Mykolaiv

Maria Orska was an important actress of the German theater and cinema in the 1920s. Maria Orska was born as Rachel Blindermann in 1896, of a... Polish-Jewish family, in a city of Mykolaiv , not far from Odessa, in what is now Ukraine, at the time a part of Russian Empire. Just before World War I Maria Orska moved to Warsaw and from there she moved to Berlin in 1915, as Warsaw has been occupied by German army during the war. She spoke fluently Polish, German and Russian. In Berlin, Maria Orska worked with Max Reinhardt and was famous for her parts in theater plays by Strindberg, Wedekind and Pirandello. She also gained national popularity in Germany for her film parts, although theater was always more important to her. Her first movie Dämon und Mensch was produced by Jules Greenbaum, one of the pioniers of the German cinema, who discovered cinema during his 20 years long stay in Chicago and migrated back to Germany in 1895. Most of her movies were produced by Alfred Maack, director and producer employed by Greenbaum.
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Arthur W. Hodes , known professionally as Art Hodes, was an American jazz pianist. Hodes was born in Ukraine. His family settled in Chicago, Illinois... when he was a few months old. His career began in Chicago clubs, but he did not gain wider attention until moving to New York City in 1938. In that city he played with Sidney Bechet, Joe Marsala, and Mezz Mezzrow. Later Hodes founded his own band in the 1940s and it would be associated with his home town of Chicago. He and his band played mostly in that area for the next forty years. In the late 1960s Hodes starred in a series of TV shows on Chicago style jazz called "Jazz Alley". Here he appeared with greats like Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy McPartland. He also wrote for jazz magazines like Jazz Record. He remained an educator and writer in jazz. During this period of his life and into the 1970s Hodes resided in south suburban Park Forest, Illinois. He toured the UK in 1987 recording with drummer John Petters. In 1988 he returned to appear at the Cork jazz Festival with Petters and Wild Bill Davison.
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