are in march"(1968-1972) and publish a libertarian-inspired radical bulletin. After "events", he became more and more interested in sociology.

In the fall of 1968, thanks to a scholarship from the Franco-Quebec Office for Youth, he spent several months in Quebec studying the answers to the questions raised by delinquency, especially juvenile. He is passionate about the transformations that this country is going through, his song, his cinema, his literature, his poetry. He connected with the founders of the Parti Quebecois like René Lévesque, filmmakers like Denys Arcand, trade unionists like Michel Chartrand or singers like Gilles Vigneault. For 15 years, he returns to Montreal one or more times a year.

As Louis Joinet, a jurist and high magistrate, advisor of several ministries, reported in the program of Jean Lebrun The March of the History of January 10, 2013, Philippe Meyer went to settle some time in Chile to support the Chilean left under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He had been hired to conduct a fisheries study. He also denounces the use of psychiatry by the police in communist states.

In 1977, under the direction of Annie Kriegel and Philippe Ariès, he defended his doctoral dissertation, "L'Enfant et raison d'État", a history and sociology of public policies dealing with irregular childhood (delinquents, mentally ill, etc.). He is also a researcher at the Philippe Paumelle Mental Health Center. In 1980, in disagreement with the reform led by Alice Saunier-Seïté which resulted in the deletion of the status of researchers "out-of-status" (independent), he declined an invitation to enter the CNRS and became a journalist.

 For several years, he animated the Journal with several voices of the magazine Esprit and collaborates successively with L'Express (1980-1986), with Point, with the Event of Thursday (1991-1994) and again with Point (1994- 2002).

On the radio, he has been working since March 1982 for public service stations. He has hosted numerous shows on France Culture, France Inter and France Musique, sometimes simultaneously, on a wide variety of themes (classical music and songs, history of ideas, deciphering information, media and news).

On television, he hosted on M6 a show devoted to classical music from 1986 to 1988 (Come back when you want), then on Arte , Anicroches . For a few months (2000-2001), he became a portraitist of the guest of the show L'Heure de vérité, developing his sense of the formula and his pamphleteering talent. He has also collaborated on documentaries for television, including the famous De Nuremberg Nuremberg by Frederic Rossif, which he wrote and recorded the text.

From 1984 to 2007, he was a lecturer at Sciences Po, where he first taught the sociology of the media and where, from 1997, he led a seminar devoted to Paris, its history and contemporary urban issues. In 2016-2017, he directs a seminar on Paris at the Ecole nationale supérieure des mines in Paris.

Actor in the cinema ( It begins today Bertrand Tavernier , The Case Picpus Jacques Fansten ) and on television ( Maigret television series, episodes A failure of Maigret and Signed Picpus ), Philippe Meyer also interprets his own texts on the stage : Causerie , a monologue on the humor played at the Théâtre Mouffetard in 1997, then at the Théâtre de la Ville in 1999; Paris la Grande (2001), a show of texts and songs dedicated to Paris, written at the request of the Théâtre de la Ville 9 ; The Place du coeur (with a view on the back) , a play on the theme of absence, directed by Jean-Claude Penchenat. For the French Comedy (Studio Theater), he writes and directs in October 2010 Songs of days with and songs of the days without, then Songs defended and, at the Theater ephemeral Our best memories.

He presented his candidacy for the French Academy for the election to chair 40 December 8, 2011 and got 10 votes in the first round, leading, then going to 3 and 5 in the next two rounds, while the election is finally white; he renewed his candidacy for the chair 33 on April 18, 2013 and met 8 votes to 15 to Dominique Bona, who was elected in the first round. He was a candidate for the third time in 2014 at François Jacob's chair, but only gets two votes in the third round, Marc Lambron being elected.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of the state of California.

Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon, his most famous film was The Terminator. He was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" and the "Styrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnold Strong" and "Arnie" during his acting career, and more recently the "Governator" (a portmanteau of Governor and the Terminator, one of his film roles).

As a Republican, he was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger was sworn in on November 17, 2003, to serve the remainder of Davis's term. Schwarzenegger was then re-elected on November 7, 2006, in California's 2006 gubernatorial election, to serve a full term as governor, defeating Democrat Phil Angelides, who was California State Treasurer at the time. Schwarzenegger was sworn in for a second term on January 5, 2007.

Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor was an American actor.

Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Nebraska, he was the son of Ruth Adaline (née Stanhope) and Spangler Andrew Brugh, who was a farmer turned doctor. As a teenager, he was a track star and played the cello in his high school orchestra. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Doane College to study music.

While at Doane, he took cello lessons from Professor E. Gray, a man whom he admired and idolized. After Professor Gray announced he was accepting a new position at Pomona College in Los Angeles, Brugh moved to California and enrolled at Pomona. He joined the campus theater group and was eventually spotted by a MGM talent scout in 1932 after production of Journey's End.

After Brugh signed a seven-year contract with MGM for $35 a week, his name was changed to Robert Taylor. He made his film debut in the 1934 comedy, Handy Andy, opposite Will Rogers (on a loan-out to 20th Century Fox). After appearing in a few small roles, he appeared in one of his first leading roles in Magnificent Obsession, with Irene Dunne. This was followed by Camille, opposite Greta Garbo.

Throughout the late 1930s, Taylor appeared in films of varying genres including the musicals Broadway Melody of 1936 and Broadway Melody of 1938, and the British comedy A Yank at Oxford with Vivien Leigh. In 1940, he reteamed with his A Yank at Oxford co-star Vivien Leigh in Mervyn LeRoy's drama Waterloo Bridge.

In 1941, Taylor began breaking away from his perfect leading man image and began appearing in darker roles. That year he portrayed Billy Bonney (better known as Billy the Kid) in Billy the Kid. The next year, he played the title role in the film noir Johnny Eager opposite Lana Turner. After playing a tough sergeant in Bataan in 1943, Taylor contributed to the war effort by becoming a flying instructor in Naval Air Corps. During this time, he also starred in instructional films and narrated the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady.

In 1950, Taylor landed the role of General Marcus Vinicius in Quo Vadis, opposite Deborah Kerr. The film was a hit, grossing USD$11 million. The following year, he starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the film version of Walter Scott’s classic Ivanhoe, followed by 1953's Knights of the Round Table and The Adventures of Quentin Durward, all filmed in England.

By the mid-1950s, Taylor's career began to wane. He starred in a comedy western in 1955 co-starring Eleanor Parker called Many Rivers To Cross. In 1958, he formed his own production company, Robert Taylor Productions, and the following year, he starred in the ABC hit television series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor (1959-1962). Following the end of the series in 1962, Taylor continued to appear in films and television including A House Is Not a Home and two episodes of Hondo. In 1965, after filming Johnny Tiger in Florida, Taylor took over the role of narrator in the television series Death Valley Days, when Ronald Reagan left to pursue a career in politics. Taylor would remain with the series until 1969 when he became too ill to continue working.

In 1951, Taylor starred in the film Above and Beyond, a biopic of Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets. The two men met and found that they had much in common. Both had considered studying medicine, and were avid skeet-shooters and fliers. Taylor learned to fly in the mid-1930s, and served as a United States Navy flying instructor during World War II. His private aircraft was a Twin Beech called "Missy" (wife Stanwyck's nickname) which he used on hunting and fishing trips. She complained that he spent all his time polishing his guns and aircraft, but when airborne could "do anything a bird could do, except sit on a barbed wire fence".

On June 8, 1969, Taylor died of lung cancer at the age of 57 and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California.

Edgar Faure

Edgar Faure was a French politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist.

Faure was born in Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon. He trained as a lawyer in Paris and became a member of the Bar at 27, the youngest lawyer in France to do so at the time. While living in Paris, he became active in Third Republic politics, and joined the Radical Party.

During the German occupation of World War II, he joined the French Resistance in the Maquis, and in 1942 fled to Charles de Gaulle's headquarters in Algiers, where he was made head of the Provisional Government of the Republic's legislative department. At the end of the war he served as French counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials.

In 1946, he was elected to the French Parliament as a Radical. While the popularity of his party declined to less than 10 per cent of the total vote, none of the other parties was able to gain a clear majority. As such, early on, Faure’s party often played a disproportionately important role in the formation of French governments. In this, he led the cabinet in 1952 and from 1955 to 1956. Faure was a leader of the more conservative wing of the party, opposing the party's left under Pierre Mendès-France.

Faure's views changed during the Fourth Republic, and after being initially opposed to the Fifth Republic (he voted against presidential election by universal suffrage in the 1962 referendum), he eventually became a Gaullist. De Gaulle's party, the Union for the New Republic, sent him on an unofficial mission to the People's Republic of China in 1963. In government he served in successive ministries: Agriculture (1966-1968), National Education (1968-1969, where he was responsible for pushing through reform of the universities), and Social Affairs (1972-1973). He declined to be a candidate at the 1974 presidential election, and supported Valéry Giscard d'Estaing against the Gaullist candidate Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

He had the reputation of a careerist and the nickname of "weathercock". He replied with humour that "it is not the weathercock which turns; it is the wind!".

He was a member of the National Assembly for the départment of Jura from 1946 to 1958, and for the départment of Doubs from 1967 to 1980. He presided over the French National Assembly from 1973 to 1978. He was a Senator from 1959 to 1967 for Jura, and again in 1980 for Doubs. In 1978 he became a Member of the Académie française.

On the regional, departmental and local levels, Edgar Faure was mayor of Port-Lesney (Jura) from 1947 to 1971, and from 1983 to 1988, and mayor of Pontarlier between 1971 and 1977; he served as president of the General Council of the Jura départment from 1949 to 1967, then member of the General Council of the Doubs from 1967 to 1979, president of the council of the Franche-Comté région (1974-1981, 1982-1988).

Jacques Simonet

Jacques Perrin is a French actor and filmmaker. He is occasionally credited as Jacques Simonet. Simonet was his father's name and Perrin his mother's.

His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique de Paris.

He was given his first juvenile film roles by Italian director Valerio Zurlini. He also gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac on the Paris stage.

He played opposite Claudia Cardinale in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia and played the younger brother in Family Diary with Marcello Mastroianni, both under the direction of Zurlini. He was also the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso.

He won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 for the Italian film Almost a Man and the Spanish film The Search.

At 27, he created a studio and filmed the internationally acclaimed Z, which was directed by Costa Gavras and starred Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. Z received an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1969. Perrin was both co-producer and actor in the film.

He collaborated with Costa Gavras again in État de Siège (State of Siege) in 1973 and Section spéciale in 1975. All of these films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with a documentary on the Algerian uprising (La guerre d'Algérie) and a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende (La Spirale).

Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film in 1976: La Victoire en Chantant (Black and White in Color) by legendary director Jean-Jacques Annaud. In 1977, he embarked on Le Désert des Tartares, again starring Trintignant. The cast included such big-name actors as Max von Sydow, but was not very successful and left Perrin with debts (although it did win the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français).

His recent successes have been the animal films Microcosmos and Le Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration), which were both filmed by his studio Galatée Films.

He also played the role of the old Pierre Morhange, narrator of the very internationally successful film The Chorus, that he also produced. The young Pépinot was played by his younger son Maxence.

Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat

Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination on 6 October 1981. He was a senior member of the Free Officers group that overthrew the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he succeeded as President in 1970.

In his eleven years as president he changed Egypt's direction, departing from some of the economic and political principles of Nasserism by reinstituting the multi-party system and launching the Infitah. His leadership in the October War of 1973 and the regaining Sinai made him an Egyptian hero. His visit to Israel and the eventual Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty won him the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award September 11, 1991 posthumously, but was an act enormously unpopular with the Arab world and Islamists, and resulted in Egypt being expelled from the Arab League.

Anwar El Sadat was born on 25 December 1918 in Mit Abu al-Kum, al-Minufiyah, Egypt to a poor family, one of 13 brothers and sisters. His father was Egyptian, and his mother was Sudanese. He spent his early childhood under the care of his grandmother, who told him stories revolving around resistance to the British occupation and drawing on contemporary history. During Sadat’s childhood, he admired and was influence greatly by four individuals. The first of his childhood heroes was Zahran, the alleged hero of Denshway, who resisted the British in a farmer protest. According to the story, a British soldier is killed. Zahran was the first Egyptian hanged in retribution for the soldier's death. Stories like the Ballad of Zahran introduced Sadat to Egyptian nationalism, a value he held throughout his life. The second individual was Kemel Ataturk who was leader of the modern Turkey. Sadat admired his ability to overthrow the colonial influence and his many social reforms . He also idolized Mohanda Gandhi and his belief of nonviolence when facing injustice. The fourth individual who Anwar al Sadat respected was Adolf Hitler. Sadat was opposed to colonial power and Hitler’s Nazi Germany posed a threat to Britain’s power. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Cairo in 1938 and was appointed in the Signal Corps. He entered the army as a second lieutenant and was posted in Sudan (Egypt and Sudan were one country at the time). There, he met Gamal Abdel Nasser, and along with several other junior officers they formed the secret Free Officers Movement committed to freeing Egypt from British domination and royal corruption.

During the Second World War he was imprisoned by the British for his efforts to obtain help from the Axis Powers in expelling the occupying British forces. Along with his fellow Free Officers, Sadat participated in the military coup that launched the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 which overthrew King Farouk I on July 23 of that year. After the revolution, he was assigned to take over the radio networks to announce the news of the revolution to the Egyptian people.

In 1964, after holding many positions in the Egyptian government, he was chosen to be vice president by President Nasser. He served in that capacity until 1966, and again from 1969 to 1970.

During the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat was appointed Minister of State in 1954. In 1959, he assumed the position of Secretary to the National Union. Sadat was the President of the National Assembly (1960-1968) and then vice president and member of the Presidential Council in 1964. He was reappointed as vice president again in December 1969.

After Nasser's death in 1970, Sadat succeeded him as President, but it was widely considered that his presidency would be short-lived. Viewing him as having been little more than a puppet of the former President, Nasser's supporters in government settled on Sadat as someone they could easily manipulate. Nasser's supporters were well satisfied for six months until Sadat instituted The Corrective Revolution and purged Egypt of most of its other leaders and other elements of the Nasser era.

In 1971, Sadat endorsed in a letter the peace proposals of UN negotiator Gunnar Jarring which seemed to lead to a full peace with Israel on the basis of Israel's withdrawal to its pre-war borders. This peace initiative failed as neither the United States nor Israel accepted the terms as discussed then.

Sadat likely perceived that Israel's desire to negotiate was directly correlated to how much of a military threat they perceived from Egypt, which, after the Six-Day War of 1967, was at an all time low. Israel also viewed the most substantial part of the Egyptian threat as the presence of Soviet equipment and personnel (in the thousands at this time). It was for those reasons that Sadat expelled the Soviet military advisers from Egypt and proceeded to whip his army into shape for a renewed confrontation with Israel.During this time, Egypt was suffering greatly from economic problems caused by the Six Days War and the Soviet relationship also declined due to their unreliability and refusal of Sadat’s requests for more military support.

On 6 October 1973, in conjunction with Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Sadat launched the October War, known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack to recapture occupied Sinai. The Egyptian performance in the initial stages of the war (see The Crossing) astonished both Israel and the Arab World as Egyptian forces pressed approximately 15 km into the Sinai Peninsula beyond the Bar Lev Line. This line is popularly thought to have been an impregnable defensive chain. Indeed the Egyptian performance was highly praised by Jewish American military strategist Edward Luttwak in an article that appeared in the Jerusalem Post in the wake of the 2006 Lebanon War:

“ ...hundreds of Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed by brave Egyptian infantrymen with their hand-carried missiles and rockets....In 1973, after crossing the Suez Canal, Egyptian infantrymen by the thousands stood their ground unflinchingly against advancing 50-ton Israeli battle tanks, to attack them successfully with their puny hand-held weapons. They were in the open, flat desert, with none of the cover and protection that Hizbullah had in their fortified bunkers or in Lebanon's rugged terrain.... Later, within the few square miles of the so-called Chinese farm near the Suez Canal, the Israelis lost more soldiers fighting against the Egyptians in a single day and night than the 116 killed in a month of war in Lebanon - including the victims of vehicle accidents and friendly fire....Hizbullah certainly did not run away and did hold its ground, but its mediocrity is revealed by the casualties it inflicted, which were very few." ”

As the war progressed, three divisions of the Israeli army (IDF) led by then General Ariel Sharon had crossed the Suez Canal, encircling the Egyptian Third Army. Prompted by an agreement between the United States and Egypt's Soviet allies, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 338 on 24 October 1973, calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The initial Egyptian and Syrian victories during the war restored popular morale throughout Egypt and the Arab World, and for many years after Sadat were known as the "hero of the Crossing". Israel recognized Egypt as a formidable foe, and Egypt's renewed political significance eventually led to regaining and reopening the Suez Canal through the peace process.

On 19 November 1977, Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem about his views on how to achieve a comprehensive peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which included the full implementation of UN Resolutions 242 and 338. He made the visit after receiving an invitation from Begin and once again sought a permanent peace settlement.

The Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin in Washington, DC, United States, on 26 March 1979, following the Camp David Accords (1978), a series of meetings between Egypt and Israel facilitated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Both Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the treaty. In his acceptance speech, Sadat referred to the long awaited peace desired by both Arabs and Israelis.

“Let us put an end to wars, let us reshape life on the solid basis of equity and truth. And it is this call, wich reflected the will of the Egyptian people, of the great majority of the Arab and Israeli peoples, and indeed of millions of men, women, and children around the world that you are today honoring. And these hundreds of millions will judge to what extend every responsible leader in the Middle East has responded to the hopes of mankind”

The main features of the agreement were the mutual recognition of each country by the other, the cessation of the state of war that had existed since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the complete withdrawal by Israel of its armed forces and civilians from the rest of the Sinai Peninsula which Israel had captured during the 1967 Six-Day War. The agreement also provided for the free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal and recognition of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways. The agreement notably made Egypt the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel.


President Jimmy Carter shaking hands with Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty on the grounds of the White House.The peace agreement between Egypt and Israel has remained in effect since the treaty was signed.

The treaty, which gained wide support among Egyptians, was extremely unpopular in the Arab World and the wider Muslim World. His predecessor Nasser had made Egypt an icon of Arab nationalism, an ideology that appeared to be sidelined by an Egyptian orientation following the 1973 war (see Egypt). By signing the accords, many non-Egyptian Arabs believed Sadat had put Egypt's interests ahead of Arab unity, betraying Nasser's pan-Arabism, and destroyed the vision of a united "Arab front" and elimination of the "Zionist Entity". Sadat's shift towards a strategic relationship with the U.S. was also seen as a betrayal by many. In the United States his peace moves gained him popularity among some Evangelical circles. He was awarded the Prince of Peace Award by Pat Robertson.

In 1979 the Arab League expelled Egypt in the wake of the Egyptian–Israel peace agreement, and the League moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. It was not until 1989 that the League re-admitted Egypt as a member, and returned its headquarters to Cairo. Many believed that only a threat of force would make Israel negotiate over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Camp David accords removed the possibility of Egypt, the major Arab military power, from providing such a threat. As part of the peace deal Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in phases, returning the entire area to Egypt on 25 April 1982.

The last years of Sadat's reign were marked by turmoil and there were several allegations of corruption against him and his family. In January 1977, a series of 'Bread Riots' protested Sadat's economic liberalization and specifically a government decree lifting price controls on basic necessities like bread. Dozens of nightclubs on the famous Pyramids Street were sacked by Islamists. Following the riots the government reversed itself and re-controlled prices.

Islamists were enraged by Sadat's Sinai treaty with Israel, particularly the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad. According to interviews and information gathered by journalist Lawrence Wright, the group was recruiting military officers and accumulating weapons, waiting for the right moment to launch "a complete overthrow of the existing order" in Egypt. Chief strategist of El-Jihad was Aboud el-Zumar, a colonel in the military intelligence whose "plan was to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing - he expected - a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country."

In February 1981, Egyptian authorities were alerted to El-Jihad's plan by the arrest of and operative carrying crucial information. In September, Sadat ordered a highly unpopular roundup of more than 1500 people, including many Jihad members, but also intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes.

The round up missed a Jihad cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli, who succeeded in assassinating Anwar Sadat that October.

According to Tala'at Qasim, ex-head of the Gama'a Islamiyya interviewed in Middle East Report, it was not Islamic Jihad but the Islamic Group that organized the assassination and recruited the assassin (Islambuli). Members of the Group's 'Maglis el-Shura' ('Consultative Council') - headed by the famed 'blind shaykh' - were arrested two weeks before the killing, but they did not disclose the existing plans and Islambuli succeeded in assassinating Sadat.

On 6 October 1981, the month after the crackdown, Sadat was assassinated during the annual victory parade in Cairo.

Arthur Davison Ficke

Arthur Davison Ficke was born in Davenport, Iowa. His father, Charles August Ficke, was a prominent lawyer and his mother a longtime member of the Davenport Public Library school board. They were active in the Unitarian Church which Ficke attended as a young boy. During his childhood there were frequent travels to Europe and the Orient with his family. Ficke attended Davenport High School, and first published his poetry in the high school newspaper which he served as literary editor. In 1900 he entered Harvard where he studied with William James and George Santayana and wrote for a Harvard literary magazine. It was at Harvard that Ficke met Witter Bynner, who would become a lifelong friend, and figure prominently in a literary hoax involving the Imagist poets the two men would engineer.

After graduation from Harvard, Ficke traveled with his family and then undertook two years of legal study at the University of Iowa (1906-1907) where he also taught in the English department. After his graduation he joined his father's law firm and in 1907 married Evelyn B. Blunt and published his first book, From the Isles (1907).

Ficke's travel's were curtailed by the war as he entered Army service in 1917 and served as a captain in France. In 1918 he met the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and they would remain close friends for the rest of his life. Millay was clearly in love with Ficke, but it was poetry and friendship that would sustain them over the years.

Ficke received an Army assignment as a Judge Advocate in Paris where he continued his efforts to collect Japanese prints, an interest which is reflected in his poetry. A second trip to Japan was made in 1920.

After the war, Ficke decided to give up the practice of law. He divorced his wife in 1922, but remarried in December, 1923 to Gladys Brown, a painter and took up residence in New York City. In 1925 Ficke was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was treated at Saranac Lake, New York. He then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he lived until 1928 when he and his wife acquired a home in Hillsdale, New York.

In the 1930s Ficke would undergo further treatment for tuberculosis, but he continued to travel and to write, and work with Millay on her poetry. In 1940 Ficke began a series of lectures on Japanese art in New York, but the lecture series was canceled in 1941 because of the impending war. Ficke learned in 1943 that he had throat cancer; he died in Hudson, New York on November 30, 1945.

Colonel Tom Parker

"Colonel" Tom Parker was an entertainment impresario known best as the manager of Elvis Presley. For many years Parker claimed to have been U.S. born, but it eventually emerged that he was born in Breda, Netherlands, to Dutch parents. His management of Elvis Presley re-wrote the role of the manager and was seen as central to the astonishing success of Presley's career. He displayed a ruthless devotion to his client's interests and piloted Elvis to global superstardom.

Parker's involvement in the music industry began as a music promoter in the late 1940s, working with such country music stars as Minnie Pearl, Hank Snow, and Eddy Arnold. During this time he received the honorary title of "Colonel" in 1948 from Jimmie Davis, the governor of Louisiana, in return for work he did on Davis' election campaign.

Parker's real place of birth was in Breda, Netherlands. Still carrying his baptismal name, Andreas Cornelis (Dries) van Kuijk left his native land at about the age of 20 and joined the United States Army, despite the fact he was not a U.S. citizen. Van Kuijk was stationed in Hawaii, at a base commanded by a Captain Tom Parker. After leaving the service, van Kuijk adopted the name Tom Parker. He became part of the circus world some time later. He also worked as a dogcatcher and a pet cemetery proprietor in Temple Terrace, Florida, in the 1940s.

Parker died of a stroke on January 21, 1997, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of 87.

Michel Drucker

Michel Drucker is a popular French journalist and TV host.

Michel Drucker was born in Vire, Calvados, in Normandy. Jacques Drucker, a doctor, is Michel's younger brother and Jean Drucker a TV top executive, is Michel's older brother. He started a journalistic career in 1965 at the ORTF as sports reporter and commentator. Although he kept doing live coverage of major soccer matches until 1986, he soon turned to hosting variety shows. He is known for his polite and toned-down attitude towards show-business stars, and best-known outside France for the incident between Serge Gainsbourg and megastar Whitney Houston.

He is married to the French actress Dany Saval and is an uncle of Léa Drucker, an actress, and Marie Drucker, a TV journalist on France 3 News.

Michel Drucker has been on screen for so long and so permanently (in various shows and on different networks, both public and private), that he once said that some people consider that he was included in the price of their TV sets.

He is noted for having helped many Quebecois singers get discovered in Europe. His current show is Vivement Dimanche, every Sunday afternoon on France 2 and TV5 Monde.

Laurent Boutonnat

Laurent Pierre Marie Boutonnat is a French composer and film and music video director, best known as the songwriting partner of Mylène Farmer and the director of moody, provocative and literature-inspired music videos.

Laurent Boutonnat directed his first film, Ballade de la Féconductrice, at the age of 17, while the film itself is rated 18. It would later be screened off competition at the Festival de Cannes. The movie contains multiple graphic elements that would characterize Boutonnat's provocative style.

In 1984, having composed a song called "Maman a tort" with Jérôme Dahan for which they needed a female singer, they started auditioning, and Mylène Farmer, a young student in acting, eventually showed up. Boutonnat and Farmer then started an artistic collaboration which goes on to this day. While Farmer had limited songwriting input on her first album, she thereafter took the habit of writing all the lyrics while Boutonnat composes the music and arranges it.

Boutonnat also took up Farmer's visual image. He started directing long, big-budget, literature-inspired music videos that took more the shape of short films. His style was widely recognized, especially thanks to the videos "Libertine" and "Pourvu qu'elles soient douces" in which the action takes place during the eighteenth century. Other videos like those of "Ainsi soit je..." were appreciated for their simplicity and their visual language. Whether they were big productions or simple projects, all of Boutonnat's videos that he created during that time contained many references to literature and art, like Farmer in her lyrics. Boutonnat is sometimes considered to have revolutionized French music videos, including art and cinematic imagery in them and therefore not limiting them to simple commercial tools.

Boutonnat's videos for Farmer contained many nude and sexual provocative scenes which forced the TV stations to ban them from airplay. In the early 90's, at the end of the promotion of Farmer and Boutonnat's hugely successful album L'Autre..., Farmer decided to start working with different music video directors. Boutonnat remained her songwriting partner. The last video he directed for her at that time was "Beyond My Control", banned from daytime TV airplay for violence and sex.

In 1994, Boutonnat directed his first feature film, Giorgino, based on an idea he had had for many years. Starring Farmer, Jeff Dahlgren and Joss Ackland, the film was a major critical and commercial flop at the time, even if more recent reviews of the film are less hostile with the film after it achieved cult status with its DVD release. Personally shaken by the disaster, Boutonnat and Farmer decided to part ways. Farmer exiled herself in the USA where she started writing new lyrics and discovering new music. Shortly afterwards, she reconciled with Boutonnat when she asked him to join her to write the music. The resulting album was a success. The corresponding music videos were not directed by Boutonnat as agreed by both.

After a string of hugely successful albums, Farmer and Boutonnat wrote the first two hugely successful albums of Alizée, the first of them beating sales records. Boutonnat also directed her videos, which were far more commercial and TV-friendly than those he usually directs.

In 2001, Boutonnat directed his first video for Farmer since "Beyond My Control", her hit single "Les Mots" that she recorded with Seal. The video contains many references to Le radeau de la méduse, the famous painting by Géricault.

In 2007, Boutonnat finally directed Jacquou le Croquant, his first feature film since 1994. The film received mixed reviews and met a modest commercial success, but it was nonetheless nominated for the César of the Best Costumes. As for Farmer, she recorded the theme song, "Devant soi", for the end credits.

The songwriting partnership between Farmer and Boutonnat is still going strong, with each of their albums having huge success in French-speaking countries.

In December 2010, Farmer released her eighth album, Bleu Noir, without the collaboration of Boutonnat. The album marks the only time that Farmer and Boutonnat did not work together in Farmer's music career. The couple reunited in 2012 composing together all the songs for the album Monkey Me.

Sir Ralph Freeman

Sir Ralph Freeman was an English structural engineer, responsible for the design of several of the world's most impressive bridges.

Born in London, England, he studied at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and the City and Guilds of London Institute, and in 1901 joined Douglas Fox & Partners, a firm of consulting engineers specialising in the design of steel bridges. He rose to become senior partner and in 1938 the firm changed its name to Freeman Fox & Partners.

Sir Ralph is best remembered for his design work on the Victoria Falls Bridge (1905) and the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932). He also designed the lesser known Birchenough Bridge (1935), which is a smaller replica of the Sydney bridge in the Chipinge area of Zimbabwe. He died on 11 March 1950.

Paul Szep

Paul Michael Szep is a celebrated political cartoonist. He was the chief editorial cartoonist at the Boston Globe from 1967- 2001 and has been syndicated to hundreds of newspapers worldwide. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice for Editorial Cartooning in 1974 and 1977. Szep also won the prestigious international Thomas Nast Prize (1983). The Society of Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) honored him twice with its Distinguished Service Award for Editorial Cartooning (1973 and 1976). He won the National Headliner Award in 1977 and the National Cartoonist Society's Editorial Cartoonist of the year (1978). He has written more than a dozen books.

Szep is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art. He first started cartooning at the Financial Post newspaper in Canada.

Szep was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and his cartoons on Edward King, the governor of Massachusetts, resulted in his being sued for libel. In 1987, a court dismissed King's suit. His work is currently syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Joseph Papp

Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He was a high school student of Harlem Renaissance playwright Eulalie Spence.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954 with the aim of making Shakespeare's works accessible to the public. In 1957 he was granted the use of Central Park for free productions of Shakespeare's plays.

By age 41, after the establishment of Central Park's Delacorte Theater, Papp looked for an all-year theater he could make his own. After looking at other locations, he fell in love with the location and the character of Lafayette Street’s Astor Library. After massive renovations, Papp moved his staff to the newly named Public Theater, hoping to attract a newer, less conventional audience to new and innovative playwrights.

Papp also obtained the use of the Astor Library Building in 1967; this has since become known as the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

At the Public Theater, Papp's focus moved away from the Shakespearean classics and toward new work. Notable Public productions included Charles Gordone’s No Place to Be Somebody (the first off-Broadway show, and the first play by an African American, to win the Pulitzer Prize) and the plays of David Rabe, Tom Babe, and Jason Miller. Papp called his productions of Rabe's plays "the most important thing I did at the Public."

As festival designer Ming Cho Lee put it, “With the new playwrights, the whole direction of the theater changed. Joe changed direction and none of us realized for a while that he had changed direction. The Public Theater became more important than the Delacorte. The new playwrights became more interesting to Joe than Shakespeare."

Among the myriad plays and musical Papp produced, Papp is perhaps best known for his productions of Hair, The Pirates of Penzance, and A Chorus Line.

Along with the Public Theater, Papp was best known for the New York Shakespeare Festival, which he founded, but he was also a Gilbert and Sullivan lover. In 1980, to commemorate the centenary of The Pirates of Penzance, Papp mounted a souped-up, modernized version of the opera in Central Park. The show was a sensation, and Papp transferred it to the Broadway stage, where it ran for over 800 performances. It won Tony Awards for Best Revival, Best Director, Wilford Leach, and Best Actor -- Kevin Kline -- and Linda Ronstadt was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical. The Papp production was much criticized in Gilbert & Sullivan circles. To make the opera more suitable for a Broadway audience, Papp's creative team wrote new orchestrations for a synthesizer-based orchestra. Musical tags were expanded or contracted, verses were transposed. The "fight scene" between the pirates and police, to which Sullivan had allotted only ten chords, was entirely rewritten. The Act II finale was restored to its first-night state. Liberties were taken with the dialogue too, though certainly not to the same degree as the music.

In addition to founding the New York Shakespeare Festival, Papp played a key role in the fostering of theatre throughout New York, in particular, the development of numerous Off Broadway theatres throughout his years as head of the NYSF. Among the many theatres that Papp supported (often with funds from successful Broadway transfers, such as A Chorus Line) were Theatre for a New Audience, which presented several productions at the NYSF, and the Riverside Shakespeare Company, for whom Papp took a special interest, beginning with the sponsorship of the New York premiere of Brecht's Edward II in 1982, continuing with the financial underwriting of Riverside's New York Parks Tours of Free Shakespeare, including The Comedy of Errors in (1982), Merry Wives of Windsor in 1983, Romeo and Juliet in 1984, and Romeo and Juliet in 1985. In 1983, Papp dedicated newly renovated theatre of The Shakespeare Center with Helen Hayes. A complete listing of Festival productions is available in Joe Papp: An American Life by Helen Epstein.

Joseph Papp died of prostate cancer, aged 70. His biography Joe Papp: An American Life was written by journalist Helen Epstein and published in 1994.