John Cromwell (born Elwood Dager; December 23, 1886 – September 26, 1979) was an American film and stage director and actor. His films spanned the early days of sound to film noir in the early 1950s, by which time his directing career was almost terminated by the Hollywood blacklist.

Early life and education
Born as Elwood Dager in Toledo, Ohio to an affluent Scottish-English family, executives in the steel and iron industry, Cromwell graduated from private high school at Howe Military Academy in 1905, but never pursued higher education.

Early acting career, 1905–1912

Upon leaving school, Cromwell immediately began his stage career touring with stock companies in Chicago, then made his way to New York City in his early 20s. Billed as Elwood Dager in his youth, he changed his name to John Cromwell at the age of 26 following a 1912 New York stage appearance.

Cromwell made his Broadway debut in the role of John Brooke in Little Women (1912), an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. The production was an immediate hit and ran for 184 performances.

Throughout Cromwell's stage career, he worked in close collaboration with one of the outstanding Broadway producers of the day, William A. Brady. Indeed, virtually all of the stage productions Cromwell participated in before he began his film career were produced by Brady.
The Painted Woman (1913) marked Cromwell's first assignment as stage director. Written by Frederic Arnold Kummer, the play closed in two days. By 1914, he was acting in and co-directing productions, including "Too Many Cooks" (1914), which ran for 223 performances.

In 1915, he joined the New York Repertory Company and performed in the American premieres of two George Bernard Shaw plays: Major Barbara in 1916, as character "Charles Lomax", and in a revival of Captain Brassbound's Conversion. Cromwell's stage career was interrupted by a brief stint in the U.S. Army during World War I.

By the 1920s, Cromwell had become a respected Broadway director, often in collaboration with co-directors Frank Craven or William Brady. Cromwell frequently performed on stage in this period which included works by future Pulitzer-Prize-winners Sidney Howard and Robert E. Sherwood. In 1927, Cromwell directed and played the lead in the gangster drama, The Racket, with newcomer Edward G. Robinson debuting in a tough guy role of the type for which Robinson became known throughout his film career.

In 1928, Cromwell moved to Hollywood to serve as a dialogue director during the movie industry's transition to  films with sound. Although Cromwell returned to Broadway in later years, his primary occupation after 1928 was as a movie director.

Early film career

Paramount Famous Lasky, 1929

Paramount Famous Lasky film producer B. P. Schulberg signed the 42-year-old Cromwell as a screen actor in October 1928 at the time of the industry-wide transition from silent productions to the new sound technology. After a satisfactory début performance in the 1929 early talkie The Dummy which featured Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, Jack Oakie and ZaSu Pitts, Cromwell was invited to share directorial duties with Edward Sutherland, an experienced filmmaker.

Though Cromwell had never worked behind a camera, Paramount was eager to hire experienced stage directors "because of their presumed knowledge in handling dialogue." However erroneous this assumption, Cromwell and Sutherland enjoyed a productive collaboration completing two early talkies, both in 1929: Close Harmony, a jazz-band romance, and The Dance of Life, based on the George Mankers Watters play Burlesque (Sutherland's co-direction went uncredited in The Dance of Death). Cromwell had a minor acting role in each of these productions.

In a 1973 interview with Leonard Maltin, Cromwell offered a frank assessment of his difficulties adapting to the new medium as a movie director:

During Cromwell's early films with Paramount, he was tasked with directing stage and film star George Bancroft, the studio's top property. Bancroft had performed in a number successful silent films with Paramount's rising director Josef von Sternberg, culminating in a Best Actor nomination for Bancroft in Thunderbolt (1930). The Mighty (1930) was Cromwell's first of four pairings with Bancroft, and his first solo debut as director.

On his next film The Street of Chance, Cromwell formed a personal and professional bond with producer David O. Selznick in his first production, then an assistant to B.P. Schulberg. The picture, starring William Powell, Kay Francis and Jean Arthur, was a success at the box office.

Paramount-Publix, 1930–1931

In 1930, Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation changed its name to Paramount Publix Corporation because of the growing importance of the Publix Theater chain.

The Texan (1930) was Cromwell's adaptation of the O. Henry short story "A Double-Dyed Deceiver" and starring Paramount's rising star Gary Cooper.

Paramount again enlisted actors Powell and Francis in Cromwell's For the Defense (also 1930), a legal drama involving a lawyer and his criminal fiancée. He directed the second cinematic version of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer (also 1930) with Jackie Coogan starring as the eponymous Tom.

During 1931-1932, Cromwell fulfilled his commitments to direct Bancroft in three more films. Indeed, Cromwell had agreed to continue working with Bancroft only if Paramount arranged to let him direct Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in an adaption of Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, a project that eventually was directed by Frank Borzage.

The Bancroft films include Scandal Sheet, with co-star Clive Brook, Rich Man's Folly (both 1931), an adaption of Dickens' Dombey and Son and The World and the Flesh (also 1931), a romance set in revolutionary Russia. Cromwell's professional view of Bancroft's performance in Rich Man's Folly elicited these remarks:

Cromwell made three more pictures for Paramount-Publix, all released in 1931: Scandal Sheet, with Bancroft, Unfaithful, with Ruth Chatterton and The Vice Squad with Paul Lukas and Kay Francis.

During pre-production of the 1932 The World and the Flesh, a tale of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Cromwell became disgusted with both the quality of the scenario, as well as the Paramount's sharp curtailment in rehearsal time. Cromwell's historical outlook and stage experience informed these following comments:

In the early sound films the studios, having experience only with dialogue-free (silent) pictures, deferred to the Broadway dialogue-savvy stage directors, like Cromwell, who they enlisted during the transition to "talkies". In early production of For the Defense, Cromwell reports he was informed about a change in policy concerning rehearsals:

Cromwell bargained with the producer, and they agreed to trade shooting days in exchange for rehearsal days. Cromwell recalled: "I think I ended up with four days rehearsal [by] cutting two days off the shooting schedule. Incredible! I couldn't believe it years afterwards."

Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO): 1933–1935
Cromwell's disaffection from Paramount led him to "walk off the lot" after The World and the Flesh, and with the help of his agent Myron Selznick, he moved to RKO. At the time, David O. Selznick was running RKO, and Cromwell recalled his professional experience there fondly: "RKO was always an endearing place to me; it had a distinct feeling of independence and individuality it never lost."

Cromwell was initially assigned by RKO to direct "a series of soap operas and films about family strife". Among these were Sweepings (1933), starring Lionel Barrymore in an unusually "restrained" performance. Cromwell directed The Silver Cord, an adaptation of a play he directed in 1926. His 1933 film adaptation concerns a young wife, Irene Dunne, who battles with her interfering mother-in-law Laura Hope Crews. The picture, which disparaged "motherhood", was considered audacious in its day.

Cromwell finished off this series with Double Harness (1933), "a shrewd and sophisticated interior drama" with Ann Harding and William Powell.

Ann Vickers (1933)
Cromwell filmed a then-controversial adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel Ann Vickers (1933). Irene Dunne played the eponymous character, a social reformer who exposes the degrading conditions in American prisons and has an affair with a jurist Walter Huston. Jane Murfin's screenplay reflected the characterizations in the Lewis novel, where Vickers is a "birth control advocate" who engages in an extramarital affair. The script drew the ire of the Production Code Administration and the Catholic Church. The Studio Relations Committee (SRC) chairman James Wingate called the script "vulgarly offensive". The SRC, overseeing the MPPDA, demanded an overhaul of the Murfin's script. RKO managers protested, and a compromise was reached when Dunne's character was relieved of adultery charges by a change in her marital status. Although awarded approval, the film helped spur the formation of the Production Code Administration, which later rigorously censored films for almost 25 years, largely under Catholic moral crusader Joseph Ignatius Breen.

Spitfire and This Man Is Mine (1934)

Cromwell's first two pictures of 1934 are considered "largely forgettable" according to author Michael Barson, beginning with a "miscast" Katharine Hepburn in Spitfire.

RKO's 26-year-old Hepburn as "Spitfire" (her pejorative sobriquet) was conceived as a "character study" rather than a genuine narrative, to showcase the rising young star. Based on the play Trigger by Lula Vollmer, Hepburn is improbably tasked with portraying an anti-social hillbilly-tomboy and faith healer in a rural backcountry community. Cromwell admitted that he was skeptical as to Hepburn's suitability for the part and objected to her contrived country accent. Hepburn herself tried unsuccessfully to get out of the film.

Cromwell, struggling with setting up his shots and conscious of avoiding cost overruns, disputed with Hepburn as to re-shooting of a key scene. The contretemps led to Cromwell's emphatic rejection of her requests and the director, "who did not like the film much", recalled that "I think those [disputes] were reflected in the picture." Nonetheless, Cromwell's visual compositions, along with the work of his cinematographer Edward Cronjager showcase Hepburn's "exuberant" performance, in which "her physical celebrations of the joys of life make this an eccentric and likeable film." Surprisingly, the film was successful at the box office.

Cromwell completed another soap opera with Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy, This Man is Mine (1934).

Of Human Bondage (1934)
Cromwell embarked on a film that proved to be highly offensive to the censors, but immensely popular among moviegoers: Of Human Bondage.

Although film historian John Baxter considers Cromwell's adaption of W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage "overrated", critic Jon Hopwood posited that the director "made his name" in Hollywood with this picture.

The film dramatizes forms of personal tyranny and obsession, in which an unsophisticated and heartless waitress, Mildred (Bette Davis) employs low-cunning to win the affection of a club-footed and self-effacing young medical student, Philip (Leslie Howard). The scenes are shot with great efficiency and effect in which "the camera movement seems to represent the emotional state of the characters." Cromwell adapted to studio budget limitations, employing the spartan interior sets to good effect in emphasizing the "unreality" of medical student's daily routines.

Bette Davis' Mildred saw the emergence of the actress in a "breakthrough" performance and "her first truly great film role." Davis' rendition fully conveys "the vulgarity and venality" of the character, impressing studios executives and audiences.

Like Cromwell's 1933 Ann Vickers, Of Human Bondage was received the disapproval of the Production Code Administration (PCA), led by Catholic activist Joseph Breen. The PCA demanded a number of alterations to the scenario, among them that Mildred's diagnosis of syphilis be changed to tuberculosis, and that the coarseness of Davis' interpretation of the "slatternly waitress" be toned down. RKO readily complied under threat of a $25,000 fine per violation.

Despite studio executives' submitting to the censorship, Of Human Bondage was picketed in the major cities in the Midwestern United States by the Catholic National Legion of Decency. Perhaps in response to the reputation the film acquired by these demonstrations, the picture broke attendance records at Chicago's Hippodrome Theater with hundreds of moviegoers turned away. Nationwide, the movie enjoyed a tremendous box-office success.

As to Cromwell's successful handling of Davis' role, he was never labelled a "woman's director" (as were directors such as George Cukor). Nevertheless, his extensive experience as a stage performer endowed him a sympathy which elicited fine performances from his players, especially the women. Davis' performance was an early manifestation of this salutary influence.

The last film released in 1934 directed by Cromwell was a post-WWI romantic drama The Fountain concerning an Englishwoman who must tell her devoted German husband returning from the war that she has fallen in love with her childhood sweetheart.

Film historian Kingsley Canham considers this a "key" film in Cromwell's oeuvre, showcasing the director's "elegance" and "assurance" in his handling of the décor and its relationship to performances.

The "restlessness and soul searching" of the expatriate wife Julie (Ann Harding) and her lover interned British flyer Lewis (Brian Aherne) is conveyed through camera movements, and with a minimum of dialogue. The "metaphysical" nature of this romance is made explicit by Cromwell's insertion of an excerpt from the English poet Coleridge's poem "Dejection". Canham praises The Fountain as "undoubtedly one of Cromwell's most outstanding achievements..."

After finishing Of Human Bondage, Cromwell enjoyed a pleasant interlude making Village Tale (1935), "one of Cromwell's favorite projects." Comprising a series of character studies, the picture features Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Ann Dvorak. Jalna and I Dream Too Much(both 1935), represent a return to Cromwell's "soap opera" depictions of familial relations and marital strife. The director's wife Kay Johnson was featured in Jalna, and Henry Fonda starred in I Dream too Much.

United Artists and 20th Century Fox, 1936–1939

After his recent collaborations with Pandro S. Berman and other producers, Cromwell reunited with David O. Selznick, following him to United Artists and 20th Century Fox to make five films: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), To Mary – with Love (1936), Banjo on My Knee (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and Algiers (1938).

David O. Selznick enlisted Cromwell to make a heavily invested re-make of the silent era film Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)

The casting of child actor Freddy Bartholomew in the title role, according to Canham, was a masterstroke by Selznick and Cromwell's direction showcases the "sheer professionalism" of Bartholomew's acting abilities. Cromwell wisely selected his supporting cast from Hollywood's renowned "English Colony" of British expatriates. A film that emphasizes characterization over incident, Cromwell's handling of the camera endows the picture with a cinematic quality that avoids the impression of "filmed literature."

The first film created under Selznick International Pictures, Little Lord Fauntleroy was his most profitable production until Gone With the Wind (1939).

Banjo on My Knee (1936)

Selznick tasked Cromwell with filming "another marital drama" released by 20th Century Fox studios with Claire Trevor the interloper and Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter as the happy couple. Banjo on My Knee (1936), set in the New Orleans and a comedy-of-errors interspersed with musical productions, included a fulsome rendition of W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues". The film bears similarities in setting and staging to director James Whale's Show Boat released the same year.

Cromwell, according to Canham, fails to cinematically develop the characters of co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea and reduces the plebeian denizens of the Mississippi River Delta to caricatures.

Walter Brennan, was cast as the rural patriarch Newt Holley, who emerges as welcome comedy relief in a picture writes Canham where "nothing ever comes easily to the people in Cromwell's films and ambition often cloaks failure or death for commoners or even Ruritanian royalty."

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

In reviving novelist Anthony Hope's swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda, David O. Selznick took a calculated risk as to popular taste. That leading man Ronald Colman was under contract to Selznick was the key factor in proceeding with the project. The decision to pick John Cromwell as director was based on his demonstrated ability to handle actors, and his disciplined observance of budgetary restraints.

Despite Cromwell's skill with both male and female actors, an amusing contretemps arose during script and storyboard development. Ronald Colman (like screen actor John Barrymore) favored presenting just one facial profile to the camera to conceal his "bad side". Co-star Madeleine Carroll soon approached Cromwell, claiming a facial defect on the same side as Colman, meaning any face-to-face on-screen close-up would put one actor at disadvantage.

As director Cromwell remembered:

Despite the generally "fluid style of the finished work" the authorship of several of the action scenes remain in question. Selznick was adamant about engaging directors George Cukor and Woody van Dyke to instill a sharper expressive element into the acting or to provide a more graphic presentation of the action episodes. Cromwell's widely recognized "visual elegance" may have influenced Selznick's "poor opinion of him as an action director." Both Cukor and Van Dyke went uncredited as was customary under Director's Guild rules.

Film critic Michael Barson considers Cromwell's The Prisoner of Zenda as the beginning of his "golden age" among Hollywood directors, and a production that deserves designation as a "classic".

Algiers (1938)
Algiers (1938), Cromwell's re-make of director Julien Duvivier's French thriller Pepe Le Moko (1936), launched the Hollywood careers of two European actors: Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. Cromwell elicited a fine performance from Boyer as an international thief who matches wits with the local police inspector played by Joseph Calleia, attempting to lure the French fugitive from his refuge in the "Casbah", the native quarter of Algiers. The dialogue, "tight and logical", was crafted by John Howard Lawson, with contributions from novelist-screenwriter James M. Cain. Cromwell and his cinematographer James Wong Howe successfully manufactured a "polished" facsimile of Duvivier's original for producer Walter Wanger.

Cromwell strained to extract an impressive American acting debut from the Austrian Lamarr, whom Wanger wished to mold into a "second Garbo". Cromwell recalled:

Cromwell made an aborted attempt to direct producer Sam Goldwyn's The Adventures of Marco Polo (ultimately completed by director Archie Mayo and John Ford in 1938), followed briefly by a return to the stage to direct Fredric March and Florence Eldridge.

Made for Each Other and In Name Only: Carole Lombard, 1939

While Selznick was deeply immersed in pre-production for Gone with the Wind (1939), he engaged Cromwell to direct Carole Lombard and James Stewart in the romantic comedy Made for Each Other (1939). The simple narrative of young newlyweds struggling with both "the trivial and the traumatic" provided a platform to showcase Cromwell's adept handling of the cast.

Lombard was eager for a role with dramatic potential (she had been designated as "The Queen of the Screwball comedy" in her earlier roles). She benefited from the straightforward script "that allowed for a great deal of insight into the characters, and for an unusual amount of flexibility in the cast's playing." Lombard's dramatic interpretation of wife Jane Mason emerges as "casual and very human." Stewart is perfectly suited to the role of the unassertive yet endearing young husband in need of the tactful guidance of his more mature spouse.

A distinct critical success, but undistinguished at the box-office, Cromwell was delighted to have the opportunity to direct Lombard in his next feature film: In Name Only (1939). Another production in a genre that Cromwell was well-equipped to present—the marital melodrama—Lombard plays "the other woman" to the wealthy Cary Grant, trapped in an unhappy marriage with the possessive Kay Francis.

Lombard's Julie, a widow, suffering from "shattered illusions" of ever possessing Grant, must first abandon all hope before Fate intervenes on her behalf. Grant retains his "natural flippancy" to deliver a number of comic scenes which avoids undermining his character's credibility, and Kay Francis' obsessive matron agrees to give Grant a divorce with this malignant invective: "I hope you'll both be miserable!" Cromwell's overall grasp of the dramatic atmosphere serves to blend the performances and "nearly brings it off."

Historian Kingley Canham offers an insight into Cromwell's handling of "romantic illusions" inherent to melodramatic narratives:

Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)

RKO executives tasked Cromwell with adapting playwright Robert Sherwood's play Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which had been produced to great acclaim on Broadway in 1938. The Pulitzer Prize-winning stage production concerned the early career of US President Abraham Lincoln, who led the Union forces to victory in the American Civil War. The unfolding war in Europe and the Far East gave special resonance to the subject matter.

Despite the fact that 20th Century Fox was well-advanced in producing a John Ford picture starring Henry Fonda that dramatized the same events in Lincoln's life, this did not deter bids for the film rights to the Sherwood's historical drama and independent producer Max Gordon financed its purchase for $250,000, to be filmed by RKO studios. Stage actor Raymond Massey, who played the role of Lincoln in the Broadway production was selected, with Sherwood's fulsome approval, to perform in the screen role of Abe Lincoln in Illinois.

Cromwell's characterization of Lincoln is distinct from that of the Ford's in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Whereas Ford presents a mythological figure who rises from a humble rural lawyer to the most exalted position in the nation, Cromwell's relies less on iconography and emphasizes historic details which reveal Lincoln's early character as less exalted: "Raymond Massey [emerges] as a far less confident Lincoln than Henry Fonda."

The presentation of Lincoln's historical relationship with Ann Rutledge (played by May Howard) is used by Cromwell to establish aspects of Lincoln's essential character and avoids Ford's romantization of Rutledge in Young Abe Lincoln, which features a sentimental graveside eulogy.

Actor Ruth Gordon, in her debut screen appearance as the future Mrs. Lincoln, provides a key antidote to Cromwell's callow Lincoln who is lazy, skeptical and lacking in ambition. Gordon's Mary Todd forthrightly sets about preparing Lincoln to face his destiny in anticipation of marrying him, providing "a remarkably astute cinematic interpretation." Cinematographer James Wong Howe's lighting and camera work effectively documents the transformation in Lincoln that earned Howe an Oscar nomination.

Victory (1940)

As early as 1919, Cromwell had taken a keen interest in novelist Joseph Conrad's psychological drama Victory: An Island Tale (1915), concerning an English expatriate who attempts to withdraw as a recluse to a small Indonesian island. His solitary existence is undone when he rescues a young woman, leading to the infiltration of his sanctuary by a gang of sociopaths, with tragic results. Cromwell personally contacted Conrad shortly after publication of Victory to obtain production and dramatic rights to the work, only to discover that permission had been bestowed on producer Laurence Irving and McDonald Hastings, respectively. Cromwell directed a version of their adaptation in the United States in the 1920s that quickly folded.

Twenty years later, Cromwell filmed his screen version, Victory (1940), for Paramount with Fredrick March as the recluse Hendrik Heyst and Betty Field as Alma, and Cedric Hardwicke as the pathological Mr. Jones (also serving as narrator). Cromwell's professional relationship with March had commenced on Broadway in 1925 when he directed March in Kay Horton's Harvest.

Cromwell was dissatisfied with some of the casting in Victory, particularly with that of British actor Cedric Hardwicke :

Cromwell considered his next project more satisfactory. In Cromwell's film adaptation, So Ends Our Night (1941), an adaption of the Erich Maria Remarque novel Flotsam (1939), Fredrick March plays an anti-Nazi fugitive pursued by fascist Austrian authorities. In his flight he encounters other exiles, played by Glenn Ford and Margaret Sullavan, and his freedom is only achieved through an ultimate sacrifice. Erich von Stroheim appears in a supporting role as Nazi SS officer Brenner.

Cromwell was particularly pleased with the script by Talbot Jennings, and although the picture was not a commercial success, Cromwell considered So Ends the Night "one of my best."

Son of Fury (1942)

Cromwell's disparaged his next assignment, Son of Fury, as strictly "a studio project." Financed generously by 20th Century Fox but controlled at every phase to ensure its commercial success, Cromwell was limited to using its "lavish sets" by Darryl F. Zanuck to manufacture "a stock 20th Century Fox costume" period-piece.

The protagonist, Benjamin Blake, heir to a baronetcy, is played by child actor Roddy McDowell as a youth, then by Tyrone Power in adulthood. Curiously, although a time lapse shows the juvenile Blake's transformation from boy to man, his uncle Sir Arthur Blake George Sanders shows no discernible signs of aging.

Cromwell recalled enjoying his work with leading man Tyrone Power "and particularly with [co-star] Gene Tierney" as he "never saw her in a film I liked until Son or Fury and I think that was because I worked so hard to get her to stop acting and be simple."

Historian Kingsley Canham issued this judgement on Cromwell's direction of the picture:

Since You Went Away (1944)
As part of his promotion of his protégé, 25-year-old Jennifer Jones, Selznick enlisted Cromwell to direct a paean to the American family during wartime, Since You Went Away (1944).

Film historian Kingley Canham describes Since You Went Away as "undoubtedly one of the most superior, polished and effective wartime propaganda works to emerge from the cinema during the Second World War." Selznick, dissatisfied with the screenplay written by author Margaret Buell Wilder, overhauled it to create a celebration of the American homefront as an "impregnable fortress" sustaining the US war effort.

The cast features Claudette Colbert, Shirley Temple, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Robert Walker and Agnes Moorehead. Cromwell's handling of the scenes establish, writes Canham "a warmth and conviction" that surpasses perfunctory performances. Despite Selznick's usual heavy involvement in the production, Cromwell's deployment of the cast and technicians was such that "his reputation as a Hollywood professional could have survived entirely on the strength of Since You Went Away."

A commercial as well as critical success, the film received nine Oscar nominations - including Best Picture, virtually the entire cast and all technical credits - but winning only one, for Max Steiner's score.

The Enchanted Cottage (1945) and Anna and the King of Siam (1946)

Cromwell returned to RKO to make one of his most personally gratifying pictures, The Enchanted Cottage (1945), a remake of director John S. Robertson's 1924 silent film production, both based on Arthur Wing Pinero's 1921 play of the same name.

A romantic fantasy, "handled with perception and feeling" by Cromwell, tells the story (presented in flashbacks) of a disfigured combat veteran Robert Young returning from the Second World War and an "ugly duckling" maiden Dorothy McGuire, who marry and together discover the transformative power of love. Pianist and composer Herbert Marshall, blinded in the war, contributes to their personal triumph.

Returning to 20th Century Fox, Cromwell embarked on another satisfying project, Anna and the King of Siam (1947), "a demonstration of Cromwell's craftsmanship" earning Oscars for cinematography and art direction. The 1944 story by author Margaret Landon is based on the memoirs of Anglo-Indian Anna Leonowens, who served as governess for King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand) in the 1860s. The King is played by Rex Harrison and the governess by Irene Dunne. Her task is to tutor his numerous children sired with his harem, and "guide the King in matters of state and household" informed by her petty bourgeois sensibilities. Cromwell avoids both minor comedy relief and spectacle, concentrating on character development of the King and Anna.

A success at the box-office and the Academy Awards, the Leonowens tale appeared as a Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical in 1951 and on film in The King and I (1956).

RKO assigned Cromwell the drama Night Song (1948) starring Dana Andrews and Merle Oberon concerning a wealthy society woman who strives to advance the career of a blind pianist. Termed "a disaster [and] an unbelievable film" the picture's only saving grace is a cameo appearance by Arthur Rubinstein performing at the piano.

During the post-World War II period, Cromwell's created a number of films that are considered film noir and reflect the director's frame-up as a Fellow-traveler accused of Communist sympathies by the House Un-American Activities Committee investigators and Hollywood executives during the emerging McCarthyite era. Cromwell claimed that "I was never anything that suggested a Red, and there never was the slightest evidence with which to accuse me of being one." Nevertheless, Cromwell was blacklisted by the Hollywood film industry from 1952 to 1958.

Dead Reckoning (1947): Columbia Pictures

Warner Bros. studios, with top film star Humphrey Bogart under contract, reluctantly agreed to an actor exchange with Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures, making Bogart available for a limited period of time to the rival studio. Bogart had the option of picking his director and screenplay, and settled on Cromwell.  Cromwell recalled his earliest encounter with the actor in the 1922 Broadway production of Drifting in which Bogart was cast in the roles of Ernie Crockett and The Third Husband:

In Dead Reckoning (1947), Bogart portrays a hardened WWII veteran who engages in a deadly pursuit to locate the murderer of a comrade-in-arms. Lizabeth Scott serves as the noir femme-fatale. The often incoherent narrative reflects Cromwell's struggle to make sense of the disconcerting script. Cromwell recalled:

Despite these conceptual limitations, Cromwell achieves a level of coherency that delivers a vigorous film in the noir style.

Hollywood and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
During the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 1947 investigations into the film industry, John Cromwell was identified as a person of interest linked to supposed Communist subversion in Hollywood. Cromwell described himself as "a 'liberal' Democrat" and avers he did not become politically active until the re-election campaign for US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third run for the White House in 1940. Most of this, according to Cromwell, was limited to collecting membership dues for the Hollywood Democratic Committee which consisted of "3,000 members". In a 1973 interview with film historian Leonard Maltin for Action magazine, Cromwell recounted studio efforts to undermine his work during the anti-Communist witch-hunts:

Cromwell's agent had negotiated an excellent film contract, but within weeks RKO was purchased by film producer and anti-Communist Howard Hughes. As Cromwell remembered, "the complete freedom from inter-studio politics went up in smoke." He said that the change in ownership caused an exodus of screenwriters and technicians from the studios whose "reputations" were perceived by Hollywood executives as "tinged" with sympathies for Communism: the writers "knew it was useless to stay there".

Remaining under contract, Cromwell decided to persevere at RKO, confident that "they could not harm me much". On the contrary, Cromwell discerned a conscious effort to force him out when RKO executives presented him with an ultimatum: accept studio dictated screenplays and scripts, or violate his contract. Cromwell was convinced that a screenwriter had approached Hughes, urging him to buy the rights of a story that was so repellent to Cromwell the director would be compelled to reject it—providing RKO grounds for terminating his lucrative agreement.
Cromwell describes his dilemma:

Cromwell reports that the studio immediately assigned a screenwriter to the pre-production team who was "one of the worst [anti-Communist] 'witch-hunters' in Hollywood, and I saw that this was pretty deliberate". Multiple screenwriters were tasked with developing a workable script from the flawed story. They came to loggerheads with Cromwell, finally convincing RKO management that it was "logically" impossible to make the picture. When delays in production threatened to trigger the "triple-salary" provision in Cromwell's contract, RKO loaned Cromwell to Warner Bros. to make Caged. The final film, eventually released in 1949, had to be retitled The Woman on Pier 13.

Caged (1950)
Cromwell's noir picture Caged (1950) is an indictment of an American social and sexual hierarchy set in the microcosm of a woman's prison. Among Cromwell's "bitterest films", historian Kingsley Canham describes its formulation:

A Warner Brothers production, Cromwell adopted the visual effects, subject matter and dramatic music characteristic of the studio's pictures, including its "hard-boiled" dialogue.

At the center of Cromwell's work—and "casting against type"—are the strong performances by Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Hope Emerson, Betty Garde and Lee Patrick, through whom he "makes his case".

Cromwell returned to RKO (with John Houseman producing) in the studios' bid to duplicate the success of Caged, again a crime drama, where Dennis O'Keefe is the love object of Jane Greer and Lizabeth Scott: The Company She Keeps (1951). Cromwell failed to fully make use of the talented cast and to effectively dramatize the confusing script.

The Racket (1951)
Cromwell's last film before his expulsion by the Hollywood studios under the anti-Communist blacklist was The Racket (1951). The play by Bartlett Cormack had been produced on Broadway in 1927, with Cromwell in the leading role of Capt. McQuigg (with future film star Edward G. Robinson in a bit part). In the 1928 silent film adaption of the play directed by Lewis Milestone and produced by the 22-year-old Howard Hughes, Robinson is elevated to the role of gangster Nick Scanlon for this silent film version. Robert Mitchum reprises the role of the honest police Captain Thomas McQuigg, the same character director Cromwell had performed on Broadway in 1927.

Cromwell's film version is a dark and pessimistic noir that parades the gangsterism of "the business corporation structure…the brainless thugs...the crooked bail bondsmen and cops and corrupt judges to the unseen 'Man' at the top." The film, which includes suspenseful and effective fight scenes delivers "capable entertainment".

As familiar with the material as Cromwell was, RKO's Howard Hughes rejected his final cut and enlisted director Nicholas Ray to shoot additional scenes. Cromwell is reported to have walked off the set in disgust. Due to his blacklisting by the Hollywood studios, Cromwell did not work in the film industry again until later in the decade.

The Goddess (1958)
During the years of forced studio inactivity beginning in 1952, Cromwell's only engagement in Hollywood was a small acting role in Top Secret Affair (1957), directed by H.C. Potter and starring Kirk Douglas and Susan Hayward. Historian Kingsley Canham reports that the erstwhile director was "active in the theater" during these intervening years. Cromwell was enticed to return to film directing when Columbia Pictures promised him the option make "first cut" on the proposed feature. The Goddess (1958) was his last major cinematic work, and "in many respects one of his best films."

The story and script by dramatist Paddy Chayefsky details the tragic rise and fall of a fictitious Hollywood actress, Emily Ann Faulkner/Rita Shawn. Cromwell chose to present the saga in three chronological and dramatic episodes: "Portrait of a Young Girl, Maryland 1930" (Faulkner played by the 9-year-old Patty Duke), "Portrait of a Young Woman," and "Portrait of a Goddess" (the later two performed by Kim Stanley).

Cromwell uses the film as a platform on which to "bitterly parody the emotionalism of his earlier films", linking the episodes together by the repetition of fragments of dialogue from the characters that "echo" throughout the film.

The Goddess emerges as Cromwell's reckoning with the Hollywood film industry. The characterization of Emily Ann Faulkner and Rita Shawn emerge as an indictment of the Hollywood system. Film historian Kingsley Canham observes:

Cromwell discovered that his "first cut" rights were inadequate to preserve his work, and in subsequent editing effected through the efforts of writer Chayefsky, The Goddess was reduced to half its original length. Cromwell ultimately walked off the project.

Cromwell's film career closed with two lackluster films: The Scavengers (1959) starring Vince Edwards and Carol Ohmart, made in the Philippines, and a low-budget drama, A Matter of Morals (1961), made in Swede with Maj-Britt Nilsson and Patrick O'Neal.

Life after Hollywood
Cromwell devoted the rest of his career primarily to the theater where he had begun. He wrote three plays, all staged in New York; starred opposite Helen Hayes in a revival of What Every Woman Knows, directed the original Broadway company of Desk Set, and eventually found artistic satisfaction in four seasons at the Tyrone Guthrie theater in Minneapolis, founded by the expatriate British director in 1963 when he, like Cromwell, had grown disenchanted with Broadway's increasing commercialism.

Cromwell was cast by Robert Altman in the role of Mr. Rose for the film 3 Women (1977) starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, and as Bishop Martin in A Wedding (1978) starring Desi Arnaz, Jr., Carol Burnett, Geraldine Chaplin, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman and Lillian Gish. His wife Ruth Nelson also appeared in both Altman films.

Personal life
Cromwell married four times. His first wife, stage actress Alice Lindahl died of influenza in 1918. He and stage actress Marie Goff divorced. Cromwell next married actress Kay Johnson in 1928, divorcing in 1946. His final marriage, to actress Ruth Nelson in 1947, lasted until his death in 1979. Cromwell and Johnson had two sons; one is actor James Cromwell.

Death
He died at age 92 in Santa Barbara, California of a pulmonary embolism.

Filmography

Stage career

From 1912 to 1928.

Footnotes

References
 Arnold, Jeremy. TCM. Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Turner Movie Classics.http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1309/Abe-Lincoln-in-Illinois/articles.html Retrieved 15 August 2020.
 Barson, Michael. 2019. John Cromwell: American Actor and director. Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Cromwell. December 19, 2019. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
 Baxter, John. 1970. Hollywood in the Thirties. International Film Guide Series. Paperback Library, New York. LOC Card Number 68-24003.
 Canham, Kingsley. 1976. The Hollywood Professionals, Volume 5: King Vidor, John Cromwell, Mervyn LeRoy. The Tantivy Press, London.
 Brottman, Mikita and Sterritt, David. TCM. The Goddess (1958). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/15894/The-Goddess/articles.html Retrieved 17 August 2020.
 Hopwood, Jon C. IMDb. John Cromwell: Biography https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0188669/bio?ref_=nm_sa_1 Retrieved 9 August 2020.
 Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Date unk. John Cromwell: Other works. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0188669/otherworks?ref_=nmbio_ql_2 Retrieved 11 August 2020.
 Koszarski, Richard. 1976. Hollywood Directors: 1914-1940. Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 76-9262.
 LoBianco, Lorraine. TCM The Company She Keeps (1951). Turner Movie Classics. https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/71346/The-Company-She-Keeps/articles.html Retrieved 21 August 2020.
 LoBianco, Lorraine. TCM. Directed by John Cromwell. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/216307%7C0/Directed-By-John-Cromwell.html Retrieved 11 August 2020.
 Miller, Frank. TCM. Since You Went Away (1944). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/90225/Since-You-Went-Away/articles.html Retrieved 15 August 2020.
 Passafiume, Andrea. TCM. Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1309/Abe-Lincoln-in-Illinois/articles.html Retrieved 14 August 2020
 Quin, Eleanor. TCM. In Name Only. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2238/In-Name-Only/articles.html Retrieved 16 August 2020.
 Tatara, Paul. TCM. THE RACKET (1951). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/103611%7C0/The-Racket.html Retrieved 21 August 2020.
 TSPDT, Date Unk. John Cromwell. They Shoot Horses Don't They. https://www.theyshootpictures.com/cromwelljohn.htm Retrieved 11 August 2020.

External links

1880s births
1979 deaths
Male actors from Toledo, Ohio
American theatre directors
American male film actors
American male stage actors
American film directors
American people of English descent
American people of Scottish descent
Tony Award winners
Presidents of the Directors Guild of America
Hollywood blacklist
20th-century American male actors
Deaths from pulmonary embolism

John Cromwell (director)


The Bulandra Theatre () in Bucharest, Romania was founded in 1947 as Teatrul Municipal; its first director was Lucia Sturdza-Bulandra, one of the leading Romanian stage actresses of her generation. Liviu Ciulei was director between 1963 and 1972; one of the most important directors since then was Ștefan Iordănescu (1999–2002), who restructured the theatre management. From 2002 until his death in 2019, the theatre was directed by Alexandru Darie; as of 2020, the director is Vlad Zamfirescu.

Since 1991, the Bulandra Theatre has been a member of the Union of European Theatres, which was founded in March 1990. The theatre currently has two stages, located about  apart from one another: Sala Liviu Ciulei, the former Sala Izvor (renovated 2002) near the Dâmboviţa River, not far from the southwest corner of Cișmigiu Gardens; and Sala Toma Caragiu (renovated 2003), about half a kilometer southeast of Piața Romană, just east of the Grădina Icoanei park.

Originally Teatrul Municipal, the theatre later acquired the name Teatrul Lucia Sturdza Bulandra, now shortened to Teatrul Bulandra. The present Sala Liviu Ciulei (Izvor) was and remains the headquarters, housing offices as well as the actual theatre space. The main teatre building has been renamed in 2011 after the previous head of Bulandra Theatre, film and theatre director and actor Liviu Ciulei. Before Communist times, the second hall, located by Grădina Icoanei and designed by architect Ion Mincu, was the auditorium of a private school, Școala Centrală de Fete (Central Girls' School), located on Icoanei Street. After nationalization, the hall was first renamed after Filimon Sârbu, then later took its present name, in memory of actor Toma Caragiu.

References

External links

 Official site; the pages about both past productions  and those in their current repertory contain numerous photos, over 100 in all.

Bulandra Theatre
Bulandra Theatre
1947 establishments in Romania

Bulandra Theatre


The frontal sinuses are one of the four pairs of paranasal sinuses that are situated behind the brow ridges. Sinuses are mucosa-lined airspaces within the bones of the face and skull. Each opens into the anterior part of the corresponding middle nasal meatus of the nose through the frontonasal duct which traverses the anterior part of the labyrinth of the ethmoid. These structures then open into the semilunar hiatus in the middle meatus.

Structure

Each frontal sinus is situated between the external and internal plates of the frontal bone. Their average measurements are as follows: height 28 mm, breadth 24 mm, depth 20 mm, creating a space of 6-7 ml.

Each frontal sinus extends into the squamous part of the frontal bone superiorly, and into the orbital part of frontal bone posteriorly to come to occupy the medial part of the roof of the orbit.

Each sinus drains through an opening in its inferomedial part into the frontonasal duct.

Vasculature
The mucous membrane of the frontal sinus receives arterial supply from the supraorbital artery, and anterior ethmoidal artery.

Venous drainage is provided by the superior ophthalmic vein.

Lymph is drained into the submandibular lymph nodes.

Innervation
The mucous membrane of the sinus is innervated by the supraorbital nerve, which contains the postganglionic parasympathetic nerve fibers for mucous secretion from the ophthalmic nerve.

Anatomical variation
Frontal sinuses are rarely symmetrical as the septum between them frequently deviates to either side of the midline. The two sinuses also vary in extent compared to one another.

Their size of the frontal sinuses is highly variable. Rarely, one or both sinuses is hypoplastic or even absent.

Sexual dimorphism
Prominence of frontal sinuses is sexual dimorphic; they are more prominent in males, whereas less so in children and in females, resulting in an oblique forehead in males that is a male sexual characteristic.

Development
The frontal sinuses are the only sinuses that are absent at birth. They begin to appear during the second year of life as excavations in the diploë. The development of these sinuses accounts for the suddenly increased mucus production at this age. They are generally well developed, and functional between the sixth and eighth years, though they continue to grow slower until reaching their maximum size after puberty.

Function
Through its copious mucus production, the sinus is an essential part of the immune defense/air filtration carried out by the nose. Nasal and sinal mucosae are ciliated and move mucus to the choanae and finally to the stomach.  The thick upper layers of nasal mucus trap bacteria and small particles in tissue abundantly provided with immune cells, antibodies, and antibacterial proteins.  The layers beneath are thinner and provide a substrate in which the cilia are able to beat and move the upper layer with its debris through the ostia toward the choanae.

Clinical significance
Infection of the frontal sinus causing sinusitis can give rise to serious complications, as it is in close proximity to the orbit and cranial cavity (orbital cellulitis, epidural and subdural abscess, meningitis).
Endonasal approach into the frontal sinus in children with acute and chronic frontal sinusitis without the usage of surgical optics is not successful, because in this case the operation is performed almost blindly and technically difficult even in adults.

Fractures

Frontal sinus fractures occur from trauma to the part of the frontal bone that overlies the sinus, often from motor vehicle accidents and falls. The hallmarks of a frontal sinus fracture is a frontal depression in the anterior table of the bone. Additionally, clear fluid leaking from the nose may indicate that fractures to the posterior table have torn into the dura mater, creating a cerebrospinal fluid leak.

Goals in management are to protect the intracranial structure, control any existing CSF leakage, prevent late complications, and aesthetically correct the deformity caused, if any. In anterior table fractures, if the table is minimally displaced, there will be no treatment necessary, only observation. If largely displaced, the correction is open reduction and internal fixation. If inhibiting the nasofrontal outflow tract, procedure is to undergo open reduction and internal fixation of the anterior table and osteoplastic flap with obliteration.

In posterior table fractures, a nondiplaced fracture with no CSF leak will only be observed. Those with a CSF leak will undergo sinus exploration if the CSF leak is not internally resolved within 4 to 7 days. With more dramatic displacements, sinus exploration will be required to determine the required level of cranialization, obliteration, and reparation to the dura.

Aesthetic reconstruction

In the case of facial feminization surgery, modifications to the frontal sinus can be made to make the face more feminine, alongside softening the orbital rims. The forehead operations for feminization were first described by Dr. Douglas Ousterhout in the 1980s. Those operations consisted of four different techniques based on the anatomy of the patient. They were named arbitrarily by number (Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 and Type 4), with no particular relevance to their level of difficulty or frequency.

 Type 1
The Type I forehead describes a forehead with an absent frontal sinus or alternatively with sufficiently thick bone overlaying the frontal sinus so that burring alone is enough to correct the forehead. This type of forehead tends to occur in approximately 3% to 5% of the population. In these situations, the operation consists of using rotary instruments to shape and contour the bone to the desired level, while observing the thickness of the bone to avoid penetrating the intracranial space. The main risks associated with this operation tend to be bleeding. There are often venous lakes present throughout the frontal bone.

 Type 2
The Type II forehead describes another uncommon situation. This describes a patient with brow bossing; however, the bossing is at the correction position in terms of prominence. Therefore, the problem lies primarily above the bossing. We see this forehead type at about the same frequency as we see the Type I forehead. The Type II forehead is corrected by using a filling material such as methyl methacrylate.7 Other materials may be more ideal at this point; however, none are superior in terms of cost to methyl methacrylate. Although many surgeons do not consider the cost of the materials they are using, hydroxyapatite and calcium phos-phate bone cements cost approximately 1000 times that of methyl methacrylate. The advantage of bone cement is its adherence to the underlying bone, and the more analogous nature to native bone substrate. The material is applied to fill in the area above the bossing, and then gently contoured to blend with the transverse forehead bossing thereby-creating a uniformly round forehead
 Type 3
The Type III forehead is the most common situation and occurs in more than 90% of patients. The forehead, in this situation, has a prominent bossing across the top of the brows, and that bossing is overly projected. A frontal sinus is present. The thinness of the sinus precludes using exclusively rotary instruments to thin the bone. An osteotomy and reconstruction are the only operations to provide the proper round shape to the forehead with the decreased prominence that is necessary for a soft forehead, which involves a setback of the anterior table of the frontal sinus. This procedure is described as Type 3 Forehead Cranioplasty.

 Type 4
This operation can be described as an extended Type II operation. In this situation, the entire forehead is diminutive, including the area underlying the brows, and the entire forehead requires augmentation. Regardless of the material type, care should be taken to avoid having the implant sit directly underneath the incision as this leads to a higher rate of infection and removal.

Treatment of the orbital rim is almost always necessary in all these various forehead operations, regardless of what is done with the frontal bossing.

References

External links

  (, )
 Use of Frontal Sinus Transillumination For Cranioplasty in Facial Feminization Surgery
 Approach to Feminization Surgery and Facial Masculinization Surgery: Aesthetic Goals and Principles of Management.

Bones of the head and neck
Otorhinolaryngology

Frontal sinus


Porto dos Milagres (English: Port of Miracles) is a Brazilian telenovela that was produced and aired by TV Globo from 5 February to 29 September 2001, totaling 203 chapters.

It is written by Aguinaldo Silva and Ricardo Linhares with the collaboration of Filipe Miguez, Maria Elisa Berredo, Nelson Nadotti and Gloria Barreto. It is loosely based on two works written by Jorge Amado: Sea of Death and The Discovery of America by the Turks.

It stars Marcos Palmeira, Flávia Alessandra, Antônio Fagundes, Cássia Kis, Luíza Tomé, Leonardo Brício, Camila Pitanga and Arlete Salles.

Plot
Félix Guerrero is illegally selling part of the land his father's inheritance left to him and his twin brother Bartolomeu. The police finds out, and Félix and his wife Adma are fugitives in Spain. While on the run, a gypsy prophesies that Félix will cross the sea and become king. Thinking that this prediction could only occur in Bolivia, they visit the country without any success. Then they go to Rondônia, more precisely the city of Porto Velho. Félix and Adma discover a newspaper report that Bartolomeu became the most important and powerful man in the city of Porto dos Milagres, located on the coast of Bahia. To get rid of Bartolomeu, Adma goes to Porto dos Milagres and poisons him, making Félix take the place of his brother.

Félix becomes king. However, a prostitute named Arlete, knocks on Félix's door with Bartolomeu's newborn son. Arlete is received by Adma who has been living in the town. To get rid of the legitimate heir, Adma orders Eriberto, her foreman, to put an end to Arlete and the baby. Eriberto takes a boat with Arlete and the baby at the same time that fisherman Frederico and his wife Eulália, about to give birth, are on another boat, sailing in search of a doctor. Arlete realizes the coldness of Eriberto, causing her to put the baby in a basket in the water. Eriberto kills Arlete and, when he is about to get rid of the baby, a wave stops him, capsizing the boat. The basket with the child is guided to Frederico and Eulália's boat. Eulalia's baby is born dead. Frederico, in turn, hears the baby crying in the basket in the sea and picks him up. Eulália, thinking it is her son, names the baby Gumercindo and passes away.

Years later, Gumercindo is a fisherman respected by all in his community. He meets Livia, the girlfriend of Alexandre Guerrero, Félix and Adma's son. Livia and Gumercindo fall in love, but their love is threatened by the sensual Esmeralda, who is crazy in love with Gumercindo. Gumercindo becomes Félix's main enemy when the latter is elected mayor of Porto dos Milagres. Félix does not suspect that Guma is his nephew and that he threatens his throne, as the gypsy had prophesied years before.

Cast
 Marcos Palmeira as Gumercindo Vieira "Guma"
 Flávia Alessandra as Lívia Proença de Assunção
 Antônio Fagundes as Félix Guerrero and Bartolomeu Guerrero
 Cássia Kiss as Adma Guerrero
 Luíza Tomé as Rosa Palmeirão
 Leonardo Brício as Alexandre Guerrero
 Arlete Salles as Augusta Eugênia Proença de Assunção
 Nathalia Timberg as Ondina
 José de Abreu as Eriberto
 Zezé Polessa as Amapola Ferraço
 Joana Fomm as Rita
 Tonico Pereira as Francisco "Chico" Vieira
 Camila Pitanga as Esmeralda
 Marcelo Serrado as Rodolfo Augusto Proença de Assunção
 Carla Marins as Judite dos Reis
 Louise Cardoso as Maria Leontina
 Eduardo Galvão as Otacílio Ferraço
 Paloma Duarte as Dulce
 Kadu Moliterno as Dr. Rodrigo
 Fulvio Stefanini as Osvaldo
 Flávio Galvão as Deodato
 Cláudia Alencar as Epifânia
 Mônica Carvalho as Maria do Socorro "Socorrinho"
 Júlia Lemmertz as Genésia
 Vladimir Brichta as Ezequiel
 Bárbara Borges as Luíza
 Roberto Bomtempo as Jacques
 Zezé Motta as Mãe Ricardina
 Taís Araújo as Selminha Aluada
 Miguel Thiré as Alfredo Henrique
 Sérgio Menezes as Rufino
 Daniela Faria as Haydée Caolha
 Guilherme Piva as Alfeu
 Marcélia Cartaxo as Quirina
 Cláudio Corrêa e Castro as Seu Babau
 Renata Castro Barbosa as Bela
 Camilla Farias as Ana Beatriz

Guest stars
 Glória Menezes as Dona Coló
 Lima Duarte as Senator Victório Vianna
 Ary Fontoura as Deputy Pitágoras Williams Mackienzie
 Débora Duarte as Olímpia
 Eloísa Mafalda as Celeste Marabás
 Sandra Pêra as Eunice
 Letícia Sabatella as Arlete Palmeirão
 Hugo Carvana as Delegado Gouvêia
 Reginaldo Faria as Coronel Jurandir de Freitas
 Cristiana Oliveira as Eulália
 Maurício Mattar as Frederico
 Carolina Kasting as Laura Proença
 Tuca Andrada as Leôncio
 Ilva Niño as Valdenice
 Luíza Curvo as Cecília Palmeirão
 Eunice Muñoz as Gipsy

External links

2001 Brazilian television series debuts
2001 Brazilian television series endings
2001 telenovelas
TV Globo telenovelas
Portuguese-language telenovelas
Television shows based on Brazilian novels

Porto dos Milagres


Veniamin Petrovich Yudin (1928–1983) was a Kazakhstan scholar of oriental studies, historian, philologist, expert on Persian and Turkic manuscripts, researcher and teacher. Yudin was born on February 1, 1928, in Stalingrad (modern Volgograd). Yudin started his scientific and pedagogical activity as Uighurologist in 1950 after graduating Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, where he completed a postgraduate study in Uighur philology under a known Turkologist Prof. V.M. Nasilov.

In 1955 Yudin started his work at the Kazakhstan Pedagogical Institute in a newly opened Uighur branch, where he lectured in Uighur language the classes of ancient and classical Uighur literature, folklore and language. In 1960-1976 he lectured in the Kazakhstan State University and worked in the Uighurology Department of the Linguistics Institute of Kazakhstan SSR Academy of Sciences. Alongside the Kazakhstan artifacts, Yudin investigated from historical and philological points the richest manuscript heritage of the Uighur people. Yudin authored over 80 scientific publications in Russian, Uighur and Kazakh languages, some of them were re-published in English.

Yudin studied manuscripts unearthed in Xinjiang, northwest China, including "Chingiz-name" by Utemish-Khodja (16th century), "Tarih-i Shaibani" (beginning of 17th century), "Ziya' al-kulub" by Mukhalemad Avaz (beginning of 17th century).

Yudin's work "Clan and tribal composition of Moghuls of Moghulistan and Moghulia and their ethnic connections with Kazakh and other neighboring peoples" (News of Kazakhstan SSR Academy of Sciences, Social sciences, 1965, No. 3) broke ground in "nonconventional" illumination of the Moghulia state as distinct from Moghulistan in ethnic, territorial and chronological relations, state structure, and about Moghulian ethnic composition which contributed to the Kazakh, Uighur and Kirgiz peoples.

Much of Yudin's research was not published during his lifetime, including his translations of sources, research on history of the Kazakhs and Uighurs and other subjects.

References and sources

Turkologists
Kazakhstani philologists
1928 births
1983 deaths
People from Volgograd
20th-century philologists
Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies alumni

Benjamin P. Yudin


The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is an American late-night talk show hosted by Johnny Carson on NBC, the third iteration of the Tonight Show franchise. The show debuted on October 1, 1962, and aired its final episode on May 22, 1992. Ed McMahon served as Carson's sidekick and the show's announcer.

For its first decade, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show was based at the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, with some episodes recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank, California; on May 1, 1972, the show moved to Burbank as its main venue and remained there exclusively after May 1972 until Carson's retirement. The show's house band, the NBC Orchestra, was led by Skitch Henderson, until 1966 when Milton Delugg took over, who was succeeded by Doc Severinsen less than a year later.

The series has been ranked as one of the greatest TV shows of all time in polls from both 2002 and 2013.

Format
Johnny Carson's Tonight Show established the modern format of the late-night talk show: a monologue sprinkled with a rapid-fire series of 16 to 22 one-liners (Carson had a rule of no more than three on the same subject) was followed by sketch comedy, then moving on to guest interviews and performances by musicians and stand-up comedians. Occasionally, Carson interviewed prominent politicians such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey, however Carson refused to discuss his personal political views on the show out of concern it might alienate his audience and resisted efforts from his writing staff, particularly head writer and admitted liberal Marshall Brickman, to include more political material in the show.  Other regulars were selected for their entertainment or information value, in contrast to those who offered more cerebral conversation.

His preference for access to Hollywood stars caused the show's move to the West Coast on May 1, 1972; The Tonight Show would not return to New York until 2014 when Jimmy Fallon took the hosting reins. When asked about intellectual conversation on The Tonight Show, Carson and his staff invariably cited "Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Margaret Mead, Gore Vidal, Shana Alexander, Madalyn Murray O'Hair" as guests; one television critic stated, however, "he always presented them as if they were spinach for your diet when he did [feature such names]." Family therapist Carlfred Broderick appeared on the show ten times, and psychologist Joyce Brothers was one of Carson's most frequent guests. Carson, in general, did not feature prop comedy acts (Carson was not averse to using prop comedy himself); such acts, with Gallagher being a prominent example, more commonly appeared when guest hosts helmed the program.

Carson almost never socialized with guests before or after the show; frequent interviewee Orson Welles recalled that Tonight Show employees were astonished when Carson visited Welles's dressing room to say hello before a show. Unlike his avuncular counterparts Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and Dick Cavett, Carson was a comparatively "cool" host who only laughed when genuinely amused and abruptly cut short monotonous or embarrassingly inept interviewees. Mort Sahl recalled, "The producer crouches just off camera and holds up a card that says, 'Go to commercial.' So Carson goes to a commercial and the whole team rushes up to his desk to discuss what had gone wrong, like a pit stop at Le Mans." Actor Robert Blake once compared being interviewed by Carson to "facing the death squad" or "Broadway on opening night." The publicity value of appearing on The Tonight Show was so great, however, that most guests were willing to subject themselves to the risk.

Show regulars

Ed McMahon
The series' announcer and Carson's sidekick was Ed McMahon, who from the first show would introduce Carson with a drawn-out "Here's Johnny!" (something McMahon was inspired to do by the overemphasized way he had introduced reporter Robert Pierpoint on the NBC Radio Network program Monitor). The catchphrase was heard nightly for 30 years, and ranked top of the TV Land poll of U.S. TV catchphrases and quotes in 2006; it has been referenced in all media going from The Shining to Johnny Bravo to a "Weird Al" Yankovic album cut; it was even used for the character Johnny Cage in the video game series Mortal Kombat.

McMahon, who held the same role in Carson's ABC game show Who Do You Trust? for five years previously, would remain standing to the side as Carson did his monologue, laughing (sometimes obsequiously) at his jokes, then join him at the guest chair when Carson moved to his desk. The two would usually interact in a comic spot for a short while before the first guest was introduced.

McMahon stated in a 1978 profile of Carson in The New Yorker that "the 'Tonight Show' is my staple diet, my meat and potatoes—I'm realistic enough to know that everything else stems from that." After a 1965 incident in which he ruined Carson's joke on the air, McMahon was careful to, as he said, "never to go where [Carson]'s going." He wrote in his 1998 autobiography:

Bandleaders and others

The Tonight Show had a live big band for nearly all of its existence. The NBC Orchestra during Carson's reign was originally led by Skitch Henderson (who had previously led the band during Tonight Starring Steve Allen), followed briefly by Milton DeLugg. Starting in 1967 and continuing until Jay Leno took over, the band was led by Doc Severinsen, with Tommy Newsom filling in for him when he was absent or filling in for McMahon as the announcer (this usually happened when a guest host substituted for Carson, which generally gave McMahon the night off as well). The series' instrumental theme music, "Johnny's Theme," was a re-arrangement of the Paul Anka composition "Toot Sweet," which Anka and Annette Funicello had separately recorded, with lyrics, as "It's Really Love." During shows when Newsom filled in for Severinsen, the band played a slightly truncated version of the theme that transitioned from the bridge to the closing phrase without reprising the first few notes of the main melody. The NBC Orchestra was the last in-house studio orchestra to perform on American television.

Behind the scenes, motion picture director/producer Fred de Cordova joined The Tonight Show in 1970 as producer, graduating to executive producer in 1984. Unlike many people of his position, de Cordova often appeared on the show, bantering with Carson from his chair off-camera (though occasionally a camera would be pointed in his direction).

Dick Cavett was Carson's original head writer. He was succeeded by Marshall Brickman when Cavett left to pursue a stand-up career in 1964. The Tonight Show writing staff was structured so that the head writer was responsible for all of the material except for the nightly monologues, which the remainder of the staff handled; Brickman remarked in a 2009 interview that this was the main reason why he, at 25, got his position without any major experience, since all of the other writers under Cavett declined the offer.

Recurring segments and skits

Characters

 Carnac the Magnificent, in which Carson played a psychic who clairvoyantly divined the answer to a question contained in a sealed envelope. This was to some degree a variation on Steve Allen's recurring "The Question Man" sketch. The answer was always an outrageous pun. "Carnac" examples:
"Debate" ... "What do you use to catch de fish?"
"Baja"   ... "What sound does a sheep make when it laughs?"
"Ben-Gay" ... "Why didn't Mrs. Franklin have any kids?"
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou" ... "Name three things that have yeast."
"Three Dog Night" ... "What's a bad night for a tree?"
"Mount Baldy" ... "What did Yul Brynner's wife do on their wedding night?" also "How do you play 'horsey' with Don Rickles?"

"Sis boom bah" ... "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes." (Ed McMahon's personal favorite)
If the laughter fell short when a line bombed (as it often did), "Carnac" would face the audience with mock seriousness and bestow a comic curse: "May a diseased yak befriend your sister!" or "May a rabid holy man bless your nether regions with a power tool!"

 "Floyd R. Turbo," a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial. Floyd always spoke haltingly, as though reading from cue cards, and railed against some newsworthy topic, like Secretaries' Day: "This raises the question: Kiss my Dictaphone!"
 "Art Fern," the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time Movie" program, who advertised inane products, assisted by the attractive Matinee Lady, played by Paula Prentiss (late 1960s), Carol Wayne (the most familiar Matinee Lady, 1971–81, 1984), Danuta Wesley (1982), and Teresa Ganzel (1984–92). He imitated the vocal stylings of Jackie Gleason's character "Reginald Van Gleason". The fake movies Art would introduce usually had eclectic casts ("Ben Blue, Red Buttons, Jesse White, and Karen Black") and nonsensical titles ("Rin-Tin-Tin Gets Fixed Fixed Fixed"). This would be followed by a four-second stock film clip before coming back for another commercial, usually catching Art and the Matinee Lady in a very compromising position. On giving directions to a fake store he was touting, Fern would show a spaghetti-like road map, sometimes with a literal "fork in the road," other times making the joke, "Go to the Slauson Cutoff...," and the audience would recite with him, "...cut off your Slauson!" The character was previously named "Honest Bernie Schlock" and then "Ralph Willie" when the Tea Time sketches first aired in the mid-to-late 1960s. At least one surviving pre-1972 Art Fern sketch that originated from New York had its movie show title as "The Big Flick," an amalgam of two movie show titles in use at the time by New York station WOR-TV, The Big Preview and The Flick. On that sketch Lee Meredith was the Matinee Lady. Carson's Comedy Classics features an episode where Juliet Prowse is in the role of Matinee Lady, from 20 August 1971.
 "Aunt Blabby," an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters' character "Maude Frickert." A frequent theme would be McMahon happening to mention a word or phrase that could suggest death, as in "What tourist attractions did you check out?," to which Aunt Blabby would respond, "Never say check out to an old person!"
 "El Mouldo," mysterious mentalist. He would announce some mind-over-matter feat and always fail, although triumphantly shouting "El Mouldo has done it again!" Ed McMahon would take exception, noting El Mouldo's failure. "Did I fail before?" asked El Mouldo. "Yes!," replied McMahon, to which El Mouldo said, "Well, I've done it again!" El Mouldo was in large part a continuation of Carson's mentalist character Dillinger, which he had performed on The Johnny Carson Show in 1955 on CBS-TV; Dillinger was an obvious spoof of Dunninger, leading to complaints and threats of lawsuits against Carson and CBS.
 "David Howitzer, Consumer Supporter," a thinly veiled satire of consumer reporter David Horowitz. Howitzer's segments (in a rare example of prop comedy for the show) usually featured purported counterfeit consumer goods (usually gag props) that unscrupulous mail-order companies had sent his unsuspecting viewers (for example, a woman who spent thousands of dollars on an oriental rug instead received a cheap toupee made in Taiwan).
 "Ronald Reagan." During President Reagan's term in office, Carson developed an impersonation of the president that was featured regularly in a Mighty Carson Art Players segment. Carson also did a less memorable impersonation of Jimmy Carter during his term as President.

Bits
 "Stump the Band," where studio audience members ask the band to try to play obscure songs given only the title. Unlike when this routine was done during the Jack Paar years with the Jose Melis band, Severinsen's band almost never knew the song, but that did not stop them from inventing one on the spot. Example:
Guest's request: "My Dead Dog Rover"
Doc Severinsen, singing: "My dead dog Rover / lay under the sun / and stayed there all summer / until he was done!"
David Letterman revived this bit later, along with the CBS Orchestra on his Late Show.
 "The Mighty Carson Art Players," (depending on one's point of view, the name was an obvious tribute to or ripoff of radio legend Fred Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players). While Carson's show was primarily a talk show, with performances by guests, periodically Carson and a group of stock performers would perform skits that spoofed news, movies, television shows, commercials, and past events. A Mighty Carson Art Players appearance would usually be announced along with that night's guests during McMahon's introduction.
Example: Johnny, dressed as a doctor, starting to talk about some intimate topic (just as in the real ad) and then being hit by cream pies from several directions at once.
 "The Edge of Wetness," in which Johnny would read humorous plot summaries of a fictional soap opera (such as The Edge of Night) while the camera randomly chose an unsuspecting audience member whom Carson claimed was, for example, the butler from the soap.
 "Headlines," developed by Jay Leno, and seen only during nights when he guest-hosted beginning in 1986, featured humorous stories and typos from newspaper clippings. This carried over when Leno became permanent host in 1992.
 "How ___ was it?" a recurring call-and-response during Carson's monologues. Carson would set up the joke with a passing comment about, for instance, the weather with the phrase "It was so hot..." prompting the audience to respond "HOW HOT WAS IT?" Carson would then follow with several punch lines (e.g. "I heard Burger King singing, 'If you want it made your way, cook it yourself!'"). Carson would occasionally throw the audience off with an anti-joke (such as "it was worth the trip in, wasn't it?").

Programming history

Jack Paar's last appearance was on March 29, 1962, and due to Carson's commitment to the ABC game show Who Do You Trust?, he could not take over until October 1 (the day his ABC contract expired). His first guests were Rudy Vallée, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, and Joan Crawford. Carson inherited from Paar a show that was 1 3/4 hours (105 minutes) long. The show broadcast two openings, one starting at 11:15 p.m. and including the monologue, the other that listed the guests and re-announced the host, starting at 11:30 p.m. The two openings gave affiliates the option of screening either a fifteen-minute or thirty-minute local newscast preceding Carson. Since 1959, the show had been videotaped earlier the same broadcast day.

As more affiliates introduced thirty minutes of local news, Carson's monologue was being seen by fewer people. To rectify this situation, Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson co-hosted the first fifteen minutes of the show between February 1965 and December 1966 without Carson, who then took over at 11:30. Finally, because he wanted the show to start when he came on, at the beginning of January 1967 Carson insisted the 11:15 segment be eliminated (which, he claimed in a monologue at the time, "no one actually watched except the Armed Forces and four Navajos in Gallup, New Mexico").

January 1965 – September 1966: Saturday or Sunday 11:15 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (reruns, initially billed as The Saturday Tonight Show)
September 1966 – September 1975: Saturday or Sunday 11:30 p.m.–1:00 a.m. (reruns, now identified as The Saturday/Sunday Tonight Show; The Weekend Tonight Show by 1973)
January 2, 1967 – September 12, 1980: Monday–Friday 11:30 p.m.–1:00 a.m.

By the mid-1970s Tonight was the most profitable show on television, making NBC $50 to $60 million ($ to $ million in ) each year. Carson influenced the scheduling of reruns (which typically aired under the title The Best of Carson) in the mid-1970s and, in 1980, the length of each evening's broadcast, by threatening NBC with, in the first case, moving to another network, and in the latter, retiring altogether.

In order to work fewer days each week, Carson began to petition network executives in 1974 that reruns on the weekends be discontinued, in favor of showing them on one or more nights during the week. In response to his demands, NBC created a new comedy/variety series to feed to affiliates on Saturday nights that debuted in October 1975, Saturday Night Live.

In 1980, Carson renewed his contract with the stipulation that the show lose its last half-hour. On the last 90-minute show (September 12, 1980), Carson explained that by going to an hour, the show would feel more fast-paced, and have a greater selection of guests.

For a year, Tom Snyder's existing talk show, Tomorrow, was expanded to 90 minutes and forced to change its format, adding gossip reporter Rona Barrett as a co-host and taking on the name Tomorrow Coast to Coast. This was short-lived as a year and a half later, Snyder had quit and Tomorrow Coast to Coast had been canceled. Carson was given authority to fill the vacant time slot and used it to create Late Night with David Letterman (1982–1993). Today, The Tonight Show remains one hour in length and is still followed by Late Night, currently under the title Late Night with Seth Meyers (2014–).

September 15, 1980 – August 30, 1991: Monday–Friday 11:30 p.m.–12:30 a.m.
September 2, 1991 – May 22, 1992: Monday–Friday 11:35 p.m.–12:35 a.m.

In May 1991, following positive viewer reception during tests in St. Louis (KSDK) and Dallas–Fort Worth (KXAS), NBC reached an agreement with Carson Productions to delay the show's start time by five minutes beginning September 2, allowing its stations to include more commercials during their local newscasts. (The timeshift would also affect Late Night, Later with Bob Costas, and station-programmed overnight syndicated shows.) NBC executives had been proposing the five-minute delay idea to Carson since 1988, only to be repeatedly rebuffed, amid concerns that some of its affiliates—particularly those that had unsuccessfully sought permission to delay the Tonight Show by a half-hour—would begin preempting the program entirely and replace it with syndicated reruns to generate extra revenue from local advertising.

In an onscreen eulogy to Carson in 2005, David Letterman said that every talk show host owes his livelihood to Johnny Carson during his Tonight Show run.

1979–1980 contract battle

In 1979, when Fred Silverman was the head of NBC, Carson took the network to court, claiming that he had been a free agent since April of that year because his most recent contract had been signed in 1972. Carson cited a California law barring certain contracts from lasting more than seven years. NBC claimed that it had signed three agreements since then and Carson was bound to the network until April 1981. While the case was settled out of court, the friction between Carson and the network remained and Carson was actively courted by rival network ABC, which was willing to double Carson's salary and offer him a lighter work schedule and ownership of the show. NBC, in turn, was ready to offer The Tonight Show to Carson's most frequent guest host at the time, Richard Dawson.

Eventually, Carson reached an agreement that paid $25 million a year while reducing his workload from 90 to 60 minutes, with new shows airing only three nights a week 37 weeks a year (a guest host would appear Monday nights and for most of Carson's 15 weeks of vacation and "Best of Carson" reruns would air Tuesdays) and also give him ownership of the show, as well as its back catalog, and of the time slot following the Tonight Show which became Late Night with David Letterman produced by Carson Productions. In September 1980, Carson's eponymous production company gained ownership of the show after owning it from 1969 to the early 1970s.

Archives

Unfortunately, only 33 complete episodes of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show that had originally aired prior to May 1, 1972 are known to exist. All other shows during this period, including Carson's debut as host, are now considered lost. Carson himself initially encouraged the erasure of his archives thinking that the shows were of no real value and that NBC should "make guitar picks" out of them. Carson's shows were preserved by NBC into the early 1970s, but then thrown out to free storage space after the show moved to Burbank, California. When Carson later learned of their destruction, he was furious.

Other surviving material from the era has been found on kinescopes held in the archives of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, or in the personal collections of guests of the program, while a few moments such as Tiny Tim's wedding, were preserved. New York meteorologist Dr. Frank Field, an occasional guest during the years he was weather forecaster for WNBC-TV, showed several clips of his appearances with Carson in a 2002 career retrospective on WWOR-TV; Field had maintained the clips in his own personal archives. There are also two appearances by Judy Garland in 1968 that still survive. John Lennon and Paul McCartney's joint appearance on the May 14, 1968 episode guest-hosted by Joe Garagiola, with a guest appearance by Tallulah Bankhead (one of her last), was preserved on poor-quality home kinescope and audiotape in separate recordings by Beatles fans.  Similarly, the Supremes' May 22, 1967 appearance survives on poor-quality kinescope and an audio recording of their April 5, 1968 appearance honoring the recently slain Martin Luther King Jr. was preserved.

The program archive is virtually complete from 1973 to 1992. Carson Productions has also made clips available on YouTube and Antenna TV.

Although no footage is known to remain of Carson's first broadcast as host of The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962, photographs taken that night survive, including Carson being introduced by Groucho Marx, as does an audio recording of Marx's introduction and Carson's first monologue . One of his first jokes upon starting the show (after receiving a few words of encouragement from Marx, one of which was, "Don't go to Hollywood!") was to pretend to panic and say, "I want my nana!" (This recording was played at the start of Carson's final broadcast on May 22, 1992.)  The oldest surviving video recording of the show is dated November 1962, while the oldest surviving color recording is from April 1964, when Carson interviewed Jake Ehrlich Sr. as his guest.

The 30-minute audio recordings of many of the "missing" episodes are contained in the Library of Congress in the Armed Forces Radio collection. Many 1970s-era episodes have been licensed to distributors that advertise mail-order offers on late-night TV. The later shows that exist in full were stored by Carson in a bomb-proof underground salt mine outside Hutchinson, Kansas.

The non-tape archives pertaining to Carson's show are held by the Elkhorn Valley Museum in Carson's hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska. Beginning in 2020, the museum began working with the National Comedy Center to preserve the archive.

Rebroadcasts and streaming availability
A large amount of material from Carson's first two decades of The Tonight Show (1962–1982), much of it not seen since it had first aired, appeared in a half hour "clip/compilation" syndicated program known as Carson's Comedy Classics that aired in 1983. Audio clips from the show were featured nightly on WHO-AM in Des Moines, Iowa in the mid-2000s. In 2014, Turner Classic Movies would begin rerunning select interviews from the program for a new series called "Carson on TCM" presented by Conan O'Brien, who himself hosted The Tonight Show briefly.

The digital multicast network Antenna TV acquired rerun rights to whole episodes of the series in August 2015. Unlike the previous clip shows, Antenna TV's airings feature full broadcasts as they were originally seen, with the only edits being removal of The Tonight Show name, with the show being renamed simply as Johnny Carson (as of January 2018, the broadcasts air opposite the current edition of The Tonight Show in much of the United States, and NBC still owns the trademark on that name), and with bumpers, walk-on music and the closing theme being replaced by generic music cues from the Warner/Chappell Production Music library. Most musical guest segments are also removed. Antenna TV began airing the show seven days a week beginning January 1, 2016. Currently, sixty-minute episodes (from September 1980-May 1992) air Monday through Friday nights, and ninety-minute episodes (from 1972-September 12, 1980) Saturday and Sunday nights.

Selected episodes of Carson's show are available on NBC's Peacock streaming service. Shout! Factory launched a 24/7 streaming channel devoted to the series in August 2020, which is distributed through free over-the-top platforms including Stirr, Xumo and Pluto TV.  Recently, The Roku Channel began streaming JohnnyCarsonTV on its multi-channel platform LiveTV.

Guest hosts
Jack Paar had often asked Carson to guest-host Tonight in its earliest years and repeatedly claimed he had been responsible for NBC's selection of Carson in 1962 as his replacement. Steve Allen also utilized guest hosts, including Carson and Ernie Kovacs, particularly after he began hosting The Steve Allen Show in prime time in 1956 and needed to reduce his workload on Tonight.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson had guest hosts for entire weeks during Carson's vacations and other nights he had off. Many guest hosts were already large names in their own right, among them Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds and Don Rickles. Comedian Woody Allen guest hosted three times between 1966 and 1971. The following is a list of those who guest-hosted at least fifty times during the first 21 years of the show's run:
Joey Bishop (177 times, mostly in the 1960s)
Joan Rivers (93, during the 1970s and 1980s)
John Davidson (87)
Bob Newhart (87)
David Brenner (70)
McLean Stevenson (58)
Jerry Lewis (52, mostly in the 1960s)
David Letterman (51, mostly between 1980 and 1981)

Sammy Davis Jr. guest hosted in April 1965, becoming the first African-American to host a talk show. Harry Belafonte guest hosted for a week in February 1968, and among Belafonte's guests were Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., just months before both men were assassinated (King in April, Kennedy in June).
On April 2, 1979, Kermit the Frog was guest host.  In addition, many other Muppets appeared for skits and regular segments: Frank Oz voiced Fozzie Bear and Animal, while Jerry Nelson performed Uncle Deadly, a Vincent Price-inspired Muppet during a segment with the real Price. Richard Dawson guest hosted 14 times during 1979 and 1980, and was being considered as a full-time replacement should Carson have retired during his 1980 contract dispute with NBC.

Carson's contract, that took effect in 1981, reduced his work schedule to three nights a week, 37 weeks a year. "Best of Carson" reruns aired on Tuesdays in the weeks that Carson was hosting new shows. Monday night shows and shows for most of the 15 weeks that Carson had off were hosted by guest hosts. Due to the frequent need for substitutes, starting in 1983 permanent guest hosts were hired in order to give the program more stability. The permanent guest hosts were Joan Rivers (1983–1986), then, after about a year where a wide range of guest hosts were used, Garry Shandling alternating with Jay Leno (1987–1988) and finally Leno alone (1988–1992) after Shandling left to focus on his Showtime series It's Garry Shandling's Show.  Leno, who first guest hosted in 1986, would do so 333 times before becoming the next Tonight Show host in 1992. Though the concept of using "permanent" guest hosts was fairly strictly adhered to, occasionally illness or some other situation necessitated a substitute guest host, as when David Brenner filled in for Joan Rivers on October 31 and November 1, 1985, when Rivers's husband was briefly hospitalized.

During the show's run, its cast and crew collaborated with a number of NBC sitcoms to produce spoof episodes of the Tonight Show. These spoofs typically ran in the sitcom's usual spot on the  broadcast schedule and featured one of the sitcom's main characters as the guest host.

Joan Rivers

In September 1983, Joan Rivers was designated Carson's permanent guest host, a role she had been essentially filling for the previous year. In 1986, after years as a guest and 190 total appearances as guest host, she left the program for her own show on the then-new Fox Network. According to Carson, Rivers never personally informed him of the existence of her show. Rivers, on the other hand, disagreed. Nevertheless, Rivers' new show was quickly canceled, and she never again appeared on The Tonight Show with Carson.  Nor did she appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a ban maintained by Leno out of respect for Carson. She also never appeared during Conan O'Brien's seven-month run. After Carson's death in 2005, Rivers told CNN that Carson never forgave her for leaving, and never spoke to her again, even after she wrote him a note following the accidental death of Carson's son Ricky in June 1991. On February 17, 2014, Rivers returned to the Tonight Show as part of a skit in which numerous celebrities paid new host, Jimmy Fallon, after having lost the bet that he would never become the host of the program. Rivers appeared for a full-length interview segment on March 27, 2014.

The program of July 26, 1984, with guest host Joan Rivers, was the first MTS stereo broadcast in U.S. television history, though not the first television broadcast with stereophonic sound. Only NBC's flagship local station in New York City, WNBC, had stereo broadcast capability at that time. NBC transmitted The Tonight Show in stereo sporadically through 1984 and on a regular basis beginning in 1985.

Consequential appearances
According to Skepticism activist James Randi, Carson invited Uri Geller, who claimed paranormal powers, onto the Tonight Show specifically to disprove the Israeli performer's claims. Randi later wrote, "that Johnny had been a magician himself", so prior to the date of taping, Randi was asked "to help prevent any trickery."  Per Randi's advice, the show prepared their own props without informing Geller, and did not let Geller or his staff "anywhere near them." When Geller joined Carson on stage, he appeared surprised that he was not going to be interviewed, but instead was expected to display his abilities using the provided articles. Geller said "This scares me." and "I'm surprised because before this program your producer came and he read me at least 40 questions you were going to ask me." Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities, saying "I don't feel strong" and he expressed his displeasure at feeling like he was being "pressed" to perform by Carson. According to Adam Higginbotham's Nov. 7, 2014 article in the New York Times:

However, this appearance on The Tonight Show, which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller's claimed abilities, backfired. According to Higginbotham,

Carson's last shows
As his retirement approached, Carson tried to avoid sentimentality but would periodically show clips of some of his favorite moments and again invited some of his favorite guests.  He told his crew, "Everything comes to an end; nothing lasts forever. Thirty years is enough. It's time to get out while you're still working on top of your game, while you're still working well."

Carson hosted his penultimate show, featuring guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler, on May 21, 1992. The last of Carson's monologues was delivered on this episode and was written by Jim Mulholland, Steven Kunes and Rift Fournier. Once underway, the atmosphere was electric and Carson was greeted with a sustained, two-minute intense standing ovation. Williams was especially uninhibited with his trademark manic energy and stream-of-consciousness lunacy. Midler was more emotional. When the conversation turned to Johnny's favorite songs, "I'll Be Seeing You" and "Here's That Rainy Day," Midler mentioned that she knew a chorus of the latter. She began singing the song, and after the first line, Carson joined in and turned it into an impromptu duet. Midler finished her appearance from center stage, where she slowly sang the pop standard "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." Carson became unexpectedly tearful, and a shot of the two of them was captured by a camera angle from across the set that had never before been used on the show. The audience became tearful as well and called the three performers out for a second bow after the taping was completed.  This show was immediately recognized as a television classic that Midler considered one of the most emotional moments of her life and eventually won an Emmy for her role in it.

Carson had no guests on his final episode of The Tonight Show on May 22, 1992, which was instead a retrospective show taped before an invitation-only studio audience of family, friends, and crew. During the show, Carson regretted that the first 10 years of his tenure as host no longer exist saying that he would have loved to show the audience clips of Jayne Mansfield with Boris Karloff,  Peter Lorre talking to Tallulah Bankhead and even the first appearance of Bette Midler (who had appeared on Carson's penultimate episode the night before) on the show. More than fifty million people tuned in for this finale, which ended with Carson sitting on a stool alone at center stage, similar to Jack Paar's last show. He said these final words in conclusion:

A few weeks after the final show aired, it was announced that NBC and Carson had struck a deal to develop a new series.  Ultimately, however, Carson chose not to return to television. He gave only two major interviews after his retirement: one to The Washington Post in 1993, and the other to Esquire magazine in 2002. Carson hinted in his 1993 interview that he did not think he could top what he had already accomplished. He rarely appeared elsewhere after retiring, providing only a guest voice on an episode of The Simpsons, which included him performing feats of strength and featured Bette Midler as well.  Carson's final television appearance was cameo on the May 13, 1994, Late Show with David Letterman where he handed over a copy of a Top 10 List and sat in Dave's chair for a minute.  He was prepared to say a few words, but the crowd's cheering was so loud and so sustained, that he humorously decided to leave without saying anything—although as he exited, he could be heard saying "Thank you, good night!"

In 2005, after Carson's death, it was revealed that he had made a habit of sending jokes to Dave Letterman via fax machine which Letterman would then sometimes incorporate into his monologues. The January 31, 2005, episode of the Late Show with David Letterman, which featured a tribute to Carson, began with a monologue by Letterman composed entirely of jokes written by Carson himself after his retirement.

In 2011, the last Carson Tonight show was ranked No. 10 on the TV Guide Network special, TV's Most Unforgettable Finales.

See also
There's... Johnny!

References

External links

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The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson