But hosting a talk show wasn't all Winfrey had in mind. Although untrained as an actress, she was nominated for an Oscar for her powerful performance as a slave in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. (Two decades later Winfrey produced a musical version on Broadway.) She created Harpo productions to house her show and to produce socially relevant films. She also launched a monthly book segment on her show and her selections immediately became best sellers.
American writer,actor,producer and director Tyler Perry is a great example of a man living the American dream. Emmitt Perry, Jr, born September 13,1969, in New Orleans,Louisiana.Tyler Perry is one of four children,two older sisters and a younger brother, of mother, Willie Maxine Perry and father Emmitt Perry, Sr. Tyler Perry came to the attention of critics across the United States when his play “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” which was made into a popular movie. Perry had become a playwright when all odds were against him. By 2005 he was a millionaire.Tyler Perry had a terrible childhood from suffering years of abuse from his father.Perry once described his father as a man “whose answer to everything was to beat it out of you(”Tyler Perry." 2012.
She won two fellowships from the National Endowment for the arts, one was for fiction in 1982 and one was for poetry in 1987. During this time, she also met her literary agent, Susan Bergholz, who after seeing a small packet of short stories encouraged Cisneros to develop them into one what was to become Woman Hollering Creek. Cisneros won many awards for this including: the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of 1991, the Qualitiy Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and was selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The New York Times and the American Library Journal. In 1995, Cisneros won the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She moved to San Antonio where she has she is now lecturing to students at a local arts center.
She stayed in Warrensburg until her later years when her and her husband moved to Florida. Draper wrote children’s plays, along with children’s books. She got into playwriting because she loved to act. As a freshman in college at Central Missouri State College (now UCM), she won The Longman’s Green Prize for her one-act play, Holy Hour. Through college, Draper continued to write and act in plays.
Not only were the southerners nominated for the American Comedy Award in 1990, they also come close to the Golden Globe, as well as the CFCA Award. Individual awards were presented as well, Julia Roberts won the Golden Globe Award and Shirley MacLaine was nominated for numerous awards as well. In conclusion, Steel Magnolias is one of those laugh-and-cry-and-feel-good-all-at-the-same-time movies. 9 to 5 which is another film starring Dolly Parton came out in 1980’s, didn’t even come close to Steel Magnolias as a personal opinion. This film is great to watch when ready to laugh or maybe even to shed a tear but all in all it is a great
Karen Elliott Ms. Dennis English 1302.05 March 1, 2011 Steel Magnolias, a Southern Story “Steel Magnolias” a play written by Robert Harling is a heartwarming story of true friendship between six “steel” women. The women of “Steel Magnolias” are a sisterhood and Truvy’s Beauty Spot is a haven for them. Truvy’s, a place where there is plenty of southern hospitality, southern dialect, tears, laughter and joy is also a second home for the women. When the play first opened I was surprised to see that there would be only six characters throughout the entire play. I was concerned that they would not be able to express the full meaning of the movie with only six women.
At the age of 7, Matlin landed her first leading role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at a children’s theatre company in Chicago, Illinois called the International Center on Deafness and the Arts. She went on to study Criminal Justice to be come a law enforcement officer at Harper College in Illinois, but she never lost her passion for acting. She had a real talent. After college, Marlee continued to do shows around Chicago for several years. She got her big break starring in the stage show Children of a Lesser God as the main character Sarah, a deaf woman who becomes involved with a speech teacher at a school for the deaf.
It eventually opened off-Broadway in 1970, and in 1971 made a brief jump to Broadway. Overall, the play enjoyed a very successful New York run of 819 performances. Zindel's portrayal of the painful side of family life struck a chord with audiences who found they could easily relate to the themes of loneliness and shattered dreams. The play was critically acclaimed and earned several awards, including an Obie Award for best play of the season (1970), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play of the year (1970), and the Pulitzer Prize for drama (1971). It was so popular that in 1972 Twentieth-Century Fox released a film version starring Joanne Woodward.
She began studying for her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She wanted more control over her music, so she opened her own production and publishing company. She also began producing and composing television and music scores. During this time, not fully focused on recording an album it was another two years until she came out with another album. In 1977 she released Blue Lights in the Basement, which was one of the top selling albums of the year.
This was his first commercial success was Ma Rainey's Black Bottom which was developed at the Playwrights Center in 1983 and eventually moved to premier at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1984 and went on to Broadway where it enjoyed 275 performances and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The premier at the Yale Repertory established a collaborative bond between Wilson and Lloyd Richards who was then dean of the Yale School of Drama. This play was partly inspired by the plays of Amiri Baraka who warned black writers to keep their characters faithful to the black experience Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the title of a song by Ma Rainey referring to black bottom dance. Each play dealt with a particular decade as illustrated in Ma Rainey's which represented a female blues singer who deals with the pressures of an abusive music business which victimized its black artists. The play was set in a movie studio and the character of Levee was played by Charles Dutton of television's Roc fame.