Syracuse

The Landmark Theatre, originally known as Loew's State Theater, is an historic theater from the era of "movie palaces", located on South Salina... Street in Syracuse, New York, United States. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb, it is the city's only surviving example of the opulent theatrical venues of the 1920s. The Landmark is on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally named Loew's State Theatre, it opened on February 18, 1928, and offered double bills of famous vaudeville stage acts and first-run films. During the Great Depression and World War II it continued to do good business, as theater patrons escaped for a few hours into its plush grandeur. However, by the 1970s, the theater suffered from low attendance and was in disrepair. Eventually it closed, and was in danger of demolition. In 1977 a group, Syracuse Area Landmark Theatre, or SALT, was formed to preserve and renovate the venue. With the help of a benefit concert by Harry Chapin the group successfully raised the money to purchase the property and begin the work of restoration, at which time Loew's State was renamed the Landmark Theatre.
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Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , widely known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and... has won three Golden Globe Awards for the same movies: Born on the Fourth of July , Jerry Maguire , Magnolia . He started his career with the movie Endless Love. Cruise's first appearance in a major film was in 1981's Taps. His first leading role was in the film Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise played the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and successful 1986 film Top Gun, and also secret agent Ethan Hunt in the series of Mission: Impossible action films. He has starred in a variety of other successful films, including: Rain Man , Days of Thunder , A Few Good Men , Vanilla Sky , Minority Report , The Last Samurai , Collateral , and War of the Worlds . Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.
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Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed... characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. She won the Nobel Prize in 1993 and in 1987 the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In April 2012 it was announced she would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio to Ramah and George Wofford. She is the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read fervently; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the black community . In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University, where she received a B.A. in English in 1953.
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Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of... the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and anti-war politics. Serling was born December 25, 1924, into a Jewish family in Syracuse, New York, the second of two sons born to Esther and Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer in order to earn a steady income. Sam Serling later took up the trade of butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close. Serling's mother was a homemaker. He and his family spent most of his youth seventy miles south of Syracuse in Binghamton after moving there in 1926.
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Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky , was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a... choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. Deren was born in Kiev, present-day Ukraine, to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Marie Fiedler, who supposedly named her after Italian actress Eleanora Duse. In 1922, the family moved to Syracuse, New York. Her father shortened the family name to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. In 1928, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Her mother moved to Paris to be with her daughter while she attended the League of Nations School in Geneva, Switzerland from 1930 to 1933. Deren began college at Syracuse University, where she became active in the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League . Through the YPSL she met Gregory Bardacke, whom she later married at the age of eighteen. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City.
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Camille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The... University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984. She is the author of the best-selling 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, and four other books, including essay collections, a study of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and Break, Blow, Burn on poetry. She writes articles on art, popular culture, feminism, and politics for mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia has celebrated Madonna and taken radical libertarian positions on controversial social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and drug use. She is known as a critic of American feminism, and is also strongly critical of the influence of French writers such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.
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Michael Edward "Mikey" Welsh was an American artist and musician, best known as the former bassist of Weezer. He played with Weezer frontman Rivers... Cuomo during Cuomo's time in Boston during the hiatus in the band Homie. Following original bassist Matt Sharp's decision to leave Weezer to focus on his group, The Rentals, Welsh was chosen to take over for him. Welsh played with Weezer from the time that they regrouped in 2000 until August 2001, when he suffered a mental breakdown. Shortly afterwards, he retired from music to focus on his art career. Welsh died on October 8, 2011. Welsh was born April 20, 1971 in Syracuse, New York. He began his career as a Boston-area musician, playing in bands such as Heretix, Chevy Heston, Jocobono, Left Nut, and Slower. He was a touring bassist for Juliana Hatfield. In 1997 he joined the first incarnation of The Rivers Cuomo Band, the side-project of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. He joined Weezer following the departure of Matt Sharp in 1998. During Weezer's hiatus he played with Verbena and the first incarnation of Patrick Wilson's band The Special Goodness.
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Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of... the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and anti-war politics. Serling was born December 25, 1924, into a Jewish family in Syracuse, New York, the second of two sons born to Esther and Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer in order to earn a steady income. Sam Serling later took up the trade of butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close. Serling's mother was a homemaker. He and his family spent most of his youth seventy miles south of Syracuse in Binghamton after moving there in 1926.
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James Nachtwey is an American photojournalist and war photographer. He grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College, where he... studied Art History and Political Science . He has been awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal five times. In 2003, he was injured by a grenade in an attack on his convoy while serving as a Time contributing correspondent in Baghdad, from which he has made a full recovery. Nachtwey started working as a newspaper photographer in 1976 at the Albuquerque Journal. In 1980, he moved to New York and began working as a freelance photographer. In 1981, Nachtwey covered his first overseas assignment in Northern Ireland illustrating civil strife. He has documented a variety of armed conflicts and social issues, spending time in South Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union shooting pictures of war, conflict and famine, and images of socio-political issues in Western Europe and the United States. He currently lives in New York City.
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Thom Filicia is an openly gay interior designer, most famous for his role as an interior design expert on the American television program Queer Eye... for the Straight Guy. He is also a co-author of a book based on the show. Interior designer Thom Filicia is founder and Chief Creative Officer of New York City-based design firm, Thom Filicia, Inc. Since launching the acclaimed enterprise in 1998, Filicia's New-American Style has earned him widespread acclaim and notable clients in the worlds of entertainment, finance, sports, media, fashion and hospitality. Filicia is universally known for his ability to create stunning modern, yet classic interiors that retain an inviting aesthetic which reflects the individuality of his clients. Filicia’s unmistakable design sensibility has earned him countless accolades from the design world including being named by House Beautiful as one of their “Top 100 Designers,” House & Garden dubbed him an “International Taste Maker” and Elle Décor regaled him as an “A-List Designer.
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Jimmy Van Heusen , was an American composer. He wrote songs mainly for films and television , and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best... Original Song. Born Edward Chester Babcock in Syracuse, New York, he began writing music while at high school. He renamed himself at age 16, after the famous shirt makers, Phillips-Van Heusen, to use as his off-air name during local shows. His close friends called him "Chet." Studying at Cazenovia Seminary and Syracuse University, he became friends with Jerry Arlen, the younger brother of Harold Arlen. With the elder Arlen's help, Van Heusen wrote songs for the Cotton Club revue, including "Harlem Hospitality." He then became a staff pianist for some of the Tin Pan Alley publishers, and wrote "It's the Dreamer in Me" with lyrics by Jimmy Dorsey. Collaborating with lyricist Eddie DeLange, on songs such as "Heaven Can Wait", "So Help Me", and "Darn That Dream", his work became more prolific, writing over 60 songs in 1940 alone. It was in 1940 that he teamed up with the lyricist Johnny Burke.
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Rory Cochrane is an American actor. He is known for playing Ron Slater in Dazed and Confused, Lucas in Empire Records, and Tim Speedle in CSI:... Miami. Cochrane's first roles included a part in a docudrama about drugs on Saturday Night with Connie Chung and an appearance in an episode of H.E.L.P. . He then made his film debut in A Kiss Before Dying, followed by his first substantial role as Jeff Goldblum's son in Fathers & Sons. Cochrane played major roles in the films Empire Records and Dazed and Confused, with Jason London and Ben Affleck, and appeared in Hart's War starring Bruce Willis & Colin Farrell. He also appeared in the Richard Linklater film A Scanner Darkly . Cochrane reprised his role as Tim Speedle on CSI: Miami in the episode "Bang, Bang, Your Debt", as a hallucination to Det. Eric Delko. He played the character of Greg Seaton in 24 alongside Jon Voight.
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Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film and television director. He is commonly known for his... energetic stage personality, his dark, acerbic black comedy, and his gruff but high-pitched voice. Goldthwait was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Kathleen, a department store employee, and Tom Goldthwait, a sheet metal worker. He was raised in a Catholic working class family. Goldthwait decided on a career as a comedian at an early age and was performing professionally while still in high school at the age of 15. He attended St. Matthew's grammar school in East Syracuse, New York, where he met fellow comedian and voice-over actor Tom Kenny in first grade. He and Tom graduated together from Bishop Grimes Junior/Senior High School in East Syracuse, New York, in 1980. They formed a comedy troupe with East Syracuse native Tom Nettle, called The Generic Comics.
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