Travis Banton (August 18, 1894 – February 2, 1958) was an American costume designer. He is perhaps best known for his long collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg. He is generally considered one of the most important Hollywood costume designers of the golden age.

Born in Waco, Texas, Travis Banton moved to New York City as a child. He was educated at Columbia University and at the Art Students League of New York where he studied art and fashion design.

An early apprenticeship with a high-society costume dressmaker earned him fame. When Mary Pickford selected one of his dresses for her wedding to Douglas Fairbanks, his reputation was established.

He opened his own dressmaking salon in New York City, and soon was asked to create costumes for the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1924, Banton moved to Hollywood when Paramount contracted with him to create costumes for his first film, The Dressmaker from Paris.

Beginning with Norma Talmadge in Poppy, Banton designed clothing for Pola Negri and Clara Bow in the 1920s. When designer Howard Greer left Paramount in 1929, Travis Banton was promoted to Head Designer and was responsible for dressing the studio's most illustrious stars.

​Glamour, subtle elegance, and exquisite fabrics endeared Travis Banton to the most celebrated of Hollywood's beauties and made him one of the most sought-after costume designers of his era. As viewings of such films as The Gilded Lily (1935) and Desire (1936) reveal, his costume designs were marked by form-flattering cuts (often on the bias), rich fabrics (such as satin and lamé), and extravagant textures (beads, fur, and feathers). He collaborated closely with directors and actresses in order to fulfil their vision.

His position as head designer at Paramount, while gave Banton rare prestiges, put him under constant pressure of designing on time, he started drinking and his alcoholism worsened over the years. In 1938 Banton was forced to leave Paramount(according to some commentators also at the instigation of his assistant Edith Head)

In the 1930s and 1940s Banton designed for such stars as Kay Francis, Lilyan Tashman, Sylvia Sidney, Gail Patrick, Helen Vinson, and Claudette Colbert. Ultimately, Banton may be best remembered for forging the style of such Hollywood icons as Carole Lombard, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West. Dietrich and Banton had an especially close and successful collaboration. His work for Dietrich is still frequently referenced by designers.

From 1939 to 1941, Travis Banton worked for Twentieth Century-Fox as Howard Greer's assistant, then shortly for Columbia Pictures. From 1945 to 1948 Banton worked as head stylist for Universal Studios. 

In more than two decades working for Hollywood, Travis Banton has created costumes for many of the Hollywood stars of his era, including:

Renowned and remembered as Marlene Dietrich's image maker in history, Travis Baton had a more intimate relationship with Carole Lombard for whom he designed her off screen wardrobe as well as her on screen ones.

​Travis Banton died of throat cancer on February 2, 1958, in Los Angeles. He was buried on February 4 at the Little Church of the Flowers in Glendale, California. An extensive collection of Banton's drawings is housed in the Brooklyn Museum.

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE (10 June 1911 – 30 November 1977) was a British dramatist and screenwriter. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.

A troubled homosexual who saw himself as an outsider, Rattigan wrote a number of plays which centred on issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships, or a world of repression and reticence.

​Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington, London, of Irish Protestant extraction. Rattigan's birth certificate and his birth announcement in The Times indicate he was born on 9 June 1911. However, most reference books state that he was born the following day; Rattigan himself never publicly disputed this date. There is evidence suggesting that the date on the birth certificate is incorrect. He was given no middle name, but he adopted the middle name "Mervyn" in early adulthood.

He had an elder brother, Brian. They were the grandsons of Sir William Henry Rattigan, an India-based jurist, and later a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for North-East Lanarkshire. His father was Frank Rattigan CMG, a diplomat whose exploits included an affair with Princess Elisabeth of Romania (future consort of King George II of Greece) which resulted in her having an abortion. The Royal House of Romania is considered to be the inspiration of Rattigan's play The Sleeping Prince.

Rattigan was educated at Sandroyd School from 1920 to 1925, and Harrow School. Rattigan played cricket for the Harrow First XI and scored 29 in the Eton–Harrow match in 1929. He then went to Trinity College, Oxford.

His success as a playwright came early, with the comedy French Without Tears in 1936 which was inspired by his 1933 visit to a village called Marxzell in the Black Forest, where young English gentlemen went to learn German.

Rattigan's determination to write a more serious play produced After the Dance (1939), a satirical social drama about the "bright young things" and their failure to politically engage. The outbreak of the Second World War scuppered any chances of a long run. 

During the war, Rattigan served in the Royal Air Force as a tail gunner. After the war, Rattigan alternated between comedies and dramas, establishing himself as a major playwright: the most successful of which were The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952), and Separate Tables (1954).

Rattigan's belief in understated emotions and craftsmanship was deemed old fashioned after the overnight success in 1956 of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger began the era of kitchen sink dramas by the writers known as the Angry Young Men. Rattigan responded to this critical disfavour with some bitterness. His plays Ross, Man and Boy, In Praise of Love, and Cause Célèbre, however show no sign of any decline in his talent. Rattigan explained that he wrote his plays to please a symbolic playgoer, "Aunt Edna", someone from the well-off middle-class who had conventional tastes.

Rattigan was gay, with numerous lovers but no long-term partners.

It has been claimed his work is essentially autobiographical, containing coded references to his sexuality, which he kept secret from all but his closest friends. 

Rattigan was fascinated with the life and character of T. E. Lawrence. In 1960 he wrote a play called Ross, based on Lawrence's exploits. Preparations were made to film it, and Dirk Bogarde accepted the role. However, it did not proceed because the Rank Organisation withdrew its support, not wishing to offend David Lean and Sam Spiegel, who had started to film Lawrence of Arabia. Bogarde called Rank's decision "my bitterest disappointment".

The same year, a musical version of French Without Tears was staged as Joie de Vivre, with music by Robert Stolz of White Horse Inn fame. It starred Donald Sinden, lasted only four performances, and has never been revived.

Rattigan was diagnosed as having leukaemia in 1962 and recovered two years later, but fell ill again in 1968. He disliked the so-called Swinging London of the 1960s and moved abroad, living in Bermuda, where he lived off the proceeds from lucrative screenplays including The V.I.P.s and The Yellow Rolls-Royce. For a time he was the highest-paid screenwriter in the world.

In 1964, Rattigan invested £3,000 in young playwright Joe Orton's outrageous comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane, trying to get the play transferred to the West End. Although an unlikely champion of the risqué Orton, Rattigan recognised the younger man's talent and approved of what he considered a very well written piece of theatre. 

Rattigan was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1971 for services to the theatre, being only the fourth playwright to be knighted in the 20th century (after Sir W. S. Gilbert in 1907, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero in 1909 and Sir Noël Coward in 1970). He had previously been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), in June 1958. He moved back to Britain, where he experienced a minor revival in his reputation before his death.

Terence Rattigan died in Hamilton, Bermuda, from bone cancer in 1977, aged 66. His cremated remains were deposited in the family vault at Kensal Green Cemetery.

In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.

There was a revival of of his plays since early 90s, In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.

A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston.

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​Tamara Rojo CBE (born 17 May 1974) is a Spanish ballet dancer. She is English National Ballet's artistic director and a lead principal dancer with the company. She was previously a principal dancer with The Royal Ballet.

​Tamara Rojo CBE (Montreal, Canadá, 17 de mayo de 1974) es una bailarina y directora de ballet española. En la actualidad es directora artística del English National Ballet en Londres. Anteriormente fue bailarina principal de The Royal Ballet. En enero de 2016 Tamara Rojo se doctoró ‘cum laude’ en la URJC.

Tamara ​Rojo was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to Spanish parents who returned with her to Spain when she was 4 months old. At the age of 5 she began dance classes in Madrid and became a full-time student age 11 at Madrid's Royal Professional Conservatory of Dance.

Though her parents were pleased at her developing balletic talent, they insisted Rojo also complete an academic education through evening classes she could attend after studio rehearsals. Having graduated from the Conservatory at 16, she completed her secondary studies over the next two years. She went on to complete further degrees including a bachelor of dance, master of scenic arts and a PhD in performing arts, becoming DA magna cum laude in 2016 from King Juan Carlos University.

Tamara Rojo began her professional career in 1991 with the Ballet de la Comunidad de Madrid, under the direction of Víctor Ullate. In 1994, she won Gold Medal at the Paris International Dance competition, together with a Special Jury Award from a panel including Natalia Makarova, Galina Samsova and Vladimir Vasiliev, three outstanding figures in the ballet world at that time.

In 1996 Galina Samsova, artistic director of Scottish Ballet, invited Rojo to join the company. There she performed principal roles in Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, La Sylphide and Cranko's Romeo and Juliet. Derek Deane, then English National Ballet artistic director, asked her to join ENB the following year. For her he created the roles of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" and Clara in "The Nutcracker" for which The Times named Rojo "Dance Revelation of the Year" in 1997. She also danced principal roles in Swan Lake, Paquita, Coppelia and Glen Tetley's The Sphinx.

Rojo approached Royal Ballet director Anthony Dowell in 2000 with a view to joining the company. Over the next 12 years, she performed major roles in most of the company's repertoire including ballets choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan and Frederick Ashton, Dowell's Swan Lake, Makarova's La Bayadere, Rudolph Nureyev's Don Quixote, and Peter Wright 's The Nutcracker. She danced in the world premiere of Snow White, created for her by choreographer Ricardo Cué. The title role in Isadora was recreated for her by MacMillan's widow, the artist and set designer Deborah MacMillan, custodian of the late choreographer's ballets.

In 2000, Rojo was asked at short notice to replace the injured Royal Ballet principal Darcey Bussell in the title role in Giselle. Ignoring her own sprained ankle, Rojo learned the role in a fortnight and went on to receive rave reviews. In 2002, while dancing Clara in Nutcracker, Rojo began to tremble on stage. Sent to a private hospital after the performance, she learned her appendix had burst and was told to take six weeks off. However, she resumed dancing after only two, relapsed and returned to hospital. Rojo admitted some years later it was "completely wrong and I do not feel that anyone should do this. It really is not worth it."

In 2003, while preparing for the Royal Ballet's Australian tour, Rojo suffered an infected bunion so serious that her foot swelled to the size of a tennis ball. Doctors recommended surgery on her foot, a potentially career-ending operation. Months later, after countless hours of rehabilitation, she resumed dancing and said the injury changed her perspective on life, her body and dance. She felt that she valued each and every day more and learned that nothing in life should be taken for granted.

After this experience, she and her father developed a device to stretch pointe shoes in order to reduce pressure on bunions, and formed a company in 2017 to market it.

Rojo is set to make her choreographic debut with a Florence Nightingale-inspired version of Raymonda, set during the Crimean War. It is scheduled to premiere in January 2021, but the pandemic has postponed it.

​Nació en la ciudad canadiense de Montreal donde residían sus padres, ambos de nacionalidad española. Cuando Tamara cumplió cuatro meses se trasladaron a España. Se inició en el Centro de Danza Víctor Ullate (1983-1991), completando su formación con David Howard y Renatto Paroni. Tras formar parte de la Compañía de Ullate (1991-1996), Galina Samsova la invitó a bailar en el Scottish Ballet (1996-1997). Con esta compañía interpretó, entre otras obras, El lago de los cisnes, El Cascanueces, Romeo y Julieta y La sylphide. Doctora con sobresaliente ‘cum laude’ en el Instituto Superior de Danza Alicia Alonso de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos con la tesis: Perfil Psicológico de un Bailarín de alto nivel. Rasgos vocacionales del bailarín profesional. Anteriormente obtuvo el Máster en Artes Escénicas por la URJC.

Con 25 años fue bailarina principal en el English National Ballet (Ballet Nacional de Inglaterra) (1997-2000), categoría con la que se incorporó al The Royal Ballet de Londres, invitada por Anthony Dowell en julio de 2000.

Ha actuado, como artista invitada, entre otras compañías de ballet, con: el Ballet Mariinski, el ballet del Teatro de La Scala de Milán, el Tokyo Ballet, el ballet del Teatro Mijáilovski de San Petersbugo, el Ballet de la Ópera de Niza, el Arena de Verona, el Ballet Nacional de Cuba y el Ballet de la Ópera de Berlín y ha participado en numerosas galas de ámbito internacional.

Directora del English National Ballet a partir de septiembre de 2012, se comprometió a mantener los clásicos relevantes y renovados, lo que le encaminó a ofrecer al galardonado coreógrafo Akram Khan el desafío creativo de crear una nueva versión del ballet clásico Giselle. Bajo la dirección de Tamara Rojo, el English National Ballet fue invitado, por primera vez en la historia, a bailar del 21 al 25 de junio de 2016 en la Ópera de París Palais Garnier: Le Corsaire, de Marius Petipa y Konstantín Serguéiev, en la renovada versión de Anna-Marie Holmes.

En 2016 Rojo invitó al coreógrafo Akram Khan a recrear una nueva versión del icónico ballet romántico Giselle resultando un destacado éxito.

La pandemia de la COVID-19 retrasó el estreno de una renovada versión coreografiada por Tamara Rojo del ballet clásico Raymonda, inspirado en el espíritu revolucionario de la enfermera Florence Nighting para situar la escena en la Guerra de Crimea en 1854.