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1-5 of 5
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lupe Velez was born on July 18, 1908, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, as Maria Guadalupe Villalobos Velez. She was sent to Texas at the age of 13 to live in a convent. She later admitted that she wasn't much of a student because she was so rambunctious. She had planned to become a champion roller skater, but that would change. Life was hard for her family, and Lupe returned to Mexico to help them out financially. She worked as a salesgirl for a department store for the princely sum of $4 a week. Every week she would turn most of her salary over to her mother, but she kept a little for herself so she could take dancing lessons. With her mature shape and grand personality, she thought she could make a try at show business, which she figured was a lot more glamorous than dancing or working as a salesclerk. In 1924 Lupe started her show business career on the Mexican stage and wowed audiences with her natural beauty and talent. By 1927 she had emigrated to Hollywood, where she was discovered by Hal Roach, who cast her in a comedy with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Douglas Fairbanks then cast her in his feature film The Gaucho (1927) with himself and wife Mary Pickford. Lupe played dramatic roles for five years before she switched to comedy. In 1933 she played the lead role of Pepper in Hot Pepper (1933). This film showcased her comedic talents and helped her to show the world her vital personality. She was delightful. In 1934 Lupe appeared in three fine comedies: Strictly Dynamite (1934), Palooka (1934) and Laughing Boy (1934). By now her popularity was such that a series of "Mexican Spitfire" films were written around her. She portrayed Carmelita Lindsay in Mexican Spitfire (1939), Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940), The Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941) and Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (1943), among others. Audiences loved her in these madcap adventures, but it seemed at times that she was better known for her stormy love affairs. She married one of her lovers, Johnny Weissmuller, but the marriage only lasted five years and was filled with battles. Lupe certainly did live up to her nickname. She had a failed romance with Gary Cooper, who never wanted to wed her. By 1943 her career was waning. She went to Mexico in the hopes of jump-starting her career. She gained her best reviews yet in the Mexican version of Naná (1944). Bolstered by the success of that movie, Lupe returned to the US, where she starred in her final film as Pepita Zorita, Ladies' Day (1943). There were to be no others. On December 13, 1944, tired of yet another failed romance, with a part-time actor named Harald Maresch, and pregnant with his child, Lupe committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. She was only 36 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jess Lee Brooks a.k.a Jesse Brooks was an exceptional actor. He appeared in many of the top Black Cinema movies of the time, always playing the role of the caring policemen trying to warn the gangsters before it's too late, a father who would die for his kids. Whatever he played he was always a guardian angel over ones he cared for, the only time he would do wrong was if you wronged him or a loved one. Movie audiences felt as though they knew him when seeing him off-screen because on-screen his natural, love, kind word for all and protective persona reminded them of their father. Even in Hollywood films, he often outshone many of the white leading stars with his strong presence like in Sullivan's Travels where he gave an emotional performance that no one will ever forget after seeing it. Brooks died in 1944 and got respectful obituaries written about him. He was a man who wasn't afraid of being emotional or loving but was the definition of a man.- Actor
- Director
Ernest Shields was born on 5 August 1884 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Greyhound Limited (1929), The Birth of Patriotism (1917) and Sheridan's Pride (1914). He was married to Betty Schade. He died on 13 December 1944 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Producer
Musse Scheel was born on 17 July 1868 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was an actress and producer, known for Hendes naade, dragonen (1925), Genboerne (1939) and Balletten danser (1938). She died on 13 December 1944.- Art Department
- Writer
Wassily Kandinsky, a lawyer turned artist, belongs in the Pantheon of the 20th century artists alongside Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
He was born Wassily (Vasili Vasilevich) Kandinsky on December 16, 1866, in Moscow, Russia. His father, Vasili Silvesterovich Kandinsky, was a successful Russian businessman, his mother was a homemaker. Young Kandinsky enjoyed a happy childhood traveling across Europe with his parents and living in Odessa and Moscow. He studied arts and music from his early age and played piano and cello. Kandinsky had the physiological gift of synaesthesia cognate with that of composer Aleksandr Skryabin, and writer Vladimir Nabokov, which enabled him to hear colors and to see sounds. Kandinsky wrote: "Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul."
He earned his Law degree from the Moscow University and lectured at the Moscow Faculty of Law until 1896, then worked as managing director at a Moscow publishing and printing business. At age 30 he changed his life and career completely and moved from Russia to Europe. From 1896-1914 Kandinsky lived in Munich. There he studied art anatomy, drawing and composition under Anthon Azbe for two years. From 1897-1900, he studied in Munich Academy of Art and graduated from the class of Franz von Schtucke. In 1901 he founded "Falanga" artistic movement and school, where he also taught his ideas in art. At that time his paintings represented his earlier impressions from seeing the Russian folk art coupled with his musical imagination. Synaesthetic ability led him to creation of his original style, focused more on series of colors than on formal details. His paintings from that period, like "The Blue Rider" (1903), are steps to creation of the modern abstract art.
Kandinsky was the founder and active member of some of the most influential art movements. In 1911 he founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) together with Franz Marc, and included such artists as August Macke, Paul Klee, Alexej von Javlensky, and other painters fundamental to Expressionism. The group held two important exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 touring Germany, for which Kandinsky also included paintings by Henri Rousseau. Kandinsky was the main driving force behind the start of the new movement: he chose artists, collected their works, and published an almanac. In his writings Kandinsky promoted abstract art. He formulated his ideas of spirituality in art, his color theory, and the concept of autonomous color painted apart from an object or form.
The start of WWI in 1914 forced Kandinsky back to Russia. There he taught art in Moscow and visited St. Petersburg. In 1916, he met Nina Andrievskaya who became his wife in 1917. During and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he was involved in art teaching and participated in museum reform. He published an autobiographical book 'Stupeni' (Steps 1918). From 1919-1921 he was the Chairman of Russian Art Acqusitions Commission, taught at VKHUTEMAS, and was elected the Vice-President of Russian Academy of Arts. His life in Russia was full of painful and traumatic events. He was devastated by the death of his young son in Moscow. At that time, Kandinsky suffered from another blow from the Soviets when his spiritual and artistic position was bashed and denounced as individualistic and bourgeois. He was under suspicion from the Soviet communists and was eventually stripped from his Soviet citizenship. In 1921 Kandinsky escaped from the Soviet Russia and joined the Bauhaus movement in Weimar, Germany. He was invited by Walther Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, an innovative school of art and architecture. There Kandinsky taught design and advanced color theory, as well as an abstract painting class.
In 1933 Bauhaus was banned by the Nazis. Kandinsky fled from the Nazi Germany and settled in Paris. He became a French citizen in 1939 and continued living and working in Paris during the Nazi occupation in WWII. His studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, was frequently visited by 'Joan Miro' and younger artists. He became established internationally through several exhibitions, and his works were acquired in the USA by Solomon Guggenheim, who became one of his most enthusiastic supporters. Kandinsky expressed his creative achievements in the series of seven large "Compositions" (1911-39), which are widely acclaimed as the culmination of an abstract style in art.
Wassily Kandinsky died on December 13, 1944, in his studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. He is recognized as the developer of Abstractionism in modern art.