An “imaginative biography” of Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago who was killed in the line of fire during an assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933.
Category: Biography
Vesta Tilley is the daughter of a music-hall chairman who watches shows from the wings with great enthusiasm. One day, her father finds her dressed as a boy, singing to an audience of dolls. Her act, he believes, is good enough to be performed in front of a live audience. As time goes on, word of her spreads. Viewed as the first male impersonator, her fame leads her into marriage to a nobleman.
Biography of the curvaceous and sharp-witted actress who scandalized Broadway and Hollywood in the 1920s-30s with her frank approach to sex.
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Portrait of Italian tycoon, Enrico Mattei, who headed a state-combined industrial concern for natural resources from the early post-war years and who died under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash at Milan airport in 1962.
The last decade (1937-47) of the poet Hans Fallada’s life. He lives with his family in Carwitz. His craving for harmony collides with the circumstances of the times and his own inner turmoil. He writes already anything of note, drinks and takes pills. His wife Anna sees him through his times of darkest depression, tolerating his overt aggression and his affair with the house maid Anneliese. But once he begins a relationships with the manufacturer’s widow Ursula Losch, Anna finally calls for a divorce. His love for the pretty, young Ursula delivers him a new thirst for life, but only for a brief time.
The story of Buzz Aldrin, the second astronaut to walk on the moon, and the problems he had after his return to Earth, including the breakup of his marriage, a nervous breakdown and his hospitalization for psychiatric problems.
Flying from his enemies in the Catholic Church, the free thinking philosopher, poet and scientist Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) has found some protection in Venice. But the Roman Inquisition, fearing his influence in Europe, wants to bring him on trial for ‘heresy’.
The acclaimed Tony Palmer helmed this 1984 biopic on 19th and early 20th century Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, here portrayed by Robert Stephens. Palmer opts to focus not on the whole gestalt of Puccini’s life, but on a devastating scandal that transpired in 1909, when Giacomo’s wife, Elvira Puccini, accused maid Doria Manfredi of bedding her husband. The unfounded allegations prompted a massive lawsuit from the maid’s family, and nearly toppled Giacomo’s illustrious career.