Giulio Marchetti

Giulio Marchetti was an Italian stage, film and television actor and presenter.

Born in Barcelona, Marchetti was the grandson of the operetta actor and comedian Giulio and the son of the theatrical artistic director Adriano.

After completing high school in Bologna, he immediately started his stage career as a vaudeville actor and singer in the style of the American minstrel show performers. He got a large popularity between early 1940s and mid-1950s, thanks to a series of successful revues. He was also active, as a character actor, in a number of films and television series, often working alongside Totò.

Marchetti is also well known in Italy as the presenter for many years of the show Giochi senza frontiere. In the early 1970s he decided to abandon the showbusiness and became the owner of a service station.

Trader Horn

Alfred Aloysius "Trader" Horn born Alfred Aloysius Smith; was an ivory trader in central Africa. He wrote a book, Trader Horn: A Young Man's Astounding Adventures in 19th-Century Equatorial Africa, detailing his journeys into jungles teeming with buffalo, gorillas, man-eating leopards, serpents and "savages". The book also documents his efforts to free slaves, meet the founder of Rhodesia, Cecil Rhodes, and liberate a princess from captivity.

A silent film exists of Horn, as well as recent writings about him online and a biography by Tim Couzens.

Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist.

During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift by hypothesizing in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth. His hypothesis was controversial and not widely accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics. Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and were the first to overwinter on the inland Greenland ice sheet and the first to bore ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier.

Alfred Wegener was born in Berlin on 1 November 1880 as the youngest of five children in a clergyman's family. His father, Richard Wegener, was a theologian and teacher of classical languages at the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. In 1886 his family purchased a former manor house near Rheinsberg, which they used as a vacation home. Today there is an Alfred Wegener Memorial site and tourist information office in a nearby building that was once the local schoolhouse. He was cousin to film pioneer Paul Wegener.

Wegener attended school at the Köllnisches Gymnasium on Wallstrasse in Berlin, graduating as the best in his class. Afterward he studied Physics, meteorology and Astronomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck. From 1902 to 1903 during his studies he was an assistant at the Urania astronomical observatory. He obtained a doctorate in astronomy in 1905 based on a dissertation written under the supervision of Julius Bauschinger at Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University), Berlin. Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines.

In 1905 Wegener became an assistant at the Aeronautisches Observatorium Lindenberg near Beeskow. He worked there with his brother Kurt, two years his senior, who was likewise a scientist with an interest in meteorology and polar research. The two pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. On a balloon ascent undertaken to carry out meteorological investigations and to test a celestial navigation method using a particular type of quadrant “Libellenquadrant”, the Wegener brothers set a new record for a continuous balloon flight, remaining aloft 52.5 hours from April 5–7, 1906.

In that same year 1906, Wegener participated in the first of his four Greenland expeditions, later regarding this experience as marking a decisive turning point in his life. The expedition was led by the Dane Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and charged with studying the last unknown portion of the northeastern coast of Greenland. During the expedition Wegener constructed the first meteorological station in Greenland near Danmarkshavn, where he launched kites and tethered balloons to make meteorological measurements in an Arctic climatic zone. Here Wegener also made his first acquaintance with death in a wilderness of ice when the expedition leader and two of his colleagues died on an exploratory trip undertaken with sled dogs.

After his return in 1908 and until World War I, Wegener was a lecturer in meteorology, applied astronomy and cosmic physics at the University of Marburg. His students and colleagues in Marburg particularly valued his ability to clearly and understandably explain even complex topics and current research findings without sacrificing precision. His lectures formed the basis of what was to become a standard textbook in meteorology, first written In 1909/1910: Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere), in which he incorporated many of the results of the Greenland expedition.

On 6 January 1912 he publicized his first thoughts about continental drift in a lecture at a session of the Geologischen Vereinigung at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt am Main and in three articles in the journal Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen.

After a stopover in Iceland to purchase and test ponies as pack animals, the expedition arrived in Danmarkshavn. Even before the trip to the inland ice began the expedition was almost annihilated by a calving glacier. The Danish expedition leader, Johan Peter Koch, broke his leg when he fell into a glacier crevasse and spent months recovering in a sickbed. Wegener and Koch were the first to winter on the inland ice in northeast Greenland. Inside their hut they drilled to a depth of 25 m with an auger. In summer 1913 the team crossed the inland ice, the four expedition participants covering a distance twice as long as Fridtjof Nansen's southern Greenland crossing in 1888. Only a few kilometers from the western Greenland settlement of Kangersuatsiaq the small team ran out of food while struggling to find their way through difficult glacial breakup terrain. But at the last moment, after the last pony and dog had been eaten, they were picked up at a fjord by the clergyman of Upernavik, who just happened to be visiting a remote congregation at the time.

Later in 1913 after his return Wegener married Else Köppen, the daughter of his former teacher and mentor, the meteorologist Wladimir Köppen. The young pair lived in Marburg, where Wegner resumed his university lectureship.

As an infantry reserve officer Wegener was immediately called up when the First World War began in 1914. On the war front in Belgium he experienced fierce fighting but his term lasted only a few months: after being wounded twice he was declared unfit for active service and assigned to the army weather service. This activity required him to travel constantly between various weather stations in Germany, on the Balkans, on the Western Front and in the Baltic region.

Nevertheless, he was able in 1915 to complete the first version of his major work, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (“The Origin of Continents and Oceans”). His brother Kurt remarked that Alfred Wegener’s motivation was to “reestablish the connection between geophysics on the one hand and geography and geology on the other, which had become completely ruptured because of the specialized development of these branches of science.”

Interest in this small publication was however low, also because of wartime chaos. By the end of the war Wegener had published almost 20 additional meteorological and geophysical papers in which he repeatedly embarked for new scientific frontiers. In 1917 he undertook a scientific investigation of the Treysa meteorite.

Wegener obtained a position as a meteorologist at the German Naval Observatory (Deutsche Seewarte) and moved to Hamburg with his wife and their two daughters. In 1921 he was appointed senior lecturer at the new University of Hamburg. From 1919 to 1923 Wegener did pioneering work on reconstructing the climate of past eras (now known as "paleoclimatology"), closely in collaboration with Milutin Milanković, publishing Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit (“The Climates of the Geological Past”) together with his father-in-law, Wladimir Köppen, in 1924. In 1922 the third, fully revised edition of “The Origin of Continents and Oceans” appeared, and discussion began on his theory of continental drift, first in the German language area and later internationally. Withering criticism was the response of most experts.

In 1924 Wegener was appointed to a professorship in meteorology and geophysics in Graz, which finally provided him with a secure position for himself and his family. He concentrated on physics and the optics of the atmosphere as well as the study of tornados. Scientific assessment of his second Greenland expedition; ice measurements, atmospheric optics, etc. continued to the end of the 1920s.

In November 1926 Wegener presented his continental drift theory at a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in New York City, again earning rejection from everyone but the chairman. Three years later the fourth and final expanded edition of “The Origin of Continents and Oceans” appeared.

In 1929 Wegener embarked on his third trip to Greenland, which laid the groundwork for a later main expedition and included a test of an innovative, propeller-driven snowmobile.

Wegener's last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14 participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made. Wegener felt personally responsible for the expedition's success, as the German government had contributed $120,000. Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there, and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. Owing to a late thaw, the expedition was six weeks behind schedule and, as summer ended, the men at Eismitte sent a message that they had insufficient fuel and so would return on October 20th.

On September 24th, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey, the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F) and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On 19 October the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte. There being only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp. They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis, but they never reached the camp: Wegener died and Villumsen was never seen again. The expedition was completed by his brother, Kurt Wegener.

Wegener died in Clarinetania, Greenland, in November 1930. Villumsen had buried the body with great care, and a pair of skis marked the grave site. After burying Wegener, Villumsen had resumed his journey to West camp, but was never seen again. Six months later, on 12 May 1931, Wegener's body was found halfway between Eismitte and West camp. The team that found him reburied his body in the same spot and marked the grave with a large cross. Wegener had been 50 years of age and a heavy smoker, and it was believed that he had died of heart failure brought on by overexertion.

Lech Walesa

Lech Wałęsa is a retired Polish politician and labour activist. He co-founded and headed Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.

While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist, for which he was persecuted by the Communist authorities, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980 he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He co-founded the Solidarity trade-union movement.

After martial law was imposed in Poland and Solidarity was outlawed, Wałęsa was again arrested. Released from custody, he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government.

In the Polish general election of 1990, Wałęsa successfully ran for the newly re-established office of President of Poland. He presided over Poland's transition from communism to a post-communist state, but his popularity waned and his role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election.

Since the fall of Communism in Poland, there have been allegations that Wałęsa had collaborated with the earlier communist secret police. In 2017 a lengthy investigation by the Institute of National Remembrance concluded that a handwriting study proved the authenticity of documents that Wałęsa had agreed to collaborate with the communist secret police.

Barack Hussein Obama Sr.

Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii. There, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961, and with whom he had a son, Barack II. She divorced him three years later. The elder Obama later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. He saw his son Barack once more, when the boy was about ten.

In late 1964, Obama Sr. married Ruth Beatrice Baker, a Jewish-American woman whom he had met in Massachusetts. They had two sons together before separating in 1971 and divorcing in 1973. Obama first worked for an oil company, before beginning work as an economist with the Kenyan Ministry of Transport. He gained a promotion to senior economic analyst in the Ministry of Finance. He was among a cadre of young Kenyan men who had been educated in the West in a program supported by Tom Mboya. Obama Sr. had conflicts with Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, which adversely affected his career. He was fired and blacklisted in Kenya, finding it nearly impossible to get a job. Obama Sr. was involved in three serious car accidents during his final years; he died as a result of the last one in 1982.

Bourvil

André Bourvil, born André Robert Raimbourg, often known mononymously as Bourvil, was a French actor and singer best known for his roles in comedy films, most notably in his collaboration with Louis de Funès in the films Le Corniaud (1965) and La Grande Vadrouille (1966). For his performance in Le Corniaud, he won a Special Diploma at the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn is a French politician, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a controversial figure in the French Socialist Party due to his involvement in several financial and sexual scandals. He is often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK. Strauss-Kahn was appointed managing director of the IMF on 28 September 2007, with the backing of his country's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and served in that capacity until his resignation on 18 May 2011 in the wake of allegations that he had sexually assaulted a maid. Other allegations followed.

He was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense and Sciences Po, and was Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 1999 as part of Lionel Jospin's "Plural Left" government. He sought the nomination in the Socialist Party presidential primary of 2006, but was defeated by Ségolène Royal in November.

David O. Selznick

David O. Selznick was an American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive. He is best known for producing Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940), both earning him an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Ramón Novarro

Jose Ramón Gil Samaniego, best known as Ramón Novarro, was a Mexican film, stage and television actor who began his career in silent films in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one of the top box office attractions of the 1920s and early 1930s. Novarro was promoted by MGM as a "Latin lover" and became known as a sex symbol after the death of Rudolph Valentino.

William Gibson

William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for The Miracle Worker in 1959, which he later adapted for the film version in 1962.

Hal Roach Jr.

Hal Roach Jr. was primarily a film and television producer and occasional director.

Hal Roach Sr.

Harold Eugene Roach Sr. was an American film and television producer, director, and actor from the 1910s to the 1990s, best known today for producing the Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang film comedy series.

W.F. Harvey

William Fryer Harvey was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the macabre and horror genres. Among his best-known stories are "August Heat" and "The Beast with Five Fingers", described by horror historian Les Daniels as "minor masterpieces."

Ludwig Hohlwein

Ludwig Hohlwein was a German poster artist. He was trained and practiced as an architect until 1906, when he switched to poster design. Hohlwein's adaptations of photographic images was based on a deep and intuitive understanding of graphical principles. His creative use of color and architectural compositions dispels any suggestion that he uses photos as a substitute for creative design.

Dennis Morgan

Dennis Morgan was an American actor-singer. Born as Earl Stanley Morner, he used the acting pseudonym Richard Stanley before adopting the name under which he gained his greatest fame.

Clifford D. Simak

Clifford Donald Simak was an American science fiction writer. He was honored by fans with three Hugo Awards and by colleagues with one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master, and the Horror Writers Association made him one of three inaugural winners of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Sir Arnold Bax

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist.

Bax was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War.

Between 1910 and 1920 Bax wrote a large amount of music, including the symphonic poem Tintagel, his best-known work. During this period he formed a lifelong association with the pianist Harriet Cohen – at first an affair, then a friendship, and always a close professional relationship. In the 1920s he began the series of seven symphonies which form the heart of his orchestral output. In 1942 Bax was appointed Master of the King's Music, but composed little in that capacity. In his last years he found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards, mainly through a growing number of commercial recordings, his music was gradually rediscovered, although little of it is heard with any frequency in the concert hall.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk," "Straight, No Chaser," "Ruby, My Dear," "In Walked Bud," and "Well, You Needn't." Monk is the second most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than a thousand pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.

His compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations.

Monk was renowned for his distinctive style in suits, hats, and sunglasses. He was also noted for an idiosyncratic habit observed at times during performances: While the other musicians in the band continued playing, he would stop, stand up from the keyboard, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano.

Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time magazine, after Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington and before Wynton Marsalis.

Sergei Yesenin

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was a Russian lyric poet. He is one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century.

Billy Martin

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He is best known as the manager of the New York Yankees, a position he held five different times. As Yankees manager, he led the team to consecutive American League pennants in 1976 and 1977; the Yankees were swept in the 1976 World Series by the Cincinnati Reds but triumphed over the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the 1977 World Series. He also had notable managerial tenures with several other AL squads, leading four of them to division championships.

Martin had a distinguished playing career in the 1950s, highlighted by his years with the Yankees during which he performed at a high level in appearances in the World Series. He was also selected for the American League All Star team in 1956. In these years his infamous propensity for fisticuffs became established, both on and off the baseball field.

As a manager, Martin was known for turning losing teams into winners, and for arguing animatedly with umpires, including a widely parodied routine in which he kicked dust on their feet. However, he was criticized for not getting along with veteran players and owners, burning out young pitchers, and for having an addiction to alcohol. During the 1969 through 1988 period as a manager, Martin totaled 1,253 victories with a .553 winning percentage.

Bob Burns

Robin "Bob" Burns was an American musical comedian, who appeared on radio and in movies from 1930 to 1947. Burns played a novelty musical instrument of his own invention, which he called a "bazooka". During World War II, the US Army's handheld anti-tank rocket launcher was nicknamed the "bazooka".

Moe Howard

Moses Harry Horwitz, known professionally as Moe Howard, was an American actor and comedian best known as the de facto leader of the Three Stooges, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television for four decades. That group originally started out as Ted Healy and His Stooges, an act that toured the vaudeville circuit. Moe's distinctive hairstyle came about when he was a boy and cut off his curls with a pair of scissors, producing a ragged shape approximating a bowl cut.

Danny Kaye

David Daniel Kaminsky, better known by his screen name Danny Kaye, was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian, and musician. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.

Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1956).

His films were popular, especially his performances of patter songs and favorites such as "Inchworm" and "The Ugly Duckling". He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honour in 1986 for his years of work with the organization.

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long was an American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention), the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (in 1987, from the Horror Writers Association), and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

Long was born in Manhattan, New York City on April 27, 1901. He grew up in the Harlem area of Manhattan. His father was a prosperous dentist and his mother was May Doty. The family resided at 823 West End Avenue in Manhattan. Long's father was a keen fisher and hunter, and Long accompanied the family on annual summer vacations from the age of six months to 17, usually in the Thousand Islands region on the Canadian shore, about seven miles from the village of Gananoque. When he was three years old, on one of these vacations, he fell into the river at the end of a long pier and contracted pneumonia.

A lifelong resident of New York City, Long was educated in the New York City public school system. As a boy he was fascinated by natural history, and wrote that he dreamed of running "away from home and explore the great rain forests of the Amazon." He developed his interest in the weird by reading the Oz books, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells as well as Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe. Though writing was to be his life's work, he once commented that as "important as writing is, I could have been completely happy if I had a secure position in a field that has always had a tremendous emotion and an imaginative appeal for me—that of natural history."

In his late teens, he was active in the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA) in which he won a prize from The Boy's World (around 1919) and thus discovered amateur journalism. His first published tale was "Dr Whitlock's Price (United Amateur, March 1920). Long's story "The Eye Above the Mantel" (1921), a pastiche of Edgar Allan Poe, in UAPA, caught the eye of H. P. Lovecraft, sparking a friendship and correspondence that would endure until Lovecraft's death in 1937.

Long attended New York University from 1920 to 1921, studying journalism but later transferred to Columbia, leaving without a degree. In 1921, he suffered a severe attack of appendicitis, leading to a ruptured appendix and peritonitis. He spent a month in New York's Roosevelt Hospital, where he came close to dying. Long's brush with death propelled him into a decision that he would leave college to pursue a freelance writing career. In 1923, at the age of 22, he sold his first short story, "The Desert Lich", to Weird Tales magazine. Throughout the next four decades, Long was to be a frequent contributor to pulp magazines, including two of the most famous: Weird Tales (under editor Farnsworth Wright) and Astounding Science Fiction (under editor John W. Campbell). Long was an active freelance writer, also publishing many non-fiction articles.

His first book, the scarce volume A Man from Genoa and Other Poems, was published in 1926 by W. Paul Cook. Two copies are held in the collections of John Hay Library.  Long's closest friends (apart from H. P. Lovecraft) in this period included Samuel Loveman, H. Warner Munn, and James F. Morton. He had several encounters with Hart Crane, who lived one flight above Loveman in Brooklyn Heights.

"The Horror from the Hills", a story serialised in 1931 in Weird Tales, incorporated almost verbatim a dream H. P. Lovecraft related to him (among other correspondents) in a letter. The short novel was published many years later in separate book form by Arkham House in 1963, as The Horror from the Hills. In the late 1930s, Long turned his hand to science fiction, writing for Astounding Science Fiction. He also contributed horror stories to Unknown, later called Unknown Worlds. Long contributed an episode (along with C.L. Moore, Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft) to the round-robin story "The Challenge from Beyond" (1935).

Like The Man from Genoa and Other Poems, his second book is a volume of fantastic verse: The Goblin Tower (1935), published jointly by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert H. Barlow under Barlow's The Dragonfly Press imprint. (A variant edition of this volume was published in 1945 by New Collectors Group - see Bibliography). Published in an edition of only 100 copies, this volume is exceedingly scarce; two copies are held at the collections of John Hay Library. In pulps such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories during the 1940s, Long sometimes wrote using the pseudonym 'Leslie Northern.' What Long characterized as a "minor disability" kept him out of World War II and writing full-time during the early 1940s.

Long reputedly ghost-wrote two, possibly three, of the Ellery Queen Junior novels (see Ellery Queen (house name) (mentioned in correspondence with August Derleth) but unfortunately did not identify the three titles. It has been speculated by researchers that the two are: The Golden Eagle Mystery (1942) and The Green Turtle Mystery (1944). The third one may have been the fugitive The Mystery of the Golden Butterfly, which was apparently never published. (This volume is mentioned as Long's on the rear panel of The Horror from the Hills and on the rear flap of The Rim of the Unknown).

He wrote comic books in the 1940s, including horror stories for Adventures Into the Unknown (ACG).[6] Long contributed several original scripts to this comic's early issues, as well as an adaptation of Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. He authored scripts for Planet Comics, Superman, Congo Bill, DC's Golden Age Green Lantern, and the Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel. He worked in the 1940s as a script-reader for Twentieth Century Fox Long wrote crime and weird menace stories for Ten Gang Mystery and other magazines. Long credited Theodore Sturgeon, whom he met several times in the mid-1940s, as being instrumental in getting one of his middle-period stories, "A Guest in the House", produced on CBS-TV in 1954.

In 1946, Arkham House published Long's first collection of supernatural fiction, The Hounds of Tindalos, which collected 21 of his best tales from the previous twenty years of magazine publication. It featured works which had appeared in such pulps as Weird Tales, Astounding Stories, Super Science Stories, Unknown, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dynamic Science Fiction, Startling Stories, and others. In "The Man from Time", a time-traveller from the future has an encounter with writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. His later science fiction works include the story collection John Carstairs, Space Detective (1949) about a 'botanical detective', and the novels Space Station 1 (1957), Mars is My Destination (1962) and It Was the Day of the Robot (1963).

In the 1950s he was involved with editing five different magazines. He was uncredited associate editor on The Saint Mystery Magazine and Fantastic Universe. He was associate editor on Satellite Science Fiction, 1959; on Short Stories, 1959–60; and on Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine until 1966. Long several times met fellow Weird Tales writer and poet Joseph Payne Brennan, and later provided the foreword for Brennan's The Chronicles of Lucius Leffing (1977). After the decline of the pulps, Long moved into the prolific production of science fiction and gothic romance novels during the 1960s and 1970s. He even wrote a Man from UNCLE story, "The Electronic Frankenstein Affair", which appeared under the pen name Robert Hart Davis in the Man from UNCLE Magazine.

In 1960, he married Lyda Arco, an artists' representative and aficionado of drama. She was a Russian descended from a line of actors in the Yiddish theatre who ran a salon in Chelsea, NY. They stayed together till Long's death in 1994, but had no children. Long described himself as an "agnostic." Referring to Lovecraft, Long wrote that he "always shared HPL's skepticism . . . concerning the entire range of alleged supernatural occurrences and what is commonly defined as 'the occult.'" In 1963 Arkham House published Long's novel The Horror from the Hills, a work partly incorporating Lovecraft's account of a dream Lovecraft had experienced. This work introduced Long's alien entity Chaugnar Faugn into the Cthulhu Mythos cycle.

In 1972 Arkham House published The Rim of the Unknown, their second hardcover collection of Long's work - a volume focussing primarily on his science fiction short stories.  Long wrote nine modern Gothic novels, starting with So Dark a Heritage in 1966 (published under his own name), eight of which were published as by "Lyda Belknap Long", a combination of his wife (Lyda Arco Long)'s first name and his middle name and surname. Seven of these appeared during the 1970s; all were entirely his own work and were workmanlike products intended to support him and his wife rather than to be of high literary quality.

Illumination on Long's own life and work is provided by his extensive introduction to The Early Long (1975), a collection of his best early stories which essentially duplicates the contents of The Hounds of Tindalos but to which Long adds detailed headnotes to each story. Further writing on his own life is found in his Autobiographical Memoir (Necronomicon Press, 1986). Long's book-length memoir of H. P. Lovecraft, Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, was issued by Arkham House in 1975. It was written in haste as a result of Long's reading of L. Sprague de Camp's Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), which Long felt to be biased against Lovecraft. In 1977, Arkham House issued Long's hardcover poetry collection In Mayan Splendor, containing all the poems from A Man from Genoa and Other Poems (1924) and The Goblin Tower (1926). The same year he won the First Fandom Hall of Fame award (1977). In 1978 he won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 4th World Fantasy Convention).

Long's literary output slowed down after 1977, with his gothic The Lemoyne Heritage. He published several scattered stories in the 1980s including the story chapbook "Rehearsal Night" (Pub: Thomas L. Owen,1981) and one episode in the round-robin sequence Ghor Kin-Slayer (Necronomicon Press, 1997). He and his wife lived in extreme poverty during the 1980s and 1990s in an apartment in Chelsea, Manhattan - a period documented in Peter Cannon's memoir Long Memories (1997). In 1987, Long was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Long, though confined to a wheelchair, was a Guest of Honour at the H.P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1990, where he spoke on panels regarding his memories of his great friend and literary mentor.  Long died of pneumonia on January 3, 1994 at the age of 92 at Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in Manhattan, after a seven-decade career as a writer and editor.

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century: music critic Donal Henahan stated that "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim."

His Adagio for Strings (1936) has earned a permanent place in the concert repertory of orchestras. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music twice: for his opera Vanessa (1956–57) and for the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1962). Also widely performed is his Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), a setting for soprano and orchestra of a prose text by James Agee. At the time of his death, nearly all of his compositions had been recorded.

Freddie Roulette

Frederick Martin "Freddie" Roulette is an American electric blues lap steel guitarist and singer. He is best known as an exponent of the lap steel guitar. He is a member of the band Daphne Blue and has collaborated with Earl Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, Henry Kaiser, and Harvey Mandel. He has also released several solo albums.

Xavier Cugat

Xavier Cugat was a Spanish-American bandleader and native of Spain who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music in United States popular music. In New York, he was the leader of the resident orchestra at the Waldorf-Astoria before and after World War II. He was also a cartoonist and a restaurateur. The personal papers of Xavier Cugat are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

Cugat was born as Francisco de Asís Javier Cugat Mingall de Bru y Deulofeu in Girona, Catalonia, Spain. His family immigrated to Cuba when Xavier was five. He was trained as a classical violinist and played with the Orchestra of the Teatro Nacional in Havana. On 6 July 1915, he and his family arrived in New York City as immigrant passengers on board the S.S. Havana. Cugat appeared in recitals with Enrico Caruso, playing violin solos.

Entering the world of show business, he played with a band called The Gigolos during the tango craze. Later, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times as a cartoonist. Cugat's caricatures were later nationally syndicated. His older brother, Francis, was an artist of some note, having painted the famous cover art for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby.

In the late 1920s, as sound began to be used in films, Cugat put together another tango band that had some success in early short musical films. And by the early 1930s, he began appearing with his group in feature films. His first notable appearance occurred in 1942, in the Columbia production You Were Never Lovelier with Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, and Adolphe Menjou. Most of his subsequent movies were made at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, including Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), Holiday in Mexico (1948), A Date with Judy (1948), Luxury Liner (1948), and the Esther Williams musicals Bathing Beauty (1944), This Time for Keeps (1947), On an Island with You (1948), and Neptune's Daughter (1949).

In 1931, Cugat had taken his band to New York for the 1931 opening of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and he eventually replaced Jack Denny as the leader of the hotel's resident band. For 16 years, Cugat helmed the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's orchestra, shuttling between New York and Los Angeles for most of the next 30 years. One of his trademark gestures was to hold a chihuahua while he waved his baton with the other arm.

Cugat owned and operated the Mexican restaurant, Casa Cugat, on La Cienega's "Restaurant Row" for a number of years, located at 848 North La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. The restaurant was frequented by several Hollywood celebrities, and featured two singing guitarists, who would visit each table and play diners' favorite songs upon request. In addition to Mexican cuisine, the restaurant also had an "American menu," which included such dishes as fried shrimp, steaks, seafood and chicken. According to Cugat, "Marlon Brando loves quesadillas, so he usually has two orders. Paul Newman always orders arroz con pollo, chicken and rice. Dinah Shore is mad about chilled gazpacho. Comedian Steve Martin always orders steak picado. George Burns and Milton Berle both love chile verde. Merv Griffin always orders the Cugat special combination plate. Charo is a fan of the filet of sole fundador. James Caan orders tournedos of beef Diablo. When sportscaster Vin Scully comes in you can bet he'll order albondigas soup with meatballs and vegetables, spiced with cilantro." The restaurant had been in operation since the 1940s, and finally closed its doors in 1986.

Xavier Cugat spent his last years in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, living in a suite at Hotel Ritz. Cugat died of heart failure at age 90 in Barcelona and was buried in his native Girona.

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer and instrumentalist. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s. Among the instruments he plays are the sopranino, soprano, C-melody, F mezzo-soprano, E-flat alto, baritone, bass, and contrabass saxophones; the E-flat, B-flat, and contrabass clarinets; and the piano. He used to play flute and alto flute as well, but has since discontinued his use of these instruments.

Braxton studied philosophy at Roosevelt University. He taught at Mills College in the 1980s, and was Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut from the 1990s until his retirement at the end of 2013. He taught music composition and music history, with a particular focus on the avant-garde, as well as leading ensembles in performances of his own compositions. In 1994, he was granted a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant". In 2013, he was named a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master

Sir Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.

Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.

In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere.

Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.

Elgar died on 23 February 1934 at the age of seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St. Wulstan's Roman Catholic Church in Little Malvern.

Groucho Marx

Julius Henry Marx, known professionally as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian, writer, stage, film, radio, and television star. He was known as a master of quick wit and is widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era.

He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers; Harpo Marx and Chico Marx, of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life.

His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty disguises, known as Groucho glasses: a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.

Marx was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with pneumonia on June 22, 1977 and died there nearly two months later at the age of 86 on August 19, 1977.

John Guillermin

John Guillermin was a British film director, writer and producer who was most active in big budget, action adventure films throughout his lengthy career.

His more well-known films include I Was Monty's Double (1958), Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959), Never Let Go (1960), Tarzan Goes to India (1962), Waltz of the Toreadors (1962), The Blue Max (1966), The Bridge at Remagen (1969), The Towering Inferno (1974), King Kong (1976), Death on the Nile (1978), Sheena (1984) and King Kong Lives (1986). From the 1980s he worked on much less prestigious projects, and his final films consisted of lower budgeted theatrical releases and made-for-TV films.

Guillermin was born Yvon Jean Guillermin in London on November 11, 1925. His parents were French expatriates, Joseph and Genevieve Guillermin; his father worked in the perfume industry. Guillermin grew up in England and attended the City of London School and the University of Cambridge. He joined the Royal Air Force at age 19.  After mustering out of the Royal Air Force at the age of 22, Guillermin's directorial career began in France with documentary filmmaking.

In 1948 he moved back to London. With Robert Jordan Hill he set up a small production company, Advent Films. Together they made Bless 'Em All (1948) which Guillermin helped produce. They co-directed High Jinks in Society (1949), a comedy with the cockney character actor Ben Wrigley. The company was backed by Adelphi Pictures for whom Guillermin made four further features: Melody in the Dark (1949), which he scripted for Hill to direct; Torment (1950), known as Paper Gallows in the US; Song of Paris (1952) (a.k.a. Bachelor in Paris) and The Crowded Day (1954) (a.k.a. Shop Soiled).

He went to Hollywood in 1950 to study film-making methods.  Other films he made around this time include two based on scripts by Alec Coppel, The Smart Aleck (1951) and Two on the Tiles (1951). He also directed Four Days (1951), and Miss Robin Hood (1952), the latter starring Margaret Rutherford. He worked on such TV shows as Strange Stories (1953), and Your Favorite Story (1953).
His film Operation Diplomat (1953) was described as "the first example of prime Guillermin... a 70-minute programmer so tautly directed that every image counts, every detail matters, every actor's movement feels perfectly timed-a true gem."

It was followed by Adventure in the Hopfields (1954), a children's film; and a Spanish shot movie - Tormenta (1955), also known as Thunderstorm. There were other TV series, The Adventures of Aggie (15 TV episodes, 1956–57) and Sailor of Fortune (1957-58). According to the BFI, "it was a modest beginning but he soon hit his stride with a string of films that transcended their meagre budgets to reveal a genuine talent."

His first major movie was Town on Trial (1957), a thriller starring John Mills. Maureen Connell had a small role; she would soon marry Guillermin. According to the BFI, "Detractors have too often accused Guillermin of being merely a journeyman, lacking any real style of his own. The defence would do worse than to offer Town on Trial as its Exhibit A, drawing particular attention to its breathtaking PoV shot of the killer stalking a second victim that anticipates the camera gymnastics of Dario Argento."

Following this Guillermin announced he would make Insurrection about the 1916 Easter Rising for Carl Foreman based on a story by Liam O'Flaherty.[4] Instead Guillermin made another movie with Mills, I Was Monty's Double (1958), the story of Operation Copperhead with M. E. Clifton James playing himself.

His reputation also increased when he made The Whole Truth (1958), with Stewart Granger, George Sanders and Donna Reed.  Guillermin was then hired by producer Sy Weintraub to help re-invigorate the Tarzan series. The result was Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959), now regarded as one of the best Tarzans. One writer called it "the most relentless and brutal Tarzan film ever made - it's Guillermin's Heart of Darkness.

It was followed by a heist film with Aldo Ray and Peter O'Toole, The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960) and Never Let Go (1960) with Peter Sellers; Guillermin also wrote the story. Waltz of the Toreadors (1962), based on a Jean Anouilh play, reunited him with Sellers. Tarzan Goes to India (1962) was another popular Tarzan film.

Guns at Batasi (1964) was an adventure-drama set in the last days of British colonialism. It was released by 20th Century Fox whose head of production Darryl F. Zanuck became a fan of Guillermin and signed him for two more films - Rapture (1965) and The Blue Max (1966). It starred George Peppard who said working with Guillermin was "the most exciting, creative experience I've ever had." Zanuck was a mentor to Guillermin. "If he'd said he'd wanted a picture on a lab technician in the Sahara, I'd have done it eagerly," said Guillermin.

Guillermin then received an offer to work in Hollywood, reuniting him with Peppard: P.J. (1968) (formerly known as Criss Cross). It was followed by another with Peppard, House of Cards (1968)

The Bridge at Remagen (1969) was a World War Two film originally shot in Czechoslovakia. Rl Condor (1970) was a rare Western. For MGM he made Skyjacked (1972), a popular thriller with Charlton Heston and Shaft in Africa (1973). He was also meant to make The Palermo Affairfor Walter Seltzer but it was never filmed. He had a big hit with The Towering Inferno (1974) for producer Irwin Allen. Allen got most of the critical kudos which annoyed the director. "I wanted to fight it because dammit I made that picture," said Guillermin. "But I let the studio talk me out of it. They said it would only hurt business. But I was wrong, I should have fought."  He was meant to make Hennessy but was replaced by Don Sharp.


He was meant to direct Midway (1976) but was replaced by Jack Smight. His next job came from Dino De Laurentis who was looking for a director for his remake of King Kong (1976). He had been turned down by Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman, Roman Polanski and Sydney Pollack before going with Guillermin. "To me John Guillermin is a talent guy," said De Laurentis. "He is a strange character, but this don't mean anything to me. All directors are strange characters. Bergman is a strange character, Fellini is a strange character - all directors. He was very open to special effects. And then, he believe in the story; he believe in the love story. And if he believe in it, it works. Because John GuiIIermin believe in this fantastically human love story... Every director at one point jump from one category to another category. No director can be genius from first movie. You must give a chance when people are talented. And I recognize in John some quality. And he did it with KONG. He surprised you, surprised all critics."

"The original 'Kong' was part of my childhood and I loved it," said Guillermin. "I dreamed about it. What I wanted to do was to re-create what I’d felt about it the first time I saw it, but still adapt the story to our own day. I didn't think and still don't that you could simply remake it... We all wanted and tried to get back to that lyrical childhood idea of the beauty and the beast. It was tricky trying to balance all the jokes on the one hand and the danger of bathos on the other, but I wanted it to be obvious that we regarded the material with sincerity."

King Kong starred Jeff Bridges who recalls "so many problems" on the film. "Every week or so John Guillermin would just explode, yelling at everybody. It got to the point where we waited for his blow ups." Writer Lorenzo Semple Jr said there was "a creative tension" between Guillermin and De Laurentiis which "helped us all." Guillermin said in a 1976 interview, "I've been directing all over the bloody world for 27 years, learning my craft, and by now it's dripping from my fingers. I was ready for Kong and it was a lovely opportunity. It could've been better if we'd had more time. Still I'm damned proud. It works. It ain't bad."  Another success was Death on the Nile (1978).

"In Britain they seem to have run out of things to film," he said. "Over here there's an extraordinary freedom to take on an enormous variety of subjects."  "Guillermin was not very nice to me," said Lois Chiles, who had a small role in the film. "On my very first day when I questioned a direction I didn't understand, he stood there swearing at me. It was awful."

In the late 1970s, Guillermin was attached to make The Godfather Part 3 and worked on a script with Dean Reisner and Mario Puzo. He made the Canadian horror film Mr. Patman (1980). After this he was briefly connected to a big screen version of Tai Pan to star Roger Moore.
He was replaced on Sahara (1983) by Andrew McLaglen. There were two attempts to repeat the success of King Kong: Sheena (1984) and King Kong Lives (1986). Sheena starred Tanya Roberts who recalled "John screams until you get it right.. He shouted at me to be 'honest’, and he wouldn’t let up until I was. I’d be upset, but I worked harder until he was satisfied. He did his research, and he got sustained performances out of all of us.” Guillermin's son Michael died in a car accident during the making of Sheena.

Guillermin was still grieving while making King Kong Lives. He occasionally left the set halfway through a day’s shooting to go sailing. After one argument with the production staff, he stayed away for days. Filming was completed by an uncredited 21-year-old documentary film-maker, Charles McCracken.  Guillermin’s last film was The Tracker (1988), a made-for-TV western starring Kris Kristofferson. For TV he was one of the directors on La Revolution Francaise Les Annees Lumiere (1989).

Town on Trial (1957) showed his early craftsmanship, with Guillermin managing to obtain a menacing performance from the usually benign John Mills. Guillermin in time became known more as a general entertainment director than as an auteur director, and in his later career as a director for films with big budgets and spectacular effects. He also became known as a pipe smoking exacting perfectionist, filming and refilming scenes to get exactly what he was looking for. Unusual camera angles and hand held camera shots were among his preferred options.

Memoirs of actors, editors and producers indicate that Guillermin was a difficult man to work with. He is described in Norma Barzman's book where he is mentioned in connection with the shooting of The Blue Max (1966) as having a "cold, stiff-lipped manner." Elmo Williams, producer of The Blue Max, described Guillermin as a "demanding director, indifferent to people getting hurt as long as he got realistic action . . . he was a hard-working, overly critical man whom the crew disliked. However, Guillermin was a master at camera setup."

Producer David L. Wolper wrote that Guillermin was "the most difficult director with whom I'd ever worked." Wolper further described Guillermin as "a real pain in the ass." Guillermin was directing Wolper's The Bridge at Remagen (1969). When some members of the Czech crew were late for the first day of filming in 1968, Guillermin screamed at them. He was told by a crew member if he did this again, the entire crew would walk off the set. Guillermin later told Wolper he could not set foot on the set one day because of the complexity of the filming. Wolper told Guillermin he was therefore sacked. Guillermin apologized and was re-employed immediately.

Ralph E. Winters was employed as editor for King Kong (1976) after a nice conversation with Guillermin. Winters described the director as "A skinny guy, dark, with very sharp features." In the screening room, Winters witnessed a frustrated Guillermin kicking the seat in front until it broke; Winters got an apologetic phone call the next day. Twenty-three years after the film was released, Guillermin called to compliment him on his work on King Kong.

Charlton Heston described Guillermin as an "imaginative and skillful director" with an "irascible streak." Before filming started on Midway (1976), producer Walter Mirisch replaced Guillermin with Jack Smight after Guillermin requested more time and equipment, particularly aeroplanes, than the budget allowed. Guillermin was also replaced as director on Sahara (1983) by Andrew V. McLaglen.

Novelist James Dickey, who worked with him on the unfilmed Alnilam project in 1989, wrote that Guillermin was "one of those megalomaniacal directors who have to be given the gates of Heaven before they consider doing a project." His work was re-appraised in Film Comment.

Why has Guillermin's career gone unrecognized? Easy: bad timing. Guillermin hit his stride at the end of the Fifties, just as a post-studio system style of filmmaking was arising with the French New Wave, Britain's Free Cinema, and so on. For the admirers of these idioms, Guillermin's meticulously executed and unapologetically classical works, such as The Blue Max (66) or The Bridge at Remagen (69), were anathema. The only Guillermin film that was somewhat in synch with the fashion of the day is Never Let Go (60), an excursion into England's underworld that functions as a perfectly constructed parable about the new middle class's fear of falling-a kitchen-sink noir. The problem wasn't so much the disdain of new wave hipsters, as it was one of the director's attitude. Guillermin is something of a melancholic: in his coolly unflinching cinema, tired, traumatized men in desperate situations fight with dour determination for a few shreds of dignity. There's nothing conventionally uplifting about his films; his tales of violence, grimy glory, and defeat conceded with stoicism, don't make for easy viewing experiences. At their finest, Guillermin's films are howls from the soul's darker recesses-theirs is a savage heart.

On 20 July 1956, Guillermin married actress and author Maureen Connell. They had two children, Michelle and Michael-John, the latter of whom died in 1983 in a car accident in Truckee, California. They resided in the Los Angeles area beginning 1968.

On 27 September 2015, Guillermin died in Topanga, California, from a heart attack at the age of 89.

Larry Storch

Lawrence Samuel Storch is an American comedian and actor best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for cartoon shows, such as Mr. Whoopee on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, and his live-action role of the bumbling Corporal Randolph Agarn on F Troop.

Will Jordan

Will Jordan is an American character actor and stand-up comedian best known for his resemblance - and ability to do uncanny impressions of - television host and newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan. Jordan was an early friend and influence on Lenny Bruce.

Sullivan had almost no mannerisms, which made him hard to impersonate. According to Jordan, he invented some funny mannerisms that Sullivan never had, like cracking his knuckles, spinning, and shaking back and forth. Jordan's early appearances mimicking Ed came on The Ed Sullivan Show. In his act, Jordan came up with the catch-phrase, "Welcome to our Toast of the Town Shoooo", which became a stereotypical joke for nearly every Sullivan impersonator after that, usually as the more generic "Really Big Shoooo.”

In virtually all of his film appearances since the 1970s, Jordan has portrayed Sullivan in films that feature characters appearing on Sullivan's famous variety series such as I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which depicted the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964.[3] Sullivan died in 1974. In 1983, Jordan appeared as Sullivan in the elaborately produced 60s-TV-style video for "Tell Her About It", the Billy Joel hit single.

Jordan impersonated Sullivan in the 2003 film Down with Love. Jordan appeared as Sullivan in the Broadway revival of the musical Bye Bye Birdie, which ran from October 15, 2009, through January 24, 2010. Jordan appeared in the original Broadway production in 1960-1961.

Jordan's other impressions include Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx and Jack Benny.

Lou Costello

Louis Francis "Lou", known by the stage name Lou Costello, was an American actor of radio, stage, television and film and burlesque comedian best remembered for the comedy double act of Abbott and Costello, with Bud Abbott. They started in burlesque, before showcasing their routines on radio, on Broadway, and in Hollywood films between 1940 -1956. Costello played a bumbling character opposite Abbott's straight man. He was known for the catchphrases "Heeeeyyy, Abbott!" and "I'm a baaaaad boy!"

Costello was born Louis Francis Cristillo on March 6, 1906, in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Helen Rege and Sebastiano Cristillo. His father was Italian (from Calabria, Italy) and his mother was an American of Italian, French, and Irish ancestry. He attended School 15 in Paterson and was considered a gifted athlete. He excelled in basketball and reportedly was once the New Jersey state free throw champion (his singular basketball prowess can be seen in Here Come the Co-Eds (1945), in which he performs all his own tricky hoop shots without special effects). He also fought as a boxer under the name "Lou King". He took his professional name from actress Helene Costello.

As a young man Costello was a great admirer of silent movie comedian Charlie Chaplin. In 1927 Costello hitchhiked to Hollywood to become an actor, but could only find work as a laborer or extra at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Brothers. His athletic skill brought him occasional work as a stunt man, notably in The Trail of '98 (1928). He can also be spotted sitting ringside in the Laurel and Hardy film The Battle of the Century (1927).

Shortly after completion of The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock—his only starring film appearance without Abbott—Costello suffered a heart attack. He died at Doctors Hospital in Beverly Hills on March 3, 1959, three days before his 53rd birthday.

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Simon Nimoy was an American actor, film director, photographer, author, singer and songwriter. He was best known for his role as Spock of the Star Trek franchise, a character he portrayed in television and film from a pilot episode shot in late 1964 to his final film performance in 2013.

Nimoy began his career in his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. Foreshadowing his fame as a semi-alien, he played Narab, one of three Martian invaders, in the 1952 movie serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.

In December 1964, he made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot "The Cage", and went on to play the character of Spock until the end of the production run in early 1969, followed by eight feature films and guest slots in the various spin-off series. The character has had a significant cultural impact and garnered Nimoy three Emmy Award nominations; TV Guide named Spock one of the 50 greatest TV characters. After the original Star Trek series, Nimoy starred in Mission: Impossible for two seasons, hosted the documentary series In Search of..., narrated Civilization IV, and made several well-received stage appearances. He also had a recurring role in the science fiction series Fringe.

Nimoy's public profile as Spock was so strong that both of his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995), were written from the viewpoint of sharing his existence with the character.

Charles Eaton

Charles Eaton was a senior officer and aviator in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), who later served as a diplomat.

Born in London, he joined the British Army upon the outbreak of World War I and saw action on the Western Front before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. Posted as a bomber pilot to No. 206 Squadron, he was twice captured by German forces, and twice escaped. Eaton left the military in 1920 and worked in India until moving to Australia in 1923. Two years later he joined the RAAF, serving initially as an instructor at No. 1 Flying Training School. Between 1929 and 1931, he was chosen to lead three expeditions to search for lost aircraft in Central Australia, gaining national attention and earning the Air Force Cross for his "zeal and devotion to duty".

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Eaton became the inaugural commanding officer of No. 12 (General Purpose) Squadron at the newly established RAAF Station Darwin in Northern Australia. Promoted group captain the following year, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1942. He took command of No. 79 Wing at Batchelor, Northern Territory, in 1943, and was mentioned in dispatches during operations in the South West Pacific. Retiring from the RAAF in December 1945, Eaton took up diplomatic posts in the Dutch East Indies, heading a United Nations commission as Consul-General during the Indonesian National Revolution. He returned to Australia in 1950, and served in Canberra for a further two years. Popularly known as "Moth" Eaton, he was a farmer in later life, and died in 1979 at the age of 83. 

Bill McAloney

William Simpson "Bill" McAloney was a senior engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and an Australian exchange recipient of the George Cross, the highest civil decoration for heroism in the United Kingdom and formerly in the Commonwealth. Born in Adelaide, he worked as a mechanic before enlisting in the RAAF as an aircraft engine fitter in 1936. In August the following year, he attempted to rescue the pilot of a crashed Hawker Demon aircraft engulfed in flames at an airfield in Hamilton, Victoria. The first on scene, McAloney rushed into the wreckage in an effort to extract the unconscious pilot. The pilot's leg was trapped, however, and while struggling to free it one of the wing tanks burst, knocking McAloney unconscious. McAloney was pulled from the aircraft suffering severe burns and spent the next month in hospital. He was subsequently awarded the Albert Medal for his actions in the rescue attempt.

McAloney sufficiently recovered to return to his work in the RAAF, and during the Second World War was primarily involved in engine repair and engineering staff work in Australia. Commissioned as a flying officer in 1942, he saw service in Dutch New Guinea during late 1944. He received a permanent commission in the RAAF in 1948, and was advanced to squadron leader in 1950. During the Malayan Emergency, he served as technical officer to both No. 90 Wing and No. 1 Squadron, based in Singapore. In 1960, he was made Officer Commanding Engineering Squadron at the Aircraft Research and Development Unit, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his efforts in the post. McAloney retired in 1966 with the honorary rank of group captain. In 1971, the Albert Medal was discontinued and living recipients of the decoration were invited to exchange their medal for the George Cross; McAloney took up the offer and formally became a recipient of the latter. He died in 1995 at the age of 85.

Fou Ts'ong

Fou Ts'ong or Fu Cong is a Chinese pianist.

Born in Shanghai, to a family of intellectuals (his father was the translator Fu Lei), Fou first studied piano with Mario Paci, the Italian founder of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. In 1953, Fou moved to Europe to continue his training at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, at present Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, with prof. Zbigniew Drzewiecki, where he impressed his professors with his grasp of the mazurka rhythm. His mastery was confirmed when he won 3rd prize and the special Mazurka Prize at the 1955 International Chopin Piano Competition.

Fou has been based in London since 1960, whence he embarked on a performing and teaching career that has taken him throughout the world and been acclaimed for his interpretations of Chopin. Hermann Hesse proclaimed him to be the only true performer of the composer's work. Among Fou's friends are the fellow pianists Martha Argerich, Leon Fleisher and Radu Lupu, who, acknowledging his influence upon their musical development, were "obliged to Fou Ts'ong for all his new ideas and for opening new musical horizons for all of us."

He was a member of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition's jury in 1991, 1999 and 2007.