- Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk (April 26, 1900 - January 14, 1987) was a film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s. Sirk was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, Germany to Danish parents. He was raised in Denmark, but later moved to Germany as a teenager. He spread his education over three universities. He started his career in 1922 in the theatre of the Weimar Republic, including the direction of an early production of "The Threepenny Opera". - Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (born September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. He is the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. Almodóvar never judges his characters actions, whatever they do, … - Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of Italian opera in the 19th century and went well beyond the work of Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, … - George Raft
George Raft (26 September 1895 – 24 November 1980) was an American film actor most closely identified with his portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. - Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger (May 6, 1913 - August 16, 1993), born James Leblanche Stewart, was an English film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. Tall, dark, dignified and handsome, Granger was a popular leading man in the 40s, 50s and 60s. He was born in London, and educated at Epsom College. - Dion Boucicault
: This article is about Dion Boucicault Senior, for his actor and stage director son see Dion Boucicault Jr. (1859 -1929). Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot (born December 26, circa 1820 - died September 18, 1890) was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. - Harold Robbins
Harold Robbins (born Francis Kane and given the adoptive name of Harold Rubin) (May 21, 1916-October 14 1997) was an American author. Born in New York City, Harold Rubin spent his childhood in an orphanage. He was educated at George Washington High School and after leaving school he worked in several jobs. Robbins made his first million at the age of twenty by selling sugar for the wholesale trade. - Everett Sloane
Everett Sloane was an American television and film actor, songwriter, and theatre director. Sloane is probably best known for his supporting role playing Mr. Bernstein in the cinema classic "Citizen Kane". Born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, Sloane attended the University of Pennsylvania before dropping out in order to join a theater company, but he stopped acting and became a runner on Wall Street after a number of negative stage reviews. - Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon was an American stage actor and stage and film director. Born in Baltimore of Jewish heritage, he was a member of the Group Theatre (1935 - 1940), he was blacklisted as a Communist in the days of McCarthyism. He later joined the faculty of the UCLA Theatre Arts Department. Gordon was the maternal grandfather of actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Due to this, Gordon's Hollywood career neatly falls into two phases. - Tod Slaughter
Tod Slaughter (19 March 1885 - 19 February 1956) was an English actor, best known for playing over-the-top maniacs in macabre film adaptations of Victorian melodramas. Born as Norman Carter Slaughter in Newcastle, he made his way onto the stage in 1905 at West Hartlepool. After a brief interruption to serve during the war in the Royal Flying Corps, Slaughter resumed his career and returned to the stage. - Norman Krasna
Norman Krasna (born November 7, 1909-November 1, 1984) was an American screenwriter, playwright, and film director. He is best known for penning screwball comedies, melodrama, and early films noir. Krasna also directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's "Princess O'Rourke", a film he also directed. Later in his career, he also wrote plays, … - Theresa Rebeck
Theresa Rebeck is an American stage, screen, television, and radio writer. She was born in Kenwood, Ohio (part of the Cincinnati area), and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in 1983, a M.F.A. in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Victorian era melodrama, awarded in 1989. - Marie Corelli
Marie Corelli (May 1, 1855 - April 21, 1924) was a British novelist. Born Mary Mackay in London, she was the illegitimate daughter of a well known Scottish poet and songwriter, Dr. Charles Mackay, and his servant, Elizabeth Mills. In 1866, the very young Mary Mackay was sent to a Parisian convent to further her education. She would only return to the United Kingdom four years later in 1870. Mary Mackay began her career as a musician, … - Jack Perrin
Jack Perrin was an American actor specializing in westerns. He was born Lyman Wakefield Perrin in Three Rivers, Michigan; his father worked in real estate and relocated the family to Los Angeles, California shortly after the turn of the century. Perrin served in the U.S. Navy during World War I. Following the war, he returned to Los Angeles and started acting for Universal Studios. Initially Perrin did bit parts and supporting roles, … - Olive Higgins Prouty
Olive Higgins Prouty (January 10 1882 – March 24 1974) was an American novelist, best known for her pioneering consideration of psychotherapy in "Now, Voyager" starring Bette Davis and her feminist melodrama "Stella Dallas". The latter was used as the basis for two successful films - the 1937 version, which starred Barbara Stanwyck, was nominated for two Academy Awards - and a radio serial which was broadcast daily for 18 years, … - Georg Benda
Georg Anton [Jiří Antonín] Benda was a Bohemian-German kapellmeister and composer. Born in Staré Benátky, Bohemia, Czech Republic, Benda was 19 when Frederick II of Prussia bestowed upon him in 1741 the position of second violinist in the chapel of Berlin. The following year Benda was summoned to Potsdam as a composer and arranger for his older brother Franz, himself an illustrious composer and violinist. - Wilson Barrett
Wilson Barrett (February 18, 1846 - July 22, 1904) was an English actor, manager, and playwright. In the 1880s he was, according to Jacob Adler, the most famous actor on the London stage. Barrett was born in Essex, the son of a farmer. He made his first appearance on the stage at Halifax in 1864, and then played in the provinces alone and with his wife, Caroline Heath, in East Lynne. After managerial experiences at the Grand Theatre, Leeds and elsewhere, … - George Lillo
George Lillo (1693 - 1739) was a British playwright and tragedian. Very little is known of his biography, except that he was a jeweler in London as well as a dramatist. His family may have come from Flanders originally. His most famous play was "The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell" (1731). It is notable for being what might now be called melodrama and for setting Augustan drama into a more melodramatic course. - Mark Rappaport
Mark Rappaport is an American independent/underground film director who has been working sporadically since the early 1970s. His films are often marked by high camp, melodrama, deadpan humor, ennui, and a rather cavalier attitude towards copyright law and intellectual property, often using music, archival footage, and excerpts from Hollywood films without seeking permission. Central to Rappaport's work is the relationship between the audience and media, … - Jane Morgan
Jane Morgan (born December 25, 1920, Newton, Massachusetts) is an American popular singer, specializing in traditional pop music. She was born Florence Catherine Currier, in Newton, Massachusetts (in the Boston area), a relative of Nathaniel Currier, the 19th century lithographer. Her father was the first cellist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led an orchestra and string quartet in the months when the Symphony was out of season. - Edward Fitzball
Edward Fitzball (1792-27 October 1873) was a popular English playwright, who specialised in melodrama. His real surname was Ball, and he was born at Burwell, Cambridgeshire. Fitzball was educated in Newmarket, was apprenticed to a Norwich printer in 1809. He produced some dramatic pieces at the local theatre, and eventually the marked success of his "Innkeeper of Abbeville", or "The Osiler and the Robber" (1820), … - Mark Lemon
Mark Lemon (November 30, 1809 - May 23, 1870) was the editor of "Punch", born in London, England. He had a natural talent for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to devote himself to the writing of plays. More than sixty of his melodramas, operettas and comedies were produced in London. At the same time he contributed to a variety of magazines and newspapers, and founded and edited the "Field". - José Echegaray
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, statesman, and the leading Spanish dramatist of the last quarter of the 19th century. Along with the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, making him the first Spaniard to win the prize. His most famous play is "El gran galeoto", a drama written in the grand nineteenth century manner of melodrama. - Frédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaitre was a French actor and playwright. The son of an architect, he was born Antoine Louis Prosper Lemaitre at Le Havre, Seine-Maritime but adopted the first name Frédérick as a stage name. He spent two years at the Conservatoire, and made his first appearance at a variety performance in one of the basement restaurants at the Palais Royal. - Tareque Masud
Tareque Masud is a Bangladeshi film director who makes films in Bangla. His most widely appreciated films centre around the Bangladesh Liberation War. Masud mentions in his website and on many interviews his childhood experience while studying in a madrasa. The Liberation War fought against Pakistan disrupted his life as it did the lives of countless others. After the war, he pursued a general education and completed his postgraduate Masters degree from Dhaka University. - Faten Hamama
(born 27 May 1931) is an Egyptian producer and an acclaimed actress of film, television, and theatre. She was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from melodramas to historical films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were romantic dramas. Noted for her willingness to play serious characters, she has also acted in some of the most controversial films in the history of Egyptian cinema. - Zdeněk Fibich
Zdeněk Fibich (December 21 1850 - October 15 1900) was a Czech composer of classical music, including chamber works (including two string quartets, a piano trio, piano quartet and a quintet for piano, strings and winds), symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas, the most famous probably The Bride of Messina; melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia, … - Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter
Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter, was a German poet and dramatist. He was born at Gotha. After the completion of his university course at Göttingen, he was appointed second director of the Gotha Archive. He subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law courts, as secretary to the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha legation. In 1768 he returned to Gotha as tutor to two young noblemen, and here, together with HC Boie, he founded the farnous "Göttinger Musenalmanach". - Andrew Halliday
Andrew Halliday Duff (1830 - April 10, 1877), British journalist and dramatist, was born at Marnoch, Banffshire. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and in 1849 he came to London, and discarding the name of Duff, devoted himself to literature. His first engagement was with the daily papers, and his work having attracted the notice of Thackeray, he was invited to write for the "Cornhill Magazine". - N. M. Sheikevitch
N.M. Sheikevitch was a Yiddish novelist and, beginning around 1880, a playwright in Yiddish theater in Odessa, Ukraine. Jacob Adler wrote of his melodramas "Nothing so crude as this can be found in Goldfaden... [but] the humor in Sheikevitch is more believable." His first works for theater were written around 1881 and performed in at the Mariinski Theater in Odessa, Ukraine; Ukraine was then part of Imperial Russia. He soon had a troupe of his own, … - Auguste Vacquerie
Auguste Vacquerie, French journalist and man of letters, was born at Villequier (Seine Inferieure) on 19 November 1819. He was from his earliest days an admirer of Victor Hugo, with whom he was connected by the marriage of his brother Charles with Léopoldine Hugo. His earlier romantic productions include a volume of poems, "L'Enfer de l'esprit" (1840); a translation of the "Antigone" (1844) in collaboration with Paul Meurice; and "Tragaldabas" (1848), … - Elizabeth Polack
Elizabeth Polack was an English playwright of the 1830s, notable for having been "the first Jewish woman melodramatist in England". Few historical records survive detailing the life of Elizabeth Polack. Although neither the year nor place of her birth have been noted, documentation of her activity as a playwright active in London between 1830 and 1838 remains for posterity. Only two of the five plays with which she is credited survive. - William Abbot
William Abbot (June 12, 1798-June 1,1843) was an English actor. He was born in Chelsea, London, and made his first appearance on the stage at Bath in 1806, and his first London appearance in 1808. At Covent Garden in 1813, in light comedy and melodrama, he made his first decided success. He was Pylades to Macready's Orestes in Ambrose Philips's "Distressed Mother" when Macready made his first appearance at that theatre (1816). - Carl Rosman
Carl Rosman is an Australian clarinettist. Rosman studied with Phillip Miechel in Melbourne, then with Peter Jenkin at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has performed in many countries in Europe, Asia, Australasia and both North and South America as a soloist. He is known for his extreme virtuosity, and is closely associated with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, Richard Barrett, Chris Dench and Liza Lim, … - Rebecca Forstadt
Rebecca Trust Olkowski (born December 16, 1953 in Denver, CO), better known by her maiden name, Rebecca Forstadt, is a voice actor who is best known for playing anime girls with sweet voices. She is also known as Reba West and Becky Olkowski. After studying theater at Orange Coast College, in Costa Mesa, CA, Ms. Forstadt began her acting career by working at Knott's Berry Farm's Bird Cage Theater, performing melodramas, … - Moses Horowitz
Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz (February 27, 1844 – March 4, 1910), also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater. Jacob Adler describes him as an "authorit[y] on dramaturgy", but also remarks that before being part of the Yiddish theater in London in the mid-1880s he had "wandered in different lands, involved himself in various undertakings, … - Ron Husmann
Ron Husmann (born June 30 1937) is an American actor. Born in Rockford, Illinois, Husmann graduated from Northwestern University in 1959, and made his Broadway debut in "Fiorello!" later that year. In 1960 he was cast in "Tenderloin", garnering a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and winning the Theatre World Award for his performance. Additional Broadway credits include "All-American", "Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen", … - Freddy Wittop
Freddy Wittop was a Tony Award-winning costume designer. He also enjoyed secondary careers as a dancer and college professor. Born Frederick Wittop Koning in Bussum, the Netherlands, Wittop emigrated with his family to Brussels, where he apprenticed at the age of thirteen with the resident designer at the Brussels Opera. Moving to Paris in 1931, he designed for the Folies Bergère and other music halls, creating costumes for Mistinguett and Josephine Baker, among others. - Dion Boucicault Jr.
Dion Boucicault Jr. (23 May 1859 - 25 June 1929) was an actor and stage director. He was born in New York, the son of Dion Boucicault the elder, the well-known actor and dramatist, and of his wife, Agnes Boucicault, who was also well known on the stage. Boucicault was educated at Esher, Cuddington and Paris, and made his first appearance as an actor in New York on 11 October 1879. His first appearance in London was in November 1880, when he played Andy in his father's play, … - Camillo Federici
Camillo Federici (9 April 1749 - 23 December 1802) was an Italian dramatist and actor. He was born at Garessio, a small town in Piedmont. His real name was Giovanni Battista Viassolo; he took his pen-name from the title of one of his first pieces, "Camillo e Federico". He was educated at Turin, and showed an early fondness for literature, especially for the theatre.
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