1{2 "document_id": "lb_2wikimqa_cf5321576ab8cc1b8453991abac66aa5d46155d8ffa7ee17",3 "family": "public_2wikimqa",4 "split": "test",5 "text": "Passage 1:\nLamman Rucker\nLamman Rucker (born October 6, 1971) is an American actor. Rucker began his career on the daytime soap operas As the World Turns and All My Children, before roles in The Temptations, Tyler Perry's films Why Did I Get Married?, Why Did I Get Married Too?, and Meet the Browns, and its television adaptation. In 2016, he began starring as Jacob Greenleaf in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf. Rucker is married to Kelly Davis Rucker, a graduate of Hampton University. As of 2022, he stars in BET+ drama The Black Hamptons.\n\nEarly life\nRucker was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Malaya (née Ray) and Eric Rucker. He has partial ancestry from Barbados. Rucker spent his formative years in the greater Washington, DC, Maryland area. He first had an interest in acting after he was placed in many child pageants. His first acting role was as Martin Luther King in the 4th grade. He was in the drama club in 7th grade and then attended high school at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. Rucker studied at Carnegie-Mellon University and Duquesne University.On August 29, 2019, he shared personal life experiences that he credits for his success with the Hampton University football team.\n\nCareer\nHis major role came in 2002 when he assumed the role of attorney T. Marshall Travers on the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns opposite Tamara Tunie. He left the series the following year and portrayed Garret Williams on ABC soap opera All My Children in 2005. He also had the recurring roles on the UPN sitcoms All of Us and Half & Half.\nRucker is best known for his roles in the Tyler Perry's films. He co-starred in Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010). He played Will Brown in 2008 film Meet The Browns. He later had a starring role on Perry's sitcom Meet the Browns reprising his role as Will from 2009 to 2011. The following year after Meet the Browns, Rucker was cast in the male lead role opposite Anne Heche in the NBC comedy series Save Me, but left after pilot episode. He later had roles in a number of small movies and TV movies. Rucker also had regular role opposite Mena Suvari in the short-lived WE tv drama series, South of Hell.In 2015, Rucker was cast as one of leads in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf. He plays Jacob Greenleaf, the eldest son of Lynn Whitfield' and Keith David's characters.\n\nFilmography\nFilm\nTelevision\nAward nominations\nPassage 2:\nRichard T. Jones\nRichard Timothy Jones (born January 16, 1972) is an American actor. He has worked extensively in both film and television productions since the early 1990s. His television roles include Ally McBeal (1997), Judging Amy (1998–2005), CSI: Miami (2006), Girlfriends (2007), Grey's Anatomy (2010), Hawaii Five-0 (2011–2014), Narcos (2015), and Criminal Minds (2017). Since 2018, he has played Police Sergeant Wade Grey on the ABC police drama The Rookie.His film roles include portrayals of Lamont Carr in Disney's Full Court Miracle (2003), Laveinio \"Slim\" Hightower in Rick Famuyiwa's coming-of-age film The Wood (1999), Mike in Tyler Perry's dramatic films Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010), and Captain Russell Hampton in the Hollywood blockbuster Godzilla (2014).\n\nEarly life\nJones was born in Kobe, Japan, to American parents and grew up in Carson, California. He is the son of Lorene, a computer analyst, and Clarence Jones, a professional baseball player who at the time of Jones' birth was playing for the Nankai Hawks in Osaka. He has an older brother, Clarence Jones Jr., who works as a high school basketball coach. They would return to North America after Clarence's retirement following the 1978 season. His parents later divorced. Jones attended Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, California, then graduated from Tuskegee University.\n\nCareer\nSince the early 1990s, Jones has worked in both film and television productions.His first television role was in a 1993 episode of the series California Dreams. That same year, he appeared as Ike Turner, Jr. in What's Love Got to Do with It. From 1999 to 2005, he starred as Bruce Calvin van Exel in the CBS legal drama series Judging Amy.Over the next two decades, Jones starred or guest-starred in high-profile television series such as Ally McBeal (1997), CSI: Miami (2006), Girlfriends (2007), Grey's Anatomy (2010), Hawaii Five-0 (2011–2014), Narcos (2015), and Criminal Minds (2017).His film roles include portrayals of Lamont Carr in the Disney film Full Court Miracle (2003), Laveinio \"Slim\" Hightower in Rick Famuyiwa's coming-of-age film The Wood (1999), and Mike in Tyler Perry's dramatic films Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010), and Captain Russell Hampton in the Hollywood blockbuster Godzilla (2014).From 2017 to 2018, Jones played Detective Tommy Cavanaugh in the CBS drama series Wisdom of the Crowd.Since February 2018, Jones has played the role of Sergeant Wade Gray in the ABC police procedural drama series The Rookie with Nathan Fillion.\n\nPersonal life\nJoshua Media Ministries claims that its leader, David E. Taylor, mentors Jones in ministry, and that Jones has donated $1 million to its efforts.\n\nFilmography\nFilm\nTelevision\nPassage 3:\nPort of Seven Seas\nPort of Seven Seas is a 1938 drama film starring Wallace Beery and featuring Frank Morgan and Maureen O'Sullivan. The movie was written by Preston Sturges based on the plays of Marcel Pagnol and the films based on them, and was directed by James Whale, the director of Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). The cinematography is by Karl Freund, who filmed Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and I Love Lucy (1951-1957).\n\nPlot\nTCM Synopsis:\nIn the port of Marseilles, France, Honore Panisse, a well-to-do sailmaker in his fifties, is enamored of the lovely Madelon, the daughter of a widowed fishmonger. For many years Panisse has played cards with Bruneau, Captain Escartefigue and tavern-owner Cesar, the father of Marius, the boy with whom Madelon is in love. Though Cesar and Marius are great friends, they argue constantly, especially over Panisse's infatuation with Madelon, whom Cesar considers one of the family. One day, Marius sends Madelon a note saying that he is going to sea for three years, but cannot say goodbye in person because it would break his heart. Madelon rushes to the docks and faints as his ship sails away. Because Panisse has just arrived, he tries to carry her home, but Cesar insists on taking her himself, not realizing that Marius has gone. Panisse tries to tell him why she fainted, but cannot, and listens fretfully as Cesar tells him that the two young people will soon be married. When he tells Madelon's mother Honorine this, Madelon, now revived, tells them that Marius has gone. Despite her love, she did not stop him because she knew how much he loved the sea. One month later, As Cesar pretends not to care that Marius has not written, the postman arrives with a letter from the boy. When Madelon arrives he reads the letter aloud, saddening Madelon, who is barely mentioned. Soon Panisse goes to Honorine to ask once again for the hand of Madelon. At the same time, Madelon finds out that she is pregnant and prays that she will have the strength to tell her mother. Madelon later goes to Panisse and tells him why she cannot marry him, but he is overjoyed with the news of her pregnancy because he has always wanted a son and his late wife was never able to bear a child. Because Panisse is so kind, Madelon agrees to marry him for the sake of the little one, and when Cesar arrives, quells his anger by telling him the truth. Cesar finally relents in his anger at Panissse for \"stealing\" his grandchild when Panisse says that he will make Cesar the godfather. They agree to call the boy Cesar Marius Panisse. After the baby is born, he is the apple of Panisse's eye, and Madelon gains the gratitude of Panisse's aged relatives, as well as the continued devotion of Panisse. One year later, just after Panisse has reluctantly boarded the train to go to Paris on business, Marius unexpectedly shows up at his father's house, returned to France to obtain some equipment for his ship. During the night, Marius goes to see Madelon, knowing that she has married Panisse, and Madelon lies to him, saying that Panisse is asleep. Marius confesses how much he has missed her, but she tells him it's too late. When the baby cries, she goes to him and Marius realizes that the child is his. When she tearfully confesses that Panisse is actually in Paris, Marius asks her to come away with him, but she tells him to go away. Just then Cesar comes back. He has returned home because he ran into the town doctor on the train and learned that a neighbor's child has contracted scarlet fever. He tells Marius to go away because that the baby now belongs to Panisse. She wants to go away with him and the baby, but just as they are talking, Panisse comes home because he was worried about the baby. Soon Cesar arrives also and tells Marius to go, but he refuses to leave without Madelon and the baby. Though Panisse sadly says that Madelon can have her freedom, he adds that he cannot give the baby up. When Panisse goes to check on the baby, Madelon and Cesar make Marius realize that the baby belongs as much to Panisse as Marius or Madelon. When Panisse returns, Marius shakes his hand and goes away, after which Panisse and Madelon happily look at their baby's first tooth.\nIn the French port of Marseille, a lovely young woman named Madelon is in love with a young sailor, Marius. Madelon in turn is loved by Honore Panisse, a well-to-do middle-aged sailmaker. When Marius finds out he must go to sea for three years, he leaves without saying goodbye to Madelon; in a note he tells her that it would break his heart to tell her in person. She rushes to the dock, but sees his ship sailing away and faints. Marius's father Cesar, who already thinks of Madelon as one of the family, carries her to her home.\nLater, Madelon finds out that she is pregnant, and to spare her the shame of a child born out of wedlock, Panisse asks Madelon to get an abortion. She agrees, and goes to find a rusty clotheshanger. She proceeds with her attempt to kill her fetus. She did not succeed, and was rushed to the hospital bleeding.\nA year later Marius unexpectedly returns from sea to buy some equipment for his ship. Visiting Madelon that night, he sees the baby and realizes that he is the father. He asks her to steal away with him, but she refuses. Despite her love for Marius, she knows that Panisse, who adores the child, will be a better father than Marius, who will be away at sea for many years at a time. Marius leaves, shaking Panisse's hand before he goes, and Panisse and Madelon happily look at their baby's first tooth.\n\nCast\nWallace Beery as Cesar\nFrank Morgan as Panisse\nMaureen O'Sullivan as Madelon\nJohn Beal as Marius\nJessie Ralph as Honorine\nCora Witherspoon as Claudine\nEtienne Girardot as Bruneau\nE. Alyn Warren as Captain Escartefigue\nJerry Colonna as Arab Rug Dealer (uncredited)\nHenry Hull as Uncle Alzear (uncredited)\nDoris Lloyd as Customer (uncredited)\nFred Malatesta as Bird Seller (uncredited)\nRobert Spindola as Boy (uncredited)\n\nProduction\nAlthough the credited basis of Port of Seven Seas was Marcel Pagnol's 1931 play Fanny, the screenplay incorporated some incidents from three French films written by Pagnol based on his plays: Marius (1931), directed by Alexander Korda, Fanny (1932), directed by Marc Allégret, and César (1936), which Pagnol directed. The play \"Marius\" was a great success and was played more than one thousand times in Paris.\nWilliam Wyler was slated to direct the film at the time that Preston Sturges was brought into the project, the working titles for which were \"Fanny\", \"Madelon\", \"Life on the Waterfront\" and \"Man of the Waterfront\". Ernest Vajda had been reported to be one of the screenwriters, but was not credited. The project was considered by Universal Studios in late 1933 or early 1934, but was dropped sometime after Joseph Breen, who supervised the Production Code, rejected the submitted script. Paramount Pictures had some interest in it, before the script ended up at MGM by July 1936. Although the MGM script was still essentially the one that Universal had submitted to the Hays Office, this time the censors found it \"acceptable\", and it was approved on 15 March 1938. This did not prevent the Legion of Decency from protesting that the film \"lower[ed] the standards\" that the Production Code was designed to uphold.Port of Seven Seas was in production from late December 1937 through 28 January 1938, with retakes completed on 23 February. Shortly before production started, Luise Rainer, who was to have played \"Madelon\" was replaced by Maureen O'Sullivan because of a bad cold.\nThe film was released on 1 July 1938, the long delay coming about because the studio considered the subject matter \"dangerous\" for the film industry while Congress was considering legislation which had implications for film censorship.The movie was premiered on July 1, 1938 in New York City. Marcel Pagnol and Raimu (the great French actor who played Cesar in the French plays and movies) were invited but did not come, supposedly for fear of air travel. The movie was premiered in France in Marseille, later in 1938, at the movie theatre \"Le Noailles\" with Wallace Beery, Marcel Pagnol and Raimu in attendance.\n\nOther versions\nPagnol's plays provided source material for the three French films noted above, a 1933 Italian film named Fanny, the 1934 German film Der Schwarze Walfisch (\"The Black Whale\"), the 1954 Broadway musical Fanny, and the 1961 non-musical film based in part on it. Even though many situations and incidents in the 1961 film originated in Port of the Seven Seas, neither it nor Preston Sturges was credited.\n\nNotes\nExternal links\nPort of Seven Seas at IMDb \nPort of Seven Seas at the TCM Movie Database \nPort of Seven Seas at AllMovie\nPassage 4:\nOlav Aaraas\nOlav Aaraas (born 10 July 1950) is a Norwegian historian and museum director.\nHe was born in Fredrikstad. From 1982 to 1993 he was the director of Sogn Folk Museum, from 1993 to 2010 he was the director of Maihaugen and from 2001 he has been the director of the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. In 2010 he was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.\nPassage 5:\nDana Blankstein\nDana Blankstein-Cohen (born March 3, 1981) is the executive director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. She was appointed by the board of directors in November 2019. Previously she was the CEO of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television. She is a film director, and an Israeli culture entrepreneur.\n\nBiography\nDana Blankstein was born in Switzerland in 1981 to theatre director Dedi Baron and Professor Alexander Blankstein. She moved to Israel in 1983 and grew up in Tel Aviv.\nBlankstein graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Jerusalem in 2008 with high honors. During her studies she worked as a personal assistant to directors Savi Gabizon on his film Nina's Tragedies and to Renen Schorr on his film The Loners. She also directed and shot 'the making of' film on Gavison's film Lost and Found. Her debut film Camping competed at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2007.\n\nFilm and academic career\nAfter her studies, Dana founded and directed the film and television department at the Kfar Saba municipality. The department encouraged and promoted productions filmed in the city of Kfar Saba, as well as the established cultural projects, and educational community activities.\nBlankstein directed the mini-series \"Tel Aviviot\" (2012). From 2016-2019 was the director of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television.\nIn November 2019 Dana Blankstein Cohen was appointed the new director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School where she also oversees the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab. In 2022, she spearheaded the launch of the new Series Lab and the film preparatory program for Arabic speakers in east Jerusalem.\n\nFilmography\nTel Aviviot (mini-series; director, 2012)\nGrowing Pains (graduation film, Sam Spiegel; director and screenwriter, 2008)\nCamping (debut film, Sam Spiegel; director and screenwriter, 2006)\nPassage 6:\nMichael Ning\nMichael Ning (Chinese: 凌智豪; Jyutping: ling4 zi3 hou4 born 5 November 1979) known professionally as Chinese: 白只; pinyin: bái zhī; Jyutping: baak6 zi2\nis a Hong Kong born Chinese actor best known for his role in the 2015 film Port of Call.\n\nFilmography\nPassage 7:\nPeter Levin\nPeter Levin is an American director of film, television and theatre.\n\nCareer\nSince 1967, Levin has amassed a large number of credits directing episodic television and television films. Some of his television series credits include Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, James at 15, The Paper Chase, Family, Starsky & Hutch, Lou Grant, Fame, Cagney & Lacey, Law & Order and Judging Amy.Some of his television film credits include Rape and Marriage: The Rideout Case (1980), A Reason to Live (1985), Popeye Doyle (1986), A Killer Among Us (1990), Queen Sized (2008) and among other films. He directed \"Heart in Hiding\", written by his wife Audrey Davis Levin, for which she received an Emmy for Best Day Time Special in the 1970s.\nPrior to becoming a director, Levin worked as an actor in several Broadway productions. He costarred with Susan Strasberg in \"[The Diary of Ann Frank]\" but had to leave the production when he was drafted into the Army. He trained at the Carnegie Mellon University. Eventually becoming a theatre director, he directed productions at the Long Wharf Theatre and the Pacific Resident Theatre Company. He also co-founded the off-off-Broadway Theatre [the Hardware Poets Playhouse] with his wife Audrey Davis Levin and was also an associate artist of The Interact Theatre Company.\nPassage 8:\nIan Barry (director)\nIan Barry is an Australian director of film and TV.\n\nSelect credits\nWaiting for Lucas (1973) (short)\nStone (1974) (editor only)\nThe Chain Reaction (1980)\nWhose Baby? (1986) (mini-series)\nMinnamurra (1989)\nBodysurfer (1989) (mini-series)\nRing of Scorpio (1990) (mini-series)\nCrimebroker (1993)\nInferno (1998) (TV movie)\nMiss Lettie and Me (2002) (TV movie)\nNot Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) (documentary)\nThe Doctor Blake Mysteries (2013)\nPassage 9:\nJames Whale\nJames Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theatre director and actor, who spent the greater part of his career in Hollywood. He is best remembered for several horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), all considered classics. Whale also directed films in other genres, including the 1936 film version of the musical Show Boat.\nWhale was born into a large family in Dudley, Worcestershire now Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. He discovered his artistic talent early on and studied art. With the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the British Army and became an officer. He was captured by the Germans and during his time as a prisoner of war he realised he was interested in drama. Following his release at the end of the war he became an actor, set designer and director. His success directing the 1928 play Journey's End led to his move to the US, first to direct the play on Broadway and then to Hollywood, California, to direct films. He lived in Hollywood for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime romantic partner, producer David Lewis. Apart from Journey's End (1930), which was released by Tiffany Films, and Hell's Angels (1930), released by United Artists, he directed a dozen films for Universal Pictures between 1931 and 1937, developing a style characterised by the influence of German Expressionism and a highly mobile camera.\nAt the height of his career as a director, Whale directed The Road Back (1937), a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. Studio interference, possibly spurred by political pressure from Nazi Germany, led to the film's being altered from Whale's vision, and it was a critical failure. A run of box-office disappointments followed and, while he would make one final short film in 1950, by 1941 his film directing career was effectively over. He continued to direct for the stage and also rediscovered his love for painting and travel. His investments made him wealthy and he lived a comfortable retirement until suffering strokes in 1956 that robbed him of his vigor and left him in pain. He committed suicide on 29 May 1957 by drowning himself in his swimming pool.\nWhale was openly gay throughout his career, something that was very rare in the 1920s and 1930s. As knowledge of his sexual orientation has become more widespread, some of his films, Bride of Frankenstein in particular, have been interpreted as having a gay subtext and it has been claimed that his refusal to remain in the closet led to the end of his career.\n\nEarly years\nWhale was born in Dudley, Worcestershire, at the heart of the Black Country, the sixth of seven children of William, a blast furnaceman, and Sarah, a nurse. He attended Kates Hill Board School, followed by Bayliss Charity School and finally Dudley Blue Coat School. His attendance stopped in his teenage years, because the cost would have been prohibitive and his labor was needed to help support the family. Thought not physically strong enough to follow his brothers into the local heavy industries, Whale started work as a cobbler, reclaiming the nails he recovered from replaced soles and selling them for scrap for extra money. He discovered he had some artistic ability and earned additional money lettering signs and price tags for his neighbors. He used his additional income to pay for evening classes at the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts.World War I broke out in early August 1914. Although Whale had little interest in the politics behind the war, he realized that conscription was inevitable, so he voluntarily enlisted just before it was introduced, into the British Army's Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in October 1915, and was stationed initially at Bristol. He was subsequently commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Worcestershire Regiment in July 1916. He was taken prisoner of war in battle on the Western Front in Flanders in August 1917, and was held at Holzminden Officers' Camp, where he remained until the war's end, being repatriated to England in December 1918. While imprisoned he became actively involved, as an actor, writer, producer and set-designer, in the amateur theatrical productions that took place in the camp, finding them \"a source of great pleasure and amusement\". He also developed a talent for poker, and after the war he cashed in the chits and IOUs from his fellow prisoners that he had amassed in gambling to provide himself with finances for re-entry into civilian life.\n\nCareer\nTheatre\nAfter the armistice, he returned to Birmingham and tried to find work as a cartoonist. He sold two cartoons to the Bystander in 1919 but was unable to secure a permanent position. Later that year he embarked on a professional stage career. Under the tutelage of actor-manager Nigel Playfair, he worked as an actor, set designer and builder, \"stage director\" (akin to a stage manager) and director. In 1922, while with Playfair, he met Doris Zinkeisen. They were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. They were reportedly engaged in 1924, but by 1925 the engagement was off.In 1928 Whale was offered the opportunity to direct two private performances of R. C. Sherriff's then-unknown play Journey's End for the Incorporated Stage Society, a theatre society that mounted private Sunday performances of plays. Set over a four-day period in March 1918 in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, France, Journey's End gives a glimpse into the experiences of the officers of a British infantry company in World War I. The key conflict is between Capt. Stanhope, the company commander, and Lt. Raleigh, the brother of Stanhope's fiancée. Whale offered the part of Stanhope to the then barely known Laurence Olivier. Olivier initially declined the role, but after meeting the playwright agreed to take it on. Maurice Evans was cast as Raleigh. The play was well received and transferred to the Savoy Theatre in London's West End, opening on 21 January 1929. A young Colin Clive was now in the lead role, Olivier having accepted an offer to take the lead in a production of Beau Geste. The play was a tremendous success, with critics uniform and effusive in their praise and with audiences sometimes sitting in stunned silence following its conclusion only to burst into thunderous ovations. As Whale biographer James Curtis wrote, the play \"managed to coalesce, at the right time and in the right manner, the impressions of a whole generation of men who were in the war and who had found it impossible, through words or deeds, to adequately express to their friends and families what the trenches had been like\". After three weeks at the Savoy, Journey's End transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre, where it ran for the next two years.\n\nWith the success of Journey's End at home, Broadway producer Gilbert Miller acquired the rights to mount a New York production with an all-British cast headed by Colin Keith-Johnston as Stanhope and Derek Williams as Raleigh. Whale also directed this version, which premiered at Henry Miller's Theatre on 22 March 1929. The play ran for over a year and cemented its reputation as the greatest play about World War I.\n\nEarly work in Hollywood\nThe success of the various productions of Journey's End brought Whale to the attention of movie producers. Coming at a time when motion pictures were making the transition from silent to talking, producers were interested in hiring actors and directors with experience with dialogue. Whale traveled to Hollywood in 1929 and signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. He was assigned as \"dialogue director\" for a film called The Love Doctor (1929). He completed work on the film in 15 days and his contract was allowed to expire. It was at around this time that he met David Lewis.Whale was hired by independent film producer and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, who planned to turn the previously silent Hughes production Hell's Angels (1930) into a talkie. Whale directed the dialogue sequences. When his work for Hughes was completed, he headed to Chicago to direct another production of Journey's End.Having purchased the film rights to Journey's End, British producers Michael Balcon and Thomas Welsh agreed that Whale's experience directing the London and Broadway productions of the play made him the best choice to direct the film. The two partnered with a small American studio, Tiffany-Stahl, to shoot it in New York. Colin Clive reprised his role as Stanhope, and David Manners was cast as Raleigh. Filming got underway on 6 December 1929 and wrapped on 22 January 1930. Journey's End was released in Great Britain on 14 April and in the United States on 15 April. On both sides of the Atlantic the film was a tremendous critical and commercial success.\n\nWith the Laemmles at Universal\nUniversal Studios signed Whale to a five-year contract in 1931 and his first project was Waterloo Bridge. Based on the Broadway play by Robert E. Sherwood, the film stars Mae Clarke as Myra, a chorus girl in World War I London who becomes a prostitute. It too was a critical and popular success. At around this time, Whale and Lewis began living together.In 1931, Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr. offered Whale his choice of any property the studio owned. He chose Frankenstein, mostly because none of Universal's other properties particularly interested him, and he wanted to make something other than a war picture. While Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus itself was in the public domain, Universal owned the filming rights to a stage adaptation by Peggy Webling. Whale cast Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein and Mae Clarke as his fiancée Elizabeth. For the Monster, he turned to the little known Boris Karloff, who had wide-ranging experience in supporting roles. Shooting began on 24 August 1931 and wrapped on 3 October. Previews were held 29 October, with wide release on 21 November. Frankenstein was an instant hit with critics and the public. The film received glowing reviews and shattered box office records across the United States, earning Universal $12 million on first release.Next from Whale were The Impatient Maiden and The Old Dark House (both 1932). The Impatient Maiden made little impression but The Old Dark House, starring Karloff and Charles Laughton, is credited with reinventing the \"dark house\" subgenre of horror films. Thought lost for some years, a print was found by filmmaker Curtis Harrington in the Universal vaults in 1968. It was restored by George Eastman House, and released on Blu-ray disk in 2017.\nWhale's next film was The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), a critical success but a box-office failure. He returned to horror with The Invisible Man (1933). Shot from a script approved by H. G. Wells, the film blended horror with humor and confounding visual effects. Much admired, The New York Times placed it in their list of the ten best films of the year, and the film broke box-office records in cities across America. So highly regarded was the film that France, which restricted the number of theatres in which undubbed American films could play, granted it a special waiver because of its \"extraordinary artistic merit\".Also in 1933 Whale directed the romantic comedy By Candlelight which gained good reviews and was a modest box office hit. In 1934 he directed One More River, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Galsworthy. The film tells the story of a woman desperate to escape her abusive marriage to a member of the British aristocracy. This was the first of Whale's films for which Production Code Administration approval was required and Universal had a difficult time securing that approval because of the elements of sexual sadism implicit in the husband's abusive behavior.\n\nBride of Frankenstein (1935) was Whale's next project. He had resisted making a sequel to Frankenstein as he feared being pigeonholed as a horror director. Bride hearkened back to an episode from Mary Shelley's original novel in which the Monster promises to leave Frankenstein and humanity alone if Frankenstein makes him a mate. He does, but the mate is repelled by the monster who then, setting Frankenstein and his wife free to live, chooses to destroy himself and his \"bride\". The film was a critical and box office success, having earned some $2 million for Universal by 1943. Lauded as \"the finest of all gothic horror movies\", Bride is frequently hailed as Whale's masterpiece.\nWith the success of Bride, Laemmle was eager to put Whale to work on Dracula's Daughter (1936), the sequel to Universal's first big horror hit of the sound era. Whale, wary of doing two horror films in a row and concerned that directing Dracula's Daughter could interfere with his plans for the first all-sound version of Show Boat (previously filmed as a part-talkie by Harry A. Pollard), instead convinced Laemmle to buy the rights to a novel called The Hangover Murders. The novel is a comedy-mystery in the style of The Thin Man, about a group of friends who were so drunk the night one of them was murdered that none can remember anything. Retitled Remember Last Night?, the film was one of Whale's personal favorites, but met with sharply divided reviews and commercial uninterest.\n\nWith the completion of Remember Last Night? Whale immediately went to work on Show Boat (1936). Whale gathered as many of those as he could who had been involved in one production or another of the musical, including Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, Charles Winninger, Sammy White, conductor Victor Baravalle, orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett, and, as Magnolia, Irene Dunne, who believed that Whale was the wrong director for the piece. The 1936 version of Show Boat, faithfully adapted from the original stage production, is believed to be the definitive film version of the musical by many critics, but became unavailable following the 1951 remake. In 2014, a restoration of the film became available on DVD in the U.S. as part of Warner Home Video's Archive Collection line; and in 2020, a 4K restoration Blu-Ray was released by The Criterion Collection.Show Boat was the last of Whale's films to be produced under the Laemmle family. The studio was now bankrupt, and the Laemmles lost control to J. Cheever Cowdin, head of the Standard Capital Corporation, and Charles R. Rogers, who was installed in Junior Laemmle's old job.\n\nCareer decline\nWhale's career went into sharp decline following the release of his next film, The Road Back (1937). The sequel to Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, which Universal had filmed in 1930, the novel and film follow the lives of several young German men who have returned from the trenches of World War I and their struggles to re-integrate into society. The Los Angeles consul for Nazi Germany, Georg Gyssling, learned that the film was in production. He protested to PCA enforcer Joseph Breen, arguing that the film gave an \"untrue and distorted picture of the German people\". Gyssling eventually met Whale, but nothing came of it. Gyssling then sent letters to members of the cast, threatening that their participation in the film might lead to difficulties in obtaining German filming permits for them and for anyone associated in a film with them. While the low volume of business conducted by Universal in Germany made such threats largely hollow, the State Department, under pressure from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Screen Actors Guild, stepped in and the German government backed down. Whale's original cut of the film was given generally positive reviews, but some time between preview screenings and the film's general release, Rogers capitulated to the Germans, ordering that cuts be made and additional scenes be shot and inserted. Whale was furious, and the altered film was banned in Germany anyway. The Germans were successful in persuading China, Greece, Italy and Switzerland to ban the film as well.Following the debacle of The Road Back, Charles Rogers tried to get out of his contract with Whale; Whale refused. Rogers then assigned him to a string of B movies to run out his contractual obligation. Whale only made one additional successful feature film, The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), before retiring from the film industry in 1941.\n\nPost-film life\nWith his film career behind him, Whale found himself at a loose end. He was offered the occasional job, including the opportunity to direct Since You Went Away for David O. Selznick, but turned them down. Lewis, meanwhile, was busier than ever with his production duties and often worked late hours, leaving Whale lonely and bored. Lewis bought him a supply of paint and canvasses and Whale re-discovered his love of painting. Eventually he built a large studio for himself.With the outbreak of World War II, Whale volunteered his services to make a training film for the United States Army. He shot the film, called Personnel Placement in the Army, in February 1942. Later that year, in association with actress Claire DuBrey, he created the Brentwood Service Players. The Players took over a 100–seat theatre. Sixty seats were provided free of charge to service personnel; the remaining were sold to the public, with the box office proceeds donated to wartime charities. The group expanded to the Playtime Theatre during the summer, where a series of shows ran through October.Whale returned to Broadway in 1944 to direct the psychological thriller Hand in Glove. It was his first return to Broadway since his failed One, Two, Three! in 1930. Hand in Glove would fare no better than his earlier play, running the same number of performances, 40.Whale directed his final film in 1950, a short subject based on the William Saroyan one-act play Hello Out There. The film, financed by supermarket heir Huntington Hartford, was the story of a man in a Texas jail falsely accused of rape and the woman who cleans the jail. Hartford intended for the short to be part of an anthology film along the lines of Quartet. However, attempts to find appropriate short fiction companion pieces to adapt were unsuccessful and Hello Out There was never commercially released.Whale's last professional engagement was directing Pagan in the Parlour, a farce about two New England spinster sisters who are visited by a Polynesian whom their father, when shipwrecked years earlier, had married. The production was mounted in Pasadena for two weeks in 1951. Plans were made to take it to New York, but Whale suggested taking the play to London first. Before opening the play in England, Whale decided to tour the art museums of Europe. In France he renewed his acquaintanceship with Curtis Harrington, whom he had met in 1947. While visiting Harrington in Paris, he went to some gay bars. At one he met a 25-year-old bartender named Pierre Foegel, whom Harrington believed was nothing but \"a hustler out for what he could get\". The 62-year-old Whale was smitten with the younger man and hired him as his chauffeur.A provincial tour of Pagan in the Parlour began in September 1952 and it appeared that the play would be a hit. However, Hermione Baddeley, starring in the play as the cannibal \"Noo-ga\", was drinking heavily and began engaging in bizarre antics and disrupting performances. Because she had a run of the play contract she could not be replaced and so producers were forced to close the show.Whale returned to California in November 1952 and advised David Lewis that he planned to bring Foegel over early the following year. Appalled, Lewis moved out of their home. While this ended their 23-year romantic relationship, the two men remained friends. Lewis bought a small house and dug a swimming pool, prompting Whale to have his own pool dug, although he did not himself swim in it. He began throwing all-male swim parties and would watch the young men cavort in and around the pool. Foegel moved in with Whale in early 1953 and remained there for several months before returning to France. He returned in 1954 permanently, and Whale installed him as manager of a gas station that he owned.Whale and Foegel settled into a quiet routine until the spring of 1956, when Whale suffered a small stroke. A few months later he suffered a larger stroke and was hospitalized. While in the hospital he was treated for depression with shock treatments.Upon his release, Whale hired one of the male nurses from the hospital to be his personal live-in nurse. A jealous Foegel maneuvered the nurse out of the house and hired a female nurse as a non-live-in replacement. Whale suffered from mood swings and grew increasingly and frustratingly more dependent on others as his mental faculties were diminishing.\n\nDeath\nWhale died by suicide by drowning himself in his Pacific Palisades swimming pool on 29 May 1957 at the age of 67. He left a suicide note, which Lewis withheld until shortly before his own death decades later. Because the note was suppressed, the death was initially ruled accidental. The note read in part:\n\nTo ALL I LOVE,\nDo not grieve for me. My nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and night—except when I sleep with sleeping pills—and any peace I have by day is when I am drugged by pills.\n\nI have had a wonderful life but it is over and my nerves get worse and I am afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony and it [is] best for everyone this way. The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye and thank you for all your love. I must have peace and this is the only way.\nWhale's body was cremated per his request, and his ashes were interred in the Columbarium of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. Because of his habit of periodically revising his date of birth, his niche lists the incorrect date of 1893. When his longtime partner David Lewis died in 1987, his executor and Whale biographer James Curtis had his ashes interred in a niche across from Whale's.\n\nSexual orientation\nJames Whale lived as an openly gay man throughout his career in the British theatre and in Hollywood, something that was virtually unheard of in that era. He and David Lewis lived together as a couple from around 1930 to 1952. While he did not go out of his way to publicize his homosexuality, he did not do anything to conceal it either. As filmmaker Curtis Harrington, a friend and confidant of Whale's, put it, \"Not in the sense of screaming it from the rooftops or coming out. But yes, he was openly homosexual. Any sophisticated person who knew him knew he was gay.\" While there have been suggestions that Whale's career was terminated because of homophobia, and Whale was supposedly dubbed \"The Queen of Hollywood\", Harrington states that \"nobody made a thing out of it as far as I could perceive\".With knowledge of his sexuality becoming more common beginning in the 1970s, some film historians and gay studies scholars have detected homosexual themes in Whale's work, particularly in Bride of Frankenstein in which a number of the creative people associated with the cast, including Ernest Thesiger and Colin Clive, were alleged to be gay or bisexual. Scholars have identified a gay sensibility suffused through the film, especially a camp sensibility, particularly embodied in the character of Pretorius (Thesiger) and his relationship with Henry Frankenstein (Clive). Minnie introduces Pretorius to Frankenstein with the line, \"He's a very queer-looking old gentleman, sir....\" at 16:56 in the film.\nGay film historian Vito Russo, in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying the character as gay, instead referring to him as \"sissified\" (\"sissy\" itself being a Hollywood's gay stock character). Pretorius serves as a \"gay Mephistopheles\", a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the unnatural act of non-procreative life. A novelisation of the film published in England made the implication clear, having Pretorius say to Frankenstein \"'Be fruitful and multiply.' Let us obey the Biblical injunction: you of course, have the choice of natural means; but as for me, I am afraid that there is no course open to me but the scientific way.\" Russo goes so far as to suggest that Whale's homosexuality is expressed in both Frankenstein and Bride as \"a vision both films had of the monster as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened\".Whale's partner David Lewis stated flatly that Whale's sexual orientation was \"not germane\" to his filmmaking. \"Jimmy was first and foremost an artist, and his films represent the work of an artist—not a gay artist, but an artist.\" Whale's biographer Curtis rejects the notion that Whale would have identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective, stating that if the highly class-conscious Whale felt himself to be an antisocial figure, it would have been based not in his sexuality but in his origin in the lower classes.\n\nFilm style\nWhale was heavily influenced by German Expressionism. He was a particular admirer of the films of Paul Leni, combining as they did elements of gothic horror and comedy. This influence was most evident in Bride of Frankenstein. Expressionist influence is also in evidence in Frankenstein, drawn in part from the work of Paul Wegener and his films The Golem (1915) and The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) from Robert Wiene, which Whale reportedly screened repeatedly while preparing to shoot Frankenstein. Frankenstein roughly alternates between distorted expressionistic shots and more conventional styles, with the character of Dr. Waldman serving as \"a bridge between everyday and expressionist spaces\". Expressionist influence is also evident in the acting, costuming and the design of the Monster. Whale and makeup artist Jack Pierce may also have been influenced by the Bauhaus school of design. The expressionist influence lasted throughout Whale's career, with Whale's final film, Hello Out There, praised by Sight & Sound as \"a virtuoso pattern of light and shade, a piece of fully blown expressionist filmmaking plonked down unceremoniously in the midst of neo-realism's heyday\".Whale was known for his use of camera movement. He is credited with being the first director to use a 360-degree panning shot in a feature film, included in Frankenstein. Whale used a similar technique during the Ol' Man River sequence in Show Boat, in which the camera tracked around Paul Robeson as he sang the song. (The sequence also uses expressionist montages illustrating some of the lyrics.) Often singled out for praise in Frankenstein is the series of shots used to introduce the Monster: \"Nothing can ever quite efface the thrill of watching the successive views Whale's mobile camera allows us of the lumbering figure\". These shots, starting with a medium shot and culminating in two close-ups of the Monster's face, were repeated by Whale to introduce Griffin in The Invisible Man and the abusive husband in One More River. Modified to a single cut rather than two, Whale uses the same technique in The Road Back to signal the instability of a returning World War I veteran.\n\nLegacy\nInfluential film critic Andrew Sarris, in his 1968 ranking of directors, lists Whale as \"lightly likable\". Noting that Whale's reputation has been subsumed by the \"Karloff cult\", Sarris cites Bride of Frankenstein as the \"true gem\" of the Frankenstein series and concludes that Whale's career \"reflects the stylistic ambitions and dramatic disappointments of an expressionist in the studio-controlled Hollywood of the thirties\".Whale's final months are the subject of the novel Father of Frankenstein (1995) by Christopher Bram. The novel focuses on the relationship between Whale and a fictional gardener named Clayton Boone. Father of Frankenstein served as the basis of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters with Ian McKellen as Whale and Brendan Fraser as Boone. McKellen was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Whale. Bram's novel has also been adapted as a play which premiered in London at the Southwark Playhouse in February 2015.Only two of Whale's films received Oscar nominations: The Man in the Iron Mask (for its musical score), and Bride of Frankenstein (for its sound recording).\nA memorial sculpture was erected for Whale in September 2001 on the grounds of a new multiplex cinema in his home town of Dudley. The sculpture, by Charles Hadcock, depicts a roll of film with the face of Frankenstein's monster engraved into the frames, and the names of his most famous films etched into a cast concrete base in the shape of film canisters. Other sculptures related to Whale's cinema career were planned, referencing his early work in a local sheet metal factory, but none had been installed as of 2019.Horror in Hollywood: The James Whale Story, a retrospective of Whale's artwork, opened at the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery in October 2012 and ran through to January 2013.\n\nFilmography\nPassage 10:\nRaiders of the Seven Seas\nRaiders of the Seven Seas is a 1953 American swashbuckler film directed by Sidney Salkow and starring John Payne and Donna Reed. The supporting cast features Gerald Mohr, Lon Chaney Jr. and Anthony Caruso.\n\nPlot\nThe pirate Barbarossa raids the Sultan of Morocco's ships and captures a betrothed woman.\n\nCast\nJohn Payne as Barbarossa\nDonna Reed as Alida\nGerald Mohr as Capt. Jose Salcedo\nLon Chaney Jr. as Peg Leg\nAnthony Caruso as Renzo\nHenry Brandon as Capt. Goiti\nSkip Torgerson as Datu\nFrank De Kova as Capt. Romero\nWilliam Tannen as Ramon\nChristopher Dark as Pablo\nClaire DuBrey as Señora Salcedo\nHoward Freeman as Mayor Pompano\n\nProduction\nThe film was originally known as Storm over the Caribbean, Barbarossa and Swords Against the Mast. It was an original story co written by director Sidney Salkow, who subsequently signed a long-term contract with producer Edward Small.\n\nSee also\nFlame of Araby (1951), with Barbarossa and his brother as villains\nList of films featuring slavery",6 "char_len": 48701,7 "document_hash": "1765bccd0b4fb1873115045e92de6611989d847ee85a9b83c490eaf7b2f8041f",8 "questions": [9 {10 "question_id": "q00",11 "qtype": "2wikimqa",12 "question": "Why did the director of film Port Of Seven Seas die?"13 }14 ]15}