Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
Only includes names with the selected topics
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
1-3 of 3
- Actor
- Soundtrack
With his lanky frame, big nose, toothbrush moustache and horn-rimmed glasses he looked like someone had decided to cross Groucho Marx with Albert Einstein. The perennial scene-stealer Felix Bressart had two distinct careers as a comic actor: an earlier one, on stage and screen in his native Germany, and a later -- even more prosperous one -- in Hollywood. Trained under Maria Moissi in Berlin, Felix began acting professionally after World War I. He honed his skills in the genres of political parody, musical comedy and slapstick farce in the theatres of Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna (with Max Reinhardt). By 1933, he had established his film acting credentials in popular mainstream movies like Three from the Filling Station (1930) and Die Privatsekretärin (1931). Like so many other distinguished actors he was forced to leave the German realm after the Nazis took power in 1933. Felix moved via Switzerland and France to a new domicile in the United States where his connections to fellow émigrés like Joe Pasternak and Ernst Lubitsch guaranteed him rapid and steady employment.
In Hollywood, Felix joined the regular company of stock players at MGM. He was immediately typecast, his stock-in-trade being disheveled academics, wistful European philosophers, scientists and music professors of diverse ethnicity. His first major screen success was as one of the Russian commissars in Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939), a delightful performance which spawned as similar part being created for him in Comrade X (1940). The role which ultimately defined his career, in equal parts comedy and pathos, was in the classic wartime satire To Be or Not to Be (1942), as Greenberg, a Jewish member of an acting troupe with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. It seemed, that Felix was still underemployed in films, since he managed to practise as a doctor of medicine on the side. Sadly, he died of leukemia in 1949 at the untimely age of 57.- Art Department
- Costume Designer
Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Grigorovich (Alexandra Exter) was born on January 6, 1882, in Belostok, Russian Empire (now Poland). Her father, named Aleksandr Grigorovich, was a wealthy businessman. She married a successful Kiev lawyer, named Nicolas Evgenievich Ekster, who was her cousin. Alekandra Ekster was an attractive, elegant, cosmopolitan lady, and soon became the toast of the town. Her painting studio in the attic at 27 Funduklievskaya Street was a rallying stage for Kiev's intellectual elite. There she was visited by poets and writers Anna Akhmatova, Ossip Mandelstam, Ilja Ehrenburg, director Aleksandr Tairov, the dancers Bronislava Njinska, and 'Elsa Kruger', and many artists.
Exter studied art at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Montparnasse, Paris, during the 1907 and 1908. Then she returned to Kiev and participated in exhibitions with David Burlyuk. During the following years Exter lived between Kiev, Odessa, Milan, and Paris and was exhibiting her works in Salon des Independants in Paris, and in International Futurist Exhibitions in Milan and Rome. At that time she established a circle of famous friends such as 'Andre Gide', Guillaume Apollinaire, Fernand Leger, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque. She was influenced by Cubism and was a personal friend of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who introduced her to Gertrude Stein. By the 1917 her manner of painting had evolved to the point where any recognizable objects were gone. Exter's works became studies in blocks of bright colors. In 1918 she produced street decorations in abstract style in Kiev and Odessa. From 1918-1920 she founded and led a teaching and production workshop in Kiev. There her students were Grigoriy Kozintsev, Sergei Yutkevich, and Aleksei Kapler among others. In 1921 Exter moved to Moscow. There she collaborated with Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, and other Russian avant-garde artists. From 1921-1924 she was teaching art in Moscow, at the Higher Artistic-Technical Workshop (VKHUTEMAS). At that time Exter achieved success as a stage designer, most recognized for her work for the Moscow Chamber Theatre of Aleksandr Tairov.
In 1924 Alexandra Exter and her husband emigrated to France and settled in Paris. She taught at the Academie der Moderne in Paris and later was a professor at Academie d'Art Contemporain under 'Fernand Leger'. She also worked as a book illustrator for the publishing company Flammarion. During her life Exter produced a large number of paintings, graphic works, street designs, and theatrical costumes and decorations, and worked in a variety of styles from Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism and Constructivism.
Alexandra Exter died on March 17, 1949, in Fontanay-aux-Roses, near Paris, France.- Camera and Electrical Department
Owen Crompton was born on 11 March 1893 in Melbourne, Australia. He died on 17 March 1949 in Los Angeles, California, USA.