Merle Oberon was an Indian-born British actress.

She began her film career in British films, and a prominent role, as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII, brought her attention. Leading roles in such films as The Scarlet Pimpernel advanced her career, and she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel. A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she soon followed this with her most renowned role, as “Cathy” in Wuthering Heights. Her career continued until the end of the 1940s when it declined and her acting performances over the following years were relatively few.

According to her birth certificate, Oberon was born in Bombay, British India on 18 February 1911 as Estelle Merle Thompson, although other sources note 19

Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and sometime actor.

Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake. To make money, young Mervyn sold newspapers and entered talent shows as a singer. Through this he worked his way into vaudeville. When his act broke up, he and his cousin, Jesse Lasky, went to Hollywood.

LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films. His first directing job was in 1927’s No Place to Go. When his movies made lots of money without costing too much, he became well-received in the movie business.

In 1931 he directed the gangster epic Little Caesar, launching Edward G. Robinson into stardom. In 1938 he was chosen as head of production at MGM, where he was responsible for the decision to make The Wizard of Oz. He was responsible for discovering Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Robert Mitchum and Lana Turner.

Mauritz Stiller was a Finnish actor, screenwriter and silent film director, who was mostly active in Sweden.

Born Moshe Stiller in Helsinki, his family was of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, having lived in Russia and Poland before settling in Finland. At age four, Stiller's mother committed suicide, after which he was raised by family friends. From early on, Stiller was interested in acting. His talents did not go unnoticed, and soon Stiller was offered the opportunity to practice and display his acting skills in the theaters of Helsinki and Turku in Finland.

Drafted into the army of Czar Nicholas II — Finland was at the time an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia?rather than report for duty he fled the country for exile, and settled in Sweden.

By 1912 Stiller had become involved with Sweden's rapidly developing silent film industry. He began by writing scripts, in addition to acting and directing in short films but within a few years gave up on acting to devote his time to writing and directing. He was soon directing feature-length productions and his 1918 effort Thomas Graals bästa barn with Victor Sjöström in the leading role, received much acclaim.

Max Steiner was a Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as such is often referred to as “the father of film music”. Along with such composers as Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman and Miklós Rózsa, Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films.

Steiner composed hundreds of film scores, including The Informer, Now, Voyager, and Since You Went Away, all of which won him Academy Awards. He was nominated for the Academy Award a total of twenty six times, a record surpassed only by Alfred Newman and John Williams for the most nominations received by a composer. Three of his scores were also nominated at a time when composers were not eligible to be nominated in the Original Score category.

Steiner was one of the best-known composers in Hollywood, and is widely regarded today as one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in history, including John Ford and William Wyler. Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner’s popular works include King Kong, Little Women, Jezebel, Casablanca, and the film score for which he is possibly best known, Gone with the Wind. Despite being one of the most popular film soundtracks ever written, Gone with the Wind failed to win an Oscar for him.

Steiner was born as Maximilian Raoul Steiner in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Steiner later claimed that he was given, and rejected, the name Walter, but there is no evidence of this in his birth register, held at the Jewish community of Vienna. Later in life he purportedly discovered a half-brother named James Owen, with whom he co-wrote the song “Theme from A Summer Place”. His paternal grandfather was Maximilian Steiner, the influential manager of Vienna’s Theater an der Wien; his father was Gabor Steiner, Viennese impresario and carnival and exposition manager, responsible for the Ferris wheel in the Prater that would become the setting for a key scene of the film The Third Man ; his godfather was the composer Richard Strauss.

Mel Brooks was honored with the 2,406th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the ceremony. Guests included Robert Osborne, Max Brooks, and Carl Reiner.

6712 Hollywood Boulevard on April 23, 2010.

BIOGRAPHY

Mel Brooks began his distinguished career during television's Golden Age as a writer for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows, the first of many comedy series for which he would write.

In the '60s, Brooks teamed up with Carl Reiner to write and perform The 2000 Year Old Man albums, which became immediate bestsellers and Grammy winners.

Brooks wrote and narrated The Critic, a short satire that received an Academy Award„¥ for Best Animated Short Subject in 1964. In 1965, he teamed up with Buck Henry to create the long-running television series Get Smart. In 1968, he wrote and directed his first feature film, The Producers, which earned him an Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay. It later became the basis for the hit Broadway musical and subsequent film version.

Brooks has created a remarkable string of hit comedies: The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not To Be, Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Like The Producers, Young Frankenstein also made a successful transition to the Broadway musical stage.

Brooks' visionary film company, Brooksfilms Limited, has produced some of America's most distinguished films, among them David Lynch's The Elephant Man and David Cronenberg's The Fly.

For three successive seasons, Brooks won Emmys for his role as Uncle Phil the series Mad About You. Last year, commemorating his lifelong contributions to American culture, Brooks was named among the recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors.