Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel (born 13 May 1939) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor whose latest work is that of Detective Lieutenant Gene Hunt on ABC's crime drama "Life on Mars". He is widely known for the "tough-guy" characters he portrays and for his memorable roles from Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Jane Campion's The Piano and Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant.

Keitel was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland.[1][2] His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hatmaker.[1][3]
Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School (New York). At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, a decision that took him to Lebanon. After his return to the United States, he was a court reporter and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career.

Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel met struggling filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a part in Scorsese's student production, Who's That Knocking at My Door. Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on numerous projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets but this proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. He later appeared with De Niro in Taxi Driver, playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.
Originally, Keitel was to have played the role of Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now; however, he was fired early in the production and replaced by Martin Sheen. After this, it was many years before he would be able to get anything other than minor roles. At the end of the 1970s, Keitel was mostly working in European films for directors such as Ridley Scott, usually in sinister character parts.
Throughout the 1980s, Keitel continued to find plenty of work on both stage and screen, but was usually in the stereotypical role of a thug. This role reached its zenith when Keitel starred in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in 1992, where his performance as "Mr. White" relaunched his semi-slumping career. Ridley Scott also helped Keitel by casting him as the sympathetic policeman in Thelma and Louise in 1991. That same year he landed a role in Bugsy, for which he obtained an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Since then, Keitel has chosen his roles with care, seeking to change his image and show off a broader acting range. One of those roles was the title character in Bad Lieutenant, about a self-loathing police lieutenant trying to redeem himself. His decision to co-star in Jane Campion's The Piano marks the approximate beginning of this phase of Keitel's career. He played an efficient clean-up expert Winston Wolf in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. In 1996 he landed a major role in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's film, From Dusk Till Dawn, and in 1997 he starred in the crime drama Cop Land, which also starred Sylvester Stallone, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro. Later roles include the fatherly Satan in Little Nicky, a wise Navy man in U-571, and diligent F.B.I. agent Sadusky in National Treasure. In 1999, Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack on the set of Eyes Wide Shut, due to scheduling conflicts. He has shown a willingness to help other start-up filmmakers by appearing in their first feature film. He did this not only for Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, but also Ridley Scott (The Duellists), Paul Schrader (Blue Collar), James Toback (Fingers), and Tony Bui (Three Seasons).
He also appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007. Unlike many American male actors who either never appear nude in film or only do so once, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano.
In January 2008, Keitel played Jerry Springer in the New York City premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall.[citation needed] It was announced in July 2008 that Keitel had been cast in the role of Detective Gene Hunt in ABC's new series Life on Mars.[4]
In 2002 at the Moscow International Film Festival Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for the outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school.

Keitel was formerly in a long-term relationship to actress Lorraine Bracco. He married actress Daphna Kastner in 2001. Keitel is the father of three children: daughter Stella (born 1985) from his relationship with Bracco; son Hudson (born 2001) from his relationship with Lisa Karmazin; and son Roman (born 2003) from his marriage to Kastner. He is godfather of close friend Michael Madsen's son Max.
A Keitel családban 1939. május 13-án született meg a harmadik gyermek, akit Harveynak neveztek el. A família Brooklynban élt, a Brighton Beach-en volt egy kis lakásuk. A környéken olaszok, írek és zsidók éltek, Keitelék az utóbbi kisebbséghez tartoztak. A papa lengyel volt, kalapkészítőként dolgozott, a mama egy gyorsétkezdében volt felszolgáló. Harvey ebben a környezetben cseperedett fel, a hithű askenázi zsidók életét élte egészen addig, amíg barátaival fel nem fedezték a vidámpark nyújtotta szórakozásokat, és be nem surrantak a mozikba, hogy végignézzék a vasárnapi matinékat. Keitel gyakran emlegeti, hogy amikor Manhattanben járt, attól félt, hogy az utcákat elárasztja a láva vagy más természeti katasztrófa következik be, ahogy a moziban látta.
Aztán tizenévesen belefeledkezett a nagy férfisztárok alakításaiba, James Dean vagy Marlon Brando egyfajta ideállá váltak számára, a szülők legnagyobb megbotránkozására. Az ő világuk szűkebb volt, s Harvey ki akart törni ebből. Szakközépiskolás korában népszerű volt, osztályelnökké választották, de elégedetlen tanárnője új szavazást rendelt el, ami persze az ő szája íze szerint alakult. Keitel egy ideig dühöngött, aztán iskolát került, végül kicsapták. 16 évesen belépett a haditengerészethez. Ott szerzett barátai tülekedtek azért, hogy az ebédlőben mellé ülhessenek, ugyanis azonnal nem volt képes megszabadulni a kóser étkezési szokásoktól, és a felszolgált tejet mindig szomszédai kortyolgatták.
Leszerelés után Harvey többféle pénzkereseti lehetőséggel próbálkozott. Éveken át bírósági rajzoló volt - mivel az amerikai tárgyalótermekben tilos fényképezni -, majd női cipőket adott el, végül beiratkozott az Actor's Studióba. Stella Adler és Lee Strasberg láthatott valamit benne, akárkit nem vettek volna a szárnyaik alá. Harvey 1965-ben észrevett egy újsághirdetést, amelyben egy New York-i filmrendező keresett szereplőket első filmjéhez, a Who's That Knocking At My Door? című produkcióhoz. Az illetőt Martin Scorsesének hívták. Ez volt a kezdete Keitel és Scorsese hosszú, gyümölcsöző együttműködésének. Ám addig még meg kellett szereznie a színészi gyakorlatot. Off-off-off-Broadway kávéházakban és kisebb színpadokon lépett fel. Aztán megint Scorsesével forgatott, a rendező kevésbé ismert dokumentumfilmjében, a Street Scenes-ben tűnt fel. Harmadik közös filmjük, az Aljas utcák ismertté tette Keitelt, a kulturális örökségével küszködő amerikai olasz - Scorsese alteregója - megszemélyesítése könnyen ment a lengyel-román gyökerekkel rendelkező színésznek. Az Alice már nem lakik itt és A taxisofőr szintén lehetőséget nyújtott Harvey tehetségének demonstrálására. Sikeres lett, de ez nem jelentette azt, hogy mindent megengedhet magának.
Ugyan Francis Ford Coppola őt szemelte ki az Apokalipszis most főszerepére, Keitel összekülönbözött a rendezővel, aki a forgatás kezdete előtt elzavarta őt a Fülöp-szigetekről, és Martin Sheen vette át a szerepet. Harvey nem vette szívére a dolgot, inkább igent mondott Ridley Scott felkérésére, és a Joseph Conrad regényéből készült Párbajhősök-ben nyújtott jelentős alakítást. Ezután elkerülték a főszerepek és mintegy tíz éven át nem sikerült megint reflektorfénybe kerülnie. Húsz filmben játszott, három színdarabban lépett fel, aztán megint Scorsese következett, aki Júdás szerepére kérte fel a Krisztus utolsó megkísértése című filmjében. A mozi nagy botrányt kavart, a Jézust alakító Willem Dafoe és Keitel egyaránt értetlenül álltak a klerikális támadások kereszttüzében. Harvey viszont megint felhívta magára a figyelmet, ennek köszönhetően olyan filmekben játszott, mint a Thelma és Louise, a Bugsy és az Öldöklő vágyak. Aztán megint egy elsőfilmes direkt0orral működött együtt, Quentin Tarantino Kutyaszorítóban című filmjében nemcsak játszott, hanem társproducer is volt, s neki köszönhetően a mozi költségvetése 35 ezer dollárról 400 ezerre emelkedett. Abel Ferrara Mocskos zsaru című filmjében nyújtott alakítása kiváltotta a kritikusok elismerését is, majd Keitel azt is bebizonyította, hogy nemcsak negatív figurákat tud kiválóan életre kelteni, hanem rejtőzik benne némi romantika is. A zongoralecke-ben egy Új-Zélandon élő skót telepest játszik, aki szenvedélyesen beleszeret egy néma asszonyba. Aztán megint karakter váltott, Tarantino Ponyvaregény-ében hűvös machót alakított. A színész nem rajong a főszerepekért, számos független filmben is szerepet vállalt, amik nem hoztak annyi pénzt a konyhára, viszont művészi kihívást jelentettek számára, mint például Wayne Wang Füst-jének trafiktulajdonosa. Spike Lee Nepperek-jében ugyan főszereplő volt, ám a forgatókönyv kevés lehetőséget nyújtott számára, így improvizálással egészítette ki a figurát.
Keitel magánélete egy ideig jól alakult. 1992-ben összeköltözött Lorraine Bracco színésznővel, a kapcsolat tíz évig tartott, de nem házasodtak össze. A szakítás nem volt barátságosnak nevezhető, ugyanis nagy harc folyt a lányukért. Harvey azt állította, hogy Bracco barátja, Edward James Olmos színész molesztálta Stellát, s végül a bíróság döntése szerint Olmos csak egy másik felnőtt társaságában lehetett együtt a gyerekkel... Keitel ezután Andie McDowell-lel randevúzgatott, közelebbi kapcsolatba került Lisa Karmazin keramikussal, akitől 2001 nyarán Hudson fia született, ám 2001 szeptemberében a torontói filmfesztiválon találkozott Daphne Kastnerrel, s ez szerelem volt az első látásra. A pár három héttel később Jeruzsálemben egy titkos szertartás keretében kötött házasságot.Harvey Keitelt nemcsak filmből lehet ismerni, hanem 2000 óta reklámból is, ugyanis a színészt sikerült megnyerni a Johnny Walker kampányhoz, amelynek keretében whiskyt népszerűsít.
Keitel Szabó Istvánnal is dolgozott együtt a Szembesítés-ben, amelyben amerikai tisztet alakít, aki a híres német karmester, Wilhelm Furtwängler ügyét vizsgálja a II. világháború utáni Berlinben. A színész következő filmje a The Limit című politikai thriller lesz, amelyben angol ügyvédet alakít, aki belekeveredik a szerb föld alatti mozgalomba.

Nick Carter

Nickolas Gene Carter (born January 28, 1980) is an American actor, musician, and pop singer. He is a member of the musical group The Backstreet Boys and the older brother of Aaron Carter.

Carter was born in Jamestown, New York,[1] the son of Jane E.(née Spaulding) and Robert Gene Carter. His siblings include Angel, Leslie, Bobbie Jean (nickname: BJ), and singer Aaron. He also has an older half-sister named Ginger from his father's first marriage. Carter's father, Robert Eugene Carter, is a Jewish American and his mother, Jane E. Spaulding, is a Mayflower descendant of Welsh, Irish, German, English and 1/4 Blackfoot ancestry.
Several years later, the family moved to Ruskin, Florida and managed a retirement home where they added his younger siblings to their family.[2] Carter began auditioning for acting roles in the early 1990s, and appeared in many commercials. He later made a tiny background appearance in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Look for him, he's the kid on the slip and slide. It is said that in several auditions, Nick met AJ McLean and Howie Dorough and they became friends.

Later, the three friends formed a mini-vocal group and started seeking a manager. As they found him, Lou Pearlman, he thought it most appropriate to seek for a fourth member. This was the chance for Kevin Richardson, who brought his cousin Brian with him. At the beginning, there was no success in the United States, even though the first single had been a hit on Orlando radio stations. Lou then marketed the Backstreet Boys in Europe, where they became commercially successful in 1996.
The Backstreet Boys became hugely popular in Europe and the United States in the late 1990s, and Carter gained fame, becoming known as the "heartthrob" of the group. He is the youngest, joining the group at twelve years old.
In 1999, he was ranked #1 on the list of "Hottest Teen People Under 21" by Teen People magazine and was named "The Biggest Teen Idol" by Teen People magazine. He was also named one of People magazines "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" in 2000, and voted CosmoGirl's Sexiest Man in the World" in 2002.

Carter attempted a career as a solo artist in 2002, when he released Now Or Never. The album reached #17 on Billboard 200 and was certified gold. That same year, Carter was named "The Sexiest Man in the World" in a CosmoGirl Magazine poll conducted by its readers. Carter has also returned to his acting career. He appeared opposite Kevin Zegers in the 2004 horror film, The Hollow, made two appearances on the TV show "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter", and also appeared on "American Dreams".

Nick Carter began work on his second solo album in 2003, but the recordings were aborted when the Backstreet Boys returned to the studio. One of the tracks from the earlier recording sessions was used as the theme song to the House of Carters. "Let It Go" was written by Nick Carter, Matthew Gerrard, and Bridget Louise Benenate.[3] He is now back in the studio in Nashville, and working on his second album. Nick is working with songwriter Toby Gad responsable for the worldwide hit Big Girls Don't Cry. No release date was announced.

Carter and his siblings starred in a reality television show, House of Carters, which premiered in October 2006 on E!. The series features all five Carter siblings reuniting to live in the same house, as well as feature in-depth moments of their ups and downs.[4] The first season of HoC had 8 episodes, and Carter has since said the show will not seek another season.
Carter is currently (May 2007) filming independent movie Fast Glass with Brandon Quinn, Andrew Keegan, Natalia Cigliuti, Greg Grunberg, and Reno Wilson. The movie is directed by Kim Bass and produced by Dave Riggs and Desiree Jellerette.[5] It's slated for release in 2008.

Nick Carter was announced as the new Special Ambassador for the Year of the Dolphin (YoD) on May 17, 2007. He was to record a new song and video with all proceeds going to this project, and also make a public service announcement and appear at local schools.

Carter has dated and been linked with many famous and infamous women in the entertainment industry, including Asun Ortega, Isabell Filling, Angi Taylor, Paris Hilton, Dalene Kurtis, Lexi Marie, Kaya Jones, Julie Bornemann, and Ashlee Simpson and a long term relationship with Julia Kocanski.
On September 29, 2006, Carter claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he lost his virginity to Debra Lafave when they were classmates.[7]
On June 12, 2007, Kathy Griffin discussed her date with Nick Carter on Tyra. She jokingly alleged that he was illiterate and they showed him not being able to read the menu. However, he has been photographed reading books like The Da Vinci Code, and notes James Redfield's classic bestseller "The Celestine Prophecy" as one of his favorites.
Nicholas Gene Carter (Született: 1980. január 28), amerikai színész, zenész és pop énekes. Tagja a Backstreet Boys együttesnek, Aaron Carter bátyja.

Nick a New York állambeli Jamestownban született,[1] Jane Spaulding és Robert Gene Carter fia. Testvérei: Bobbie Jean (beceneve: BJ), Leslie, és az ikrek Aaron és Angel. Féltestvére: Ginger, édesapja első házasságából. Néhány évvel később a család a floridai Ruskinba költözött, ahol a szülők egy idősek otthonát vezettek. [2] Már kiskorában is szeretett szerepelni. Első szereplése Az operaház fantomjának főszerepe volt.[3] Megnyert néhány tehetségkutató versenyt, és énekelt a Tampa Bay Buccaneers futballjátékokon. Játszott TV reklámokban. Első filmszerepét az Ollókezű Edward című filmben kapta 1990-ben. Nemsokára találkozott AJ Mcleannel és Howie Dorough-al akikkel hamar összebarátkozott.

Később a három barát egy A capella csapatot alapított. Lou Pearlman menedzselte őket. Kis idő elteltével csatlakozott a csapathoz Kevin Richardson, aki magával hozta unokatestvérét Brian Littrellt. Kezdetben nem arattak nagy sikert az Egyesült Államokban, de menedzserük javaslatára 1996-ban Európában kezdtek koncertezni, ahol hatalmas rajóngótáboruk lett.

2002-ben szóló karrierbe kezdett és megjelent Now or Never című albuma, amely a Billboard 200-as listán a 17. helyig tornászta fel magát. Még ugyan ebben az évben elnyerte a "Legszexisebb férfi a Világon" címet a Cosmogirl magazin olvasói jóvoltából. Visszatért színészi karrierjéhez is. Kevin Zegers rendezte "The Hollow" című horror filmben játszotta Brody szerepét.

Nick belekezdett második lemeze felvételeibe, de ez félbeszakadt, mivel a Backstreet Boys újra összeállt és stúdióba vonult.

Nick és testvérei elindítottak egy valóságshow-t Carterék háza címmel, amit 2006 októberében kezdte vetíteni az amerikai E! csatorna. A show 1 évadból állt, ami 8 részt tartalmazott. Szerepet kapott a "Fast Glass" című filmben, amit 2007-ben kezdtek forgatni. Olyan neves színészekkel játszik együtt, mint Brandon Quinn, Andrew Keegan, Natalia Cigliuti, Greg Grunberg, és Reno Wilson. A filmet Kim Bass rendezte, a producerek Dave Riggs és Desiree Jellerette voltak.

Nicknek sok barátnője volt a szórakoztatóiparból, köztük Willa Ford, Asun Ortega, Paris Hilton, Dalene Curtis és Ashlee Simpson.
2006 szeptember 29-én a "The Howard Stern Show"-ban elmesélte, hogyan vesztette el szüzességét Debra LaFavé-vel, aki az osztálytársa volt.

Adolf Zukor

Adolf Zukor, born Adolph Cukor, (January 7, 1873 – June 10, 1976) was a film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures.
He was born to a Jewish family in Ricse, Hungary, which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1889, at the age of 16, he emigrated to America. Like most immigrants, he began modestly. When he first landed in New York, he stayed with his family and worked in an upholstery shop. A friend got him a job as an apprentice at a furrier. Zukor stayed there for two years. When he left to become a "contract" worker, sewing fur pieces and selling them himself, he was nineteen years old and an accomplished designer. But he was young and adventuresome, and the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, commemorating Columbus's discovery of America, drew him to the Midwest. Once there, he started a fur business. In the second season of operation, Zukor's Novelty Fur Company expanded to twenty-five men and opened a branch.
One of the stubborn fallacies of movie history is that the men who created the film industry were all impoverished young vulgarians. Zukor clearly didn't fit this profile. By 1903, he already looked and lived like a wealthy young burgher, and he certainly earned the income of one. He had a commodious apartment at 111th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City's wealthy German-Jewish section. He became involved in the motion picture industry when in 1903 his cousin, Max Goldstein approached him for a loan. Mitchell Mark needed investors in order to expand his chain of similar theaters that begun in Buffalo, New York with Edisonia Hall. The arcade salon was to feature Thomas Edison's marvels: phonographs, electric lights and moving pictures. Zukor not only gave Goldstein the money but insisted on forming a partnership to open another one. Another partner in the venture was Marcus Loew.
In 1912, Adolph Zukor established Famous Players in Famous Plays as the American distribution company for the French film production Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth starring Sarah Bernhardt. The following year he obtained the financial backing of the Frohman brothers, the powerful New York City theatre impresarios. Their primary goal was to bring noted stage actors to the screen and they created the Famous Players Film Company that produced The Prisoner of Zenda (1913). The studio evolved into Famous Players-Lasky and then Paramount Pictures, of which he served as president until 1936 when he was elevated to chairman of the board. He revolutionized the film industry by organizing production, distribution, and exhibition within a single company.
Zukor was also an accomplished director and producer. He retired from Paramount Pictures in 1959 and thereafter assumed Chairman Emeritus status, a position he held up until his death at the age of 103 in Los Angeles.
Zukor Adolf (Zukor, Adolph) (Ricse, 1873. január 7. - Los Angeles, 1976. június 10.) producer, a Paramount Pictures filmvállalat alapítója, a hollywoodi filmgyártás egyik létrehozója.

Falusi zsidó szatócs családjában született. Mátészalkán elvégzett 4 polgárit, majd Abaújszántóra került inasnak Blau Herman vegyeskereskedésébe. 15 éves korában (1888) gondolt egy merészet, és kezébe vette a vándorbotot.
Noha a zsebében mindössze pár dollár árválkodott, meg sem állt Amerikáig. Előbb egy szőrméshez szegődött, később önállósította magát és szűcsműhelyt nyitott. 20 éves korában (1893) látott egy filmet és azonnal megérezte benne az üzleti lehetőséget. Nem a művészet érdekelte, hanem a pénzcsinálás, a vállalkozás öröme és kockázata.
1904-ben betársult egy filléres bódéba, ahol három perces mozidarabokat lehetett megtekinteni egy penny bedobása fejében. Marcus Loew-vel, a későbbi mozimogullal szövetkezve hálózatot épített ki, s arra törekedett, hogy az új találmány iránti érdeklődést maximálisan kielégítse. A piacon azonban a korai nagy társaságokból alakult tröszt diktált, Zukornak tehát "robbantania" kellett. A szerencse az Erzsébet királynő képében sietett a segítségére. Megvásárolta a Sarah Bernhardt főszereplésével készült francia film forgalmazási jogát, és ezzel 1912-ben a szó szoros értelmében tarolt Amerikában.
A mind magabiztosabb egykori szűcs még ugyanabban az esztendőben megalapította a Famous Players in Famous Plays Company-t, s a büszke cégtáblának megfelelően kiváló erőket szerződtetett igényes regények és színdarabok vászonra viteléhez. Többek között Edwin S. Porter, a tehetséges pionírok egyike rendezett számára, csillagai között pedig Mary Pickford, az első igazi sztár is ott tündökölt.

1914-ben Zukor már évi 30 film készítésére képes csapatot verbuvált, megnyílt a Broadwayn 3500 személyes mozipalotája, a Standard. Los Angeles külvárosában, Hollywoodban kibérelte egy narancsfarm gazdasági épületét, ott rendezte be az első stúdiót. Hamarosan csapatostól kéredzkedtek hozzá a népszerű szerepjátszók. Az ő "istállójából" került ki ekkor, ill. a fölemelkedés esztendeiben Douglas Fairbanks, John Barrymore, Pola Negri, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Adolphe Menjou, Rudolph Valentino, Gary Cooper és a többi élő legenda. Bevezette a kizárólagosságot: színészei más cégek számára nem dolgozhattak.
Zukor cége 1916-ban egyesült Jesse L. Lasky Feature Film Company nevű gyárával. Az óriási tekintéllyel rendelkező ex-magyart választották elnökké. A birodalom megkoronázását a forgalmazás megkaparintása jelenthette. Erre is született stratégia. William Hodkinson rendelkezett a legtöbb mozidarab vetítési jogával. Zukor először felajánlotta neki a fúziót, de az elutasítástól sem jött zavarba: annak rendje és módja szerint megbuktatta vetélytársát és megvalósította elképzelését. Így kezdődött 1916-ban a Paramount Pictures krónikája.
A birodalom és vezére uralkodott a filmszakmában, de a virágzás nem tart(hat)ott örökké. 1932-ben a könyvek 21 millió dolláros deficitet mutattak.
A hosszabb szünet utáni újjászervezéstől kezdve a cég a Paramount Pictures Inc. nevet viselte. Barney Balaban lett az új vezető, ám az alapítónak sem kötöttek útilaput a talpára: az igazgatótanács elnökeként továbbra is bejárhatott hivatalába.
Az 1940-es évek végén a televíziót akarta az ellenőrzése alá vonni. Szövetkezett az ABC (American Broadcasting Company) tévétársasággal, ami nem kis hatalmat és befolyást jelentett.
1966-ban a stúdió a Gulf and Western Industries nevű konszernbe olvadt. Adolph Zukor a "szép új világon" is rajta tarthatta a szemét, tiszteletbeli elnökként fürödhetett a népszerűségben.
1949-ben életművéért Oscar-díjat kapott. Századik születésnapját világraszóló külsőségek között ünnepelték meg.

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall (7 July 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Russian Jewish artist associated with several key art movements and was one of the most successful artists of the twentieth century. He forged a unique career in virtually every artistic medium, including paintings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall's haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have enjoyed universal appeal, and art critic Robert Hughes called him "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."
As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known and most-loved paintings of our time. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists.” For decades he “had also been respected as the world’s preeminent Jewish artist.” He also accepted many non-Jewish commissions, including a stained glass for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, a Dag Hammarskjold memorial at the United Nations, and the great ceiling mural in the Paris Opera.
His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, and the October Revolution of 1917 brought Chagall both opportunity and peril. He was by now one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde. He founded the Vitebsk Arts College, which was considered the most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union. However, "Chagall was considered a non-person by the Soviets because he was Jewish and a painter whose work did not celebrate the heroics of the Soviet people." As a result, he soon moved to Paris with his wife, never to return.[2]
He was known to have two basic reputations, writes Lewis - as a pioneer of modernism, and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism’s golden age in Paris, where “he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism.” Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk." [2] “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.”

Marc Chagall was born in Liozno, near Vitebsk, now in Belarus, the eldest of nine children in a close-knit Jewish family led by his father Khatskl (Zakhar) Shagal, a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite. This period of his life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work. The family home on Pokrovskaya Street is now the Marc Chagall Museum.

He began studying painting in 1906 with a local artist, Yehuda Pen. In 1907, he moved to St. Petersburg. There he joined the school of the Society of Art Supporters and studied under Nikolai Roerich. It was here that he was exposed to experimental theater and the work of such artists as Gauguin.[5] From 1908-1910 Chagall studied under Leon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting.
This was a difficult period for Chagall; at the time, Jewish residents were only allowed to live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and the artist was jailed for a brief period for an infringement of this restriction. Despite this, Chagall remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, and regularly visited his home town where, in 1909, he met his future wife, Bella Rosenfeld.
After gaining a reputation as an artist, Chagall left St. Petersburg to settle in Paris to be near the burgeoning art community in the Montparnasse district, where he developed friendships with such avant-garde luminaries as Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk and, a year later, married his fiancée, Bella. While in Russia, World War I erupted and, in 1916, the Chagalls had their first child, a daughter named Ida.
Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although the Soviet Ministry of Culture made him a Commissar of Art for the Vitebsk region, where he founded Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art and an art school, he did not fare well politically under the Soviet system. "Chagall was considered a non-person by the Soviets because he was Jewish and a painter whose work did not celebrate the heroics of the Soviet people."[6] He and his wife moved back to Paris in 1922.
During this period, Chagall wrote articles, poetry and his memoirs (in Yiddish,) which were published mainly in newspapers (and only posthumously in book-form). Chagall became a French citizen in 1937.
With the Nazi occupation of France during World War II and the deportation of Jews, the Chagalls fled Paris, seeking asylum at Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, where the American journalist Varian Fry assisted in their escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in the United States where he lived until 1948 (his wife Bella died in 1944.)
His wife Bella, who appears in many of his paintings, bore him one child, Ida and then died on September 2, 1944. Bella and Ida appeared in many of his early and most famous paintings. In 1945, he began a relationship with his housekeeper Virginia Haggard McNeil, with whom he had a son, David. In the 1950s, they moved to a villa in Provence. [7] Virginia left him in 1952, and Chagall married Valentina Brodsky (whom he called "Vava").

Chagall had a complex relationship with Judaism. On the one hand, he credited his Russian Jewish cultural background as being crucial to his artistic imagination. But however ambivalent he was about his religion, he could not avoid drawing upon his Jewish past for artistic material. As an adult, he was not a practicing Jew, but through his paintings and stained glass, he continually tried to suggest a more "universal message," using both Jewish and Christian themes.

He traveled several times to Greece and visited Israel in 1957. During this time, he rediscovered a free and vibrant use of color. His works of this period are dedicated to love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also began to work in sculpture, ceramics, and stained glass.
In a recent book review of Chagall's biography, author Serena Davies writes, "By the time he died in France in 1985 - the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years - he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War."
She later adds that the book "leaves us finally with an image of a man who came from nowhere to achieve world-wide acclaim. Yet his fractured relationship with his Jewish identity - he was physically divorced from his homeland, and he wasn't a practising Jew - was unresolved and tragic. He would have died with no Jewish rites, had not a stranger stepped forward and said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over his coffin."

Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes that reflected his Jewish heritage. In 1950 he began experimenting with graphic mediums. After meeting with Fernand Mourlot, he often visited Mourlot Studios where he eventually produced close to a thousand different lithographic editions. With the assistance of Charles Sorlier, a master printer working at Mourlot, he spent 30 years exploring the graphic medium that most lends itself to color representation. Charles Sorlier also became one of his closest friends, assistant and counsel until the day of his death.
Chagall's artworks are difficult to categorize. Working in the pre-World War I Paris art world, he was involved with avant-garde currents, however, his work was consistently on the fringes of popular art movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism, among others. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its exponents, including Amedeo Modigliani.
Abounding with references to his childhood, Chagall's work has also been criticized for slighting some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates happiness and optimism to those who view his work strictly in terms of his use of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crucifixion, which is rich with intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and the oppression of Jews in general.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Jewish theater became a catalyst for modernist experimentation. Chagall and other artists were hired to produce theater sets and costumes combining Russian folk art with elements of Cubo-Futurism and Constructivism.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall engaged in a series of large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings. For example, 200,000 visitors a year visit St. Stephen’s cathedral in Mainz, Germany. "Tourists from the whole world pilgrim up St. Stephen’s Mount, to the glowing blue stained glass windows by the artist Marc Chagall," states the city's web site. "St. Stephen’s is the only German church for which the Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) created windows."

The website also states, “The colours address our vital consciousness directly, because they tell of optimism, hope and delight in life”, says Monsignor Klaus Mayer, who imparts Chagall’s work in mediations and books. He established contact with Chagall in 1973, and succeeded in persuading the “master of colour and the biblical message” to set a sign for Jewish-Christian attachment and international understanding in the east chancel. In 1978, the first Chagall window by the then 91-year-old artist was fitted. A further eight followed, six for the east chancel and three in the transept."[10]
In 1960, he created stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem. During the Six-Day War the hospital came under severe attack, placing Chagall's work under threat. In response to this, Chagall wrote a letter from France stating "I am not worried about the windows, only about the safety of Israel. Let Israel be safe and I will make you lovelier windows." Luckily, most of the panels were removed in time, with only one sustaining severe damage. In 1973, Israel issued a series of stamps featuring the Chagall windows, which depict the Twelve tribes.

The U.N. public lobby has a stained-glass window designed by Chagall and was a gift from United Nations as well as Marc Chagall himself. It was presented in 1964 as a memorial to Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary-General of the UN, and fifteen other people who died with him in a plane crash in 1961.
The U.N. website describes the stained glass a "memorial, which is about 15 feet wide and 12 feet high, contains several symbols of peace and love, such as the young child in the center being kissed by an angelic face which emerges from a mass of flowers. On the left, below and above motherhood and the people who are struggling for peace are depicted. Musical symbols in the panel evoke thoughts of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was a favourite of Mr. Hammarskjold's.".

Chagall also designed tapestries which were woven under the direction of Yvette Cauquil-Prince, who also collaborated with Picasso. These tapestries are much rarer than his paintings, with only 40 of them ever reaching the commercial market. [12]Chagall designed three tapestries for the state hall of the Knesset in Israel, along with 12 floor mosaics and a wall mosaic.

In 1930, Chagall was commissioned to do a series of Bible prints by Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Chagall spent three months in Palestine to paint preparatory gouaches. He completed 66 of the plates by 1939, and returned to the project 13 years later, after the Holocaust. These hand-colored etchings, completed in 1956, illustrated scenes from the Old Testament in Chagall's unique style.
Like Picasso, Chagall worked on ceramics. However, none of Chagall's pieces were made into editions and they are exceedingly rare and can be seen in only a few museums throughout the world.

Chagall's work is housed in a variety of locations, including the Palais Garnier (the old opera house), the Chase Tower Plaza of downtown Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Metz Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Reims, the Fraumünster abbey in Zürich, Switzerland, the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany and the Biblical Message museum in Nice, France, which Chagall helped to design.
The only church in England with a complete set of Chagall window-glass is located in the tiny village of Tudeley, in Kent, England. Chagall painted 12 colorful stained-glass windows in Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, with each frame depicting a different tribe. In the United States, the Union Church of Pocantico Hills contains a set of Chagall windows commemorating the prophets, which was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr..
At the Lincoln Center in New York City, Chagall's huge murals, The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, are installed in the lobby of the new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. Also in New York, the United Nations Headquarters has a stained glass wall of his work. In 1967 the UN commemorated this artwork with a postage stamp and souvenir sheet.
In 1973, the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall (Chagall Museum) opened in Nice, France. The museum in Vitebsk which bears his name was founded in 1997, in the building where his family lived, although, prior to his death, years before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, Chagall was persona non grata in his homeland. The museum has only copies of his work.
In 2007, an exhibition of his work, “Chagall of Miracles,” at Il Complesso del Vittoriano, included the Red Jew (1915), Above the City (1914-1918), Composition with Circles and Goat (1920), and The Fall of the Angel (1923-1947). Despite the fact that he was a Jew, he employed Christian iconography. He was also a dreamer whose works touched on the harsh realities of war and persecution. The works in this exhibition highlighted these aspects of Chagall's work.

In the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a print of Chagall's Adam and Eve is displayed on one of the walls of Spock's Enterprise ship quarters. When asked, he explains that the image is a philosophical reminder to him that all things must eventually end. Also, in the song "Painting by Chagall" by The Weepies.

Marc Chagall (Moise Zaharovics Sagalov, másként Moishe Segal, oroszul: Марк Захарович Шагал, Мойше Хацкелевич Сегалов) (Vityebszk, Oroszország, 1887. július 7. – Saint-Paul de Vence, Franciaország, 1985. március 28.) belorusz–zsidó származású honosított francia festőművész, a modern festészet egyik legkiemelkedőbb alakja.

Apja heringkereskedő, anyja eladó volt Vityebszkben. Életének e szakaszára mint szegény, de boldog időszakra utal a későbbi műveiben. 1906-ban kezdett festészetet tanulni Yehuda Penn, egy helybeli művész keze alatt, majd néhány hónappal később, 1907-ben Szentpétervárra költözött és különböző iskolákban festészetet tanult. Nyikoláj Rörich (Николай Рёрих) volt a mestere a Művészettámogatók Társaságának iskolájában, ahol találkozhatott minden festészeti iskola és stílus képviselőjével. 1908 és 1910 között a Zvanceva magániskolában Leon Bakst volt a mestere. 1910-ig élt Szentpéterváron, ahol zsidók csak engedéllyel tartózkodhattak, egyszer egy rövid időre bebörtönözték. Rendszeresen visszalátogatott szülőfalujába, ahol 1909-ben megismerkedett későbbi feleségével, Bella Rosenfelddel, egy jómódú ékszerész lányával. 1910–1914 között támogatója, Vinaver ösztöndíjának köszönhetően Párizsban élt, a Montparnasse közelében. Barátja lett – többek között – Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay és Fernand Léger. Részt vett a Sturm 1914-es berlini kiállításán, és azonnal ismert festővé vált. Visszatért Vityebszkbe, és 1915-ben feleségül vette menyasszonyát, Bellát, akitől 1916-ban lánya született, Ida.
Az első világháborúban katonáskodott. 1917-ben a Párizsból ismert Lunacsarszkij Vityebszk kerület művészeti népbiztosává nevezte ki. A politizálás nem tetszett neki, így 1919-ben már Moszkvában dolgozott, az Állami Zsidó Színháznál, majd 1923 őszén a családjával Párizsba költözött. 1937-ben megkapta a francia állampolgárságot. A náci megszállás elől egy ideig Marseille-ben rejtőztek, majd Spanyolországon és Portugálián át Amerikába menekültek. 1941 és 1947 között New Yorkban élt. 1944. szeptember 2-án meghalt felesége, szeretett társa, alkotásainak visszatérő alakja. 1946-ban visszatért Európába, és 1949-ben a franciaországi Vence-ban telepedett le. Életének ezen intenzív szakaszában újra felfedezte az élénk, vibráló, életteli színeket; az alkotásai témáit a szerelem és az életöröm adta. Ekkor kezdett el foglalkozni szobrászattal, kerámiával, üvegfestéssel. 1952-ben újra megnősült, felesége Valentina Brodsky lett. Többször utazott Görögországba és Izraelbe. 1960-ban alkotta a jeruzsálemi Hadassa egyetemi klinika zsinagógájának üvegablakait.
1973-ban Nizzában megnyílt a Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall (Chagall Múzeum). A nevét viselő vityebszki múzeumot csak 1997-ben alapították, az egykori lakóházában – a szovjet időkben Chagall nemkívánatos személy volt. Itt csupán műveinek másolata látható.

Chagall nem sorolható be a századeleji avantgárd egyik irányzatába sem. Ugyanakkor hatása kétségtelenül nagy volt mind a szürrealistákra, mind az expresszionistákra.
Emlékképeket, bensőjén átszűrt meseszerű fantáziavilágot, és nem a látható valóságot ábrázolta. Műveiben a szereplő emberek, állatok, tárgyak szimbolikus értelműek. Életműve elsősorban ifjúsága emlékeiből táplálkozik, Vityebszk zsidónegyedének rituális életéből, a szegénység vidám, szomorú költészetéből.
Művészetét általában három szakaszra bontják. Az első az 1907–10 közötti korszak, amelyben tematikáját sötét színekkel, hagyományos eszközökkel jeleníti meg. 1911-től a kubista térarchitektúra és a modern színelmélet szabályai szerint ábrázol. Az 1930-as évektől pedig jelképei (szárnyas óra, gyertyatartó, szerelmespár, kecske, hal, …) minden formai kötöttség nélküli szabadsággal, ugyanakkor lelki viharokkal telve kerülnek a képre.