Manly Monday - Marlon Brando!

 

 

Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor and film director with a career spanning 60 years, during which he won many accolades, including two Academy Awards for Best Actor, three BAFTA Awards for Best Foreign Actor and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor — Motion Picture Drama. He is regarded as arguably the greatest and most influential actor in 20th-century film. Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the civil rights movement and various Native American movements. Having studied with Stella Adler in the 1940s, he is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting, derived from the Stanislavski system, to mainstream audiences.

He initially gained acclaim and his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for reprising the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, a role that he originated successfully on Broadway.^[5] He received further praise, and an first Academy Award and Golden Globe Award, for his performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, and his portrayal of the rebellious motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One proved to be a lasting image in popular culture.^[6] Brando received Academy Award nominations for playing Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952); Mark Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; and Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver in Sayonara (1957), an adaptation of James A. Michener's 1954 novel. 

The 1960s saw Brando's career take a commercial and critical downturn. He directed and starred in the cult western One-Eyed Jacks, a critical and commercial flop, after which he delivered a series of notable box-office failures, beginning with Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). After ten years of underachieving, he agreed to do a screen test as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). He got the part and subsequently won his second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in a performance critics consider among his greatest. He refused the award due to mistreatment and mis-portrayal of Native Americans by Hollywood. The Godfather was one of the most commercially successful films of all time, and alongside his Oscar-nominated performance in Last Tango in Paris, Brando reestablished himself in the ranks of top box-office stars.

After a hiatus in the early 1970s, Brando was generally content with being a highly paid character actor in supporting roles, such as Jor-El in Superman (1978), as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), and in The Formula (1980), before taking a nine-year break from film. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brando was paid a record $3.7 million ($16 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and 11.75% of the gross profits for 13 days' work on Superman.

Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of only six actors named in 1999 by Time magazine in its list of the 100 Most Important People of the Century.^[7] In this list, Time also designated Brando as the "Actor of the Century".

 Read Full Details On Wikipedia Here!

 

Sci Fi Sunday -

 Remember these guys? Who didn't want to just move right in with them!!!! They originally aired in prime time TV from September 23, 1962 to March 17, 1963, and then another series was developed in the 80s of all things....

I've deliberately copied a list of the main characters straight from Wiki below to make sure I don't miss anyone - lots of fun facts!

 

• George Jetson: age 40, is the main character and protagonist of the series. He is a loving family man who always seems to make the wrong decisions. He works at Spacely's Sprockets turning the Referential Universal Digital Indexer (R.U.D.I.) on and off. He is married to Jane and together they have two children, Judy and Elroy.

 

• Jane Jetson: age 33, is George's wife, mother of their two children, and a homemaker, although it is Rosie who does most of the work. Jane is obsessed with fashion and new gadgetry. Her favorite store is Mooning Dales. She is a dutiful wife who always tries to make life as pleasant as possible for her family. Outside of the home, she is a member of the Galaxy Women Historical Society and is a fan of Leonardo de Venus and Picasso Pia.

 

• Judy Jetson: age 15, is the elder child in the Jetson family, born when Jane was just 18 years old. A student at Orbit High School, she is a stereotypical teenage girl whose interests include clothes, hanging out with boys, and revealing secrets to her digital diary that she calls "DiDi". Judy is the girl next door and also loyal to her family.

 

• Elroy Jetson: initially age 6½; later age 8,  is the younger of the two children in the Jetson family. He is highly intelligent and an expert in all space sciences. A mild-mannered and good child, Elroy attends Little Dipper School, where he studies space history, astrophysics, and star geometry. Elroy loves his dog Astro and is always there to support him when George loses his patience with the family pet.

 

• Rosey: Rosey is the Jetsons' household robot. She is an outdated model, but the Jetsons love her and would never trade her for a newer model. Rosey does all the housework and some of the parenting. She is a strong authoritarian and occasionally dispenses pills to the family. Excluding a scene from the closing credits, Rosey appears in only two episodes of the original 1960s show, but makes many appearances on the 1980s show.

 

• Astro: Astro is the Jetsons' family dog. Prior to being a Jetson, his name was Tralfaz and he belonged to the fabulously rich Mr. J.P. Gottrockets. Astro is one of George's best friends, next to his work computer, R.U.D.I., as well as Elroy's best buddy. He is able to speak in a rough sounding English resembling dog barks and growls, a manner of speaking which voice actor Don Messick would later reuse for the role of Scooby-Doo.

 

• Orbitty: is an alien with spring-like legs who was the second pet of the Jetson family. He has the ability to express his emotions by changing color. This character was introduced in the 1980s version of the series, but did not appear for the third season (except for one cameo) or any of the movies.

 

• Cosmo Spacely: is George's boss and owner of Spacely Space Sprockets. His company was founded in Newfoundland in 1937. He is a small man with thinning black hair and a bad temper, and is the main antagonist of the series. Spacely always comes up with ideas to bring in more business, but they backfire. George, whom Spacely has known since childhood, gets blamed for most things that go wrong. A series' running gag involves his kicking George out of his office shouting, "Jetson! You're fired!"; however, Spacely would give George his job back in the end of the episode, and if he was very happy with George, promote him to vice-president of the company. Mr. Spacely is sometimes helped out by Uniblab, the company's robot assistant.

 

• Spencer Cogswell: is Spacely's big competitor. He owns Cogswell Cogs company and causes a lot of trouble for Spacely and George. To a lesser extent Cogswell is another of the series' antagonists. He and Spacely are always finding ways to bring each other's businesses down. Cogswell has often tried to steal Spacely's ideas and make them his own to gain an advantage (only for it to backfire on both bosses). He's also not above firing his employees when any little thing goes wrong. Mr. Cogswell's first name, "Spencer", is revealed in the 1980s version of The Jetsons. Cogswell slightly resembles Mr. Slate of The Flintstones.

 

• R.U.D.I.: is George's work computer and one of his best friends, next to his dog, Astro. His name is an acronym for Referential Universal Digital Indexer. R.U.D.I. only appeared one episode in 1962 version in Good Little Scouts. He has a human personality and is a member of the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Humans. In the episode "Family Fallout" (originally aired September 22, 1985), the Jetsons win a TV game show after George Jetson correctly states what the initials "R.U.D.I." stand for.

 

• Henry Orbit: is the Jetsons' apartment's building superintendent aka apartment janitor and George's friend. He is always helpful and always in a good mood. He built a robot named Mac who has a crush on Rosie.