Black Magic

Gregory Ratoff was a Russian-born American film director, actor and producer. His most famous role as an actor was as producer Max Fabian who feuds with star Margo Channing in All About Eve . Ratoff was born in Samara, Russia to a Jewish family. The actor first came to the United States in 1922.... He married the Russian actress Eugenie Leontovich in 1923 . He returned to the United States, passing through Ellis Island in July 1925. On the steerage passenger list of the SS Mauretania he was listed as Gregoire Ratoff; for next of kin he listed his mother, Mme. Sophie Ratner of Paris. Ratoff is most noted for having directed the pro-Soviet propaganda film Song of Russia and for being one of the two producers to have purchased and developed the original rights to the James Bond franchise from Ian Fleming in 1955. Ratoff died on 14 December 1960 from leukemia in Solothurn, Switzerland, aged 63. His body was returned to the United States for burial at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, New York. Although divorced from Leontovich, Ratoff was buried under a gravestone marked Beloved Husband.
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George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar , a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury... Theatre; The War of the Worlds , the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane , which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time. After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
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