Résultats Éditeur "Charles River Editors" dans Divertissement et célébrités

Many Americans remember Burns today as the funny comedian who lived (and worked) for an incredibly long time, but Burns' prolific career, which lasted almost the last 75 years of the 20th century, not only demonstrates the enduring influence of vaudeville on radio, television, and cinema but also evidences important ideological developments, particularly related to ethnicity and gender.

Like many pop cultural icons (and rock icons in particular), Freddie Mercury is one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century and yet one of the more enigmatic personalities as well. To be sure, anyone who was alive during the reign of Queen is well aware of who Mercury was and the sound of his music (even those who despise rock music are familiar with the blasting, deliriously over-the-top rhythms of songs like "We Are the Champions").

In the history of television programming, no show was as consistently excellent in the ratings as The Ed Sullivan Show, a variety show that brought on all kinds of acts, from dancers to artists and singers. It was the longest-running show to maintain one time slot, and today it is widely remembered for introducing the nation to the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. When Elvis was on the show in 1956, over 82% of the nation's entire television audience tuned in, a rating that would make even the Super Bowl blush.

In the 1940s, film noir was at its peak, and Hollywood was churning out dark, mysterious, exotic and erotic classics. In 1944, the premiere femme fatale was Barbara Stanwyck, who was the highest paid woman in America that year, thanks to roles in films like Double Indemnity (1944), in which she uses her persuasive powers to convince a man to commit murder. That film would earn Stanwyck the first of her four Academy Award nominations. After a nearly 60-year career in acting, the American Film Institute would recognize her as the 11th greatest female screen legend of the 20th century.

In 1994 the American Film Institute gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Jack Nicholson, who became one of the youngest actors ever to receive the award. Such tributes typically come as a capstone to a star's career, not when the actor is still in his 50s. In fact Nicholson would go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor just a few years after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award as a result of As Good As It Gets (1997), and he would earn another Academy Award nomination for About Schmidt (2002).

Among the most recognizable and iconic vocal artists known to American society from the mid-20th to the 21st century, baritone Nat King Cole is indelible in the nation's consciousness for such hits as "Mona Lisa" and "Ramblin' Rose" as well as for his rendition of Mel Tormé's famous "Christmas Song", with the opening line known to millions of American households: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire."

In the 1940s, there were few actors who personified the all-American look like Burt Lancaster, who set Hollywood ablaze quickly with performances in movies like The Killers, The Flame and the Arrow, and The Crimson Pirate. Indeed, his status as a heartthrob was cemented by 1953's From Here to Eternity, when he and Deborah Kerr shot a romantic scene on a Hawaiian beach that ensured the film's inclusion in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Romantic Films of the 20th century.

As it turned out, however, that was just the first phase in a critically acclaimed career that would span over 40 years. As Lancaster grew older, he wisely veered away from the early kinds of roles he had as a leading man and branched out into more distinguished roles that were also more challenging, earning him brand new levels of acclaim. In time, he would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Actor, including a win for Elmer Gantry (1960) when he was in his late 40s. By the time he was finished, the American Film Institute named him 19th on its list of the 50 best actors of the 20th century.

If Lon Chaney will forever be recognized as The Man with 1,000 Faces, Jackie Gleason holds a legitimate claim to being The Man with 1,000 Personas. Indeed, during his time hosting The Jackie Gleason Show on television, he developed numerous alter egos, including tough guy Rudy the Repairman, the energetic Joe the Bartender, and the alcoholic Rum Dum.

Sprightly swing music spills across the dimly lit club. The grayish curtains of cigarette smoke part every once in a while to reveal a sparkling stage and tables upon tables of patrons, some incurably inebriated and others high on the fast-paced nightlife. Fabulous flappers in shimmery cocktail dresses and stylish feather headbands throw their hands up and stomp their feet to the addictive beat on the dance floor. Smartly dressed men, their hair neatly parted and slicked back, toss fistfuls of dice onto the plush green baize of the craps tables.

Perhaps no actor has been able to retain their popularity into old age as well as Sean Connery. Despite retiring in 2006, Connery remains a venerable figure who continues to receive accolades for his handsome virility and status within the Hollywood elite. onsidering his personal acclaim as an actor, it is perhaps surprising that despite his status, most of the films in which Connery has appeared are not particularly acclaimed. Even the James Bond franchise initially received a largely lukewarm critical reception.

The life of Joan Crawford is one of the most famous Hollywood rags-to-riches tales. While it is common to think of Hollywood as a land offering great opportunity to hardworking actresses, the Horatio Alger myth rarely applies in reality, but it applied almost perfectly to Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford's life and career also shed light on the treatment of women in pop culture and in cinema during the early 20th century. Her career was not only limited to film acting, as she acted in musical revues and was previously an unabashed flapper during the Roaring Twenties.

When the American Film Institute assembled a list of its top 100 actors, one of the top 10 was James Cagney, an actor whose acting and dancing talents spawned a career that spanned over five decades and once compelled Orson Welles to call him "maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera." Ultimately it was portraying tough guys and gangsters in the 1930s that turned Cagney into a massive star, the kinds of roles he was born to play after growing up rough in Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century.

Despite the enormous esteem he has garnered from virtually every corner of the music world, Jerry Garcia has continued to elude both fans and music historians as they attempt to determine his origins and categorize his art and influence on American music. Part of their difficulty lies in the fact that his work as the frontman for the Grateful Dead, "one of the most prolific and iconic guitarists of the twentieth century", tended toward a blending of the traditional with the experimental.

The first 40 years of Van Dyke's career would be impressive enough, but Van Dyke has also appeared in hit films, most notably Mary Poppins, over a span of about 50 years. Van Dyke has noted over the course of a career now spanning eight decades that he's "retired so many times now it's getting to be a habit," but as he once joked, "I've won several Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, so maybe somebody will let me have an Oscar, and then I'll have a full set."

Hollywood has never lacked leading men who could captivate viewers with dramatic performances that depict them as suave romantics or dashing heroes, especially during the Golden Age of Hollywood when stars like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant graced screens. But in 1940, the 4th most popular star in the U.S. was a foreign actor from Australia, and unlike other movie stars, he was more notorious for his pursuits off the screen than on it.

Despite a general dearth of African American names rising to musical prominence during the years of Reconstruction, Black talent existed in good measure for both popular and classical genres. And among the most notable musicians celebrated in the present day is composer Scott Joplin, who in his day earned the moniker “King of Ragtime”.

When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, Jimmy Stewart ranked third, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. There is a certain inevitability to these three actors ranking at the top of the list; after all, they were the dominant faces of Hollywood during the height of the era known as classical Hollywood cinema, a time before the onset of television when the movies still enjoyed relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment.

When people think of musicals, two of the first names that immediately spring to mind are Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, two giants of one of Hollywood's most distinctive genres. Without question, both men played an instrumental role in popularizing and sustaining the musical from the 1930s through the 1950s, the final decades of Hollywood's Golden Age. Although they did collaborate on two occasions, in many ways Gene Kelly's rise to popularity in the 1940s amounted to a changing of the guard.

Virtually all famous actors are regaled by the public, but even still, Fred Astaire occupies a privileged position in American pop culture. The specific films in which Astaire acted may not be especially famous in their own right - most people likely cannot recall the title of Top Hat (1935), his most decorated film - but Astaire's dancing prowess invariably creates a lasting impact on viewers.

In the opening pages of his seminal book-length study of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock's Films (1965), Robin Wood famously asked, "Why Should We Take Hitchcock Seriously?" Wood then proceeded to offer a detailed examination of Hitchcock's career to that point, arguing that the Master of Suspense belonged among the ranks of the preeminent directors in Hollywood, and that his films were among the most important in American culture.