Here are just a few of the great Hollywood stars that lit up the silver screen during the Model A era
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American film actor. Although he won acclaim and major awards
for a wide variety of roles, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys."]
Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for its famous grapefruit scene, the film
thrust Cagney into the spotlight, making him one of Warners' and Hollywood's biggest stars. In 1938 he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for Angels with Dirty Faces, before winning in 1942 for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me.
Cagney walked out on Warners several times over his career, each time coming back on improved personal
and artistic terms. In 1935 he sued Warners for breach of contract and won; this marked one of the first times an actor had
beaten the studios on a contract issue. He worked for an independent film company for a year while the suit was settled, and
also established his own production company, Cagney Productions in 1942 before returning to Warners again four years later.
Jack Warner called him "The Professional Againster", in reference to Cagney’s refusal to be pushed around.
Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting tours of troops before and during World War II, and was President of the Screen Actors Guild for two years.
Jean Harlow (March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American
film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Platinum Blonde" and (as Maxene Andrews describes her) the "Blonde Bombshell" due to her famous platinum blonde hair, and ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time
by the American Film Institute, Harlow starred in several films, mainly designed to showcase
her magnetic sex appeal and strong screen presence, before making the transition to more developed roles and achieving massive
fame under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Harlow's enormous popularity and "laughing vamp" image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which
was marred by disappointment, tragedy, and ultimately, her sudden death from renal failure at age 26.
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OUR GANG aka THE LITTLE RASCALS |
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals,
was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, Our Gang was produced at the Roach studio starting in 1922 as a silent short subject series.
Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, went to sound in 1929 and continued production until 1938, when he sold the series to
MGM. MGM in turn continued producing the comedies until 1944. A total of 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky, were eventually produced, featuring over forty-one child actors. In the mid-1950s, the 80 Roach-produced shorts with sound were syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals, as MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark.
The series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural
way. While child actors are often groomed to imitate adult acting styles, steal scenes, or deliver "cute" performances, Hal
Roach and original director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular kids. Our Gang also notably put
boys, girls, whites and blacks together in a group as equals, something that "broke new ground," according to film historian Leonard Maltin. Such a thing had never been done before in cinema but was commonplace after the success of Our Gang.
First Academy Awards (1929): The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929. It was a
quiet affair compared to the glamor and glitz that accompany the ceremonies of today. Two hundred and fifty people attended
the black-tie banquet that evening in the Blossom Room of Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Emil Jannings, the winner for best actor,
had decided to go back to his home in Germany before the ceremony. Before he left for his trip, Jannings was handed the very
first Academy Award.
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