Rancher Taw Jackson returns to his hometown to settle a score, after being released early from prison for good behavior. Three years earlier, he was framed by corrupt businessman Frank Pierce and wrongfully imprisoned, while Pierce appropriated his ranch and lands, as well as the recently discovered gold on the property.
Jackson decides to steal Pierce’s largest gold shipment, worth $500,000 (approximately $12M-$13M today). Jackson learns the date of the shipment from Wes Fletcher, an elderly wagon driver employed by Pierce.
He then hires a marksman and safecracker known only as “Lomax” to assist him, even though Lomax had helped Pierce send Jackson to prison. The safe of gold dust is being transported in a “war wagon”, a heavily armored stagecoach surrounded by armed guards on horseback.
Lomax and Jackson rescue Levi Walking Bear, a Kiowa translator, from a gang of Mexican banditos. Lomax is then sent to pick up Billy Hyatt, supposedly an expert on explosives, and is dismayed to find he is a teenage drunkard. Jackson, Fletcher, Hyatt, Lomax and Levi meet up to discuss their next move, and Fletcher instantly objects to Hyatt’s presence around his teenage “wife” Kate.
Lomax rides into town and is confronted by Pierce, who offers him $12,000 for Jackson’s head. Lomax spends the night with Lola, an old acquaintance, at one point having to stop Hyatt, who has become drunk again, from spilling the beans about the robbery. Jackson and Levi return from negotiations with the Kiowas, during which the warriors agreed to help, since Pierce is starving the tribe out. Jackson sends Hyatt to wait at Fletcher’s farm. Kate, in Fletcher’s absence, reveals to Hyatt that she is not married and was actually sold by her abusive parents. Hyatt starts trying to defend Kate from Fletcher’s harsh behaviors, and Jackson has to stop Fletcher from killing Hyatt.
Levi, Jackson, and Lomax cause a disturbance in town to confuse Pierce’s men. The conspirators later sneak onto Jackson’s old ranch to steal some nitroglycerin from a safe in the mining shack. Jackson keeps Pierce distracted by pretending to collect some of his old things, while Lomax and Hyatt put the nitro in bottles.
The next day, Hyatt rigs a bridge to explode with the bottles of nitro, Levi blocks the normal route with a felled tree, and Lomax and Jackson set up a booby trap in a narrow gorge. Pierce reveals he has added a turret with a Gatling Gun to the war wagon, and he and his guards set out with the shipment. The Kiowa warriors create a dust screen and separate the guard riders from the War Wagon. The bridge explodes behind the wagon as it crosses, stranding the guards on the other side of the cliffs. Chief Wild Horse and some more Kiowa warriors attack the wagon and try to take all the gold for themselves, but many are killed by the Gatling Gun.
When the wagon is diverted into the gorge by the fallen tree, Jackson and Lomax spring their trap, killing the drivers. Pierce shoots the last two of his men when they try to desert him and the wagon, but one of them shoots back as he dies, killing Pierce. The wagon crashes into a gulch, and the conspirators quickly load the gold dust into some flour barrels on Fletcher’s cart. However, the Kiowa warriors kill Fletcher and attempt to take all the gold (and the flour) for themselves. Hyatt uses the last bottle of nitro to kill the chief and scare the warriors off, but the cart horses spook and run off. The flour barrels are lost and broken, with the Kiowa women, unaware of all that transpired, gathering up the flour to feed their families.
Jackson finds $100,000 worth of gold dust in a hidden compartment in the cart, where Fletcher had tried to steal it. Lomax angrily takes Jackson’s horse as payment, and Jackson gives a small amount of dust to Hyatt, who rides off with Kate while Levi returns to the Kiowas. They plan to meet in six months to divide the rest, when the robbery will be old news.
L’Opération Christmas Drop est une opération humanitaire réalisée chaque année à Noël depuis 1952 par la United States Air Force en Micronésie et supportée par les communautés locales de Guam. Devenue une tradition, c’est la plus ancienne mission du Département de la Défense des États-Unis encore en activité, et le plus long transport aérien humanitaire au monde. L’opération est menée au départ des bases aériennes d’Andersen et de Yokota.
Ce téléfilm classé “film de Noël” se passe dans les tropiques en pleine chaleur
Ce qui nous change des films de Noël traditionnel avec de la “fausse neige” ( en carton ou en fibre ou autre produits synthétiques) installée sur des couloirs de studio aux rues “propres” avec maisons propres et des gens “souriants”. La plupart du temps dans des petits villages que nous ne trouvons que dans ces films.
Le scénario tourne souvent autour de salariés, ou personnes déprimées vivant dans les grandes villes / métropoles qui sont “obligées” de passer Noël dans ces bleds . Puis soudain, l’amour débarque et ces personnes n’ont plus envie de rentrer en métropole.
Dans ce cas, c’est la même chose. Sauf qu’ ERICA ( la fonctionnaire chargée d’établir un rapport , donc de quitter Washington DC pour GUAM ) quitte la métrople pour la plage et pour la chaleur.
Au moins, dans ce cas, la mer n’est pas fausse et nous n’avons pas de fausse neige.
Ce film est actuellement sur NETFLIX. Notre équipe a pu le visionner. Il vaut le détour.
Ce n’est pas un chef d’oeuvre, loin de là mais : Son atout, sa valeur est ailleurs : Parce que :
Ce film relate une histoire VRAIE ( du moins en ce qui concerne les opérations humanitaires dont parle le film) . Ce film reprend l’OPERATION CHRSITMAS DROP. (qui dure depuis des décennies) C’est l’intérêt de ce film de Noël
Il sera apprécié par les lecteurs, cinéphiles qui privilégient la langue du coeur à la langue de la raison voire la langue du rationnel
Charles Spencer Chaplin, dit Charlie Chaplin , né le 16 avril 1889 probablement à Londres (Royaume-Uni) et mort le 25 décembre 1977 à Corsier-sur-Vevey (Suisse), est un acteur, réalisateur, scénariste, producteur et compositeur britannique.
Devenu une idole du cinéma muet à partir du milieu des années 1910, et plus particulièrement du burlesque, grâce à son personnage de Charlot (désigné simplement comme « the tramp » — le vagabond — dans les versions originales), il acquiert ensuite une notoriété et une reconnaissance plus large pour ses performances d’acteur comme pour ses réalisations. Durant une carrière longue de 65 ans, il joue dans plus de 80 films. Sa vie publique et privée, ainsi que ses prises de position, font par ailleurs l’objet d’adulations comme de controverses.
Chaplin grandit dans la misère entre un père absent et une mère en grandes difficultés financières, tous deux artistes de music-hall, qui se séparent deux ans après sa naissance. Plus tard, sa mère est internée à l’hôpital psychiatrique alors que son fils a quatorze ans. À l’âge de cinq ans, il fait sa première apparition sur scène. Il commence très tôt à se produire dans des music-halls et devient rapidement acteur. À 19 ans, il est remarqué par l’imprésario Fred Karno et réalise une tournée aux États-Unis. Il joue au cinéma pour la première fois en 1914 dans le film Pour gagner sa vie et travaille avec les sociétés de production Essanay, Mutual et First National. En 1918, il est l’une des personnalités les plus connues au monde.
En 1919, Chaplin cofonde la société United Artists et obtient ainsi le contrôle total sur ses œuvres. Parmi ses premiers longs-métrages figurent Charlot soldat (1918), Le Kid (1921), L’Opinion publique (1923), La Ruée vers l’or (1925) et Le Cirque (1928). Il refuse de passer au cinéma sonore et continue de produire des films muets dans les années 1930, comme Les Lumières de la ville (1931) et Les Temps modernes (1936). Ses œuvres deviennent ensuite plus politiques, avec notamment Le Dictateur (1940), dans lequel il se moque d’Hitler et de Mussolini. Sa popularité décline dans les années 1940 en raison de controverses au sujet de ses liaisons avec des femmes bien plus jeunes que lui et d’un procès en reconnaissance de paternité. Chaplin est également accusé de sympathies communistes et les enquêtes du FBI et du Congrès lui font perdre son visa américain. Il choisit de s’établir en Suisse en 1952. Il abandonne son personnage de Charlot dans ses derniers films, dont Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Les Feux de la rampe (1952), Un roi à New York (1957) et La Comtesse de Hong-Kong (1967).
Chaplin écrit, réalise et produit la plupart de ses films, en plus d’y jouer et d’en composer la musique. Il est perfectionniste et son indépendance financière lui permet de consacrer plusieurs années au développement de chacune de ses œuvres. Bien qu’étant des comédies de type slapstick, ses films intègrent des éléments de pathos et sont marqués par des thèmes sociaux et politiques ainsi que par des éléments autobiographiques. En 1972, l’Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences lui a remis un Oscar d’honneur pour sa contribution inestimable à l’industrie cinématographique et plusieurs de ses œuvres sont aujourd’hui considérées comme faisant partie des plus grands films de tous les temps.
Même si Chaplin a encore des projets de film, sa santé devient très fragile dans le milieu des années 1970. Plusieurs affectent son élocution et il doit utiliser un fauteuil roulant.
Parmi ses dernières réalisations figurent la création d’une autobiographie en images, My Life in Pictures (1974) et la resonorisation de L’Opinion publique en 1976 Il apparaît également dans un documentaire sur sa vie, The Gentleman Tramp (1975), réalisé par Richard Patterson. En 1975, la reine Élisabeth II le fait chevalier.
En octobre 1977, la santé de Chaplin s’est détériorée au point qu’il demande une attention de tous les instants Il meurt d’un AVC dans son sommeil le matin du 25 décembre 1977, à l’âge de 88 ans. Selon ses dernières volontés, une petite cérémonie funéraire anglicane est organisée le 27 décembre et il est inhumé dans le cimetière de Corsier-sur-Vevey Parmi les hommages du monde du cinéma, le réalisateur René Clair écrit : « il était un monument du cinéma » ; l’acteur Bob Hope a quant à lui déclaré : « nous avons eu de la chance de vivre à son époque ».
Le 1er mars 1978, le cercueil de Chaplin est exhumé et volé par deux mécaniciens automobiles, un Polonais, Roman Wardas, et un Bulgare, Gantcho Ganev. Leur but est d’extorquer une rançon de cent mille francs suisses à Oona Chaplin afin de pouvoir ouvrir plus tard un garage automobile. Ils sont arrêtés lors d’une vaste opération de police le 17 mai 1978 et le cercueil est retrouvé enterré dans un champ de maïs près du village voisin de Noville. Il est réenterré dans le cimetière de Corsier-sur-Vevey et un caveau en béton armé est ajouté pour empêcher tout nouvel incident.
Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty; April 24, 1934) is an American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author.
An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career.
Shirley Mac Laine
A six-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), and Best Actress nominations for Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), and The Turning Point (1977), before winning Best Actress for…
Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty; April 24, 1934) is an American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author.
An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career.
Shirley Mac Laine
A six-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), and Best Actress nominations for Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), and The Turning Point (1977), before winning Best Actress for Terms of Endearment (1983). She twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, for Ask Any Girl (1959), and The Apartment (1960).
MacLaine won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Special for the 1976 TV special, Gypsy In My Soul. She has also won five competitive Golden Globe Awards and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 1998 ceremony.
Named after Shirley Temple (who was 6 years old at the time), Shirley MacLean Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. MacLaine’s younger brother is the actor, writer and director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor.
Their parents raised them as Baptists. Her uncle (her mother’s brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.
Shirley Mac Laine2
While MacLaine was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, eventually taking a position at Arlington’s Thomas Jefferson Junior High School. MacLaine played baseball in an all-boys team, holding the record for most home runs which earned her the nickname “Powerhouse”. During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.
As a toddler she had weak ankles and would fall over with the slightest misstep, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet at the age of three.
This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys’ roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class.
Eventually she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but then tightened the ribbons on her toe shoes and proceeded to dance the role all the way through before calling for an ambulance.
Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique.
She explained that she didn’t have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite “beautifully constructed feet” of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle.
Also slowly realizing ballet’s propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of dancing, acting and musical theater.
MacLaine made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. This was quickly followed by her role in the Martin and Lewis film Artists and Models (also 1955).
Soon afterwards, she had a role in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). This was followed by Hot Spell and a leading role in Some Came Running (both 1958); for the latter film she gained her first Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination.
Her second Oscar nomination came two years later for The Apartment (1960), starring with Jack Lemmon.
The film won five Oscars, including Best Director for Billy Wilder. She later said, “I thought I would win for The Apartment, but then Elizabeth Taylor had a tracheotomy.” She starred in The Children’s Hour (1961) also starring Audrey Hepburn and James Garner, based on the play by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler.
She was again nominated, this time for Irma la Douce (1963), which reunited her with Wilder and Lemmon. Don Siegel, her director on Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) said of her: “It’s hard to feel any great warmth to her. She’s too unfeminine and has too much balls. She’s very, very hard.”
At the peak of her success, she replaced Marilyn Monroe in Irma la Douce and What a Way to Go! (1964). Other films from this period include Gambit (1966), with Michael Caine, and the film version of the musical Sweet Charity (1968), based on the script for Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria released a decade earlier.
MacLaine’s documentary film The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), co-directed with Claudia Weill, concentrates on the experiences of women in China. It was nominated for the year’s Documentary Feature Oscar.
Co-starring with Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point (1977), MacLaine portrayed a retired ballerina much like herself; she was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 1978, she was awarded the Women in FilmCrystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.
In Being There (1979), she appeared with Peter Sellers. In a short-lived MacLaine television sitcom, Shirley’s World (1971–72), co-produced by Sheldon Leonard and ITC and shot in the United Kingdom, she was cast as a photojournalist.
MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book Out on a Limb;
The Salem Witch Trials;
These Old Broads written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins;
Coco, a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel.
She appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern) and Harold Levinson (played by Paul Giamatti) in 2012–2013.
In February 2016, it was announced that MacLaine will star in the live-action family film A Little Mermaid, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, to be produced by MVP Studios.[16]
MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi.
In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I’m Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband.
MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, with the exceptions of Jack Lemmon (The Apartment) and Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment).
MacLaine has also gotten into feuds with such notable co-stars as Anthony Hopkins (A Change of Seasons), who said that “she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with,” and Debra Winger (Terms of Endearment).
MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.
She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom and practicing Transcendental Meditation.
Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has also made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks’s romantic comedy Defending Your Life (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the “Past Lives Pavilion”.
In Postcards from the Edge (1990), MacLaine sings a version of “I’m Still Here”, with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to “I’m feeling transcendental – am I here?” In the television movie These Old Broads, MacLaine’s character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.
She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–8. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing a Washington, D.C. UFO incident in the 1950s.In the April 2011 edition of the Oprah show MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.
MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.
Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern’s campaign for president in 1972.That year, she authored the book McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs.
On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker’s autobiography Lucky Me: My Life With – and Without – My Mom, Shirley MacLaine.[36]MacLaine has called the book “virtually all fiction”.
MacLaine starred in A Change of Seasons (1980) alongside Anthony Hopkins, and won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983), playing Debra Winger’s mother. She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) for Madame Sousatzka (1988).
She has continued to star in major films, such as Steel Magnolias with Sally Field, Julia Roberts and other stars. In 2000 she made her feature-film directorial debut and starred in Bruno, which was released to video as The Dress Code. MacLaine has starred in Postcards from the Edge (1990) with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds from a screenplay by Reynolds’s daughter, Carrie Fisher; Used People (1992) with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; Guarding Tess (1994) with Nicolas Cage; Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; Rumor Has It… (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston; In Her Shoes (also 2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and Closing the Ring (2007) directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer.
Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, singer, film producer, film director, screenwriter and humanitarian. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio.
Lewis has received several awards for lifetime achievements from the American Comedy Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Venice Film Festival, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and been honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early life
Lewis was born on March 16, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey to Russian Jewish parents His father, Daniel Levitch (1902–80), was a master of ceremonies and vaudeville entertainerwho used the professional name Danny Lewis.
His mother, Rachel (“Rae”) Levitch (née Brodsky),was a piano player for a radio station. Lewis started performing at age five and would often perform alongside his parents in the Catskill Mountains in New York State.
By 15, he had developed his “Record Act” in which he exaggeratedly mimed the lyrics to songs on a phonograph.
He used the professional name Joey Lewis but soon changed it to Jerry Lewis to avoid confusion with comedian Joe E. Lewis and heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. Lewis then dropped out of Irvington High School in the tenth grade. He was a “character” even in his teenage years pulling pranks in his neighborhood including sneaking into kitchens to steal fried chicken and pies. During World War II, he was rejected for military service because of a heart murmur.
Lewis initially gained attention as part of a double act with singer Dean Martin, who served as straight man to Lewis’ zany antics in the Martin and Lewis comedy team. The performers were different from most other comedy acts of the time because they relied on their interaction instead of planned skits. They quickly rose to national prominence, first with their popular nightclub act, next as stars of their own radio program.
All sixteen movies were produced by Hal B. Wallis. Attesting the comedy team’s popularity, DC Comics published the best-selling The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comics from 1952 to 1957. As Martin’s roles in their films became less important over time the partnership came under strain. Martin’s participation became an embarrassment in 1954 when Look magazine used a publicity photo of the team for the magazine cover but cropped Martin out of the photo.The partnership ended on July 24, 1956.
While both Martin and Lewis went on to successful solo careers, neither would comment on the split nor consider a reunion. They did however make occasional public appearances together up until 1961, but were not seen together again until a surprise television appearance by Martin on a Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 1976, arranged by Frank Sinatra.
The pair eventually reconciled in the late 1980s after the death of Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin, in 1987.
The two men were seen together on stage for the last time when Martin was making what would be his final live performance at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Lewis pushed out a birthday cake for Martin’s 72nd birthday in 1989 and sang “Happy Birthday” to him, and joking, “why we broke up, I’ll never know.”
Lewis tried his hand at releasing music during the 1950s, having a chart hit with the song “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” (a song largely associated with Al Jolson and later re-popularized by Judy Garland) as well as the song, “It All Depends on You” in 1958. He eventually released his own album titled, Jerry Lewis Just Sings.
By the end of his contract with producer Hal B. Wallis, Lewis had several productions of his own under his belt. In 1959, a contract between Paramount Pictures and Jerry Lewis Productions was signed specifying a payment of $10 million plus 60% of the profits for 14 films over a seven-year period.
In 1960, Lewis finished his contract with Wallis with Visit to a Small Planet (1960), and wrapped up work on his own production, Cinderfella, which was postponed for a Christmas 1960 release, and Paramount, needing a quickie feature film for its summer 1960 schedule, held Lewis to his contract to produce one. Lewis came up with The Bellboy (1960). Using the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami as his setting—and on a small budget, with a very tight shooting schedule, and no script—Lewis shot the film by day and performed at the hotel in the evenings. Bill Richmond collaborated with him on the many sight gags. Lewis later revealed that Paramount was not happy financing a ‘silent movie’ and withdrew backing. Lewis used his own funds to cover the $950,000 budget.
During production Lewis developed the technique of using video cameras and multiple closed circuit monitors, which allowed him to review his performance instantly.
His techniques and methods, documented in his book and his USC class, enabled him to complete most of his films on time and under budget.
Lewis directed and co-wrote The Family Jewels (1965) about a young heiress who must choose among six uncles, one of whom is up to no good and out to harm the girl’s beloved bodyguard who practically raised her. Lewis played all six uncles and the bodyguard. On television, Lewis hosted two different programs called The Jerry Lewis Show. The first was a two-hour Saturday night variety show on ABC in the fall of 1963. The lavish, big-budget production failed to find an audience and was canceled after 13 weeks. His second program was a one-hour variety show on NBC from 1967 to 1969.
By 1966, Lewis, then 40, was no longer an angular juvenile, his routines seemed more labored and his box office appeal waned to the point where Paramount Pictures new executives felt no further need for the Lewis comedies and did not wish to renew his 1959 profit sharing contract. Undaunted, Lewis packed up and went to Columbia Pictures, where he made Three On A Couch (1966), then appeared in Way…Way Out (1966) for 20th Century Fox followed by The Big Mouth (1967), Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968) and Hook, Line & Sinker (1969).
In 1968, he screened Spielberg’s early film, Amblin’ and told his students, “That’s what filmmaking is all about.”
Lewis directed and made his first offscreen voice performance as a bandleader in One More Time (1970), which starred Sammy Davis Jr. (a friend of Lewis). He then produced, directed and starred in Which Way to the Front? (1970).
He would then make and star in the unreleased The Day the Clown Cried (1972), a drama set in a Nazi concentration camp.
Lewis rarely discusses the film, but once suggested that litigation over post-production finances prevented the film’s completion and release. However, he admitted during his book tour for Dean and Me that a major factor for the film’s burial is that he is not proud of the effort. In 1976, Lewis appeared in a revival of Hellzapoppin’ with Lynn Redgrave, but it closed on the road before reaching Broadway.
After an absence of 11 years, Lewis returned to film in Hardly Working (1981), a movie in which he both directed and starred.
In France, Lewis starred in both To Catch a Cop a.k.a. “The Defective Detective” (1984) and How Did You Get In?, We Didn’t See You Leave (1984). Lewis has stated that as long as he has control over distribution of those movies, they will never have an American release. Meanwhile, a syndicated talk show Lewis hosted for Metromedia in 1984 was not continued beyond the scheduled five shows. Lewis starred in the ABC televised drama movie Fight For Life (1987) with Patty Duke, then appeared in Cookie (1989).
Lewis had a cameo in Mr. Saturday Night (1992) while guest appearing in an episode of Mad About You as an eccentric billionaire. Lewis made his Broadway debut, as a replacement cast member playing the devil in a revival of Damn Yankees, choreographed by future movie director Rob Marshall (Chicago) while also starring in the film Arizona Dream (1994), as a car salesman uncle. Lewis then starred as a father of a young comic in Funny Bones (1995).
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry L
In March 2006, the French Minister of Culture awarded Lewis the Légion d’honneur, calling him the “French people’s favorite clown” Lewis has remained popular in the country, evidenced by consistent praise by French critics in the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma for his absurd comedy, in part because he had gained respect as an auteur who had total control over all aspects of his films, comparable to Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock.
Liking Lewis has long been a common stereotype about the French in the minds of many English-speakers, and is often the object of jokes in English-speaking world pop culture.
“That Americans can’t see Jerry Lewis’s genius is bewildering,” says N. T. Binh, a French film magazine critic. Such bewilderment was the basis of the book Why the French Love Jerry Lewis, by Rae Beth Gordon
In 2012, Lewis directed a musical theatre version of The Nutty Professor (with score by Marvin Hamlisch) at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville from July 31 to August 19 over the summer. Lewis appeared in the Brazilian film Till Luck Do Us Part 2 (2013), then next in a small role in the crime drama The Trust (2016). Lewis made a comeback in a lead role in Max Rose (2016).
In an October 6, 2016 interview with Inside Edition, Lewis acknowledged that he may not star in any more films given his advanced age, while admitting, through tears, that he was afraid of dying as it would leave his wife and daughter alone.] In December of that year, he expressed interest in making another film.
Lewis has been married twice:
Patti Palmer (née Esther Grace Calonico), a former singer with Ted Fio Ritomarried October 3, 1944, divorced September 1980[
SanDee Pitnick; married February 13, 1983; a 32-year-old Las Vegas dancer; married in Key Biscayne, Florida
He has six sons (one adopted) and one daughter (adopted):
Ronald Steven “Ronnie” Lewis (born December 1949 [adopted])
Scott Anthony Lewis (born February 22, 1956)
Christopher Lewis (born October 1957)
Anthony Lewis (born October 1959)
Joseph Lewis (born January 1964, died October 24, 2009 [from a narcoticsoverdose])[36]
With SanDee Pitnick
Danielle Sara Lewis (adopted March 1992)
Lewis has suffered from a number of illnesses and addictions related both to aging and a back injury sustained in a comedic pratfall from a piano while performing at the Sands Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip on March 20, 1965.
The accident almost left him paralyzed. In its aftermath, Lewis became addicted to the painkiller Percodan for thirteen years
He says he has been off the drug since 1978.] In April 2002, Lewis had a Medtronic “Synergy” neurostimulator implanted in his back which has helped reduce the discomfort. He is now one of the company’s leading spokesmen.
In the 2011 documentary Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, Lewis said he suffered his first heart attack while filming Cinderfella in 1960.
In December 1982, Lewis suffered another heart attack. En route to San Diego from New York City on a cross-country commercial airline flight on June 11, 2006, he sustained a minor heart attack .
It was discovered that he had pneumonia as well as a severely damaged heart. He underwent a cardiac catheterization and two stents were inserted into one of his coronary arteries, which was 90% blocked. The surgery resulted in increased blood flow to his heart and has allowed him to continue his rebound from earlier lung problems. Having the cardiac catheterization meant canceling several major events from his schedule, but Lewis fully recuperated in a matter of weeks.
In 1999, Lewis’ Australian tour was cut short when he had to be hospitalized in Darwin with viral meningitis. He was ill for more than five months. It was reported in the Australian press that he had failed to pay his medical bills. However, Lewis maintained that the payment confusion was the fault of his health insurer. The resulting negative publicity caused him to sue his insurer for US$100 million
In September 2001, Lewis was unable to perform at a planned London charity event at the London Palladium.
He was the headlining act, and he was introduced, but did not appear. He had suddenly become unwell, apparently with heart problems. He was subsequently taken to the hospital. Some months thereafter, Lewis began an arduous, months-long therapy that weaned him off prednisone and enabled him to return to work. On June 12, 2012, he was treated and released from a hospital after collapsing from hypoglycemia at a New York Friars’ Club event. This latest health issue forced him to cancel a show in Sydney.
Muscular dystrophy activism
Throughout his entire life and prolific career, Lewis was a world renowned humanitarian who has supported fundraising for research into muscular dystrophy. Until 2011, he served as national chairman of and spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) (formerly, the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America).
Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the company from 1952 to 1959, then every Labor Day weekend from 1966 to 2010, he hosted the live annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Over nearly half a century, he raised over $2.6 billion in donations for the cause.
On August 3, 2011, it was announced that Lewis would no longer host the MDA telethons and is no longer associated with the Muscular Dystrophy Association
On May 1, 2015, it was announced that in view of “the new realities of television viewing and philanthropic giving”, the telethon was being discontinued.
] In early 2016, Lewis made an online video statement for the organization on its website, in honor of its rebranding, marking his first appearance in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association since his final Labor Day Telethon in 2010 and the ending of his tenure as national chairman in 2011.
Theater chain
In 1969, Lewis agreed to lend his name to “Jerry Lewis Cinemas”, offered by National Cinema Corporation as a franchise business opportunity for those interested in theatrical movie exhibition. Jerry Lewis Cinemas stated that their theaters could be operated by a staff of as few as two with the aid of automation and support provided by the franchiser in booking films and in other aspects of film exhibition.
A forerunner of the smaller rooms typical of later multi-screen complexes, a Jerry Lewis Cinema was billed in franchising ads as a “mini-theatre” with a seating capacity of between 200 and 350. In addition to Lewis’s name, each Jerry Lewis Cinema bore a sign with a cartoon logo of Lewis in profile.
Initially 158 territories were franchised, with a buy-in fee of $10,000 or $15,000 depending on the territory, for what was called an “individual exhibitor”. For $50,000, the Jerry Lewis Cinemas offered an opportunity known as an “area directorship”, in which investors controlled franchising opportunities in a territory as well as their own cinemas.
The success of the chain was hampered by a policy of only booking second-run, family-friendly films. Eventually the policy was changed, and the Jerry Lewis Cinemas were allowed to show more competitive films, but after a decade the chain failed. Both Lewis and National Cinema Corp. declared bankruptcy in 1980.
Jerry’s House
In 2010, Lewis met with 7-year-old Lochie Graham who shared his idea for “Jerry’s House”, a place for vulnerable and traumatized children. The Australian charity hope2Day is raising funds to build the facility in Melbourne, Australia.
Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer, whose innovations to the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano, and whose best-known compositions, “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and “Honeysuckle Rose”, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.
Waller’s son Maurice wrote in his 1977 biography of his father that Waller had once complained on hearing the song, and came from upstairs to admonish him never to play it in his hearing because he had had to sell it when he needed money.
Maurice Waller’s biography similarly notes his father’s objections to hearing “On the Sunny Side of the Street” playing on the radio.
Waller recorded “I Can’t Give You…” in 1938, playing the tune but making fun of the lyrics; the recording was with Adelaide Hall who had introduced the song to the world at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in 1928.
The anonymous sleeve notes on the 1960 RCA Victor album Handful of Keys state that Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of which co-written with his closest collaborator Andy Razaf.
Razaf described his partner as “the soul of melody… a man who made the piano sing… both big in body and in mind… known for his generosity… a bubbling bundle of joy”.
Gene Sedric, a clarinetist who played with Waller on some of his 1930s recordings, is quoted in these same sleeve notes recalling Waller’s recording technique with considerable admiration: “Fats was the most relaxed man I ever saw in a studio, and so he made everybody else relaxed.
After a balance had been taken, we’d just need one take to make a side, unless it was a kind of difficult number.”
Waller played with many performers, from Nathaniel Shilkret and Gene Austin, to Erskine Tate, Fletcher Henderson, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and Adelaide Hall, but his greatest success came with his own five- or six-piece combo, “Fats Waller and his Rhythm”.
His playing once put him at risk of injury. Waller was kidnapped in Chicago leaving a performance in 1926. Four men bundled him into a car and took him to the Hawthorne Inn, owned by Al Capone.
Waller was ordered inside the building, and found a party in full swing. Gun to his back, he was pushed towards a piano, and told to play. A terrified Waller realized he was the “surprise guest” at Capone’s birthday party, and took comfort that the gangsters did not intend to kill him.
It is rumored that Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days and left very drunk, extremely tired, and had earned thousands of dollars in cash from Capone and other party-goers as tips.
In 1926, Waller began his recording association with the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor, his principal record company for the rest of his life, with the organ solos “St. Louis Blues” and his own composition, “Lenox Avenue Blues”.
Although he recorded with various groups, including Morris’s Hot Babes (1927), Fats Waller’s Buddies (1929) (one of the earliest multiracial groups to record), and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers (1929), his most important contribution to the Harlem stride piano tradition was a series of solo recordings of his own compositions: “Handful of Keys”, “Smashing Thirds”, “Numb Fumblin'”, and “Valentine Stomp” (1929).
After sessions with Ted Lewis (1931), Jack Teagarden (1931) and Billy Banks’ Rhythmakers (1932), he began in May 1934 the voluminous series of recordings with a small band known as Fats Waller and his Rhythm.
This six-piece group usually included Herman Autrey (sometimes replaced by Bill Coleman or John “Bugs” Hamilton), Gene Sedric or Rudy Powell, and Al Casey.
Waller wrote “Squeeze Me” (1919), “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now”, “Ain’t Misbehavin'” (1929), “Blue Turning Grey Over You”, “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling” (1929), “Honeysuckle Rose” (1929) and “Jitterbug Waltz” (1942). He composed stride piano display pieces such as “Handful of Keys”, “Valentine Stomp” and “Viper’s Drag”.
He enjoyed success touring the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1930s. He appeared in one of the first BBC television broadcasts.
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While in Britain, Waller also recorded a number of songs for EMI on their Compton Theatre organ located in their Abbey Road Studios in St John’s Wood. He appeared in several feature films and short subject films, most notably Stormy Weather in 1943, which was released July 21, just months before his death.
For the hit Broadway show Hot Chocolates, he and Razaf wrote “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” (1929), which became a hit for Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong.
Waller performed Bach organ pieces for small groups on occasion. Waller influenced many pre-bebop jazz pianists; Count Basie and Erroll Garner have both reanimated his hit songs. In addition to his playing, Waller was known for his many quips during his performances.
Between 1926 and the end of 1927, Waller recorded a series of pipe organ solo records. These represent the first time syncopated jazz compositions were performed on a full-sized church organ.
Waller contracted pneumonia and died on a cross-country train trip near Kansas City, Missouri, on December 15, 1943. His final recording session was with an interracial group in Detroit, Michigan, that included white trumpeter Don Hirleman.
Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of Stormy Weather, and after a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room, during which he had fallen ill.
More than 4,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem, which prompted Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Fats Waller “always played to a packed house.”
Afterwards he was cremated and his ashes were scattered, from an airplane piloted by an unidentified World War black aviator, over Harlem.
One of his surviving relatives is former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket and current Baltimore Ravens wideout Darren Waller, who is Fats’ paternal great-grandson.
The film is an adaptation of the 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The film’s screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage musical’s book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.
Based on the memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian woman studying to become a nun in Salzburg in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children.
After bringing love and music into the lives of the family through kindness and patience, she marries the officer and together with the children they find a way to survive the loss of their homeland through courage and faith.
The original Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical score was enhanced by two new songs by Richard Rodgers.
Arranger and conductor Irwin Kostal prerecorded the songs with a large orchestra and singers on a stage prior to the start of filming, and later adapted instrumental underscore passages based on the songs.
Choreographers Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, who had worked with Andrews on Mary Poppins, worked out all new choreography sequences that incorporated many of the Salzburg locations and settings. The Sound of Music was filmed from March 26 through September 1, 1964, with external scenes shot on location in Salzburg, Austria, and the surrounding region, and interior scenes filmed at the 20th Century Fox studios in California.
The team before and nowadays
The movie was photographed in 70 mm Todd-AO by Ted McCord and produced with DeLuxe Color processing and six-track sound recording.
The film was released on March 2, 1965 in the United States, initially as a limited roadshow theatrical release. The critical response to the film was widely mixed, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times calling it “romantic nonsense and sentiment”, and Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times describing it as “three hours of visual and vocal brilliance”.
The film was a major commercial success, becoming the number one box office movie after four weeks, and the highest-grossing film of 1965.
By November 1966, The Sound of Music became the highest-grossing film of all-time—surpassing Gone with the Wind—and held that distinction for five years. The film was just as popular throughout the world, breaking previous box-office records in twenty-nine countries.
Following an initial theatrical release that lasted four and a half years, and two successful re-releases, the film sold 283.3 million admissions worldwide and earned a total worldwide gross of $286,214,076. Adjusted for inflation, the film earned $2.366 billion at 2014 prices—the fifth highest grossing film of all time.
The Sound of Music received five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer (The sound of Music )
The film also received two Golden Globe Awards, for Best Motion Picture and Best Actress, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical.
In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) listed The Sound of Music as the fifty-fifth greatest American movie of all time, and the fourth greatest movie musical.
In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
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The Change-Up is a 2011 American comedy film produced and directed by David Dobkin, written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman.
The film was released on August 5, 2011, in North America, by Universal Pictures, and received mostly negative reviews, with commentators criticizing the overly crude humor and generic plot, but praising the cast and particularly Bateman’s against-type performance.
Dave Lockwood (Jason Bateman) and Mitch Planko (Ryan Reynolds) are close friends who are each jealous of the other’s lifestyle.
While Dave is a lawyer with a wife and kids, Mitch is a freewheeling actor who has sex with many different women.
After getting drunk at a bar, Mitch and Dave urinate in a park’s fountain, and simultaneously wish that they had each other’s lives.
The next morning, Mitch and Dave realize they have switched bodies. Mitch remembers the wish they made the night before and they drive back to the park, planning to urinate again in the fountain and wish for their original lives back, but find the fountain has been removed for restorations.
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