lafayette

1934

   Nacido en Lafayette, Indiana, estudia interpretacion en Nueva York. Actor de television, en los anos 60 se convierte en director y productor en ese mismo medio. Es contratado por Paramount en 1965. No ha dejado de hacer peliculas desde entonces, y en los ultimos tiempos parece haber retomado, aunque timidamente, su faceta de actor, en peliculas como Maridos y mujeres (Husbands and Wives, Woody Allen, 1992) o Eyes Wide Shut (Eyes Wide Shut, Stan ley Kubrick, 1999).

   La filmografia de Pollack como director de cine es irregular. Peca, por lo general, de pretencioso y ambiguo. Parece moverse mejor en los filmes de accion que en aquellos en los que solo intervienen sentimientos personales. Obtuvo resonantes exitos con Tal como eramos (The Way We Were, 1973), Tootsie (Tootsie, 1982) y Memorias de Africa (Out of Africa, 1985), por la que logro el Oscar de la Acade mia, pero tambien algun que otro inesperado fracaso. Su mejor pelicula, en un juicio estrictamente personal, es The Yakuza (Yakuza, 1974), en la que consigue acertar con las claves narrativas de la historia que tiene entre manos. Sus westerns son me nos buenos (una forma matizada de decir peores) de lo que podria parecer a primera vista.

   FILMOGRAFIA

    The Scalphunters (Camino de la venganza). 1968. 102 minutos. Color DeLuxe. Norlan-Bristol (UA). Burt Lancaster, Shelley Winters, Telly Savalas.

    Jeremiah Johnson (Las aventuras de Jeremiah Johnson). 1972. 116 minutos. Technicolor. Panavision. Wizan-Sanford Productions (WB). Robert Redford, Will Geer.

    The Electric Horseman (El jinete electrico). 1979. 122 minutos. Tech ni color. Panavision. Ray Stark-Wild Wood (Columbia/Universal). Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Valerie Perrine.

1896-1975

   Nacido en Brookline, Massachusetts, William A Well man deja los estudios secundarios para jugar como profesional en un equipo de hockey sobre hielo. Con posterioridad, lo encontramos alistado en la Legion Extranjera Fran cesa y, durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, como as de la aviacion. Despues de un encuentro accidental con Douglas Fairbanks entra en el mundo del cine. Pronto, en 1923, empieza a dirigir, sobre todo westerns, hasta que su pelicula Alas (Wings, 1927), en la que tiene ocasion de plasmar, casi de modo autobiografico, sus conocimientos del universo de la aviacion, le proporciona un enorme exito y, por anadidura, el primer Oscar a la Mejor Pelicula.

   En los anos treinta es el responsable de filmes violentos y controvertidos como The Public Enemy (1931). Wellman es uno de los ilustres pioneros de Hollywood, y de nuevo, ese personaje es alguien importante en el mundo del western. Cultivo con brillantez la comedia (La reina de Nueva York, Nothing Sacred, 1937), el genero belico (Lafayette Escadrille, 1958), el filme de aventuras (Beau Geste, 1939) y el drama (Ha nacido una estrella, A Star is Born, 1937), primera version del clasico que volveria a rodar, en los anos cincuenta, George Cukor. Pero tal vez es en el western donde Wellman se encuentra mas a gusto, contribuyendo a su historia y tambien a su mitologia con algunas impresionantes peliculas que se encuentran entre lo mejor que nunca se ha hecho dentro del genero, como The Ox-Bow Incident y Cielo amarillo.

   La primera, oscura, tenebrosa, reflexiva, pone al espectador, y tambien a los personajes del drama, frente a la realidad de un linchamiento, la vieja ley del oeste que en esta ocasion se trata de trascender; un amargo y austero final resuena en nuestros oidos como si de un viento helado se tratase. Cielo amarillo, por su parte, nos cautiva con sus ecos shakespeareanos; al fin y al cabo, no deja de ser una transposicion de “La tempestad” al mundo inclemente del desierto, que encierra en su interior una ciudad fantasma como si fuera una isla. No conviene olvidar, tampoco, Caravana de mujeres, pelicula de permanente actualidad, pero es que tambien Mas alla del Missouri, a pesar de su aparente sencillez, es un modelo de renovacion narrativa.

   FILMOGRAFIA

    The Call of the Wild (La llamada de la selva). 1935. 95 minutos. Blanco y Negro. Fox. Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Jack Oakie, Reginald Owen.

    Robin Hood of El Dorado (Joaquin Murrieta). 1936. 86 minutos. Blanco y Negro. MGM. Warner Baxter, Ann Loring, Bruce Cabot.

    The Great Man’s Lady (Una gran senora). 1942. 90 minutos. Blanco y Negro. Paramount. Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy.

    The Ox-Bow Incident. 1943. 75 minutos. Blanco y Negro. Fox. Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hugues, Anthony Quinn.

    Buffalo Bill (Aventuras de Buffalo Bill). 1944. 90 minutos. Technicolor. Fox. Joel McCrea, Maureen O’Hara, Linda Darnell.

    Yellow Sky (Cielo amarillo). 1948. 98 minutos. Blanco y Negro. Fox. Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Ann Baxter.

    Across the Wide Missouri (Mas alla del Missouri). 1951. 78 minutos. Technicolor. MGM. Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, John Hodiak, Maria Elena Marques.

    Westward the Women (Caravana de mujeres). 1952. 116 minutos. Blanco y Negro. MGM. Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, John McIntire.

    Track of the Cat. 1954. 102 minutos. Warnercolor. CinemaScope. Wayne-Fellows (WB). Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright.

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SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After initial education at Trinity College School, Port Hope, Ontario, Fessenden studied at Bishops University, Lennoxville, Quebec. When he graduated in 1885, he became Principal of the Whitney Institute in Bermuda, but he left the following year to go to New York in pursuit of his scientific interests. There he met Edison and eventually became Chief Chemist at the latter's Laboratory in Orange, New Jersey. In 1890 he moved to the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and two years later he returned to an academic career as Professor of Electrical Engineering, initially at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, and then at the Western University of Pennsylvania, where he worked on wireless communication. From 1900 to 1902 he carried out experiments in wireless telegraphy at the US Weather Bureau, filing several patents relating to wire and liquid thermal detectors, or barretters. Following this he set up the National Electric Signalling Company; under his direction, Alexanderson and other engineers at the General Electric Company developed a high-frequency alternator that enabled him to build the first radiotelephony transmitter at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. This made its initial broadcast of speech and music on 24 December 1906, received by ship's wireless operators several hundred miles away. Soon after this the transmitter was successfully used for two-way wireless telegraphy communication with Scotland. Following this landmark event, Fessenden produced numerous inventions, including a radio compass, an acoustic depth-finder and several submarine signalling devices, a turboelectric drive for battleships and, notably, in 1912 the heterodyne principle used in radio receivers to convert signals to a lower (intermediate) frequency.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Mies van der Rohe was the son of a stonemason and his early constructional training came from his father. As a young man he gained experience of the modern school from study of the architecture of the earlier leaders, notably Peter Behrens, Hendrik Berlage and Frank Lloyd Wright. He commenced architectural practice in 1913 and soon after the First World War was establishing his own version of modern architecture. His building materials were always of the highest quality, of marble, stone, glass and, especially, steel. He stripped his designs of all extraneous decoration: more than any of his contemporaries he followed the theme of elegance, functionalism and an ascetic concentration on essentials. He believed that architectural design should not look backwards but should reflect the contemporary achievement of advanced technology in both its construction and the materials used, and he began early in his career to act upon these beliefs. Typical was his early concrete and glass office building of 1922, after which, more importantly, came his designs for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition of 1929. These designs included his famous Barcelona chair, made from chrome steel and leather in a geometrical design, one which has survived as a classic and is still in production. Another milestone was his Tugendhat House in Brno (1930), a long, low, rectilinear structure in glass and steel that set a pattern for many later buildings of this type. In 1930 Mies followed his colleagues as third Director of the Bauhaus, but due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany it was closed in 1933. He finally left Germany for the USA in 1937, and the following year he took up his post as Director of Architecture in Chicago at what is now known as the Illinois Institute of Technology and where he remained for twenty years. In America Mies van der Rohe continued to develop his work upon his original thesis. His buildings are always recognizable for their elegance, fine proportions, high-quality materials and clean, geometrical forms; nearly all are of glass and steel in rectangular shapes. The structure and design evolved according to the individual needs of each commission, and there were three fundamental types of design. One type was the single or grouped high-rise tower, built for apartments for the wealthy, as in his Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago (1948–51), or for city-centre offices, as in his Seagram Building in New York (1954–8, with Philip Johnson) or his Chicago Federal Centre (1964). Another form was the long, low rectangle based upon the earlier Tugendhat House and seen again in the New National Gallery in Berlin (1965–8). Third, there were the grouped schemes when the commission called for buildings of varied purpose on a single, large site. Here Mies van der Rohe achieved a variety and interest in the different shapes and heights of buildings set out in spatial harmony of landscape. Some examples of this type of scheme were housing estates (Lafayette Park Housing Development in Detroit, 1955–6), while others were for educational, commercial or shopping requirements, as at the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963–9).

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1. LAT Gallus lafayettei ( Lesson)

2. RUS цейлонская джунглевая курица f

3. ENG Ceylon [Lafayette’s] junglefowl

4. DEU Ceylon-Huhn n, Lafayettehuhn n

5. FRA coq m de La Fayette