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Steamboat Bill Jr.Steamboat Bill Jr. is a feature-length silent comedy film featuring Buster Keaton, one of the masterpieces of American silent film comedy. Released by United Artists on May 20 1928, the film is the last product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers.
The story concerns a young man straight out of college making good as a Mississippi steamboat captain, trying to follow in his father's footsteps, and falling in love with the daughter of John James King (Tom McGuire) who is his father's business rival.
But Steamboat Bill's finest moments come during its cyclone sequence. Keaton filmed close to Sacramento valley, building $135,000 worth of breakaway street sets on a riverbank and then filming their systematic destruction with six powerful Liberty-motor wind machines and a 120-foot crane. Keaton himself, who calculated and performed his own stunts, was suspended on a cable from the crane and hurled him from place to place, as if airborn. The resulting sequence on film is astonishing and still watchable as spectacle, if not comedy. And it comes punctuated by Keaton's single most famous stunt. Keaton stands in the street, making his way through the destruction, when an entire building facade collapses onto him. The attic window fits neatly around Keaton's body as it falls, coming within inches of flattening him. Keaton did the stunt himself with a real building section and no trickery.
The director was Charles Reisner, the credited writer was Carl Harbaugh (although Keaton wrote the film and publicly called Harbaugh useless but "on the payroll"), and also starred Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron, and Tom Lewis.
The movie was parodied by Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie, which also was the first Mickey Mouse movie to become commercially successful, and which was itself parodied by Steamboat Itchy, an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon on The Simpsons.
External links
- [http://www.archive.org/details/SteamboatBillJr Watch the Movie at the Internet Archive]
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- [http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-1459-120B3E64-39B4713C-prod6 thorough Epinions description]
- [http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Article/0,,74686,00.html Turner Classic Movies]
Category:1928 films
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), always known as Buster Keaton, was a popular and influential American silent-film comic actor and filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname The Great Stone Face. His innovative work as a director made great contributions to the development of the art of cinema.
A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
Early life in vaudeville
Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, and Harry Houdini owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born in the town of Piqua (PICK-way), Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor. The boarding house in which he was born was later destroyed by a tornado. Currently on this site is a memorial plaque, and nearby is a rural water company that maintains a one-room Keaton museum. Piqua is so small that the annual Buster Keaton Celebration is held in nearby Iola, Kansas.
Keaton credited Harry Houdini, who was his godfather, with dubbing him "Buster" after seeing him, at the age of six months, tumble down a flight of stairs without injury. At the time, the word "buster" either meant broncobuster or a fall. It was only after Keaton was nicknamed the word became a name — one example of this early use is the comic strip character Buster Brown.
At the age of three, he began performing with his parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the act was how to raise a small child. Myra played the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by throwing Buster against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage. Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse. Decades later, Keaton said that he was never abused by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In fact, Buster would have so much fun, he would begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage. This drew fewer laughs from the audience, so Buster adopted his famous dead-pan expression whenever he was working.
The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. When one official saw Buster in full costume and make-up, he asked a stage-hand how old that performer was. The stage-hand shrugged and pointed to Buster's mother. "I don't know," he said, "ask his wife!" Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of the English Music Halls, Buster was a rising star in the theater, so much so that even when Myra and Joe tried to introduce Buster's siblings into the act, Buster remained the central attraction.
By the time Buster was 21, Joe's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Buster and Myra left Joe in Los Angeles. Myra returned to their summer home in Michigan, while Buster travelled to New York, where his performing career moved from vaudeville to film.
Silent film era
In February 1917 Keaton met Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a co-star and gag-man. Keaton later claimed that he was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire gag department. Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends, a bond that would never break, even after Arbuckle was embroiled in the scandal that cost him his career and his personal life.
After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, The Keaton Studio. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), Cops (1922), The Electric House (1922), and The Playhouse (1921). Based on the success of these shorts, he graduated to full-length features. These films made Keaton one of the most famous comedians in the world. At the time, he was perhaps the third most popular comedian in America behind Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.
His film-making style employs editing and framing techniques that are more closely aligned with modern sensibilities than the melodrama of other films of the day. His style of comedy and humor has been called timeless, in contrast to other silent comedians whose approaches are more rooted in their own era.
His most enduring feature-length films include Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Cameraman (1928), Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), and The General (1927). The last film, set during the American Civil War, is considered his masterpiece, combining physical comedy with Keaton's love for trains. Unfortunately, many of his most acclaimed films performed poorly in the box office due to their sophistication—audiences had a difficult time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of considerable ambition.
In addition, the technical side of filmmaking fascinated him and he was forward thinking enough to want to produce sound films when they began to become technically practical and popular. The fact that he had a good voice and years of stage experience promised an easier adjustment than Chaplin's silent Tramp character, who Chaplin thought could not survive sound.
Marriages
In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joe Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. After the birth of their second son, the marriage began to suffer. According to Keaton's autobiography, Natalie turned him out of the bedroom and sent detectives to follow him to see who he was dating behind her back. In 1932, Natalie divorced him, taking his entire fortune, and refusing to allow contact between Keaton and his sons. Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later.
In 1933, Buster married Mae Scriven, his nurse during an alcoholic binge that he remembered nothing about afterward. When they divorced in 1936, she took half of everything they owned — half of each dining set, half of each table and chair set, half of the books, and even Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.
In 1940, Buster married Eleanor Norris, who was 23 years younger than he. She saved his life and helped salvage his career. All their friends advised them against it, but the marriage lasted until Buster's death. Between 1947 and 1954, Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded doubles act.
Sound era and television
Keaton's filmmaking unit was acquired by MGM in 1928, a business decision that Keaton regretted ever afterwards. He was forced to enter the ranks of the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a more restrictive environment that he had previously worked in. He had difficulty adapting to the studio system and lapsed into alcoholism. His career declined within a few years, and he spent most of the 1930s in obscurity, working as a gag writer for various MGM films, particularly those of the Marx Brothers—including A Night at the Opera (1935), At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940);and various films of Red Skelton. He also starred in short films made for Educational Pictures and Columbia Pictures (the latter were directed and written by Del Lord) during this period, which received little attention at the time.
He made appearances in films, including Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). He had a brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's late film Limelight (1952). For ten minutes, Keaton and Chaplin share the screen for the only time in their careers, playing two aging former vaudeville stars trying to recapture a bit of glory, decades after both Chaplin's and Keaton's fame had peaked — though Keaton remarks, "If one more person tells me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out the window."
He had two back-to-back television series, The Buster Keaton Show (1950) and Life With Buster Keaton (1951). Despite their popularity, he cancelled the programs because he could not create enough material to produce a new show each week. He also found steady work as an actor for TV commercials, but he largely believed that he had been forgotten. His classic silent films saw a revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shortly before he died, Keaton starred in a short film called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film Board of Canada, in which he returned to the classic deadpan style that he had known during the peak of his career in the 1920s. He also played the central role in Samuel Beckett's only film project, Film (1965).
Death
Buster contracted lung cancer after years of smoking. His wife and doctors let him believe that he had contracted chronic bronchitis and he was never told that he was dying. Why exactly they did this is uncertain, but it is clear that Keaton required others to manage his daily living. Since his condition was already terminal when it was diagnosed, perhaps they were concerned that if he had been told, he would have stopped working. Performing before a camera or a live-audience was what Buster enjoyed most, apart from model trains. Buster Keaton is interred in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
Legacy and contribution
Buster Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd are remembered as the great comic innovators of the silent era. Many regard Keaton as the superior filmmaker of the three, although Keaton never made such comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and often praised Chaplin for his genius.
Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6321 Hollywood Boulevard (for television). In 1994, he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards, Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow.
Filmography
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- Kino Video Studio (2001). [http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?product_id=597 The Art Of Buster Keaton]. Set of 11 DVDs.
Books
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External links
- [http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/busterkeatonfans/ Buster Keaton Fans Yahoo List]
- [http://www.busterkeaton.com The International Buster Keaton Society]
- [http://www.iolaks.com/keaton Annual Buster Keaton Celebration, Iola, KS]
- [http://film.virtual-history.com/person.php?personid=697 Bibliography]
- [http://www.metrogirl.com/thriftshop/keaton.html The Keaton Character: Buster Keaton and the Economy of Means] (essay)
- [http://www.ida.liu.se/~juhta/buster/ Juha's Buster Keaton Page (link resource)]
- [http://silentgents.com/PKeaton.html Buster Keaton Photo Galleries] (includes rare images of BK smiling and laughing)
- [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000036/ IMDB.com listing for Buster Keaton]
- [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/keaton.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database]
- [http://www.fathom.com/course/10701030/index.html Buster Keaton on Comedy and Making Movies], an online seminar from Columbia University.
Notes
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Keaton, Joseph "Buster"
Keaton, Joseph "Buster"
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ja:バスター・キートン
United Artists
The United Artists Corporation (aka United Artists Associated, United Artists Pictures, and United Artists Films) is a movie studio and a subsidiary of MGM, itself part of Sony Pictures.
The Early Years
Sony Pictures
UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919 by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D. W. Griffith. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Already hardened veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out even before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, said, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from former Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo (son-in-law of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director.
The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin to produce five pictures each year. But by the time the company got under way in 1920-1921, feature-films were becoming more expensive and more polished; running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was soon clear that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five films a year. By 1924, by which time Hart and Griffith had dropped out, the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support a costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president; not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton. Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, especially Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda and Howard Hughes. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name.
Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks; Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon provided four pictures a year to UA's schedule. Pickford herself produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney, Walter Wanger and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of the business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away, Goldwyn and Disney to RKO, Wanger to Universal, Selznick to retirement. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor.
The 1950s and 1960s
In 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed; Chaplin, not favorable at first, came around when his circumstances changed abruptly in 1952.
Hounded by the American Legion and others for years over his left-wing politics and his lurid private life, Chaplin left the country for an extended vacation in Europe. While he was away, his visa expired; when he asked the State Department for a renewal, he was refused. Never having bothered to become an American citizen though he had lived in the US since 1914, Chaplin found himself rejected by his adopted land on grounds of "moral turpitude." Unable to return home, he was amenable to selling his half of United Artists, as well as his own studio on La Brea Avenue.
In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the first studio without a "studio." Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such; thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance or the expensive production staff which ran up costs at other studios. Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel and John Huston, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA two major hits, The African Queen and Moulin Rouge. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films. UA production-head Arnold Picker could do no wrong in selecting the properties which the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955.
UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder, Joseph E. Levine and others. In the 1960s, UA introduced U.S. audiences to The Beatles by releasing producer Walter Shenson's A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). At the same time it backed two expatriate Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's Bond novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No (which was a sensation in 1962) and served as the launching point for the James Bond series. That franchise has outlived UA's life as a studio, still running forty years later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood.
Borrowing the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division was responsible for shows like Gilligan's Island, The Fugitive, Outer Limits, The Patty Duke Show, and thirtysomething. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial -- and profitable --rental library. (See note below at '"The Fall and Slight Rise of UA"' for more on this). There was also a short-lived record division, later sold to Thorn EMI.
On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, Transamerica Corp.
The 1970s and 1980s
What Transamerica got was not just the UA name and library, but the expertise and experience of Krim, Benjamin and a team of others. For a time the flow of successful pictures continued. New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Milos Forman, and Brian De Palma. In 1973 UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM's films.
But insurance companies are a cautious, steady business. The ups-and-downs of movie making made them nervous. And then there were the costs; Hollywood has always been based on image, so executives had to be pampered a bit. All of this drove the insurance company crazy. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including chairman Krim and president Benjamin, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures, with backing from Warner.
The inexperienced new leadership of UA, anxious to show that they could make quality pictures too, agreed to back Michael Cimino's pet project, a big-budget western, Heaven's Gate. After a tumultuous two-year gestation, the picture proved to be a colossal failure, angering critics and alienating audiences. The publicity about runaway costs far overshadowed any appeal the film might have. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year; to Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signalled that this was a company that could no longer produce pictures. Within a year, UA was sold to Kirk Kerkorian, who merged it into his MGM. Film editors replaced UA logos on all prints to remove any reference to former owner Transamerica.
In 1975, Harry Salzman sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit. John Cork, producer of dozens of documentaries for the Bond films on DVD, claims that UA sold this 50% stake back to Broccoli in the mid-1980s. It has also been claimed that MGM/UA kept a distribution deal with Danjaq said to be far better than that given Broccoli and Salzman in 1962.
The Fall and Slight Rise of UA
Under Kerkorian, United Artists became a shell. The studio was essentially dormant after 1989, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, while keeping the MGM/UA library for himself. (See below for a note on the film library.)
In 1990 came the farcical sale to the Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti; having bought MGM/UA by wildly overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films, while beginning to re-position UA as a boutique or specialty studio. UA (re-christened United Artists Films) released a few "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, 2002's foreign-film Academy Award winner, No Man's Land, and 2004's Hotel Rwanda, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Films.
The Last Act?
On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion.
Since then, Sony has said little about UA's future. While Sony announced that the MGM name will continue to be used on selected features, their plans for UA seem unclear. A few pictures in the pipeline at the time of the Sony takeover are being "jointly" released by UA and Sony Classics. After a sometime splendid, sometimes awful eighty-six year history, this seems to be the last act for "the studio of the stars," United Artists.
Memorable releases
1920s and 1930s
- Way Down East (1920)
- Orphans of the Storm (1922)
- The Thief of Bagdad (1924, starring Douglas Fairbanks)
- The Gold Rush (1925)
- My Best Girl (1927)
- Taming of the Shrew (1929)
- Hell's Angels (1930)
- City Lights (1931)
- Scarface (1932)
- Modern Times (1936)
- The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
- Nothing Sacred (1937)
- Stella Dallas (1937)
- A Star Is Born (1937)
- Wuthering Heights (1939)
- Stagecoach (1939)
1940s
- Rebecca (1940)
- The Thief of Bagdad (1940, Korda's version)
- The Great Dictator (1940)
- That Hamilton Woman (1941)
- To Be or Not To Be (1942)
- Since You Went Away (1944)
- Spellbound (1945)
- Red River (1948)
1950s
- The African Queen (1951)
- Moulin Rouge (1952)
- Vera Cruz (1954)
- Marty (1955)
- Night of the Hunter (1955)
- Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
- The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
- The Big Country (1958)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
1960s
- The Apartment (1960)
- The Magnificent Seven (1960)
- The Misfits (1961)
- West Side Story (1961)
- Dr. No (1962)
- From Russia With Love (1963)
- Tom Jones (1963)
- The Pink Panther and sequels (1964)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s
- Sleeper (1972)
- The Long Goodbye (1972)
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
- Rocky (1976)
- Carrie (1976)
- Annie Hall (1977)
- Thieves Like Us (1978)
- Apocalypse Now (1979)
1980s
- The Secret of NIMH (1982)
- Rain Man (1988)
- Child's Play (1988)
- All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
1990s
- GoldenEye (1995)
- Rob Roy (1995)
- Showgirls (1995)
- The Birdcage (1996)
- Ronin (1998)
Film Archives
The value of film libraries has increased exponentially in recent years, even as ownership gets more fractured. Few studios had the foresight or ability to maintain control over every picture they produced or released. United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the pre-1948 Warner Bros. and RKO libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, this catalog now belongs to Warner Bros.' Turner Entertainment division.
Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, ownership of UA's output often rests with the individual or company producing. Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures (today part of Paramount Pictures) or small boutique houses like Castle Hill Productions.
Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts, are controlled by his estate.
When she retired from pictures in 1933, Mary Pickford wanted to destroy her films; afraid that they would be laughed-at, she was finally made to see that they would have artistic or historic value, and today rights to all of her films are held by the Pickford Foundation.
All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists in the early 1930s are owned by The Walt Disney Company. Rights to Selznick International Pictures and other later productions from David Selznick are held by ABC. The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, Twentieth Century-Fox. The pre-1941 Samuel Goldwyn films released by UA are now held by a company with which Goldwyn feuded for years, MGM.
Most of the Beatles' films are owned by the surviving members of the group, through Apple Corps; A Hard Day's Night is controlled by Miramax Films, but Yellow Submarine is held by UA. Rights to Mike Todd's splashy Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed Saul Zaentz films are now in the hands of Warner Bros.
But a good number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s, in the public domain, have been forgotten. Of the hundreds of fiilms distributed by UA over eighty-plus years, those which it owns outright today are its own productions from 1951 forward (plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm A Bum and Howard Hawks's Red River).
See also
- United Artists Records
- List of Hollywood movie studios
Notes on Sources
- Bach, Steven. Final Cut. New York: Morrow, 1985.
- Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
- Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.
- Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
- Thomson,David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1992.
External links
- [http://www.unitedartists.com United Artists website]
Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer subsidiaries
Category:Hollywood movie studios
ja:ユナイテッド・アーティスツ
1928
1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).
Events
January-May
- January 6-7 - River Thames floods in London - 14 drowned
- January 7 - Moat at the Tower of London, previously drained in 1843, is completely refilled by a tidal wave
- January 12 - US murderer Ruth Snyder executed at Ossining
- January 17 - OGPU arrests Lev Trotsky in Moscow; he assumes a status of passive resistance and is exiled to Turkestan
- February - Kurume University (Japan) established
- February 11 - 1928 Winter Olympic Games open in St. Moritz, Switzerland
- February 12 - Heavy hails kill 11 in England
- February 25 - Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, DC becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
- March 12 - Malta becomes a British dominion
- March 12 - In California, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles fails killing 400
- March 21 - Charles Lindbergh is presented the Congressional Medal of Honor for his first trans-Atlantic flight.
- April 10 - Pineapple Primary - Republican Party primary elections in Chicago preceded by assassinations and bombings
- April 12 - Bomb attack against the King of Italy in Milan - 17 bystanders dead
- April 22 - Earthquake destroys Corinth - 200.000 buildings destroyed
- May 15-17 - Christian X of Denmark visits Finland
- May 15 - Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia, commenced operations
- May 15 - Release of the animated short Plane Crazy, featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
- May 23 - Bomb attack against Italian consulate in Buenos Aires - 22 dead, 41 injured
- May 24 - Airship Italia crashes on the North Pole; one of the occupants is Italian general Umberto Nobile
- May 30 - A rescue expedition leaves for the North Pole
June-August
- June 11 - Medical doctor's strike begins in Vienna
- June 14 - Students take over the medical wing of Rosario University in Argentina
- July 6 - The world's largest hailstone falls in Potter, Nebraska.
- July 12 - Mexican aviator Emilio Carranza dies in a solo plane crash in the New Jersey Pine Barrens while returning from a goodwill flight to New York City.
- June 17 - Aviator Amelia Earhart starts her attempt to become the first woman to successfully pilot an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she succeeded the next day).
- July 17 - Jose del León Toral assassinates Alvaro Obregon, president of Mexico
- June 20 - Shooting incident in Yugoslavian parliament - Punica Rasic shoots 3 opposition representatives and injures three others
- June 24 - Swedish aeroplane rescues part of Italian North Pole expedition, including Umberto Nobile. Soviet icebreaker Krasin saves the rest July 12
- July 16 - Leon Toral assassinates Álvaro Obregón, president of Mexico
- July 25 - USA recalls its troops from China
- July 27 - Tich Freeman becomes only bowler ever to take 200 first-class wickets before end of July.
- July 28 - Official opening ceremony of the 1928_Summer_Olympics in Amsterdam.
- August 16 - Murderer Carl Panzram is arrested in Washington, DC after killing about 20 people.
- August 25 - Ahmet Zogu proclaims himself King Zog I of Albania; he is crowned September 1
- August 28 - The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris - it was the first treaty which outlawed aggressive war.
September-December
- September 1 - Richard Byrd leaves New York for Arctic
- September 3 - Alexander Fleming discovers Penicillin
- September 15 - Tich Freeman sets all-time record for number of wickets taken in an English cricket season.
- September 16 - The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane kills at least 2,500 people in Florida.
- October 2 Saint Josemaria Escriva, founds Opus Dei
- October 7 - Haile Selassie crowned king (not yet emperor) of Abyssinia
- October 12 - An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
- November 3 - cartoon star Mickey Mouse appears in Steamboat Willie, an animated short produced by Walt Disney.
- November 4 - At Park Central Hotel in Manhattan, Arnold Rothstein, New York City's most notorious gambler, is shot to death over a poker game.
- November 6 - Swedes start a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the old warrior king.
- November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1928: Republican Herbert Hoover wins by a wide margin over Democrat Alfred E. Smith.
- November 10 - Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
- November 11 - US gambling king Arnold Rothstein is shot to death in New York City
- December 3 - In Rio de Janeiro, a seaplane sunk near Cap Arcona with Alberto Santos-Dumont on board.
- December 5 - Police disperses Sicilian gangs' meeting in Cleveland
- December 21 - U.S. Congress approves the construction of The Boulder Dam, later renamed The Hoover Dam
- December 31 - Bells of Big Ben first time in a radio
Unknown dates
- Charles King elected president of Liberia with 600,000 votes; the whole of country has only 15,000 voters.
- Chaco war
- Coca Cola enters Europe through the Amsterdam Olympics.
- Eliot Ness begins to lead the prohibition unit in Chicago, Illinois.
- The old Canaanite city of Ugarit is rediscovered.
- Turkey switches from the Arabic to the Latin-based modern Turkish alphabet.
- The right to vote extended to all women in the United Kingdom.
- Frederick Griffith conducts the Griffith experiment, indirectly proving existence of DNA.
- Motorola is founded.
- First (and last) Best Title Writing Academy Award given.
- The Episcopal Church in the United States of America ratifies a new revision of the Book of Common Prayer.
- W2XBS, RCA's first television station, is established in New York City.
- Australian farmer, Jack Trott, finds Rhizanthella gardneri in his garden.
Births
January
- January 5 - Ali Bhutto, President of Pakistan and Prime Minister of Pakistan (d. 1979)
- January 5 - Walter Mondale, U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate
- January 7 - William Peter Blatty, American writer
- January 11 - David L. Wolper, television producer
- January 16 - William Kennedy, American author
- January 17 - Jean Barraqué, French composer (d. 1973)
- January 17 - Vidal Sassoon, English cosmetologist
- January 23 - Chico Carrasquel, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (d. 2005)
- January 23 - Jeanne Moreau, French actress
- January 24 - Desmond Morris, anthropologist and writer
- January 26 - Roger Vadim, French film director (d. 2000)
- January 30 - Hal Prince, American stage producer and director
February
- February 5 - Andrew Greeley, American Catholic priest and novelist
- February 9 - Frank Frazetta, American illustrator
- February 9 - Roger Mudd, American journalist
- February 23 - Vasili Lazarev, cosmonaut (d. 1990)
- February 26 - Fats Domino, American musician
- February 26 - Anatoli Filipchenko, cosmonaut
- February 27 - Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel
March-April
- March 4 - Alan Sillitoe, English writer
- March 6 - Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian writer, Nobel Prize laureate
- March 8 - Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer (d. 1990)
- March 10 - James Earl Ray, American assassin (d. 1998)
- March 12 - Edward Albee, American dramatist
- March 16 - Christa Ludwig, German mezzo-soprano
- March 19 - Hans Küng, Swiss theologian
- March 19 - Patrick McGoohan, Irish actor
- March 20 - Fred Rogers, American children's television host (d. 2003)
- March 24 - Byron Janis, American pianist
- March 25 - Jim Lovell, astronaut
- March 28 - Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish-born U.S. National Security Advisor
- March 31 - Gordie Howe, Canadian hockey player
- March 31 - Lefty Frizzell, American country music performer
- April 1 - Jane Powell, American dancer, actress, and singer
- April 1 - George Grizzard, American actor
- April 2 - Serge Gainsbourg, French singer (d. 1991)
- April 4 - Maya Angelou, American poet and novelist
- April 6 - James D. Watson, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- April 7 - James Garner, American actor
- April 7 - Alan J. Pakula, American producer and director (d. 1998)
- April 8 - Eric Porter, English actor (d. 1995)
- April 9 - Tom Lehrer, American songwriter
- April 12 - Jean-François Paillard, French conductor
- April 19 - Alexis Korner, British blues musician (d. 1984)
- April 23 - Shirley Temple, American actress and politician
May-June
- May 3 - Dave Dudley, American singer (d. 2003)
- May 4 - Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt
- May 8 - Theodore Sorenson, American lawyer and speechwriter
- May 9 - Colin Chapman, English automotive engineer (d. 1982)
- May 9 - Pancho Gonzalez, American tennis player (d. 1995)
- May 9 - Barbara Ann Scott, Canadian figure skater
- May 12 - Burt Bacharach, American composer
- May 16 - Billy Martin, baseball player and manager (d. 1989)
- May 18 - Pernell Roberts, American actor
- May 23 - Rosemary Clooney, American singer and actress (d. 2002)
- May 26 - Jack Kevorkian, American physician
- June 1 - Georgi Dobrovolski, cosmonaut (d. 1971)
- June 1 - Bob Monkhouse, English comedian and game show host (d. 2003)
- June 13 - John Forbes Nash, Jr., American mathematician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics
- June 14 - Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, Argentine-born revolutionary (d. 1967)
- June 19 - Nancy Marchand, American actress (d. 2000)
- June 25 - Alexei Abrikosov, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- June 26 - Jacob Druckman, American composer (d. 1996)
July-September
- July 5 - Warren Oates, American actor (d. 1982)
- July 10 - Moshe Greenberg, American-Israeli Bible scholar
- July 11 - Bobo Olson, American boxer (d. 2002)
- July 12 - Elias James Corey, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 13 - Leroy Vinnegar, American musician (d. 1999)
- July 16 - Robert Sheckley, American writer
- July 25 - Keter Betts, American jazz bassist (d. 2005)
- July 26 - Stanley Kubrick, American film director (d. 1999)
- July 26 - Bernice Rubens, British novelist (d. 2004)
- August 6 - Andy Warhol, American artist (d. 1987)
- August 10 - Eddie Fisher, American singer
- August 12 - Bob Buhl, baseball player (d. 2001)
- August 15 - Nicolas Roeg, English film director
- August 18 - Marge Schott, baseball team owner (d. 2004)
- August 25 - Herbert Kroemer, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- September 11 - William Kienzle, American author (d. 2001
- September 14 - Angus Ogilvy, husband of Princess Alexandra of Kent (d. 2004)
- September 15 - Julian Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist
- September 19 - Adam West, American actor
- September 22 - James Lawson, American civil rights activist and minister
- September 30 - Elie Wiesel, Romanian Holocaust survivor, writer, and lecturer, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
October-December
- October 1 - George Peppard, American actor (d. 1994)
- October 8 - Bill Maynard, British actor
- October 9 - Einojuhani Rautavaara, Finnish composer
- October 27 - Kyle Rote, American football player (d. 2002)
- October 30 - Daniel Nathans, American microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1999)
- November 3 - Osamu Tezuka, Japanese artist (d. 1989)
- November 3 - George Yardley, American basketball player (d. 2004)
- November 10 - Ennio Morricone, Italian composer
- November 11 - Carlos Fuentes, Panamanian writer
- November 17 - Rance Howard, American actor
- November 29 - Paul Simon, U.S. Senator from Illinois (d. 2003)
- December 7 - Noam Chomsky, American linguist
- December 15 - Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian artist (d. 2000)
- December 16 - Philip K. Dick, American author (d. 1982)
- December 25 - Dick Miller, American actor
Unknown date
- Sultan Azlan Muhibbudin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Yusuff Izzudin Shah Ghafarullahu-lahu, King of Malaysia
Deaths
- January 1 - Loie Fuller, American dancer (b. 1862)
- January 6 - Alvin Kraenzlein, American athlete (b. 1876)
- January 11 - Thomas Hardy, English writer (b. 1840)
- January 29 - Douglas Haig, British soldier (b. 1861)
- January 30 - Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, Danish scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1867)
- February 1 - Hughie Jennings, baseball player (b. 1869)
- February 4 - Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1853)
- February 15 - Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1852)
- February 16 - Eddie Foy, American vaudevillian (b. 1856)
- April 2 - Theodore William Richards, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
- April 5 - Roy Kilner, English cricketer (b. 1890)
- June 4 - Chang Tso-lin, Chinese warlord (b. 1873)
- June 22 - A. B. Frost, American illustrator (b. 1851)
- August 12 - Leos Janacek, Czech composer (b. 1854)
- August 30 - Wilhelm Wien, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
- October 22 - Andrew Fisher, fifth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1862)
- December 1 - José Eustasio Rivera, Colombian writer (b. 1888)
- December 10 - Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect (b. 1868)
- Robert Abbe, American surgeon (b. 1851)
Nobel Prizes
- Physics - Owen Willans Richardson
- Chemistry - Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
- Physiology or Medicine - Charles Jules Henri Nicolle
- Literature - Sigrid Undset
- Peace - not awarded
ko:1928년
ms:1928
ja:1928年
simple:1928
th:พ.ศ. 2471
Mississippi
Mississippi is a Southern state of the United States.
Postal abbreviation: MS. Official (long) name: State of Mississippi.
The state takes its name from the Mississippi River, which flows along the western boundary. The name itself probably means "big waters" in an old form of Ojibwe, a Native American language spoken around the river's headwaters. Other nicknames attached to Mississippi are the Magnolia State and the Hospitality State.
In research company Morgan Quitno's Most Liveable State Award, Mississippi has been in last place for seven years [http://www.morganquitno.com/srml.htm] ([http://www.morganquitno.com/sr05mlfac.htm factors]).
USS Mississippi was named in honor of this state.
History
Main article: History of Mississippi
Mississippi was part of the Mississippian culture in the early part of the second millennium AD; descendant Native American tribes include the Chickasaw and Choctaw. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and gave their names to local towns) include the Natchez, the Yazoo, and the Biloxi.
The first expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of Hernando de Soto, who passed through in 1540. However, the first settlement was that of Ocean Springs (or Old Biloxi), settled by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699. In 1716, Natchez was founded on the Mississippi River (as Fort Rosalie); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. After spending some time under Spanish, British, and French nominal jurisdiction, the Mississippi area was deeded to the United States after the French and Indian War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris.
The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina; it was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the U.S. and Spain. Land was purchased (generally through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes from 1800 to about 1830.
Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union, on December 10, 1817.
When cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and Black Belt regions—became increasingly wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil and the high price of cotton on the international market. The severe wealth imbalances and the necessity of large-scale slave populations to sustain such income played a heavy role in both state politics and in the support for secession.
Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union as one of the Confederate States of America on January 9, 1861. During the Civil War the Confederate States were defeated. Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union on February 23, 1870.
Mississippi was considered to typify the Deep South during the era of Jim Crow. A series of increasingly restrictive racial segregation laws enacted during the first part of the 20th century resulted in the emigration of almost half a million people, three-quarters of them black, in the 1940s. However, at the same time, Mississippi became a center of rich, quintessentially American music traditions: gospel music, jazz music, blues, and rock and roll all were invented, promulgated, or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians. Mississippi was also noted for its authors in the early twentieth century, especially William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.
Mississippi was a center of the civil rights movement. While many in the state supported the effort to secure voting and other rights for African-Americans, the vocal opposition of many politicians and officials and the violent tactics of Ku Klux Klan members and sympathizers gave Mississippi a reputation as a reactionary state during the 1960s.
The state was the last to repeal prohibition and to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, in 1966 and 1995 respectively.
On August 17, 1969, Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles of Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
In recent years, Mississippi has been noted for its political conservatism, improved civil rights record, and increasing industrialization. In addition, a decision in 1990 to legalize riverboat gambling has led to economic gains for the state. However, an estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several riverboat casinos in August 2005. Gambling towns in Mississippi include the Gulf Coast towns of Gulfport and Biloxi, and the river towns of Tunica, Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez. Before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was the second largest gambling state in the Union, ahead of New Jersey and behind Nevada.
On October 17, 2005, Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that now allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within 800 feet of the water). The only exception is in Harrison County, where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of U.S. Highway 90.
U.S. Highway 90 until its replacement in 1903.]]
Law and government
After the Civil War, mistreatment of Southerners during Reconstruction by the federally-appointed Republican governors led to considerable resentment toward the Republican Party. As a result, Mississippi's state government had a very long unbroken record of single-party dominance. For 116 years, from 1876 to 1992 Mississippians only elected Democratic governors. For most of that time period, Democrats also held the majority of seats in the state legislature (which they still do) not to mention most other elected offices, including the state's federal representation (although some Republicans began to win Congressional elections in the 1970s).
As with all other U.S. States and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently Haley Barbour (Republican). The Lieutenant Governor, currently Amy Tuck (originally elected as a Democrat, she switched to the Republican Party in 2002), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi, rather than appointed by the governor.
(See: List of Governors of Mississippi)
(See: List of Lt. Governors of Mississippi)
(See: List of State Treasurers of Mississippi)
(See: Mississippi general election results, 2003)
Legislative authority resides in the state legislature, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate, while the House of Representatives selects their own Speaker. The state Constitution permits the legislature to establish by law the number of Senators and Representatives, up to a maximum of 52 Senators and 122 Representatives. Current state law sets the number of Senators at 52 and Representatives at 122. The term of office for Senators and Representatives is four years.
(See: List of state legislatures of the United States.)
Supreme Judicial authority rests with the state Supreme Court, which has statewide authority. In addition, there is a statewide Court of Appeals, as well as Circuit Courts, Chancery Courts and Justice Courts, which have more limited geographical jurisdiction. The nine Judges of the Supreme Court are elected from three districts (three Judges per district) by the state's citizens in non-partisan elections to eight-year staggered terms. The ten Judges of the Court of Appeals are elected from five districts (two Judges per district) for eight-year staggered terms. Judges for the smaller courts are elected to four-year terms by the state's citizens who live within that court's jurisdiction.
At the federal level, Mississippi's two U.S. senators are Trent Lott (Republican) and Thad Cochran (Republican). As of the 2001 reapportionment, the state has 4 congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives.
(See: List of United States Representatives from Mississippi)
Mississippi has 82 counties. Citizens of Mississippi counties elect the five members of their county Board of Supervisors from single-member districts, as well as other county officials.
(See: List of Mississippi counties)
Economics
List of Mississippi counties
[http://www.bea.gov/ The Bureau of Economic Analysis] estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2003 was $72 billion. Per capital personal income in 2003 was $23,466, 51st in the nation (ranking includes the District of Columbia).
Mississippi's rank as the poorest state can be traced to the Civil War. Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation. The war cost the state 30,000 men. Plantaton owners who survived the war were virtually bankrupted by the emancipation of slaves, and Union troops left widespread destruction in their wake.
Transportation
Mississippi is served by six Interstate highways
- Interstate 10
- Interstate 20
- Interstate 55
- Interstate 59
- Interstate 110
- Interstate 220
and fourteen main U.S. Highways
- U.S. Highway 11
- U.S. Highway 45
- U.S. Highway 49
- U.S. Highway 51
- U.S. Highway 61
- U.S. Highway 65
- U.S. Highway 72
- U.S. Highway 78
- U.S. Highway 80
- U.S. Highway 82
- U.S. Highway 84
- U.S. Highway 90
- U.S. Highway 98
- U.S. Highway 278
as well as a system of State Highways.
For more information, visit the [http://www.gomdot.com/ Mississippi Department of Transportation] website.
Demographics
Population
- The 2000 Census reported Mississippi's population as 2,844,658 [http://www.censusscope.org/us/s28/chart_popl.html]. 2004 estimates show the population as having risen to 2,902,966. [http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2004-01.pdf]
Racial Makeup and Ancestry
The Census Bureau considers race and Hispanic origin to be two separate categories. This data, however, is only for non-Hispanic members of each group: non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, etc. For more information on race and the Census, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28U.S._Census%29 here.]
Until about 1940, Blacks made up a majority of Mississippians. Their share of the population has since declined, but has in recent years begun to increase, due mainly to a younger Black age structure caused by a relatively high Black birthrate, although this has subsided somewhat in recent years. In Mississippi's public school system, the majority of students are Black. [http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/profile.asp] Blacks currently predominate in the northwestern Yazoo Delta, the southwestern, and central parts of the state.
Nearly 10,000 Native Americans (mostly Choctaw) live in the east central section of the state. The small Chinese population found in the Delta is descended from farm laborers brought there from California in the 1870s. The Chinese did not adjust well to the Mississippi plantation system, however, and most of them became small merchants. The coastal fishing industry has attracted Southeast Asian refugees.
The white population of Mississippi is remarkably homogeneous and mostly of American ancestry. More than 98 percent native-born, predominantly of Northern European descent. According to the 2000 Census, the largest ancestries are American (14.2%), Irish (6.9%), English (6.1%), and German (4.5%). There are also French and Italian populations. French Creoles are the largest demographic group in Hancock County on the Gulf Coast. The black, Choctaw Indian (in Neshoba County), and Chinese segments of the population are also almost entirely native-born.
Religion
Mississippi's religious affiliations principally consist of evangelical Protestant denominations, particularly the Baptists (Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, etc.), along with Methodists and Presbyterians. The small Roman Catholic population is found primarily in urban areas and on the Gulf Coast, and the tiny Jewish population is also mainly concentrated in urban areas.
The current religious affiliations of the people of Mississippi are as follows:
- Christian – 92%
- Protestant – 86%
- Baptist – 58%
- Methodist – 10%
- Pentecostal – 3%
- Presbyterian – 2%
- Other Protestant – 13%
- Roman Catholic – 5%
- Other Christian – 1%
- Other Religions – <1%
- Non-Religious – 7%
Important cities and towns
Education
Colleges and universities
Miscellaneous information
State motto: "Virtute et Armis" (By Valor and Arms)
State song: "Go, Mississippi", adopted 1962
Patron saint: Our Lady of Sorrows
State flower and state tree: Magnolia
State bird: Mockingbird
State beverage: Milk
State fish: Largemouth Bass
State insect: Honeybee
State water mammal: Bottlenose Dolphin
State shell: Oyster
State fossil: A whale fossil nicknamed "ziggy"
State land mammals: White-tailed Deer and Red Fox
State waterfowl: Wood duck
State stone: Petrified wood
State wildflower: Coreopsis
State butterfly: Spicebush Swallowtail
State dance: Square Dance
Statehood Quarter was minted in 2002.
Pledge to the Flag: "I salute the flag of Mississippi and the sovereign state for which it stands with pride in her history and achievements and with confidence in her future under the guidance of Almighty God."
Famous Mississippians
Mississippi has produced a number of notable and famous individuals, including author William Faulkner, author Eudora Welty, musician Elvis Presley, blues musicians B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, novelist John Grisham, entertainer Oprah Winfrey, author Richard Wright, actor Morgan Freeman, playwright Tennessee Williams, and country music singer Faith Hill .
External links
- [http://www.ms.gov State of Mississippi]
- [http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/ The Mississippi Writers Page]
- [http://www.yoyita.com Mississippi Arts]
-
Mississippi
ko:미시시피 주
ja:ミシシッピ州
simple:Mississippi
Ernest TorrenceErnest Torrence (June 26, 1878 - May 13, 1933) was a Scottish born film actor who appeared in many Hollywood films.
External links
-
Category:1878 births
Category:1933 deaths
Category:Scottish actors
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie, released on November 18, 1928, is an animated cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. The cartoon is a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr. and was written and directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It is a parody which has become more famous than what it is parodying.
Music for Steamboat Willie was put together by Wilfred Jackson, one of Disney's animators (and not, as sometimes reported, by Carl Stalling). It comprises popular melodies including "Steamboat Bill" and "Turkey in the Straw".
It has been (and continues to be) in the history books as the first animated short with a completely post-produced soundtrack of music, dialogue, and sound effects, although other cartoons with synchronized soundtracks had been exhibited before, notably by Max Fleischer's My Old Kentucky Home (1926) and Paul Terry's Dinner Time (1928). Steamboat Willie was the first sound cartoon to attract widespread notice and popularity.
The film has been the center of some attention regarding the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act passed in the United States. Steamboat Willie has been close to entering the public domain in the United States several times; each time, copyright protection in the United States has been extended. Many people have claimed that these extensions were a response by the U.S. Congress to extensive lobbying by Disney. However, the copyright extensions that Congress has passed in recent decades have followed extensions in international copyright conventions to which the United States is a signatory. (See U.S. copyright law, Universal Copyright Convention, and Berne Convention.) The U.S. copyright on Steamboat Willie will be in effect through 2023. However, it is now public domain in Canada and Australia.
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
A Steamboat Willie-themed world named Timeless River was featured in the Disney/Squaresoft video game Kingdom Hearts II.
Synopsis
Mickey is serving aboard Steamboat Willie under Captain Pete. He is first seen piloting the steamboat while whistling. Pete arrives to take the helm and angrily throws him off the bridge. They soon have to stop for cargo. Almost as soon as they set off again, Minnie arrives, too late to board. Mickey manages to pick her up from the river shore. Minnie accidentally drops her sheet music for the popular folk song "Turkey in the Straw," which is eaten by a goat. Mickey and Minnie use its tail to turn it into a phonograph, which plays the tune. Mickey uses various other animals as musical instruments, disturbing Captain Pete, who puts him back to work. Mickey is reduced to peeling potatoes for the rest of the trip. A parrot attempts to make fun of him, but Mickey throws himself in the river.
See also
- Mickey Mouse: Addition of sound to the series
External links
- [http://www.filmsound.org/animation/steamboatwilly/ The Test Screening of Steamboat Willie]
- [http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rllew/chronint.html Chronology of Animation]
- [http://disneyshorts.toonzone.net/years/1928/steamboatwillie.html Steamboat Willie at The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts]
Category:1928 films
Category:Disney animated shorts, 1920s
Category:Comedy films
Category:Musical films
Category:Short films
Category:United States National Film Registry
ja:蒸気船ウィリー
Itchy and Scratchy: For the Australian electronic music act, see Itch-E and Scratch-E.
Itch-E and Scratch-E
The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a Show-within-a-show of The Simpsons which appears as a segment of the fictional Krusty the Klown TV show, watched regularly by Bart and Lisa Simpson and other characters on the animated series. Itself an animated cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show depicts a mouse, Itchy, and a cat, Scratchy, who attack and graphically mutilate each other with deadly weapons.
Background
The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a parody of violent animated cartoons, and the author Matt Groening attribute them to a mix of older cartoons, mostly Tom and Jerry and Herman the Cat, although there are other opinions [http://www.silverbox.com/krusty/debate3.html]. While not usually as openly graphic or bloody as Itchy and Scratchy, these works depicted physical abuse between their characters with no long-term consequences; Itchy and Scratchy take this violence to its logical extreme.
The fictional series has supposedly been in continuous production since the early 20th century, first for theater release and then for radio and TV. Older Itchy & Scratchy cartoons are occasionally shown which satirize other aspects of early animation; for example, a cartoon called Steamboat Itchy resembles the early Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie. Lisa Simpson once mentioned the tasteless and racist Itchy & Sambo cartoons of the 1930s.
The Itchy & Scratchy Show appearing as part of The Krusty the Klown Show could be seen as paralleling The Simpsons when they were on The Tracey Ullman Show. Also, many of the themes explored in The Simpsons episodes are also "explored" in Itchy and Scratchy. Itchy and Scratchy, in one Simpsons episode, star in a feature movie entitled Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie.
The characters of Itchy and Scratchy are voiced (within the reality of The Simpsons) by a woman named June Bellamy (whose physical appearance is said to be based on June Foray, a famous voice actress) who also claims to be the voice of Road Runner. (Apparently, she recorded a lone "meep," and they doubled it so as not to have to pay her for two "meeps.") In reality, Itchy is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and Scratchy is voiced by Harry Shearer.
Itchy and Scratchy themselves were once replaced by a show called Worker and Parasite, a parody of Soviet-bloc government-made cartoons. Because of licensing restrictions, Krusty could not run Itchy and Scratchy, so he had to show "communist propaganda cartoons" from the 1960s. The resulting cartoon showed a poorly drawn cat and a poorly drawn mouse jumping around inexplicably while experimental music played.
In the Simpsons episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming," Sideshow Bob's threat of detonating a nuclear bomb caused all TV to be cancelled. However, Krusty went to a small broadcasting shack in the desert to stay on air. His heavily improvised show contained The Stingy and Battery Show, starring a scorpion and a battery.
History within The Simpsons
Within the Simpsons universe, the characters were created by Roger Meyers, Sr., who built the legacy of Itchy and Scratchy and established Itchy and Scratchy Studios in 1921. It was revealed in the episode "The Day the Violence Died" that Chester J. Lampwick actually invented Itchy in 1919 and owns the rights to that character.
Scratchy starred in his first cartoon in 1928, entitled That Happy Cat. The film, which is ten seconds of animation showing the cat whistling and tipping his hat, did very poorly. Later that year, Itchy and Scratchy starred in their first cartoon together entitled Steamboat Itchy
In the 1930s, there were a series of tasteless Itchy & Sambo cartoons.
During World War II, cartoon shorts were created teaming the pair together, supporting the United States against Germany. Despite creator Myers, Sr. being labeled as a Nazi sympathizer, one film showed Adolf Hitler being repeatedly injured and eventually beheaded by the cat and mouse team.
In the 1950s, the duo appeared in television commercials for Laramie Cigarettes; this was a spoof of television stars pitching cigarettes in 1950s- and 1960s-era television commercials (most notably The Flintstones), in an effort to entice children to take up smoking.
Itchy and Scratchy Studios is currently run by Roger Meyers, Jr., the son of the cartoon's creator. It is animated in Korea.
Revealed in the episode "Itchy & Scratchy Land" are characters from the short-lived Itchy & Scratchy and Friends Hour: Uncle Ant, Disgruntled Goat, Flatulent Fox, and Ku Klux Klam. These characters lampooned the addition of superfluous, two-dimensional characters to TV shows in an effort to draw viewer interest.
In 1990, The Itchy and Scratchy Show underwent a non-violent retooling following a protest campaign led by Marge Simpson. Marge was later discredited and the cartoon returned to its original violent format.
In 1992, Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie was released. It received nine Academy Awards.
In 1994, Itchy & Scratchy Land opened, although it was temporarily shut down because of malfunctioning robots (a la Jurassic Park or the movie Westworld). Unfortunately, Euro-Itchy and Scratchy Land apparently failed to match the success of its domestic counterpart, with no visitors upon its opening (in a parody of the early failure of Euro Disneyland theme park).
In 1997, the show began declining in ratings and a third character, Poochie the dog, was added (see below).
Forty years from "now," Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie will be the first-billed film at a "Classics of Animation" screening at the Aztec Theater in Springfield (Beauty and the Beast gets second billing).
Poochie
Beauty and the Beast
Poochie was a dog character added to the Itchy & Scratchy lineup in The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.
According to the show's plot, the producers believed the cartoons were getting stale, and needed a new character to reinvigorate the show, despite the objections of one of the show's writers, who 'at the risk of sounding pretentious', felt that Itchy and Scratchy comprised 'a dramaturgical diad'. Homer Simpson gets the job of voicing Poochie, who is introduced in the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon "The Beagle Has Landed." A product of marketing department thinking, Poochie was near-universally despised, and was killed off in his second appearance, despite Homer's objections.
Both plots were a reference to TV shows which added new characters purportedly to reinvigorate the show (often in the show's waning years and/or to replace stars who had either departed or grown up, if they were child actors). Famous examples include Scooby-Doo (when his nephew, Scrappy-Doo, was suddenly added); The Flintstones, who suddenly found themselves co-starring with The Great Gazoo; and The Brady Bunch, when Cousin Oliver came to live with the Bradys. Quite often, these additions of superfluous characters are seen as jumping the shark moments; such changes are regarded by fans to be the defining events in the decline of a TV show. This is itself satirized in the episode, with the mysterious addition of a new character, "Roy," to the Simpson family; Roy leaves the show at the end of the episode.
Many fans of the show also saw Poochie's creation, depiction, and demise as a response to various criticisms of The Simpsons by its viewers. The focus group's desire for a show where its characters solve real-life problems, and simultaneous desire for a show with its characters "getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers" reflects the division between fans of earlier episodes of the series, which tended to focus on the family's relationships with each other, and fans of the later episodes, which tended to rely more heavily on sight gags, cameo appearances, and non-sequiturs. Other aspects of the episode also play up this argument, including Bart's declaration that the creators of Itchy and Scratchy are "giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free" and Lisa's closing lines about how Itchy and Scratchys viewers "should thank our lucky stars that they're still putting on a program of this caliber after so many years."
Despite being created for a single-episode appearance (and despite a legal document from Krusty stating that he would never reappear), Poochie has appeared in later episodes of The Simpsons, such as the 11th Halloween show, an Itchy & Scratchy episode ("Tears of a Clone"), and was on a Krusty-Brand show T-Shirt (as well as "Itchy-Poochie").
According to The Simpsons comic system, many spin-offs featuring Poochie were made before his debut on the show. Many of these spin-offs were simply badly-disguised rip-offs of other popular comics. A Poochie comic was called Astro-Poochie (obviously a rip-off of Astro Boy) which shows Poochie resembling the anime character. Some small print on the top reads "here is another idea we had...".
Other Itchy & Scratchy characters
There was also a vulture modeled after Mr. Burns — in a cartoon he himself scripted and directed ("Fraudcast News") — who touted the virtues of nuclear power.
When Marge protested the cartoon's violence, a cartoonist modeled a squirrel with tall, blue hair after her. The squirrel interrupted a baseball bat fight between the title characters shouting "Don't do that! Hey! Don't do that!" to which Itchy whacked her head off.
Quentin Tarantino guest appears in one episode, supposedly having directed it. In the episode, Itchy douses Scratchy with gasoline while the music "Stuck in the Middle With You" is playing. Tarantino then enters and explains his motivation behind the violence in the episode before being brutally attacked by the cat and mouse duo.
Elvis Presley also appears in a cartoon, shooting Scratchy when he gets his head stuck in Elvis' television set — a reference to the apocryphal tale of Presley shooting out a picture tube with a pistol when dissatisfied with the program.
In the Episodes Itchy and Scratchy Land and The Day the Violence Died several other characters in the Itchy and Scratchy world created by Meyers included Disgruntled Goat, Uncle Ant, Brown-nose Bear, Flatulent Fox, Rich Uncle Skeleton, Ku Klux Klam and Dinner Dog. It is revealed in The Day the Violence Died that all these characters were plagiarised due to the fact Meyers only thought up stick-figures called Sarcastic Horse and Manic Mailman. Since they stank he stole other people's characters (but little did Meyers Jr. know The Mr. Zip postal services plagiarised Manic Mailman). Meyers claimed Flatulent Fox was based on a true story. Ku Klux Klam is a Ku Klux Klan member because of his name and clothing.
In Margical History Tour, Homer/King Henry VIII watches a version of Itchy and Scratchy. It is performed by hand puppets and consists of them beating each other with clubs after accusing each other.
The show has recently gained several derivative characters, based on other famous people and characters such as Austin Powers Itchy, Scratchbob Itchpants and Osama Bin Scratchy.
Video Games
A video game named The Itchy & Scratchy Game was released for Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Super NES and Game Boy. Another game Itchy and Scracthy in Miniature Golf was released for Game Boy.
External links
- [http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/information/lists/itchyscratchy.shtml Itchy & Scratchy episode guide]
- [http://www.geocities.com/simpsons_guide/simpsons_itchy.html Theme Song Lyrics]
- [http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=119618 Movie Lyrics]
Itchy and Scratchy
Itchy and Scratchy
Itchy and Scratchy
Itchy and Scratchy
Itchy & Scratchy
Category:1928 filmsThis category lists the titles of films originally released in the year 1928.
See also 1928 in film.
Category:Films by year
Category:1928 S/2003 J 9
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