Famous Woman: R.I.P List
This is my tribute list of the talented and famous ladies individuals that have passed away....Their legacies will forever live in our hearts......May the Rest in Peace.......
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- Actress
- Art Department
- Producer
Alexis Arquette (born Robert Arquette) (death: September 11, 2016) was an American actress. Arquette was born in Los Angeles, the fourth of five children of Lewis Arquette, an actor and director, and Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (Nowak), a Jewish actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher, and therapist. Lewis's family's surname was originally "Arcouet"; Lewis's father was comedian Cliff Arquette, who went by the stage name of Charley Weaver. Arquette was distantly related to American explorer Meriwether Lewis. Actors Rosanna, Richmond, Patricia, and David Arquette are her siblings.Date of Birth 28 July 1969, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death 11 September 2016, Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name Robert Arquette
Nicknames Eva Destruction Lex
Height 5' 7¾" (1.72 m)- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Dickson was born Thais Alalia Dickerson on August 13, 1917, in Pocotello, Idaho. After her father died, her mother took Gloria and her sister to California. During high school she started acting in local theater productions. When she was nineteen a Warner Brothers talent scout saw one of her performances and offered her a contract. For her first film she was given the leading role in They Won't Forget (1937). Her performance got rave reviews and she was called the "luckiest girl in Hollywood". Gloria continued to get good roles in Gold Diggers in Paris (1938), They Made Me a Criminal (1939), and I Want a Divorce (1940). In 1938 she married makeup artist Perc Westmore. He wanted her to be more glamorous and persuaded her to have a nose job. After leaving MGM, Gloria's career stalled and she could only get small roles in B-movies like Lady of Burlesque (1943) and The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine (1942). Gloria divorced Perc and married director Ralph Murphy in 1941. Unfortunately, Ralph had a wandering eye, and their marriage only lasted two years. By 1944, Gloria was unemployed and overweight and was also struggling with a serious alcohol problem. She married former boxer William Fitzgerald and rented a house in West Hollywood. On April 10, 1945, Gloria was taking a nap when the house caught fire. She tried to escape but ended up trapped in a bathroom. Gloria suffered second-degree burns and died from asphyxiation. She was only 27 years old. Gloria is buried at Hollywood Forever cemetery with a tombstone reading "Thais A. Dickerson, My Baby".Born: Thais Dickerson August 13, 1916 in Pocatello, Idaho, USA Died: April 10, 1945 (age 28) in Hollywood, California, USA
Ironically, in one of Gloria Dickson's final performances, Crime Doctor's Strangest Case (1943), she played the wife of a man who habitually started accidental fires with carelessly discarded smoking materials. Two such scenes were featured in the movie. It was just two short years later she died in a house fire suspected to have been caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette.
She died of asphyxiation from inhalation of fumes. She was found face down in the bathroom with first and second degree burns covering her body. Police thought the flames started from an unextinguished cigarette that lit a chair on fire while Dickson was sleeping. It is thought she went to the bathroom to try to escape through the window and is estimated she waited there for an hour before dying.
Her pet boxer also died in the fire that killed her.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Betsy Palmer was probably best known for playing Jason Voorhees' mother in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980), but her career as an actress began many years before.
Palmer was born Patricia Betsy Hrunek in East Chicago, Indiana, to Marie (née Love), who launched the Chicago Business College, and Rudolph Vincent Hrunek, a Czech-born industrial chemist. Palmer played a young female officer opposite Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955), and appeared in another war film the same year, The Long Gray Line (1955). Throughout the late 1950s, Palmer was recognized as a news reporter on Today (1952) on NBC, then became largely involved in television. She remained in made-for-TV films and notable guest appearances, before playing the murderous avenging mother, Mrs. Voorhees, in the horror film Friday the 13th (1980). She also continued working in television, and appearing in low-budget films like The Fear: Resurrection (1999). Palmer spent her later years between her home in New York City and Sedona, Arizona.
Betsy Palmer died of natural causes on a Friday, May 29, 2015, at a hospice care center in Danbury, Connecticut.Date of Birth
1 November 1926, East Chicago, Indiana, USA
Date of Death
29 May 2015, Danbury, Connecticut, USA (natural causes)
Birth Name
Patricia Betsy Hrunek
Height
5' 7" (1.7 m)
Trade Marks:
The role of Pamela Voorhees on Friday the 13th (1980).
Sparkling blue eyes
Natural blonde hair
Deep sultry voice
Betsy Palmer died of natural causes on a Friday, May 29, 2015, at a hospice care center in Danbury, Connecticut.- African American actress Juanita Moore entered films in the early 1950s, a time in which few black people were given an opportunity to act in major studio films. Fortunately Moore's roles began improving as Hollywood developed a social consciousness toward the end of the decade. In 1959 she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy updating of a once controversial Fannie Hurst novel about racism. Within the next decade Hollywood underwent several sociological upheavals, and Juanita was one of the beneficiaries. She became a fixture in black-oriented films of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in such films as Uptight (1968), Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) and Abby (1974). She also appeared in Walt Disney Pictures' The Kid (2000), and was in a total of more than 50 films. Moore retired in 2001 and passed away New Year's Day 2014 . She was 99.Date of Birth
19 October 1914, Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
Date of Death
1 January 2014, Los Angeles, California, USA
Spouses:
Charles Thomas Burris
(8 October 1953 - 27 April 2001) (his death)
Nyas Berry
(1943 - 6 October 1951) (his death)
She collapsed and died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, from natural causes. She was 99 years old.
Following her death, she was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Susan Cabot was born in Boston and raised in a series of eight foster homes. She attended high school in Manhattan, where she took an interest in dramatics and joined the school dramatic club. Later, while trying to decide between a career in music or art, she illustrated children's books during the day and sang at Manhattan's Village Barn at night. It was at this same time that she made her film debut as an extra in Fox's New York-made Kiss of Death (1947) and worked in New York-based television. Maxwell Arnow, a casting director for Columbia Pictures, spotted Cabot at the Village Barn, and a co-starring role in that studio's B-grade South Seas drama On the Isle of Samoa (1950) resulted. While in Hollywood Cabot was also signed for the role of an Indian maiden in Universal's Tomahawk (1951) with Van Heflin. Subsequently signed to an exclusive contract by Universal, Cabot co-starred in a long string of films opposite leading men like John Lund, Tony Curtis and Audie Murphy. Inevitably, she became fed up with the succession of western and Arabian Nights roles, asked for a release from her Universal pact and accepted an offer from Harold Robbins to star in his play "A Stone for Danny Fisher" in New York. Roger Corman lured her back to Hollywood to play the lead in the melodramatic rock-'n-'roller Carnival Rock (1957) and she stayed on to star in five more films for the enterprising young producer-director. After a highly publicized 1959 fling with Jordan's King Hussein, Cabot divided her time between TV work and roles in stage plays and musicals.Date of Birth
9 July 1927, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Date of Death
10 December 1986, Encino, California, USA (homicide)
Birth Name
Harriet Shapiro
Height
5' 2" (1.57 m)
Burial: Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City (Los Angeles), California.
In 1964, she gave birth to her son, Timothy, who suffered from dwarfism. He bludgeoned her to death while she slept with a weight-lifting bar in the bedroom of her Encino home. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter but cited years of mental and physical abuse by her as his defense. He received a three-year suspended sentence and was placed on probation for the crime.
Personal Quotes
[about Roger Corman] He gave me a lot of freedom, and also a chance to play a lot of parts that Universal would never have given me. Oddball, wacko parts, like the very disturbed girl in Sorority Girl (1957) and things like that. I had a chance to do moments and scenes that I didn't get before.- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Chantal Akerman was born on 6 June 1950 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for The Meetings of Anna (1978), I, You, He, She (1974) and A Couch in New York (1996). She was married to Sonia Wieder-Atherton. She died on 5 October 2015 in Paris, France.Date of Birth
6 June 1950, Brussels, Belgium
Date of Death
4 October 2015, Paris, France (suicide)
Birth Name
Chantal Anne Akerman
The great Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman has died aged 65. Best-known for her three-hour 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, made when she was just 25 years old, Akerman was a groundbreaking figure in feminist and experimental cinema.- Gia Allemand was born on 20 December 1983 in Howard Beach, Queens, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Ghost Trek: The Kinsey Report (2011), Ghost Trek: Goomba Body Snatchers Mortuary Lockdown (2013) and Bachelor Pad (2010). She died on 14 August 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.Alternate Names:
Gia
Height:
5' 5" (1.65 m)
Born:
1984
Died:
August 14, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (apparent suicide attempt) - Actress
- Writer
- Director
Maya Angelou was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Maya Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre.Date of Birth
4 April 1928 , St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Date of Death
28 May 2014 , Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
Birth Name Marguerite Annie Johnson
Height 6' (1.83 m)
Spouses:
Paul Du Feu (18 January 1974 - 1981) (divorced)
Tosh Angelos (1950 - 1952) (divorced)
Personal Quotes:
[on the George Zimmerman acquittal] A number of people think that only blacks were hurt, that African Americans were hurt by this decision, but that is not true. All you have to do is look at the protesters - they are white and black, Spanish-speaking and Asian. What is really injured - bruised if you will - is the psyche of our national population. We are all harmed. We are all belittled, and we give to the rest of the world more ammunition to sneer at us. It really makes me see how far we have to go, that one man armed with a gun can actually profile a young man because he is black and end up shooting him dead. It is so painful.
[on Michelle Obama] Philosophers tell us that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mrs. Obama is as if it doesn't touch her. She hasn't tried to become anybody else's idea of First Lady. She has remained herself, with her grace, her gentleness, and her sense of humor. That she would dare to wear clothes off the rack, or go out and garden, or have a grandmother in the White House - she knows how to be a public figure without being separate from her family.
[on reconnecting with her mother who had abandoned her ten years before] I didn't know her. I didn't trust her. But I began to like her because she was kind. I said, 'I'd like to call you Lady'. She told everybody, "Call me Lady from now on'. Amazing. And she was kind to people, all sorts of people - white ones and black ones and Spanish-speaking ones. If they needed something, my mother was the one.
[observation at 85] I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there , and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth'.
On experience: A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
On childhood: Few, if any survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.
On love: The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. They divorced when she was five and she rarely saw her father after that.
As a school girl, she originally wanted to be a dancer, but later switched gears to head into acting. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, after attending She was educated at Highland Manor, a private boarding school in Tarrytown, New York (through the generosity of wealthy uncles), and then at Julia Richman High School, which enabled her to get her feet wet in some off-Broadway productions.
Out of school, she entered modeling and, because of her beauty, appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, one of the most popular magazines in the US. The wife of famed director Howard Hawks spotted the picture in the publication and arranged with her husband to have Lauren take a screen test. As a result, which was entirely positive, she was given the part of Marie Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944), a thriller opposite Humphrey Bogart, when she was just 19 years old. This not only set the tone for a fabulous career but also one of Hollywood's greatest love stories (she married Bogart in 1945). It was also the first of several Bogie-Bacall films.
After 1945's Confidential Agent (1945), Lauren received second billing in The Big Sleep (1946) with Bogart. The mystery, in the role of Vivian Sternwood Rutledge, was a resounding success. Although she was making one film a year, each production would be eagerly awaited by the public. In 1947, again with her husband, Lauren starred in the thriller Dark Passage (1947). The film kept movie patrons on the edge of their seats. The following year, she starred with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore in Key Largo (1948). The crime drama was even more of a nail biter than her previous film.
In 1950, Lauren starred in Bright Leaf (1950), a drama set in 1894. It was a film of note because she appeared without her husband - her co-star was Gary Cooper. In 1953, Lauren appeared in her first comedy as Schatze Page in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). The film, with co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, was a smash hit all across the theaters of America.
After filming Designing Woman (1957), which was released in 1957, Humphrey Bogart died on January 14 from throat cancer. Devastated at being a widow, Lauren returned to the silver screen with The Gift of Love (1958) in 1958 opposite Robert Stack. The production turned out to be a big disappointment. Undaunted, Lauren moved back to New York City and appeared in several Broadway plays to huge critical acclaim. She was enjoying acting before live audiences and the audiences in turn enjoyed her fine performances.
Lauren was away from the big screen for five years, but she returned in 1964 to appear in Shock Treatment (1964) and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). The latter film was a comedy starring Henry Fonda and Tony Curtis. In 1966, Lauren starred in Harper (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Harris, which was one of former's signature films.
Alternating her time between films and the stage, Lauren returned in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express (1974). The film, based on Agatha Christie's best-selling book was a huge hit. It also garnered Ingrid Bergman her third Oscar. Actually, the huge star-studded cast helped to ensure its success. Two years later, in 1976, Lauren co-starred with John Wayne in The Shootist (1976). The film was Wayne's last - he died from cancer in 1979. In late 1979, Lauren appeared with her good friend, James Garner, in a double episode, Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs (1979), of his Rockford Files series.
For Lauren's next film role, she appeared in a large ensemble film, HealtH (1980), which again paired her with James Garner, and in 1981, she played an actress being stalked by a crazed admirer in The Fan (1981). The thriller was absolutely fascinating with Lauren in the lead role, again playing opposite her good friend James Garner, making three straight screen roles with Lauren opposite James Garner. After that production, Lauren was away from films again, this time for seven years. In the interim, she again appeared on the stages of Broadway. When she returned, it was for the filming of 1988's Appointment with Death (1988) and Mr. North (1988). After 1990's Misery (1990) and several made for television films, Lauren appeared in 1996's My Fellow Americans (1996), a comedy romp with Jack Lemmon and James Garner as two ex-presidents and their escapades. In 1997, Lauren appeared in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), in one of the best roles of her later career, opposite Barbra Streisand, where Lauren was nominated as Best Actress in a Supporting Role by both the Academy and the Golden Globes, winning the Golden Globe for the role.
Despite her age and failing health, she made a small-scale comeback in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004) ("Howl's Moving Castle," based on the young-adult novel by Diana Wynne Jones) as the Witch of the Waste, and several other roles through 2008, but thereafter acting endeavors for the beloved actress became increasingly rare. Lauren Bacall died on 12 August 2014, five weeks short of her 90th birthday.Date of Birth
16 September 1924 , New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
12 August 2014 , New York City, New York, USA (Stroke)
Birth Name
Betty Joan Perske
Nicknames
The Look
Betty
Height
5' 8½" (1.74 m)
Spouses:
Jason Robards
(4 July 1961 - 10 September 1969) (divorced) (1 child)
Humphrey Bogart
(21 May 1945 - 14 January 1957) (his death) (2 children)
Trade Marks:
Deep husky voice
Cat-like green eyes
At the funeral for her husband, Humphrey Bogart, she put a whistle in his coffin. It was a reference to the famous line she says to him in their first film together To Have and Have Not (1944): "You know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow.".
[on the Twilight films] Yes, I saw Twilight - my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever. After the "film" was over I wanted to smack her across her head with my shoe, but I do not want a (tell-all) book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die. So instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, "Now that's a vampire film!". And that goes for all of you! Watch Nosferatu instead!
[on Humphrey Bogart] Was he tough? In a word, no. Bogey was truly a gentle soul.
I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can't have it all.
I don't think being the only child of a single parent helped. I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.- Actress
- Writer
- Composer
Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Shortly after wards, she appeared as Marcia in the TV series The Second Hundred Years (1967).
The film that made her a star was Easy Rider (1969), where she worked with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and a supporting actor named Jack Nicholson. She appeared with Nicholson again the next year when they starred in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which garnered an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Karen. Her roles mainly consisted of waitresses, hookers and women on the edge. Some of her later films were disappointments at the box office, but she did receive another Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby (1974). One role for which she is well remembered is that of the jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). Another is as the woman terrorized in her apartment by a murderous Zuni doll come to life in the well received TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975). After a number of forgettable movies, she again won rave reviews for her role in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Since then, her film career has been busy, but the quality of the films has been uneven.Date of Birth
1 July 1939, Park Ridge, Illinois, USA
Date of Death
8 August 2013, Los Angeles, California, USA (pancreatic cancer)
Birth Name
Karen Blanche Ziegler
Height
5' 7" (1.70 m)
Spouse
Stephen Eckelberry (27 September 1987 - her death) 1 child
L.M. Kit Carson (4 July 1975 - 28 June 1983) (divorced) 1 child
Robert Burton (18 April 1973 - 23 October 1974) (divorced)
Charles Black (1960 - ?) (divorced)
Personal Quotes
My God, there aren't any more movie stars, which is terrific with me, it's very healthy. A lot of love now occurs in the business, people helping each other to do good work, getting high on each other's success. Isn't that great?
[on the craft of acting] That's really what acting is: you imagine things, then you respond naturally to what you've imagined.
Every time you do a part you try to find out what it would really be like to be that person, no matter who she is.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Lucille Bliss was an American voice actress from New York City who was known for voicing Smurfette from The Smurfs, Anastasia from Cinderella and Ms. Bitters from Invader Zim. She voiced in other animated projects and video games including Robots and The Secret of NIMH. She passed away in November 8th, 2012.Date of Birth
31 March 1916, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
8 November 2012, Costa Mesa, California, USA (natural causes)
Trivia
Bliss continually went to audition for a voice in Hanna-Barbera cartoons for approximately 20 years. She was then finally cast as the voice of Smurfette on "Smurfs, The" (1981)_.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
A supremely gifted, versatile player who could reach dramatic depths, as exemplified in her weary-eyed, good-hearted waitress in The Last Picture Show (1971), or comedy heights, as in her sadistic drill captain in Private Benjamin (1980), Eileen Brennan managed to transition from lovely Broadway singing ingénue to respected film and television character actress within a decade's time. Her Hollywood career was hustling and bustling at the time of her near-fatal car accident in 1982. With courage and spirit, she recovered from her extensive facial and leg injuries, and returned to performing... slower but wiser. On top of all this, the indomitable Eileen survived a bout of alcoholism and became recognized as a breast cancer survivor, having had a mastectomy in 1990. On camera, she still tosses out those trademark barbs to the delight of all her fans, as demonstrated by her more-recent recurring roles as the prying Mrs. Bink on 7th Heaven (1996) and as Zandra, the disparaging acting coach, on Will & Grace (1998).
She was born with the highly unlikely marquee name of Verla Eileen Regina Brennan in Los Angeles, California, the child of Irish-Catholic parents Regina ("Jeanne") Manahan (or Menehan), a minor silent film player, and John Gerald Brennan, a doctor. Following grade school education, she attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and appeared in plays with the Mask and Bauble Society during that time. She then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Her lovely soprano coupled with a flair for comedy was the winning combination that earned her the break of her budding career as the not-so-dainty title role in the off-Broadway, tongue-in-cheek operetta "Little Mary Sunshine". For this 1959 endeavor, Eileen not only won an Obie Award, but was among an esteemed group of eight other thespians who won the Theatre World Award that year for "Promising New Personality", including Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett and a very young Patty Duke.
Unwilling to be pigeonholed as a singing comedienne, Eileen took on one of the most arduous and demanding legit roles a young actress could ask for when she portrayed Annie Sullivan role in a major touring production of "The Miracle Worker" in 1961. After proving her dramatic mettle, she returned willingly to the musical theatre fold and made a very beguiling Anna in a production of "The King and I" (1963). She took her first Broadway bow in another comic operetta, "The Student Gypsy" (1963). In the musical, which was an unofficial sequel to her "Mary Sunshine" hit, she played a similarly-styled Merry May Glockenspiel, but the show lasted only a couple of weeks. Infinitely more successful was her deft playing of Irene Malloy alongside Carol Channing's Dolly Levi Gallagher in the original Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" (1964). Eileen stayed with the role for about two years.
By this time, Hollywood beckoned and Eileen never looked back... or returned to sing on Broadway. After a support role in the film comedy Divorce American Style (1967) starring Debbie Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke, Eileen's talents were selected to be showcased on the irreverent variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967). But what seemed to be an ideal forum to show off her abilities didn't. Overshadowed by the wackier talents of Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi and Jo Anne Worley, who became television comedy stars from this, Eileen seemed out of sync with the knockabout slapstick element. She left the cast before the show barely got off the ground. "Laugh-In" (1968-1973) went on to become a huge cult hit.
In retrospect, this disappointment proved to be a boon to Eileen's dramatic film career. Set in a dusty, barren town, she played up her hard looks and earned terrific reviews for her downbeat role of Genevieve, the careworn waitress, in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). As part of a superb ensemble cast, her hard-knocks vulnerability and earthy sensuality added authenticity to the dreary Texas surroundings. Following this, she scored great marks for her brothel madam/confidante in George Roy Hill's ragtime-era Oscar winner The Sting (1973). Bogdanovich himself became a fan and used Eileen again and again in his subsequent films -- the ambitious but lackluster Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975). At least, the latter movie allowed her to show off her singing voice. Her comedic instincts were on full display too in the all-star mystery spoofs Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978) where she fared quite well playing take-it-on-the-chin dames.
Eileen hit the apex of her comic fame playing the spiky and spiteful drill captain who mercilessly taunts and torments tenderfoot Goldie Hawn in the huge box-office hit Private Benjamin (1980). She deservedly earned a "best supporting actress" Oscar nomination for her scene-stealing contribution and was given the chance to reprise the role on the television series that followed. Starring Lorna Patterson in the Hawn role, Private Benjamin (1981) was less successful in its adaptation to the smaller screen but Eileen was better than great and earned both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards in the process.
During the show's run in 1982, Brennan had dinner one evening with good friend Goldie Hawn at a Los Angeles restaurant. They had already parted ways when Brennan was hit and critically injured by a car while crossing a street. Replaced in the television series (by "Alice" co-star Polly Holliday), her recovery and rehabilitation lasted three years, which included an addiction to painkillers. She returned to the screen in another amusing all-star comedy whodunit, Clue (1985), in which she played one of the popular game board suspects, Mrs. Peacock. While looking weaker and less mobile, she showed she had lost none of the disarming causticity that made her a character star.
Forging ahead, Eileen went on to recreate her tough luck waitress character in Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show (1971), and also appeared with Bette Midler in the overly mawkish Stella (1990). However, for the most part, she lent herself to playing eccentric crab apples in such lightweight fare as Rented Lips (1987), Sticky Fingers (1988), Changing Habits (1997), Pants on Fire (1998), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (2005) and Naked Run (2011). She has also provided crotchety animated voices for series cartoons.
Eileen Brennan died at age 80 on July 28, 2013 at her Burbank, California home after a battle with bladder cancer. She is survived by her two sons, Patrick (formerly a basketball player, now an actor) and Sam (a singer), from her first and only marriage in the late 1960s to mid-1970s.Date of Birth
3 September 1932, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death
28 July 2013, Burbank, California, USA (bladder cancer)
Birth Name
Verla Eileen Regina Brennen
Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Spouse
David John Lampson (28 December 1968 - 1974) (divorced) 2 children
Trade Mark
Deep smoky voice
Personal Quotes
Actors are crazy or we wouldn't be doing this.- Abigail Van Buren was born on 4 July 1918 in Sioux City, Iowa, USA. She was a producer, known for Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory (2014), The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956) and Sammy and Company (1975). She was married to Morton Phillips. She died on 16 January 2013 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.Date of Birth
4 July 1918, Sioux City, Iowa, USA
Date of Death
18 January 2012 USA (Alzheimer's)
Birth Name
Pauline Esther Friedman
Nickname
Abby
Popo
Spouse
Morton Phillips (2 July 1939 - ?) 2 children - Actress
- Additional Crew
Marilyn Burns was born Mary Lynn Ann Burns on May 7, 1949 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and raised in Houston, Texas. She attended the University of Texas at Austin where she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Drama. Marilyn was one of the original scream queens, remembered primarily for her role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). She played Sally Hardesty, a teenager who travels with her brother and some friends to the cemetery where her grandfather was buried to investigate reports of grave vandalism, and then encounters an insane, murderous family, including the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface.
Her follow-up appearance was in Eaten Alive (1976), where she played a vacationer who unwittingly stumbles upon a hotel managed by a maniac who feeds his guests to his crocodile. Marilyn earned her scream queen status by starring in other horror movies; Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1981) and Future-Kill (1985). She appeared in the television miniseries Helter Skelter (1976) about the real-life trial of Charles Manson and his family. She played Linda Kasabian, a member of the Manson Family whose testimony helped lead to the convictions of the cult leader and many of his followers.
Marilyn had an uncredited cameo as Sally Hardesty in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), and made a cameo appearance as Verna Carlson in Texas Chainsaw (2013). However, aside from these roles and occasional appearances at horror conventions, she lived a relatively quiet life out of the spotlight in the Houston area in her later years. Marilyn Burns died at age 65 in her sleep on August 5, 2014 and was found in her Houston, Texas home by family members, the cause was an apparent heart attack, although not specified.Date of Birth 5 July 1950 , Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
Date of Death 5 August 2014 , Houston, Texas, USA
Height 5' 2" (1.57 m)
The actress who lived through the original Leatherface has died. Marilyn Burns was 65. A family member found the actress in her home near Houston on August 5th. No cause of death was reported. She made her big-screen starring debut in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as Sally Hardesty, who somehow remains standing as everyone around her is picked off in particularly brutal ways.- Actress
- Producer
Chyna had been called "The First Lady of Sports Entertainment". Her accomplishments went far beyond the wrestling ring and anyone's guess. Before exchanging body slams, modeling for top magazines and guest-starring on hundreds of shows,
Chyna was a shy girl who was born Joan Marie Laurer in Rochester, New York, to Janet Carol (Wahl) and Joseph "Joe" Von Laurer, Jr. She spent most of her childhood in a home filled with alcoholism and domestic problems. She found her escape through working out, and began doing aerobics and lifting weights at a gym near her home. This is where she found her true niche: the world of fitness.
As the only female in the gym, Chyna always stood out but developed bonds and friendships with the gym members, who gave her the encouragement to keep going. She broke all gender barriers everywhere she went, and continued her love of fitness throughout her college days. Chyna graduated from the University of Tampa with a 3.9 GPA, and a double major in Spanish Literature, in under two years. She also studied foreign languages, and could speak English, Spanish, German and French. Chyna was a true humanitarian, and served in the U.S. Army ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) and the Peace Corps, helping to teach illiterate third-world children to read. She was a strong supporter of the National Animal Rescue charity, which helps domesticated animals find good, loving homes.
Throughout her life, Chyna dreamed of being an entertainer. She began that career in the early 1990s, as a belly dancer, and soon moved on to fitness competitions, but the star found her real calling in the entertainment world: professional wrestling. She began training to be a professional under the guidance of the wrestling legend Walter 'Killer' Kowalski, in a professional wrestling school in which all other students were men. She soon took the world of women's wrestling by storm and began competing in the PGWA, where she was given the 1996 Rookie of the Year award for the Women's Championship.
After dominating the world of women's wrestling, Chyna was discovered by Paul Levesque (aka "Triple H") and Shawn Michaels (HBK), two WWF (World Wrestling Federation) superstars who helped Chyna break into the big-time. She made her worldwide television debut in February 1997 as a bodyguard for Triple H, but soon went on to break all gender stereotypes by competing with some of the toughest men in the WWF, under the name "Chyna". Years later, she was the only woman to qualify for the Royal Rumble and King of the Ring tournaments, and became the only female Intercontinental Champion and the only undefeated Women's Champion in WWF history.
Five years after she debuted as a professional wrestler in the WWF, Chyna parted ways with the company. She then toured Japan, taking the country by storm and battling in the ring with the likes of such champions as Keiji Mutô, The Great Kabuki, and most notably, Masahiro Chôno. Her 2002 Tokyo Dome match against Chono earned her the title of Nikkian Sport's 2002 Women's Wrestler of the Year.
Meanwhile, back in the US, Chyna appeared in several films, hosted a variety of shows, and showed that women can combine strength and beauty in two top-selling issues of "Playboy" magazine, which proved to the world that women can be beautiful without having the anorexic "Twiggy" look. She also appeared in the first-ever Playboy documentary, which conducted in-depth interviews with Chyna, her former manager Rich Minzer, her friend Joe Gold, and Hugh Hefner himself.
Her strong will to the best and "survival of the fittest" attitude made her one of the top wrestlers in history. She served as a role model to millions of men and women by proving anything is possible, through hard work and determination. In her best-selling autobiography "If They Only Knew", she discussed what it took to make it to the top, and showed the world what she had to overcome to make her one of the most well-known pop culture icons in the world. Shortly after her first appearance in "Playboy", she released her own fitness video, Chyna Fitness: More Than Meets the Eye (2000), which won awards from fitness and lifestyle magazines. The video is still popular with both Chyna's fans and fitness fans alike.
Unlike most former pro wrestlers, Chyna had success on her own two feet. She was on nearly every talk show, and was featured on hundreds of magazine covers, from "Playboy" and "Newsweek" to "TV Guide" and "People". She was featured on Reggie Benjamin's CD "2X-Centrix", performing drums and back up vocals. She was on the top of the "dance music" billboard charts for five weeks with the CD single "Ride", and also sang with her own rock band, "The Chynna Dolls", for a short time, playing venues like The Roxy, Elrey Theater, Hollywood Athletic Center, and two performances on Howard Stern (1994). She starred in the comedies Cougar Club (2007) and Illegal Aliens (2007), and also hosted a variety of shows, from Robot Wars: Extreme Warriors (2001) to FYE and AMC's "Tough Guys series. She had many guest-starring roles on TV series, such as Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1998), 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996), Pacific Blue (1996), The Nick Cannon Show (2002), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996), Mad TV (1995), MTV's "Diary" and many others. She was also featured on season four of The Surreal Life (2003) and VH1's spin off, The Surreal Life: Fame Games (2007), as well as in films, including Alien Tracker (2003), Alien Fury: Countdown to Invasion (2000), Frank McKlusky, C.I. (2002), Hunter: Back in Force (2003). In 2008, she appeared on VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew (2008) TV series to conquer personal demons and depression caused from an abusive relationship and childhood trauma.
In 2009, she released a fashion book, "Paper Doll", which became a best-seller. In May 2011, she returned to the world of wrestling with TNA, debuting on the May 12 edition of TNA iMPACT! Wrestling (2004), and followed it up with one last match at the TNA TNA: Sacrifice (2011) Pay-per-view, where she and Kurt Angle took on Jeff Jarrett and Karen Jarrett. The episode was one of the highest-rated for the company in many years. Although her match with TNA was a one-time-only deal, Chyna showed the world she had turned her life around - she had overcome depression, emotional trauma and was finally where she wanted to be in life.
In June 2011, Chyna released her first adult video with Vivid Entertainment, Backdoor to Chyna (2011), which sold over a million copies. She said the movie allowed her to regain control of her life, gave her a newfound confidence and got her back on her feet. She embarked on a huge media tour, appearing all over the US. She began feature dancing at high-end nightclubs, appeared on dozens of radio shows, including Howard Stern on Demand (2005) and ABC radio, and in November 2011 won a Fleshbot Award for her "Backdoor to Chyna" video. In 2012, she appeared in A Night at the Silent Movie Theater (2012) and appeared in the music video "Gonna Make You Love Me" for the band Lovechild. She also appeared in a tell-all interview with KayFabe Commentaries, in which she discussed everything from her childhood to drugs, porn and everything in between.
Chyna died on April 20, 2016, in Redondo Beach, California. She was 46.Date of Birth 27 December 1970, Rochester, New York, USA
Date of Death 20 April 2016, Los Angeles, California, USA (unknown)
Birth Name Joan Marie Laurer
Nicknames Va-Chyna The Ninth Wonder of the World Mamacita
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m)
Became first woman to compete in the Royal Rumble.
Became first woman to compete in the King of the Ring tournament.
Became first woman to hold a men's title in he WWF by defeating Jeff Jarrett for the Intercontinental title in 1999. thus becoming First woman to win the World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental Championship.
Her father Joe, passed away in May 2014.- Caitlin Clarke was born on 3 May 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Dragonslayer (1981), Blown Away (1994) and Crocodile Dundee (1986). She died on 9 September 2004 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.Date of Birth 3 May 1952, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Date of Death 9 September 2004, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA (ovarian cancer)
Birth Name Catherine Ann Clarke
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m) - Actress
- Music Department
- Composer
Growing up and living under the huge, daunting shadow of a singing icon can intimidate a son or daughter enough to want to look anywhere else to find their station in life. Those who dared to try to follow in their footsteps, such as Frank Sinatra Jr., found success branching out in other areas of music; others like the Crosby brothers, suffered from perpetual self esteem issues that led to personal tragedy; still others, like Liza Minnelli found meteoric success on their own and emulated/paralleled their famous parent's own star achievements.
"Sophisticated Lady" Natalie Cole fits into the last-mentioned category. Moreover, she ended up living a dream by dueting with her father, the late and great Nat 'King' Cole, through the use of modern technology, to multiple Grammy-winning glory. This would become the pinnacle of her musical success. Unlike Minnelli, however, her famous crooning parent, who broke many racial barriers during his way-too-short life in the limelight, did not live long enough to enjoy his daughter's rise to stardom, dying of lung cancer a little more than a week after Natalie's 15th birthday.
Stephanie Natalie Maria Cole was born on February 6, 1950, and grew up in a heavily musical atmosphere in Los Angeles' exclusive Hancock Park area. In addition to her father, mother Maria had been a background vocalist with the Duke Ellington outfit. Natalie herself grew up surrounded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and, Frank Sinatra, who were considered family. Singing on one of her dad's Christmas albums, and performing by age 11, her father's early death brought emotional scars and perhaps induced a self-imposed lack of musical focus. The family relocated to Massachusetts and Natalie eventually took off to college, first attending and majoring in child psychology at the University of Massachusetts. The transferred to the University of Southern California before returning to her first campus and graduating in 1972. At this point, however, she decided to live her music a go again and began performing at various night spots. It was at this juncture that she gradually fell into drug addiction, including heroin use.
A breakthrough for Natalie came via her early 70s association with Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy, who once worked with one of Natalie's real-life idols, Aretha Franklin. A debut album in the form of "Inseparable" came out in 1975, which included her bit hit "This Will Be" (#6 on the pop charts and a multiple Grammy winner for best R&B female vocals and "best newcomer". In 1976 producer Yancy became her husband but they divorced after only a few years and following the birth of their only child, Robert Adam Yancy. Her ex-husband died in 1985.
During the "disco era", milder hits with "Sophisticated Lady," "Mr. Melody," "I've Got Love on My Mind," "Our Love," "Stand By," "What You Won't Do for Love," and "Hold On" and "Nothing But a Fool" arrived, along with more platinum and gold albums. Acute drug problems, however, continued to hinder her progress and she eventually took time off time for recovery. In 1985, Natalie released, in what was the start of a comeback, her album "Dangerous" for Modern Records; she later lost her contract. Such as late 80s pop singles included "Jump Start My Heart," "Miss You Like Crazy", "Pink Cadillac" and "I Live for Your Love" kept her visible and on the charts.
In the midst of her ebb-and-flow R&B success, Natalie decided in 1991 to record a new CD, "Unforgettable...with Love," paying homage to her late father. With the help and encouragement of family, she re-arranged and re-recorded some of his greatest songs in the same studio that he recorded (Capitol Studios), used some of the same musicians and even recreated one of his signature songs, the title tune "Unforgettable," with a technological effect that appeared as if they were dueting together. Never before or since has this been pulled off and marketed so successfully. The CD, which met with some derision (some critics felt she was grasping for straws in a career that was going backwards), was an instant "easy listening" sensation. Not only did it sell well over 30 million copies, it would become an eight-time over platinum winner. It earned a armload of awards on Grammy night -- including "Album of the Year" and "Record of the Year".
Over time Natalie began covering jazz standards. A jazz CD in 1994 also captured a Grammy (she has racked up a total of eight Grammy awards thus far). Like her Dad, she has become a fond Christmas commodity both on TV and in the record stores. In addition, she branched out into occasional acting roles, including the social drama Lily in Winter (1994) and the autobiographical feature film Livin' for Love: The Natalie Cole Story (2000) in which she herself played the ups and downs of her own turbulent life. She has also made infrequent acting appearances on such shows as "I'll Fly Away," "Law & Order," "Touched by an Angel" and "Grey's Anatomy".
Natalie's private life, however, continued to show vulnerability. A second marriage to drummer Andre Fisher of Rufus fame also ended in divorce and she later married and divorced a third time to Kenneth H. Dupree, a church bishop. Natalie's older adopted sister, Carol Cole earned a modicum of distinction as an actress and celebrity for a time, but her adopted brother, Nat Kelly Cole, briefly an actor, died in 1995 at age 36 of AIDS-related complications.
Firmly content wrapping her glorious vocals around yesteryear's standards, Natalie's star contained the warm, fuzzy glow and velvet-like smoothness so reminiscent of her famous dad. She continued to shine with her CD "Still Unforgettable, in which she nursed the classics as only she can and "dueted" once again with her father on "Walking My Baby Back Home"
In July of 2008, Natalie was diagnosed with a life-threatening liver virus, Hepatitis C, which had laid dormant for decades from her early days of hard drug and alcohol use. It progressed to the point of her having a have a kidney transplant the following year. Although she continued to perform, she remained illness-prone up until her death on New Year's Eve 2015 of congestive heart failure induced by lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. Her 2000 memoir, Angel on My Shoulder, detailed much of her early addiction battles.Date of Birth 6 February 1950, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death 31 December 2015, Los Angeles, California, USA (congestive heart failure)
Birth Name Natalie Maria Cole
Height 5' 9" (1.75 m)
Spouses: Kenneth H. Dupree (12 October 2001 - 2004) (divorced)
Andre Fischer (16 September 1989 - 1996) (divorced)
Marvin Jerome Yancy (30 July 1976 - 1980) (divorced) (1 child)
Received a kidney transplant on May 19, 2009, the same day that her sister, Carol Cole, passed away.- Actress
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Catherine E. Coulson began her professional association with director David Lynch when she worked as assistant director on Lynch's legendary feature debut Eraserhead (1977). This is when the two began discussing the idea of a woman who carried a log around with her. Coulson spent much of her career working behind-the-scenes before finally bringing the Log Lady to life on Lynch's cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990). The Log Lady was one of the most puzzling and emblematic of the show's characters, and she has ensured Coulson a permanent place in the hearts of cult TV fans.Date of Birth 22 October 1943, Ashland, Oregon, USA
Date of Death 28 September 2015, Ashland, Oregon, USA (cancer)
Birth Name Catherine Elizabeth Coulson
Spouse (2) Jack Nance (20 April 1968 - 1976) (divorced)
Marc Sirinsky (? - 28 September 2015) (her death) (1 child)
Forever identified as the log-carrying lady on the cult Twin Peaks (1990) series.
Though divorced from actor Jack Nance in 1976, she worked with him again on the Twin Peaks (1990) series in the 90s.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Yvonne Joyce Craig was born on May 16, 1937 in Taylorville, Illinois. As a young teenager, Yvonne showed such promise as a dancer that she was accepted to Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Her training progressed until she left the company in 1957 over a disagreement on casting changes. She moved to Los Angeles hoping to continue her dancing, but was soon cast in movies. At first, Yvonne had small roles in movies such as Gidget (1959) and The Gene Krupa Story (1959). After that, her film career just bumped along. As Yvonne was dating Elvis Presley at the time, she did have a supporting role in the two Elvis movies, It Happened at the World's Fair (1963) and Kissin' Cousins (1964).
But her fame would come with the cult television series Batman (1966) in which she played Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Barbara. Her secret identity was Batgirl and as the Commissioner's daughter, she had access to all the calls of trouble taking place in Gotham City. Her character, Batgirl, was part of the 1967-68 season, which was the end of the run for the series. After Batman (1966), she also appeared on other television series such as Star Trek (1966) and The Six Million Dollar Man (1974). As her career wound down, Yvonne went into the real estate business. Yvonne Craig died at age 78 of breast cancer at her home in Pacific Palisades, California on August 17, 2015.Date of Birth 16 May 1937, Taylorville, Illinois, USA
Date of Death 17 August 2015, Pacific Palisades, California, USA (breast cancer)
Birth Name Yvonne Joyce Craig
Height 5' 4" (1.63 m)
Spouses: Kenneth Aldrich (1988 - 17 August 2015) (her death)
Jimmy Boyd (15 August 1960 - 1962) (divorced)- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann B. Davis made her debut in show business at age 6 earning $2.00 in a puppet show. At the University of Michigan, Ann planned to study medicine but got the acting bug from her brother who was the lead dancer in the national company of "Oklahoma" for over a year. Ann then spent six years in little theaters, stock companies, touring musicals, and such until she got her break as "Schultzie", the secretary on "The Bob Cummings Show." Before Hollywood, Ann spent a summer at the Cain Park Theater and, during a year at the Erie Playhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania, she studied everything about show production and played dozens of roles ranging from teenagers to characters over 60. In 1949, she arrived at Porterville, California and spent three years at the Barn theater.
She then moved down the coast to Monterey, where she appeared at the Wharf theater. From there she decided to try Hollywood. Anne has also played many parts on stage including "The Women", "Twelfth Night", "Dark Of The Moon", and others. Her mother, Marguerite Scott Davis, appeared with professional stock companies for over thirty years.Date of Birth
3 May 1926 , Schenectady, New York, USA
Date of Death
1 June 2014 , San Antonio, Texas, USA (subdural hematoma after a fall)
Birth Name
Ann Bradford Davis
Height
5' 4" (1.63 m)
Personal Quotes:
On leaving show business in 1976 for a year to join Bishop Frey's Episcopalian Commine: "I never heard a voice from the clouds saying get out of show business. - Interview with R Todd Nash The Tartan 1987- Actress
- Make-Up Department
- Producer
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.Date of Birth
5 April 1908, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
Date of Death
6 October 1989, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France (metastasized breast cancer)
Birth Name
Ruth Elizabeth Davis
Nickname
The Fifth Warner Brother
The First Lady of Film
Height
5' 3" (1.60 m)
Spouse
Gary Merrill (28 July 1950 - 6 July 1960) (divorced) 2 children
William Grant Sherry (30 November 1945 - 5 July 1950) (divorced) 1 child
Arthur Farnsworth (31 December 1940 - 25 August 1943) (his death)
Harmon Nelson (18 August 1932 - 6 December 1938) (divorced)
When she died in 1989, she reportedly left an estate valued between $600,000 and $1 million, consisting mainly of a condominium apartment she owned in West Hollywood. 50% of her estate went to her son, Michael Merrill, and the remaining 50% went to her secretary and companion, Kathryn Sermack. Her daughter, Barbara Merrill aka B.D. Hyman, was left nothing due to her lurid book about life with her mother. During her long life, she spent the majority of her wealth supporting her mother, three children, and four husbands.
She was of English, French, and Welsh descent.
When she died, her false eyelashes were auctioned off, fetching a price of $600. Previously, she had said that her biggest secret was brown mascara.
[on her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth] Farney was a real charmer, but an alcoholic who was tied to his mother's apron strings... and what a mother. Christ, what a cold bitch.
[on Elizabeth Taylor's declining to have Davis as her co-star in A Little Night Music (1977)] She is such a fool. One would think that after all her years in the business she would want to work with a professional.
[on Greta Garbo] Oh, Garbo was divine. Soooo beautiful. I worshipped her. When I became a star, I used to have my chauffeur follow her in my car. I always wanted to meet her.
[during tension on the set of The Whales of August (1987) about her esteemed costar Lillian Gish] She ought to know about close-ups! Jesus, she was around when they invented them!
[in 1977, on why she was still working] So I am up to my ears in taxes and debts, and that's why I come out of my house in Connecticut every few years and work. I can hole up for just so long, then I gotta get out and stir things up again. It's half for income and half for me.
[on John Wayne] I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He's the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.
[on Errol Flynn] He was just beautiful . . . Errol. He himself openly said, "I don't know really anything about acting," and I admire his honesty because he's absolutely right.
[before taking her final flight in 1989] I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.
[Joan Crawford] and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.
[on sex] God's biggest joke on human beings.
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why [Joan Crawford] always plays ladies.
[referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill] Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis.
[about Katharine Hepburn's tie for the 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand] I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know.
I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
[on her character in All About Eve (1950)] Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she be? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?
[on rival Joan Crawford] She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.
[when told by director Robert Aldrich that the studios wanted Joan Crawford as her co-star for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)] I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.- Charlotte Dawson was born in New Zealand. She left New Zealand at age 16 to model in Europe and New York. After about ten years of modeling she moved to Australia, where she worked in television and in the fashion industry. In 2002 she returned to Auckland, where she worked on shows How's Life, Getaway and Charlotte's Lists. Since 2007 she has been a judge on Australia's Next Top Model.Date of Birth
8 April 1966 , Auckland, New Zealand
Date of Death
22 February 2014 , Woolloomooloo, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (suicide)
Spouse:
Miller, Scott (1999 - 2001) (divorced) - Actress
- Make-Up Department
- Soundtrack
Diller put out an autobiography in 2005 in her late 80s, and entitled it "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse", which pretty much says it all when recalling the misfit life and career of the fabulous, one-of-a-kind Phyllis Diller. It may inspire all those bored, discouraged and/or directionless housewives out there to know that the one-time 37-year-old chief bottle washer and diaper disposer of five started out writing comedy routines for her fellow female laundry mates as a sort of reprieve from what she considered her everyday household doldrums. Little did she know she would wind up an entertainment legend who would share the biggest comedy stages with the likes of Bob Hope, George Burns and Jack Benny.
They said it couldn't be done back then (to be a successful lady comic, that is) but the doyenne of female stand-up did just that -- opened the doors for other odd-duck funny girls who dared to intrude on what was considered a man's profession. Initially, the comedienne whipped up an alter-ego that could have only been created with the aid of hallucinogens. Boldly facing the world as a scrawny, witchy-faced, flyaway haired, outlandishly costumed, cigarette-holding, magpie-cackling version of "Auntie Mame", Diller made a virtue out of her weird looks and cashed in on her wifely horror tales and her own idiosyncratic tendencies. Her solid fan base has been thriving now for over five decades.
She was born Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917 in Lima, Ohio to Perry Marcus and Frances Ada (Romshe) Driver. A student at Lima's Central High School, she went on to study for three years at the Sherwood Music Conservatory in Chicago, before transferring to Bluffton (Ohio) College where she served as the editor of the school's more humorous newspaper articles. She was a serious student of the piano but was never completely confident enough in her performance level to try and act on it as a possible career.
She wed Sherwood Anderson Diller at age 22 in November 1939 and had six children (one of whom died in infancy). On the sly, she was an advertising copywriter. During World War II, the family moved to Michigan where her husband had found work at the Willow Run Bomber Plant. A natural laugh-getter, she began writing household-related one-liners and the feedback from the fellow wives greatly encouraged her. When the family moved to California for job-related reasons, Diller became a secretary at a San Francisco television station. By this time, she had built up the courage to put together a nightclub act.
The local television hosts at the station (Willard Anderson and Don Sherwood) thought her act was hilarious and invited her on their show in 1955. Not long after, at age 38, Diller made her debut at San Francisco's Purple Onion nightclub. What was to be a two-week engagement was stretched out to more than a year and a half. The widespread publicity she received took her straight to the television talk and variety circuits where she was soon trading banter with Jack Paar, Jack Benny and Red Skelton, among others, on their popular television series. She was a contestant on Groucho Marx's popular quiz show You Bet Your Life (1950).
Throughout the 1960s, audiences embraced her bold and brazen quirkiness. Diller formed a tight and lasting relationship with Bob Hope, appearing in scores of his television specials and co-starring in three of his broad 1960s comedy films (Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), Eight on the Lam (1967) and The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell (1968). Diller joined Hope in Vietnam in 1966 with his USO troupe.
Her celebrity eventually took its toll on her marriage. She separated from and eventually divorced Sherwood in 1965, who had, by this time, become a favorite topic and target of her act in the form of husband "Fang". That same year, she married singer, film actor and television host Warde Donovan who appeared with her in the slapstick movie Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968). They divorced in 1975.
By this time, Diller was everywhere on the small screen. A special guest on hordes of television series and comedy specials and, especially on such riotfests as Laugh-In (1977) and the Dean Martin celebrity series of roasts, she became a celebrity on the game show circuit as well, milking laughs on such established shows as The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965) and The Gong Show (1976). She published best-selling comedy records to her credit and humorous anecdotes to pitch that made it to the bookstore shelves, such as "Phyllis Diller Tells All About Fang". However, stand-up remained her first love.
Her forays on television in her own series were, regretfully, unsuccessful. Her first television series, The Phyllis Diller Show (1966), had her pretty much pulling out all the stops as a wacky widow invariably scheming to keep up a wealthy front despite being heavily in debt. She had the reliably droll Reginald Gardiner and cranky Charles Lane as foils and even Gypsy Rose Lee, but to little avail. Revamped as "The Phyllis Diller Show", several of comedy's best second bananas (John Astin, Paul Lynde, Richard Deacon, Billy De Wolfe, Marty Ingels) were added to the mix, but the show was canceled after a single season. A second try with The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show (1968), a comedy/variety show that had the zany star backed by none other than Rip Taylor and Norm Crosby, lasted only three months.
Seldom did she manage or receive offers to take her funny face off long enough to appear for dramatic effect. Somewhat more straightforward roles came later on episodes of Boston Legal (2004) and 7th Heaven (1996). Back in 1961, interestingly enough, she made both her stage and film debuts in the dramas of William Inge. Her theatrical debut came with a production of "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" and she appeared first on film in the highly dramatic Splendor in the Grass (1961), lightening things up a bit with a cameo appearance as larger-than-life nightclub hostess Texas Guinan. Diller later impressed with her harridan role in the film The Adding Machine (1969) opposite Milo O'Shea.
Diller enjoyed a three-month run on Broadway in "Hello, Dolly!", co-starring Richard Deacon and appeared in other shows and musicals over time: "Wonderful Town" (she met her second husband Warde Donovan in this production), "Happy Birthday", "Everybody Loves Opal" and "Nunsense". In 1993, Diller was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Her cackling vocals have enhanced animated features, too, what with Mad Monster Party? (1967) and A Bug's Life (1998). It took a heart attack in 1999 to finally slow down the comedienne and she eventually announced her retirement in 2002.
Aside from the baby who died in infancy, Diller was also predeceased by her eldest son, Peter (who died of cancer in 1998) and her daughter, Stephanie Diller (who died of a stroke in 2002). Her surviving children are Sally Diller, Suzanne Sue Diller and Perry Diller. As late as January 2007, she made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992). She was set to return on her 90th birthday in July but a back injury forced her to cancel. She died at age 95 of heart failure on August 20, 2012 in her home in Brentwood, California.Date of Birth
17 July 1917, Lima, Ohio, USA
Date of Death
20 August 2012, Los Angeles, California
Birth Name
Phyllis Ada Driver
Height
5' 1" (1.55 m)
"Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home."
"I love to go to the doctor. Where else would a man look at me and say 'Take off your clothes'?"
"You know you're old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you're barefoot."- Sultry, brunette Faith Domergue was born in New Orleans, part Creole, but primarily of Irish and English extraction. She was adopted when she was six weeks old. In 1927 her adoptive parents took her to live in California, where she was educated at Catholic schools in Santa Monica. She had her first flirt with the acting profession while still at school, on stage at the Bliss Hayden Theatre. Just after her graduation she suffered a disfiguring injury during a car accident when she was thrown into a windshield, and spent 18 months undergoing intensive plastic surgery. Still in her teens, she was briefly married to Acapulco night club owner and bandleader Teddy Stauffer.
By 1941 she was properly back in circulation. "Discovered" by a Warner Brothers talent scout, she was signed to a contract and her name streamlined a la Hollywood to "Faith Dorn". Sometime at the end of May that year young Faith found herself at a studio party (it was not unheard of for underage ingénues to be thrown together with rich or influential men) given on board the Southern Cross, a yacht owned by billionaire Howard Hughes. Hughes, 21 years her senior, became quickly infatuated with the teenager and bought out her contract from Warner Brothers for $50,000, then signed her to the studio he owned, RKO Pictures. He also mollified her adoptive parents by buying them a house, and he paid for Faith to take lessons to perfect her diction and acting. The romantic affair continued on-and-off until mid-1943, and was eventually scuttled by Hughes' various indiscretions with stars Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth.
In 1945 Faith reclaimed her original name, Domergue (insisting it be pronounced "Dah-mure") and, by the following year, made her screen debut in Young Widow (1946), a film starring another Hughes find, Jane Russell. Hughes then spent the extravagant--for the time--amount of $3.2 million on Vendetta (1950), the picture that was to catapult Faith to stardom. Three directors went to work on the project, only to be fired in quick succession: Max Ophüls, Preston Sturges and Stuart Heisler. Faith's lack of theatrical training also proved to be a detriment. The picture was eventually completed by Mel Ferrer, but not released until 1950. When it finally arrived in cinemas, it--like Hughes other fiasco, the Spruce Goose--failed to take off. An earlier effort, the film noir Where Danger Lives (1950), was also released at this time. It starred Domergue in the role as a homicidal femme fatale, opposite Robert Mitchum as the lover she manipulates into taking the blame for her murdering millionaire hubby Claude Rains. In spite of another huge publicity campaign, with Faith featured on the cover of "Look" Magazine and articles in numerous other publications, this film also performed indifferently at the box office and caused Hughes to lose interest in his erstwhile protégé.
During the next few years Faith began to freelance at other studios, appearing in westerns: The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), with Audie Murphy; The Great Sioux Uprising (1953), with Jeff Chandler; and Santa Fe Passage (1955) with John Payne at Republic. In 1955 she starred in the first of a trio of sci-fi/horror outings for which she is chiefly remembered. In This Island Earth (1955), shot in Technicolor at Universal, she played a scientist kidnapped by aliens and, with her colleagues, pressed into service defending their world against interplanetary attack. Helped by a clever script and make-up artist Bud Westmore's $24,000 creation of a bug-eyed mutant monster, the film was a huge success and has become a cult favorite. Faith essayed yet another scientist engaged in destroying Ray Harryhausen's giant octopus (six-tentacled, because of the minuscule budget) in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). In Cult of the Cobra (1955), Faith replaced Mari Blanchard in the role of the high-priestess of a cobra-worshiping cult who assumes the shape of a serpent in order to kill six GIs who have witnessed a secret ceremony.
Following her separation from Argentine writer/director Hugo Fregonese, Faith made three films in England, most notably as queen of the London underworld in Vernon Sewell's Spin a Dark Web (1956) (aka "Spin a Dark Web"). During the 1960s she concentrated on television and appeared in everything from Bonanza (1959) to Combat! (1962), from Perry Mason (1957) to Bronco (1958). After making several films in Italy (and getting married for a third time, to assistant director and theatrical producer Paolo Cossa in 1966)) , she revisited the horror genre in the cheap but cheerful The House of Seven Corpses (1974), as the emotive star of a horror movie who awakens the deceased after reading from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead".
Faith Domergue never quite made it as a major star, unlike Jane Russell. She did, however, acquire something of a cult following because of her involvement in the seminal This Island Earth (1955), as well as her other science-fiction films from this period. Ironically, Faith later confessed that she never much cared for the genre.Date of Death
4 April 1999, Santa Barbara, California, USA (cancer)
Birth Name
Faith Marie Domergue
Height
5' 5" (1.65 m)
Personal Quotes
[about filming of The Great Sioux Massacre (1965)] We were on location in Pendelton, Oregon, where they had the Yumatilla Indians, not the Sioux tribe. These people were into harvesting winter wheat, and they knew nothing of horses, like the Sioux did. In fact [laughs], they kept falling off! There was an ambulance standing by because these poor Indians who wanted to be in the movie, simply couldn't ride a horse!" - Actress
- Soundtrack
An honest-to-goodness Southern Belle, similar to her most famous character role, "Elly May Clampett" on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Donna Douglas grew up in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area, loving "critters". She got married soon after high school, had a son, divorced and won a couple of beauty contests, all within the span of a few years. She moved to New York and soon appeared on television series, including a well-remembered guest-star shot on The Twilight Zone (1959) in one of the series' most famous episodes, Eye of the Beholder (1960), in which she plays a woman who tries to undergo a series of experimental treatments to make her beautiful, only for the treatments to fail. The twist was she was beautiful, at least to the viewers, but considered hideous to the pig people of the planet, she was on. She immediately won the character role of "Elly May Clampett" on one of the greatest situation comedies of all time, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). This extremely comical series debuted with The Clampetts Strike Oil (1962), on her 30th birthday, Wednesday, September 26th, 1962, which is among the narrowest & sheerest coincidences, that are hardest to believe.Date of Birth
26 September 1932, Pride, Louisiana, USA
Date of Death
1 January 2015, Zachary, Louisiana, USA (pancreatic cancer)
Birth Name
Doris Smith
Trade Marks:
Platinum blonde hair
Sparkling blue eyes
Voluptuous figure
Lisp, breathless voice
At her death, she was survived by son Danny Bourgeois, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, one brother and other extended family members.
[on the death of Buddy Ebsen] He has a very, very special place in my heart. And he certainly was an inspiration in many directions, I think he has left a positive influence, politically. He loved his country.
[death bed message to Max Baer Jr.] Tell Maxie I thought I was going to get better.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The girl who one day would be known as "Winnipeg's Sweetheart" was born at Grace Hospital on December 4, 1921, as Edna Mae Durbin. In her early childhood there were no obvious signs that one day she would be a bigger box office attraction than Shirley Temple. Renamed Deanna Durbin for show business purposes, by age 21 she was the most highly paid female star in the world. Her major motion pictures were Three Smart Girls (1936), Mad About Music (1938) and That Certain Age (1938). By the time she was 18 her income was $250,000 a year. Her voice was often described as "natural and beautiful" and her version of "One Fine Day" from Madame Butterfly, became a classic. Deanna was a Hollywood star in every way. There were Deanna Durbin dolls and dresses. An engineering firm named its so-called dream home in her honor. Her first screen kiss was described in a headline story across the continent. What makes Deanna Durbin's story different is that she was never comfortable with adulation. When she was at the top of her career as Hollywood's leading actress and singer, she turned her back on that world for a life of seclusion. Her first two marriages had failed, and before she married her third husband, director Charles David, she set one condition: he had to promise that she could have what she yearned for - "the life of nobody". Her seclusion is incomplete. She lives in the French village of Neauphlé-le-Château, and for over 35 years has resisted every approach from film companies. Her husband has told journalists that "Mario Lanza pleaded with her for years to make a film with him. But she will never go back to that life." She granted only one interview since 1949 to film historian David Shipman in 1983.Date of Birth
4 December 1921, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Date of Death
20 April 2013 , Neauphle-le-Château, Yvelines, France
Birth Name
Edna Mae Durbin
Spouse
Charles David (21 December 1950 - 1 March 1999) (his death) 1 child
Felix Jackson (13 June 1945 - 27 October 1949) (divorced) 1 daughter
Vaughn Paul (18 April 1941 - 14 December 1943) (divorced)
Personal Quotes
I couldn't go on forever being Little Miss Fixit who burst into song.
Just as Hollywood pin-up represents sex to dissatisfied erotics, so I represented the ideal daughter millions of fathers and mothers wished they had. - 1959- Actress
- Additional Crew
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born on September 29, 1931 in Malmo, Sweden. Growing up with seven brothers and sisters was not an adventure, but Anita's adventure began when she was elected Miss Sweden in 1950. She did not win the Miss Universe contest but she got a modeling contract in the United States. She quickly got a film contract with Howard Hughes's RKO that did not lead anywhere (but Anita herself has said that Hughes wanted to marry her). Instead, she started making movies with Universal, small roles that more often than not only required her to look beautiful. After five years in Hollywood, she found herself in Rome, where Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) meant her breakthrough. She stayed in Italy and made around 20 movies during the next ten years, some roles memorable, some to be forgotten. Her two marriages gave her a great deal of attention from the press. During the 1970s, the roles became less frequent, but she made a marvellous comeback with Fellini's Intervista (1987).
Anita Ekberg retired from acting in 2002 after 50 years in the motion picture industry. In December 2011, she was destitute following three months in a hospital with a broken thigh in Rimini, during which her home was robbed of jewelry and furniture, and her villa was badly damaged in a fire. Ekberg applied for help from the Fellini Foundation, which also found itself in difficult financial straits. She died at age 83 from complications of an enduring illness on January 11, 2015 at the clinic San Raffaele in Rocca di Papa, Italy. Ekberg had a new film project with exclusively female Italian producer "Le Bestevem", in which her character, as movie star, should have been recovered again as an icon of the silver screen, a project that was interrupted by her death.
Her funeral was held on January 14, 2015, at the Lutheran-Evangelical Christuskirche in Rome, after which her body was cremated and her remains were buried at the cemetery of Skanor Church in Sweden.Date of Birth
29 September 1931, Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden
Date of Death
11 January 2015, Rocca di Papa, Lazio, Italy
Birth Name
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg
Nicknames
The Iceberg
Miss Sweden
Height
5' 6½" (1.69 m)
Spouses:
Rik Van Nutter
(9 April 1963 - 1975) (divorced)
Anthony Steel
(22 May 1956 - 14 May 1959) (divorced)
Trade Mark (4)
Platinum blonde hair
Cat-like blue eyes
Voluptuous figure
Seductive deep voice
Best known by the public for her role as Sylvia Rank in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), which features the famous scene of her cavorting in Rome's Trevi Fountain, clad in a black gown with a plunging neckline.
She died at age 83 from complications of an enduring illness on January 11, 2015 at the clinic San Raffaele in Rocca di Papa, Italy. Anita Ekberg had a new film project with exclusively female Italian producer "Le Bestevem", in which her character, as movie star, should've been recovered again as an icon of the big screen, a project that was interrupted by her death. Her funeral was held on January 14, 2015, at the Lutheran-Evangelical Christuskirche in Rome, after which her body was cremated and her remains were buried at the cemetery of Skanor Church in Sweden.
Personal Quotes:
I'm very proud of my breasts, as every woman should be. It's not cellular obesity, it's womanliness.
When you're born beautiful, it helps you start in the business. But then it becomes a handicap.
I was lonely, but I have no regrets. I have loved, cried, been mad with happiness. I have won and I have lost.
I don't know if paradise or hell exists, but I'm sure hell is more groovy.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement, to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her paternal grandfather's family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her father had a lucrative practice in Japan, but due to Joan and older sister Olivia de Havilland's recurring ailments the family moved to California in the hopes of improving their health. Mrs. de Havilland and the two girls settled in Saratoga while their father went back to his practice in Japan. Joan's parents did not get along well and divorced soon afterward. Mrs. de Havilland had a desire to be an actress but her dreams were curtailed when she married, but now she hoped to pass on her dream to Olivia and Joan. While Olivia pursued a stage career, Joan went back to Tokyo, where she attended the American School. In 1934 she came back to California, where her sister was already making a name for herself on the stage. Joan likewise joined a theater group in San Jose and then Los Angeles to try her luck there. After moving to L.A., Joan adopted the name of Joan Burfield because she didn't want to infringe upon Olivia, who was using the family surname.
She tested at MGM and gained a small role in No More Ladies (1935), but she was scarcely noticed and Joan was idle for a year and a half. During this time she roomed with Olivia, who was having much more success in films. In 1937, this time calling herself Joan Fontaine, she landed a better role as Trudy Olson in You Can't Beat Love (1937) and then an uncredited part in Quality Street (1937). Although the next two years saw her in better roles, she still yearned for something better. In 1940 she garnered her first Academy Award nomination for Rebecca (1940). Although she thought she should have won, (she lost out to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940)), she was now an established member of the Hollywood set. She would again be Oscar-nominated for her role as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth in Suspicion (1941), and this time she won. Joan was making one film a year but choosing her roles well. In 1942 she starred in the well-received This Above All (1942).
The following year she appeared in The Constant Nymph (1943). Once again she was nominated for the Oscar, she lost out to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943). By now it was safe to say she was more famous than her older sister and more fine films followed. In 1948, she accepted second billing to Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Joan took the year of 1949 off before coming back in 1950 with September Affair (1950) and Born to Be Bad (1950). In 1951 she starred in Paramount's Darling, How Could You! (1951), which turned out badly for both her and the studio and more weak productions followed.
Absent from the big screen for a while, she took parts in television and dinner theaters. She also starred in many well-produced Broadway plays such as Forty Carats and The Lion in Winter. Her last appearance on the big screen was The Witches (1966) and her final appearance before the cameras was Good King Wenceslas (1994). She is, without a doubt, a lasting movie icon.Date of Birth
22 October 1917 , Tokyo, Japan
Date of Death
15 December 2013 , Carmel, California, USA
Birth Name
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland
Height
5' 3" (1.60 m)
Personal Quotes:
Marriage, as an institution, is as dead as the dodo bird.
If you keep marrying as I do, you learn everybody's hobby.
I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia [sister Olivia de Havilland] did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!
[Before the failure of her first marriage] Too many Hollywood marriages have smashed up because husbands were Mr. Joan Fontaine. That will never happen in our marriage because I am 100% Mrs. Brian Aherne.
[on working with Orson Welles on Jane Eyre (1943)] You can not battle an elephant. Orson was such a big man in every way that no one could stand up to him. On the first day at 4 o'clock, he strode in followed by his agent, a dwarf, his valet and a whole entourage. Approaching us, he proclaimed, "All right, everybody turn to page eight." And we did it, though he was not the director.
[on Charles Boyer] Charles Boyer remains my favorite leading man. I found him a man of intellect, taste and discernment. He was unselfish, dedicated to his work. Above all, he cared about the quality of the film he was making, and unlike most leading men I have worked with, the single exception being Fred Astaire, his first concern was the film, not himself.
[on Olivia de Havilland] We're getting closer together as we get older, but there would be a slight problem of temperament. In fact, it would be bigger than Hiroshima.
[on working with director George Cukor on The Women (1939)] I learned about acting from George than anyone else and through just one sentence. He said, "Think and feel and the rest will take care of itself."
I hope I'll die on stage at the age at 105, playing Peter Pan.
[on Olivia de Havilland] My sister is a very peculiar lady. When we were young, I wasn't allowed to talk to her friends. Now, I'm not allowed to talk to her children, nor are they permitted to see me. This is the nature of the lady. Doesn't bother me at all.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Bonnie Franklin, of the freckled, fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, rosy-cheeked, carrot-haired variety, could light up a room with her buoyant, folksy personality, but she could be quite serious in a take-charge manner when it came to purposeful acting work. It took Norman Lear and a highly popular TV sitcom to finally make the 31-year-old performer a household star in the mid-1970s.
She was born Bonnie Gail Franklin in Santa Monica, California on January 6, 1944, the daughter of Samuel Benjamin, an investment banker, and Claire (née Hersch) Franklin, both of Jewish descent. She was thrust onto the stage at a very young age as a child tap dancer and became the protégé of consummate tapper Donald O'Connor. At age 9, she performed with O'Connor on NBC's The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950). A year later, she performed as one of the Cratchit daughters in the Shower of Stars (1954) TV version of "A Christmas Carol", starring Fredric March and Basil Rathbone as "Scrooge" and "Marley", respectively. The young girl then appeared, unbilled on film, playing sweet young things in the rural comedy, The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956), Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) and the Sandra Dee/Troy Donahue's box office tearjerker, A Summer Place (1959).
At age 13, the family moved from Santa Monica to upper-scale Beverly Hills. Graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1961, Bonnie studied at Smith College for a time where the freshman co-ed acted in an Amherst College production of "Good News". She then transferred to UCLA and majored in English. Following her studies, she returned to TV and appeared in lightweight comedies that welcomed her perky, pixie-like presence. These included mid-to-late 1960s episodes of Mr. Novak (1963), Gidget (1965), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964), Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1965) and The Munsters (1964). In 1967, she married Ronald Sossi, a playwright best-known for his writing/producing chores on the TV series, The Rat Patrol (1966). The marriage, however, was short-lived and ended in 1970.
It was on the musical stage that Bonnie found breakthrough success. Following diligent work in "Drat the Cat!" (1965), "Your Own Thing" (1968), "George M.!" (1969) and "Dames at Sea" (1969), she took her first Broadway curtain call in "Applause", the well-received 1970 musical version of All About Eve (1950), starring Lauren Bacall. Bonnie played a theater "gypsy", named "Bonnie", who sings and dances to the title song backed by her "band of gypsies". Bonnie won the Outer Critics and Theatre World awards and a 1970 Tony nomination for her effort here. She continued on the stage with prime roles in "A Thousand Clowns" (1971), the title role in "Peter Pan" (1973), and the revue "Oh, Coward!" (1975).
It wasn't until Bonnie was handed the prime role of "Ann Romano", a divorced mom raising two daughters (Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli) on One Day at a Time (1975), did she become a viable star. Although her contagious cheerfulness and beaming smile was part of her value on the comedy show, Franklin desired to focus on taboo TV subjects such as divorce, birth control, sexual harassment and suicide, as well as getting laughs. While the program didn't match the ground-breaking importance or success of an All in the Family (1971), the show did command consistent and respectable ratings ("Top 20" for seven of its nine years) and lasted on CBS until 1984. Bonnie received one Emmy nomination and two Golden Globe nominations during the sitcom's run, and managed to find time to squeeze in a few other TV-movie projects as well -- A Guide for the Married Woman (1978), Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (1979), the title role in Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger (1980) and Your Place... or Mine (1983). Bonnie also directed episodes of One Day at a Time (1975), Karen's Song (1987) Charles in Charge (1984) and The Munsters Today (1987).
Following the show's demise, Bonnie seemed to keep a lower profile on camera, focusing instead on theatre roles and in several humanitarian efforts. Sporadic guest roles on Burke's Law (1994) (revived), Almost Perfect (1995) and Touched by an Angel (1994) was highlighted by a 2005 TV reunion with her One Day at a Time (1975) TV family, The One Day at a Time Reunion (2005). Her return to the theatre, after a break of 14 years, included roles in a variety of plays: "Happy Birthday and Other Humiliations" (1987), "Annie Get Your Gun" (1988) (as "Annie Oakley"), "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" (1988), "Love and Guilt and the Meaning of Life" (1990), "Grace & Glorie" (1996), "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (1997), "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1999), "Same Time, Next Year" (2000), "Dancing at Lughnasa" (2003), "A Touch of the Poet" (2005), "A Delicate Balance" (2007) and as crotchety "Ouisar" in "Steel Magnolias" (2011). In addition, she put together and toured in her own cabaret act and appeared in nearly a dozen staged readings with Los Angeles' Classic and Contemporary American Playwrights.
Bonnie was a tireless activist for a variety of charities and civic-oriented issues, among them AIDS care and research and the Stroke Association of Southern California. More recently, Bonnie reunited with "One Day at a Time" daughter Valerie Bertinelli in a 2011 episode of Bertinelli's sitcom, Hot in Cleveland (2010), and, a year later, played a recurring nun in the daytime The Young and the Restless (1973).
In September of 2012, Bonnie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died several months later on March 1, 2013. Her second husband of 29 years, TV/film producer Marvin Minoff, who produced Bonnie's TV movie, Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger (1980), as well as the film, Patch Adams (1998), died in 2009.Date of Birth
6 January 1944, Santa Monica, California, USA
Date of Death
1 March 2013, Los Angeles, California, USA (pancreatic cancer)
Birth Name
Bonnie Gail Franklin
Height
5' 3" (1.60 m)
Personal Quotes
[In 2004, she reviewed clips from "One Day at a Time" (1975)] "When I looked at the tapes, I remember thinking how thin I looked. At the time, I was always saying, 'I need to lose weight, I need to lose 10 pounds'."
[as to whether she knew that "One Day at a Time" (1975) was going to be a hit or not]: As soon as we went on the air we started receiving a lot of letters. The letters were saying, 'This is my life. This is what I'm going through. This is what my mother is like.' And so we pretty quickly got the idea that we were touching something.- Peaches Geldof was born on 13 March 1989 in Westminster, London, England, UK. She was a writer, known for The King Is Dead (2010), 8 Out of 10 Cats (2005) and Celebrity Juice (2008). She was married to Thomas Cohen and Maxwell Drummey. She died on 7 April 2014 in Wrotham, Kent, England, UK.Date of Death 7 April 2014 , Wrotham, Kent, England, UK
Birth Name Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof
Height 5' 4" (1.63 m)
Spouses: Thomas Cohen (8 September 2012 - 7 April 2014) (her death) (2 children)
Maxwell Drummey (5 August 2008 - 2011) (divorced)
[on Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)] "I watched that film and I felt disgusted the way he was so biased. He completely ridiculed him [Bush] and it's just like when you're in a playground and you're bullying a little kid. I was for the Iraq war. I supported Bush completely. Of course, it's terrible that millions of people have died but if you think of Saddam Hussein and all the terrible things he's done, I mean, something doesn't come from nothing. Everyone at school, like, a lot of people knew nothing about the war and were wearing T-shirts saying 'F--- Bush' and saying 'Bush sucks'. I think people should be more informed before hating a person for something".
[on discipline] "People are going to hate me for saying this, but I can see where parents are coming from when they impose a curfew. Since I turned sixteen, Dad's been quite reasonable and extended it to one in the morning. But I don't go out at all on weeknights because I have to get up at, like, seven."
[on her name] "I hate ridiculous names, my weird name has haunted me all my life. I hate being called spoilt. My life is ordinary. I also hate being famous because people claim to know me because of my surname. - Anne Haney held prominent roles acting on stage, on the screen, and on TV. All these achievements came in her mid-40s, after she had raised a daughter and buried a husband. It wasn't until after she had packed her daughter off to college and "the maid quit", as she said, that she decided to try her hand at acting. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee and studied drama, radio and TV at the University of North Carolina, where she met her husband, John Haney. She did apply her schooling briefly at a Memphis television station, but soon settled down with her husband and devoted herself to family life. "I was a lovely faculty wife. We made ambrosia salad. We did good works. We played a lot of bridge", she said of those times. By the 1970s, however, Haney began seeking work in local theatre productions and television commercials. Soon, she was traveling with a touring company performing as the maid in Noël Coward's "Fallen Angels". She toured for two years. Eventually, she joined the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of T.V. and Radio Artists. She and her husband had, in fact, planned to move to Southern California after his retirement. She was eager to experience and, she hoped, benefit from the variety and prestige available only in Hollywood. Those plans changed when Mr. Haney died of kidney disease in 1980; Anne Haney made the trek to California, alone. Not long after arriving, she had an agent and a part in the Walter Matthau vehicle Hopscotch (1980). As her career took off, she also secured roles on stage, notably the role of Margaret Fielding in the Theatre West production of "Verdigris". When asked whether she ever dwelled on the prospect that had she begun her career too late, she replied that "this is gravy to me. It's a wonderful way to spend the last third of my life".Date of Birth 4 March 1934, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Date of Death 26 May 2001, Studio City, California, USA (heart failure)
Birth Name Anne Ryan Thomas
Spouse: John Haney (? - 1980) (his death) (1 child)
Personal Quotes: On why she started an acting career so late in life: "My husband died, my daughter went to college, the dog got fleas, and the maid quit, so I had to come to Hollywood." - Actress
- Soundtrack
Jan Hooks is better remembered for her five-year run on Saturday Night Live (1975) (1986-91) on the series she impersonated actress ranging from Bette Davis, to Ann-Margret, to Sally Kellerman, to Jodie Foster. After she left the show, she was proposed by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason to replace Jean Smart on CBS's Designing Women (1986). She accepted. She played the role of Carlene Dobber for the final two seasons. She has also played memorable characters in feature-films including, Tina (the Alamo girl) in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), and Dixie Glick in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood (2004).Date of Birth 23 April 1957, Decatur, Georgia, USA
Date of Death 9 October 2014, New York City, New York, USA (a serious illness)
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m)
Originally turned down for a regular spot on Saturday Night Live (1975) in 1985 because they thought at age 28, she was too old; they hired her the next year, when she was 29.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946's The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954), Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as "Gwen French" in 1958's Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha's stint on the US silver screen's trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.Date of Birth
10 August 1924 , Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Date of Death
31 May 2014 , Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Spouses:
Hal B. Wallis (31 December 1966 - 5 October 1986) (his death)
C. Ray Stahl (31 March 1951 - 4 February 1954) (divorced)
This placid blonde was once in the running for the role of Marion Crane in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but lost out to Janet Leigh.
Was once labeled "Universal's answer to Grace Kelly".
Personal Quotes:
When you live with fame as a day-to-day reality, the allure of privacy and anonymity is as strong as the desire for fame for those who never had it.- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Sylvia Kristel was born on September 28, 1952 in Utrecht, Netherlands. She first came to international attention in the early 1970s with Emmanuelle (1974) for director Just Jaeckin. Then two more sequels followed in which she also starred. Included in her credits are a long list of European films including the film Julia (1974), in which she played the lead. In 1979, she came to Hollywood, appearing in The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979) for producer Jennings Lang, who also featured her in the comedy film The Nude Bomb (1980). However, this was all a prelude to the most successful film in Kristel's career -- Private Lessons (1981) -- in which she played the housekeeper who initiates 15-year-old Eric Brown to the wonders of sex. The film grossed over $50,000,000 worldwide. The Dutch actress, who speaks four languages (Dutch, English, Italian and French), now made her home in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sylvia Kristel died at age 60 of cancer in her sleep on October 18, 2012.Date of Birth 28 September 1952, Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands
Date of Death 18 October 2012, Netherlands (cancer)
[from a 2005 Dutch newspaper interview] I don't expect too much from the afterlife, I think that I know very well what pain is. When I think of the end of my life, I think mainly: I didn't do nothing, but I could have done more.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Sagan Lewis was born on 30 November 1952 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for St. Elsewhere (1982), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and About Schmidt (2002). She was married to Tom Fontana. She died on 7 August 2016 in New York City, New York, USA.Date of Birth 1953, Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Date of Death 7 August 2016, New York City, New York, USA (cancer)
Birth Name Susan J. Lewis
Tom Fontana (July 2015 - her death) Tom Fontana (18 December 1981 - 1992) (divorced)- Actress
- Soundtrack
Joan Lorring was born Madeline Ellis on April 17, 1926, in Hong Kong. She and her mother, Ania Fred, a Russian Jewish immigrant, left Hong Kong after the outbreak of WWII to pursue an acting career, settling in California in the late 1930s. After finding radio work in Los Angeles, Lorring worked her way into films making a minor debut at age 18 in the romantic war drama Song of Russia (1944) and subsequently played the small part of Pepita in the ensemble suspense The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944).
The following year Joan won the coveted role of the scheming, trampy Bessie opposite Bette Davis in The Corn Is Green (1945), earning a Academy Award nomination for "best supporting actress" in the process. She may have lost the Oscar trophy that year to Anne Revere for National Velvet (1944) but Warner Brothers Studio was more than impressed with the up-and-comer and eagerly signed her up. Joan proved quite able in a number of juicy film noir parts, including Three Strangers (1946) and The Verdict (1946), both opposite the malevolent pairing of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
Inexplicably her film career went into a rapid decline by the end of the decade. As a result she sought work elsewhere and maintained with stage, radio and small screen endeavors into the next decade. On Broadway she made her debut in the prime role of budding college student Marie who sets off the explosive dramatic action in "Come Back, Little Sheba" (1950) starring Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer. She continued with strong roles in "The Autumn Garden" (1951), "Dead Pigeon" (1953) and "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957).
Among Joan's many 1950s dramatic showcases on TV was her portrayal of suspected ax-murderess Lizzie Borden's sister Emma on an Alfred Hitchcock episode. In the 1970s, Joan made a mini comeback in the Burt Lancaster movie The Midnight Man (1974) as Cameron Mitchell's wife. She also performed on radio soap operas and appeared for a season on the TV soap Ryan's Hope (1975) before phasing out her career once again.
Long married to New York endocrinologist Dr. Martin Sonenberg, who died in 2011, Joan passed away on May 30, 2014, in Sleepy Hollow, New York, survived by two daughters.Date of Birth 17 April 1926 , Hong Kong, China
Date of Death 30 May 2014 , New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name Mary Madeline Ellis
Nickname Dellie Ellis
Spouse: Dr. Martin Sonenberg (? - 30 May 2014) (her death) (2 children)- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not until The Light That Failed (1939) that she got a chance to get better parts. In most of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) and High Sierra (1940), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them. She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Colman, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson. She made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging from Pillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer in The Man I Love (1946). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles. She left Warner Brothers in 1947 and became a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when director Elmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man's Bette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man's Don Siegel. The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to television where she directed episodes in shows such as The Untouchables (1959) and The Fugitive (1963). In the seventies, she made guest appearances on various television show and appeared in small parts in a few movies.Date of Birth
5 April 1908, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
Date of Death
6 October 1989, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France (metastasized breast cancer)
Birth Name
Ruth Elizabeth Davis
Nickname
The Fifth Warner Brother
The First Lady of Film
Height
5' 3" (1.60 m)
Spouse
Gary Merrill (28 July 1950 - 6 July 1960) (divorced) 2 children
William Grant Sherry (30 November 1945 - 5 July 1950) (divorced) 1 child
Arthur Farnsworth (31 December 1940 - 25 August 1943) (his death)
Harmon Nelson (18 August 1932 - 6 December 1938) (divorced)
When she died in 1989, she reportedly left an estate valued between $600,000 and $1 million, consisting mainly of a condominium apartment she owned in West Hollywood. 50% of her estate went to her son, Michael Merrill, and the remaining 50% went to her secretary and companion, Kathryn Sermack. Her daughter, Barbara Merrill aka B.D. Hyman, was left nothing due to her lurid book about life with her mother. During her long life, she spent the majority of her wealth supporting her mother, three children, and four husbands.
She was of English, French, and Welsh descent.
When she died, her false eyelashes were auctioned off, fetching a price of $600. Previously, she had said that her biggest secret was brown mascara.
[on her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth] Farney was a real charmer, but an alcoholic who was tied to his mother's apron strings... and what a mother. Christ, what a cold bitch.
[on Elizabeth Taylor's declining to have Davis as her co-star in A Little Night Music (1977)] She is such a fool. One would think that after all her years in the business she would want to work with a professional.
[on Greta Garbo] Oh, Garbo was divine. Soooo beautiful. I worshipped her. When I became a star, I used to have my chauffeur follow her in my car. I always wanted to meet her.
[during tension on the set of The Whales of August (1987) about her esteemed costar Lillian Gish] She ought to know about close-ups! Jesus, she was around when they invented them!
[in 1977, on why she was still working] So I am up to my ears in taxes and debts, and that's why I come out of my house in Connecticut every few years and work. I can hole up for just so long, then I gotta get out and stir things up again. It's half for income and half for me.
[on John Wayne] I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He's the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.
[on Errol Flynn] He was just beautiful . . . Errol. He himself openly said, "I don't know really anything about acting," and I admire his honesty because he's absolutely right.
[before taking her final flight in 1989] I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.
[Joan Crawford] and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.
[on sex] God's biggest joke on human beings.
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why [Joan Crawford] always plays ladies.
[referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill] Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis.
[about Katharine Hepburn's tie for the 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand] I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know.
I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
[on her character in All About Eve (1950)] Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she be? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?
[on rival Joan Crawford] She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.
[when told by director Robert Aldrich that the studios wanted Joan Crawford as her co-star for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)] I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Her father was a minister, and when she joined a local stock company as a youngster she changed her name to avoid embarrassing her family. She worked in vaudeville and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her film debut was in A House Divided (1931). She repeated her stage role in Dead End (1937) as Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart)'s mother, which led to a number of slum mother parts. She played very strong role of Lucy, the dude ranch operator in The Women (1939). She achieved popularity as a comedienne in six 1940s movies made with Wallace Beery e.g., Barnacle Bill (1941). The character which would dominate her remaining career was established when she played Ma Kettle in The Egg and I (1947), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She began her co-starring series with Percy Kilbride the following year in Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' (1948) and continued through seven more. Her last movie was a "Kettle" without Kilbride: The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957).Born: Mary Tomlinson February 24, 1890 in Acton, Indiana, USA Died: April 10, 1975 (age 85) in Los Angeles, California, USA
Had been known to wear white gloves and a surgical mask for fear of germ contamination.
Her husband Stanley died in 1935, but until her death, she often had "conversations" with her late husband, occasionally interrupting a scene in a movie. She would then let the director know it was okay to continue the scene, which she did as if nothing happened.
There were a total of 10 movies in which Main played the character of Ma Kettle. She also co-starred with Kettle co-star Percy Kilbride in Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' (1948) though it isn't a Kettle film.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Trudy Marshall was born on 14 February 1920 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Dragonwyck (1946), The Dancing Masters (1943) and Too Many Winners (1947). She was married to Philip Jordan Raffin and Leland Lindsay. She died on 23 May 2004 in Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA.Date of Birth 14 February 1922, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death 23 May 2004, Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA (lung cancer)
Spouse Phillip J. Raffin (17 November 1944 - 1981) (his death) 3 children- Arlene Martel was likely best-known (if not by name) to Star Trek (1966) fans, and possibly most television viewers of a certain age, as Spock's treacherous Vulcan betrothed, T'Pring, in the episode, Amok Time (1967).
Born Arline Greta Sax to Austrian Jewish immigrants on April 14, 1936 in New York City, she spent her early years in one of the poorest slums in the Bronx. When her mother's boss saw her poor living conditions, he personally underwrote her attendance at an upper-crust boarding school in Connecticut. At age 12, she assumed personal responsibility to audition for New York's famed High School of the Performing Arts. Not only did she gain entrance, she went on to excel at the school and graduated with the school's top drama award. Her professional career began in her teens when she landed the role of Esther in the Broadway production of 'Uncle Willie', also starring Norman Fell.
After heading to Hollywood, Martel began making guest appearances on television series such as The Untouchables (1959), Route 66 (1960) and The Twilight Zone (1959). She had the recurring role of Tiger on the situation comedy Hogan's Heroes (1965). Her facility with accents and dialects enabled her to play a wide variety of characters, earning her the nickname of "The Chameleon". Her relationship with James Dean was chronicled in Joe Hyams's biography, "The James Dean Story".
Married and divorced three times, Arlene had three children: Adam Palmer, Avra Douglas, and Jod Douglas.
Martel died at age 78 of a heart attack on August 12, 2014 in Santa Monica, California. She had battled breast cancer some years earlier.Date of Birth 14 April 1936 , New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death 12 August 2014 , Los Angeles, California, USA (heart attack)
Birth Name Arline Greta Sax
Nickname The Chameleon
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m)
Spouses: Jerry Douglas (20 October 1962 - ?) (divorced) (2 children)
Robert Palmer (? - ?) (1 child)
Science Fiction fans may be surprised to learn that Arlene Martel not only had an important guest appearance on Star Trek (1966) episode Star Trek: Amok Time (1967), but also co-starred in what is generally considered the best episode of the original black-and-white series The Outer Limits (1963). She played "Consuelo Biros" opposite Robert Culp's character, "Trent", in the season two episode, The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand (1964), which aired on 17 October 1964. This episode was written by famed science fiction author Harlan Ellison. - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Originally a dance instructor, she came to Broadway during the Depression to begin her career as a professional actress. A daughter of Texas, she originally began work as a dance instructor until a local evangelical-adherent burned down her studio citing her work as being too sinful for human nature. Coming to New York City, she appeared on Broadway introducing the song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". She later made a name for herself in several Hollywood musicals during the 1940s and later in her career enjoyed huge success as Peter Pan, which she cited as her favorite role.Date of Birth
1 December 1913, Weatherford, Texas, USA
Date of Death
3 November 1990, Rancho Mirage, California, USA (cancer)
Birth Name
Mary Virginia Martin- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Melissa Mathison was born on 3 June 1950 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The BFG (2016) and Kundun (1997). She was married to Harrison Ford. She died on 4 November 2015 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Date of Birth
3 June 1950, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death
4 November 2015, Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name
Melissa Marie Mathison
Height
5' 11" (1.8 m)
Spouse:
Harrison Ford
(14 March 1983 - 6 January 2004)
(divorced) (2 children)- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mindy McCready was born on 30 November 1975 in Fort Meyers, Florida, USA. She was an actress, known for Switchback (1997) and Mindy McCready: Ten Thousand Angels (1996). She died on 17 February 2013 in Heber Springs, Arkansas, USA.Date of Birth
30 November 1975, Fort Meyers, Florida, USA
Date of Death
17 February 2013, Heber Springs, Arkansas, USA (suicide by gunshot)
Birth Name
Malinda Gayle McCready
Height
5' 8" (1.73 m)
Arrested July 21, 2007 in Florida and charged with battery and resisting arrest.
Convicted in 2004 for fraudulently obtaining prescription painkillers. In 2005, while on probation for that offense, was charged with driving under the influence. Was found not guilty of the DUI charge, but guilty of driving on a suspended license.
On September 30, 2008, began a 60-day jail sentence after being convicted of probation violation.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
The incredibly gifted comedienne-actress Anne Meara is known for her comedic efforts alongside husband-comedian, Jerry Stiller; together, they were 'Stiller and Meara'; they were original members of the improvisational company, the Compass Players, which later evolved as the Second City Theater. They gained popularity with their skits on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948), but the act dissolved following the demise of variety television. Meara went on to offer her talents to a variety of television roles, notably the Golden Globe-winning Sally Gallagher in Rhoda (1974), and Veronica Rooney, an outspoken Irish cook in the hit sitcom Archie Bunker's Place (1979). In later years, Meara played reoccurring characters in Sex and the City (1998) and The King of Queens (1998).Date of Birth
20 September 1929, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
23 May 2015, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Spouse:
Jerry Stiller
(14 September 1954 - 23 May 2015)
(her death) (2 children)- Actress
- Writer
- Stunts
Evita Muñoz was born on November 26th, 1936, in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico. Before she was 4 years old, she was in front of the cameras already making _El Secreto del Sacerdote_ with Pedro Armendáriz. It was in her second film, ¡Ay Jalisco... no te rajes! (1941) with Jorge Negrete, that she was given the nickname of "Chachita". From then on, she became the star of her own movies, like Morenita clara (1943) and La hija del payaso (1946). When she was a teenager, she stared in the biggest grossing and still most popular trilogy of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema: _Nosotros los pobres (1948)_, _Ustedes los ricos (1948)_, and Pepe El Toro (1953), sharing credits with Pedro Infante. Her ongoing career spans over 40 classic films during 60 years as a wonderfully complete actress, star, idol and has made her a living legend in her own time, as the sole survivor of the Golden Age of Mexican Movies.Date of Birth 26 November 1936, Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico
Date of Death 23 August 2016, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico (cardiorespiratory arrest)
Birth Name Eva M. Muñoz R.
Spouse: Hugo Macias (14 February 1958 - present) (3 children)
Her nickname, "Chachita", was accidentally introduced during her second feature film, Jalisco, Don't Backslide (1941), when the director and producer, Ismael Rodriguez, not being able to remember her given name, started to refer to her as "Muchachita"; (A term of endearment meaning "little girl"), which then was shortened to only "Chachita".- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Brittany Murphy was born Brittany Anne Bertolotti on November 10, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Sharon Kathleen Murphy and Angelo Joseph Bertolotti. Her father's ancestry is Italian, and her mother is of Irish and Slovak descent. Her father moved the family back to Edison, New Jersey as a native New Yorker and to be closer to other siblings from previous marriages. While dining out one night in the presence of Hollywood royalty, Brittany at the age of 5 approached an adjoining table when Academy Award nominee Burt Reynolds and George Segal were seated. Brittany introduced herself to the Hollywood legends and confidently told them that someday she too would be a star.
She comes from a long line of international musicians and performers with three half-brothers and a sister. Angelo Bertolotti was torn from their tight-knit family as a made-man with the Italian Mafia. The Senior Bertolotti, who coined the nickname of "Britt" for his daughter, was also an entrepreneur and diplomat for organized crime families and one of the first to be subjected to a RICO prosecution. Brittany's interests and well-being were always her father's first goal and objective. To distance his talented daughter from his infamous past, Angelo allowed Sharon to use her maiden name for Brittany's, so that her shining star would not be overshadowed by a father's past, with the couple divorcing thereafter.
Brittany began receiving accolades and applause in regional theater at the early age of 9. At the age of 13, she landed several national commercials. She appeared on television and caught the attention of a personal manager and an agent. Soon, Brittany's mother Sharon turned full-time to being a "Stage Mom" where Angelo provided financial support throughout and their relationship is memorialized with a long and close history in pictures. The hopeful daughter and mother moved to Burbank, CA, where Brittany landed her first television role on Blossom (1990). Hearts and doors opened up for a starring role on Drexell's Class (1991), a short lived TV series.
Brittany's big screen movie debut started with Clueless (1995), where she was co-starring with Alicia Silverstone. Britt soared, demonstrating her musical and artistic talents with dramatic and comedic roles landing a nomination for best leading female performance in the Young Artist Awards for her role in the television film David and Lisa (1998). She garnered tremendous attention for her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie. Brittany's band, "Blessed Soul" was growing with her as lead singer and Britt lent her vocal talents to the TV hit, cartoon sensation, King of the Hill (1997) as the voice of Luanne.
She is alleged to have been a witness in the case of the former Department of Homeland Security employee and persecuted whistleblower Julia Davis. According to Davis, Brittany and her fiancée Simon Monjack were then targeted for retaliation that included land and aerial surveillance and a threatened prosecution. Monjack was arrested and detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Brittany and Simon confided in Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Reporter, telling him in an interview that they were under surveillance by helicopters and their telephones have been wiretapped. This information was published by THR posthumously, in an article entitled "The Last Difficult Days of Brittany Murphy."
On December 20, 2009, Brittany Murphy died an untimely death. The LAPD and Los Angeles County Coroner closed the case within one hour, attributing her death to pneumonia and anemia. Five months after Brittany's unexpected demise, her husband Simon Monjack was found dead in the house he shared with Brittany. The chief/spokesperson at the Los Angeles County Dept of Coroner, Craig Harvey, stated that Simon also died from the same exact causes as his wife, namely pneumonia and anemia. Neither Brittany, nor Simon, were given a thorough and complete forensic autopsy for poisons. Brittany's father, Angelo "AJ" Bertolotti, is pursuing the investigation of the true reasons behind Brittany's and Simon's sudden demise, as he believes that the two were murdered. Abnormally high levels of heavy metals and poisons were discovered in Brittany's hair, tested by two other independent forensic labs with famed Pathologist, attorney Cyril Wecht concluded from the appearances, Brittany could have been murdered and should be exhumed. Her father Angelo is preparing court actions to ensure she obtains justice.Date of Birth
10 November 1977, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Date of Death 20 December 2009, Los Angeles, California, USA (pneumonia and anemia)
Birth Name
Brittany Anne Bertolotti
Nickname
Britt
Height
5' 3" (1.6 m)
Spouse:
Simon Monjack
(12 April 2007 - 20 December 2009) (her death)
(November 18, 2013) Almost 4 years after her death, a lab discovered that Murphy's body had 10 heavy metals at levels higher than the WHO [The World Health Organization] high levels. It was reported that she died from pneumonia, but her father Angelo Bertolotti asked for independent tests.
She stated in her will that all of her assets should be left to her mother, Sharon Murphy.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Lupe Ontiveros was born on 17 September 1942 in El Paso, Texas, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for As Good as It Gets (1997), Selena (1997) and Chuck & Buck (2000). She was married to Elias P. Ontiveros. She died on 26 July 2012 in Whittier, California, USA.Date of Birth
17 September 1942, El Paso, Texas, USA
Date of Death
26 July 2012 USA (Liver Cancer)
Height
4' 11" (1.50 m)
Spouse
Elias Ontiveros (? - present( her death) 3 children
Trade Mark
Playing Housekeepers/Maids
She estimates she has played a maid in at least 150 films or plays. She narrated a documentary, "Maid in America".
She is best known in the Latino community for her portrayal of Yolanda Saldivar, the murderer of Selena in the movie Selena, and to Anglo audiences as the housekeeper on The Goonies (1985).
on the Hispanic population in this country] They don't know we're very much a part of this country and that we make up every part of this country. When I go in there and speak perfect English, I don't get the part.
I've made chicken salad out of chicken manure. I'm proud to represent those hands that labor in this country, I've given every maid I've portrayed soul and heart.- Actress
- Director
As she inherited her love for the arts by her father, well-known playwright, actor, director and novelist Mario Peña, it is not hard to understand that actress Elizabeth Pena already had designs to become an actress by the time she was eight years old.
Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on September 23, 1959, the petite (5' 2") actress was raised in New York City. Elizabeth's (and sister Tania's) parents, Cuban immigrants Mario and Estella Margarita Peña, would achieve a strong Latino reputation as the founders of the off-Broadway Latin-American Theatre Ensemble. They also encouraged Elizabeth's talent. In 1975, the young teenager became a founding member of the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors, and two years later graduated from New York's High School of Performing Arts, now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts.
Elizabeth found occasional work in repertory theater and in television commercials. Making her film debut in the independent Spanish-speaking feature El Super (1979), about Cuban refugees, she continued with playing a long line of independent and rebellious characters, which showed plenty of attitude and independence. Playing offbeat roles -- from a knife-threatening waitress to a disco queen -- she appeared in such early films as They All Laughed (1981) and Crossover Dreams (1985). Elizabeth's big break came in the form a support role in the hugely popular and entertaining comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), co-starring Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte, in which she stole several scenes as the sultry, smoky-voiced, politically-minded maid Carmen.
Two consecutive short-lived television series came about around this time. Her first, the ensemble comedy Tough Cookies (1986), had her playing a police officer, and the second was the title housekeeper role in the sitcom I Married Dora (1987). High in demand now, Elizabeth continued to spice up both the big and small screen in such roles as Ritchie Valens' stepsister-in-law in the well-received biopic La Bamba (1987); a drug enforcement agent in the miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story (1990); PTSD-suffering Tim Robbins' live-in girlfriend in the complex drama Jacob's Ladder (1990); and a dedicated legal secretary on the corporate drama series Shannon's Deal (1990) starring Jamey Sheridan.
Honors also came Elizabeth's way when she received the Independent Spirit and Bravo awards for the film Lone Star (1996), and four ALMA Awards for her performances in the television movie Contagious (1997), the films Tortilla Soup (2001) and Rush Hour (1998), and her regular role on the Latino drama series Resurrection Blvd. (2000).
Into the millennium, Elizabeth found steady employment on television with guest roles on Boston Public (2000), CSI: Miami (2002), Without a Trace (2002), Numb3rs (2005), Ghost Whisperer (2005), Charlie's Angels (2011), Prime Suspect (2011), Common Law (2012), and Modern Family (2009). One of her last roles was on the television series Matador (2014). She also found herself further down the credits in films such as On the Borderline (2001), Transamerica (2005), The Lost City (2005), Mother and Child (2009), The Perfect Family (2011), Plush (2013), and Grandma (2015). Three other films -- Girl on the Edge (2015), Ana Maria in Novela Land (2015), and The Song of Sway Lake (2018) -- were released posthumously. She also provided a voice in the popular Disney/Pixar animated film The Incredibles (2004).
A chronic alcohol problem severely hampered Elizabeth's life and she died suddenly from cirrhosis of the liver in Los Angeles, California on October 14, 2014, at age 55. She was survived by her second husband (from 1994), Hans Rolla, and their two children, son Kælan and daughter Fiona.Date of Birth
23 September 1959, Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA
Date of Death
14 October 2014, Los Angeles, California, USA (after a brief illness)
Birth Name
Elizabeth Maria Peña
Height
5' 2" (1.57 m)
Spouses:
Hans Rolla
(1994 - present) (2 children)
William Kibler
(1988 - ?) (divorced)
(on her refusal to portray Latin stereotypes) There are a lot of jobs I've turned down because they wanted me to play what I call "Miss Cuchifrito" types.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Deborah Raffin was born on 13 March 1953 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Death Wish 3 (1985), God Told Me To (1976) and Touched by Love (1980). She was married to Michael Viner. She died on 21 November 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Date of Birth
13 March 1953, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death
21 November 2012, Los Angeles, California, USA (leukemia)
Birth Name
Deborah Iona Raffin
Height
5' 9" (1.75 m)
Spouse
Michael Viner (4 August 1974 - 2005) (divorced) 1 child
R.I.P Deborah. I remember her from way back in Death Wish 3 and Scanners 2. She was a tall (5'10'') and very beautiful actress. Thank you for your films Deborah. May you find the peace you deserve..- Music Artist
- Producer
- Actress
Dolores Janney "Jenni" Rivera was a Mexican-American actress, singer-songwriter, T.V. producer, spokesperson, philanthropist & entrepreneur known for her work within the banda and norteña music genres. She began recording in 1992, and her recordings often have themes of social issues, infidelity & relationships. Her tenth studio album, Jenni (2008), became her first number-one album in the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart in the United States. In 2010, she appeared in and produced the reality TV show Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis & Raq-C. She also appeared in and produced I Love Jenni starting in 2011 and Chiquis 'n Control in 2012. Rivera, along with six others, died in a plane crash at Iturbide, Nuevo León, Mexico on December 9, 2012.Date of Death
9 December 2012, Mexico (airplane crash)
Spouse
Esteban Loaiza (8 September 2010 - present)
Juan Lopez (? - 14 July 2009) (his death) 2 children
Her brothers are also singers. Her brother Lupillo Rivera is a very successful singer who has won many awards in the Latino community. Her brother Pete Rivera is a pastor.- Writer
- Actress
- Producer
Joan Rivers is an American talk show host, comedian, writer and actress from Brooklyn, New York. She voiced Dot Matrix from Mel Brooks' Spaceballs. She has portrayed in several films and shows such as Shrek 2, Look Who's Talking, The Smurfs and Iron Man 3. She passed away in September 2014 at Manhattan, New York.Date of Birth 8 June 1933, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death 4 September 2014, New York City, New York, USA (cardiac arrest after surgery)
Birth Name Joan Alexandra Molinsky
Nickname The Queen of the Barbed One-liners
Height 5' 2" (1.57 m)
Spouses: Edgar Rosenberg (15 July 1965 - 14 August 1987) (his death) (1 child)
James Sanger (1955 - 1955) (annulled)
Trade Marks: Has had a lot of plastic surgery, has never denied it, and as a matter of fact, makes lots of jokes about her own (and other people's) plastic surgery. Loud, raspy voice with New York accent. Says "Can we talk?" frequently in both her acting roles and stand-up routines.
Personal Quotes: [In 2010, on Twitter] With all the plastic surgery I've had I'm worried that when I die, God won't recognize me!
[on reality shows] When was the last time you went to a dinner party where three women got up and slapped each other? Everybody's punching and slapping. This is not reality. We got a second season because everybody that has a parent, a mother, anyone can relate to what really happens between adult children and parents.
[on the passing of Elaine Kaufman] Elaine's was a place you went to let everyone know you were in town. It was first stop L.A./N.Y. You knew your name was above the title when Elaine sat with you. I also loved that the prices changed constantly.
[in an interview, on the UK chat show Loose Women (1999) in 2008, talking about working the red carpet for the E! Channel]: You get someone like Russell Crowe, and you want to say to the camera, he is a piece of - get ready to bleep this - *beep* *beep* (Rivers was immediately pulled from the UK chat show - they had no bleep.) These idiots came running onto the set, ripped me off my seat and dragged me off, saying, "Let's go, let's go, let's go." When the audience saw my empty chair, I worried that, because of my age, they might think I'd wet it because my diaper leaked. People always ask me, "What haven't you done, Miss Rivers? You've done this and that, been nominated for an Emmy and a Tony. You've hosted shows, you've acted, done stand-up, lost your husband to suicide, been bankrupted by a business partner [who made off with $37m in the 1990s] - what haven't you done?. Well, until today, I'd never been kicked off live television. *beep*
One of the earliest jokes I did about my husband was that I was the one who really caused Edgar's suicide, because, while we were making love, I took the bag off my head.
My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I'd scatter his ashes at [the department store] Neiman Marcus - that way, I'd visit him every day.
[on young female comics]: They all come up to me and say, "Without you, I couldn't be here, the barriers you broke down." I say, "Get the *beep* away from me. I still could take every one of you with one hand behind my back. Outta here. Talk like that at my funeral, but not till then.".
The only thing that's saving me is my age. Because I don't care. I've been up, I've been down. I've been fired, I've been hired. I've been broke. What are you gonna to do me? Not like me? I don't give a damn.- Actress
- Director
- Additional Crew
Doris Roberts was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Ann (Meltzer) and Larry Green. She was raised in New York, and took her stepfather's surname. Roberts was a 20-year veteran of the Broadway stage before she began appearing steadily in character roles in film and on television during the 1970s. A versatile player with an inescapably "mom-like" presence, she was adept at playing sympathetic roles but made her most memorable mark as hard-boiled dames, gossips, and nags who were often too savvy of the ways of the world to be fooled by anyone. Roberts built up some face recognition with regular appearances in the sitcoms Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) (syndicated) and Angie (1979) (ABC), but truly came into her own as a widely known comedienne when she was cast as the meddling, strong-willed family matriarch on Everybody Loves Raymond (1996) (CBS). The show became of the best-loved sitcoms in history, and Roberts earned seven Emmy nominations and four wins for her colorful characterization. Well past the common age of retirement and well past the show's celebrated end, Roberts maintained a reputation as one of the big and small screen's most iconic mothers, and she continued to be a welcome sight as a television guest star and film player.Date of Birth 4 November 1925, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Date of Death 17 April 2016, Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name Doris May Green
Height 5' 1" (1.55 m)
Spouse (2) William Goyen (10 November 1963 - 30 August 1983) (his death)
Michael Emilio Cannata (1956 - 1962) (divorced) (1 child)
Trade Marks: Husky resonant voice. Frequently plays motherly roles Short stature
Personal Quote: Everything in life comes to an end. I've known loss. I've lost my husband, I've lost friends. When my husband died, I was devastated.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Born Mary Jeanette Robison. She was the youngest daughter of Henry Robison of Penrith, Cumberland, England and Julia Schelesinger of Liverpool, Lancashire, England. Her father died in 1860 and her mother remarried. In 1866/67 they were living in St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and moved back to London, England in 1871. She ran away from home to marry Charles Leveson Gore in 1875 and in 1877 the young couple went to Fort Worth, Texas, USA to establish a cattle ranch. They survived for two years before moving to New York where her husband died about 1881.
In 1884 she took up acting to support her three children (only her son Edward Gore survived childhood). She played both leads and supporting roles on the road and on Broadway, and over several decades she became highly respected as a character actress. She appeared in a few silent films, then returned to the screen for good in 1926 and flourished in the subsequent sound era. She was usually cast as crusty, gruff, domineering society matron or grandmother. For her portrayal of Damon Runyon's Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), one of her rare starring roles, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Ultimately she appeared in more than 60 films, the last of which was released the year of her death.Born: Mary Jeannette Robison
April 19, 1858 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died: October 20, 1942 (age 84) in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA
The earliest-born actress to receive an Oscar nomination.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Best known for the role of Florida Evans on the 1970s sitcoms Maude (1972) and Good Times (1974), African-American actress Esther Rolle proved to be as spirited and iron-willed off-camera as well. The gap-toothed actress with the gravelly voice was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, the 10th child of 18 born to Caribbean farming immigrants. Her first important work came with the Negro Ensemble Company and over the years would earn a solid careworn reputation in such theater plays as "The Blacks", "Blues for Mister Charlie", "The Amen Corner", "A Raisin in the Sun" and "A Member of the Wedding". Ironically, her father insisted she promise him that she would never become a servant or maid in real life. She didn't, and however Esther would have her biggest successes playing just those types of roles. She caught the attention of television producer Norman Lear while performing on stage who cast her in the Maude (1972) supporting role in 1972. Audiences loved her so much as the feisty domestic who stood her ground, and then some, against her volatile and liberal-minded employer Maude Findley (Bea Arthur), that Esther earned her own spin-off series with Good Times (1974). Compelled to fight racial stereotypes, she insisted before accepting the series that a strong father figure be central in the show (actor John Amos). And while she still played the role of a lower middle-class maid, the show's emphasis was to be on her home and family life, not her outside work. Still, Esther left the show for one season when she was unhappy about the negative role model perpetuated by Jimmie 'JJ' Walker's jive-talking character J.J., but later returned after the producers assured her that more responsibility would be taken. In other assignments, she won an Emmy Award for the television movie Summer of My German Soldier (1978) and gained further respect for her work in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979) and for her film work in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Rosewood (1997). Two of her sisters, Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter, were also character actresses. Afflicted with diabetes, Esther's health failed in the 1990s and toward the end of her life she was on kidney dialysis. The actress, who was divorced and had no children, died nine days after her 78th birthday on November 17, 1998.Date of Birth
8 November 1920, Pompano Beach, Florida, USA
Date of Death
17 November 1998, Los Angeles, California, USA
(complications from diabetes)
Birth Name
Esther Elizabeth Rolle
Spouse:
Oscar Robinson
(1955 - 1975) (divorced)
Trade Marks:
Her Role As Florida Evans on "Good Times"
Her deep raspy voice
Gap between her two front teeth.
When she died in 1998, she left an estate valued in excess of $1.7 million including $200,000 in cash a $400,000 home, $1,072,000 in treasuries. In addition, she owned 1,000 shares of Bethdames Corporation, several Mutual Funds, and 2% interest in El Toro, Ltd.
Her former Good Times (1974) co-star, Jimmie Walker, was the only actor not to attend her funeral.
Her sister, actress Rosanna Carter, passed away in 2001, at age 83, just 3 years after Rolle's death. Her other sister, actress Estelle Evans died in 1985 and lived to be age 78. Both made guest-appearances on Good Times with Esther.
Just before her death, Rolle was reunited with Bea Arthur on RuPaul's VH-1 talk show, where Rolle was brought out to surprise Arthur. This was the first time in over 25 years, they've last seen each other.
Just before her death, her ex-Good Times (1974) co-star, BernNadette Stanis, attended her acting mentor's 78th birthday party, during an Awards Gala in North Hollywood, California.
Esther Rolle passed away on November 17, 1998, just 9 days after she celebrated her 78th and final birthday. 1 year after her death, the film Train Ride (2000) was dedicated to her.
In her final interview, she said on the day of her 78th birthday, that she was glad, very happy; for some reason, when she was younger. Rolle never thought she'd lived to be 50. She lived to be age 78.- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Costume Designer
- Additional Crew
L'Wren Scott was born on 28 April 1964 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. She was a costume designer, known for Ocean's Thirteen (2007), Diabolique (1996) and Mercy (2000). She was married to Andrew Brand and Andrew Ladsky. She died on 17 March 2014 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.Date of Birth
28 April 1964 , USA
Date of Death
17 March 2014 , Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
Height
6' 3" (1.91 m)
Designer and model.
Longtime girlfriend of Mick Jagger.
Was partners with Bianca Jagger for 13 years.
Was longtime friend of Nicole Kidman for 25 years. ”- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ann Sheridan won the "Search for Beauty" contest which carried with it a Paramount screen test. Signed to a contract at 18, she was put into a number of small roles under her real name of Clara Lou Sheridan. As she got better, her name was changed to Ann. In 1936, after two dozen films, she went to Warner Brothers, which billed her as the "Oomph Girl," a name she despised -- although she certainly looked the part. She was allowed to mature into a leading star who could be the girl next door or the tough-as-nails dame. She was in a lot of comedies and a number of forgettable movies, but the public liked her, and her career flourished. She also gave great performances such as the singer in Torrid Zone (1940) and the waitress in They Drive by Night (1940). In 1948, she was dropped by Warner Bros., but came back in Howard Hawks' comedy I Was a Male War Bride (1949) with Cary Grant. She continued to make films into the 1950s but retired before the end of the decade. She starred in the soap opera Another World (1964) and the western series Pistols 'n' Petticoats (1966). Unfortunately, just as her career was reviving with this series, she died of cancer.Born:
Clara Lou Sheridan
February 21, 1915 in Denton, Texas, USA
Died:
January 21, 1967 (age 51) in Los Angeles, California, USA
In her will, she asked that her cremated remains be placed in a columbarium at a cemetery in Los Angeles. Her biographer Karen McHale discovered that the actress' instructions had not been followed and arranged to have her final wishes fulfilled. Hollywood Forever Cemetery donated a niche and held a dignified service (presided over by her cousin, the Rev. Sallie Watson) on February 21, 2005 - which would have been her 90th birthday- Sylvia Sidney was born in The Bronx, New York City, on August 8, 1910 as Sophia Kosow to Jewish parents. Her father was born in Russia and her mother was born in Romania. They divorced not long after her birth. Her mother subsequently remarried and young Sophia was adopted by her stepfather, Sigmund Sidney.
A shy, only child, her parents tried to encourage her to be more outgoing and gregarious. As an early teen, Sophia (later Sylvia) had decided she wanted a stage career. While most parents would have looked down on such an announcement, Sylvia was encouraged to pursue the dream she had made. She enrolled in the Theater Guild's School for Acting. Sylvia later admitted that when she decided to become a stage actress at 15, it wasn't being star struck that occurred to her, but the expression of beauty that encompassed acting. All she wanted was to be identified with good productions.
One school production was held at a Broadway theater and in the audience there was a critic from the New York Times who had nothing but rave reviews for the young woman. On the strength of her performance in New York, she appeared onstage in Washington, D.C. Further stage productions followed, each better than the last and it wasn't long before the film moguls were at the doorstep. She was appearing in the stage production of "Crime" when she made her first appearance on the silver screen in 1927. The film in question was Broadway Nights (1927) which dealt with stage personalities of which Sylvia, despite her extremely tender age, was one. After the film she returned to the stage where she appeared in creations which were, for the most part, forgettable. She moved to Colorado to tour with a stock company. She later returned to Broadway for a series of other plays. By 1929, she was on the big screen with Thru Different Eyes (1929) as Valerie Briand. This was followed by a short film, Five Minutes from the Station (1930). Sylvia Sidney was slowly leaving the stage for the production studios of Paramount.
1931 saw her appear in five films, one of which, City Streets (1931), made her a star. Aware that she was replacing the great Clara Bow, who was suffering from severe and debilitating health issues, mainly depression. The contrast between the two actresses was great but the movie was a hit. The sad-eyed Sylvia made a tremendous impact and her screen career was off a running. Her next film was Ladies of the Big House (1931) as Kathleen Storm McNeil, part of a couple framed for a murder they didn't commit. The film made huge profits at the box-office. She then made Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), appearing opposite Fredric March. The film was an unqualified success. Later, in Madame Butterfly (1932), she starred as the doomed geisha girl (Cho-Cho San); critics agreed that only her performance saved the film from being a total disaster.
In 1933, she starred in the title role in Jennie Gerhardt (1933). Yet another doom and gloom picture, she played a girl beset with poverty and the death of her young husband before the birth of their child. Sidney received the star spotlight in Good Dame (1934). Despite her fine performance, the film failed at the box-office. She scored big with the film critics as the lead female in Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), a restaurant owner who falls for a big time gangster. Her performance was overshadowed by Alan Baxter, who gave an outstanding portrayal as the gangster. That film was quickly followed by "Accent On Youth", in which she played Linda Brown, a young lady fascinated by older men. In 1938, Sidney played in "You and Me", opposite George Raft. The film critics gave it mixed reviews but it did not fare well at the box-office. Afterward, the roles began to dissipate. She filmed ...One Third of a Nation... (1939) and would not be seen again onscreen until The Wagons Roll at Night (1941). There was a four year hiatus before Blood on the Sun (1945), opposite James Cagney.
In 1946, she starred in The Searching Wind (1946) as Cassie Bowman. The film was based on a Broadway play but it just didn't transfer well onto the big screen. It was widely considered to be too serious and flopped with the movie fans. After Love from a Stranger (1947), she didn't appear onscreen again until Les Miserables (1952), as "Fantine". Only three more films followed that decade. There were no films throughout the 1960s. After appearing in a made-for-television movie, she returned to the big screen in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), playing the mother of the character played by Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward. For her performance, Sidney received her only Oscar nomination, losing to another actress who also only received one Oscar nomination in her lifetime, Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon (1973)). O'Neal was 10 years old when she accepted the award.
Aside from a few more supporting role film appearances strewn here and there, Sidney mostly appeared on television thereafter. In 1988, she appeared as Juno in Tim Burton 's hit film Beetlejuice (1988). Her last film for the big screen was Mars Attacks! (1996) as the unlikely heroine whose taste in music saves Earth from an exceptionally brutal Martian victory. She had been seriously injured after being hit by a car but director Burton waited for her to be able to appear (in a wheelchair) rather than recast the role. In 1998, she played Clia, the irritable elderly travel agency clerk, who appeared (along with Fyvush Finkel) at the beginning of every episode of Fantasy Island (1998), the short-lived black-humored reboot of the iconic 1970s series of the same name.
A lifelong heavy smoker, Sidney died on July 1, 1999, aged 88, of throat cancer.Born:
Sophia Kosow
August 8, 1910 in Bronx, New York, USA
Died:
July 1, 1999 (age 88) in New York City, New York, USA - Actress
- Soundtrack
Jean Stapleton was born Jeanne Murray in Manhattan, New York City, to Marie A. (Stapleton), an opera singer, and Joseph Edward Murray, a billboard advertising salesman. Her paternal grandparents were Irish. She was a cousin of actress Betty Jane Watson. Other relatives in show business were her uncle, Joseph E. Deming, a vaudevillian; and her brother Jack Stapleton, a stage actor. She graduated from Wadleigh High School, NYC, in 1939. She worked as a secretary before becoming an actress. Stapleton made her stage debut at the Greenwood Playhouse, Peaks Island, Maine, in the summer of 1941, and her New York stage debut in "The Corn Is Green" (1948). She appeared on Broadway in the musicals "Damn Yankees" (1955) and "Bells Are Ringing" (1956), and later repeated her roles in the movie versions (Damn Yankees (1958) and Bells Are Ringing (1960)). Her other Broadway roles included the original companies of "Rhinoceros" (1961) and "Funny Girl" (1964). Stapleton also played Abby Brewster in the 1986-87 revival of "Arsenic and Old Lace".This list is private and visitors cannot leave comments. Change list settings
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The greats of the cinema who have left an unforgettable legacy for us to continue to enjoy.....May they rest in peace......
Page 2 of 3 (245 People)
Jean Stapleton
“ Date of Birth
19 January 1923, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
31 May 2013, New York City, New York, USA (natural causes)
Birth Name
Jeanne Murray
Spouse
William Putch (26 October 1957 - 23 November 1983) (his death) 2 children
[on being identified with Edith] The first time I was on [the TV quiz show] "Hollywood Squares", I didn't get one question until the end. I assumed it was because they thought I was a dingbat.
[on her most famous character, Edith] She is not the typical American housewife. At least, I *hope* she's not the typical American housewife. What Edith represents is the housewife who is still in bondage to the male figure, very submissive and restricted to the home. She is very naive, and she kind of thinks through a mist, and she lacks the education to expand her world. I would hope that most housewives are not like that. [But] I view her as a true and honest reflection of a woman who is part of a family like the Bunkers. She has her good points--she is very human, very honest, very compassionate, very intuitive, and in most situations she says the truth and pricks Archie's inflated ego.”- Actress
- Soundtrack
This tall (5'10"), pretty, willowy brunette (but frequently blonde) was born on April 28, 1948, in New York City, as one of four children. Raised in Passaic, New Jersey, Marcia grew into a striking young teen and worked for a time as a model in a local children's department store. A talented singer, she initially attempted a singing career and was picked up as a recording artist for Uni Records in 1967. Her debut single, "The Flower Children", was a top 40 hit in many West Coast U.S. markets,
Trekking back to New York City equipped only with her modeling and singing credentials, Marcia found herself performing in an off-Broadway show at the ripe old age of 15, replacing 17-year-old Liza Minnelli in the musical "Best Foot Forward." Inspired, Marcia ventured ahead with a number of stage roles, then broke into television, appearing in several episodes as a teen on the popular The Patty Duke Show (1963). Following some sporadic work on such shows as "Ironside" and "The Paul Lynde Show," Marcia scored her first semi-regular role as an army nurse on the very first season of M*A*S*H (1972).
Making her film debut in the featured role of a reporter in the obscure, semi-counterculture film Changes (1969), Marcia focused on TV work into the 1970's with parts in such shows as "Police Story," "Marcus Welby," "City of Angels," "The Love Boat," "Fantasy Island" and the TV-movies Journey from Darkness (1975) and Brenda Starr (1976). Her huge, breakout role, and the one for which she will best be remembered, was as Gabe Kaplan's wife on the popular sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975) for four seasons. Despite the steady work, Marcia remained disillusioned at playing the relatively overlooked role of Julie Kotter. The primary focus landed squarely on Brooklyn schoolteacher Kotter (the show was based on Kaplan's real-life experiences as a teacher) and his interaction with student "Sweathogs" Robert Hegyes, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Ron Palillo and pre-megastar John Travolta. Stuck with what many deemed a reactive character, she gamely stayed with the show, however, throughout its run.
While "Kotter" would remain her only hit series, she immediately went into another, albeit short-lived, series playing an office worker to sexist sportswriter Ted Bessell in the comedy Good Time Harry (1980). In a second attempt, she co-starred in the crime series Booker (1989) as boss to Dennis Booker, the titular insurance investigator played by handsome, young Richard Grieco, a spin-off character from the series 21 Jump Street (1987).
In between, she remained a steady focus as a guest on such shows as "The Rockford Files," "Magnum, P.I.," "E/R" and "I Married Dora," she appeared in the occasional film -- the offbeat romantic comedy Soup for One (1982) co-starring Saul Rubinek and featured in the Christopher Reeve adventure The Aviator (1985). she regained some popularity as the wholesome wife of nerdy Rick Moranis in the surprise Walt Disney hit Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989). She reprised that role in the equally popular sequel Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992) and played the same kind of wife in the family fantasy comedy And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird (1991).
Marcia remained true blue to the small screen with single performances on "Civil Wars," "Sweet Justice," "Charlie Grace," "Murder, She Wrote," "Highlander," "L.A. Heat," "Tracy Takes On..." and "Baywatch." Returning to films with the crime comedy Another Stakeout (1993), the family sci-fi comedy Earth Minus Zero (1996), in 1998, Marcia returned to her singing talents and performed with "Beauty and the Beast" star Susan Egan in "Hello Again," which was a revamped version of the Max Ophüls classic French film La Ronde (1950). Here she played against type as a prostitute. Marcia attempted two other short-lived series with the comedy Noah Knows Best (2000) and action adventure Tremors (2003) and phased away from the camera not long after a recurring role as a sergeant in the police series Third Watch (1999).
Over the years Marcia carved out a niche for herself not only as a fine actress but also as a social and labor activist, and lent her skills and talents to many progressive causes. Diagnosed with breast and bone cancer in 2007, she published Life with a Side Order of Cancer, a memoir in which she detailed her life, career and challenging illness the following year. Marcia died of complications on October 24, 2014, in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles. She was 66 and survived by her sister Julie Strassman-Cohn, a TV story editor, brother Steve Strassman and daughter Elizabeth Collector, from a brief 1980's marriage to writer/director Robert Collector.“ Date of Birth
28 April 1948, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
24 October 2014, Sherman Oaks, California, USA (breast cancer)
Birth Name
Marcia A. Strassman
Nickname
Bullet
Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)
Her big breakout role, and the one for which she will best be remembered, was as Gabe Kaplan's wife on the popular sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975) for four seasons. Despite the steady work, she was fairly disillusioned at playing the relatively sane (i.e., overlooked) role of Julie Kotter. Most of the focus landed squarely on her husband, a Brooklyn schoolteacher (the show was based on Kaplan's real-life experiences as a teacher) and his interaction with student "Sweathogs" Robert Hegyes, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Ron Palillo and pre-megastar John Travolta. Stuck with essentially a reactive character, she gamely stayed with the show throughout its run. "Kotter" would be her only hit series despite a handful of attempts,- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Shirley Temple was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all: act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in her films and they ultimately bought millions of dollars' worth of products that had her likeness on them. Dolls, phonograph records, mugs, hats, dresses, whatever it was, if it had her picture on there they bought it. Shirley was box-office champion for the consecutive years 1935-36-37-38, beating out such great grown-up stars as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford. By 1939, her popularity declined. Although she starred in some very good movies like Since You Went Away (1944) and the The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), her career was nearing its end. Later, she served as an ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. It was once guessed that she had more than 50 golden curls on her head.Date of Birth
23 April 1928 , Santa Monica, California, USA
Date of Death
10 February 2014 , Woodside, California, USA
Birth Name
Shirley Jane Temple
Height
5' 2" (1.57 m)
Spouses:
Charles Black (16 December 1950 - 4 August 2005) (his death) (2 children)
John Agar (19 September 1945 - 7 December 1950) (divorced) (1 child)
Trade Mark:
Curly hair
Personal Quotes:
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.
One famous movie executive who shall remain nameless, exposed himself to me in his office. "Mr X", I said, "I thought you were a producer, not an exhibitor".
Shirley Temple doesn't hurt Shirley Temple Black. Shirley Temple helps Shirley Temple Black. She is thought of as a friend - which I am!
I'm not too proud of the movies I made as a grownup except for That Hagen Girl (1947), which nobody remembers but which gave me a chance to act.
I class myself with Rin Tin Tin. People in the Depression wanted something to cheer them up, and they fell in love with a dog and a little girl.- Actress
Helen Thomas was born on 4 August 1920 in Winchester, Kentucky, USA. She was an actress, known for Dave (1993), Broadcast Blues (2009) and 1992 Presidential Debates (1992). She was married to Douglas B. Cornell. She died on 20 July 2013 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.Date of Birth
4 August 1920, Winchester, Kentucky, USA
Date of Death
20 July 2013, Washington, D.C., USA
Personal Quotes
Philosophy of checking sources, learned while working for a wire service early in her career: If your mother told you she loved you, you checked it out- Quite a familiar lady and notorious busybody on 1950s and '60s TV and film, petite, red-headed character actress Lurene Tuttle was born in Pleasant Lake, Indiana and raised on a ranch close to the Arizona border. Her father, O.V. Tuttle, started out as a performer in minstrels, but found a job as a railroad-station agent when times got hard. Her grandfather was a drama teacher who once managed an opera house in Angola, Indiana. As a child, she studied acting in Phoenix and was known for her scene-stealing comedy antics even at that early age.
At age 15, the family relocated to Monrovia, California, and it was there that Tuttle began her career. She received dramatic training at the Pasadena Playhouse and appeared in many of their productions, including "The Playboy of the Western World." She subsequently became a troupe member of Murphy's Comedians, a vaudeville company, and then eventually extended her range as a dramatic ingénue in stock shows. Although making it to Broadway somehow slipped through her fingers, Tuttle worked on stage consistently throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Known for her speaking voice and mastery of a wide range of dialects, she found a new avenue in radio during the Depression and became one of that medium's most-recognized voices playing both sweet and sour characters. Dubbed the "First Lady of Radio," her best-remembered role came as Effie, the altruistic "Girl Friday" on "The Adventures of Sam Spade" opposite Howard Duff's cynical-edged gumshoe. Red Skelton also admired her versatility and used her frequently in a variety of parts on his radio show.
Film and TV presented itself to her strongly in the 1950s, by this time fitting in comfortably whether a warm and wise wife and mother or brittle matron. Following her film debut in Heaven Only Knows (1947), Tuttle lent able support alongside film's top stars including Cary Grant in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) and Room for One More (1952); Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Niagara (1953); Joan Crawford in Goodbye, My Fancy (1951); Leslie Caron in The Glass Slipper (1955); and even Liberace when he tried to go legit in Sincerely Yours (1955). It was a rare occasion, however, when she was given a chance to truly shine in a prime supporting role. She could always be counted on to steal a bit of focus with just a sly grin or cynical look as she did playing the brief part of the sheriff's wife in Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic Psycho (1960). One of those rare exceptions when Tuttle actually top-lined a film came with her crazed portrayal of the title character in Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960). Here Tuttle pulled out all the stops in this admittedly fictional "B" crimer, going totally ballistic as the Ozark matriarch who, along with her boys, sets people on fire, runs over cops, and tommyguns her way into infamy. On the small screen, Tuttle was an amusing regular in a plethora of sitcoms, playing starchy relatives or gossipy townsfolk. Most audiences remember her quite fondly as the matriarch in Life with Father (1953) opposite Leon Ames, and as the crusty senior nurse on the Diahann Carroll series Julia (1968). She and Ames took the play "Life With Father" on the road several times after the series' demise.
Off-stage, Tuttle was married to fellow actor and announcer Mel Ruick; their paths initially crossed while both were performing in radio. Their daughter was musical comedy actress Barbara Ruick, best known for playing Carrie Pipperidge in the classic film musical Carousel (1956). The couple eventually divorced, and Tuttle wed again, but the marriage was short-lived. Tragically, her only child, who was married to epic film composer John Williams of "Star Wars" fame, died unexpectedly in 1974.
Tuttle was a well-respected drama and diction coach for several decades. She began teaching radio technique in the 1940s and re-trained some prominent actors who were returning from extensive WWII duty. After a lengthy departure in the 1950s due to TV commitments, she returned to to teaching acting almost to the end. Some of her more famous students included Red Skelton, Orson Welles, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Jayne Meadows. She lived out the rest of her life in Southern California and succumbed to cancer at age 78. In addition to her famous son-in-law, she was survived by her three grandchildren: Jennifer Gruska, a story editor; Mark Towner Williams, a drummer; and Joseph Williams, a composer and singer.Date of Birth
29 August 1907 , Pleasant Lake, Indiana, USA
Date of Death
28 May 1986 , Encino, California, USA (cancer) - Misty Anne Upham, born in Kallispell, Montana, grew up in south Seattle, the fourth of five children. She began her career at the age of thirteen when she joined a community theater group, Red Eagle Soaring. What began as a summer workshop soon turned into a full-time job. By the age of fourteen she was writing and directing short skits and performing on tours throughout the northwest. In the next four years she would be accepted to several Seattle theater companies, all while attending high school. Her first break came in 2001 when she landed the role of Mrs. Blue Cloud in Chris Eyre's sophmore project Skins (2002), where she portrayed a victim of domestic abuse on the Pine Ridge reservation. She also had a large role in the family drama August: Osage County (2013), playing Johnna Monevata, a live-in housekeeper.
Misty died in 2014, in Auburn, Washington, of blunt-force trauma.Date of Birth
6 July 1982, Kalispell, Montana, USA
Date of Death
October2014, Auburn, Washington, USA
Birth Name
Misty Anne Upham
Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Last seen on October 5, 2014 at her apartment in Auburn, Washington. Her father called police on October 6th saying that she was missing. Police searched her apartment and felt that she left of her own volition; and have not officially declared her missing. As of October 12, 2014 she had not contacted family or friends. On October 16, 2014, police found a body in a ravine that they believe to be hers.
Personal Quotes:I don't like interviews. I hate them. I always feel so stupid. I just go blank, even with the simplest questions. I guess it's to do with the fact that I'm a perfectionist. I don't want to say anything that I'll regret in ten years time. And I'm also painfully shy in real life. When I'm in front of the camera, or talking to people as an actress, and not as myself, it's like I become another person. Somehow possessed with somebody who is worth talking to. Because at home people could care less about what I have to say.
I would love to do a film like Howard's End, which is one of my favorites. I would love to do a film like Sense & Sensibility, but until society changes, the only roles I'd get to play in movies like that would be either as a maid, or a prisoner, which totally sucks. - Actress
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Vanity was a glamorous Canadian model and lead singer of the all-girl group "Vanity 6." She specialized in playing sultry female characters often in trouble with the law.
Vanity was born Denise Katherine Matthews in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, the daughter of Helga Senyk and James Levia Matthews. She was of African and German descent. Vanity first appeared on screen in the biographical tale of writer Jack London titled Klondike Fever (1979), before venturing into more gritty territory such as the slasher film Terror Train (1980), the very odd chick flick Tanya's Island (1980), a B-grade martial arts film entitled The Last Dragon (1985) and the totally weird Never Too Young to Die (1986).
However, her best two performances were as the naive stripper assisting blackmail victim Roy Scheider in the under-rated thriller 52 Pick-Up (1986) and as a seductive, smart-talking nightclub singer teaming up with cop Carl Weathers to defeat murderous car tycoon Craig T. Nelson in the violent Action Jackson (1988).
Unfortunately, the remainder of Vanity's film work was of the "straight-to-video" variety and she only scored minor roles in several low-budget thrillers such as Neon City (1991) and Da Vinci's War (1993). In late 1995, Vanity turned her back on Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and dedicated her life to the Christian faith.
Vanity, who suffered from sclerosis encapsulating peritonitis, died on February 15, 2016 in Fremont, California.Date of Birth
4 January 1959, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Date of Death
15 February 2016, Fremont, California, USA (kidney failure)
Birth Name
Denise Katrina Matthews
Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Died approximately 6 days before the death of her longtime mentor and former boyfriend Prince.
Vanity, who suffered from sclerosis encapsulating peritonitis, died on February 15, 2016 in Fremont, California.
She was Prince's protégé and was in the band "Vanity 6" in which she played a hooker on stage (the band was originally named "Hookers").
Prince originally wanted her stage/band name to be "Vagina" but she refused and they settled upon "Vanity."
After leaving Hollywood she dedicated most of her life to her church.
Personal Quote:
[interview, 1995] When I came to the Lord Jesus Christ, I threw out about 1,000 tapes of mine--every interview, every tape, every video. Everything.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Esther Jane Williams was born on August 8, 1921 in Inglewood, California. Her youth was spent as a teenage swimming champion and she won three United States National championships. She eventually was spotted by a MGM talent scout while working in a Los Angeles department store. She made her film debut with MGM in an "Andy Hardy" picture called Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942). She became Mickey Rooney's love interest in the movie, and her character was called Sheila Brooks. Following this movie, stardom was not far away. MGM created a special sub-genre for her known as "Aqua Musicals". Her first swimming role was in Bathing Beauty (1944). This was a simple movie compared to her later big splashes such as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), co-starring Victor Mature and Walter Pidgeon. Esther Williams was often called "America's Mermaid", as it appeared that she could stay underwater forever!
Following the decline of the once lucrative MGM aqua musical, she attempted dramatic roles. The Unguarded Moment (1956), is one example of this new found dramatic confidence. It co-starred George Nader and John Saxon. Also, The Big Show (1961), co-starring Cliff Robertson and Robert Vaughn was another dramatic role. Overall, Esther's acting skills were limited and, as a musical star in the audience's eyes, she was unsuccessful. She retired from the movie industry in the 1960s, returning as a star guest in That's Entertainment! III (1994) discussing her appearance in MGM films. She certainly is recognized today for bringing enjoyment, escapism and entertainment on the big screen and has also a highly successful business in swimwear. Occasional television work discussing her contribution to the film industry is a treat for her fans from time to time.
Esther Williams died at age 91 in her sleep on June 6, 2013 in her home in Los Angeles, California.Date of Birth
8 August 1921, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of Death
6 June 2013, Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name
Ester Jane Williams
Nickname
America's Mermaid
Height
5' 8½" (1.74 m)
Spouse
Edward Bell (24 October 1994 - her death)
Fernando Lamas (31 December 1969 - 8 October 1982) (his death)
Ben Gage (25 November 1945 - 20 April 1959) (divorced) 3 children
Leonard Kovner (27 June 1940 - 1944) (divorced)
Personal Quotes
I was called America's mermaid, because it appeared that I could stay underwater indefinitely.
All they ever did for me at MGM was change my leading man and the water in my pool.
No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.
I don't know to this day how I managed to fit into those bathing suits when I was pregnant, but I did.
The popular "Andy Hardy" series movies were MGM's tests for its promising stars such as Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Donna Reed. If you didn't make it in those pictures, you were never heard from again.
[International Swimming Hall of Fame] If swimming would make his daughter grow up to look like Esther Williams, then father was willing to pay for the lessons.
[in 2003] I was just a swimmer who got lucky.- Actress
- Soundtrack
This pretty, apple-cheeked brunette was in many supporting roles in many 1930s and 1940s films. She is best remembered as a supporting player in Columbia two-reel comedies, opposite such legends as the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton, Andy Clyde, and Harry Langdon. Dorothy made her stage debut at the tender age of just 2 ½, in East Lynne at the Portland Theatre. She became "Ms. Maine" in a beauty contest, selected by Rudolph Valentino. Her stage roles included Helen Of Troy, Young Sinners, and Springtime For Henry. Dorothy entered films in 1932, and appeared in numerous roles in movie such as Under Eighteen (1931), As the Earth Turns (1934) (as leading lady Jean Muir's troublesome stepsister), I Give My Love (1934), High Sierra (1940), and Manpower (1941). Thanks to the wonder of television, and the constant popularity of the Three Stooges, she is seen almost daily around the world wherever the Stooge shorts are aired. Some of Dorothy's hobbies were swimming, roller-skating, painting, and poetry. She retired from the big screen in 1942, and married musician Paul Drake soon thereafter. They were married until her passing on August 9, 1990.Date of Birth 6 January 1906, Portland, Maine, USA
Date of Death 9 August 1990, Long Island, New York, USA
Spouse Morgan Galloway (1931 - 1932) (divorced) Teddy Weinstein
She starred in many of the 3 Stooges shorts in the Curly era. She retired from the big screen in 1942, and married musician Paul Drake soon thereafter. They were married until her passing on August 9, 1990- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Mae Boren Axton was born on 14 September 1914 in Bardwell, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for True Romance (1993), Cast Away (2000) and The Client (1994). She was married to John T. Axton. She died on 9 April 1997 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.Date of Birth
14 September 1914, Bardwell, Texas, USA
Date of Death
9 April 1997, Nashville, Tennessee, USA- Born in 1971, Charlotte Brosnan is the daughter of Cassandra Harris (d. 1991) and Dermot Harris (d. 1986); and the adopted daughter of Pierce Brosnan, who was married to Cassandra from 1977 until her death on 28 December, 1991. She has one brother, Christopher Brosnan (son of Cassandra and Dermot, who was also adopted by Pierce); one half-brother, Sean Brosnan (son of Cassandra and Pierce); and two adopted/step-brothers, Dylan and Paris (sons of Pierce and Keely Shaye Brosnan). Charlotte has a daughter, Isabella Sophie (b. August 1998) and a son Lucas (b. April 16th 2005), with Alex Smith.Date of Birth
27 November 1971, London, England, UK
Date of Death
28 June 2013, London, England (ovarian cancer)
Birth Name
Charlotte Emily Harris
Niece of the late great Richard Harris. - Frequently appearing for or alongside her actor/writer husband of 50 years, noted stage, screen and TV heavy and writer Leo Gordon, actress Lynn Cartwright is probably best remembered for one of her early screen roles as the brusque, Brooklyn-accented switchboard operator in the cult horror The Wasp Woman (1959), and for her touching final screen appearance as the older, sweet-faced WWII-era baseball player Dottie Hinson (played throughout most the film by Geena Davis)) in the final scenes of the Penny Marshall-helmed comedy A League of Their Own (1992).
The willowy, auburn-haired performer with the highly distinctive cheek bones was born on February 27, 1927, in McAlester, Oklahoma, the daughter of U.S. Congressman Wilburn and his wife Carrie (née Staggs) Cartwright. Lynn's younger sister, Wilburta, born a year later, went on to become an artist. Other politically-minded Oklahomans from her family tree include Legislator Buck Cartwright and former Attorney General Jan-Eric Cartwright.
Lynn enrolled in acting lessons at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in the late 1940s. Here is where she met Gordon, an ex-con who was trying to turn his life around as an actor. The couple married in February of 1950 and began married life touring together on the Borscht Belt stages. They went on to have a daughter together, Tara Gordon.
Leo's career took off after he landed an agent and moved the family West to Los Angeles. His brutally hard looks and massive brick-wall presence easily took on evil dimensions and after a chilling breakthough perf in City of Bad Men (1953), cemented his screen infamy with the powerful role of the psychotic prisoner in director Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954). Lynn (using her real first name Doralyn before condensing it to Lynn) found a couple of meager TV assignments ("Rin Tin Tin," etc.) during this early time, but began finding more roles once Leo managed to parlay his acting career into a successful writing one as well. Lynn, in fact, made her film debut in the very first film script Leo sold, Black Patch (1957), which included parts for the two of them.
Lynn also appeared in her writer/husband's script The Cry Baby Killer (1958) which was produced by Roger Corman and introduced Jack Nicholson to film audiences, and can be spotted as one of Zsa Zsa Gabor's Venusian sirens in the campy cult opus Queen of Outer Space (1958). She ended the decade with minor TV drama work in "Target," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Peter Gunn," "Bat Masterson" and "Highway Patrol".
The 1960's proved to be lean years. Other than a couple of unbilled film parts in The Apartment (1960), which won Oscar's "Best Picture" that year and the totally obscure The Girls on the Beach (1965) in which Lynn and Leo were glimpsed as waiters, acting offers were few and far between. By the end of the decade she was appearing in her husband's soft-erotica scripts, including All the Loving Couples (1969), which focused on wife swappers, and in The Erotic Adventures of Robin Hood (1969), which is self-explanatory, as the villainous Lady Sallyforth. The former was based on Leo's own written novel.
Lynn appeared without Leo in the sex-minded teaser film Gabriella, Gabriella (1970) and in The Lucifer Complex (1978) starring Robert Vaughn. She also worked (with and without Leo) from time to time in association with writer/director/producer Rod Amateau in such frisky movie vehicles as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) starring Peter Sellers and The Seniors (1978) starring Dennis Quaid and Priscilla Barnes, as well as Amateau's Nazi-themed lowbudget Son of Hitler (1979) with 'Bud Cort' in the unlikely title role, the teen-oriented Lovelines (1984), and the bizarre and controversial The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987).
On the small screen Lynn could occasionally be found on such 70s and 80s shows as "Adam 12," "Little House on the Prairie," "Dynasty" and "Knot's Landing," some of which were scripted by her husband. In the 1970s Leo and Lynn joined the Group Repertory Theatre company in North Hollywood, California, which was founded by actor Lonny Chapman, where Leo tested and wrote (while Lynn appeared in) several of his stage plays.
Lynn ended her career on a sentimental high note after being cast as the senior version of Geena Davis' character who revisits her baseball-playing alumni at the end of the comedy hit film A League of Their Own (1992) starring Davis and Tom Hanks. The facial resemblance between the two actresses is so extraordinary that people often assume it is Geena herself wearing old-age makeup. Part of this mistaken belief has to to do with the confusion over Lynn's voice -- which was not used in the movie but dubbed in by Geena herself.
Illness dogged Leo's last years and he died in 2000 of cardiovascular disease at age 78, after 50 years of marriage. Lynn was never able to overcome her grief and her health quickly declined following his death with the advancement of dementia. She died four years later after a fall resulted in a hip fracture. She was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.Date of Birth
27 February 1927, McAlester, Oklahoma, USA
Date of Death
2 January 2004, Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from dementia)
Birth Name
Doralyn E. Cartwright
Spouse
Leo Gordon (14 February 1950 - 26 December 2000) (his death) 1 child - Carolyn Mitchell was born Barbara Ann Thomason on January 25, 1937 in Phoenix, Arizona, to Don and Helen Thomason. While attending Emerson Elementary School in Phoenix, she became known as the prettiest girl in Phoenix. Her family moved to Inglewood, California in 1951, a part of Los Angeles, a mecca for beautiful and ambitious young woman desiring to be spotted.
While attending Inglewood's Morningside High School, she began entering beauty pageants, and in October 1953, her dreams came true when she was crowned "Miss Venus." In 1954, she began attending the Hollywood Professional School, where she started using weights to tone her figure to better compete in beauty pageants. In 1954, she was crowned "Queen of the Championships of Southern California." Later that year, she won the "Miss Muscle Beach" and "Miss Surf Festival" titles.
In 1955, she had the honor of being named "Miss Huntington Beach," followed by the "Miss Van Ness," "Miss Bay Beach," "Miss Southwest Los Angeles," "Miss Pacific Coast," and "Queen of Southern California" titles. After graduating from school, she became a dance instructor for Arthur Murray. As "Tara Thomas," she became a model, appearing in "Modern Man" in December 1957.
Early in 1958, Fate intervened in the guise of car salesman Bill Gardner, who introduced her to Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney at a nightclub. The smitten Rooney, hot again after winning the third of his four Oscar nominations the year before (for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for "The Bold and the Brave") and appearing in a box office hit as the eponymous lead in 'Don Siegel's "Baby Face Nelson" (1957), bought her a $4,500 fur coat. On April 12th, 1958, she reportedly took an overdose of sleeping pills. The day after the incident, she told the press that the Mick tried to resuscitate her by pushing her into his swimming pool. The incident later was revealed to be a publicity stunt. By June, Mickey had separated from his fourth wife, actress Elaine Devry, and bought a new house in Sherman Oaks which she moved into to play house with the diminutive movie star.
Before becoming the fifth Mrs. Mickey Rooney, Thomason made two low-budget, indie features, including "Cry Baby Killer" (1958) with future superstar Jack Nicholson. Thomason and Mickey were secretly married in Mexico on December 1, 1958. In March of 1959, the three-months-pregnant Thomason threatened to commit suicide if Rooney didn't get a divorce and marry her, though Mickey tried to convince here that they were already married. On September 13, 1959, Barbara Ann Thomason Rooney gave birth to a daughter, Kelly Ann, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. Rooney announced he had wed Thomason in a Mexican ceremony. Later that year, she appeared in the November 1959 issue of "Gala" magazine.
Due to the dubious nature of their Mexican marriage, Mickey remarried Thomason in 1960, with the Reverend Douglas Smith presiding at his Los Angeles church, making their marriage legal. Their second daughter, Kerry Yule, was born on December 30, 1960. They would have two more children, a son Michael Joseph, born on April 2, 1962, and a third daughter, Kimmy Sue, born four years to the day after their first, on September 13, 1963 by cesarean section.
In August 1963, the heavily pregnant Barbara accompanied Mickey to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, for the filming of "The Secret Invasion." According to his second autobiography, Mickey had been cheating on her, and on July 4th, 1964, Mickey had met a stripper and movie extra in Atlantic City. In late August, his new girlfriend created a row when Barbara Ann accompanied Mickey to the set for the filming of his television series, "Mickey." After the incident, Barbara had a massive fight with Mickey, and in September '64, they both were in contact with divorce attorneys. However, they didn't divorce but decided to move out of Beverly Hills. They sold their Beverly Hills home and moved into a Brentwood house they bought relatively cheap for only $65,000 as both of the previous two occupants had died at the house in freak accidents. It would prove equally unlucky for Barbara.
After becoming friendly with French actor Alain Delon, who was in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1964 to try to make a go at Hollywood. It was Delon who introduced Mickey and Barbara to his stand-in Milos Milosevics, a 24-year-old Yugoslavian actor Delon has brought with him from Paris. Mickey had to go on location to the Philippines to film a picture, and he made the fatal mistake of asking his new friend Milosevics to look after his his wife. Milosevics agreed. With the cat away, the mice did play. Barbara reportedly took Milosevics as a lover to get back at Mickey for his philandering.
While Mickey was in the Philippines, Barbara Ann accompanied her new lover Milosevics to northern California, to the location shoot of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," in which he has a bit part. They were still having an affair when Mickey returned and moved out of the Brentwood house after finding out. The couple filed for an official separation on December 1965, after which Milosevics moved into the Brentwood house to live with Barbara and her four children by Mickey.
After learning she was planning to file a lawsuit for separate maintenance, Mickey filed for divorce on January 19, 1966, citing mental cruelty. In his suit, Mickey asked the court for a restraining order to keep Milosevics out of the Brentwood house. Barabra began to panic when she learned that she might lose her children in a custody battle due to her adultery. On his part, Milosevics became jealous when he realized she was considering returning to Mickey. He was even more incensed when he heard a tape recording of a conversation between Barbara and Mickey, discussing the divorce suit. On the tape, made by a private detective on January 20, 1966 with the help of Barbara and Milosevics, she tells Mickey that she will not see Milosevics again, even as a friend. Afterwards, Mickey checked in to the hospital for treatment of an exotic blood disease he has picked up on location.
That night, she went out with Milosevics and her friend Margie Lane for dinner at the Daisy on Rodeo Drive. They returned to Brentwood and bid her friend goodnight at 8:30 p.m. Three of the children were at home; three-year-old Kimmy Sue was visiting her grandparents in Inglewood. The following day, her friend Wilma Catania and the maid forced open the locked door of the master bedroom with a screwdriver. In the bathroom, they found the bodies of Barbara and Milosevics. She was lying on her back, shot through the jaw, Milosevics beside her, face down, a bullet hole in his temple. Milosevic had shot Barbara with Mickey's chrome-plated .38 caliber revolver, then turned the weapon on himself. When Mickey learned about the murder-suicide, he went into shock and is forced to stay another day in the hospital.
Barabra Ann Thomason's funeral services and interment were held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale on February 5, 1966, with Reverend Douglas Smith, the minister who had married her and Mickey in 1960, presiding. Barbara's four children were put into the custody of their grandparents in Inglewood.
In his autobiography, Mickey said of the murder-suicide,"I died when she did. I am furious at what happened to her." On the rebound, Mickey married Barbara's close friend Marge Lane. That marriage failed after 100 days.25 January 1937, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Date of Death
31 January 1966, Los Angeles, California, USA (homicide)
Birth Name
Barbara Ann Thomason
Spouse
Mickey Rooney (1 December 1958 - 31 January 1966) (her death) 4 children.
Mother of Kimmy Sue Rooney, Kerry Yule Rooney, Kelly Ann Rooney and Michael Joseph Kyle Rooney, from her marriage to Mickey Rooney. - Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Teri Shields was born on 11 August 1933 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Sahara (1983), Endless Love (1981) and Wanda Nevada (1979). She was married to Frank Shields. She died on 31 October 2012 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.Date of Birth
1933, Newark, New Jersey, USA
Date of Death
31 October 2012, Manhattan,New York, USA (Illness due to Dementia)
Birth Name
Maria Theresia Schmonn
Spouse
Francis Alexander Shields (1964 - ?) (divorced) 1 child- Actress
- Soundtrack
In a career spanning six decades plus, the ever-vital and ever-versatile Carmen Zapata stands as one of the most respected and diversified Hispanic-American figures in the performing arts. The much-admired veteran actress has worn many hats over the years: teacher, producer, translator, lecturer and narrator.
Born in New York City on July 15, 1927, the daughter of a Mexican father and Argentine mother, she started entertaining on the musical stage. Making her Broadway debut in the chorus of "Oklahoma" in 1946, she continued in the same vein with regional and summer stock roles in "Bloomer Girl", Bells Are Ringing", "Guys and Dolls" "Carnival" (with Liza Minnelli), "Bye Bye Birdie", "No Strings" and "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off". In 1956 she appeared on Broadway in the Jose Quintero-directed dramatic piece "The Innkeepers" starring Geraldine Page, but it closed within a few days. For years Carmen was active on the stand-up comedy circuit performing in clubs and hotels across the country while billing herself as "Marge Cameron" in order to encourage non-discriminatory employment.
She returned late to acting in the early 1960s (as Carmen Zapata) and the subsequent search for ethnic support roles proved both difficult and unfulfilling. It was impossible to steer clear of the severe stereotypes imposed on her, yet she managed to establish a name for herself on 1970s TV. As a series regular, she had supporting duties alongside Mayor Anthony Quinn in the drama The Man and the City (1971); played matriarch Sophia Valdez in the ethnic family sitcom Viva Valdez (1976) opposite Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.; appeared as Arthur Hill's housekeeper in the detective drama Hagen (1980) starring Chad Everett; and had flavorful recurring roles in The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971) and Flamingo Road (1980). Unfortunately, the series' run of all these shows was too short-lived to earn top TV stardom for herself.
Always striving for dignity, intelligence and positiveness in her work, she was often defeated by token appearances that underused her vast talents. When afforded the opportunity she could be quite touching and heartfelt. Dramatic and comedic performances included roles in such popular shows as "The Bold Ones", "Bonanza", "Marcus Welby, M.D.", "Owen Marshall", "Medical Center", "Adam 12", "Mod Squad", "The Rookies", "Love, American Style", "Wonder Women", "The Streets of San Francisco", "McMillan and Wife", "Trapper John, M.D.", "Chico and the Man", "Matt Houston", "Falcon Crest", "Married with Children", "The Trials of Rosie O'Neil", "L.A. Law", "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman", and many, many others. She was seen sporadically in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the daytime soap Santa Barbara (1984) as Carmen Castillo. Less visible on film, negligible roles included Sol Madrid (1968), Hail, Hero! (1969), Portnoy's Complaint (1972), Rabbit Test (1978), Boulevard Nights (1979), How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), the campy horror flick Vultures (1984), and, more recently as one of the choir nuns in the box-office bonanza Sister Act (1992) and its sequel.
More significantly, Ms. Zapata established herself as a prominent benefactor to the Los Angeles-area performing arts. In 1973 she co-founded the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts (BFA), a resident theater company and organization dedicated to bringing the Hispanic experience and culture to the Southern California community via the medium of bilingual stage productions. Serving as its president and producing director, many honors have been bestowed upon her for her selfless contributions. Establishing a durable relationship with the Los Angeles Unified School District to bring the works of great Hispanic authors to public school students, she has produced over 80 plays on BFA's mainstage. On TV, she starred as the town mayor for nine seasons on the PBS' bilingual children's television show Villa Alegre (1973).
As a teacher of drama, Carmen has offered her talents and services to the Academy of Stage and Cinema Arts and the East Los Angeles College Theatre Arts, among others venues. Moreover, a BFA facility was set up as an extension of UCLA. Since 1976, Carmen has been co-translating the groundbreaking plays and poems of such renowned Hispanic figures as 'Federico Garcia Lorca'. These important translations have included Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding", "The House of Bernarda Alba" and "Yerma" (the last work mentioned won a Dramalogue Award in 1980). In return, she portrayed the small role of Garcia Lorca's mother in the film Death in Granada (1996) starring Andy Garcia as the maverick Spanish poet and playwright who was executed by firing squad for his political stoicism.
A narrator for the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mothers of the Plaza of Mayo (1985), Carmen's later focus has been as a lecturer at universities and theater conferences across the country. At age 80, Ms. Zapata's unwavering dedication in preserving Hispanic-American culture continues to be a source of pride to the Los Angeles community and her profound influence has extended itself nationwide. At various times, she has been the recipient of several L.A. industry awards as well, including the "Ovation", the Dramalogue and Nosotros Awards for her excellence in theatre.
In 2003, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her final millennium film roles included The Egg Plant Lady (2000) and The Sleepy Time Gal (2001) while on TV she made a brief appearance in the TV movie Fidel (2002). She died of heart failure on January 5, 2014, in Van Nuys, CA.Date of Birth
15 July 1927, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
5 January 2014, Van Nuys, California, USA (heart failure)
Birth Name
Carmen Margarita Zapata
Spouse:
Ron Friedman
(July 1957 - 1963) (divorced)
Among her various honors: The 1997 Hispanic Heritage Award for Lifetime Achievement, honoring her commitment to the arts for more than 50 years; YMCA Leadership Award; Woman of Courage Award from the City of Los Angeles; the Governor's Life Achievement Award, and the Community Leadership Award from the Mexican and American Foundation. In May of 1990, she was knighted by his Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain and presented with "El Lazo de Dama del Orden del Mérito Civil." In August of 1993 Mayor Richard Riordan appointed her Commissioner of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.