Roy Rogers (born Leonard Franklin Slye) (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), was a singer and cowboy actor, as well as the namesake of the well-known Roy Rogers Restaurants chain. He and his second wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino Trigger, and his German Shepherd Dog, Bullet, were featured in over one hundred movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often either Pat Brady, (who drove a jeep called "Nellybelle") or the crotchety Gabby Hayes. Roy's nickname was "King of the Cowboys". Dale's nickname was "Queen of the West." For many Americans (and non-Americans), he was the embodiment of a cowboy. Hollywood movies just scratch the surface of what could be recommended for viewing. No matter what your film preference, the pleasant atmosphere of romantic comedies, the thrills of action and suspense, or a motion picture epic, the Hollywood classics of the 1920's through the 1950's offer something for everyone. one with the Wind was released in 1939, directed by Victor Fleming and is a classic of epic proportions. Gone with the Wind, first published on May, 1936, is a romantic novel and the only novel written by Margaret Mitchell. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction  and follows the life of Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation  owner. Scarlett marries two men she does not love, all the while thinking that she is in love with Ashley Wilkes, who has married Melanie Hamilton. During both marriages, Scarlett spends a lot of time with Rhett Butler. After her second husband dies, Scarlett marries Rhett, who is aware of her passion for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple have been through so much that Rhett has fallen out of love with her. Martin Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Flushing, New York. Through most of his life, his chosen career goal was to be a priest. However, he later had a change of heart, and decided instead to become a filmmaker. In 1964, he graduated from New York University from the film program. During the rest of the 60's, Scorsese made various student films, eventually becoming an assistant director and co-editor of the documentary Woodstock in 1970. This film, along with his others, caught the eye of veteran low budget producer Roger Corman. In 1972, Scorsese directed Boxcar Bertha for Corman. In 1973, he followed that up with his amazing feature, Mean Streets. As Walter Melnyk pointed out, that film provided benchmarks for the Scorsese Style: New York settings, loners struggling with inner demons, pointed-shoes rock meets opera soundtracks, and unrelenting cathartic violence. In 1974, Scorsese directed Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore which earned Ellen Burstyn a Best Actress Academy Award. In 1976, Scorsese directed the film for which he is probably most famous for, the ultra-violent Taxi Driver which drew controversy after it inspired John Hinckley's assasination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In 1980, Scorsese made another film with Robert De Niro, Raging Bull. The film was an amazing, black and white biography of middleweight fighter Jake LaMotta which earned two Academy Awards. One for Best Actor - Robert De Niro, and one for Best Editing - Thelma Schoonmaker. Later, it was selected as best film of the decade by film critics, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. His next few works were King of Comedy in 1983 with Robert De Niro, After Hours in 1985, and in 1986, Paul Newman earned an Academy Award for his reprisal of the role of gambler Eddie Felson in The Color of Money. His next film was probably his most controversial to date, The Last Temptation of Christ which outraged some religious groups by attempting to portray a human son of God. In 1990, he directed the excellent film, GoodFellas. In 1991, he directed a remake of Cape Fear, a remake of the classic 1961 film. In 1993, he directed The Age of Innocence. Casino, his epic about the rise and fall of a mob figure in Las Vegas was released in 1995. In 1999, Scorsese released Bringing Out the Dead, an adaptation of Joseph Connelly's novel about an overworked, stressed ambulance driver fighting insanity. Scorsese has stayed busy over the years, directing Gangs of New York in 2002, and The Aviator in 2004, with The Departed scheduled for release in 2006, with an incredible cast, consisting of such talent as Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio (a Scorsese favorite of late), Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, and Alec Baldwin, and a great story concept, being of cross spies, one being in the Boston Police Department, and the other being in the Irish Mafia in Boston. Martin has never won an Academy Award, however, in 1997, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. A film adaptation of Margaret Mitchells 1936 novel, it stared some of the biggest names in film history. Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, and Olivia de Havilland helped propel Gone with the Wind to 10 Academy Awards. It has sold more tickets in the United States than any other film in history. In AFI's 2007 list of the top 100 American Films of all time it is ranked number 6, and is considered one of the most enduring symbols of Hollywood's Golden Age. The unforgettable and timeless Casablanca was released in 1942 and has enjoyed increased popularity every year since its release. Featuring a strong international cast led by Humphrey Bogart (in his first romantic lead role), Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, Austrian actor Paul Henreid, English actor Claude Rains, German actor Conrad Veidt, English actor Sydney Greenstreet, and Hungarian actor Peter Lorre 1940s The Philadelphia Story is another must-watch Hollywood classic. A romantic comedy (based on real life socialite Helen Hope Montgomery Scott) about a bride-to-be whose plans suddenly become very complicated. Starring Katharine Hepburn, once labeled as box office poison due to the failure of some previous films, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. This film was a great success and is rated number 44 on the American Film Institutes list of the top 100 movies, and number 15 on the list of the top 100 comedies. There is no doubt that Freidrich Willhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Symphony of Horror) is a piece of landmark cinema, both for its Expressionist filmmaking and its unique treatment of the vampire as plague. Yet few people saw this monumental film prior to 1960. Though slated for destruction by Bram Stoker’s widow, the film managed to survive, popping up in the most peculiar places. Nosferatu debuted at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens in 1922. The movie was the first and last product of a small art collective called Prana Films — the brainchild of artist Albin Grau (later Nosferatu’s production designer). A month later Florence Stoker caught wind, and she started the legal machines rolling. Her only income at this point was her deceased husband’s book Dracula, and she would not let some German production company steal her meal ticket. During the 1920s, intellectual rights were a bit dodgy, so Florence paid one British pound to join the British Incorporated Society of Authors to help defend her property. Never mind that the society would also pick up the tab for the potentially huge legal bills. The world famous Hollywood Walk of Fame was constructed in the year 1958 and the first star was placed in 1960. The Walk of Fame was placed as a tribute to the artists working in the entertainment industry. It is embedded with more than 2,000 five pointed stars featuring the names of not only celebrities, but also fictional characters. Self financing Hollywood Historic Trust maintains this Walk of Fame. The first star to receive this honor was Joanne Woodward. An artist receives a star based on career and lifetime achievements in motion pictures, live theatres, radio, television, and music. The famous Hollywood sign which originally read Hollywoodland, was constructed in the year 1923 as an advertisement of a new housing development. The sign was left to disuse until in 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce repaired and removed the last four letters. The sign, now located at Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and hence cannot be used without the permission of the Chamber of Commerce. The Hollywood film industry can be called the Mecca of film industries. Though geographically it is located in Hollywood, it resides in the hearts of millions of film lovers and film related persons. The Hollywood remains and will remain a king, without a scepter. The House of Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood in the early 1950s. Protested by the Hollywood Ten before the committee, the hearings resulted in the blacklisting of many actors, writers and directors, including Chayefsky, Charlie Chaplin, and Dalton Trumbo, and many of these fled to Europe, especially the United Kingdom. The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a type of near-paranoia manifested in themes such as invading armies of evil aliens, (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The War of the Worlds); and communist fifth columnists, (The Manchurian Candidate). During the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was also threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some movie theatres would bankrupt and close. The demise of the "studio system" spurred the self-commentary of films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). In 1950, the Lettrists avante-gardists caused riots at the Cannes Film Festival, when Isidore Isou's Treatise on Slime and Eternity was screened. After their criticism of Charlie Chaplin and split with the movement, the Ultra-Lettrists continued to cause disruptions when they showed their new hypergraphical techniques. The most notorious film is Guy Debord's Howls for Sade of 1952. Distressed by the increasing number of closed theatres, studios and companies would find new and innovative ways to bring audiences back. These included attempts to literally widen their appeal with new screen formats. Cinemascope, which would remain a 20th Century Fox distinction until 1967, was announced with 1953's The Robe. VistaVision, Cinerama, and Todd-AO boasted a "bigger is better" approach to marketing movies to a dwindling US audience. This resulted in the revival of epic films to take advantage of the new big screen formats. Some of the most successful examples of these Biblical and historical spectaculars include The Ten Commandments (1956), The Vikings (1958), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and El Cid (1961). Also during this period a number of other significant films were produced in Todd-AO, developed by Mike Todd shortly before his death, including Oklahoma! (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), South Pacific (1958) and Cleopatra (1963) plus many more. The New Hollywood' and 'post-classical cinema' are terms used to describe the period following the decline of the studio system during the 1950s and 1960s and the end of the production code. During the 1970s, filmmakers increasingly depicted explicit sexual content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that included graphic images of bloody deaths. 'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling of the "New Hollywood" producers. The new methods of drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired during the classical/Golden Age period: story chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature unsettling "twist endings", main characters may behave in a morally ambiguous fashion, and the lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen in 1940s and 1950s film noir movies, in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's Psycho. 1971 marked the release of controversial films like Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection and Dirty Harry. This sparked heated controversy over the perceived escalation of violence in cinema. During the 1970s, a new group of American filmmakers emerged, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Brian de Palma. This coincided with the increasing popularity of the auteur theory in film literature and the media, which posited that a film director's films express their personal vision and creative insights. The development of the auteur style of filmmaking helped to give these directors far greater control over their projects than would have been possible in earlier eras. This led to some great critical and commercial successes, like Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Coppola's The Godfather films, Spielberg's Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George Lucas's Star Wars. It also, however, resulted in some failures, including Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and Michael Cimino's hugely expensive Western epic Heaven's Gate, which helped to bring about the demise of its backer, United Artists. The financial disaster of Heaven's Gate marking the end of the visionary "auteur" directors of the "New Hollywood", who had unrestrained creative and financial freedom to develop films. The phenomenal success in the 1970s of Jaws and Star Wars in particular, led to the rise of the modern "blockbuster". Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a smaller number of very large budget films with massive marketing and promotional campaigns. This trend had already been foreshadowed by the commercial success of disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. During the mid-1970s, more pornographic theatres, euphemistically called "adult cinemas", were established, and the legal production of hardcore pornographic films began. Porn films such as Deep Throat and its star Linda Lovelace became something of a popular culture phenomenon and resulted in a spate of similar sex films. The porn cinemas finally died out during the 1980s, when the popularization of the home VCR and pornography videotapes allowed audiences to watch sex films at home. In the early 1970s, English-language audiences became more aware of the new West German cinema, with Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders among its leading exponents. In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of martial arts films, largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee, who departed from the artistic style of traditional Chinese martial arts films and added a much greater sense of realism to them with his Jeet Kune Do style. This began with The Big Boss (1971), which was a major success across Asia. However, he didn't gain fame in the Western world until shortly after his death in 1973, when Enter the Dragon was released. The film went on to become the most successful martial arts film in cinematic history, popularized the martial arts film genre across the world, and cemented Bruce Lee's status as a cultural icon. Hong Kong action cinema, however, was in decline due to a wave of "Bruceploitation" films. This trend eventually came to an end in 1978 with the martial arts comedy films, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, directed by Yuen Woo-ping and starring Jackie Chan, laying the foundations for the rise of Hong Kong action cinema in the 1980s. In world cinema, Academy Award winning Japanese director Akira Kurosawa produced Yojimbo (1961), which like his previous films also had a profound influence around the world. The influence of this film is most apparent in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing (1996). Yojimbo was also the origin of the "Man with No Name" trend. Meanwhile in India, the Academy Award winning Bengali director Satyajit Ray wrote a script for The Alien in 1967, based on a Bangla science fiction story he himself had written in 1962. The film was intended to be his debut in Hollywood but the production was eventually cancelled. Nevertheless, the script went on to influence later films such as Steven Spielberg's E.T. (1982)

Abbott and Lou Costello (born Louis Francis Cristillo) were an American comedy duo whose work in radio, film and television made them one of the most popular teams in the history of comedy. Thanks to the endurance of their most popular and influential routine, "Who's on First?"---whose rapid-fire word play and comprehension confusion set the preponderant framework for most of their best-known routines---the team are also the only comedians known to have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Bud Abbott was born in Asbury Park, NJ, October 2, 1897 and died April 24, 1974 in Woodland Hills, California. Lou Costello was born in Paterson, NJ, March 6, 1906 and died March 3, 1959 in East Los Angeles, California. After working as Allen's summer replacement, Abbott and Costello joined Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1941, while two of their films (Buck Privates and Hold That Ghost) were adapted for Lux Radio Theater. They launched their own weekly show October 8, 1942, sponsored by Camel cigarettes. The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes (usually, by singers such as Connie Haines, Marilyn Maxwell, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Skinnay Ennis, and the Les Baxter Singers). Regulars and semi-regulars on the show included Artie Auerbrook, Elvia Allman, Iris Adrian, Mel Blanc, Wally Brown, Sharon Douglas, Verna Felton, Sidney Fields, Frank Nelson, Martha Wentworth, and Benay Venuta. Ken Niles was the show's longtime announcer, doubling as an exasperated foil to Abbott & Costello's mishaps (and often fuming in character as Costello insulted his on-air wife routinely); he was succeeded by Michael Roy, with annoncing chores also handled over the years by Frank Bingman and Jim Doyle. The show went through several orchestras during its radio life, including those of Ennis, Charles Hoff, Matty Matlock, Jack Meaking, Will Osborne, Freddie Rich, Leith Stevens, and Peter van Steeden. The show's writers included Howard Harris, Hal Fimberg, Parke Levy, Don Prindle, Ed Cherokee, Len Stern, Martin Ragaway, Paul Conlan, and Ed Forman, as well as producer Martin Gosch. Sound effects were handled mostly by Floyd Caton. Abbott and Costello moved the show to ABC (the former NBC Blue Network) five years after they premiered on NBC. In the 1880s, the American stage was dominated by 'Vaudeville shows' which was cherished by the residents of North America. Being the primitive genre of variety entertainment, these shows differed from burlesque or minstrelsy. But as entrepreneurs started experimenting with their movie-making skills, these shows lost all their glory. In 1910, director D.W.Griffith and his troop started filming in downtown Los Angeles. While searching for a more apt location, they found it in a village miles northward -- 'Hollywood'. The first movie shot by Griffith in Hollywood was In Old California, a melodrama of California. Thorough research work identified a number of points which helped in establishing Hollywood movies. But it was Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation' which was the pioneering movie. Gradually, with the growth of Hollywood industry, films were exhibited in Nicholodeon halls. Ambitious people in the production side emerged as controlling heads of movie studios. They aided the internationalization of films to reduce American provincialism. In no time, the industry produced about 400 movies a year, with an audience of 9,00,00,000 Americans per week. The American studios, however, confronted major difficulties when their sound productions were rejected in various foreign language markets. Also, the synchronization technique was too primitive. In the 1930s, parallel language versions of films were produced to provide a befitting solution to the problem. With rapid advancement of synchronization, dubbing also became more realistic. During the Golden Age of Hollywood (1920-1950), the film industry was at the peak of its success. Adherence to the formula of western slapstick comedy was the formula and musical animated cartoon contributed to it. The same creative team worked on films made by the same studio. The most renowned studios were Warner Bros., MGM, RKO, etc. Each studio had its own specialized characteristics, a trait not seen today. Yet, each film was unique in its own flavor, since the moviemakers were all artists and creative people. The release of classics that enriched the industry, were Wutheirng Heights, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and such other masterpieces. In the late 1940s, the separation of the production of films from their exhibition and the advent of television led to the decline of the studio system. The postclassical cinema gave birth to directors from a new school of thought. They introduced new filming techniques and strategies and developed upon the prevailing ones. Films like Jaws, Godfather, Psycho, and other modern blockbusters have no doubt added a new dimension to Hollywood. With independent films, another new generation of moviemakers came forward with films which were often innovative, critical, unconventional, and contradictory. However, for their considerable financial success and crossover into popular culture, they have become a very influential part of the Hollywood mainstream films. With the passage of generations, directors with their exclusive style and innovations have come up with intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking creations, making the history of Hollywood movies interesting as well as amazing. Film industry is an amalgamation of technological and commercial institutions of film making. It generally consists of film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screen writing, pre-production, post production, film festivals, actors, directors and film personnel. Today the film industry is spread all around the world. In the present century the major business centers of filmmaking are concentrated in the United States, India and China. Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, that is situated in west- northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and the cultural individuality of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metaphor for the cinema of the United States which is popularly known as Hollywood film industry. The history of Hollywood film industry probably started in the hands of D.W. Griffith when the Biograph Company sent him and his crew. They started filming on a vacant lot in downtown Los Angeles in early 1910. Soon the company explored new territories to find that the region was quite friendly and very ideal for shooting. So, Griffith then filmed the first ever movie shot in Hollywood, titled In Old California. The movie company then stayed there for some months to shoot several of their films and then returned to New York. Starting in 1913, this wonderful place came into the limelight when movie makers started heading there. Thus Hollywood film industry took birth. The first feature film made in Hollywood was called The Squaw Man. Nestor Studio, founded in 1911, was the first movie studio in Hollywood. Fifteen other small studios also were established in Hollywood. Gradually Hollywood came to be so powerfully associated with the film industry that this term began to be used as a synonym for the entire industry. During the 1960s the studio system in Hollywood declined, because many films were now being made on location in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad, such as Pinewood in the UK  and Cinecittà in Rome. "Hollywood" movies were still largely aimed at family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films that produced the studios' biggest successes. Productions like Mary Poppins (1964), My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) were among the biggest money-makers of the decade. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the power of individual actors also contributed to the decline of traditional Hollywood studio production. There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema during this period. During the late 1950s and 1960s the French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard produced films such as Les quatre cents coups, Breathless and Jules et Jim which broke the rules of Hollywood cinema's narrative structure. As well, audiences were becoming aware of Italian films like Federico Fellini's La dolce vita and the stark dramas of Sweden's Ingmar Bergman. In Britain, the "Free Cinema" of Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and innovative dramas including Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving and This Sporting Life. Other British films such as Repulsion, Darling, Alfie, Blowup and Georgy Girl (all in 1965-1966) helped to reduce prohibitions sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and violence of the James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No in 1962 would render the series popular worldwide. During the 1960s, Ousmane Sembène produced several French- and Wolof-language films and became the 'father' of African Cinema. In Latin America the dominance of the "Hollywood" model was challenged by many film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast to Hollywood and the European auteur cinema. Further, the nuclear paranoia of the age, and the threat of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange (like the 1962 close-call with the USSR during the Cuban missile crisis) prompted a reaction within the film community as well. Films like Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe with Henry Fonda were produced in a Hollywood that was once known for its overt patriotism and wartime propaganda. In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like In the Year of the Pig about the Vietnam War by Emile de Antonio. By the late 1960s however, Hollywood film makers were beginning to create more innovative and ground breaking films that reflected the social revolution taken over much of the western world such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (1967), The Graduate (1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Bonnie and Clyde is often considered the beginning of the so-called New Hollywood. Sometimes a person just wants to see a good crime solved. Take mobster films for example, these black and white classics still have the potential to entertain audience of all ages. So if you're getting tired of the same old story, try watching one of these old school crime dramas. Actors like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson will have you on the edge of your seat. Cagney made his re-entry into the mobster film genre with the film White Heat. Cagney had grown tired of producers stereo typing him, placing him in the same roles over and over again. But after significant pressure, he gave in to the producers' whims and gave viewers one of his best performances ever. Cagney's character, Cody Jarrett, finds himself with two problems: he can't stay out of prison, and he's obsessed with his mama. Once he finally makes his way out of jail, he tackles his next job. Cagney made movie history with the final scene of White Heat. Those who watch this movie will have its images permanently burned in their minds. With two versions, Scarface made it impact during two separate decades. The 1932 version still shocks viewers in the twenty-first century. And the Brian De Palma edition put out decades later is most famous for just one thing: Al Pacino. In the original film, the main character, Tony Camonte, is played by Paul Muni. Police arrest Tony for suspected murder when his boss Big Louis Costillo goes missing. But the body never turns up, and the police let Tony go. Like any good mobster, Tony then goes through town with the purpose of controlling the mafia territory by using stereotypical muscle. The film reaches a climax when Tony has to deal with his enemies, friends, family, police, and ultimately, his own destructive personality. Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (born April 25, 1940) is an American film and stage actor and director. He is best known for his roles as Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, Tony Montana in Scarface, Carlito Brigante in the 1993 film Carlito's Way, Frank Serpico in Serpico, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman, Lt. Vincent Hanna in Heat, and Roy Cohn  in Angels in America. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992 for his role in Scent of a Woman after receiving seven previous nominations. Thousands of full-length films were produced during the 1990s. Many films were specifically filmed or edited to be displayed both on theater screens as well as on the smaller TV screens, such as showing close-up scenes during dialog, rather than just wide-angle scenes in a room. The 1990s were notable in both the rise of independent cinema -- as well as independent studios such as Miramax, Lion's Gate, and New Line -- and the advancements in CGI-technology, seen in such films as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Twister, and the 1997 re-release of the Star Wars Trilogy. The Disney Renaissance begins in 1989 with The Little Mermaid, reaches the peak in popularity with The Lion King in 1994, and ends in 1999 with Tarzan. The home-video market became a major factor in total revenue for a film, often doubling the total income for a film. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), also known simply as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world.  Founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, the company was reincorporated as Walt Disney Productions  in 1929. Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American  animation  industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel. Taking on its current name in 1986, The Walt Disney Company expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theatre, radio, publishing, and online media. In addition, it has created new divisions of the company in order to market more mature content than it typically associates with its flagship family-oriented brands. Robert De Niro, Jr. (born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director, and producer. De Niro won his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, Part II (1974), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for Raging Bull (1980). His film roles include John 'Johnny Boy' Civello in Mean Streets, the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, soldier Michael Vronsky in The Deer Hunter, boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, mobster David "Noodles" Aaronson in Once Upon a Time in America, plumber/terrorist Harry Tuttle in Brazil, bounty hunter Jack Walsh in Midnight Run, mobster Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, Al Capone in The Untouchables, Louis Gara in Jackie Brown, Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, Max Cady in Cape Fear, Cop. Moe Tilden in Cop Land, Neil McCauley in Heat, Sam Rothstein in Casino and Frank Goode in Everybody's Fine. Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch or И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American actor and film producer recognized for his prominent cleft chin, his gravelly voice and his recurring roles as the kinds of characters Douglas himself once described as "sons of bitches". He is the father of Hollywood actor and producer Michael Douglas. He was no17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Douglas was born in Amsterdam, New York, to Bryna (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman.  Douglas's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants from Gomel, now in independent Belarus.  His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States.  Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky, although he never legally changed his name. Coming from a poor family, as a boy, Douglas sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk and bread. Later, he delivered newspapers and claims to have worked at more than forty jobs before becoming an actor. He found living in a family of six sisters to be stifling, "I was dying to get out. In a sense, it lit a fire under me." During high school, he acted in school plays, and discovered "The one thing in my life that I always knew, that was always constant, was that I wanted to be an actor."

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