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- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He directed a string of successful films, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
His films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." His first such "issue" film was Gentleman's Agreement (1947), with Gregory Peck, which dealt with anti-Semitism in America. It received 8 Oscar nominations and three wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director. It was followed by Pinky (1949), one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against black people. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), an adaptation of the stage play which he had also directed, received 12 Oscar nominations, winning four, and was Marlon Brando's breakthrough role. In 1954, he directed On the Waterfront (1954), a film about union corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. In 1955, he directed John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955), which introduced James Dean to movie audiences.
A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, which brought him strong negative reactions from many liberal friends and colleagues. His testimony helped end the careers of former acting colleagues Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, along with ending the work of playwright Clifford Odets. Kazan later justified his act by saying he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong." Nearly a half-century later, his anti-Communist testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event.
Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. Director Stanley Kubrick called him, "without question, the best director we have in America, and capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses." On September 28, 2003, Elia Kazan died at age 94 of natural causes at his apartment in Manhattan, New York City. Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film A Letter to Elia (2010) as a personal tribute to Kazan.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Henri Verneuil was born on 15 October 1920 in Rodosto, Ottoman Empire [now Tekirdag, Turkey]. He was a director and writer, known for I... For Icarus (1979), The Sheep Has Five Legs (1954) and Mother (1991). He was married to Françoise Bonnot and Véronique Sedro. He died on 11 January 2002 in Bagnolet, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.- Mother Teresa also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun who in 1950 founded and was an active member of the Missionaries of Charity. Although her passport name was Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, she was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Skopje, capital of North Macedonia. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.
- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Grégoire Aslan was born on 28 March 1908 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire. He was an actor and writer, known for Cleopatra (1963), The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and King of Kings (1961). He was married to Denise Noël and Jacqueline Dumonceau. He died on 8 January 1982 in Breage, Cornwall, England, UK.- Aristole Onassis was an ethnic Greek born in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey, who became a billionaire shipping tycoon when the number of billionaires could be counted on one hand. He is known to history as the second husband of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
He was the son of Socrates Onassis, a ship owner with a modest fleet of 10 ships manned by 40 sailors. The relative wealth of his father got the young Ari a good education, and he became fluent in English, Spanish and Turkish. In the aftermath of World War One, when the Ottoman Empire was broken up by the victorious Allies and modern Turkey was created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, many ethnic Greeks were expelled from the new country. The Onassis family fled to Greece as refugees.
Aristotle Onassis emigrated to Argentina in 1923 with 60 dollars (approximately $800 in 2011 dollars, when factored for inflation). He became an importer of Turkish tobacco and eventually became an owner of ships. Eventually, he held Argentine and Greek passports and dual citizenship.
Onassis switched to transporting oil for the major petroleum companies, who could save money by not owning their own fleets. It was the introduction of the supertanker to transport Middle Eastern oil that made Onassis one of the richest men in the world. A supertanker could be paid for with one six-month lease, meaning that the majority of the 20-year life-span of a tanker could result in extraordinary profits. Onassis invested his vast fortune wisely, including in the petroleum industry itself, transportation, and other businesses.
Outside of the business world, Aristole Onassis was little known, and if he was known at all, it was for his romance with the opera singer Maria Callas. However, his 1968 marriage to the widow of the late President John F. Kennedy made him a world-wide figure whose life was chronicled in newspapers around the globe. - Mustafa was born in 1881 in Salonica, then an Ottoman Turkish city, in modern day Greece. His father, Ali Riza, a customs official-turned-lumber merchant, died when Mustafa was still a boy. His mother, Zubeyde, a devout and strong-willed woman, raised him and his younger sister by herself. First enrolled in a traditional Islamic religious school, he soon switched to a modern school. In 1893, he entered a military high school where his mathematics teacher gave him the second name Kemal (meaning perfection in Turkish) in recognition of young Mustafa's superior achievement. He was thereafter known as Mustafa Kemal.
In 1905, Mustafa Kemal graduated from the War Academy in Istanbul with the rank of Staff Captain. Posted in Damascus, Syria, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, he started with several colleagues a clandestine society called "Homeland and Freedom" to fight against the Sultan's despotism. In 1908, he helped the group of officers who toppled the Sultan. Mustafa Kemal's career flourished as he won his heroism in the far corners of the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12 as well as the Balakan Wars of 1913 in which he saw action in Albania and Tripoli, Libya. He also briefly served as a staff officer in Salonica and Istanbul and as a military attache in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In October, 1914, the Ottoman Empire offically entered World War I alongside Germany and Austria as part of the Central Powers fighting the Allies of Great Britian, France, Italy and Russia. In 1915, when the Dardanelles/Galipoli campaign was launched, Mustafa Kemal, recently premoted to Colonel, became a national hero by winning successive victories against the landing British French and ANZAC armies, pinning them down at their beacheads, which finally forced the invaders to evacuate Galipoli in January 1916. Promoted to General later that year, at age 35, he liberated two major provinces in eastern Turkey against the Russian armies. In the next two years, from 1917 to 1918, he served as commander of several Ottoman armies in Palestine, Aleppo, and elsewhere, achieving another major victory by stopping the British advance at Aleppo just before the war-weary Turkish armies agreed to an armistice with the British on October 31, 1918 which ended World War I in the Middle East. As a result of the Ottoman Empire's defeat, the Turks lost all of their Middle East territories with the exception of the traditional Turkish area around the region of Asia Minor.
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed in the Black Sea port of Samsun to start the Greco-Turkish War, (known to the Turks as the War of Independence.) In defiance of the Sultan's government, he rallied a liberation army in Anatolia and convened the Congress of Erzurum and Sivas which established the basis for the new national effort under his leadership. On April 23, 1920, the Grand National Assembly was inaugurated. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was elected as its President. Fighting on many fronts, he led his forces to victory against rebels and the invading Greek armies. Following the Turkish triumph at the two major battles at Izunu in Western Turkey, the Grand National Assembly conferred on Mustafa Kemal Pasha the title of Commander-in-Chief with the rank of Marshal. At the end of August 1922, the Turkish armies won their ultimate victory. Within a few weeks, the Turkish mainland was completely liberated, an armistice with Greece was signed, and the rule of the Ottoman dynasty was abolished.
In July 1923, the national government signed the Lausanne Treaty with Great Britain, France, Greece, Italy, and others countries which regonized the new country of Turkey. In mid-October, Ankara became the capital of the new Turkish State. On October 29, the Republic was proclaimed and Mustafa Kemal Pasha was unanimously elected President of the Republic. Kemal married Latife Usakligil in early 1923. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925.
The account of Kemal Atatürk's fifteen year Presidency (1923-1938) is a saga of dramatic modernization. With indefatigable determination, he created a new political and legal system based on a Swiss Civil Code, abolished the Islamic Caliphate and made both government and education secular, gave equal rights to women, changed the Turkish language by transfering the written language from the Arabic script to the Roman alphabet, and the attire from Islamic to Western, and advanced the arts and the sciences, agriculture and industry.
In 1934, when the surname law was adopted, the national parliament gave him the name "Atatürk" (Turkish for Father of the Turks). A heavy drinker most of his life, Atatürk developed liver and kidney problems durng the last year of his life. He died on November 10, 1938, at age 57. The "national liberator" and the "Father of modern Turkey" was dead. But his legacy to his people and to the world endures to this very day. - Steve Plytas was born on 9 January 1913 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor, known for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Batman (1989) and The Young Lady from London (1959). He was married to Amy Doris Foxell. He died on 27 December 1994 in Surrey, England, UK.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Alice Sapritch was unattractive and she knew it for a fact. She nevertheless decided to become an actress, aware that she would never be the love interest of the handsome hero or play the blushing ingénue. That's the reason why she set about emphasizing her lack of glamor instead of concealing it. In these conditions, two main categories were available to her, either obnoxious monsters (Folcoche in TV made 'Vipère au poing') or foolish eccentrics (the crazy actress in 'L'événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la lune'). In 1971, with 'La folie des grandeurs', Gérard Oury gave her the opportunity to combine monstrosity and ridicule in a single character, the duenna of the Queen of Spain who, although as ugly as sin, indulges in what may well be the most comical striptease ever filmed. Unforgettable! And not being a beauty queen also happened to be an advantage. Didn't she play Hamlet's mother at the age of twenty-three? And when she was older, the beauty factor having become irrelevant, she was able to embody the poignant 'Mère russe' (Russian Mother) in the TV film of the same title. The real trouble is her film career for, in spite of one or two satisfying roles, she appeared in an endless series of particularly inept vulgar French 'comedies'. By her own admission, she would have dreamed of being directed by Bergman, Schlöndorff or Herzog and she wound up working for Philippe Clair, Michel Gérard, Jean Luret and co! Of course there were a few exceptions to this rule, for instance when she played Aunt Elizabeth in Téchiné's 1978 'Les soeurs Brontë' and a few appearances in good quality films at the beginning of her career but all in all her performances on the silver screen are a real disappointment compared with what she did on TV and on the boards.- Writer
- Actor
A.I. Bezzerides was born on 9 August 1908 in Samsun, Ottoman Empire [now Turkey]. He was a writer and actor, known for Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and They Drive by Night (1940). He was married to Von Gorne, Yvonne and Silvia Richards. He died on 1 January 2007 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Andrew Hughes was born on 1 January 1908 in Ottoman Empire. He was an actor, known for Kureji no daiboken (1965), Esupai (1974) and King Kong Escapes (1967). He died on 1 September 1996.
- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Darío Moreno was born on 3 April 1921 in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire [now Izmir, Turkey]. He was an actor, known for The Wages of Fear (1953), Kill Me Gently (1967) and Le Bal (1983). He died on 1 December 1968 in Istanbul, Turkey.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Arsevir Alyanak was born on 27 September 1907 in Adapazari, Ottoman Empire [now Sakarya, Turkey]. He was a director and writer, known for Yaban kiz (1954), Sokak çocugu (1958) and Kara bahtim (1957). He died on 1 May 1981 in Istanbul, Turkey.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Muzaffer Tema was born on 15 June 1919 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor and producer, known for Vahsi kedi (1962), 11 Uhr 20 (1970) and Disi yilan (1956). He was married to Ayten Çankaya. He died on 4 October 2011 in Çesme, Turkey.- Osman Yusuf was born on 23 May 1920 in Ottoman Empire [now Turkey]. He was an actor, known for King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963), Submersion of Japan (1973) and Mothra (1961). He died on 29 August 1982 in Japan.
- Producer
- Director
- Editor
Henri Langlois was born on 13 November 1914 in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire [now Izmir, Turkey]. He was a producer and director, known for Montage de films muets français (1974), Le métro (1934) and Spatiodynamisme (1958). He died on 13 January 1977 in Paris, France.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Charles Gérard was born on 1 December 1922 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor and director, known for L'homme qui trahit la mafia (1967), Daggers Drawn (1964) and La loi des hommes (1962). He died on 19 September 2019 in Versailles, Yvelines, France.- Rudolph Schildkraut was born on 27 April 1862 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor, known for His People (1925), The King of Kings (1927) and Pals in Paradise (1926). He was married to Ernestine Weinstein. He died on 15 July 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Kenan Pars was born on 10 March 1920 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor and producer, known for Oglum (1961), Bir atesim yanarim (1966) and Cinayet gecesi (1963). He died on 10 March 2008 in Istanbul, Turkey.- Actor
- Make-Up Department
- Director
Aram Katcher was born on 5 July 1921 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor and director, known for The Girl in the Kremlin (1957), The Right Hand of the Devil (1963) and The Female Animal (1958). He died on 20 April 1998 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Vassilis Georgiadis was a Greek director, film producer and actor. Two of Georgiadis's films, "The Red Lanterns" and "Blood on the Land", were nominated by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the final five for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Also in 1970 his film "Girls in the Sun" was nominated by the Foreign Correspondents' Association in Los Angeles for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Muharrem Gürses was born on 22 August 1913 in Amasya, Ottoman Empire [now Turkey]. He was an actor and writer, known for Malazgirt kahramani Alpaslan (1967), Bizansi titreten yigit (1967) and Zaloglu Rüstem (1966). He died on 7 April 1999 in Istanbul, Turkey.- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Turkish football player, film director, actor, editor, screenwriter, producer, lecturer and Honorary Professor.
He graduated from Vefa Lisesi in 1937. In 1938, he dropped out of Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine in the third year of his education.
Ün changed the language of cinema by going beyond the melodrama mould with the film Üc Arkadas in 1958. The film was considered one of the best films of Turkish cinema. Thanks to his success in this film, he was invited to the Film Friends Association and became one of the important directors of Turkish cinema. During this period, he started to live with Fatma Girik and the couple's relationship continued for life.
In 1960, he started the era of child stars in Turkish cinema history with the film Aysecik. After his success with Aysecik, his partnership with Arsavir Alyanak at Yakut Film ended and he founded Ugur Film.
In 1990, he made his first self-financed film, Tüm Kapilar Kapaliydi, in which he turned to a subject and cinematography not seen in his previous films. This was followed by the films Gün Ortasinda Karanlik and Zikkimin Kökü, which received many awards. The last film he directed was Sinema Bir Mucizedir (2005), but due to his illness he could not complete the film and handed it over to Tunc Basaran.
He worked as a lecturer at Mimar Sinan University Cinema-TV Department.
Film worker Memduh Ün died on 16 October 2015 at the age of 95 in Bodrum where he was being treated.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Talat Artemel was born on 24 April 1901 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. He was an actor and director, known for Hürriyet Apartmani (1944), Sonsuz aci (1946) and Nasreddin Hoca (1954). He was married to Cahide Sonku. He died on 4 August 1957 in Bolu, Turkey.- Additional Crew
One of the greatest photographers of all time Yousuf Karsh arrived in Canada as an Armenian refugee from the Turkish Ottoman Empire which perpetrated the Armenian genocide. In 1928 Karsh apprenticed with photographer John Garo in Boston then returned to Canada where Prime Minister Mackenzie King helped him photograph the visiting diplomats. In 1941 Karsh took the legendary portrait of Winston Churchill -- one of the most reproduced images in history.
The photographic subjects of Karsh (Armenian name Hovsep Karshian) included Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Queen Elizabeth II, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Pope John Paul II, Grace Kelly, John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Sophia Loren, Laurence Olivier, George Bernard Shaw, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, Humphrey Bogart, Mother Theresa, Walt Disney, Mohammed Ali, Martin Luther King and many more.
Karsh was named one of the 100 Most Notable People of the Century in 2000 by International Who's Who and Karsh had photographed 51 of those 100. Karsh was also the only Armenian, the only Canadian, and the only photographer to make the list.
Karsh died at age 93 on July 13th, 2002 in Boston.
His awards include: Medal of Service of the Order of Canada and the Centennial Medal (1968), Medal of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1975), Achievement of Life Award of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1980), Companion of the Order of Canada (1990), Gold Medal of Merit of the National Society of Arts and Letters, USA (1991).
Karsh's 100th anniversary was marked by the release of 3 postal stamps with photographs Karsh took of Winston Churchill, Audrey Hepburn, and of himself.- Writer
- Director
- Music Department
Nazim Hikmet was born on 15 January 1902 in Salonica, Ottoman Empire [now Thessaloniki, Greece]. He was a writer and director, known for Wings of Desire (1987), Günese dogru (1937) and Dügün gecesi (1933). He was married to Wera Tuljakowa, Münevver and Piraye. He died on 3 June 1963 in Moscow, USSR [now Russia].