Performing Arts in Credo: Early Film

Genre of dark, cynical crime film. Thematically indebted to the "hard-boiled" school of fiction, and stylistically to German expressionism, French poetic realism, and the constraints imposed by B film-making, film noir first appeared in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.

20th-century form of dramatic musical performance, combining elements of song, dance, and the spoken word, often characterized by lavish staging and large casts.

Film director. Earned Oscars for It Happened One Night (1934), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and You Can’t Take It With You (1938); also made It’s A Wonderful Life (1947).

US film producer, animator, and pioneer of family entertainment, whose career spanned the development of the motion picture medium, and opened Disneyland, his first theme park. Disney created many world-famous cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, made phenomenally successful feature-length animated films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Film director, screenwriter, and producer of a broad spectrum of genres, from gangster films (Scarface, 1932) and Westerns (Red River, 1948) to screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, 1938) and musicals (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953).

English-American film director, writer, and producer. In his suspense thrillers, Hitchcock unsettled audiences both through the use of intense set pieces and the suggestion that normality as usually defined masks humanity's true and much darker nature.

Film director, screenwriter, and actor. His masterpiece was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947), for which he won Academy Awards for best director and best screenplay.

Stage and film director. He won two Academy Awards as best director for Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954).

Notorious for having made the Nazi propaganda movie Triumph of the Will (1935).

US film producer. He founded the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in 1917, which merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1924, although he was not part of the deal.

From The Reader's Companion to American History
Motion picture producer.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The studio system was a key feature of Hollywood moviemaking in the period between about 1920 and 1954.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
American movie studio executives and producers. Sons of poor E European Jewish immigrants, the brothers were Harry Morris (1881-1958), Albert (1884-1967), Samuel Louis (1887-1927), all b. Poland, and Jack Leonard (1892-1978), b. London, Ontario, Canada

Of all the movie magnates he was probably the most involved with his studio's products, taking an active part in creative and editorial processes.

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American actress. She was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and her uninhibited, rather disreputable public persona belied her staid establishment origins.

Swedish actress of the 20th century. Bergman is best known for her performances in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s – most famously Casablanca (1942), in which she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
He created an indelible and enduring screen persona of the lone wolf; cynical but heroic, abrasive, romantic and stubbornly faithful to his own code of ethics.

Film and stage actor, born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. A product of the New York Actors’ Studio, he made his debut in 1943, and appeared in several plays before achieving fame in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).

U.S. film actress. She was a dancer in a Broadway chorus line when she won her first Hollywood contract in the mid 1920s. Appeared in several “working-girl-makes-good-but-doesn't-necessarily-achieve-happiness” roles which were extremely popular with audiences and earned Crawford a place among the most popular actors of the 1930s.

Film actress, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA.

Singer and actress, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Her singing was sweet, smooth, and intimate, and because she looked like everyone’s ideal ‘girl next door’, she was soon making light romantic comedies (39 films in all).

Film and stage actor. His film debut in The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935) led to more than 100 screen appearances, culminating with his Oscar-winning role in On Golden Pond (1981).

A Hollywood legend, Judy Garland achieved the status of superstar before dependence on drugs and alcohol prematurely ended her life. Her portrayal of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1938) made her an international star. Like Marlene Dietrich, whose move from the screen to the concert hall paralleled her own, Garland's art and life were tightly interwoven, but, unlike Dietrich, Garland was never in control of her career.

Audrey Hepburn was internationally famous for her elegance and beauty as well as for her elfin charm; her most memorable roles include the call girl Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1964).

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
US actor. An acclaimed actor of the classical Hollywood era, Hepburn won four Academy Awards and was nominated on 12 separate occasions. Feisty self-assurance was her trademark in both comic and dramatic roles. Hepburn was named the top female screen legend in an American Film Institute poll in 1999.

Carole Lombard was one of the best comedic talents of the 1930s and held the unofficial title of “screwball comedy queen."

Comedy team, all born in New York City, New York, USA. The three most prominent were Chico (b. Leonard) (1886–1961); Harpo (b. Adolph, but known as Arthur) (1888–1964); and Groucho (b. Julius Henry) (1890–1977).

Actor, born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, N England, UK. He became one of the most prolific, distinguished, and reliable of cinema actors.

US film actor. Mitchum's hard-boiled performances in a series of war films, melodramas, films noirs, and Westerns of the 1940s and early 1950s established him firmly in the pantheon of Hollywood's leading male performers.

English character actor.

Stage and film actor, born in Wise, Virginia, USA.

US film actor. His films included Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), for which he won an Academy Award, and It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Mae West began her acting career as a child performer in Vaudeville shows in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, West began to write and star in her own Broadway shows. West raised the spirits of cinemagoers during the Depression of the 1930s with her unique blend of comedy and sexuality.