Queen Kelly

Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work. Stroheim's most recent biographers, such as Richard Koszarski, say that he was born in Vienna, Austria in 1885 as Erich Oswald Stroheim, the son of Benno Stroheim, a... middle-class hat-maker, and Johanna Bondy, both of whom were practicing Jews. Stroheim emigrated to America at the end of 1909. On arrival at Ellis Island he claimed to be Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, the son of Austrian nobility like the characters he played in his films, but both Billy Wilder and Stroheim's agent Paul Kohner claimed that he spoke with a decidedly lower-class Austrian accent. However Jean Renoir writes in his memoirs: “Stroheim spoke hardly any German. He had to study his lines like a schoolboy learning a foreign language.” Later, while living in Europe, Stroheim claimed in published remarks to have "forgotten" his native tongue. Stroheim was a great fantasist and his authorized biography contains many factual errors. By 1914 he was working in Hollywood.
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Samuel Grosvenor "Sam" Wood was an American film director, and producer, who was best known for directing such Hollywood hits as A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Pride of the Yankees. He was also involved in a few acting and writing projects. Wood began his... career as an actor, and worked for Cecil B. De Mille as an assistant in 1915. A solo director by 1919, Wood worked throughout the 1920s directing some of Paramount Pictures's biggest stars, among them Gloria Swanson and Wallace Reid. He joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1927, working with Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Marie Dressler, and Jimmy Durante. In the 1940s, Wood directed Ginger Rogers through her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle . At one point, he served as president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Wood was married to Clara L. Roush from 1908 to his death in 1949. One of Wood's daughters was film and television actress K. T. Stevens who started her career in one of her father's films, Peck's Bad Boy , credited as 'Baby Gloria Wood'. His oldest daughter was also an actress, Jeane Wood.
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Edmund Goulding was a British film writer and director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 British made Paramount silent Three Live Ghosts alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. Also in the early 20s he wrote several screenplays for star Mae Murray and... directed by her then husband Robert Z. Leonard. Goulding is best remembered for directing cultured dramas and such as Love , Grand Hotel with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, Dark Victory with Bette Davis, and The Razor's Edge with Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power. He also directed the classic film noir Nightmare Alley with Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, and the action drama The Dawn Patrol. He was also a successful songwriter, composer, and producer. Before moving to films, Goulding was an actor, playwright and director on the London stage. Interviewed about his Goulding biography Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory , film historian Matthew Kennedy stated: He not only directed many types of films, but he took on multiple functions on each set.
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Richard Boleslavsky was a Polish film director, actor and teacher of acting. Richard Boleslavsky was born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki on February 4, 1889 in Dębowa Góra, in tsarist Russia-ruled Poland. He graduated from the Tver Cavalry Officers School. He trained as an actor at the... First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre under Konstantin Stanislavski and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky, where he was introduced to the 'system'. During World War I, Boleslavsky fought as a cavalry lieutenant on the tsarist Russian side until the fall of the Russian Empire. He left Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 for his native Poland, where he directed his first movies. As his birth name was difficult to pronounce , he took the name Ryszard Bolesławski. His Miracle at the Vistula was a semi-documentary about the miraculous victory of the Poles at the Vistula River over the superior Soviet Russian forces during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. Boleslavsky was married at least three times and had a son - Jan - with his last wife, Norma.
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Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. During the 1930s, Toland became the youngest cameraman in Hollywood but soon one of its most... sought-after cinematographers. Over a seven-year span , he was nominated five times for the "Best Cinematography" Oscar, including a win in 1940 for his work on Wuthering Heights. He worked with many of the top directors of his era, including John Ford, Howard Hawks, Erich von Stroheim, King Vidor, Orson Welles, and William Wyler. Toland was the subject of an "Annals of Hollywood" article in The New Yorker, "The Cameraman," by Hilton Als . Just before his death, he was concentrating on the "ultimate focus" lens, which makes both near and far objects equally distinct. Born in Charleston, Illinois on May 29, 1904, he died in Los Angeles, California on September 26, 1948 of coronary thrombosis at age 44. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA.
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Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the... Best Actress category. She had also produced her own films such as the controversial Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. In 1929, Swanson successfully transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser. However, personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s when she moved into theater and television. Today she is best known for her role as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star, in the critically acclaimed film Sunset Boulevard . Gloria Josephine May Swanson was born in a small house in Chicago, Illinois in 1899 to Adelaide and Joseph Theodore Swanson, a soldier. She attended Hawthorne Scholastic Academy. Her father was from a strict Lutheran Swedish American family, and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry.
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