title: Henry Clay

text: Clay was surprised by Van Buren's defeat but remained confident of his chances in the 1844 election. Polk was the first "dark horse" presidential nominee in U.S. history, and Whigs mocked him as a "fourth rate politician." Despite his relative lack of national stature, Polk proved to be a strong candidate capable of uniting the factions of the Democratic Party and winning the support of Southerners who had been reluctant to support Van Buren. Clay's stance on slavery alienated some voters in both the North and the South. Pro-slavery Southerners flocked to Polk, while many Northern abolitionists, who tended to align with the Whig Party, favored James G. Birney of the Liberty Party. Clay's opposition to annexation damaged his campaign in the South, as Democrats argued that he worked in unison with Northerners to stop the extension of slavery. In July, Clay wrote two letters in which he attempted to clarify his position on the annexation of Texas, and Democrats attacked his supposedly inconsistent position.


title: Henry Clay

text: Polk won the election, taking 49.5% of the popular vote and 170 of the 275 electoral votes. Birney won several thousand anti-annexation votes in New York, and his presence in the race may have cost Clay the election. Most of Clay's contemporaries believed that annexation had been the decisive issue in the race, but Polk's savvy campaigning on the tariff may have also been decisive, as he narrowly won pro-tariff Pennsylvania after downplaying his anti-tariff views. After Polk's victory and the final indirect success of Tyler's strategy, Congress approved the annexation of Texas, which was signed by Tyler on his last day in office, and Texas gained statehood in late 1845.


title: Henry Clay

text: After the 1844 election, Clay returned to his career as an attorney. Though he was no longer a member of Congress, he remained closely interested in national politics. In 1846, the Mexican–American War broke out after American and Mexican forces clashed at the disputed border region between Mexico and Texas. Initially, Clay did not publicly oppose the war, but privately he saw it as an immoral war that risked producing "some military chieftain who will conquer us all." He suffered a personal blow in 1847 when his son, Henry Clay Jr., died at the Battle of Buena Vista. In November 1847, Clay re-emerged on the political scene with a speech that was harshly critical of the Mexican–American War and President Polk. He attacked Polk for fomenting the conflict with Mexico and urged the rejection of any treaty that added new slave territory to the United States. Months after the speech, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory known as the Mexican Cession.


title: Henry Clay

text: By 1847, General Zachary Taylor, who commanded the American forces at Buena Vista, had emerged as a contender for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election. Despite Taylor's largely unknown political views, many Whigs believed he was the party's strongest possible candidate due to his martial accomplishments in the Mexican–American War. One of Clay's most trusted allies and advisers, John J. Crittenden, was Taylor's de facto campaign manager. Clay had initially told his allies that he would not run in the 1848 presidential election, but he was unwilling to support Taylor, a "mere military man." On April 10, 1848, he announced his candidacy for the Whig nomination. Although Webster and Winfield Scott each commanded a limited base of support in the party, Taylor and Clay each saw the other as their lone serious rival for the Whig nomination. As Taylor commanded the support of most Southern Whigs, Clay focused his efforts on courting Northern Whigs, emphasizing his opposition to the Mexican–American War and his life-long support for the gradual emancipation of slaves in Kentucky. Clay presented a strong challenge to Taylor at the 1848 Whig National Convention, but Taylor won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot. Partially in an attempt to please the Clay wing of the party, the convention nominated Millard Fillmore as Taylor's running mate. Clay was embittered by his failure at the convention, and he did not campaign on behalf of Taylor. Nonetheless, Taylor won the election, taking 47.3 percent of the popular vote and 163 of 290 electoral votes.


title: Henry Clay

text: Increasingly worried about the sectional tensions arising over the issue of slavery in newly acquired territories, Clay accepted election to the Senate in 1849. Having refused to campaign for Taylor, Clay played little role in the formation of Taylor's Cabinet or in determining the new administration's policies. In January 1850, with Congress still deadlocked regarding the status of the Mexican Cession, Clay proposed a compromise designed to organize territory acquired in the Mexican–American War and address other issues contributing to sectional tensions. His legislative package included the admission of California as a free state, the cession by Texas of some of its northern and western territorial claims in return for debt relief, the establishment of New Mexico and Utah territories, a ban on the importation of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, and a more stringent fugitive slave law. Though it faced opposition from Southern extremists like Calhoun and Northern abolitionists like William Seward, Clay's proposal won the backing of many Southern and Northern leaders.


title: Henry Clay

text: President Taylor, who favored the immediate admission of California and New Mexico as free states without any attached conditions, opposed the plan, and Clay openly broke with the president in May 1850. Debate over Clay's proposal continued into July when Taylor unexpectedly died of an illness. After Taylor's death, President Fillmore, who supported Clay's compromise bill, consulted with Clay in appointing a new Cabinet. Exhausted by the debate in the Senate, Clay took a leave of absence shortly after Taylor's death, but Fillmore, Webster, and Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas took charge of pro-compromise forces. By the end of September 1850, Clay's proposal, which became known as the Compromise of 1850, had been enacted. Though contemporaries credited Fillmore, Douglas, and Webster for their role in passing the Compromise of 1850, Clay was widely regarded as the key figure in ending a major sectional crisis.


title: Henry Clay

text: In December 1851, with his health declining, Clay announced that he would resign from the Senate the following September. Clay never recovered from his illnesses, and died of tuberculosis at 75 in his room at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 1852. He was the first person to lie in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.


title: Henry Clay

text: Clay's headstone reads: "I know no North—no South—no East—no West". Hymn writer Fanny Crosby penned this line of lament on Clay's death:


title: Henry Clay

text: Throughout most of his political life, Clay promoted his American System as both an economic program and a means for unifying the country. Clay's American System rejected strict constructionism in favor of an activist government that would help ensure a fairer and more efficient distribution of economic gains. The American System had four key tenets: high tariffs, a stable financial system, federal investment in internal improvements, and a public land sale policy designed to raise revenue and provide for carefully managed expansion into the American frontier. Through high tariffs, Clay hoped to free the United States from dependence on foreign imports, especially from Britain. Clay sought to ensure a stable financial system through support for the national bank, which regulated the country's banking system and helped ensure a consistent supply of credit. Clay's support for federally financed internal improvements stemmed from his belief that only the federal government could construct the transportation system necessary for uniting the country commercially and culturally. His land policy focused on using revenue from land sales to fund money to the states, which could then invest that money in education, infrastructure projects, and other priorities.


title: Henry Clay

text: Clay inherited slaves as a young child, and he continued to own slaves throughout his life. However, in the 1790s, he adopted antislavery views under the influence of his mentor George Wythe. Like most of his contemporaries, Clay was not a racial egalitarian and never called for the immediate abolition of slavery, but he viewed slavery as a "grievous wrong to the slave" and spoke in favor of equal treatment for free blacks. Early in his career, Clay favored gradual emancipation in both Kentucky and Missouri, but each state rejected plans that would have provided for gradual emancipation. Clay continued to support gradual emancipation throughout his career and published an open letter in 1849 calling for gradual emancipation in Kentucky, though he qualified this view by stating he would only support emancipation if it included a plan for colonizing free blacks outside of the state. Unlike many other Southern leaders, he consistently favored recognition of Haiti, which had been established through a slave revolt.


title: Henry Clay

text: In 1816, Clay helped establish the American Colonization Society, a group that wanted to establish a colony for free American blacks in Africa. The group was made up of abolitionists who wanted to end slavery and slaveholders who wanted to deport free blacks. Clay's support for colonization reflected his belief that a multiracial society was ultimately unworkable, both for whites and free blacks. Later in his career, Clay became increasingly concerned about abolitionism, remarking that "the ultraism of the South on the one hand [...] and the ultraism of abolition on the other" represented the greatest threat to the Union. Nonetheless, he consistently defended the right of abolitionists to send materials through the mail and opposed the gag rule, which limited congressional debate on slavery.


title: Henry Clay

text: Clay's status as a slave owner and his anti-slavery views would occasionally lead to conflicts in his political career. During a visit to Indiana in the 1840s, Clay was confronted at a political meeting by a Quaker abolitionist named Hiram Mendenhall, who presented Clay with a petition calling on him to free his slaves. Clay dismissed Mendenhall out of hand, stating his petition was no different than one demanding he give up his farm.


title: Henry Clay

text: Many contemporaries, including anti-slavery activist James G. Birney, believed that Clay's home state of Kentucky had the most permissive slave laws of any slave state. Clay considered himself to be a "good" master, and biographer James C. Klotter concludes that Clay took actions, such as keeping families together, to mitigate the harshness of slavery. Klotter also concludes that there is no evidence that Clay ever had an affair with any of his slaves. Yet, as Clay himself wrote, "here in Kentucky slavery is in its most mitigated form, still it is slavery." In 1829, Clay's slave, Charlotte Dupuy, sued for her freedom while visiting relatives in Maryland. Dupuy's attorney gained an order from the court for her to remain in Washington until the case was settled, and she worked for wages for 18 months for Martin Van Buren, Clay's successor as secretary of state. The case embarrassed Clay politically and personally, but he ultimately prevailed in court. After winning the case, Clay sent Dupuy to New Orleans, causing her to be away from her own family, but he later freed Dupuy and two of her children. Clay's will freed all the slaves he held at the time of his death.


title: Henry Clay

text: Aaron Dupuy, Charlotte’s husband, was ordered whipped by Clay at the behest of his wife, Lucretia. Dupuy's infraction was a late return as Lucretia's carriage driver. The overseer attempted the whipping, but Dupuy managed to wrest the whip away, and Dupuy began beating the overseer. Dupuy was not freed at the time of Clay’s death, but rather after the Civil War.


title: Henry Clay

text: Lewis Richardson, Clay's self emancipated slave, gave a speech that belies Clay’s self portrayal as a “good” master. Richardson had been enslaved at Ashland for 20 years, and after a beating escaped via the Underground Railroad in January, 1846. By May, 1846, Richardson, now in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, at Union Chapel tells not only of the continual sparse food and lack of warm clothing, but of 150 lashes from overseer Ambrose Brice for the offense of being an hour late from a visit to his wife. Brice later refutes this and states it was only 16 lashes. Richardson’s speech was published in an abolitionist newspaper, Signal of Liberty.


title: Henry Clay

text: Clay's Whig Party collapsed four years after his death, but Clay cast a long shadow over the generation of political leaders that presided over the Civil War. Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote stated his opinion that "had there been one such man in the Congress of the United States as Henry Clay in 1860-'61 there would, I feel sure, have been no civil war". Clay's protege and fellow Kentuckian, John J. Crittenden, attempted to keep the Union together with the formation of the Constitutional Union Party and the proposed Crittenden Compromise. Though Crittenden's efforts were unsuccessful, Kentucky remained in the Union during the Civil War, reflecting in part Clay's continuing influence. Abraham Lincoln was a great admirer of Clay, saying he was "my ideal of a great man." Lincoln wholeheartedly supported Clay's economic programs and, prior to the Civil War, held similar stances about slavery and the Union. Some historians have argued that a Clay victory in the 1844 election would have prevented both the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War.


title: Henry Clay

text: Clay is generally regarded as one of the important political figures of his era. Most historians and political scientists consider Clay to be one of the most influential speakers of the house in U.S. history. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Clay as one of the five greatest U.S. senators, along with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert A. Taft. A 1986 survey of historians ranked Clay as the greatest senator in U.S. history, while a 2006 survey of historians ranked Clay as the 31st-most influential American of all time. A 1998 poll of historians ranked Clay as the most qualified unsuccessful major party presidential nominee in U.S. history. In 2015, political scientist Michael G. Miller and historian Ken Owen ranked Clay as one of the four most influential American politicians who never served as president, alongside Alexander Hamilton, William Jennings Bryan, and John C. Calhoun. Noting Clay's influence over the United States in the last three decades of his life, biographer James Klotter writes that "perhaps posterity should no longer call it the Jacksonian Era ... and instead term it the Clay Era."


title: Henry Clay

text: Many monuments, memorials, and even high schools have been erected and named in honor of Clay. Sixteen counties, one each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, are named for Clay. Communities named for Clay include Clay, Kentucky, Claysville, Alabama and Claysville, Pennsylvania. The United States Navy named a submarine, the , in his honor. Several statues honor Clay, including one of Kentucky's two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Clay's estate of Ashland is a National Historic Landmark. The Decatur House, Clay's home in Washington, D.C. during his tenure as secretary of state, is also a National Historic Landmark. Due to his involvement in the American Colonization Society, a town in the newly formed Liberia in West Africa was named Clay-Ashland after Henry Clay and to where the freed slaves from Kentucky emigrated.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Joy is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film, written and directed by David O. Russell and starring Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano, a self-made millionaire who created her own business empire.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: "Joy" received a theatrical release on December 25, 2015, distributed by 20th Century Fox. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Lawrence's performance but criticized the writing and pace of the film. Lawrence received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her performance. "Joy" was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, among other accolades.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: In 1990, Joy Mangano, an airline booking agent residing in Peconic, New York, struggles financially while juggling a complicated family life. Living with Joy and her two children are her single mother, Terri, who spends all day in bed watching soap operas, her maternal grandmother, Mimi, and her under-employed ex-husband, Tony, a wannabe singer who sleeps in the basement. Her overachieving paternal half-sister, Peggy, constantly humiliates Joy in front of her children for her failed marriage. Joy's father, Rudy, further complicates matters when he also moves into the basement after his third divorce.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Mimi and Joy's best friend, Jackie, encourage Joy to pursue her inventing ambitions. Frustrated when using a conventional mop, Joy designs and builds an innovative self-wringing type. Trudy, a wealthy Italian widow Rudy is dating, agrees to invest in Joy's product. They contract with a California company to manufacture the mop's parts at a low price. To avoid a potential patent lawsuit, the company advises Joy to pay $50,000 in royalties to a man in Hong Kong who has a similar product. When the manufacturer repeatedly bills Joy to remake their faulty parts, Joy refuses to pay.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Joy meets QVC executive Neil Walker who agrees to sell her mops on TV. To manufacture 50,000 additional units, Joy takes out a second home mortgage. When the first TV attempt fails after the celebrity pitchman improperly demonstrates the product, Joy demands she be allowed to do a second infomercial. The mop sells out, earning thousands of dollars; Joy's success is soon tempered by Mimi's sudden death.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Joy's fledgling business is financially jeopardized after Peggy pays the manufacturer's excessive overcharges without Joy's approval. The manufacturer refuses to refund the money, and a contract loophole allows them to fraudulently patent Joy's mop design as their own. Shortly after filing for bankruptcy, Joy discovers there never was a similar product in Hong Kong, and the manufacturer has defrauded her. She confronts owner Derek Markham, forcing him to refund the overcharges, pay damages, and relinquish any claim to her patent or else face criminal charges.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Joy becomes a successful independent businesswoman who sponsors other inventors. Jackie and Tony are her most valued advisers. Joy supports her aging father, despite his and Peggy's unsuccessful lawsuit for ownership of her company. Only Terri is independent, having found stability with Toussaint, a Haitian plumber Joy once hired. As Neil predicted, he and Joy became "adversaries in commerce" with her move to HSN, but they remain personal friends.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: In January 2014, it was announced that David O. Russell's upcoming project would entail rewriting and directing a drama film about American inventor and entrepreneur Joy Mangano, a struggling Long Island single mom of three children. Russell set Jennifer Lawrence to play the lead role in the film, which John Davis and John Fox produced for Davis Entertainment, along with Ken Mok, with 20th Century Fox holding the distribution rights. In early November 2014, Russell said it was "a great opportunity to do something neither Jennifer nor I have done [before]". He also stated that he would like to cast Robert De Niro and create a role for Bradley Cooper to star in the film. On November 11, it was reported that De Niro was in final talks to re-team with Russell and Lawrence in the film, to play Mangano's father. They worked together in the 2012 film "Silver Linings Playbook", and then De Niro made a cameo in 2013's "American Hustle". Russell rewrote the script by Annie Mumolo. On November 17, De Niro confirmed his casting, saying "Yes I am going to do something with them. I am going to play a father." In early December 2014, Cooper was officially set to star along with Lawrence, playing an executive at QVC who helps Joy by giving the Miracle Mop a boost. On December 8, Édgar Ramírez was cast as Tony Miranda, Joy's now ex-husband. Additional cast members, including Isabella Rossellini, Diane Ladd, and Virginia Madsen in unspecified roles, were revealed on February 17, 2015. Isabella Crovetti-Cramp played young Joy. In February, another working title was revealed, which was "Kay's Baptism." Elisabeth Röhm's casting as Peggy, sister of Joy Mangano, was revealed on February 27, 2015.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Principal photography began in February 2015, after De Niro completed the shooting of "Dirty Grandpa". Filming was originally set to begin on February 9, 2015, in Boston, Massachusetts, making this Russell's third film shot in the area. Due to snow in the city, filming was rescheduled to begin on February 19, on Federal Street in Wilmington, MA, lasting through February 26, but principal photography on the film began in Boston on February 16, 2015.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: In Wilmington, filming lasted until February 26, 2015. On February 27, 2015, Lawrence made a Facebook post denying the rumors about her clashes with Russell on the set of the film, saying, "David O. Russell is one of my closest friends and we have an amazing collaborative working relationship. I adore this man and he does not deserve this tabloid malarkey. This movie is going great and I'm having a blast making it!" After wrapping up in Wilmington, the production moved to North Reading, where shooting took place March 2–4, 2015 and on March 11 and 12.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: Joy was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray on May 3, 2016 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: "Joy" grossed $56.4 million in the U.S. and Canada and $44.7 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $101.1 million against a budget of $60 million.


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the film opened on December 25, 2015 alongside "Point Break", "Daddy's Home", and "Concussion", as well as the wide release of "The Big Short". In its opening weekend, it was projected to gross $13–15 million from 2,896 theaters. It ended up grossing $17 million, finishing third at the box office behind "" ($149.2 million) and "Daddy's Home" ($38.7 million).


title: Joy (2015 film)

text: "Joy" received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 60%, based on 275 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's consensus reads, ""Joy" is anchored by a strong performance from Jennifer Lawrence, although director David O. Russell's uncertain approach to its fascinating fact-based tale only sporadically sparks bursts of the titular emotion." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Jodhaa Akbar is a 2008 Indian Hindi-language epic historical romantic drama film directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. It stars Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in the titular roles. Set in the 16th century, the film shows the life and romance between the Muslim Emperor Akbar of Mughal Empire and a Hindu Princess Jodhaa Bai of Amber, who married him on a political marriage. A. R. Rahman composed the musical score which proved to be critically and commercially successful.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: "Jodhaa Akbar" was released theatrically worldwide on 15 February 2008. Upon release, it was a critical and commercial success and became the third highest grossing Hindi film of 2008.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: "Jodhaa Akbar" won the Audience Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the São Paulo International Film Festival and 2 awards at the Golden Minbar International Film Festival. At the 56th National Film Awards, it won 2 awards Best Choreography (Chinni Prakash & Rekha Prakash for "Azeem-o-Shaan Shahenshah") and Best Costume Design (Neeta Lulla). At the 54th Filmfare Awards, it received 11 nominations, including Best Actress (Rai Bachchan), Best Supporting Actor (Sood) and Best Music Director (Rahman), and won 5 awards, including Best Film, Best Director (Gowariker) and Best Actor (Roshan). It also won 10 International Indian Film Academy Awards, 7 Star Screen Awards, in addition to two nominations at the 3rd Asian Film Awards.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: An underage future ruler of the Mughal Empire is taught by Bairam Khan to rule mercilessly, killing defeated opponents after a battle. Years later, after another battle, the now adult Jalaluddin Akbar (Hrithik Roshan) defies Bairam Khan for the first time, deciding that mercy, respect and diplomacy will be his way of gaining influence.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Jodhaa (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), daughter of Raja Bharmal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) of the Amber State, is betrothed to Rajkumar Ratan Singh of Ajabgarh. Raja Bharmal announces that his son Bhagwant Das would be his heir and Sujamal (Sonu Sood), Jodhaa's cousin, whom she wants to be the king's heir instead of Bhagwant Das, will have to work under him. Sujamal, who is deprived of his rightful throne, angrily leaves the kingdom to join Sharifuddin Hussain, Akbar's brother-in-law, who has his own ambition of becoming emperor. Raja Bharmal makes a peace offering to Akbar, proposing to strengthen relations by his daughter's marriage to the emperor himself. Akbar agrees, but this breaks his alliance with the other kings of Rajputana, including Rana Uday Singh. Jodhaa resents being reduced to a political pawn as she wants to marry Ratan Singh. She writes a letter to Sujamal, entreating him to come rescue her from the marriage, but doesn't send it.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Jodhaa demands a meeting with Akbar and demands to keep her Hindu religion after marriage, and that a temple be built for her to continue her faith, with the intention of having the emperor call off the wedding. To her surprise, Akbar agrees, having received spiritual illumination. After their marriage, Jodhaa acts reluctant with Akbar and they do not consummate their marriage. He assures Jodhaa that they will let things fall into place.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The initial progress Akbar is making to win his wife's heart is thwarted by a tragedy. The emperor's foster brother Adham Khan, the son of Akbar's nurse and nanny, Maham- Anga, murders Akbar's prime minister Atgah Khan to prevent his own war crimes from being exposed. In a fit of rage, Akbar has Adham executed by throwing him down from the palace roof, unaware of Jodhaa watching. The scene has her torn between fearing Akbar's violence and respecting his passionate love for justice.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Maham Anga despises Jodhaa. As a revenge for executing her son, she conspires to destroy Akbar's marriage, humiliating Jodhaa in front of him. She finds the letter Jodhaa had written and has it sent, and when Sujamal comes to meet Jodhaa in private, she insinuates to Akbar that Jodhaa went to meet her lover. Akbar sends his men to arrest Sujamal, who thinks Jodhaa has framed him, and flees. Akbar sends Jodhaa back to Amer. Jodhaa doesn't give an explanation, indignant at her character being questioned. Later Akbar finds out the truth and goes to her maternal home, apologises to her, and asks her to come back, but she refuses. Instead, Jodhaa tells him to investigate the working of his relations and empire.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Akbar returns and travels through the common folk in disguise to understand the problems of his people better. That is when he realizes that the citizens are not happy with the Mughal rule because of discriminatory pilgrimage tax. Akbar abolishes it and announces that every religion has its rights in his empire. This impresses Jodhaa, who comes back to him. During a celebration, an assassin sent by Sharifuddin Hussain shoots a poisoned arrow at Akbar. Jodhaa helps nurse Akbar back to health and the pair genuinely fall deeply in love.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Sujamal, Sharifuddin Hussain, and his allies march to attack Amer. After Sujamal overhears Sharifuddin plotting a silent attack on the emperor, he quickly leaves to warn Akbar of this conspiracy. Sharifuddin's army chase Sujamal off, who is received by Bhagwant Das in Akbar's camp. Before dying, he manages to warn the emperor of the attack, who then recognises Sujamal and realises what the past misunderstanding concerning the letter was. Akbar defeats Sharifuddin in hand-to-hand combat, and then spares his life for the sake of his half-sister Bakshi Banu Begum, but not before stripping him of his title of Viceroy of Ajmer and Nagaur. Eventually, Akbar proclaims that Hindustan will be a peaceful and prosperous land if people respect and honour each other's religions.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Following the success of "Lagaan" (2001), its director Ashutosh Gowariker was approached by actor and screenwriter Haidar Ali with the idea of making a film along the lines of K. Asif's historical epic, "Mughal-e-Azam" (1960). When Gowariker contemplated on whether he should make a sequel to "Mughal-e-Azam" or remake it, Ali suggested that he can do a prequel to it; Gowariker agreed and decided to create a screenplay that would cover the early years of Akbar's life from 13 to 21 years of age. In an interview with Syed Firdaus Ashraf of "Rediff.com", Ali said on his decision to work with Gowariker:Ashutosh is the only director who could do justice to a film of such a level. In "Lagaan", he touched on the issue of casteism, the oppressed class, Hindu-Muslim unity, communal harmony, team spirit, management and nationalism. He weaved all this beautifully to make a hit film without preaching or lecturing. In the same way, I told him he could make a beautiful film by touching on such issues without preaching.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Gowariker had already finished his script for "Swades" (2004) when Ali pitched the idea. As a result, he decided to start his work with Ali after completing it. In December 2001, Ali began research on the marriage of princess Jodhabai, daughter of the Rajput ruler of Amer, Bharmal with the Mughal emperor Akbar, and prepared a basic story on the couple. One month after "Swades" was released, Ali met Gowariker and handed to him the story. Gowariker subsequently announced his next project, terming it "a romantic musical", titled "Jodhaa Akbar".


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: In March 2005, Gowariker started work on the screenplay with Ali while denying speculations that Firoz A. Nadiadwala and Subhash Ghai were producing the film. It was confirmed later in August 2006 that Gowariker would co-produce the film himself under his banner AGPPL productions with Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures, in addition to the latter distributing it. Ali and Gowariker completed the script in November 2005 and sought the help of Bhawani Singh, the Maharaja of Jaipur and his spouse, Maharani Padmini Devi to provide them with "creative inputs to make "Jodhaa Akbar" as realistic as possible." K. P. Saxena was hired to write the film's dialogues.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai were the first choice of both Ali and Gowariker for portraying Akbar and Jodhabai respectively. Gowariker believed Roshan possessed the regal bearing and physique required to play the role of a king. According to Gowariker, Roshan immediately agreed after the former merely mentioned that he was doing a film on Akbar. Roshan learned Urdu as a means of preparing for his role. For casting Rai, Gowariker sent her a SMS asking "Will U B My Jodha?" to which Rai sent a reply stating "Yes, I will" followed by a smiley. Sonu Sood was chosen to play Jodhabai's cousin brother Rajkumar Sujamal. Sood had rejected offers to feature in other projects as he wanted to fully involve himself in the film.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The role of Akbar's mother, Hamida Banu Begum, was first offered to Saira Banu, who declined citing family commitments as her reason. The role subsequently went to Poonam Sinha which marked a comeback for her to acting since her brief stint in the 1970s. Actress and singer Ila Arun had wanted to work with Gowariker and approached him for a role in the film; Gowariker cast her as Akbar's nurse, Maham Anga. Nikitin Dheer was selected to play Sharifuddin Hussain, the rebellious brother-in-law of Akbar, after impressing Gowariker during the auditions. Kulbhushan Kharbanda portrayed Raja Bharmal while Suhasini Mulay was cast as Jodhabai's mother, Rani Padmavati. Actress Abir Abrar, niece of actress Kumkum, was selected to play Bakshi Banu Begum, Akbar's sister and Hussain's wife. Indrajeet Sarkar was cast in the role of Birbal, but his scenes were cut from the film's final version to reduce its duration.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: A. R. Rahman, Javed Akhtar, Nitin Chandrakant Desai and Ballu Saluja were signed up as the music composer, lyricist for the songs, art director and editor respectively, thereby collaborating with Gowariker for the third time after "Lagaan" and "Swades". Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of Tata Elxsi, were in charge of the film's special effects. Kiran Deohans, known for his work in "Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak" (1988), "Aks" (2001) and "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." (2001), was the film's cinematographer. Gowariker chose Ravi Dewan to be the stunt co-ordinator for "Jodhaa Akbar" based on the latter's experience in handling historical films, such as "" (1994). Chinni Prakash and his wife Rekha, Raju Khan and Ash Kumar were the film's choreographers.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Neeta Lulla, who had earlier worked with Rai in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Devdas" (2002), was chosen to handle the film's costume designing. Lulla found "Jodhaa Akbar" to be "one of the most challenging films" she had done. This was because she had to design costumes not only for the lead actress, but for every cast member involved in the film. Lulla did extensive research for a year and a half on the type of clothes people wore during the Mughal Empire. She went to Jaipur to procure information on what type of fabrics were worn during that period. She schematically designed clothes by providing yellow, orange and red colours for the Rajputs and gold, brown and beige colours for the Mughals.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Keeping in mind the grandeur of the Mughal Empire during Akbar's time, Lulla used the "Zardozi" and "Kundan" types of embroidery for Roshan's and Rai's dresses. The fabrics for designing the costumes as well as the shoes were bought from Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur, while authentic embroidered "Mojaris" were used for footwear. Lulla designed clothes of dark brown, black and green colours for the character of Sharifuddin Hussain after taking the characters' persona into consideration.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The jewellery used for the costumes were purchased from the jewellery brand company Tanishq. "Jodhaa Akbar" marked the company's second venture into films after the fantasy film "Paheli" (2005). A team of 200 craftsmen worked for 600 days to fashion and mould jewels made of gold gemstones. Around 300 kilograms of jewels were used. Rai and Roshan wore thirteen and eight sets of jewels respectively throughout the film. The set, which Aishwarya wore in the scene where Jodhabai is wedded to Akbar weighed 3.5 kilograms. Rai later mentioned in subsequent interviews that the toughest part of playing her character was to wear the jewellery as she found them quite heavy to bedeck. The jewels were designed using miniature paintings from Mughal literature and Akbar's autobiography by Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, the "Akbarnama" as influences. The scabbards used by the lead actors in the film weighed two kilograms.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Filming commenced in early November 2006 at Jaipur with the climax sequence with Roshan and Dheer, and the Second Battle of Panipat. Palace scenes featuring Rai as Jodhabai before her marriage to Akbar were filmed at the Roopangarh Fort in Kishangarh. The sequence featuring the Battle of Panipat was shot in the Dhula region located on the outskirts of Jaipur. To prepare for their fight sequences, Roshan and Rai learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding a month before filming began at Mehboob Studio and Mahalaxmi Racecourse respectively. Rai had learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding while filming "The Last Legion" (2007) because of which she had little difficulty in her preparations.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Dewan worked with Desai in designing the armour and ammunitions. The cannons were made of carbon fibre with iron inserted on the inner portions to make sure the cannonballs were fired smoothly. The swords were initially made of both wood and fibre but were later made of lightweight carbon fibre due to the actors not being able to manoeuvre them easily. All of the stunt sequences were rehearsed every day from 3 am to 7 am before they were filmed. A team of 250 stuntmen and 5,000 extras were used for all the battle scenes, which were filmed for 20–30 days at a stretch. Ashutosh wanted the climax to be perfect because of which the extras, who were people from nearby villages and were used for Akbar's and Hussain's armies, would often get tired standing in the same position for an entire day. Some of them would not be present the next day. As a result, Dewan placed the 250 stuntmen in the front rows of both armies so as not to show how exhausted the villagers were.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Deohans employed six cameras to film the climax scene from different angles. He was influenced by films such as "Gladiator" (2000) and "Troy" (2004) as he found the "basic colour" of those films' locations similar to that of Rajasthan's arid surroundings. The lighting was used depending on the scenes filmed. Further shooting took place at Sambhar Lake Town, and the forts of Amber, Amer and Agra. The scene where Akbar prays to the Islamic scholar Moinuddin Chishti for a successful conquest of India was filmed at the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: After the completion of the first schedule of filming—which took in 60 days—by the end of December 2006, the second schedule began on 8 January 2007 at Desai's ND Studios based in Karjat. Desai took "lakhs of photographs" of Amer Fort and Agra fort. Using the photos as reference, he erected sets consisting of the inner portions of both places in his studio. Filming could not take place entirely at the forts due to heavy traffic of tourists coming there every day. Consequentially, only the outer portions of both the forts were filmed on the spot during the first schedule while the scenes featuring the inner portions were filmed at Karjat. The inner portions that were erected by Desai included the Dīwān-e-Ām, Dīwān-e-Khās, Jodhaabai's inner chambers and the fort's gardens. The entire set measured 1,600 feet long, 600 feet wide and 68 feet high, which according to Desai was equivalent to "seven floors of a high-rise". Concrete, fibre and asbestos sheets were the materials used to create the interiors of the forts. The cost of the entire set at Karjat was estimated to be around ₹120 million.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The song "Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah", which was choreographed by Prakash, featured about 12 assistant choreographers, 400 dancers and 2,000 extras acting as the citizens of Agra. Prakash used the dance steps featured in the songs of films such as "Ganga Jamuna" (1961) and "Guide" (1965) as reference. The song was planned to be finished within 10 days but took 15 days to complete as Prakash felt it was "difficult to stick to a deadline when you have a crowd this big." He credited his team for finishing the song as he believed it would have taken "a month" to film without their co-operation. The music video for "Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah" had a production cost of (). It was the most expensive Bollywood music video at the time, matching "Dola Re Dola" from "Devdas" (2002).


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: A total of 80 elephants, 100 horses and 55 camels were employed throughout the entire film. The battle scene featuring Roshan and Ulhas Barve, who plays the King of Mankeshwar, Chittorgarh district, was filmed in June 2007 at Jaipur. Shooting was completed in October–November 2007 at Karjat. Due to the amount of money spent on the costumes and sets, the budget of the film, which was initially ₹370 million, increased to ₹400 million.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The score and soundtrack of the film was composed by A. R. Rahman, making his third collaboration with Ashutosh Gowariker after "Lagaan", and "Swades". The official soundtrack contains five songs and two instrumentals. Rahman scored the prewritten lyrics by Javed Akhtar, except for the songs "Khwaja Mere Khwaja" and "Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah". The former was written by Kashif while the latter was by Javed Akthar himself. The music was released on 9 January 2008 and the CDs were out by 18 January. Aakash Gandhi of "Planet Bollywood" reviewed the album, saying, ""Jodhaa Akbar" compositions are magical, spectacular, invigorating and above all a wholesome experience you rarely get in soundtracks these days. When you cannot pick a favourite you know the benchmark has been set consistently high. Indian music has just added another soundtrack to its eternal treasure." According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around 1,100,000 units sold, this film's soundtrack album was the year's fourteenth highest-selling.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The film emerged out as the biggest winner in many music awards. However, in the best music direction category, it lost many mainly to "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na", composed by Rahman himself. The fine background score won the film several awards including Filmfare Best Background Score and IIFA Best Background Score. The soundtrack was also nominated in numerous categories.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Many of the events portrayed in the movie are fictional. Certain Rajput groups claimed Jodhaa was married to Akbar's son, Jahangir, not Akbar. However that name of that wife of Jahangir is proposed as " 'Jodh Bai' " not " 'Jodhaa Bai' ".


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Several historians claim that Akbar's Rajput wife was never known as "Jodhaa Bai" during the Mughal period, she was referred to with her title of Mariam-uz-Zamani.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: According to Professor Shirin Moosvi, a historian of Aligarh Muslim University, neither the Akbarnama (a biography of Akbar commissioned by Akbar himself) nor any historical text from the period refer to her as Jodhaa Bai. Moosvi notes that the name "Jodhaa Bai" was first used to refer to Akbar's wife in the 18th and 19th centuries in historical writings.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: In the "Tuzk-e-Jahangiri" (autobiography of Jahangir, c.1624), the author refers to her with no name, rather the epithet "Mariam-uz-Zamani". According to Ruby Lal (2008), "The only document that names the mother of Jahangir is a later edict issued by Mariam-uz-Zamani. The seal on the edict reads 'Wali Nimat Begum, Walideh Nur al-Din Jahangir', thus clearly identifying "Mariam-uz-Zamani" with Wali Nimat Begum and unequivocally declaring her to be Jahangir's mother".


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: According to historian Imtiaz Ahmad, the director of the Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library in Patna, the name "Jodhaa" was used for Akbar's wife for the first time by Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, in his book "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan". According to Ahmad, Tod was not a professional historian. N. R. Farooqi claims that Jodhaa Bai was not the name of Akbar's Rajput queen; it was the name of Jahangir's Rajput wife.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The portrayal of ethnic Rajput people in the movie was criticised by members of the Rajput community as misleading, politically motivated historical revisionism that minimised Rajput history. The community's protests against the film in some states led to the film being banned in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttarakhand. However, the producer went to the Supreme Court to challenge it. Later, the Supreme Court of India lifted the ban on screening the film in Uttar Pradesh and some towns of Uttarakhand and Haryana. The court scrapped the Uttar Pradesh government ban as well as similar orders by authorities in Dehradun, Uttarakhand and Ambala, Sonepat and Rewari, Haryana.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Owing to the film’s success, the film was dubbed and released into Tamil and Telugu languages under the same title.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: , the film holds a 75% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews with an average rating of 6.83/10. The film received a critics' rating of 69 on Metacritic based on 4 reviews.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Anil Sinanan of "The Times" gave the film four out of five stars, stating, "Oscar-nominated "Lagaan" (2001) director Ashutosh Gowariker's sumptuous period epic has all the ingredients of a Cecil B. DeMille entertainer [...] The film ends with a passionate plea for tolerance of all religions in India, a resonant message for modern India." Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN also gave the film four out of five stars, commenting: "I've never felt this way about any other film, but sitting there in my seat watching "Jodhaa Akbar", I felt privileged as a moviegoer. Privileged that such a film had been made, and privileged that it had been made in our times so we can form our own opinions of the film rather than adopt the opinions of previous generations, which we invariably must when looking at older classics." Tajpal Rathore of the BBC gave the film four out of five stars, noting that, "although the 16th-century love story upon which it's based might be long forgotten, this endearing treatment sears into the memory through sheer size and scale alone [...] Don't let the running time put you off watching this unashamedly epic tale." Nikhat Kazmi of "The Times of India" gave the film three stars, stating that, ""Jodhaa Akbar" works only because its heart is in the right place. The film talks about a love that transcends all barriers – gender, religion, culture – and dreams of an India where secularism and tolerance are the twin towers that should never ever crumble. And Akbar and Jodhaa are the alluring exponents of this dream." Kazmi also suggests that "if you are willing to shed off all the trappings of history, only then will "Jodhaa Akbar" work for you." While suggesting that the film is "too long" and that it is "not a history lesson," Rachel Saltz of "The New York Times" also notes, "in choosing to tell the tale of this emperor and a Muslim-Hindu love story, Mr. Gowariker makes a clear point. As Akbar says, 'Respect for each other's religion will enrich Hindustan.'"


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The Tamil dubbed version also received mixed reviews. Reviewing the Tamil version, "Behindwoods" gave 4 out of 5 stars stating that "A visual feast and an intoxicating love story."


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: "Jodhaa Akbar" collected a gross revenue of 77.85 crore (US$20.82 million) in India. Box Office India declared it a hit at the domestic box office. Its domestic net income was 56.04 crore, equivalent to adjusted for inflation.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: Overseas, it grossed US$7.55 million ( 49.92 crore), and was declared a blockbuster at the overseas box office. Its overseas gross included US$2.1 million in the United Kingdom, US$3.45 million in North America, US$450,000 in Australia, and US$1.1 million in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf region.


title: Jodhaa Akbar

text: The film ended its box office run with a worldwide lifetime gross of , equivalent to US$28.37 million at the time.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was a British actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He played a wide range of classical and modern parts, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on notable British films of the era, including "The Private Life of Henry VIII", for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character. He portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. Among Laughton's biggest film hits were "The Barretts of Wimpole Street", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Ruggles of Red Gap", "Jamaica Inn", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "The Big Clock", and "Witness for the Prosecution". Daniel Day-Lewis cited Laughton as one of his inspirations, saying: "He was probably the greatest film actor who came from that period of time. He had something quite remarkable. His generosity as an actor; he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you cannot take your eyes off him."


title: Charles Laughton

text: In his later career, he took up stage directing, notably in "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial", and George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell", in which he also starred. He directed one film, the thriller "The Night of the Hunter", which after an initially disappointing reception is acclaimed today as a film classic.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton was born on 1 July 1899 in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Robert Laughton (1869–1924) and Eliza (née Conlon; 1869–1953), Yorkshire hotel keepers. A blue plaque marks his birthplace. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent, and she sent him to briefly attend a local boys' school, Scarborough College, before sending him to Stonyhurst College, the pre-eminent English Jesuit school. Laughton served in World War I, during which he was gassed, serving first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Battalion, and then with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He started work in the family hotel, though also participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. He was allowed by his family to become a drama student at RADA in 1925, where actor Claude Rains was one of his teachers. Laughton made his first professional appearance on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy "The Government Inspector", which he also appeared in at London's Gaiety Theatre in May. He impressed audiences with his talent and had classical roles in two Chekov plays, "The Cherry Orchard" and "The Three Sisters". Laughton played the lead role as Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Seán O'Casey's "The Silver Tassie" in 1928 in London. He played the title roles in Arnold Bennett's "Mr Prohack" (Elsa Lanchester was also in the cast) and as Samuel Pickwick in "Mr Pickwick" at the Theatre Royal (1928–29) in London.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He played Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's "On the Spot" and William Marble in "Payment Deferred". He took the last role across the Atlantic and made his United States debut on 24 September 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre. He returned to London for the 1933–34 Old Vic season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles (as Macbeth, Henry VIII, Angelo in "Measure for Measure" and Prospero in "The Tempest") and also as Lopakhin in "The Cherry Orchard", Canon Chasuble in "The Importance of Being Earnest", and Tattle in "Love for Love". In 1936, he went to Paris and on 9 May appeared at the Comédie-Française as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière's "Le Médecin malgré lui", the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he acted the part in French and received an ovation.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton commenced his film career in Great Britain while still acting on the London stage. He also took small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wife Elsa Lanchester, "Daydreams", "Blue Bottles" and "The Tonic" (all 1928) which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells and were directed by Ivor Montagu. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film "Piccadilly" with Anna May Wong in 1929. He appeared with Lanchester again in a "film revue", featuring assorted British variety acts, called "Comets" (1930) in which they sang a duet, "The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie". He made two other early British talkies: "Wolves" with Dorothy Gish (1930) from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, and "Down River" (1931), in which he played a drug-smuggling ship's captain.


title: Charles Laughton

text: His New York stage debut in 1931 immediately led to film offers and Laughton's first Hollywood film, "The Old Dark House" (1932) with Boris Karloff, in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travelers in a creepy remote Welsh manor. He then played a demented submarine commander in "Devil and the Deep" with Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, and followed this with his best-remembered film role of that year as Nero in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Sign of the Cross". Laughton turned out other memorable performances during that first Hollywood trip, repeating his stage role as a murderer in "Payment Deferred", playing H.G. Wells' mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau in "Island of Lost Souls", and the meek raspberry-blowing clerk in the brief segment of "If I Had A Million", directed by Ernst Lubitsch. He appeared in six Hollywood films in 1932. His association with director Alexander Korda began in 1933 with the hugely successful "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII), for which Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also continued to act occasionally on stage, including a US production of "The Life of Galileo" by (and with) Bertolt Brecht.


title: Charles Laughton

text: After his smashing success in "The Private Life of Henry VIII", Laughton soon gave up the stage for films and returned to Hollywood, where his next film was "White Woman" (1933) in which he co-starred with Carole Lombard as a Cockney river trader in the Malayan jungle. Then came "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1934) as Norma Shearer's character's malevolent father (although Laughton was only three years older than Shearer); "Les Misérables" (1935) as Inspector Javert; one of his most famous screen roles in "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) as Captain William Bligh, co-starring with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian; and "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935) as the very English butler transported to early 1900s America. He signed to play Micawber in "David Copperfield" (1934), but after a few days shooting asked to be released from the part and was replaced by W. C. Fields.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Back in the UK, and again with Korda, he played the title role in "Rembrandt" (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, "I, Claudius", by Robert Graves, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash. After "I, Claudius", he and the expatriate German film producer Erich Pommer founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: "Vessel of Wrath" (US title "The Beachcomber") (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, in which his wife, Elsa Lanchester, co-starred; "St. Martin's Lane" (US title "Sidewalks of London"), about London street entertainers, which featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and "Jamaica Inn", with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton, about Cornish shipwreckers, based on Daphne du Maurier's novel, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s.


title: Charles Laughton

text: The films produced were not commercially successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy only when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role (Quasimodo) in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939), with "Jamaica Inn" co-star O'Hara. Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak of World War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company. Laughton's early success in "The Private Life of Henry VIII" established him as one of the leading interpreters of the costume and historical drama parts for which he is best remembered (Nero, Henry VIII, Mr. Barrett, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo and others); he was also type-cast for arrogant, unscrupulous characters.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He largely moved away from historical parts when he played an Italian vineyard owner in California in "They Knew What They Wanted" (1940); a South Seas patriarch in "The Tuttles of Tahiti" (1942); and an American admiral during World War II in "Stand By for Action" (1942). He played a Victorian butler in "Forever and a Day" (1943) and an Australian bar-owner in "The Man from Down Under" (1943). Simon Callow's 1987 biography quotes a number of contemporary reviews of Laughton's performances in these films. James Agate, reviewing "Forever and a Day", wrote: "Is there no-one at RKO to tell Charles Laughton when he is being plain bad?" On the other hand, Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" declared that "Forever and a Day" boasted "superb performances".


title: Charles Laughton

text: C. A. Lejeune, wrote Callow, was "shocked" by the poor quality of Laughton's work of that period: "One of the most painful screen phenomena of latter years", she wrote in "The Observer", "has been the decline and fall of Charles Laughton." On the other hand, David Shipman, in his book "The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years", said "Laughton was a total actor. His range was wide".


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton played a cowardly schoolmaster in occupied France in "This Land is Mine" (1943), by Jean Renoir, in which he engaged himself most actively; in fact, while Renoir was still working on an early script, Laughton would talk about Alphonse Daudet's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene for the film. Laughton played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in "The Suspect" (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak, who would become a good friend. He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist in "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) and starred in "The Canterville Ghost", based on the Oscar Wilde story in 1944.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton appeared in two comedies with Deanna Durbin, "It Started with Eve" (1941) and "Because of Him" (1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate in "Captain Kidd" (1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Paradine Case" (1947). Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon in "The Big Clock" (1948). He had supporting roles as a Nazi in pre-war Paris in "Arch of Triumph" (1948), as a bishop in "The Girl from Manhattan" (1948), as a seedy go-between in "The Bribe" (1949), and as a kindly widower in "The Blue Veil" (1951). He played a Bible-reading pastor in the multi-story "A Miracle Can Happen" (1947), but his piece wound up being cut and replaced with another featuring Dorothy Lamour, and in this form the film was retitled as "On Our Merry Way". However, an original print of "A Miracle Can Happen" was sent abroad for dubbing before the Laughton sequence was deleted, and in this form it was shown in Spain as "Una Encuesta Llamada Milagro".


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton made his first colour film in Paris as Inspector Maigret in "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" (1949) and, wrote the "Monthly Film Bulletin", "appeared to overact" alongside Boris Karloff as a mad French nobleman in a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Door" in 1951. He played a tramp in "O. Henry's Full House" (1952). He became the pirate Captain Kidd again, this time for comic effect, in "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd" (1952). Laughton made a guest appearance on the "Colgate Comedy Hour" (featuring Abbott and Costello), in which he delivered the Gettysburg Address. In 1953 he played Herod Antipas in "Salome", and he reprised his role as Henry VIII in "Young Bess", a 1953 drama about Henry's children.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He returned to Britain to star in "Hobson's Choice" (1954), directed by David Lean. Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role in "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957). He played a British admiral in "Under Ten Flags" (1960) and worked with Laurence Olivier in "Spartacus" (1960). His final film was "Advise & Consent" (1962), for which he received favourable comments for his performance as a Southern US Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis).


title: Charles Laughton

text: In 1955, Laughton directed "The Night of the Hunter", starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish, and produced by his friend Paul Gregory. The film has been cited among critics as one of the best of the 1950s, and has been selected by the United States National Film Registry for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never directed again. The documentary "Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter" by Robert Gitt (2002) features preserved rushes and outtakes with Laughton's audible off-camera direction.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton made his London stage debut in Gogol's "The Government Inspector" (1926). He appeared in many West End plays in the following few years and his earliest successes on the stage were as Hercule Poirot in "Alibi" (1928); he was the first actor to portray the Belgian detective in this stage adaptation of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", and as William Marble in "Payment Deferred", making his Lyceum Theatre (New York) debut in 1931.


title: Charles Laughton

text: In 1926, he played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production of Ferenc Molnár's "Liliom" (The play became a musical in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein as "Carousel", where Ficsur became Jigger Craigin, but Laughton never appeared in the musical version). While Laughton is most remembered for his film career, he continued to work in the theatre, as when, after the success of "The Private Life of Henry VIII" he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933 as Macbeth, Lopakin in "The Cherry Orchard", Prospero in "The Tempest" and Angelo in "Measure for Measure". In the US, Laughton worked with Bertolt Brecht on a new English version of Brecht's play "Galileo". Laughton played the title role at the play's premiere in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947 and later that year in New York. This staging was directed by Joseph Losey. The processes by which Laughton painstakingly, over many weeks, created his Galileo—and incidentally, edited and translated the play along with Brecht—are detailed in an essay by Brecht, "Building Up A Part: Laughton's Galileo."


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton had one of his most notable successes in the theatre by directing and playing the Devil in "Don Juan in Hell" beginning in 1950. The piece is actually the third act sequence from George Bernard Shaw's play "Man and Superman", frequently cut from productions to reduce its playing time, consisting of a philosophical debate between Don Juan and the Devil with contributions from Doña Ana and the statue of Ana's father. Laughton conceived the piece as a staged reading and cast Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead (billed as "The First Drama Quartette") in the other roles. Boyer won a special Tony Award for his performance.


title: Charles Laughton

text: He directed several plays on Broadway, mostly under the production of his friend and Broadway producer Paul Gregory. His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial", a full-length stage dramatisation by Herman Wouk of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel "The Caine Mutiny". The play, starring Henry Fonda as defence attorney Barney Greenwald, opened the same year as the film starring Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg and José Ferrer as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét's "John Brown's Body", a full-length poem about the American Civil War and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power, Raymond Massey (re-creating his film characterisations of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown), and Judith Anderson. Laughton did not appear himself in either production, but "John Brown's Body" was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks. He directed and starred in George Bernard Shaw's, "Major Barbara" which ran on Broadway from approximately November 1, 1956, to May 18, 1957. Others in the cast were Glynis Johns, Burgess Meredith, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Eli Wallach.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden's "The Party" at the New Theatre which also had Elsa Lanchester and Albert Finney in the cast. He made his final appearances on stage as Nick Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and as King Lear at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear was lambasted by critics, and Kenneth Tynan wrote that Laughton's Nick Bottom "... behaves in a manner that has nothing to do with acting, although it perfectly hits off the demeanor of a rapscallion uncle dressed up to entertain the children at a Christmas party". Although he did not appear in any later plays, Laughton toured the US with staged readings, including a successful appearance on the Stanford University campus in 1960.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton's voice, equally capable of a penetrating, theatre-filling shout and a soft, velvety tone, first appeared on 78-rpm records with the release of five British Regal Zonophone 10-inch discs entitled "Voice of the Stars" issued annually from 1934 to 1938. These featured short soundtrack snippets from the year's top films. He is heard on all five records in, respectively, "The Private Life of Henry VIII", "The Barretts of Wimpole Street", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "I, Claudius" (curiously, since this film was unfinished and thus never released), and "Vessel of Wrath". In 1937 he recorded Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made a strong impression with it in "Ruggles of Red Gap".


title: Charles Laughton

text: He made several other spoken-word recordings, one of his most famous being his one-man album of Charles Dickens's "Mr. Pickwick's Christmas", a twenty-minute version of the Christmas chapter from Dickens's "The Pickwick Papers". It was first released by American Decca in 1944 as a four-record 78-rpm set, but was afterward transferred to LP. It frequently appeared on LP with a companion piece, Decca's 1941 adaptation of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol", starring Ronald Colman as Scrooge. Both stories were released together on a Deutsche Grammophon CD for Christmas 2005.


title: Charles Laughton

text: In 1943, Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story from St. Luke's Gospel, and this was released in 1995 on CD on a Nimbus Records collection entitled "Prima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past". A Brunswick/American Decca LP entitled "Readings from the Bible" featured Laughton reading Garden of Eden, The Fiery Furnace, Noah's Ark, and David and Goliath. It was released in 1958. Laughton had previously included several Bible readings when he played the title role in the film "Rembrandt". Laughton also narrated the story on the soundtrack album of the film that he directed, "Night of the Hunter", accompanied by the film's score. This album has also been released on CD. Also, and derived from the film they made together, a complete radio show (18 June 1945) of "The Canterville Ghost" was broadcast which featured Laughton and Margaret O'Brien. It has been issued on a Pelican LP.


title: Charles Laughton

text: A two-LP Capitol Records album was released in 1962, the year of Laughton's death, entitled "The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton". Taken from Laughton's one-man stage shows, it compiles dramatic readings from several sources. Three of the excerpts are broadcast annually on a Minnesota Public Radio Thanksgiving program entitled "Giving Thanks". "The Story Teller" won a Grammy in 1962 for Best Spoken Word Recording. Although the album has yet to be released on compact disc, it can now be heard in its entirety online.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton was the fill-in host on 9 September 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first of three appearances on CBS's "The Ed Sullivan Show", which garnered 60.7 million viewers (Ed Sullivan was recuperating from a car accident). That same year, Laughton hosted the first of two programmes devoted to classical music entitled "Festival of Music", and telecast on the NBC television anthology series "Producers' Showcase". One of his last performances was on "Checkmate", in which he played a missionary recently returned from China. He threw himself into the role, travelling to China for several months to better understand his character.


title: Charles Laughton

text: In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a castmate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including "Rembrandt" (1936), "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) and "The Big Clock" (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in "The Private Life of Henry VIII". They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton's bisexuality was corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians. Actress Maureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, disputed the contention that his sexuality was the reason Laughton and Lanchester did not have children, claiming Laughton told her he had wanted children but that it had not been possible because of a botched abortion that Lanchester had early in her career of performing burlesque. In her autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged two abortions in her youth – one of the pregnancies purportedly by Laughton – but did not mention infertility. According to her biographer, Charles Higham, the reason she did not have children was that she did not want any.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton owned an estate on the bluffs above Pacific Coast Highway at 14954 Corona Del Mar in Pacific Palisades. The property suffered a landslide in 1944, alluded to by Bertolt Brecht in his poem "Garden in Progress".


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton was a Democrat and supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton checked in to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in July 1962 with what was described as a ruptured disc. He had surgery for the collapse of a vertebra and it was revealed he had cancer of the spine. He left the hospital at the end of November. He was in a coma for some time and died at home on 15 December 1962 from renal cancer. His ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).


title: Charles Laughton

text: Laughton won the New York Film Critics' Circle Awards for "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Ruggles of Red Gap" in 1935.


title: Charles Laughton

text: For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Laughton has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Marika Domińczyk

text: Marika Domińczyk ( ) (born 1980) is a Polish-American actress who became best known in the United States for her role as Dr. Eliza Minnick on "Grey's Anatomy," which she originated in its 13th season.


title: Marika Domińczyk

text: Marika Domińczyk is one of three daughters born to Aleksandra and Miroslaw "Mirek" Domińczyk. She immigrated to the United States as a child. Her father was one of the leaders in the Polish Solidarity movement. She is the younger sister of actress Dagmara Dominczyk whose husband is actor Patrick Wilson.


title: Marika Domińczyk

text: Domińczyk became engaged to actor Scott Foley in 2006. In June 2007, the two wed in a private ceremony in Hawaii. They have three children: daughter Malina (b. November 2009) and sons Keller (b. April 2012) and Konrad (b. November 13, 2014).


title: Marika Domińczyk

text: In 2004, Domińczyk appeared in the short-lived television series "The Help," which also starred Mindy Cohn and Antonio Sabàto, Jr. The following year, she appeared as Bernadette in the 2005 movie "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." From 2006-2007, she guest-starred on the ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" as Tyler Altamirano. She reprised her role in the last two episodes of the show's fifth season. Despite her being of Polish extraction, her looks have often led to her being cast in Hispanic roles, such as Anna in "The Help" and, most recently, as South American agent Isabella in "." She appeared in "Who Do You Love?," the "Las Vegas" episode "3 Babes, 100 Guns, and a Fat Chick" (2008) as a bounty hunter, and Danny's Marine Sergeant in Iraq, and as a Russian informant to Cool Breeze, played by her husband Scott Foley, in "The Unit." She also starred in "National Lampoon's Bag Boy."


title: Marika Domińczyk

text: Domińczyk played the role of Lara in the film "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell." She was then signed for the recurring role, in ABC's drama series "Grey's Anatomy," of Dr. Eliza Minnick, an orthopedic surgeon and residency-instruction consultant who became a love interest for Jessica Capshaw's character of Dr. Arizona Robbins, which role she originated as the program's thirteenth season began. Ultimately, Dr. Minnick's approach to surgical-residency programs led to her being fired from the hospital, and Domińczyk was, herself, released from the cast. In 2019, Domińczyk recurred as Tina Marek on ABC's "Whiskey Cavalier", which starred her real-life husband Scott Foley.


title: Polo

text: Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ball through the opposing team's goal. Each team has four mounted riders, and the game usually lasts one to two hours, divided into periods called "chukkas" or ""chukkers"".


title: Polo

text: Polo has been called "the sport of kings", and has become a spectator sport for equestrians and high society, often supported by sponsorship. The progenitor of the game and its variants existed from the to the as equestrian games played by nomadic Iranian and Turkic peoples. In Persia, where the sport evolved and developed, it was at first a training game for cavalry units, usually the royal guard or other elite troops. A notable example is Saladin, who was known for being a skilled polo player which contributed to his cavalry training. It is now popular around the world, with well over 100 member countries in the Federation of International Polo, played professionally in 16 countries, and was an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1936.


title: Polo

text: Arena polo is an indoor or semi-outdoor variant with similar rules, and is played with three riders per team. The playing field is smaller, enclosed and usually of compacted sand or fine aggregate, and often indoors. Arena polo has more maneuvering due to space limitations, and uses an air-inflated ball slightly larger than the hard solid ball used in field polo. Standard mallets are used, though slightly larger-head "arena mallets" are an option.


title: Polo

text: The game's English name derives from the Balti language, from its word for 'ball', . It is cognate with the Standard Tibetan , also meaning 'ball'.


title: Polo

text: Although the exact origins of the game are not certain, many scholars suggest it most likely began as a simple game played by Iranic and Turkic equestrian nomads in Central Asia. It was developed and formalised in Ancient Iran (Persia) as "chovgan" (), becoming a national sport played extensively by the nobility. Women played as well as men. During the period of the Parthian Empire (247 BC to 224 AD), the sport had great patronage under the kings and noblemen. According to "The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity", the Persian ball game was an important pastime in the court of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). It was also part of the royal education for the Sasanian ruling class. Emperor Shapur II learnt to play polo at age seven in 316 AD.


title: Polo

text: Valuable for training cavalry, the game was played from Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosius II constructed a polo ground early in the 5th century, to Japan by the Middle Ages. The game also spread south to Arabia and to India and Tibet.


title: Polo

text: Abbasid Baghdad had a large polo ground outside its walls, and one of the city's early 13th century gates, the Bab al Halba, was named after these nearby polo grounds. The game continued to be supported by Mongol rulers of Persia in the 13th century, as well as under the Safavid dynasty. In the 17th century, Naqsh-i Jahan Square in Isfahan was built as a polo field by King Abbas I. The game was also learnt by the neighbouring Byzantine Empire at an early date. A (stadium for playing , the Byzantine name for polo) was built by Emperor Theodosius II () inside the Great Palace of Constantinople. Emperor Basil I () excelled at it; Emperor Alexander () died from exhaustion while playing and Emperor () died from a fatal injury during a game.


title: Polo

text: After the Muslim conquests to the Ayyubid and Mameluke dynasties of Egypt and the Levant, their elites favoured it above all other sports. Notable sultans such as Saladin and Baybars were known to play it and encourage it in their courts. Polo sticks were featured as one of the suits on the Mamluk precursor to modern-day playing cards. Europeans transformed the polo stick suit into the "clubs" of the "Latin" decks, as polo was little known to them at that time.


title: Polo

text: The game spread to South Asia where it has had a strong presence in the northwestern areas of present-day Pakistan (including Gilgit, Chitral, Hunza and Baltistan) since at least the 15th–16th century. Qutubuddin Aibak (), originally a Turkic slave who later founded the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290) Delhi Sultanate, was accidentally killed during a game of polo when his horse fell and he was impaled on the pommel of his saddle.


title: Polo

text: Polo likely travelled via the Silk Road to China where it was popular in the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an, and also played by women, who wore male dress to do so; many Tang dynasty tomb figures of female players survive. According to "The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity", the popularity of polo in Tang China was "bolstered, no doubt, by the presence of the Sasanian court in exile". A "polo-obsessed" noblewoman was buried with her donkeys on 6 October 878 in Xi’an, China.


title: Polo

text: An archaic variation of polo, regionally referred to as "buzkashi" or "kokpar", is still played in parts of Asia.


title: Polo

text: The modern, international, game of polo is derived from the form played in Manipur, India, where it was known as . Also in use in Manipur were the game's Tibetic names, or , referring to the wooden ball, and it was these terms, anglicised, which were adopted for the sport's name in its slow spread to the west. A European polo club was established in the town of Silchar in Assam, India, in 1859, the English tea planters having learnt it from Manipuri incomers.


title: Polo

text: The origins of the game in Manipur are traced to yet earlier precursors of . This was one of three forms of hockey in Manipur, the other ones being field hockey (called ) and wrestling-hockey (called ). Local rituals such as those connected to the , the winged-pony god of polo and the creation-ritual episodes of the festival enacting the life of his son, , the polo-playing god of sports. These may indicate an origin earlier than the historical records of Manipur. Later, according to , a royal chronicle of King Kangba, who ruled Manipur much earlier than Nongda Lairen Pakhangba () introduced ( on horseback'). Further regular playing of this game commenced in 1605, during the reign of King Khagemba under newly framed rules of the game. However, it was the first Mughal emperor, Babur, who popularised the sport in India and ultimately made a significant influence on England.


title: Polo

text: In Manipur, polo is traditionally played with seven players to a side. The players are mounted on the indigenous Manipuri Pony, which stands less than . There are no goal posts, and a player scores simply by hitting the ball out of either end of the field. Players strike the ball with the long side of the mallet head, not the end. Players are not permitted to carry the ball, although blocking the ball with any part of the body except the open hand is permitted. The sticks are made of cane, and the balls are made from the roots of bamboo. Players protected their legs by attaching leather shields to their saddles and girths.


title: Polo

text: In Manipur, the game was played even by commoners who owned a pony. The kings of Manipur had a royal polo ground within the ramparts of their Kangla Fort. Here they played on the (). Public games were held, as they still are today, at the (), a polo ground just outside the Kangla. Weekly games called () were also played in a polo ground outside the current palace.


title: Polo

text: The oldest polo ground in the world is the Imphal Polo Ground in Manipur State. The history of this polo ground is contained in the royal chronicle starting from . Lieutenant (later Major General) Joseph Ford Sherer, the father of modern polo, visited the state and played on this polo ground in the 1850s. Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India visited the state in 1901 and measured the polo ground as "225 yards long and 110 yards wide" ().


title: Polo

text: The Cachar Club, established in 1859, is located on Club Road in the heart of Silchar city in Assam. In 1862, the oldest polo club still in existence, Calcutta Polo Club, was established by two British soldiers, Sherer and Captain Robert Stewart. Later they spread the game to their peers in England. Polo was first played in England by the 10th Hussars in 1869. The British are credited with spreading polo worldwide in the late 19th century and the early 20th century at the height of its empire. Military officers imported the game to Britain in the 1860s. The establishment of polo clubs throughout England and western Europe followed after the formal codification of rules. The 10th Hussars at Aldershot, Hants, introduced polo to England in 1834. The game's governing body in the United Kingdom is the Hurlingham Polo Association, which drew up the first set of formal British rules in 1874, many of which are still in existence.


title: Polo

text: This version of polo played in the 19th century was different from the faster form that was played in Manipur. The game was slow and methodical, with little passing between players and few set plays that required specific movements by participants without the ball. Neither players nor horses were trained to play a fast, non-stop game. This form of polo lacked the aggressive methods and required fewer equestrian skills. From the 1800s to the 1910s, a host of teams representing Indian principalities dominated the international polo scene.


title: Polo

text: The World Champions Polo League was launched in Jaipur in 2016. It is a new version of polo, similar to the Twenty20 format of cricket. The pitch was made smaller and accommodated a large audience. The first event of the World Champions Polo League took place in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with six teams and room for 10,000 spectators. The rules were changed and the duration of matches made shorter.


title: Polo

text: British and Irish immigrants in the Argentine pampas started practising polo during their free time. Among them, David Shennan is credited with having organised the first formal polo game of the country in 1875, at Estancia El Negrete, located in Buenos Aires Province.


title: Polo

text: The sport spread quickly among the skilful gauchos, and several clubs opened in the following years in the towns of Venado Tuerto, Cañada de Gómez, Quilmes, Flores and later (1888) Hurlingham. In 1892 The River Plate Polo Association was founded and constituted the basis for the current Asociación Argentina de Polo. In the Olympic Games held in Paris in 1924 a team composed of Juan Miles, Enrique Padilla, Juan Nelson, Arturo Kenny, G. Brooke Naylor and A. Peña obtained the first gold medal in the country's olympic history; this also occurred in Berlin 1936 with players Manuel Andrada, Andrés Gazzotti, Roberto Cavanagh, Luis Duggan, Juan Nelson, Diego Cavanagh, and Enrique Alberdi.


title: Polo

text: The game spread across the country, and Argentina is credited globally as the capital of polo; Argentina is notably the country with the largest number ever of 10 handicap players in the world.


title: Polo

text: Five teams were able to gather four 10 handicap players each, to make 40 handicap teams: Coronel Suárez, 1975, 1977–1979 (Alberto Heguy, Juan Carlos Harriott, Alfredo Harriot and Horacio Heguy); La Espadaña, 1989–1990 (Carlos Gracida, Gonzalo Pieres, Alfonso Pieres y Ernesto Trotz Jr.); Indios Chapaleufú, 1992–1993 (Bautista Heguy, Gonzalo Heguy, Horacio Heguy Jr. and Marcos Heguy); La Dolfina, 2009–2010 (Adolfo Cambiaso Jr., Lucas Monteverde, Mariano Aguerre y Bartolomé Castagnola); Ellerstina, 2009 (Facundo Pieres, Gonzalo Pieres Jr., Pablo Mac Donough and Juan Martín Nero).


title: Polo

text: The three major polo tournaments in Argentina, known as "Triple Corona" ("Triple Crown"), are Hurlingham Polo Open, Tortugas Polo Open and Palermo Polo Open. Polo season usually lasts from October to December.


title: Polo

text: Polo has found popularity throughout the rest of the Americas, including Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the United States of America.


title: Polo

text: James Gordon Bennett Jr. on 16 May 1876 organised what was billed as the first polo match in the United States at Dickel's Riding Academy at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. The historical record states that James Gordon Bennett established the Westchester Polo Club on 6 May 1876, and on 13 May 1876, the Jerome Park Racetrack in Westchester County (now Bronx County) was the site of the "first" American outdoor polo match.


title: Polo

text: H. L. Herbert, James Gordon Bennett and August Belmont Jr. financed the original New York Polo Grounds. Herbert stated in a 1913 article that they formed the Westchester Club "after" the "first" outdoor game was played on 13 May 1876. This contradicts the historical record of the club being established before the Jerome Park game.


title: Polo

text: There is ample evidence that the first to play polo in America were actually the English Texans. "The Galveston News" reported on 2 May 1876 that Denison, Texas had a polo club which was before James Gordon Bennett established his Westchester Club or attempted to play the "first" game. The Denison team sent a letter to James Gordon Bennett challenging him to a match. The challenge was published 2 June 1876, in "The Galveston Daily News". By the time the article came out on 2 June, the Denison Club had already received a letter from Bennett indicating the challenge was offered before the "first" games in New York.


title: Polo

text: There is an urban legend that the first game of polo in America was played in Boerne, Texas, at retired British officer Captain Glynn Turquand's famous Balcones Ranch. The Boerne, Texas, legend also has plenty of evidence pointing to the fact that polo was played in Boerne before James Gordon Bennett Jr. ever picked up a polo mallet.


title: Polo

text: During the early part of the 20th century, under the leadership of Harry Payne Whitney, polo changed to become a high-speed sport in the United States, differing from the game in England, where it involved short passes to move the ball towards the opposition's goal. Whitney and his teammates used the fast break, sending long passes downfield to riders who had broken away from the pack at a full gallop. In 1909 a United States team defeated an English team with ease.


title: Polo

text: In the late 1950s, champion polo player and Director of the Long Island Polo Association, Walter Scanlon, introduced the "short form", or "European" style, four period match, to the game of polo.


title: Polo

text: All tournaments and levels of play and players are organized within and between polo clubs, including membership, rules, safety, fields and arenas.


title: Polo

text: The rules of polo are written to include the safety of both players and horses. Games are monitored by umpires. A whistle is blown when an infraction occurs, and penalties are awarded. Strategic plays in polo are based on the "line of the ball", an imaginary line that extends through the ball in the line of travel. This line traces the ball's path and extends past the ball along that trajectory. The line of the ball defines rules for players to approach the ball safely. The "line of the ball" changes each time the ball changes direction. The player who hits the ball generally has the right of way, and other players cannot cross the line of the ball in front of that player. As players approach the ball, they ride on either side of the line of the ball giving each access to the ball. A player can cross the line of the ball when it does not create a dangerous situation. Most infractions and penalties are related to players improperly crossing the line of the ball or the right of way. When a player has the line of the ball on their right, they have the right of way. A "ride-off" is when a player moves another player off the line of the ball by making shoulder-to-shoulder contact with the other players' horses.


title: Polo

text: The defending player has a variety of opportunities for their team to gain possession of the ball. They can push the opponent off the line or steal the ball from the opponent. Another common defensive play is called "hooking." While a player is taking a swing at the ball, their opponent can block the swing by using their mallet to hook the mallet of the player swinging at the ball. A player may hook only if they are on the side where the swing is being made or directly behind an opponent. A player may not purposely touch another player, another player's tack, or a pony with their mallet. Unsafe hooking is a foul that will result in a penalty shot being awarded. For example, it is a foul for a player to reach over an opponent's mount in an attempt to hook.


title: Polo

text: The other basic defensive play is called the bump or ride-off. It's similar to a body check in hockey. In a ride-off, a player rides their pony alongside an opponent's mount to move an opponent away from the ball or to take them out of a play. It must be executed properly so that it does not endanger the horses or the players. The angle of contact must be safe and can not knock the horses off balance, or harm the horses in any way. Two players following the line of the ball and riding one another off have the right of way over a single man coming from any direction.


title: Polo

text: Like in hockey or basketball, fouls are potentially dangerous plays that infringe on the rules of the game. To the novice spectator, fouls may be difficult to discern. There are degrees of dangerous and unfair play and penalty shots are awarded depending based on the severity of the foul and where the foul was committed on the polo field. White lines on the polo field indicate where the mid-field, sixty, forty and thirty yard penalties are taken.


title: Polo

text: The official set of rules and rules interpretations are reviewed and published annually by each country's polo association. Most of the smaller associations follow the rules of the Hurlingham Polo Association, the national governing body of the sport of polo in the United Kingdom, and the United States Polo Association.


title: Polo

text: Outdoor or field polo lasts about one and a half to two hours and consists of four to eight seven-minute chukkas, between or during which players change mounts. At the end of each seven-minute chukka, play continues for an additional 30 seconds or until a stoppage in play, whichever comes first. There is a four-minute interval between chukkas and a ten-minute halftime. Play is continuous and is only stopped for rule infractions (fouls), broken tack (equipment) or injury to horse or player. The object is to score goals by hitting the ball between the goal posts, no matter how high in the air. If the ball goes wide of the goal, the defending team is allowed a free 'knock-in' from the place where the ball crossed the goal line, thus getting ball back into play.


title: Polo

text: Arena polo has rules similar to the field version, and is less strenuous for the player. It is played in a enclosed arena, much like those used for other equestrian sports; the minimum size is . There are many arena clubs in the United States, and most major polo clubs, including the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club, have active arena programmes. The major differences between the outdoor and indoor games are: speed (outdoor being faster), physicality/roughness (indoor/arena is more physical), ball size (indoor is larger), goal size (because the arena is smaller the goal is smaller), and some penalties. In the United States and Canada, collegiate polo is arena polo; in the UK, collegiate polo is both.


title: Polo

text: The mounts used are called 'polo ponies', although the term pony is purely traditional and the mount is actually a full-sized horse. They range from high at the withers, and weigh . The polo pony is selected carefully for quick bursts of speed, stamina, agility and manoeuvrability. Temperament is critical; the horse must remain responsive under pressure and not become excited or difficult to control. Many are Thoroughbreds or Thoroughbred crosses. They are trained to be handled with one hand on the reins, and to respond to the rider's leg and weight cues for moving forward, turning and stopping. A well trained horse will carry its rider smoothly and swiftly to the ball and can account for 60 to 75 percent of the player's skill and net worth to their team.


title: Polo

text: Polo pony training generally begins at age three and lasts from about six months to two years. Most horses reach full physical maturity at about age five, and ponies are at their peak of athleticism and training at around age six or seven. However, without any accidents, polo ponies may have the ability to play until they are 18 to 20 years of age.


title: Polo

text: Each player must have more than one horse, to allow for tired mounts to be replaced by fresh ones between or even during chukkas. A player's "string" of polo ponies may number two or three in Low Goal matches (with ponies being rested for at least a chukka before reuse), four or more for Medium Goal matches (at least one per chukka), and even more for the highest levels of competition.


title: Polo

text: The rules for equipment vary in details between the hosting authorities, but are always for the safety of the players and mounts.


title: Polo

text: Mandatory equipment includes a protective helmet with chinstrap worn at all times by all players and mounted grooms. They must have a rigid exterior shell as well as interior padding to protect the rider's head in case of a crash or fall. Helmets must be to the locally accepted safety standard, "PAS015" (UK), "NOCSAE" (USA). A faceguard is commonly integral with a helmet.


title: Polo

text: Polo boots and kneeguards are mandatory in the UK during official play, and boots are recommended for all play everywhere. The UK also recommends goggles, elbow pads and gum shields. A shirt or jersey is required that distinguishes the player's team, and is not black and white stripes like an umpire shirt.


title: Polo

text: White polo pants or trousers are worn during official play. Polo gloves are commonly worn to protect from working the reins and mallet.


title: Polo

text: The modern outdoor polo ball is made of a high-impact plastic. Historically they have been made of bamboo, leather covered cork, hard rubber, and for many years willow root. Originally the British used a white painted leather covered cricket ball.


title: Polo

text: It must be not less than or more than in circumference. The weight must be not less than or more than . In a bounce test from on concrete at , the rebound should be a minimum of and a maximum of at the inflation rate specified by the manufacturer. This provides for a hard and lively ball.