Jesse James
Born: 1969
Birthplace: Lynnwood, California
Best Known As: Motorcycle-building star of TV's Monster Garage
As the muscular, tattooed chief gearhead of the reality TV show Monster Garage, Jesse James has chopped and welded a Lincoln Town Car into a custom fire truck and turned a Ford Mustang into a high-speed lawnmower. Monster Garage debuted on The Discovery Channel in 2002 and James began winning fans with his straight-talking, pit-bull-taming, motorcycle outlaw charisma. James had become fascinated with motorcycles as a child, and he opened his own shop, West Coast Choppers, in Long Beach, California in 1992. The company grew into a builder of super-high-end bikes with price tags of $100,000 and more. His choppers attracted celebrity customers like Shaquille O'Neal and Kid Rock, which in turn caught the eye of The Discovery Channel, which put him on the air in the 2001 special Motorcycle Mania. When that show was a hit with viewers, the series Monster Garage was born. James claims a family relationship to the 19th-century outlaw Jesse James; his great-great-grandfather was the outlaw's cousin. He married actress Sandra Bullock in 2005.
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Joseph Pulitzer
Born: 10 April 1847
Birthplace: Makó, Hungary
Death: 29 October 1911
Best Known As: Newspaperman who started the Pulitzer Prize
Joseph Pulitzer was a journalist and newspaper publisher in the last half of the 19th century whose will established the Pulitzer Prizes "for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature and the advancement of education." As a young man Pulitzer immigrated to the United States in 1864 and served during the Civil War in the 1st New York Cavalry. He made his way to St. Louis after the war and ended up working for the German language newspaper the Westliche Post in 1868. Ambitious and hardworking, Pulitzer studied English and law and served in the Missouri legislature, and by 1872 he was the owner and publisher of the Post. In 1878 he bought The Evening Dispatch and merged the two newspapers into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer moved to New York, where he acquired the New York World (1883), founded the New York Evening World (1887) and became one of the most powerful newspaper publishers in the United States and a rival and competitor of William Randolph Hearst. Although he maintained control over his publishing empire, Pulitzer had frail health and was almost completely blind in his later years. His will provided the financing of the Pulitzer prizes as well as what is now the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University.
The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917... Pulitzer served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1885-1886)... His sons Ralph (1879-1939) and Joseph (1885-1955) were also journalists and publishers, as was his grandson, Joseph, Jr. (1913-93).
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Julia Roberts
Born: 28 October 1967
Birthplace: Smyrna, Georgia
Best Known As: Star of the movie Pretty Woman
Julia Roberts made her screen debut in 1986 (co-starring with her brother, actor Eric Roberts), but it was her role in 1988's Mystic Pizza that grabbed the public's attention. After box office successes like Steel Magnolias (1989, with Dolly Parton) and Pretty Woman (1990, with Richard Gere), Roberts was among the highest paid actresses in the business and one of Hollywood's most bankable movie stars. In 2001 she won the Academy Award as the year's best actress for playing the title role in the Steven Soderbergh film Erin Brockovich. That same year she appeared with Brad Pitt in The Mexican and Ocean's Eleven (also directed by Soderbergh). Her other films include My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Mona Lisa Smile (2003, with Kirsten Dunst), Closer (2004, with Clive Owen) and Ocean's Twelve (2004, with George Clooney).
Roberts married cameraman Daniel Molder on 4 July 2002; the couple met while filming the 2001 film The Mexican. Their twin children, Hazel and Phinnaeus, were born on 28 November 2004... Roberts previously was married to singer Lyle Lovett from 1993 through 1995. She has been engaged to, but did not marry, actors Kiefer Sutherland and Dylan McDermott, and dated actor Benjamin Bratt from 1997-2001.
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John Wayne
Born: 26 May 1907
Birthplace: Winterset, Iowa
Death: 11 June 1979 (lung cancer)
Best Known As: Western movie icon and star of True Grit
Birth name: Marion Michael Morrison
John Wayne is a genuine icon of 20th century American film. Famed as a star of westerns, especially those of director John Ford, "The Duke" also played cops and soldiers with regularity. No matter what the role, Wayne nearly always played the same character: a big, tough but sensitive hero who talked straight and met the bad guys head on. Offscreen Wayne was considered a superpatriot and was closely associated with conservative political causes. His many films include classics such as Stagecoach (1939), The Quiet Man (1952) and The Searchers (1956). Wayne won an Oscar late in his career for his portrayal of hard-drinking marshal Rooster Cogburn in the 1969 film True Grit.
Wayne was honored with a United States postage stamp released in April of 2004... Wayne was married three times, all to Latinas... Wayne was the uncle of heavyweight boxer Tommy Morrison... Wayne did not serve in World War II; though he was within draft age (34) at the time of Pearl Harbor, he was eventually classified 3-A (deferred for family dependency -- Wayne had four children) and later 2-A (deferred in the national interest). The issue is a touchy one, and many of Wayne's fans insist that he was actually classified 4-F due to an old football knee injury, a bad ear, or a chronic back injury... A heavy smoker, Wayne recorded a famous anti-smoking TV ad after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
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Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller (June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an Austrian-born American swimmer and actor. He was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. After his swimming career, he played Tarzan in twelve motion pictures. Other actors also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller was the best-known.
Early life
He was born János Weißmüller in Freidorf, Austro-Hungary (present-day Timişoara, Romania) to German language speaking Austrian parents, Petrus Weißmüller and Erzsebet Kersch, as is shown on his birth and baptismal records.
When Johnny was seven months old, the family emigrated to the United States aboard the S.S. Rotterdam. They left Rotterdam on January 14, 1905, and arrived in New York twelve days later, with their names recorded in English as Peter, Elizabeth and Johann Weissmuller.
After a brief stay in Chicago, Illinois, visiting relatives, they moved to the coal mining town of Windber, Pennsylvania, where Peter Weissmuller worked as a miner. Another son, Peter Weissmuller, Jr., was born in Windber on September 3, 1905.
After several years in Pennsylvania, they moved to Chicago. Johnny's father owned a bar for a time and his mother became head cook at a famed restaurant. His parents were later divorced, as is shown by the divorce document filed in Chicago by Elizabeth Weissmuller, although a lot of sources state incorrectly that Weismuller's father died of tuberculosis contracted from working in coal mines and left her a widow. It has been said that he actually lived to old age and had another, large family of children.
From an early age, Johnny and his brother were aggressive swimmers. The beaches of Lake Michigan became their favorite summer recreation place. He then joined the Stanton Park pool, where he won all the junior swim meets. At the age of twelve he earned a spot on the YMCA swim team.
Swimming career
When Weissmuller left school, he worked as a bellhop and elevator operator at the Plaza Hotel in Chicago and trained for the Olympics with a swim coach at the Illinois Athletic Club, where he developed his revolutionary high-riding front crawl. He made his amateur debut on August 6, 1921, winning his first AAU race in the 50-yard freestyle.
Though he was foreign-born, Weissmuller gave his birthplace as Windber, Pennsylvania, and his birth date as that of his younger brother, Peter Weissmuller. This was to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the United States Olympic team, and was a critical issue in being issued an American passport.
On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke Duke Kahanamoku's world record on the 100-meters freestyle, swimming it in 58.6 seconds. He won the title in that distance at the 1924 Summer Olympics, beating Kahanamoku on February 24, 1924. He also won the 400-meters freestyle and the 4 x 200 meters relay. As a member of the American water polo team, he also won a bronze medal. Four years later, at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, he won two more Olympic titles.
In all, he won five Olympic gold medals, one bronze medal, won fifty-two U.S. National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. Johnny Weissmuller never lost a race and retired from his amateur swimming career undefeated.
Motion picture career
In 1929, Weissmuller signed a contract with BVD to be a model and representative. He traveled throughout the country doing swim shows, handing out leaflets promoting that brand of swimwear, giving his autograph and going on talk shows. In that same year, he made his first motion picture appearance as an Adonis wearing only a figleaf in a movie titled Glorifying the American Girl and he appeared as himself in the first of several Crystal Champions, a movie short featuring Weissmuller and other Olympic champions at Silver Springs, Florida.
His career really began when he signed a seven year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and played the role of Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The movie was a huge success and Weissmuller became an overnight international sensation. Even the author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created the character of Tarzan in his books, was pleased.
Weissmuller starred in six Tarzan movies for MGM with actress Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane. The last three also included Johnny Sheffield as Boy. Then, in 1942, Weissmuller went to RKO and starred in six more Tarzan movies. Sheffield appeared as Boy in the first five features for that studio. Another co-star was blonde actress Brenda Joyce, who played Jane in the last four Tarzan movies. In a total of twelve Tarzan movies, Weissmuller earned an estimated $2,000,000 and established himself as the best-known of all the actors who have ever portrayed Tarzan. Although not the first Tarzan in movies (that honour went to Elmo Lincoln), he was the first to be associated with the now traditional ululating, yodeling Tarzan yell.
When he finally left that role, he immediately traded his loincloth costume for jungle fatigues and appeared fully clothed in the role of Jungle Jim (1948) for Columbia. He made thirteen Jungle Jim movies between (1948) and (1954). Within the next year, he appeared in three more jungle movies playing himself.
In 1955, he began production of the Jungle Jim television adventure series for Screen Gems, a film subsidiary of Columbia. The show ran for twenty-six episodes, which played over and over on network and syndicated TV for many years.
Weissmuller had five wives: band and club singer Bobbe Arnst (married 1931-divorced 1933); actress Lupe Vélez (married 1933-divorced 1939); Beryl Scott (married 1939-divorced 1948); Allene Gates (married 1948-divorced 1962); and Maria Bauman (married 1963-his death 1984).
According to a movie site on the Internet, he also married and divorced Camilla Louiee, but that claim has been challenged. Weissmuller reportedly said that Louiee ran off and married another man instead of him.
With his third wife, Beryl, he had three children, Johnny Scott Weissmuller (or Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., also an actor) (born September 23, 1940), Wendy Anne Weissmuller (born June 1, 1942) and Heidi Elizabeth Weissmuller (July 31, 1944-November 19, 1962).
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he Sixty-Year Chinese Cycle directory:
