Santa Monica

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is a multipurpose convention center in Santa Monica, California owned by the City of Santa Monica. It was built in 1958... and designed by Welton Becket. For trade shows, the Civic Auditorium features 11,775 square feet of space, while the stage adds 4,485 square feet more space, for a total of 16,260 square feet . The East Wing meeting room adds even more space — 4,200 square feet of space, while the main lobby features 6,708 square feet of space. The main hall of the Civic is adaptable for not only tradeshows, but also sporting events, concerts, meetings, awards shows and other events. As a concert venue it can seat 3,000, as a banquet hall 720 in tables, and as a sports arena it can seat up to 2,500. In 1964, the auditorium played host to the T.A.M.I. Show, a filmed concert. A former home of the Academy Awards from 1961-1967, the Civic remains home to the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra. The main floor of the auditorium can be raised to be level to accommodate trade shows and what not as well as lowered so that there is an incline to see plays and shows.
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St. Monica Catholic Church is a Catholic church in Santa Monica, California. The church, located at 7th and California Streets, was erected in 1926... and was featured in the 1944 film classic Going My Way with Bing Crosby. It is also the home parish of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The parish hall, built in 1998, was designed by Frank Gehry. The parish was established in 1886. Prior to the formation of St. Monica's, the nearest Catholic church was at Olvera Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The current church opened for Christmas in 1925. At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported: "The opening of St. Monica's Church, ranked in the cathedral class and probably the finest Catholic Church of its kind on the Pacific Coast, will be celebrated with solemn high mass at 5 o'clock Christmas morning. For the first time the interior splendors of this remarkably beautitul and dignified religious edifice will be revealed to St. Monica' parish, and many out-of-town visitors are expected.
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Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music. Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of... various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner". The latter was originally an a cappella version on Vega's album, which was then remade in 1990 as a dance track produced by the British dance production team DNA. Vega was born July 11, 1959 in Santa Monica, California. Her mother, Pat Vega, is a computer systems analyst of German-Swedish heritage. Her father, Richard Peck, is of Scottish-English-Irish origin. They divorced soon after her birth. Her stepfather, Ed Vega, also known as Edgardo Vega Yunque, was a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico. When Vega was two and a half, the family moved to New York City. She grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side. At the age of nine she began to write poetry; she wrote her first song at age fourteen. Later she attended New York's prestigious High School of Performing Arts . There she studied modern dance and graduated in 1977.
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Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After... appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Seven and Emma . Following the films Sliding Doors and A Perfect Murder , Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love , for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show Glee in the episode "The Substitute". Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley , Shallow Hal , and Proof , for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama.
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Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist,... philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , Downhill Racer , Jeremiah Johnson , The Candidate , The Sting , The Way We Were , The Great Gatsby , Three Days of the Condor , The Great Waldo Pepper , All the President's Men , A Bridge Too Far , The Natural , Out of Africa , Sneakers , Indecent Proposal ,The Last Castle and Spy Game .
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Sean Astin is an American film actor, director, voice artist, and producer best known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title... character of Rudy, and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, he appeared as Lynn McGill in the fifth season of 24. Most recently, he provided the voice for the title character in Disney's Special Agent Oso. Astin also served as campaign manager for his friend, Democratic entertainment industry businessman Dan Adler in California's 36th congressional district special election, 2011. Astin was born Sean Patrick Duke in Santa Monica, California, the son of actress Patty Duke. At the time, it was reported that Desi Arnaz, Jr., was his biological father. In 1994, Astin discovered his father was Michael Tell, a music promoter and writer, and publisher of the newspaper The Las Vegas Israelite. Tell's marriage to Patty Duke was annulled shortly before her marriage in 1972 to actor John Astin, who adopted Sean. In 1973, Duke gave birth to Astin's half-brother Mackenzie Astin, who also became an actor.
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Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism . He is a two-time... Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River and Milk , as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter. Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn subsequently emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn subsequently received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam , before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk.
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Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist. At Repton School Isherwood met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom... he wrote the extravagant "Mortmere" stories, of which one was published during his lifetime, a few others appeared after his death, and others he summarised in Lions and Shadows. He deliberately failed his tripos and left Corpus Christi College, Cambridge without a degree in 1925. For the next few years he lived with violinist André Mangeot, worked as secretary to Mangeot's string quartet and studied medicine. During this time he wrote a book of nonsense poems, People One Ought to Know, with illustrations by Mangeot's eleven-year-old son, Sylvain. It was not published until 1982. In 1925 he was reintroduced to W. H. Auden and became his literary mentor and partner in an intermittent, casual liaison. Auden sent his poems to Isherwood for comment and approval. Through Auden, Isherwood met Stephen Spender, with whom he later spent much time in Germany. His first novel, All the Conspirators, appeared in 1928.
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Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist,... philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , Downhill Racer , Jeremiah Johnson , The Candidate , The Sting , The Way We Were , The Great Gatsby , Three Days of the Condor , The Great Waldo Pepper , All the President's Men , A Bridge Too Far , The Natural , Out of Africa , Sneakers , Indecent Proposal ,The Last Castle and Spy Game .
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Jamie Lee Curtis is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several... horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many genres, and has won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards. Her 1998 book, Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day, made the best-seller list in The New York Times. Curtis has appeared in advertisements, and is a blogger for The Huffington Post online newspaper. She is married to actor, screenwriter, and director Christopher Guest. Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. Curtis's parents divorced in 1962, after which her mother married Robert Brandt. Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings , Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis .
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Sean Astin is an American film actor, director, voice artist, and producer best known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title... character of Rudy, and Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In television, he appeared as Lynn McGill in the fifth season of 24. Most recently, he provided the voice for the title character in Disney's Special Agent Oso. Astin also served as campaign manager for his friend, Democratic entertainment industry businessman Dan Adler in California's 36th congressional district special election, 2011. Astin was born Sean Patrick Duke in Santa Monica, California, the son of actress Patty Duke. At the time, it was reported that Desi Arnaz, Jr., was his biological father. In 1994, Astin discovered his father was Michael Tell, a music promoter and writer, and publisher of the newspaper The Las Vegas Israelite. Tell's marriage to Patty Duke was annulled shortly before her marriage in 1972 to actor John Astin, who adopted Sean. In 1973, Duke gave birth to Astin's half-brother Mackenzie Astin, who also became an actor.
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Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism . He is a two-time... Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River and Milk , as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter. Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn subsequently emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn subsequently received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam , before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk.
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John Randolph "Jack" Webb , also known by the pseudonym John Randolph, was an American actor, television producer, director and screenwriter, who is... most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet. He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited. Born in Santa Monica, California, Webb grew up in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. His Jewish father left home before Webb was born, and Webb never knew him. He was raised a Roman Catholic by his Irish-Indian mother. One of the tenants in his mother's rooming house was an ex-jazzman who began Webb's lifelong interest in jazz by giving him a recording of Bix Beiderbecke's "At the Jazz Band Ball". In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Webb lived in the parish of Our Lady of Loretto Church and attended Our Lady of Loretto Elementary School in Echo Park, where he served as an altar boy. He then attended Belmont High School, and later, the St. John's University, Minnesota, where he studied art. At high school, Webb was a student body president. He wrote to the student boy in the yearbook: "..
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Tobias Vincent "Tobey" Maguire is an American actor and producer. He began his career in the late 1980s. While perhaps best known for his role as... Peter Parker / Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film trilogy , he has also appeared in films such as Pleasantville , Ride with the Devil , The Cider House Rules , Wonder Boys , Seabiscuit , The Good German , Tropic Thunder , and Brothers . He has been nominated for Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards and received two Saturn Awards, including one for Best Actor. Maguire was born in Santa Monica, California. He is the son of Wendy , a secretary turned screenwriter and producer, and Vincent Maguire, a construction worker and cook. He has four half-brothers. His parents, 18 and 20 years old, were unmarried at the time of his birth; the two married and subsequently divorced when Maguire was two. Maguire spent much of his childhood moving from town to town, living with each parent and other family members.
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