During the early years of film, Madam Sul-Te-Wan was one of Hollywood’s most accomplished black actresses. Though relegated by racial attitudes of the time to roles as slaves, mammys, and domestics, Madam Sul-Te-Wan still found critical success and appeared in some of early Hollywood’s most important movies, including Birth of a Nation and King Kong. Born Nellie Wan to freed slave parents, Madam Sul-Te-Wan went on to the vaudeville stage as part of a black theatrical troop. In 1915, she wrote a letter of introduction to acclaimed director of D.W. Griffith; the result was a part in Birth of the Nation, and then later in Intolerance. She worked steadily throughout the silent era and easily transitioned to talkies in the late 1920s. Her performance as Tituba in 1937’s Maid of Salem garnered her critical recognition. In 1954’s Carmen Jones, she was at last able to expand her range beyond stereotypes when she played Dorothy Dandridge’s grandmother. Her last film appearance was in 1958 and she died in 1959. Although almost completely forgotten today, Madam Sul-Te-Wan was one of Hollywood’s first black success stories. As for her stage name—no one ever dared ask and its origins remain unknown.

Gary Numan was one of the most important innovators of the "New Wave" or "electropop" musical movements of the early 1980s. Though initially grouped with the punk movement, Gary Numan’s music had little in common in the raw sound of bands like the Clash and the Ramones. Rather, Numan’s music was polished and relied heavily on the electronic-y sounds of the synthesizer. In 1979, Numan’s band, Tubeway Army, reached the top of charts with the single Are 'Friends' Electric and six months later the single "Cars" also charted at number one, as did the album The Pleasure Principle. Numan’s music utilized the smooth rhythms of the synthesizer to create a futuristic sound, and isolation and futility were favorite song themes. Numan himself projected a distant and somewhat robotically stylized persona. In 1981, at the end of his second world tour, whose elaborate stage show ate up most of the profits, Numan announced his retirement from music. By 1983, Numan was back in the recording studio, but was unable to recapture his early success. He spent the rest of the decade and most of the 1990s in a creative funk but by 2000, he was ripe for a revival. His music inspired a new generation of techno music, and bands as varied as the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails have cited him as an influence.

Upon the death of his father, young Eddie Foy began to perform in saloons in an effort to support his family. Foy polished his craft on the vaudeville circuit, crisscrossing the country, sometimes performing in fancy theatres in cities such as New York or San Francisco, other times treading the rough boards of make-shift theatres in frontier towns like Dodge City. By the early 1900s, Foy had paid his dues and was a successful Broadway star, known for his comic routines. In 1903, Foy was performing at the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago when a horrific fire broke out. The theatre was supposed to be fireproof, but it proved to be all too flammable. Over six hundred people were killed and Foy was proclaimed a hero for his efforts in rescuing the survivors. In the early 1910s, Foy organized his children into his act as "The Seven Little Foys". The troupe was immortalized in the 1955 movie, with Bob Hope playing Eddie. Foy continued to perform until his death at the age of seventy three in 1929.

Though he was only twenty-eight when he died, cornet player Bix Beiderbecke left a lasting mark on jazz music. Born in Iowa, to German immigrant parents, Beiderbecke learned to play the cornet in high school, and his interest in music soon outweighed his interest in academics. In an effort to focus his attention on school, his parents enrolled him in the Lake Forest Academy in Illinois. Unfortunately, this only put Beiderbecke closer to the locus of jazz music: Chicago. After he was expelled from school, he spent the next six years focusing on his music. The recordings he made during this period are considered among the best jazz records ever made. Beiderbecke’s instinctive grasp of melody, his elegant and sure phrasing, and the clear warm tones of his cornet were unmistakable and impossible to imitate. Weakened by long nights and the harsh bootleg alcohol, Beiderbecke’s health, however, could not keep up with his punishing schedule. In 1931, by then living in New York, Beiderbecke died of pneumonia. He was twenty-eight years old.

Built by impresario Samuel Roxy Rothafel, when the Roxy Theatre opened in New York City, it was the largest movie theatre in the world. Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Irving Berlin, the mayor of New York and the governor of New Jersey attended the Roxy’s grand opening, which featured a choral presentation and the premiere of Swanson’s latest film The Love of Sunya. It was a magnificent start for perhaps the greatest movie palace of them all. Dubbed, "The Cathedral of the Motion Picture", the Roxy Theatre was built in the Spanish Baroque style. It seated almost six thousand people, had a pipe organ trio, multiple balconies, a one hundred person orchestra pit, and a lobby as large as an airplane hanger. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Roxy was the place in New York to see a film, but by the late 1950s, despite being retrofitted to show wide-screen films in the Todd AO format, attendance was suffering. Television was out-pacing film, and the movie palace was being supplanted by the living room. The Roxy Theatre was razed in 1961 and replaced with an office building.

Russian-Polish dancer Vaslav Nijinsky revolutionized the role of the male ballet dancer with his astoundingly elevated leaps and his amazingly complex characterizations. Born in Kiev to Polish parents, Nijinsky studied joined the Imperial Ballet School at the age of twelve. His virtuosity came early; by the age of eighteen he was already dancing leading roles. His 1909 meeting with ballet promoter Serge Diaghilev proved pivotal; for the rest of Nijinsky’s career he would be guided by Diaghilev in a relationship fraught with drama. In 1912, Nijinsky appeared in the revolutionary new ballet The Afternoon of a Faun, a role he choreographed himself. Rejecting the formality of classical dance, Nijinksy danced in bare feet and his movements were angular and animalistic. The ballet caused a sensation and made Nijinsky notorious. His 1913 performance in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring, set to Stravinsky’s percussive music, caused a riot in the theatre. Though his dancing and choreography was brilliant, Nijinsky’s mental state was fragile and he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919. His dance career was over. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals. He died in 1950.

Singer, songwriter and jazz musician John Paul Larkin turned what could have been a disability into an asset, and in doing so, provided inspiration for those who shared his affliction. As a child, Larkin developed a severe stutter, and began playing the piano as a way to avoid having to talk. Despite his disability, Larkin taught himself to scat, a type of jazz singing, which use nonsensical sounds to create vocal instrumentals. As an adult Larkin became a professional jazz pianist and began to incorporate scat singing into his act. He developed a new persona, Scatman John, to go along with his singing debut, and decided to confront the issue of his stuttering head-on. His first single, released in 1994, was called Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop). A unique fusion of techo-pop and scat singing, the song’s lyrics encourage children who stuttered. The song was an enormous hit and sold over 6 million copies. In the years that followed, Scatman’s music was awarded fourteen gold and eighteen platinum records, and toured successfully throughout the world. He was inducted into the National Stuttering Association’s Hall of Fame. His last album, Everybody Jam, was released in 1996. Scatman died in 1999.