Lawrence of Arabia 1962 premiere
Friday December 21st, Warner Beverly Hills Theatre 9404 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212
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A leading man of prodigious talents, Peter O'Toole was born and raised in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, the son of Constance Jane Eliot (Ferguson), a Scottish nurse, and Patrick Joseph O'Toole, an Irish metal plater, football player and racecourse bookmaker. Upon leaving school, he decided to become a journalist, beginning as a newspaper copy boy. Although he succeeded in becoming a reporter, he discovered the theater and made his stage debut at age 17. He served as a radioman in the Royal Navy for two years, then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Richard Harris.
O'Toole spent several years on-stage at the Bristol Old Vic, then made an inconspicuous film debut in the Disney classic Kidnapped (1960). In 1962, he was chosen by David Lean to play T.E. Lawrence in Lean's epic drama Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The role made O'Toole an international superstar and received him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In 1963, he played Hamlet under Laurence Olivier's direction in the premiere production of the Royal National Theater. He continued successfully in artistically rich films as well as less artistic but commercially rewarding projects. He received Academy Award nominations (but no Oscar) for seven different films.
However, medical problems (originally thought to have been brought on by his drinking but which turned out to be stomach cancer) threatened to destroy his career and life in the 1970s. He survived by giving up alcohol and, after serious medical treatment, returned to films with triumphant performances in The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982). His youthful beauty lost to time and drink, O'Toole has found meaningful roles increasingly difficult to come by, though he remained one of the greatest actors of his generation. He had two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole, from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips. He also had a son, Lorcan O'Toole, by model Karen Brown.
On December 14, 2013, Peter O'Toole died at age 81 in London, England.- Producer
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Born in Germany he went to America some time before the second World War and spent a year in Hollywood reading foreign scripts after which he returned to Berlin where he set up his own company to organise the remaking of foreign films into German language versions. One he handled was 'All Quiet on the Western Front', an anti war film that became a kind of personal crusade for him. On the opening night the Nazi's, then in power, put a bomb in the cinema. When the Nazis came into power he left Germany and divided his time between Britain, France and America. He changed his name to the more international sounding S.P. Eagle but changed it back when with 'On the Waterfront' he realised he'd made a film to which any man would be proud to put his name.- Director
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An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding a job at Gaumont British Studios in 1927. He worked as tea boy, clapper boy, messenger, then cutting room assistant. By 1935, he had become chief editor of Gaumont British News until in 1939 when he began to edit feature films, notably for Anthony Asquith, Paul Czinner and Michael Powell. Amongst films he worked on were Pygmalion (1938), Major Barbara (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942).
By the end of the 1930s, Lean's reputation as an editor was very well established. In 1942, Noël Coward gave Lean the chance to co-direct with him the war film In Which We Serve (1942). Shortly after, with the encouragement of Coward, Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer 'Anthony Havelock-Allan' launched a production company called Cineguild. For that firm Lean first directed adaptations of three plays by Coward: the chronicle This Happy Breed (1944), the humorous ghost story Blithe Spirit (1945) and, most notably, the sentimental drama Brief Encounter (1945). Originally a box-office failure in England, "Brief Encounter" was presented at the very first Cannes film festival (1946), where it won almost unanimous praises as well as a Grand Prize.
From Coward, Lean switched to Charles Dickens, directing two well-regarded adaptations: Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). The latter, starring Alec Guinness in his first major movie role, was criticized by some, however, for potential anti-Semitic inflections. The last two films made under the Cineguild banner were The Passionate Friends (1949), a romance from a novel by H.G. Wells, and the true crime story Madeleine (1950). Neither had a significant impact on critics or audiences.
The Cineguild partnership came to an end after a dispute between Lean and Neame. Lean's first post-Cineguild production was the aviation drama The Sound Barrier (1952), a great box-office success in England and his most spectacular movie so far. He followed with two sophisticated comedies based on theatrical plays: Hobson's Choice (1954) and the Anglo-American co-production Summertime (1955). Both were well received and "Hobson's Choice" won the Golden Bear at the 1954 Berlin film festival.
Lean's next movie was pivotal in his career, as it was the first of those grand-scale epics he would become renowned for. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was produced by Sam Spiegel from a novel by 'Pierre Boulle', adapted by blacklisted writers Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman. Shot in Ceylon under extremely difficult conditions, the film was an international success and triumphed at the Oscars, winning seven awards, most notably best film and director.
Lean and Spiegel followed with an even more ambitious film, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), based on "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence. Starring relative newcomer Peter O'Toole, this film was the first collaboration between Lean and writer Robert Bolt, cinematographer Freddie Young and composer Maurice Jarre. The shooting itself took place in Spain, Morocco and Jordan over a period of 20 months. Initial reviews were mixed and the film was trimmed down shortly after its world première and cut even more during a 1971 re-release. Like its predecessor, it won seven Oscars, once again including best film and director.
The same team of Lean, Bolt, Young and Jarre next worked on an adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel "Dr. Zhivago" for producer Carlo Ponti. Doctor Zhivago (1965) was shot in Spain and Finland, standing in for revolutionary Russia and, despite divided critics, was hugely successful, as was Jarre's musical score. The film won five Oscars out of ten nominations, but the statuettes for film and director went to The Sound of Music (1965).
Lean's next movie, the sentimental drama Ryan's Daughter (1970), did not reach the same heights. The original screenplay by Robert Bolt was produced by old associate Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Lean once again secured the collaboration of Freddie Young and Maurice Jarre. The shooting in Ireland lasted about a year, much longer than expected. The film won two Oscars; but, for the most part, critical reaction was tepid, sometimes downright derisive, and the general public didn't really respond to the movie.
This relative lack of success seems to have inhibited Lean's creativity for a while. But towards the end of the 1970s, he started to work again with Robert Bolt on an ambitious two-part movie about the Bounty mutiny. The project fell apart and was eventually recuperated by Dino De Laurentiis. Lean was then approached by producers John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin to adapt E.M. Forster's novel "A Passage to India", a book Lean had been interested in for more than 20 years. For the first time in his career; Lean wrote the adaptation alone, basing himself partly on Santha Rama Rau's stage version of the book. Lean also acted as his own editor. A Passage to India (1984) opened to mostly favourable reviews and performed quite well at the box-office. It was a strong Oscar contender, scoring 11 nominations. It settled for two wins, losing the trophy battle to Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984).
Lean spent the last few years of his life preparing an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's meditative adventure novel "Nostromo". He also participated briefly in Richard Harris' restoration of "Lawrence of Arabia" in 1988. In 1990, Lean received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award. He died of cancer on April 16, 1991 at age 83, shortly before the shooting of "Nostromo" was about to begin.
Lean was known on sets for his extreme perfectionism and autocratic behavior, an attitude that sometimes alienated his cast or crew. Though his cinematic approach, classic and refined, clearly belongs to a bygone era, his films have aged rather well and his influence can still be found in movies like The English Patient (1996) and Titanic (1997). In 1999, the British Film Institute compiled a list of the 100 favorite British films of the 20th century. Five by David Lean appeared in the top 30, three of them in the top five.- Actor
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Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor best known for playing Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the title role in Doctor Zhivago (1965), was born Michel Demitri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt to Joseph Shalhoub, a lumber merchant, and his wife, Claire (Saada). Of Lebanese and Syrian extraction, the young Michel was raised Catholic. He was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria and took a degree in mathematics and physics from Cairo University with a major. Afterward graduating from university, he entered the family lumber business.
Before making his English-language film debut with "Lawrence of Arabia", for which he earned a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination and international fame, Sharif became a star in Egyptian cinema. His first movie was the Egyptian film The Blazing Sun (1954) ("The Blazing Sun") in 1953, opposite the renowned Egyptian actress Faten Hamamah whom he married in 1955. He converted to Islam to marry Hamama and took the name Omar al-Sharif. The couple had one child (Tarek Sharif, who was born in 1957 and portrayed the young Zhivago in the eponymous picture) and divorced in 1974. Sharif never remarried.
Beginning in the 1960s, Sharif earned a reputation as one of the world's best known contract bridge players. In the 1970s and 1980s, he co-wrote a syndicated newspaper bridge column for the Chicago Tribune. Sharif also wrote several books on bridge and has licensed his name to a bridge computer game, "Omar Sharif Bridge", which has been marketed since 1992. Sharif told the press in 2006 that he no longer played bridge, explaining, "I decided I didn't want to be a slave to any passion any more except for my work. I had too many passions, bridge, horses, gambling. I want to live a different kind of life, be with my family more because I didn't give them enough time.".
As an actor, Sharif had made a comeback in 2003 playing the title role of an elderly Muslim shopkeeper in the French film Monsieur Ibrahim (2003). For his performance, he won the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actor César, France's equivalent of the Oscar, from the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma.
Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2012, Sharif died of a heart attack on July 10, 2015, in Cairo, Egypt.- Actress
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Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the period from 1927 until 1964, after which she appeared on television until 1986. It was a career that lasted for 59 years.
Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, to working class parents Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens. Her father, from Massachusetts, had English ancestry, and her Canadian mother, from Nova Scotia, was of Scottish and Irish descent. Stanwyck went to work at the local telephone company for fourteen dollars a week, but she had the urge (a dream--that was all it was) somehow to enter show business. When not working, she pounded the pavement in search of dancing jobs. The persistence paid off. Barbara was hired as a chorus girl for the princely sum of $40 a week, much better than the wages she was getting from the phone company. She was seventeen, and was going to make the most of the opportunity that had been given her.
In 1928 Barbara moved to Hollywood, where she was to start one of the most lucrative careers filmdom had ever seen. She was an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (1932) and Stella Dallas (1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (1944), one of her best films, also starring Fred MacMurray (as you have never seen him before). She also excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (1939) and The Lady Eve (1941). Another genre she excelled in was westerns, Union Pacific (1939) being one of her first and TV's The Big Valley (1965) (her most memorable role) being her last. In 1983, she played in the ABC hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the eye of the public. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson.
Barbara was considered a gem to work with for her serious but easygoing attitude on the set. She worked hard at being an actress, and she never allowed her star quality to go to her head. She was nominated for four Academy Awards, though she never won. She turned in magnificent performances for all the roles she was nominated for, but the "powers that be" always awarded the Oscar to someone else. However, in 1982 she was awarded an honorary Academy Award for "superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting." Sadly, Barbara died on January 20, 1990, leaving 93 movies and a host of TV appearances as her legacy to us.- Actor
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Since starring in his first film, Splendor in the Grass (1961), Warren Beatty has been said to have demonstrated a greater longevity in movies than any actor of his generation. Few people have taken so many responsibilities for all phases of the production of films as producer, director, writer, and actor, and few have evidenced so high a level of integrity in a body of work.
In Rules Don't Apply (2016), he writes, produces, directs and stars in. Only Beatty and Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) have been nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an actor, a director, a writer, and a producer for the same film. Beatty is the only person ever to have done it twice, for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and again for Reds (1981). Beatty has been nominated 15 times by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and 8 films he has produced have earned 53 Academy nominations. In 1982 he won the Academy Award for Directing and in 2000 was given the Academy's highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award.
He was awarded Best Director from the Directors Guild of America and Best Writer three times from the Writers Guild of America. He has received the Milestone Award from the Producers Guild, the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Directors Award from the Costume Designers Guild, the Life Achievement Award from the Publicists Guild, and the Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award from the Art Directors Guild. The National Association of Theater Owners has honored him as Director of the Year, as Producer of the Year and as Actor of the Year.
He has won 16 awards from the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and the Golden Globes. In 1992, he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; in Italy he received the David di Donatello award in 1968 and again in 1981 and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998; in 2001, he received the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Sebastian International Film Festival; in 2002, he received the British Academy Fellowship from BAFTA; and in 2011, he was awarded the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film.
In December 2004, Beatty received The Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, D.C. In addition, he is the recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, the HFPA Cecile B. DeMille Award and many others. Politically active since the 1960's, Beatty campaigned with Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 presidential campaign. That same year he traveled throughout the United States speaking in favor of gun control and against the war in Vietnam. In 1972 he took a year off from motion pictures to campaign with George McGovern.
In 1981, Beatty was a founding board member of the Center for National Policy. He is a founding member of The Progressive Majority, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has participated in the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.
Beatty serves on the Board of Directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation. He previously served on the Board of Trustees of The Scripps Research Institute for several years. He has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from the Americans for Democratic Action, the Brennan Legacy Award from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, and the Philip Burton Public Service Award from The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.
In multiple forums he has addressed campaign finance reform, the increasing disparity of wealth, universal health care and the need for the Democratic Party to return to its roots.
In March of 2013, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Beatty was born in Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife, Annette Bening, live in Los Angeles and have four children.
His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. His sister is actress Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty). His ancestry is mostly English and Scottish.- Actress
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In a six-decade-plus career (she started out as a radio performer at age 14), there are very few facets of entertainment that lovely singer/actress Polly Bergen has not conquered or, at the very least, touched upon. A nightclub and Columbia recording artist of the 50s and 60s, she is just as well known for her film and Emmy-winning dramatic performances as she is for her wry comedic gifts. In the leaner times, she has maintained quite well with her various businesses. Truly one for the ages, Polly has, at age 70+, nabbed a Tony nomination for her gutsy "I'm Still Here" entertainer Carlotta in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies", and was still dishing out the barbs as she recently demonstrated as Felicity Huffman's earthy mom on Desperate Housewives (2004).
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee as Nellie Burgin on July 14, 1930, her family, which included father William, mother Lucy and sister Barbra, eventually moved to Los Angeles. By the time she was 14, Polly was singing professionally on radio and managed to scrape up singing gigs with smaller bands around and about the Southern California area. She attended Compton Junior College before Paramount mogul Hal B. Wallis caught sight of her and signed her up with his studio. Having made an isolated film debut (as Polly Burgin) a year earlier in the Monogram western Across the Rio Grande (1949), Wallis showcased her as a decorative love interest in the slapstick vehicles of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the (then) hottest comedy team in Hollywood. But At War with the Army (1950), That's My Boy (1951) and The Stooge (1951) did little for Polly although she presented herself well. MGM and Universal had the idea to cast her in a more serious vein with co-starring roles in their dramas Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), Arena (1953) and Cry of the Hunted (1953), but again she was overlooked. Disasppointed, she decided to abandon her lucrative film contract and seek work elsewhere.
That "elsewhere" came in the form of 1950s TV. Focusing on her singing, she promoted her many albums for Columbia by guest-starring on all the top variety shows of the times. This culminated in her own variety program, The Polly Bergen Show (1957). The song "The Party's Over" became her traditional show-closer and signature tune. Polly also showed some marquee mettle on the cabaret and nightclub circuits, performing at many of the top hotels and showrooms throughout the country. She made her Broadway debut along with Harry Belafonte in "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" in 1953, and went on to appear in such stage shows as "Top Man" and "Champagne Complex". A delightfully engaging game show panelist to boot, she took a regular seat on the To Tell the Truth (1956) panel for five seasons.
Polly tended to display a looser, down-to-earth personality to induce laughs but she was also was formidable dramatic player and fashion plate quite capable of radiating great charm, poise and elegance. For her role as alcoholic torch singer Helen Morgan in the special TV showcase The Helen Morgan Story (1957) , she took home the Emmy award. Unfortunately for Polly, Ann Blyth took on the role of the tragic singer in the film version (with Gogi Grant providing the vocals), in what could have been a significant return to films for her.
Instead, Polly had to wait another five years for that to happen. As the wife of Gregory Peck and designated victim of revengeful psychopath Robert Mitchum in the taut movie thriller Cape Fear (1962), her film career reignited. Other opportunities came in the form of her distraught mental patient in The Caretakers (1963), which found her at odds with nurse Joan Crawford and doctor Robert Stack; the sparkling comedy Move Over, Darling (1963), which placed her in a comedy triangle with "other wife" Doris Day and husband James Garner; and as the first woman Chief Executive of the White House in the frothy comedy tidbit Kisses for My President (1964) opposite bemused "First Gentleman" Fred MacMurray. In what was to be a tinge of deja vu, Polly again saw her movie career dissipate after only a couple of vehicles. True to form, the indomitable Polly rebounded on TV.
A mild string of TV-movies came her way as she matured into the 1970s and 1980s, most notably the acclaimed miniseries The Winds of War (1983), which reunited her with Robert Mitchum, this time as his unhappy, alcoholic wife. This, along with her participation in the sequel, War and Remembrance (1988), earned Polly supporting Emmy nominations. In the years to come, she would find herself still in demand displaying her trademark comic grit in such shows as The Sopranos (1999), Commander in Chief (2005) and Desperate Housewives (2004).
Polly returned to singing in 1999 after nearly a three-decade absence (due to health and vocal issues). Quite huskier in tone, she went on to delight the New York musical stage with stand-out performances in "Follies" (2001), "Cabaret" (2002) and "Camille Claudel" (2007). Polly still made nightly appearances and had even put together singing concert tours on occasion.
Polly has authored three best-selling beauty books outside the acting arena and has demonstrated a marked level of acumen in the business world. Founding a mail-order cosmetics business in 1965, she sold it to Faberge eight years later. She also developed her own shoe and jewelry lines.
Married (1950-1955) to MGM actor Jerome Courtland during her first movie career peak, she later wed topflight agent/producer Freddie Fields in 1957, a union that lasted 18 years and produced two adopted children, Pamela and Peter. A third marriage in the 1980s also ended in divorce. An assertive voice when it comes to women's rights and issues, her memoir "Polly's Principles" came out in 1974.
Polly played a grandmother in her last film, the dramedy Struck by Lightning (2012), and died two years later on September 20, 2013, at the age of 84.- Actress
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One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older.
Her parents divorced while she was still a child, and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before she was to move to Hollywood, she was injured riding in a car hit by a train, ending the possibility of a dancing career.
It was a terrible setback, but after taking singing lessons she found a new vocation, and at age 17, she began touring with the Les Brown Band. She met trombonist Al Jorden, whom she married in 1941. Jorden was prone to violence and they divorced after two years, not long after the birth of their son Terry. In 1946, Doris married George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract (her early credits are often confused with those of another actress named Doris Day, who appeared mainly in B westerns in the 1930s and 1940s).
Her first starring movie role was in Romance on the High Seas (1948). The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (1949) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the movies she made (in addition to several hit records). She made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. In that year, she met and married Martin Melcher, who adopted her young son Terry, who later grew up to become Terry Melcher, a successful record producer.
In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (1953), which was a major hit, and several more followed: Lucky Me (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and what is probably her best-known film, Pillow Talk (1959). She began to slow down her filmmaking pace in the 1960s, even though she started out the decade with a hit, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
In 1958, her brother Paul died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, had made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She didn't make as many films as she had in that decade, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (1968). Martin Melcher died in 1968, and Doris never made another film, but she had been signed by Melcher to do her own TV series, The Doris Day Show (1968). That show, like her movies, was successful, lasting until 1973. After her series went off the air, she made only occasional TV appearances.
By the time Martin Melcher died, Doris discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. She learned that Melcher had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against a man that Melcher had unwisely let invest her money. She married for the fourth time in 1976 and since her divorce in 1980 has devoted her life to animals.
Doris was a passionate animal rights activist. She ran Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, California, which advocates homes and proper care of household pets.
Doris died on May 13, 2019, in Carmel Valley Village, California. She was 97.- Actor
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Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mahilyow Voblast (now in Belarus). Although growing up in a poor ghetto, Douglas was a fine student and a keen athlete and wrestled competitively during his time at St. Lawrence University. Professional wrestling helped pay for his studies as did working on the side as a waiter and a bellboy. However, he soon identified an acting scholarship as a way out of his meager existence, and was sufficiently talented to gain entry into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in "Spring Again" before his career was interrupted by World War II. He joining the United States Navy in 1941, and then after the end of hostilities in 1945, returned to the theater and some radio work. On the insistence of ex-classmate Lauren Bacall, movie producer Hal B. Wallis screen-tested Douglas and cast him in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). His performance received rave reviews and further work quickly followed, including an appearance in the low-key drama I Walk Alone (1947), the first time he worked alongside fellow future screen legend Burt Lancaster. Such was the strong chemistry between the two that they appeared in seven films together, including the dynamic western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), the John Frankenheimer political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and their final pairing in the gangster comedy Tough Guys (1986). Douglas once said about his good friend: "I've finally gotten away from Burt Lancaster. My luck has changed for the better. I've got nice-looking girls in my films now."
After appearing in "I Walk Alone," Douglas scored his first Oscar nomination playing the untrustworthy and opportunistic boxer Midge Kelly in the gripping Champion (1949). The quality of his work continued to garner the attention of critics and he was again nominated for Oscars for his role as a film producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and as tortured painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), both directed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1955, Douglas launched his own production company, Bryna Productions, the company behind two pivotal film roles in his career. The first was as French army officer Col. Dax in director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant anti-war epic Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas reunited with Kubrick for yet another epic, the magnificent Spartacus (1960). The film also marked a key turning point in the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. At Douglas' insistence, Trumbo was given on-screen credit for his contributions, which began the dissolution of the infamous blacklisting policies begun almost a decade previously that had destroyed so many careers and lives.
Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s, starring in many films. He played a rebellious modern-day cowboy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), acted alongside John Wayne in the World War II story In Harm's Way (1965), again with The Duke in a drama about the Israeli fight for independence, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and once more with Wayne in the tongue-in-cheek western The War Wagon (1967). Additionally in 1963, he starred in an onstage production of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but despite his keen interest, no Hollywood studio could be convinced to bring the story to the screen. However, the rights remained with the Douglas clan, and Kirk's talented son Michael Douglas finally filmed the tale in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson. Into the 1970s, Douglas wasn't as busy as previous years; however, he starred in some unusual vehicles, including alongside a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the loopy western comedy The Villain (1979), then with Farrah Fawcett in the sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 (1980) and then he traveled to Australia for the horse opera/drama The Man from Snowy River (1982).
Unknown to many, Kirk has long been involved in humanitarian causes and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. His efforts were rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1981), and with the Jefferson Award (1983). Furthermore, the French honored him with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. More recognition followed for his work with the American Cinema Award (1987), the German Golden Kamera Award (1987), The National Board of Reviews Career Achievement Award (1989), an honorary Academy Award (1995), Recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999) and the UCLA Medal of Honor (2002). Despite a helicopter crash and a stroke suffered in the 1990s, he remained active and continued to appear in front of the camera. Until his passing on February 5 2020 at the age of 103, he and Olivia de Havilland were the last surviving major stars from the Golden Years of Hollywood.- Actress
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Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was born on September 29, 1904 in London, England, to Nancy Sophia (Greer) and George Garson, a commercial clerk. Of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent, Garson displayed no early interest in becoming an actress. Educated at the University of London intending to become a teacher, she opted instead to take a job at an advertising agency. During her off hours she appeared in local theatrical productions, gaining a reputation as an extremely talented and charismatic performer. During a stage production of "Old Music," Garson was offered a studio contract by MGM Vice President of Production Louis B. Mayer while he was on a visit to London looking for new talent. Garson's very first film under that arrangement was the immensely popular Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress - the first of six she would receive. The following year would see Greer in the highly acclaimed Pride and Prejudice (1940) as "Elizabeth Bennet". 1941 saw her earn a second nomination for her role as Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), but it was the moving, if propagandist, Mrs. Miniver (1942), in a role that she would forever be known by, that actually brought her the Oscar statuette as Best Actress.
As Marie Curie in Madame Curie (1943), she would draw yet another nomination, and the same the next year in Mrs. Parkington (1944). It began to seem that any movie she was part of would be an automatic success. Sure enough, in 1945, she won yet another nomination, for her role as "Mary Rafferty" in The Valley of Decision (1945). Still, Garson began to chafe at the unbroken stream of "noble woman" roles in which the studio was casting her. MGM felt that they had an winning formula and saw no compelling reason to alter it. Two standard seven-year contract extensions kept her at MGM until 1954 when, by mutual consent, she left the only studio she had ever known. In 1946, Greer appeared in Adventure (1945), which was a flop at the box-office. 1947's Desire Me (1947) was no less a disaster, downward spiral finally arrested with the hit That Forsyte Woman (1949). The next year, she reprised her role as "Kay Miniver" in The Miniver Story (1950), though audiences were unsurprisingly put off by her character's untimely demise from cancer, leaving screen husband Walter Pidgeon to soldier on alone.
For the remainder of the 1950s, she endured several predictably unappreciated films. Then, 1960 found her cast in the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). This film was, perhaps, her finest work and landed her seventh and final Academy Award nomination. Her final screen appearances were in The Singing Nun (1966) as "Mother Prioress" and The Happiest Millionaire (1967). After a few TV movies, Garson retired to the New Mexico ranch she shared with her husband, millionaire Buddy E.E. Fogelson. She concentrated on the environment and other various charities. By the 1980s, she was suffering from chronic heart problems, prompting her to slow down. That was the cause of her death on April 6, 1996 in Dallas, Texas, at age 91.- Actor
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Dreamy Tab Hunter stood out in film history as one of the hottest teen idols of the 1950s era. With blond, tanned, surfer-boy good looks, he was artificially groomed and nicknamed "The Sigh Guy" by the Hollywood studio system, yet managed to continue his career long after his "golden boy" prime.
Hunter was born Arthur Kelm on July 11, 1931 in New York City, to Gertrude (Gelien) and Charles Kelm. His father was Jewish and his mother was a German Catholic immigrant. Following his parents' divorce, Hunter grew up in California with his mother, older brother Walter, and maternal grandparents, Ida (Sonnenfleth) and John Henry Gelien. His mother changed her sons' surnames to her maiden name, Gelien. Leaving school and joining the Coast Guard at age fifteen (he lied about his age), he was eventually discharged when the age deception was revealed. Returning home, his life-long passion for horseback riding led to a job with a riding academy.
Hunter's fetching handsomeness and trim, athletic physique eventually steered the Californian toward the idea of acting. An introduction to famed agent Henry Willson had Tab signing on the dotted line and what emerged, along with a major career, was the stage moniker of "Tab Hunter." Willson was also responsible with pointing hopeful Roy Fitzgerald towards stardom under the pseudonym Rock Hudson. With no previous experience Tab made his first, albeit minor, film debut in the racially trenchant drama The Lawless (1950) starring Gail Russell and Macdonald Carey. His only line in the movie was eventually cut upon release. It didn't seem to make a difference for he co-starred in his very next film, the British-made Island of Desire (1952) opposite a somewhat older (by ten years) Linda Darnell, which was set during WWII on a deserted, tropical South Seas isle. His shirt remained off for a good portion of the film, which certainly did not go unnoticed by his ever-growing legion of female (and male) fans.
Signed by Warner Bros., stardom was clinched a few years later with another WWII epic Battle Cry (1955), based on the Leon Uris novel, in which he again played a boyish soldier sharing torrid scenes with an older woman (this time Dorothy Malone, playing a love-starved Navy wife). Thoroughly primed as one of Hollywood's top beefcake commodities, the tabloid magazines had a field day initiating an aggressive campaign to "out" Hunter as gay, which would have ruined him. To combat the destructive tactics, Tab was seen escorting a number of Hollywood's lovelies at premieres and parties. In the meantime, he was seldom out of his military fatigues on film, keeping his fans satisfied in such popular dramas as The Sea Chase (1955), The Burning Hills (1956) and The Girl He Left Behind (1956)--the last two opposite the equally popular Natalie Wood. At around this time, Hunter managed to parlay his boy-next-door film celebrity into a singing career. He topped the charts for over a month with the single "Young Love" in 1957 and produced other "top 40" singles as well.
Like other fortunate celebrity-based singers such as Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen, his musical reign was brief. Out of it, however, came the most notable success of his film career top-billing as baseball fan Joe Hardy in the classic Faustian musical Damn Yankees (1958) opposite Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston, who recreated their devil-making Broadway roles. Musically, Tab may have been overshadowed but he brought with him major star power and the film became a crowd pleaser. He continued on with the William A. Wellman-directed Lafayette Escadrille (1958) as, yet again, a wholesome soldier, this time in World War I. More spicy love scenes came with That Kind of Woman (1959), an adult comedy-drama which focused on soldier Hunter and va-va-voom mistress Sophia Loren demonstrating some sexual chemistry on a train.
Seldom a favorite with the film critics, the 1960s brought about a career change for Tab. He begged out of his restrictive contract with Warners and ultimately paid the price. With no studio to protect him, he was at the mercy of several trumped-up lawsuits. Worse yet, handsome Troy Donahue had replaced him as the new beefcake on the block. With no film offers coming his way, he starred in his own series The Tab Hunter Show (1960), a rather featherweight sitcom that centered around his swinging bachelor pad. The series last only one season. On the positive side he clocked in with over 200 TV programs over the long stretch and was nominated for an Emmy award for his outstanding performance opposite Geraldine Page in a Playhouse 90 episode. Following the sparkling film comedy The Pleasure of His Company (1961) opposite Debbie Reynolds, the quality of his films fell off drastically as he found himself top-lining such innocuous fare as Operation Bikini (1963), Ride the Wild Surf (1964) (1965), City in the Sea (1965) [aka War-Gods of the Deep], and Birds Do It (1966) both here and overseas.
As for stage, a brief chance to star on Broadway happened in 1964 alongside the highly volatile Tallulah Bankhead in Tennessee Williams's "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore." It lasted five performances. He then started to travel the dinner theater circuit. Enduring a severe lull, Tab bounced back in the 1980s and 1990s -- more mature, less wholesome, but ever the looker. He gamely spoofed his old clean-cut image by appearing in delightfully tasteless John Waters' films as a romantic dangling carrot to heavyset transvestite "actress" Divine. Polyester (1981) was the first mainstream hit for Waters and Tab went on to team up with Allan Glaser to co-produce and co-star a Waters-like western spoof Lust in the Dust (1984).
Co-starring with "Exorcist" star Linda Blair in the bizarre horror film Grotesque (1988), Tab's last on-camera appearance would be in a small role in the film Dark Horse (1992), which he produced. He preferred spending most of his time secluded on his ranch and breeding horses. In 2005, he returned to the limelight when he "came out" with a tell-all memoir on his Hollywood years. His long-time partner was film producer Allan Glaser.
Tab died on July 8, 2018, in Santa Barbara, California, three days shy of his 87th birthday.- Actor
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Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the movies every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play "The Morning Star" (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (1944).
Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (1946), he was again nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (1948) and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II.
With a string of hits to his credit, Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Moby Dick (1956). He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (1953). Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In the early 1960s, he appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (1962) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), which dealt with the way people live. He also gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (1961), one of the biggest box-office hits of that year.
In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) and The Dove (1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (1976). After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (1977) and the monstrous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (1978). In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (1991).
In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights and civil rights. In 2003, his Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. Gregory Peck died at age 87 on June 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
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Ronald Reagan had quite a prolific career, having catapulted from a Warner Bros. contract player and television star, into serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the governorship of California (1967-1975), and lastly, two terms as President of the United States (1981-1989).
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, to Nelle Clyde (Wilson) and John Edward "Jack" Reagan, who was a salesman and storyteller. His father was of Irish descent, and his mother was of half Scottish and half English ancestry.
A successful actor beginning in the 1930s, the young Reagan was a staunch admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (even after he evolved into a Republican), and was a Democrat in the 1940s, a self-described 'hemophiliac' liberal. He was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947 and served five years during the most tumultuous times to ever hit Hollywood. A committed anti-communist, Reagan not only fought more-militantly activist movie industry unions that he and others felt had been infiltrated by communists, but had to deal with the investigation into Hollywood's politics launched by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, an inquisition that lasted through the 1950s. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigations of Hollywood (which led to the jailing of the "Hollywood Ten" in the late '40s) sowed the seeds of the McCarthyism that racked Hollywood and America in the 1950s.
In 1950, U.S. Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas (D-CA), the wife of "Dutch" Reagan's friend Melvyn Douglas, ran as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and was opposed by the Republican nominee, the Red-bating Congressman from Whittier, Richard Nixon. While Nixon did not go so far as to accuse Gahagan Douglas of being a communist herself, he did charge her with being soft on communism due to her opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon tarred her as a "fellow traveler" of communists, a "pinko" who was "pink right down to her underwear." Gahagan Douglas was defeated by the man she was the first to call "Tricky Dicky" because of his unethical behavior and dirty campaign tactics. Reagan was on the Douglases' side during that campaign.
The Douglases, like Reagan and such other prominent actors as Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, were liberal Democrats, supporters of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, a legacy that increasingly was under attack by the right after World War II. They were NOT fellow-travelers; Melvyn Douglas had actually been an active anti-communist and was someone the communists despised. Melvyn Douglas, Robinson and Henry Fonda - a registered Republican! - wound up "gray-listed." (They weren't explicitly black-listed, they just weren't offered any work.) Reagan, who it was later revealed had been an F.B.I. informant while a union leader (turning in suspected communists), was never hurt that way, as he made S.A.G. an accomplice of the black-listing.
Reagan's career sagged after the late 1940s, and he started appearing in B-movies after he left Warner Bros. to go free-lance. However, he had a eminence grise par excellence in Lew Wasserman, his agent and the head of the Music Corp. of America. Wasserman, later called "The Pope of Hollywood," was the genius who figured out that an actor could make a killing via a tax windfall by turning himself into a corporation. The corporation, which would employ the actor, would own part of a motion picture the actor appeared in, and all monies would accrue to the corporation, which was taxed at a much lower rate than was personal income. Wasserman pioneered this tax avoidance scheme with his client James Stewart, beginning with the Anthony Mann western Winchester '73 (1950) (1950). It made Stewart enormously rich as he became a top box office draw in the 1950s after the success of "Winchester 73" and several more Mann-directed westerns, all of which he had an ownership stake in.
Ironically, Reagan became a poor-man's James Stewart in the early 1950s, appearing in westerns, but they were mostly B-pictures. He did not have the acting chops of the great Stewart, but he did have his agent. Wasserman at M.C.A. was one of the pioneers of television syndication, and this was to benefit Reagan enormously. M.C.A. was the only talent agency that was also allowed to be a producer through an exemption to union rules granted by S.A.G. when Reagan was the union president, and it used the exemption to acquire Universal International Pictures. Talent agents were not permitted to be producers as there was an inherent conflict of interest between the two professions, one of which was committed to acquiring talent at the lowest possible cost and the other whose focus was to get the best possible price for their client. When a talent agent was also a producer, like M.C.A. was, it had a habit of steering its clients to its own productions, where they were employed but at a lower price than their potential free market value. It was a system that made M.C.A. and Lew Wasserman, enormously wealthy.
The ownership of Universal and its entry into the production of television shows that were syndicated to network made M.C.A. the most successful organization in Hollywood of its time, a real cash cow as television overtook the movies as the #1 business of the entertainment industry. Wasserman repaid Ronald Reagan's largess by structuring a deal by which he hosted and owned part of General Electric Theater (1953), a western omnibus showcase that ran from 1954 to 1961. It made Reagan very comfortable financially, though it did not make him rich. That came later.
In 1960, with the election of the Democratic President John F. Kennedy, the black and gray lists went into eclipse. J.F.K. appointed Helen Gahagan Douglas Treasurer of the United States. About this time, as the civil rights movement became stronger and found more support among Democrats and the Kennedy administration, Reagan - fresh from a second stint as S.A.G. president in 1959 - was in the process of undergoing a personal and political metamorphosis into a right-wing Republican, a process that culminated with his endorsing Barry Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. (He narrated a Goldwater campaign film played at the G.O.P. Convention in San Francisco.) Reagan's evolution into a right-wing Republican sundered his friendship with the Douglases. (After Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1980, Melvyn Douglas said of his former friend that Reagan turned to the right after he had begun to believe the pro-business speeches he delivered for General Electric when he was the host of the "G.E. Theater.")
In 1959, while Reagan was back as a second go-round as S.A.G. president, M.C.A.'s exemption from S.A.G. regulations that forbade a talent agency from being a producer was renewed. However, in 1962, the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy successfully forced M.C.A. - known as "The Octopus" in Hollywood for its monopolistic tendencies - to divest itself of its talent agency.
When Reagan was tipped by the California Republican Party to be its standard-bearer in the 1965 gubernatorial election against Democratic Governor Pat Brown, Lew Wasserman went back in action. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and though Wasserman was a liberal Democrat, having an old friend like Reagan who had shown his loyalty as S.A.G. president in the state house was good for business. Wasserman and his partner, M.C.A. Chairman Jules Styne (a Republican), helped ensure that Reagan would be financially secure for the rest of his life so that he could enter politics. (At the time, he was the host of "Death Valley Days" on TV.)
According to the Wall Street Journal, Universal sold Reagan a nice piece of land of many acres north of Santa Barbara that had been used for location shooting. The Reagans sold most of the ranch, then converted the rest of it, about 200 acres, into a magnificent estate overlooking the valley and the Pacific Ocean. The Rancho del Cielo became President Reagan's much needed counterpoint to the buzz of Washington, D.C. There, in a setting both rugged and serene, the Reagans could spend time alone or receive political leaders such as the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and others.
Reagan was known to the world for his one-liners, the most famous of them was addressed to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. "Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall" said Reagan standing in front of the Berlin Wall. That call made an impact on the course of human history.
Ronald Reagan played many roles in his life's seven acts: radio announcer, movie star, union boss, television actor-cum-host, governor, right-wing critic of big government and President of the United States.- The epitome of poise, charm, style and grace, beautiful brunette Barbara Rush was born in Denver, Colorado in 1927 and enrolled at the University of California before working with the University Players and taking acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. It didn't take long for talent scouts to spot her and, following a play performance, Paramount quickly signed her up in 1950, making her debut with The Goldbergs (1950).
Just prior to this, she had met fellow actor Jeffrey Hunter, a handsome newcomer who would later become a "beefcake" bobbysoxer idol over at Fox. The two fell in love and married in December 1950. Soon, they were on their way to becoming one of Hollywood's most beautiful and photogenic young couples. Their son Christopher was born in 1952.
While at Paramount, she was decorative in such assembly-line fare as When Worlds Collide (1951), Quebec (1951) and Flaming Feather (1952). She later co-starred opposite some of Hollywood's top leading males: James Mason, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and Kirk Douglas. In most cases, she played brittle wives, conniving "other women" or socialite girlfriend types.
Despite the "A" list movies Barbara was piling up, the one single role that could put her over the top never showed its face. By the early 1960s, her film career started to decline. She married publicist Warren Cowan in 1959 and bore a second child, Claudia Cowan, in 1964. TV became a viable source of income for her, appearing in scores of guest parts on the more popular shows of the time while co-starring in standard mini-movie dramas.
She even had a bit of fun playing a "guest villainess" on the Batman (1966) series as temptress "Nora Clavicle". The stage also became a strong focus for Barbara, earning the Sarah Siddons Award for her starring role in "Forty Carats". She made her Broadway debut in the one-woman showcase "A Woman of Independent Means", which also subsequently earned her the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award during its tour. Other showcases included "Private Lives", "Same Time, Next Year", "The Night of the Iguana" and "Steel Magnolias". Rush continued to occasionally appear onscreen, most recently in a recurring role on TV's 7th Heaven (1996). She died on March 31, 2024, aged 97. - Actor
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Emanuel Goldenberg arrived in the United States from Romania at age ten, and his family moved into New York's Lower East Side. He took up acting while attending City College, abandoning plans to become a rabbi or lawyer. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts awarded him a scholarship, and he began work in stock, with his new name, Edward G. Robinson (the "G" stood for his birth surname), in 1913. Broadway was two years later; he worked steadily there for 15 years. His work included "The Kibitzer", a comedy he co-wrote with Jo Swerling. His film debut was a small supporting part in the silent The Bright Shawl (1923), but it was with the coming of sound that he hit his stride. His stellar performance as snarling, murderous thug Rico Bandello in Little Caesar (1931)--all the more impressive since in real life Robinson was a sophisticated, cultured man with a passion for fine art--set the standard for movie gangsters, both for himself in many later films and for the industry. He portrayed the title character in several biographical works, such as Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940) and A Dispatch from Reuters (1940). Psychological dramas included Flesh and Fantasy (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944)and Scarlet Street (1945). Another notable gangster role was in Key Largo (1948). He was "absolved" of allegations of Communist affiliation after testifying as a friendly witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy hysteria of the early 1950s. In 1956 he had to sell off his extensive art collection in a divorce settlement and also had to deal with a psychologically troubled son. In 1956 he returned to Broadway in "Middle of the Night". In 1973 he was awarded a special, posthumous Oscar for lifetime achievement.- Actor
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James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he was a keen athlete (football and track), musician (singing and accordion playing), and sometime actor.
In 1929, he won a place at Princeton University, where he studied architecture with some success and became further involved with the performing arts as a musician and actor with the University Players. After graduation, engagements with the University Players took him around the northeastern United States, including a run on Broadway in 1932. But work dried up as the Great Depression deepened, and it was not until 1934, when he followed his friend Henry Fonda to Hollywood, that things began to pick up.
After his first screen appearance in Art Trouble (1934), Stewart worked for a time for MGM as a contract player and slowly began making a name for himself in increasingly high-profile roles throughout the rest of the 1930s. His famous collaborations with Frank Capra, in You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and, after World War II, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) helped to launch his career as a star and to establish his screen persona as the likable everyman.
Having learned to fly in 1935, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1940 as a private (after twice failing the medical for being underweight). During the course of World War II, he rose to the rank of colonel, first as an instructor at home in the United States, and later on combat missions in Europe. He remained involved with the United States Air Force Reserve after the war and officially retired in 1968. In 1959, he was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the highest-ranking actor in U.S. military history.
Stewart's acting career took off properly after the war. During the course of his long professional life, he had roles in some of Hollywood's best-remembered films, starring in a string of Westerns, bringing his everyman qualities to movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)), biopics (The Stratton Story (1949), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), for instance, thrillers (most notably his frequent collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock), and even some screwball comedies.
On June 25, 1997, a thrombosis formed in his right leg, leading to a pulmonary embolism, and a week later on July 2, 1997, surrounded by his children, James Stewart died at age 89 at his home in Beverly Hills, California. His last words to his family were, "I'm going to be with Gloria now".- Actress
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The daughter of a noted surgeon, Dana Wynter was born Dagmar Winter in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in England. When she was 16 her father went to Morocco, reportedly to operate on a woman who wouldn't allow anyone else to attend her; he visited friends in Southern Rhodesia, fell in love with it and brought his daughter and her stepmother to live with him there. Wynter later enrolled as a pre-med student at Rhodes University (the only girl in a class of 150 boys) and also dabbled in theatrics, playing the blind girl in a school production of "Through a Glass Darkly", in which she says she was "terrible."
After a year-plus of studies, she returned to England and shifted gears, dropping her medical studies and turning to an acting career. She was appearing in a play in Hammersmith when an American agent told her he wanted to represent her. She left for New York on November 5, 1953, "Guy Fawkes Day," a holiday commemorating a 1605 attempt to blow up the Parliament building. "There were all sorts of fireworks going off," she later told an interviewer, "and I couldn't help thinking it was a fitting send-off for my departure to the New World."
Wynter had more success in New York than in London, acting on TV (Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Suspense (1949), Studio One (1948), among others) and the stage before "going Hollywood" a short time later. The willowy, dark-eyed actress appeared in over a dozen films, worked in "Golden Age" television (such as Playhouse 90 (1956)) and even co-starred in her own short-lived TV series, the globe-trotting The Man Who Never Was (1966). Married and divorced from well-known Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer, Wynter, once called Hollywood's "oasis of elegance", divided her time between homes in California and County Wicklow, Ireland until her death.- Music Artist
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Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Gaetano Alfonso "Guy" Crocetti, an Italian immigrant and barber, and his Ohio-born wife, Angela (Barra) Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. Martin came up the hard way, with such jobs as a boxer ("Kid Crochet"), a steel mill worker, a gas station worker and a casino croupier/dealer. In 1946, Martin got his first ticket to stardom, as he teamed up with another hard worker who was also trying to succeed in Hollywood: Jerry Lewis. Films such as At War with the Army (1950) sent the team toward super-stardom. The duo were to become one of Hollywood's truly great teams. They lasted 11 years together, and starred in 16 movies. They were unstoppable, but personality conflicts broke up the team. Even without Lewis, Martin was a true superstar.
Few thought that Martin would go on to achieve solo success, but he did, winning critical acclaim for his role in The Young Lions (1958) with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Some Came Running (1958), with Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. Movies such as Rio Bravo (1959) brought him international fame. One of his best remembered films is in Ocean's Eleven (1960), in which he played Sam Harmon alongside the other members of the legendary Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Martin proved potent at the box office through the 1960s, with films such as Bells Are Ringing (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), again with Rat Pack pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra. During much of the 1960s and 1970s, his film persona of a boozing playboy prompted a series of films as secret agent Matt Helm and his own television variety show. Airport (1970) followed, featuring Martin as a pilot. He played a phony priest in The Cannonball Run (1981).
In 1965, Martin explored a new method for entertaining his fans: Television. That year he hosted one of the most successful TV series in history: The Dean Martin Show (1965), which lasted until 1973. In 1965, it won a Golden Globe Award. In 1973, he renamed it "The Dean Martin Comedy Hour", and from 1974 to 1984 it was renamed again, this time "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts". It became one of the most successful TV series in history, skewering such greats as Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, James Stewart, George Burns, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and Joe Namath.
His last public role was a return to the stage, for a cross-country concert tour with Davis and Sinatra. He spoke affectionately of his fellow Rat Packers. "The satisfaction that I get out of working with these two bums is that we have more laughs than the audience has", Martin said. After the 1980s, Martin took it easy until his son, Dean Paul Martin, was killed in a plane crash in March 1987.
Devastated by the loss, from which he never recovered, he walked out on a reunion tour with Sinatra and Davis. Martin spent his final years in solitude, out of the public light. A heavy smoker most of his life, Martin died on Christmas Day 1995 at age 78 from complications to lung cancer.- Actor
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Hugh O'Brian had the term "beefcake" written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career.
O'Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19, 1925, in Rochester, New York, to Ohio-born parents Edith Lillian (Marks) and Hugh John Krampe, a United States Marine Corps officer. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants, while his mother was of half German Jewish and half English/Scottish descent. O'Brian first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company, where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino, which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films.
Hugh's gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as The Return of Jesse James (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952), The Battle at Apache Pass (1952), Red Ball Express (1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952), The Lawless Breed (1952), Seminole (1953), Saskatchewan (1954) and Drums Across the River (1954). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh's. In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better with more serviceable roles in White Feather (1955) and The Twinkle in God's Eye (1955).
Hugh finally earned top status in the "B" action adventure The Brass Legend (1956) but it did little to advance his film career. Offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later, it became a mainstay hit and Hugh an "overnight" star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway, replacing Andy Griffith for a week in the musical "Destry Rides Again" in January of 1960.
The hirsutely handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the big screen, including Come Fly with Me (1963), Love Has Many Faces (1965), Ten Little Indians (1965), Ambush Bay (1966), Africa: Texas Style (1967), Strategy of Terror (1969), John Wayne's last film The Shootist (1976), and Bruce Lee's last film Game of Death (1978), as well as with the TV-movies Wild Women (1970), Harpy (1971), Murder on Flight 502 (1975), Benny and Barney: Las Vegas Undercover (1977), Murder at the World Series (1977), Cruise Into Terror (1978). He also starred in the crime adventure series Search (1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited. In addition, he kept busy on the summer stock circuit.
In later years, he appeared in the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito comedy "Twins"; returned as "Wyatt Earp" in the TV movies The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994); and made guest appearances on such TV shows as "Fantasy Island," "The Love Boat," "Matt Houston," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law" and made his last on-camera appearance on the series "Call of the Wild" in 2000.
A sports enthusiast, his hobbies included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling, and his many philanthropic efforts did not go unrecognized. His proudest achievement was the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O'Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O'Brian was awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally "settled down" and tied the knot at age 81 with longtime companion Virginia Barber, who was close to three decades his junior. They lived in his Benedict Canyon home.
Hugh died on September 5, 2016, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.
After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, having convinced her mother that she intended to teach acting. In 1934, with some stock company work and a little Broadway experience, she was tested and signed by Universal. Simultaneously, MGM tested her and made her a better offer. When she plead ignorance of Hollywood (while wearing her worst-fitting clothes), Universal released her and she signed with MGM for seven years.
For some time she was used in secondary roles and as a replacement threat to limit Myrna Loy's salary demands. Knowing she was right for comedy, she tested five times for the role of Sylvia Fowler in The Women (1939). George Cukor told her to "play her as a freak". She did and got the part. Her "boss lady" roles began with the part of reporter Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday (1940), through whose male lead, Cary Grant, she met her future husband, Grant's house-guest at the time.
In her forties, she returned to the stage, touring "Bell, Book and Candle" in 1951 and winning a Tony Award for "Wonderful Town" in 1953. Columbia, worried the public would think she had the female lead in Picnic (1955), billed her "co-starring Rosalind Russell as Rosemary." She refused to be placed in the Best Supporting Actress category when Columbia Pictures wanted to promote her for an Academy Award nomination for her role in Picnic (1955). Many felt she would have won had she cooperated. "Auntie Mame" kept her on Broadway for two years followed by the movie version.
Oscar nominations: My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958). In 1972, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for contributions to charity.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actress
Anne Douglas was born on 23 April 1919 in Hanover, Germany. She was a producer and actress, known for Peg Leg, Musket & Sabre (1973), Deep River (2009) and Kirk Douglas: Before I Forget (2009). She was married to Kirk Douglas and Albert Buydens. She died on 29 April 2021 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Norman Chandler was previously married to Dorothy Chandler.
- Dorothy Chandler was born on 19 May 1901 in Lafayette, Illinois, USA. She was married to Norman Chandler. She died on 6 July 1997.
- Producer
- Actor
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Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.- Animation Department
- Art Department
Lillian Disney was born on 15 February 1899 in Spalding, Idaho, USA. She is known for The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), The 3rd Annual Television Academy Hall of Fame Awards (1986) and Hollywood goes to a World Premiere (1964). She was married to John Louis Truyens and Walt Disney. She died on 16 December 1997 in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jerry Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York, the only child of Leon Orbach, a former vaudevillian actor, was a German Jewish immigrant, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and Emily (nee Olexy), a radio singer, was born in Pennsylvania to immigrant Polish-Lithuanian Roman Catholic parents, Alexander Olexy and Susanna (nee Klauba). The family moved frequently. He spent part of his childhood in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania and eventually settled in Waukegan, Illinois, where he went to high school.
The constant moving made him the new kid on the block and forced him to become "a chameleon" to blend in his new settings. He studied drama at the University of Illinois and at Northwestern University. He then went to study acting in New York and got constant work in musicals. He slowly pushed to get acting roles in television and films after being overlooked due to his musical roots.
Orbach died at age 69 on December 28, 2004, after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer. His widow, Elaine Cancilla Orbach died on April 1, 2009, from pneumonia. Orbach and Cancilla both predeceased Orbach's mother, Emily Orbach, who died on July 28, 2012, at the age of 101.- Bart Lytton was born on 4 October 1912 in Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer, known for Tomorrow We Live (1942), Bowery to Broadway (1944) and Sing Your Way Home (1945). He died on 29 June 1969 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Former Broadway Actress. She starred in the musical The Threepeny Opera where she met actor Jerry Orbach and fell in love with him. They married on June 21st 1958 and had 2 sons Tony and Chris Orbach to which Marta gave up her career to raise the kids. She and Orbach divorced in 1975 after 17 years of marriage but still remained good friends until Jerry's death in 2004. She later on volunteered at the Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Marta Curro died on September 6th 2012 from bladder cancer.
- Armand Deutsch was born on 25 January 1913 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer, known for Kind Lady (1951), The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) and Right Cross (1950). He was married to Harriet Berk and Benay Venuta. He died on 13 August 2005 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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- Writer
- Soundtrack
Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, and the rest of his family was Mexican.
After starting life in extremely modest circumstances in Mexico, his family moved to Los Angeles, where he grew up in the Boyle Heights and Echo Park neighborhoods. He played in the band of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson as a youth and as a deputy preacher. He attended Polytechnic High School and later Belmont High, but eventually dropped out. The young Quinn boxed (which stood him in good stead as a stage actor, when he played Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" to rave reviews in Chicago), then later studied architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the great architect's studio, Taliesin, in Arizona. Quinn was close to Wright, who encouraged him when he decided to give acting a try. Made his credited film debut in Parole! (1936). After a brief apprenticeship on stage, Quinn hit Hollywood in 1936 and picked up a variety of small roles in several films at Paramount, including an Indian warrior in The Plainsman (1936), which was directed by the man who later became his father-in-law, Cecil B. DeMille.
As a contract player at Paramount, Quinn's roles were mainly ethnic types, such as an Arab chieftain in the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope comedy, Road to Morocco (1942). As a Mexican national (he did not become an American citizen until 1947), he was exempt from the draft. With many other actors in military service during WWII, he was able to move up into better supporting roles. He married DeMille's daughter Katherine DeMille, which afforded him entrance to the top circles of Hollywood society. He became disenchanted with his career and did not renew his Paramount contract despite the advice of others, including his father-in-law, with whom he did not get along (whom Quinn reportedly felt had never accepted him due to his Mexican roots; the two men were also on opposite ends of the political spectrum) but they eventually were able to develop a civil relationship. Quinn returned to the stage to hone his craft. His portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Chicago and on Broadway (where he replaced the legendary Marlon Brando, who is forever associated with the role) made his reputation and boosted his film career when he returned to the movies.
Brando and Elia Kazan, who directed "Streetcar" on Broadway and on film (A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)), were crucial to Quinn's future success. Kazan, knowing the two were potential rivals due to their acclaimed portrayals of Kowalski, cast Quinn as Brando's brother in his biographical film of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Viva Zapata! (1952). Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for 1952, making him the first Mexican-American to win an Oscar. It was not to be his lone appearance in the winner's circle: he won his second Supporting Actor Oscar in 1957 for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's biographical film of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life (1956), opposite Kirk Douglas. Over the next decade Quinn lived in Italy and became a major figure in world cinema, as many studios shot films in Italy to take advantage of the lower costs ("runaway production" had battered the industry since its beginnings in the New York/New Jersey area in the 1910s). He appeared in several Italian films, giving one of his greatest performances as the circus strongman who brutalizes the sweet soul played by Giulietta Masina in her husband Federico Fellini's masterpiece The Road (1954). He met his second wife, Jolanda Addolori, a wardrobe assistant, while he was in Rome filming Barabbas (1961).
Alternating between Europe and Hollywood, Quinn built his reputation and entered the front rank of character actors and character leads. He received his third Oscar nomination (and first for Best Actor) for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). He played a Greek resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation in the monster hit The Guns of Navarone (1961) and received kudos for his portrayal of a once-great boxer on his way down in Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). He went back to playing ethnic roles, such as an Arab warlord in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and he played the eponymous lead in the "sword-and-sandal" blockbuster Barabbas (1961). Two years later, he reached the zenith of his career, playing Zorba the Greek in the film of the same name (a.k.a. Zorba the Greek (1964)), which brought him his fourth, and last, Oscar nomination as Best Actor. The 1960s were kind to him: he played character leads in such major films as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969). However, his appearance in the title role in the film adaptation of John Fowles' novel, The Magus (1968), did nothing to save the film, which was one of that decade's notorious turkeys.
In the 1960s, Quinn told Life magazine that he would fight against typecasting. Unfortunately, the following decade saw him slip back into playing ethnic types again, in such critical bombs as The Greek Tycoon (1978). He starred as the Hispanic mayor of a southwestern city on the short-lived television series The Man and the City (1971), but his career lost its momentum during the 1970s. Aside from playing a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in the cinematic roman-a-clef The Greek Tycoon (1978), his other major roles of the decade were as Hamza in the controversial The Message (1976) (a.k.a. "Mohammad, Messenger of God"); as the Italian patriarch in The Inheritance (1976); yet another Arab in Caravans (1978); and as a Mexican patriarch in The Children of Sanchez (1978). In 1983, he reprised his most famous role, Zorba the Greek, on Broadway in the revival of the musical "Zorba" for 362 performances (opposite Lila Kedrova, who had also appeared in the film, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance). His career slowed during the 1990s but he continued to work steadily in films and television, including an appearance with frequent film co-star Maureen O'Hara in Only the Lonely (1991).
Quinn lived out the latter years of his life in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his time painting and sculpting. Beginning in 1982, he held numerous major exhibitions in cities such as Vienna, Paris, and Seoul. He died in a hospital in Boston at age 86 from pneumonia and respiratory failure linked to his battle with throat cancer.- Actor
- Producer
In Britain, special Christmas plays called pantomimes are produced for children. Jack Hawkins made his London theatrical debut at age 12, playing the elf king in "Where The Rainbow Ends". At 17, he got the lead role of St. George in the same play. At 18, he made his debut on Broadway in "Journey's End". At 21, he was back in London playing a young lover in "Autumn Crocus". He married his leading lady, Jessica Tandy. That year he also played his first real film role in the 1931 sound version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Phantom Fiend (1932). During the 30s, he took his roles in plays more seriously than the films he made. In 1940, Jessica accepted a role in America and Jack volunteered to serve in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He spent most of his military career arranging entertainment for the British forces in India. One of the actresses who came out to India was Doreen Lawrence who became his second wife after the war. Alexander Korda advised Jack to go into films and offered him a three-year contract. In his autobiography, Jack recalled: "Eight years later I was voted the number one box office draw of 1954. I was even credited with irresistible sex appeal, which is another quality I had not imagined I possessed." A late 1940s film, The Black Rose (1950), where he played a secondary role to Tyrone Power, would be one of his most fortunate choices of roles. The director was Henry Hathaway who Jack said was "probably the most feared, yet respected director in America, for he had a sharp tongue and fired people at the drop of a hat. Years later, after my operation when I lost my voice, he went out of his way to help me get back into films. What I did not know was that during the filming of 'The Black Rose' he was himself suffering from cancer." In the 1950s came the film that made Hawkins a star, The Cruel Sea (1953). Suffering from life-long, real-life seasickness, he played the captain of the Compass Rose. After surgery for throat cancer in 1966, requiring the removal of his larynx, Jack continued to make films. He mimed his lines and the voice was dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Rietty. His motto during those last years came from Milton's "Comus", a verse play in which he acted early in his career in Regent's Park. The lines: "Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear does arbitrate the event, my nature is that I incline to hope, rather than to fear."- Actor
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José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor and film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). Ferrer was the first Puerto Rican actor to win an Academy Award, and also the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.
In 1912, Ferrer was born is San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico. Established as a Spanish colonial city in 1521, San Juan is the third oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, following Santo Domingo (established in 1496) and Panama City (established in 1521). Ferrer's father was Rafael Ferrer, a lawyer and author who was born and raised in San Juan. Ferrer's mother was María Providencia Cintrón, a native of the coastal town of Yabucoa. Ferrer's paternal grandfather was Dr. Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, who had campaigned for Puerto Rican independence from the Spanish Empire.
The Ferrer family moved to New York City in 1914, when José was 2-years-old. As a school student, Ferrer was educated abroad at the Institut Le Rosey, a prestigious boarding school located in Rolle, Switzerland. In 1933, Ferrer was enrolled at Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied architecture, and wrote a senior thesis about French Naturalism and the literary works of Spanish naturalist writer Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921). In 1934, Ferrer transferred to Columbia University, where he studied Romance languages.
In 1934, while still a college student, Ferrer made his theatrical debut in Long Island-based theatre. In 1935, he was hired as the stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse. Later in 1935, Ferrer made his Broadway debut in the comedy play "A Slight Case of Murder" by Damon Runyon (1880-1946) and Howard Lindsay (1889-1968). This stage production of the play ran for 69 performances, with Ferrer appearing in all of them.
Ferrer's major success as a Broadway actor was performing in the play "Brother Rat" by John Monks Jr. (1910-2004) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (1910-1977). The play had a ran of 577 performances from 1936 to 1938. Among his subsequent theatrical appearances, the most successful were staged productions of Mamba's Daughters (1938), which ran for 163 performances, and "Charley's Aunt" (1940-1941), which ran for 233 performances. His role in "Charley's Aunt" required him to perform in drag, for the first time in his career.
Ferrer had one of the greatest theatrical successes of his career when playing the villainous Iago in a Broadway production of "Othello' by William Shakespeare. The production had a ran of 296 performances, lasting from 1943 to 1944. Ferrer played his most famous role as the historical figure of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in the 1946-1947 Broadway season. For this role, Ferrer won the 1947 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic "Joan of Arc" (1948). He played the historical monarch Charles VII of France (1403-1461, reigned 1422-1461), the ruler who Joan of Arc served during the Hundred Years' War. For his debut role, Ferrer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Award was instead won by rival actor Walter Huston (1883-1950).
Ferrer's success as a film actor, helped him gain more film roles in Hollywood-produced films. He played the "smooth-talking hypnotist David Korvo" in the film noir "Whirlpool" (1949), and dictator Raoul Farrago in the film noir "Crisis". He had a career highlight with a film adaptation of the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", where he played the title role. For this role, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
His next critically successful role was that of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) in the historical drama "Moulin Rouge" (1952). For this role, Ferrer was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Gary Cooper (1901-1961). The film also marked a financial success for Ferrer, who received 40% of the film's profits.
Ferrer also appeared in other box office hits of the 1950s, such as the musical "Miss Sadie Thompson" (1953), the Navy-themed drama "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), and the biographical film "Deep in My Heart" (1954). Ferrer was also interested in becoming a film director. He made his directing debut with the film noir "The Shrike" (1955). His subsequent directing efforts included war film "The Cockleshell Heroes" (1955), the film noir "The Great Man" (1956), the biographical film I Accuse! (1958), and the comedy film "The High Cost of Loving" (1958). While still critically well-received, several of these films were box office flops. He took a hiatus from films productions.
Ferrer attempted a comeback as a film director with the sequel film "Return to Peyton Place" (1961) and the musical film "State Fair" (1962). Both films were box office flops. As an actor, Ferrer had a supporting role as a Turkish Bey in the historical drama "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). While a relatively minor role, Ferrer considered the finest role of his film career.
In television, Ferrer gained a notable role as the narrator in the pilot episode of the hit sitcom "Bewitched" (1964-1972). In films, Ferrer started playing mostly supporting roles. He briefly returned to the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in the French adventure film "Cyrano and d'Artagnan". He had another notable role as a historical monarch, playing Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (reigned 4 BC-39 AD) in the Biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965).
Ferrer had his first notable role as a voice actor, playing the villain Ben Haramed in the Rankin/Bass Christmas "The Little Drummer Boy" (1968). But at this time, he started having legal troubles. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) accused Ferrer of still owing unpaid taxes since 1962.
Ferrer had many film roles in the 1970s, but no outstanding highlights. As a voice actor, he voiced Cyrano de Bergerac in an episode of "The ABC Afterschool Special". In the 1980s, Ferrer played a monarch again, playing Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV in the science fiction film "Dune". The film was an adaptation of the 1965 novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), and Shaddam was one of the film's villains. This was among the last notable roles of Ferrer's long career.
Ferred retired from acting entirely in 1991, due to increasing health problems. His last theatrical performance was a production of the generation-gap drama "Conversations with My Father". Ferrer died in 1992, due to colorectal cancer. He was 80-years-old. He died in Coral Gables, Florida, but was buried in the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Several of his children had acting careers of their own.- Actor
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Anthony Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, Lancashire, England in September 1913. He completed his education at Rugby School and had a brief spell at RADA, before treading the boards for the first time as the straight man in a music hall comedy act in 1931. Tall, burly, round-faced and possessed of a powerful and resonant voice, he was mentored early on in his career by the well-known stage director Tyrone Guthrie. Letters of introduction led to steady employment with the Old Vic Company by September 1932, and a succession of small roles in classical parts. Quayle's reputation as an actor grew steadily, and, in 1936, he appeared on Broadway opposite Ruth Gordon in 'The Country Wife'. For the next few years, he consolidated his position as a Shakespearean actor. When the Second World War began, he was among the first in his profession to enlist, serving with the Royal Artillery and rising to the rank of major. Some of his wartime experiences, such as coordinating operations with Albanian partisans as part of the secret Special Operations Executive, were destined to be paralleled by his fictional post-war screen exploits as incisive army officers or spies. With the war still fresh in his mind, he subsequently published two novels (respectively in 1945, and in 1947), 'Eight Hours from England' and 'On Such a Night'.
In 1946, Quayle also made his debut as a theatrical director with a London production of 'Crime and Punishment'. Between 1948 and 1956, he had a distinguished tenure as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing into the company some of the biggest stars of the stage, including Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Though acting in films from 1938, the theatre remained his favorite medium. He played diverse roles with great intensity and professionalism, achieving critical acclaim as Petruchio and Falstaff, Tamburlaine and Galileo (on Broadway) and the original role of Andrew Wyke in Anthony Shaffer's play 'Sleuth' (played in the first screen version by Olivier). In motion pictures Quayle tended to portray tough, dependable authority figures. He was good value for money as Commodore Harwood in Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956), as the enigmatic Afrikaner captain in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and as the stuffy, by-the-book Colonel Harry Brighton, who nonetheless appears to have a degree of admiration for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Due to his classical training, Quayle was often used in historical epics, giving one of his best performances as Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), earning him an Academy Award nomination. His voice was heard as narrator of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and on radio in anything from 'The Ballad of Robin Hood' to Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'.
The year prior to receiving his knighthood, Quayle founded the touring Compass Theatre Company, and served as its director until a few months before his death from cancer in October 1989.- Actor
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William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth business end as well, progressing from a page boy to a stage manager during his well-rounded learning experience. Rains decided to come to America in 1913 and the New York theater, but with the outbreak of World War I the next year, he returned to serve with a Scottish regiment in Europe. He remained in England, honing his acting talents, bolstered with instruction patronized by the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It was not long before his talent garnered him acknowledgment as one of the leading stage actors on the London scene. His one and only silent film venture was British with a small part for him, the forgettable -- Build Thy House (1920).
In the meantime, Rains was in demand as acting teacher as well, and he taught at the Royal Academy. Young and eager Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were perhaps his best known students. Rains did return to New York in 1927 to begin what would be nearly 20 Broadway roles. While working for the Theater Guild, he was offered a screen test with Universal Pictures in 1932. Rains had a unique and solid British voice-deep, slightly rasping -- but richly dynamic. And as a man of small stature, the combination was immediately intriguing. Universal was embarking on its new-found role as horror film factory, and they were looking for someone unique for their next outing, The Invisible Man (1933). Rains was the very man. He took the role by the ears, churning up a rasping malice and volume in his voice to achieve a bone chilling persona of the disembodied mad doctor. He could also throw out a high-pitched maniac laugh that would make you leave the lights on before going to bed. True to Universal's formula mentality, it cast him in similar roles through 1934 with some respite in more diverse film roles -- and further relieved by Broadway roles (1933, 1934) for the remainder of his contract. By 1936, he was at Warner Bros. with its ambitious laundry list of literary epics in full swing. His acting was superb, and his eyes could say as much as his voice. And his mouth could take on both a forbidding scowl and the warmest of smiles in an instant. His malicious, gouty Don Luis in Anthony Adverse (1936) was inspired. After a shear lucky opportunity to dispatch his young wife's lover, Louis Hayward, in a duel, he triumphs over her in a scene with derisive, bulging eyes and that high pitched laugh -- with appropriate shadow and light backdrop -- that is unforgettable.
He was kept very busy through the remainder of the 1930s with a mix of benign and devious historical, literary, and contemporary characters always adapting a different nuance -- from murmur to growl -- of that voice to become the person. He culminated the decade with his complex, ethics-tortured Senator "Joe" Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). That year he became an American citizen. Into the 1940s, Rains had risen to perhaps unique stature: a supporting actor who had achieved A-list stardom -- almost in a category by himself. His some 40 films during that period ranged from subtle comedy to psychological drama with a bit of horror revisited; many would be golden era classics. He was the firm but thoroughly sympathetic Dr. Jaquith in Now, Voyager (1942) and the smoothly sardonic but engaging Capt. Louis Renault -- perhaps his best known role -- in Casablanca (1942). He was the surreptitiously nervous and malignant Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946) and the egotistical and domineering conductor Alexander Hollenius in Deception (1946). He was the disfigured Phantom of the Opera (1943) as well. He played opposite the challenging Bette Davis in three movies through the decade and came out her equal in acting virtuosity. He was nominated four times for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar -- but incredibly never won. With the 1950s the few movies left to an older Rains were countered by venturing into new acting territory -- television. His haunted, suicidal writer Paul DeLambre in the mountaineering adventure The White Tower (1950), though a modest part, was perhaps the most vigorously memorable film role of his last years. He made a triumphant Broadway return in 1951's "Darkness at Noon."
Rains embraced the innovative TV playhouse circuit with nearly 20 roles. As a favored 'Alfred Hitchcock' alumnus, he starred in five Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) suspense dramas into the 1960s. And he did not shy away from episodic TV either with some memorable roles that still reflected the power of Claude Rains as consummate actor -- for many, first among peers with that hallowed title.- Arthur Kennedy, one of the premier character actors in American film from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, achieved fame in the role of Biff in Elia Kazan's historic production of Arthur Miller's Pultizer-Prize winning play "Death of a Salesman." Although he was not selected to recreate the role on screen, he won one Best Actor and four Best Supporting Academy Award nominations between 1949 and 1959 and ranked as one of Hollywood's finest players.
Born John Arthur Kennedy to a dentist and his wife on February 17, 1914 in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a young man, known as "Johnny" to his friends, studied drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. By the time he was 20 years old, he was involved in local theatrical groups. Kennedy's first professional gig was was with the Globe Theatre Company, which toured the Midwest offering abbreviated versions of Shakespearian plays. Shakesperian star Maurice Evans hired Kennedy for his company, with which he appeared in the Broadway production of "Richard II" in 1937. While performing in Evans' repertory company, Kennedy also worked in the Federal Theatre project.
Arthur Kennedy made his Broadway debut in "Everywhere I Roam" in 1938, the same year that he married Mary Cheffrey, who would remain his wife until her death in 1975. He also appeared on Broadway in "Life and Death of an American" in 1939 and in "An International Incident" in 1940 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, in support of the great American actress the theater had been named after.
Kennedy and his wife moved west to Los Angeles, California in 1938, and it was while acting on the stage in L.A. that he was discovered by fellow actor James Cagney, who cast him as his brother in the film City for Conquest (1940). The role brought with it a contract with Warner Bros., and the studio put him in supporting roles in some prestigious movies, including High Sierra (1940), the film that made Humphrey Bogart a star, They Died with Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn, and Howard Hawks's Air Force (1943) alongside future Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Gig Young and the great John Garfield. His career was interrupted by military service in World War Two.
After the war, Kennedy went back to the Broadway stage, where he gained a reputation as an actor's actor, appearing in Arthur Miller's 1947 Tony Award-winning play "All My Sons," which was directed by Kazan. He played John Proctor in the original production of Miller's reflection on McCarthyism, "The Crucible" - which Kazan, an informer who prostrated himself before the forces of McCarthyism, refused to direct - and also appeared in Miller's last Broadway triumph, "The Price."
When Kennedy returned to film work, he quickly distinguished himself as one of the best and most talented of supporting actors & character leads, appearing in such major films as Boomerang! (1947), Champion (1949) (for which he received his first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor) and The Glass Menagerie (1950), playing Tom in a mediocre adaptation of Tennessee Williams's classic play. Kennedy won his first and only Best Actor nomination for Bright Victory (1951), playing a blinded vet, a role for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle award over such competition as Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart. Other films included Fritz Lang's 'Rancho Notorious (1951)', Anthony Mann's Bend of the River (1952), William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), Richard Brooks' Elmer Gantry (1960), David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964).
In 1956, Kennedy won another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Trial (1955), plus two more Supporting nods in 1958 and 1959 for his appearances in the screen adaptations of Grace Metalious's Peyton Place (1957), and James Jones Some Came Running (1958).
Kennedy returned to Broadway frequently in the 1950s, and headlined the 1952 play "See the Jaguar", a flop best remembered for giving a young actor named James Dean one of his first important parts. A decade later, Kennedy replaced his good friend Anthony Quinn in the Broadway production of "Becket", alternating the roles of Becket and Henry II with Laurence Olivier, who was quite fond of working with him. In the 1960s, the prestigious movie parts dried up as he matured, but he continued working in movies and on TV until he retired in the mid-1980s. He moved out of Los Angeles to live with family members in Connecticut. In the last years of his life, he was afflicted with thyroid cancer and eye disease. He died of a brain tumor at 75, survived by his two children by his wife Mary, Terence and actress Laurie Kennedy. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Lequille, Nova Scotia, Canada. - Producer
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Known primarily as a TV actor, he starred as a nightclub singer on the popular The Danny Thomas Show (1953).
He also served TV behind the cameras partnering with Sheldon Leonard and Aaron Spelling to create such shows as Dick Van Dyke's show, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and Mod Squad (1968).
He was also dedicated to building the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which he founded in 1962.- Bill Welsh was born on 25 April 1911 in Greeley, Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for Dragstrip Girl (1957), The Rose Bowl Story (1952) and Hollywood Horror House (1970). He was married to Lucinda Pennington. He died on 27 February 2000 in Thousand Oaks, California, USA.
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Born in New York City on June 25, 1925, the daughter of actors Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart, June Lockhart made her professional debut at age eight in a Metropolitan Opera production of "Peter Ibbetson", playing Mimsey in the dream sequence. In the mid-1930s, the Lockharts relocated to California, where father Gene enjoyed a long career as one of the screen's great character actors. June made her screen debut in MGM's version of A Christmas Carol (1938), playing--appropriately enough the daughter of stars Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart. June appeared in a dozen or more movies before 1947, when she made her Broadway bow playing the ingénue in the comedy "For Love or Money" with John Loder. She got a standing ovation on opening night; one critic compared her debut to the first big hits of Helen Hayes and Margaret Sullavan. The overnight toast of Broadway, she went on to win a Tony Award, the Donaldson Award, the Theatre World Award and the Associated Press citation for Woman of the Year for Drama for her work in that play. On television, she has co-starred in popular series like Lassie (1954) and Lost in Space (1965).- Actor
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Soupy Sales was born on 8 January 1926 in Franklinton, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Black Scorpion (2001), The Making of '...and God Spoke' (1993) and A Dirty Shame (2004). He was married to Trudy Carson and Barbara Fox. He died on 22 October 2009 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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The accordion maestro provided nearly two decades of squeaky-clean music and family entertainment on TV every Saturday night between 1955 and 1971 on prime-time, and for another 11 years in syndication. His trademarks included his "A uh-one, a uh-two" intro and a perpetual bubble machine.- Actor
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The son of a day laborer, William Boyd moved with his family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was seven. His parents died while he was in his early teens, forcing him to quit school and take such jobs as a grocery clerk, surveyor and oil field worker. He went to Hollywood in 1919, already gray-haired. His first role was as an extra in Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife? (1920). He bought some fancy clothes, caught DeMille's eye and got the romantic lead in The Volga Boatman (1926), quickly becoming a matinée idol and earning upwards of $100,000 a year. However, with the end of silent movies, Boyd was without a contract, couldn't find work and was going broke. By mistake his picture was run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William 'Stage' Boyd) on gambling, liquor and morals charges, and that hurt his career even more. In 1935 he was offered the lead role in Hop-a-Long Cassidy (1935) (named because of a limp caused by an earlier bullet wound). He changed the original pulp-fiction character to its opposite, made sure that "Hoppy" didn't smoke, drink, chew tobacco or swear, rarely kissed a girl and let the bad guy draw first. By 1943 he had made 54 "Hoppies" for his original producer, Harry Sherman; after Sherman dropped the series, Boyd produced and starred in 12 more on his own. The series was wildly popular, and all recouped at least double their production costs. In 1948 Boyd, in a savvy and precedent-setting move, bought the rights to all his pictures (he had to sell his ranch to raise the money) just as TV was looking for Saturday morning Western fare. He marketed all sorts of "Hoppy" products (lunch boxes, toy guns, cowboy hats, etc.) and received royalties from comic books, radio and records. He retired to Palm Desert, California, in 1953. In 1968 he had surgery to remove a tumor from a lymph gland and from then on refused all interview and photograph requests.- Actor
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Don DeFore toured the country in stock companies for several years before making his Broadway debut in 1938. In films since 1941, he occasionally played leads in B pictures, but was more often cast as the good-natured buddy of the hero or a likable but gullible character whom the hero has to bail out of trouble. DeFore found much more success on television, and was a regular in the hit series Hazel (1961) and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952).- Actress
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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).- Music Artist
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Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants Natalina Della (Garaventa), from Northern Italy, and Saverio Antonino Martino Sinatra, a Sicilian boxer, fireman, and bar owner. Growing up on the gritty streets of Hoboken made Sinatra determined to work hard to get ahead. Starting out as a saloon singer in musty little dives (he carried his own P.A. system), he eventually got work as a band singer, first with The Hoboken Four, then with Harry James and then Tommy Dorsey. With the help of George Evans (Sinatra's genius press agent), his image was shaped into that of a street thug and punk who was saved by his first wife, Nancy Barbato Sinatra. In 1942 he started his solo career, instantly finding fame as the king of the bobbysoxers--the young women and girls who were his fans--and becoming the most popular singer of the era among teenage music fans. About that time his film career was also starting in earnest, and after appearances in a few small films, he struck box-office gold with a lead role in Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Gene Kelly, a Best Picture nominee at the 1946 Academy Awards. Sinatra was awarded a special Oscar for his part in a short film that spoke out against intolerance, The House I Live In (1945). His career on a high, Sinatra went from strength to strength on record, stage and screen, peaking in 1949, once again with Gene Kelly, in the MGM musical On the Town (1949) and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). A controversial public affair with screen siren Ava Gardner broke up his marriage to Nancy Barbato Sinatra and did his career little good, and his record sales dwindled. He continued to act, although in lesser films such as Meet Danny Wilson (1952), and a vocal cord hemorrhage all but ended his career. He fought back, though, finally securing a role he desperately wanted--Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He won an Oscar for best supporting actor and followed this with a scintillating performance as a cold-blooded assassin hired to kill the US President in Suddenly (1954). Arguably a career-best performance--garnering him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor--was his role as a pathetic heroin addict in the powerful drama The Man with the Golden Arm (1955).
Known as "One-Take Charlie" for his approach to acting that strove for spontaneity and energy, rather than perfection, Sinatra was an instinctive actor who was best at playing parts that mirrored his own personality. He continued to give strong and memorable performances in such films as Guys and Dolls (1955), The Joker Is Wild (1957) and Some Came Running (1958). In the late 1950s and 1960s Sinatra became somewhat prolific as a producer, turning out such films as A Hole in the Head (1959), Sergeants 3 (1962) and the very successful Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Lighter roles alongside "Rat Pack" buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were lucrative, especially the famed Ocean's Eleven (1960). On the other hand, he alternated such projects with much more serious offerings, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), regarded by many critics as Sinatra's finest picture. He made his directorial debut with the World War II picture None But the Brave (1965), which was the first Japanese/American co-production. That same year Von Ryan's Express (1965) was a box office sensation. In 1967 Sinatra returned to familiar territory in Sidney J. Furie's The Naked Runner (1967), once again playing as assassin in his only film to be shot in the U.K. and Germany. That same year he starred as a private investigator in Tony Rome (1967), a role he reprised in the sequel, Lady in Cement (1968). He also starred with Lee Remick in The Detective (1968), a film daring for its time with its theme of murders involving rich and powerful homosexual men, and it was a major box-office success.
After appearing in the poorly received comic western Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), Sinatra didn't act again for seven years, returning with a made-for-TV cops-and-mob-guys thriller Contract on Cherry Street (1977), which he also produced. Based on the novel by William Rosenberg, this fable of fed-up cops turning vigilante against the mob boasted a stellar cast and was a ratings success. Sinatra returned to the big screen in The First Deadly Sin (1980), once again playing a New York detective, in a moving and understated performance that was a fitting coda to his career as a leading man. He made one more appearance on the big screen with a cameo in Cannonball Run II (1984) and a final acting performance in Magnum, P.I. (1980), in 1987, as a retired police detective seeking vengeance on the killers of his granddaughter, in an episode entitled Laura (1987).- Actress
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Actress and singer Ann-Margret is one of the most famous sex symbols and actresses of the 1960s and beyond. She continued her career through the following decades and into the 21st century.
Ann-Margret was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland County, Sweden, to Anna Regina (Aronsson) and Carl Gustav Olsson, who worked for an electrical company. She came to America at age 6. She studied at Northwestern University and left for Las Vegas to pursue a career as a singer. Ann-Margret was discovered by George Burns and soon afterward got both a record deal at RCA and a film contract at 20th Century Fox. In 1961, her single "I Just Don't Understand" charted in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 Charts. Her acting debut followed the same year as Bette Davis' daughter in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles (1961). She appeared in the musical State Fair (1962) a year later before her breakthrough in 1963. With Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964) opposite Elvis Presley, she became a Top 10 Box Office star, teen idol and even Golden Globe nominated actress. She was marketed as Hollywood's hottest young star and in the years to come got awarded the infamous nickname "sex kitten." Her following pictures were sometimes ripped apart by critics (Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965) and The Swinger (1966)), sometimes praised (The Cincinnati Kid (1965)). She couldn't escape being typecast because of her great looks. By the late 1960s, her career stalled, and she turned to Italy for new projects. She returned and, by 1970, she was back in the public image with Hollywood films (R.P.M. (1970) opposite Anthony Quinn), Las Vegas sing-and-dance shows and her own television specials. She finally overcame her image with her Oscar-nominated turn in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971) and succeeded in changing her image from sex kitten to respected actress. A near-fatal accident at a Lake Tahoe show in 1972 only momentarily stopped her career. She was again Oscar-nominated in 1975 for Tommy (1975), the rock opera film of the British rock band The Who. Her career continued with successful films throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s. She starred next to Anthony Hopkins in Magic (1978) and appeared in pictures co-starring Walter Matthau, Gene Hackman, Glenda Jackson and Roy Scheider. She even appeared in a television remake of Tennessee Williams's masterpiece play "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1983. Another late career highlight for her was Grumpy Old Men (1993) as the object of desire for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. She continues to act in movies today.- Mary Badham was born on 7 October 1952 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She is an actress, known for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Let's Kill Uncle (1966) and The Twilight Zone (1959). She has been married to Richard Wilt since 1975. They have two children.
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Charismatic character star Edward James Begley was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Irish parents and educated at St.Patrick's school. His interest in acting first surfaced at the age of nine, when he performed amateur theatricals at the Hartford Globe Theatre. Determined to make his own way, he left home aged eleven and drifted from job to job, had a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, then worked in a bowling alley replacing pins, joined carnivals and circuses. In 1931, he appeared in vaudeville and was also hired as a radio announcer, his voice broadcast to nationwide audiences. It took him several years to establish himself on the legitimate stage, but in 1943, he had a role in the short-running play 'Land of Fame'.
His first success was the 1947 Arthur Miller play 'All My Sons' and this was followed by the 1925 Scopes Trial fictionalization 'Inherit the Wind' (1955-57), which ran for 806 performances at the National Theatre. Ed, co-starring with Paul Muni, played the part of Matthew Harrison Brady (played in the 1960 motion picture by Fredric March) and won the 1956 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Upon Paul Muni's departure from the cast, Ed used the opportunity to play the part of Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy's role in the film) with equal vigor. In 1960, he starred as Senator Orrin Knox in the political drama 'Advise and Consent'. Ed's movie career began with Boomerang! (1947), a murder mystery set in his native Connecticut, directed by Elia Kazan. Heavy-set with bushy eyebrows, the archetypal image of Ed Begley on screen is as a gruff, blustery, often heavily sweating (and sometimes corrupt) politician or industrialist. He proved his mettle in a number of classic films, including Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and On Dangerous Ground (1951). Whether as the sympathetic executive in Patterns (1956), a bigoted ex-cop turned bank robber in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), or the crazed billionaire bent on world domination of Billion Dollar Brain (1967), he tackled every part that came his way with conviction. The culmination of his work was a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role of Boss Finley in Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (1962).
In addition to countless radio broadcasts, Ed was also busy in television in the 1950s and '60s. Among frequent guest-starring appearances, his dynamic characterizations in two episodes of The Invaders (1967) ('The Betrayed' and 'Labyrinth') in particular stand out. Ed Begley died of a heart attack in April 1970 in Hollywood at the age of 69.- Larger than life, Laughtonesque, and with an eloquent, king-sized appetite for maniacal merriment, a good portion of the work of actor Victor Buono was squandered on hokey villainy on both film and television. Ostensibly perceived as bizarre or demented, seldom did Hollywood give this cultivated cut-up the opportunity to rise above the deliciously hammy arrogance that flowed through so many of his cartoonish characters. He loved to make people laugh and while he could have approached his career with more serious attention, the real money was in his madness. In the end, the actor's chronic weight and accompanying health problems took their toll -- a fatal heart attack at the untimely age of 43 -- and a wonderful actor/writer/poet/chef had exited way before his time.
Born on February 3, 1938 in San Diego, California, the son of Victor Francis Buono and Myrtle Belle (née Keller), his interest in entertainment was originally encouraged by his grandmother, Myrtle Glied (1886-1969), who had once been a vaudevillian on the Orpheum Circuit. It was she who taught Victor how to sing and recite in front of company. His initial choice of career was somewhere in the direction of medicine but the pure joy he experienced from several high school performances (playing everything from Aladdin's evil genie to Hamlet himself) led him to dismiss such sensible thinking and take on the bohemian life style of an actor.
The already hefty-framed hopeful started appearing on local radio and television stations in San Diego. At age 18, he became a member of the Globe Theater Players where he was cast in Shakespeare and the classics ["Volpone", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Knight of the Burning Pestle", "The Man Who Came to Dinner", "Witness for the Prosecution", "Henry IV, Part I (as Falstaff)", "As You Like It", "Hamlet" (as Claudius)].
In 1959, a Warner Bros. agent happened to scope out the talent at the Globe Theatre and caught Victor's wonderfully robust portrayal of Falstaff (a role he would return to now and then) and gave him a screen test. Looking older than he was, the studio set upon using Victor in weird and wacky ways, such as his bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip (1958). His wry and witty demeanor, fixed stare, huge girth and goateed mug was guaranteed to put him in nearly every television crime story needing an off-the-wall character or outlandish villain.
Following an unbilled appearance in The Story of Ruth (1960), Victor was intriguingly cast by director Robert Aldrich to play Edwin Flagg, the creepy musical accompanist and opportunist who tries to use one-time child celebrity Bette Davis for his own piggy bank in the gothic horror classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). He held his own beautifully opposite the scenery-chewing Davis and was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar for his efforts. This role also set the tone for the increasingly deranged characters he would go on to play.
Cast as the title menace in The Strangler (1964), Victor delved wholeheartedly into the sick mind of a mother-obsessed murderer and offered a startling, tense portrayal of a child-like monster who gives new meaning to the art of "necking" with women. Director Aldrich used Victor again (albeit too briefly) for his Southern-baked "Grand Guignol" horror Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) this time as Ms. Davis' crazed father. Victor also showed up in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) starring Max von Sydow where he flamboyantly took on the High Priest Sorak role in this epic but criticized retelling of Jesus.
He enhanced a number of lightweight 1960s movies including 4 for Texas (1963), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), The Silencers (1966) and Who's Minding the Mint? (1967) with his clever banter and gleeful menace. The lurid title said it all when Victor gamely took on the horror movie The Mad Butcher (1971) [aka The Strangler of Vienna] wherein he played a former mental patient preying on women again. This deranged low-budget German/Italian co-production added a "Sweeney Todd" meatpie tie in.
Victor's hearty, scene-stealing antics dominated late 1960s television series. Recurring madmen included his Count Carlos Manzeppi on The Wild Wild West (1965) and King Tut who habitually wreaked havoc on Gotham City on Batman (1966). One could always find his unsympathetic presence somewhere on a prime-time channel (Perry Mason (1957), Get Smart (1965), I Spy (1965)) but his roles ended up more campy than challenging. However, one heartfelt, serious portrayal was his portrayal of President William Howard Taft in the epic miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979). Elsewhere, he recorded a self-effacing comedy album ("Victor Buono: Heavy!") and even wrote comic poetry ("Victor Buono: It Could Be Verse". He was indeed a sought-after raconteur on daytime and nighttime talk shows.
Continuing with the theatre but on a more infrequent basis, his one-man stage shows included "Just We Three", "Remembrance of Things Past" and "This Would I Keep". He also appeared as Pellinore opposite Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence in a 1975 performance of "Camelot" and earned minor cult status for his memorable performance in the play "Last of the Marx Brothers' Writers" in a return to the Old Globe Theatre in 1977.
The never-married actor felt compelled to conceal his homosexuality. A well-regarded gourmet chef and an expert on Shakespeare, he died of a massive heart attack at his ranch in Apple Valley, California on January 1, 1982. Before his death was announced, Buono had just been cast in the Broadway-bound play "Whodunnit?" by Anthony Shaffer. The show finally arrived in New York without him and almost a year to his death (December 30, 1982). - Actor
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George Chakiris made his film debut at the age of 12 singing in the chorus of Song of Love (1947). Following his graduation from high school, he supported his night-time dancing, singing and dramatic lessons with a daytime job clerking in a Los Angeles department store. Later he started his acting/dancing career appearing in musicals such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)--he is one of the ballet dancers escorting Marilyn Monroe in "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"--White Christmas (1954), The Girl Rush (1955), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Brigadoon (1954), and Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). In 1957, he made his debut as a dramatic actor in Under Fire (1957). In 1958 he traveled to New York hoping for a Broadway "break." Hearing that Jerome Robbins was casting the London company of "West Side Story", he auditioned and was awarded the co-starring role of Riff. He played the part for almost two years on the West End stage before acting, singing and dancing as Bernardo in the Robert Wise film version (West Side Story (1961)), a performance that earned him a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Since then, he starred in a succession of films, including Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston, Bebo's Girl (1964) with Claudia Cardinale, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) with Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac and Gene Kelly, The Big Cube (1968) with Lana Turner, Why Not Stay for Breakfast? (1979), Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982), and Pale Blood (1990). He is one of the most traveled stars in motion pictures, having been to such locations as Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, Italy, England, Spain, and France. His nightclub career was launched to rave reviews at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and Harrah's Club in Lake Tahoe. In the 1970s and 1980s, his career focused on television and music. He appeared as guest star in several TV series such as Hawaii Five-O (1968) (Death is a Company Policy - 1972), Wonder Woman (1975) (Death in Disguise - 1978), CHiPs (1977) (Fox Trap - 1983), Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) (Lost and Found - 1984), Murder, She Wrote (1984) (Weave a Tangled Web - 1989), and he joined the cast of Dallas (1978) from 1985 to 1986. He has released several records: "George Chakiris," "Memories Are Made of These," "The Gershwin Song Book," "West Side Story's Dynamic...". Recently, he has appeared in several plays and stage musicals: after "The King and I" in the US in 1995, he performed in Britain the role of Rochester in "Jane Eyre".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Wendell Corey was a hard-working American character actor who appeared in numerous movies and television productions in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Born on March 20, 1914 in Dracut, Massachusetts, in the northeastern part of the Commonwealth near the New Hampshire border, Corey was the son of a Congregationalist clergyman. After receiving his education, Corey began his acting career in summer stock. During the Depression he worked with the Federal Theater Project, part of the Works Progress Administration that had been created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the unemployed to work. It was while working with the Federal Theater Project in the late 1930s that he met his wife, Alice Wiley.
He made his Broadway debut in "Comes the Revelation" in 1942, a flop that lasted only two performances. His next play, "Strip for Action" (1942-43), was more successful, lasting 110 performances. He appeared in more plays in supporting roles from 1943-45, before making his reputation as the cynical newspaperman in Elmer Rice's hit comedy "Dream Girl," which ran for 341 performances in the 1945-46 season. He was discovered during the run of the play by producer Hal B. Wallis, the former head of production at Warner Bros. who was an independent producer affiliated with Paramount Pictures. Wallis, who discovered Burt Lancaster shortly after the war, signed Corey to a Paramount contract.
It was at Paramount that he made his movie debut in Desert Fury (1947). He went on to a career as a supporting player in the '40s and '50s in A-level productions with top Hollywood stars. He also carved a niche for himself in television and in the late 1950s starred in the TV series Peck's Bad Girl (1959). In the 1960s he worked mostly in television.
Like Ronald Reagan, who was then a Democrat, the Republican Corey was interested in politics. He was elected to membership on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild and served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1961 to 1963. As a Republican, he was elected to the City Council in Santa Monica, California, in 1965. He made a bid for the Republican nomination to contest a seat in Congress in 1966, but was defeated in the primary.
Corey was still serving on the Santa Monica City Council when he died on November 8, 1968 at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He was 54 years old.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.- 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.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her surname comes from her paternal grandfather, whose family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California.
After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland, where she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935. She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract than Olivia appeared in three more films: The Irish in Us (1935), Alibi Ike (1935), and Captain Blood (1935), this last with the man with whom her career would be most closely identified: heartthrob Errol Flynn. He and Olivia starred together in eight films during their careers. In 1939 Warner Bros. loaned her to David O. Selznick for the classic Gone with the Wind (1939). Playing sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film, Hattie McDaniel.
After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films. In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warners had been fitting her. The studio responded by placing her on a six-month suspension, all of the studios at the time operating under the policy that players were nothing more than property to do with as they saw fit. As if that weren't bad enough, when her contract with Warners was up, she was told that she needed to make up the time lost because of the suspension. Irate, she sued the studio, and for the length of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The result, however, was worth it. In a landmark decision, the court said that not only would Olivia not need to make up the time, but also that all performers would be limited to a seven-year contract that would include any suspensions handed down. This became known as the "de Havilland decision": no longer could studios treat their performers as chattel. Olivia returned to the screen in 1946 and made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her: To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s.
In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948). As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). After a three-year hiatus, Olivia returned to star in My Cousin Rachel (1952). From that point on, she made few appearances on the screen but was seen on Broadway and in some television shows. Her last screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), and her last career appearance was in the TV movie The Woman He Loved (1988).
Her turbulent relationship with her only sibling, Joan Fontaine, was press fodder for many decades; the two were reported as having been permanently estranged since their mother's death in 1975, when Joan claimed that she had not been invited to the memorial service, which she only managed to hold off until she could arrive by threatening to go public. Joan also wrote in her memoir that her elder sister had been physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive when they were young. And the iconic photo of Joan with her hand outstretched to congratulate Olivia backstage after the latter's first Oscar win and Olivia ignoring it because she was peeved by a comment Joan had made about Olivia's new husband, Marcus Goodrich, remained part of Hollywood lore for many years.
Nonetheless, late in life, Fontaine gave an interview in which she serenely denied any and all claims of an estrangement from her sister. When a reporter asked Joan if she and Olivia were friends, she replied, "Of course!" The reporter responded that rumors to the contrary must have been sensationalism and she replied, "Oh, right--they have to. Two nice girls liking each other isn't copy." Asked if she and Olivia were in communication and spoke to each other, Joan replied "Absolutely." When asked if there ever had been a time when the two did not get along to the point where they wouldn't speak with one another, Joan replied, again, "Never. Never. There is not a word of truth about that." When asked why people believe it, she replied "Oh, I have no idea. It's just something to say ... Oh, it's terrible." When asked if she had seen Olivia over the years, she replied, "I've seen her in Paris. And she came to my apartment in New York often." The reporter stated that all this was a nice thing to hear. Joan then stated, "Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel. We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words. And all this is press." Joan died in 2013.
During the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of GWTW in 1989, Olivia graciously declined requests for all interviews as the last of the four main stars. She enjoyed a quiet retirement in Paris, France, where she resided for many decades, and where she died on 26 July, 2020, at the age of 104.
As well as being the last surviving major cast member of some of cinema's most beloved pre-war and wartime film classics (including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939)), and one of the longest-lived major stars in film history, Olivia de Havilland was unquestionably the last surviving iconic figure from the peak of Hollywood's golden era during the late 1930s, and her passing truly marked the end of an era.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke on December 14, 1946 in Elmhurst, Queens County, New York, to Frances Margaret (McMahon), a cashier, and John Patrick Duke, a cab driver and handyman. She was seven eighths Irish and one eighth German. Her acting career began when she was introduced to her brother Ray Duke's managers, John and Ethel Ross. Soon after, Anna Marie became Patty, the actress. Patty started off in commercials, a few movies and some bit parts. Her first big, memorable role came when she was chosen to portray the blind and deaf Helen Keller in the Broadway version of "The Miracle Worker". The play lasted almost two years, from October 19, 1959 to July 1, 1961 (Duke left in May 1961).
In 1962, The Miracle Worker (1962) became a movie and Patty won an Academy Award for best supporting actress. She was 16 years old, making her the youngest person ever to win an Oscar. She then starred in her own sitcom titled The Patty Duke Show (1963). It lasted for three seasons, and Patty was nominated for an Emmy. In 1965, she starred in the movie Billie (1965). It was a success and was the first movie ever sold to a television network. That same year, she married director Harry Falk. Their marriage lasted four years. She starred in Valley of the Dolls (1967), which was a financial but not a critical success. In 1969, she secured a part in an independent film called Me, Natalie (1969). The film was a box-office flop, but she won her second Golden Globe Award for her performance in it. In the early 1970s, she became a mother to actors Sean Astin (with writer Michael Yell) and Mackenzie Astin (with actor John Astin).
In 1976, she won her second Emmy Award for the highly successful mini-series, Captains and the Kings (1976). Other successful TV films followed. She received two Emmy nominations in 1978 for A Family Upside Down (1978) and Having Babies III (1978). She won her third Emmy in the 1979 TV movie version of The Miracle Worker (1979), this time portraying "Annie Sullivan".
In 1982, she was diagnosed with manic-depressive illness. In 1984, she became President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). In 1986, she married Michael Pearce, a drill sergeant whom she met while preparing for a role in the TV movie, A Time to Triumph (1986). In 1987, she wrote her autobiography, "Call Me Anna". In 1989, she and Mike adopted a baby, whom they named "Kevin". Her autobiography became a TV movie in 1990, with Patty playing herself, from her 30s onward. In 1992, she wrote her second book, "A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depression Illness".
Duke had a long and successful career. She was a political advocate on, among other issues, the Equal Rights Amendment, AIDS awareness, and nuclear disarmament. She died on March 29, 2016, aged 69, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of sepsis from a ruptured intestine.- Of Russian/Romanian and Jewish ancestry, sultry, amber-eyed Olive Felicia Dines grew up in Westchester County, New York. She was the daughter of Max Dines and his wife Sylvia Schwartz. According to differing sources, Max may have been a journalist or an attorney.
Felicia began in movies after first working as a teenage lingerie model in order to afford her dancing lessons. She then studied sociology at Pennsylvania State University (graduating with a B.A. in 1954), acted in college plays, attended drama school and eventually appeared in live TV commercials. As to her modeling bathing suits, negligees, bras and girdles, she later remarked "There is nothing very sexy or exciting about standing around in undergarments under hot lights" and "Modeling was hard work for me. I never liked it very much because I kept thinking I was in a rut".
Felicia's situation improved after a talent agent spotted her playing the female lead in William Inge's play Picnic at The Players Ring Theater in 1955 (Kim Novak starred in the film version that year). Columbia executives were impressed and signed the budding starlet to a seven-year contract. Initially billed as Randy Farr, Felicia found her niche as an intelligent and sexy western leading lady, first showcased in a trio of classics directed by the veteran Delmer Daves: Jubal (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and (in her best role yet) The Last Wagon (1956), opposite Richard Widmark. For the next two decades, she essayed a wide variety of characters, ranging from religious types to barmaids, from party girls to the occasional femme fatale.
Sandwiched in between frequent TV guest spots, Felicia excelled in just a handful of comedies and action films, notably in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) (as an unfaithful wife), in the poignant, idiosyncratic Jack Lemmon-directed comedy-drama Kotch (1971) (as Walter Matthau's daughter-in-law) and in the slick heist thriller Charley Varrick (1973) (this time as Matthau's love interest). A talented, much underused actress, she left show biz in 1992 but made a brief comeback 22 years later to co-star in a little known comedy drama, Loser's Crown (2014).
Felicia divorced her first husband, the actor Lee Farr, in 1955. Her second marriage was to Jack Lemmon, whom she had first met while he was filming Cowboy (1958). They married in 1962 in Paris during his work on Irma la Douce (1963). A daughter, Courtney, was born in 1966. Latterly known as Felicia F. Lemmon, she has resided in Los Angeles, devoting time and money to various philanthropic endeavours and to her much loved feline pets. - Actor
- Soundtrack
In 1953 Eddie Fisher was given his own fifteen-minute TV show called Coke Time (1953), sponsored by the Coca-Cola company. This show proved to be so popular that Coke then offered Eddie a $1 million contract to be their national spokesperson. A deal of that magnitude was almost unheard of at this time and helped push Fisher towards being one of the most popular singers by 1954. In 1955 Eddie married Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher was born a year later, followed by son Todd Fisher in l958. Later that year, the scandal of the decade broke when stories of Eddie's affair with Elizabeth Taylor were made public. She had been widowed earlier that year when her husband Mike Todd, Eddie's best friend, died in a plane crash. The bad publicity that followed did a great deal of damage to Eddie's career, while it actually increased the amount of money Elizabeth was offered for films. He and Liz did the movie BUtterfield 8 (1960), which actually earned Taylor an Academy Award, though it was received with mixed reviews. From there Liz went on to star in Cleopatra (1963), with Richard Burton, another scandal and divorce for Liz. With his TV show long gone and hit records a thing of the past, his career in the sixties consisted mainly of stage shows in Las Vegas, New York, and smaller venues as time went on. For a few years he was married to Connie Stevens and they had two daughters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher before divorcing in 1968. Eddie Fisher has written two autobiographies, the latest "Been There, Done That" published with great controversy. It seems some of the women in his past, including Debbie Reynolds, did not care for his portrayal of them. He must be given credit, however, for owning up to his own actions, which led to the degradation of his career. His fifth wife, Betty Lin, passed away from lung cancer on April 15, 2001.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Robert Gerard Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to a family of French-Canadian origin. He was the son of Jeanette (Gauthier) and Joseph Georges André Goulet. After hearing his son sing "Lead Kindly Light", in their church hall, his father told him, "I'm proud of you, son". A few weeks later, his father, lying on his death bed, called Robert to his side and told him the Lord had given him a beautiful voice and he must go and sing. His father died when Robert was 13 and he moved to Edmonton, Canada, a year later. Goulet won a singing scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of music in Toronto and, in 1951, made his concert debut at Edmonton in George Frideric Handel's "Messiah". Goulet was also a DJ on Canada's CKUA in Edmonton for two years. In 1960, he landed one of his biggest roles as "Lancelot" in Broadway's "Camelot", opposite Richard Burton and Julie Andrews. He received a Tony award in 1968 for his role in "Happy Time". He and his first wife, Louise Longmore, had one daughter, Nicolette Goulet (aka Nikki). His second wife, actress and singer Carol Lawrence, produced two sons, Christopher and Michael. In 1982, with Glenn Ford giving the bride away, he was married in Las Vegas to Vera Goulet (aka Vera Novak), a Yugoslavian-born writer, photographer and artist. When not living at their home in Las Vegas, they reside on their yacht, "Rogo", in Los Angeles. Goulet has performed at the White House for three presidents, as well as a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II.
On September 30, 2007, he was hospitalized in Las Vegas, where he was diagnosed with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, "a rare but rapidly progressive and potentially fatal condition". On October 13, he was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after it was determined that he "would not survive without an emergency lung transplant".
Goulet died on October 30, 2007 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, while awaiting a transplant.
He is survived by his wife, Vera Goulet, and three children, sons Christopher and Michael, and daughter Nicolette Goulet, who is the mother of his grandchildren, Jordan Gerard and Solange.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Though born in New York City, Ty was raised in Texas and, after military service during the Korean War, took some classes at Texas A&M. He then moved west to California and won some minor roles in B movies. When TV's Clint Walker insisted on improvements in his Cheyenne (1955) contract, Warner Brothers countered by bringing in Ty as a possible replacement. Soon, Ty had his own show, Bronco (1958), which ran from 1958 to 1962. From here, he moved into a brief flurry of film activity: Merrill's Marauders (1962) and The Chapman Report (1962) in 1962, PT 109 (1963), Wall of Noise (1963), and Palm Springs Weekend (1963) in 1963, and Battle of the Bulge (1965) in 1966. After this, Ty's career drifted off into a series of forgettable movies made in Europe and, later, he worked in Prescott, Arizona, as an evangelistic preacher. Though often dismissed as just a hunk of "beefcake" -- he did a lot of bare-chest scenes -- Ty displayed a flair for light comedy in The Chapman Report (1962) and showed dramatic potential in the underrated Wall of Noise (1963).- Actress
- Soundtrack
A slim, stunning, stylish-looking actress, British Jill Haworth (born Valerie Jill Haworth on August 15, 1945 in Sussex) was a free-spirited product of the 1960s. Her father was a textile magnate and sometime race car driver and mother an aspiring ballerina. Trained in dance herself, she attended the Corona Stage School and appeared, unbilled, as a schoolgirl in a couple of movies, before fame came knocking at her door.
The diminutive (5'2") Jill was discovered by ever-formidable director Otto Preminger after he happened upon her photo from her acting school. Looking for a new face to play the refugee role of Karen in his monumental Oscar-winning film Exodus (1960), Jill made a touching impression as Sal Mineo's ill-fated Jewish girlfriend. An impressed Preminger went on to cast the actress in two other of his other important epics that same decade -- The Cardinal (1963) and In Harm's Way (1965). Both, however, were received with much less fanfare.
At this juncture, Jill had gained a sympathy vote in Hollywood as many of her ingénues seemed to meet untimely ends. Despite a dusky, untrained singing voice, the lovely blonde went to Broadway in 1966 and fashioned the role of the capricious Britisher Sally Bowles (played with a dark wig) in the musical "Cabaret," which co-starred Bert Convy as her naive American boyfriend and the irrepressible Joel Grey as the seedy Master of Ceremonies. The Kander/Ebb musical, which took place in decadent pre-Nazi Berlin, was based on Christopher Isherwood's popular "Berlin Stories". A huge hit, it won numerous Tony awards, including best musical of the 1966-67 season. Although Jill received mixed reviews, she played the role for two years.
Interestingly, it was veterans Lotte Lenya and Jack Gilford who received Tony nominations for their elderly roles in the production and not the young leads Haworth and Convy. Later on, while Grey was asked to recreate his magnetic Tony-winning part for the 1972 film Cabaret (1972), Jill and Bert were snubbed again when the leads went to others. It should be noted that by the time Bob Fosse's screen version was ready to go, Jill's star had dimmed considerably. The movie was now geared as a showcase for the fast-rising Liza Minnelli. As such, the Bowles character was Americanized and her boyfriend, played now by Michael York, served as her British counterpart. Both Minnelli and Grey won well-deserved Oscars for their dazzling performances.
After the "Cabaret" success, things died down and Jill returned to England, relegated to a few horror films here and there, including It! (1967), Horror House (1969) and Tower of Evil (1972). She also appeared on several American TV series from time to time, including Mission: Impossible (1966), The F.B.I. (1965), Baretta (1975) and Vega$ (1978). By the 1980s, however, Jill was pretty much out of sight.
In 2001 she appeared out of nowhere in a support role for the America film Mergers & Acquisitions (2001). She was living in New York and reportedly had just finished working on a voiceover YMCA spot in 2011 when she died suddenly in her Manhattan home of "natural causes" at age 65.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Craggy-faced, dependable star character actor Van Heflin never quite made the Hollywood "A" list, but made up for what he lacked in appearance with hard work, charisma and solid acting performances. He was born Emmett Evan Heflin in Oklahoma in December 1908, the son of Fanny Bleecker (Shippey) and Emmett Evan Heflin, a dental surgeon. When his parents separated his brother and sister stayed with his mother, while he was farmed out to his grandmother in California. He was never quite settled and his restless spirit led him to ship out on a tramp steamer after graduating from school. After a year at sea he studied for a law degree at the University of Oklahoma, but after two years he decided he had enough and went back to sailing the Pacific. When he returned he decided to try his hand at acting and enrolled at the prestigious Yale School of Drama. His first foray into theatre was the comedy "Mister Moneypenny" (1928) (credited as "Evan Heflin"). It was indifferently received and Van went back to sea, this time for three years. In 1934 he returned to the stage in the plays "The Bride of Torozko" and "The Night Remembers", both outright disasters.
His big break came in 1936, when he landed a good leading role as a radical leftist at odds with the established elite in the S.N. Behrman comedy of manners, "End of Summer" at the Guild Theatre. Critic Brooks Atkinson, praising the play and the actors, commended the "sparkling dialogue" and "fluent and sunny performance" (New York Times, February 18 1936). Katharine Hepburn, who saw him on stage, then persuaded Van to take a swing at film acting and finagled a role for him alongside her in the Pandro S. Berman production A Woman Rebels (1936). Van spent a year at RKO in forgettable films, with roles ranging from a reverend in The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1937) to a top-billed part as a burnt-out quarterback in Saturday's Heroes (1937). By 1939 Van was back on stage, rather more successfully, in "The Philadelphia Story" at the Shubert Theatre. The hit play, which also starred Vera Allen, Shirley Booth and Joseph Cotten, ran for 417 performances, closing in March 1940. That same year he appeared for Warner Brothers in the entertaining but historically inaccurate western Santa Fe Trail (1940), Bosley Crowther describing his performance, above other cast members, as containing "the sharpest punch" (New York Times, December 21 1940).
On the strength of these performances, Van was signed to a contract at MGM, where he remained for eight years (1941-49). His tenure was interrupted only by two years of wartime service as a combat photographer with the U.S. 9th Air Force, First Motion Picture Unit, which produced training and morale-boosting short films. Back at MGM, his third assignment at the studio, Johnny Eager (1941), had proved an excellent showcase for his acting skills. He played Jeff Hartnett, right-hand man of the titular crime figure (Robert Taylor), a complex, sardonic character, at once loyal soldier yet abjectly self-loathing. For his role as the heavy-drinking, Shakespeare-quoting mobster with a conscience, Van got the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in 1942. He was immediately cast in the leading role as a forensically-minded detective in Kid Glove Killer (1942), a film which marked the debut of Fred Zinnemann as a feature director. This was in turn followed by another B-movie whodunit, Grand Central Murder (1942).
The prestigious--but not always accurate--historical drama Tennessee Johnson (1942) saw Van playing Andrew Johnson, the 17th US president. While the film was a critical success, it did less well at the box office. The New York Times commented on the "sincerity and strength" of his performance, adding "Mr. Heflin, in a full-bodied, carefully delineated portrait of a passionate man, gives decisive proof that his talents have thus far been haphazardly used" (January 13, 1943). In between wartime service and two musicals, Presenting Lily Mars (1943) and the Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), Van appeared in the excellent film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck (as the inevitable femme fatale) and Kirk Douglas (as an alcoholic district attorney). As the sympathetic gambler Sam who returns to his home town, ostensibly to expose the dirty secrets of the main protagonists, Van had more on-screen time than his illustrious co-stars and some good lines to boot. Van put his tough-guy screen persona to good use in enacting Raymond Chandler's wisecracking gumshoe Philip Marlowe on NBC radio from June 1947, with 19 real-life Los Angeles detectives among the live audience.
During the next few years the versatile Heflin dealt capably with a wide variety of assignments. He appeared as a jilted lover in the expensively-produced costume drama Green Dolphin Street (1947); he was Athos, one of The Three Musketeers (1948) and an ex-GI on the trail of a psychopathic prison camp informer in Fred Zinnemann's Act of Violence (1948); poignant as the unloved Monsieur Bovary in Madame Bovary (1949); an ex-cop in love with a high-flying socialite in the melodrama East Side, West Side (1949); and a cop whose affair with a married woman leads to a plot to kill her husband in The Prowler (1951).
The 1950s saw Van's progression from leading man to star character actor. Having left MGM in 1949, he was signed in this capacity to several short-term contracts by Universal (1951-54), 20th Century Fox (1954), Columbia (1957-59) and Paramount (1959-60). Apart from the big-business drama Patterns (1956), he is best remembered in this decade for his portrayal of western characters with integrity and singularity of purpose: as the struggling homesteader at the mercy of a ruthless cattle baron who befriends Shane (1953); the desperate, single-minded rancher trying to get a captured outlaw on the 3:10 to Yuma (1957); and the tough, uncompromisingly stern father forced to kill his errant son in Gunman's Walk (1958).
With the possible exception of his sympathetic German captain of a World War II surface raider in the offbeat international co-production Under Ten Flags (1960) (aka "Under Ten Flags"), Heflin had few roles of note in the 1960s. He appeared in the calamitous flop The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and the equally disastrous Stagecoach (1966) remake. One of his last performances was as the deranged bomber in Airport (1970). His final curtain call on stage was as Robert Sloane in "A Case of Libel" (1963-64) on Broadway.
Unlike many of his peers, Van shunned the limelight and was never a part of the Hollywood glamour set. A well-liked, introspective and talented performer, he died of a heart attack in July 1971, aged just 62.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, while her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was born in Úzice, Bohemia, to English and Austrian parents.
After her parents' divorce, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school. Later, when her mother moved back to the Netherlands, she attended private schools as well. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition.
After the liberation, she went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career. As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life--until the film producers came calling. In 1948, after being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film Nederlands in zeven lessen (1948). Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives' Tale (1951) as Eve Lester. The part still wasn't much, so she headed to America to try her luck there. Audrey gained immediate prominence in the US with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). This film turned out to be a smashing success, and she won an Oscar as Best Actress.
On September 25, 1954, she married actor Mel Ferrer. She also starred in Sabrina (1954), for which she received another Academy Award nomination. She starred in the films Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). She received yet another Academy Award nomination for her role in The Nun's Story (1959). On July 17, 1960, she gave birth to her first son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer.
Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), for which she received another Oscar nomination. She scored commercial success again playing Regina Lampert in the espionage caper Charade (1963). One of Audrey's most radiant roles was in the fine production of My Fair Lady (1964). After a couple of other movies, most notably Two for the Road (1967), she hit pay dirt and another nomination in Wait Until Dark (1967).
In 1967, Audrey decided to retire from acting while she was on top. She divorced from Mel Ferrer in 1968. On January 19, 1969, she married Dr. Andrea Dotti. On February 8, 1970, she gave birth to her second son, Luca Dotti in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. From time to time, she would appear on the silver screen.
In 1988, she became a special ambassador to the United Nations UNICEF fund helping children in Latin America and Africa, a position she retained until 1993. She was named to People's magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Her last film was Always (1989).
Audrey Hepburn died, aged 63, on January 20, 1993 in Tolochnaz, Vaud, Switzerland, from appendicular cancer. She had made a total of 31 high quality movies. Her elegance and style will always be remembered in film history as evidenced by her being named in Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time".- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was very close to her brother Tom; at 14 she was devastated to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years afterward, she used his November 8 birth date as her own. She became shy around girls her age and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.
After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931). She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed; after making a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory (1933), she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women (1933), was the most successful picture of its day.
But stories were beginning to leak out, of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her, and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door (1937); the many flops included Break of Hearts (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Quality Street (1937), and the now-classic Bringing Up Baby (1938).
With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison". She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938) and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The Philadelphia Story (1940) was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957).
With The African Queen (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 1950s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker (1956), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 1960s, as she devoted her time to the ailing Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did The Lion in Winter (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.
In the 1970s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), and The Corn Is Green (1979). She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn (1975) with John Wayne and On Golden Pond (1981) with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win - the latter still the record.
She made more TV-films in the 1980s and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Love Affair (1994), with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas (1994). With her health declining, she retired from public life in the mid-1990s. She died at 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third son of Harriet Catherine (Curran) and James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Irish and German ancestry.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in Hollywood when Gene Kelly arrived in town in 1941. He came direct from the hit 1940 original Broadway production of "Pal Joey" and planned to return to the Broadway stage after making the one film required by his contract. His first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. What kept Kelly in Hollywood were "the kindred creative spirits" he found behind the scenes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The talent pool was especially large during World War II, when Hollywood was a refuge for many musicians and others in the performing arts of Europe who were forced to flee the Nazis. After the war, a new generation was coming of age. Those who saw An American in Paris (1951) would try to make real life as romantic as the reel life they saw portrayed in that musical, and the first time they saw Paris, they were seeing again in memory the seventeen-minute ballet sequence set to the title song written by George Gershwin and choreographed by Kelly. The sequence cost a half million dollars (U.S.) to make in 1951 dollars. Another Kelly musical of the era, Singin' in the Rain (1952), was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for its National Film Registry. Kelly was in the same league as Fred Astaire, but instead of a top hat and tails Kelly wore work clothes that went with his masculine, athletic dance style.
Gene Kelly died at age 83 of complications from two strokes on February 2, 1996 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California.- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Norma Koch was born on 27 March 1898. She was a costume designer, known for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Marty (1955) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). She was married to Robert Martin. She died on 29 July 1979 in Jamaica, New York, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers Country Day School, then located in nearby Brookline. After RCDS, he went to high school at Phillips Andover Academy. Jack was a member of the Harvard class of 1947, where he was in Navy ROTC and the Dramatic Club. After service as a Navy ensign, he worked in a beer hall (playing piano), on radio, off Broadway, TV and Broadway. His movie debut was with Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954). He won Best Supporting Actor as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955). He received nominations in comedy (Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960)) and drama (Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980) and Missing (1982)). He won the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973) and the Cannes Best Actor award for "Syndrome" and "Missing". He made his debut as a director with Kotch (1971) and in 1985 on Broadway in "Long Day's Journey into Night". In 1988 he received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone). Growing up in the slums of Pozzuoli during the second World War without any support from her father, she experienced great sadness in her childhood. Her life took an unexpected turn for the best when, at age 14, she entered into a beauty contest and placed as one of the finalists. It was here that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. Under his guidance, Sophia was put under contract and appeared as an extra in ten films beginning with Le sei mogli di Barbablù (1950), before working her way up to supporting roles. In these early films, she was credited as "Sofia Lazzaro" because people joked her beauty could raise Lazzarus from the dead.
By her late teens, Sophia was playing lead roles in many Italian features such as La favorita (1952) and Aida (1953). In 1957, she embarked on a successful acting career in the United States, starring in Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), and The Pride and the Passion (1957) that year. She had a short-lived but much-publicized fling with co-star Cary Grant, who was nearly 31 years her senior. She was only 22 while he was 53, and she rejected a marriage proposal from him. They were paired together a second time in the family-friendly romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). While under contract to Paramount, Sophia starred in Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Key (1958), The Black Orchid (1958), It Started in Naples (1960), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), A Breath of Scandal (1960), and The Millionairess (1960) before returning to Italy to star in Two Women (1960). The film was a period piece about a woman living in war-torn Italy who is raped while trying to protect her young daughter. Originally cast as the more glamorous child, Sophia fought against type and was re-cast as the mother, displaying a lack of vanity and proving herself as a genuine actress. This performance received international acclaim and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Sophia remained a bona fide international movie star throughout the sixties and seventies, making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and starring opposite such leading men as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Her English-language films included El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arabesque (1966), Man of La Mancha (1972), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). She gained wider respect with her Italian films, especially Marriage Italian Style (1964) and A Special Day (1977), both of which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. During these years she received a second Oscar nomination and won five Golden Globe Awards.
From the eighties onward, Sophia's appearances on the big screen came few and far between. She preferred to spend the majority of her time raising sons Carlo Ponti Jr. (b. 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (b. 1973). Her only acting credits during the decade were five television films, beginning with Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), a biopic in which she portrayed herself and her mother. She ventured into other areas of business and became the first actress to launch her own fragrance and design of eyewear. In 1982 she voluntarily spent nineteen days in jail for tax evasion.
In 1991 Sophia received an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work, and was declared "one of world cinema's greatest treasures." That same year, she experienced a terrible loss when her mother died of cancer. Her return to mainstream films in Ready to Wear (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. She followed this up with her biggest U.S. hit in years, the comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), in which she played a sexy divorcée who seduces Walter Matthau. Over the next decade Sophia had plum roles in a few independent films like Soleil (1997), Between Strangers (2002) (directed by Edoardo), and Lives of the Saints (2004). Still beautiful at 72, she posed scantily-clad for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar. Sadly, that same year she mourned the death of her 94-year-old spouse, Carlo Ponti. In 2009, after far too much time away from film, she appeared in the musical Nine (2009) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. These days Sophia is based in Switzerland but frequently travels to the states to spend time with her sons and their families (Eduardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander). Sophia Loren remains one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Blonde and blue-eyed with an attractively feline appeal, Carol Lynley began her professional career as Carolyn Lee. She learned ballet at age seven, became a successful child model at age 10 (eventually working for the Sears & Roebuck department store in New York), and got her face nationally recognized as "the Coca-Cola Girl."
Carole Ann Jones was born in New York City to Frances Fuller (Felch) from New England and Irish immigrant Cyril Roland Jones. Trying to branch out into acting early on, in New York City, to Frances Fuller (Felch), from New England, and Cyril Roland Jones, who was an Irish immigrant. Trying to branch out into acting early on, Carol discovered that another individual by that name, born seven years earlier, was already on the books of Actors' Equity, so Carolyn fused "lyn" and "lee" to create 'Lynley'. From age 15 she appeared on Broadway, played juvenile roles in early anthology television, and was featured on the cover of Life Magazine in April 1957. Her first important film roles came in decidedly wholesome fare, beginning with The Light in the Forest (1958) for Walt Disney Productions, in which she played indentured servant Shenandoe. It was a promising start. A New York Times reviewer praised her performance (alongside that of fellow screen newbie James MacArthur), describing both as "real charmers with more than their share of talent." Thrust once more into the limelight, Lynley reprised her earlier Broadway role in the film version of Blue Denim (1959) as a naive girl who becomes pregnant and ponders having an illegal abortion. This performance got her nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer in 1959. That same year, she graduated with a diploma from New York's School for Young Professionals. Lynley went on to play other ingénues and troubled teens before shedding her wholesome image by the early 1960s.
Return to Peyton Place (1961) headlined the actress as a best-selling novelist who controversially reveals the town's darkest secrets and scandals. This was followed by the bawdy (and mostly irritating) sex farce Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), with Lynley as a virginal college student in a New York apartment block pursued by a lecherous landlord/playboy (played by Jack Lemmon). Luckily, better opportunities to prove her acting mettle turned up with a double role in The Cardinal (1963) (opposite Tom Tryon), and as the tormented mother of a kidnapped child in the superior psychological thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), directed by Otto Preminger and co-starring Laurence Olivier. Cinema magazine commented "With a face like that of a fallen angel, Carol Lynley has beauty that is often awe inspiring".
In March 1965, the former teen queen posed nude for an issue of Playboy magazine; later that year she played the title role in a turgid biopic of 1930s Hollywood sex symbol Jean Harlow. While the quality of her films tended to decline after the mid-'60s, there were still entertaining moments in B-pictures like The Shuttered Room (1967) and Once You Kiss a Stranger... (1969) (in this lurid thriller, Lynley rose above her material and was memorable in the role of a psychotic murderess). In Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she was merely one of the ill-fated passengers who ended up in Davy Jones' Locker. Still, Variety called her performance "especially effective". After 1967, television provided most of her work, including guest spots in seminal shows like Mannix (1967), The Invaders (1967), Hawaii Five-O (1968) and as co-star of the TV pilot for The Night Stalker (1972) (as Carl Kolchak's girlfriend). In her penultimate role, Lynley played a grandmother in a film titled uncannily similar to the one which had launched her career: A Light in the Forest (2003).
Carol Lynley retired from the screen in 2006. A highly capable actress who should have made a bigger splash in Hollywood, she passed away on September 3, 2019 in Pacific Palisades, California from a heart attack. She was 77.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Suellyn Lyon was born in Davenport, Iowa, the youngest of five siblings born to Sue Lyon (née Karr) and James Lyon. Sue Karr Lyon was 42 years old when she was widowed, when Suellyn was just 10 months old. Her mother worked in a hospital to provide for her children, and money was tight. The family then moved to Los Angeles in hopes that Suellyn could help out financially as a model.
She duly got jobs modeling for JC Penney, and doing a commercial, which featured her bleached blonde hair. She landed small parts on Dennis the Menace (1959) and The Loretta Young Show (1953). Director Stanley Kubrick saw Sue on the show and suggested to his partner that they should see her for the role of Lolita (1962). She was signed by the Glenn Shaw agency, and Pat Holmes, an agent, brought her down to Kubrick for audition, and won the part of Lolita.
In 1964, Sue married Hampton Fancher III but the marriage, like the four that would follow, would end in divorce. She was appearing at the time in such movies as 7 Women (1965), The Flim-Flam Man (1967) and Tony Rome (1967). Her second husband was Roland Harrison, an African-American photographer and football coach. The controversy over their marriage made them decide to move to Europe. She continued in movies like Evel Knievel (1971), Game of Murder (1973), and Murder in a Blue World (1973), but wound up divorcing Harrison, in part due to the fallout over the controversy and other problems.
Sue met Gary "Cotton" Adamson at the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he was serving time for murder and robbery. She worked as a cocktail waitress and lived in a hotel in Denver nearby. She married him in 1973 and began working for prison reform and conjugal rights. Unfortunately this was another short-lived marriage as she divorced him after he committed yet another robbery. More films followed including Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976), The Astral Factor (1978), Towing (1978), Crash! (1976), Don't Push, I'll Charge When I'm Ready (1971) and her final film, Alligator (1980).
Sue married Edward Weathers in 1983, but the marriage ended a year later. She married a radio engineer, Richard Rudman, but that marriage, like the four before it, ended in divorce.
Sue Lyon died in 2019, aged 73. She was survived by her only child, a daughter, Nona Harrison (from her marriage to Roland Harrison).- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Born to a Czech mother and a Serbian father in Chicago as Mladen Sekulovich, on March 22, 1912, Karl Malden did not speak English until he was in kindergarten. After graduating from high school in the nearby steel town of Gary, Indiana, Malden worked in the industry for three years until 1934, when he was frustrated with the drudgery of manual labor. He left to attend the Arkansas State Teacher's College, then the Goodman Theater Dramatic School and never looked back. Three years later, he went to New York City to find fame.
Malden rapidly became involved with the Group Theater, an organization of actors and directors who were changing the face of theater, where he attracted the attention of director Elia Kazan. With Kazan directing, Karl starred in plays such as "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller and "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams. While Malden had one screen appearance before his military service in World War II, in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he did not establish his film career until after the war. Malden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and showed his range as an actor in roles such as that of Father Corrigan in On the Waterfront (1954) and the lecherous Archie Lee in Baby Doll (1956).
He starred in dozens of films such as Fear Strikes Out (1957), Pollyanna (1960), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Gypsy (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Patton (1970) as General Omar Bradley. In the early 1970s, he built a television career on the tough but honest screen persona he had created when he starred as Detective Mike Stone on The Streets of San Francisco (1972), co-starring with Michael Douglas. He also became the pitchman for American Express, a position he held for 21 years. In 1988, he was elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a position he held for five years. Following that he, published his memoir entitled, "When Do I Start?: A Memoir", written with his daughter Carla.
Malden also courted controversy by pushing for a special salute to Elia Kazan at the 1999 Academy Awards. Malden defended both Kazan and the award, arguing that Kazan's artistic achievements outshone any shame attached to Kazan's naming names before the Congressional committee investigating Communists in Hollywood. Marlon Brando refused to give Kazan the statuette; Robert De Niro ultimately did. Karl Malden died at age 97 of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on July 1, 2009. He was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with The Glenn Miller Story (1954) allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards -- firstly on TV's Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor/Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther (1963).- Music Department
- Actor
- Writer
Johnny Mercer started his career as singer and songwriter for Paul Whiteman. He started writing songs for Hollywood in 1935, where he also had a few small parts in musicals. Among his famous songs is the inoffical anthem of Hollywood, "Hooray For Hollywood" that he wrote for the movie "Hollywood Hotel". He also had radio programs and made records, some with Bing Crosby.- Actor
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Salvatore (Sal) Mineo Jr. was born to Josephine and Sal Sr. (a casket maker), who emigrated to the U.S. from Sicily. His siblings were Michael, Victor and Sarina. Sal was thrown out of parochial school and, by age eight, was a member of a street gang in a tough Bronx neighborhood. His mother enrolled him in dancing school and, after being arrested for robbery at age ten, he was given a choice of juvenile confinement or professional acting school.
He soon appeared in the theatrical production "The Rose Tattoo" with Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach and as the young prince in "The King and I" with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner. At age 16 he played a much younger boy in Six Bridges to Cross (1955) with Tony Curtis and later that same year played Plato in James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause (1955). He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in this film and again for his role as Dov Landau in Exodus (1960).
Expanding his repertoire, Mineo returned to the theatre to direct and star in the play "Fortune and Men's Eyes" with successful runs in both New York and Los Angeles. In the late 1960s and 1970s he continued to work steadily in supporting roles on TV and in film, including Dr. Milo in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) and Harry O (1973). In 1975 he returned to the stage in the San Francisco hit production of "P.S. Your Cat Is Dead". Preparing to open the play in Los Angeles in 1976 with Keir Dullea, he returned home from rehearsal the evening of February 12th when he was attacked and stabbed to death by a stranger. A drifter named Lionel Ray Williams was arrested for the crime and, after trial in 1979, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder, but was paroled in 1990. Although taken away far too soon, the memory of Sal Mineo continues to live on through the large body of TV and film work that he left behind.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa María (Marcano) and farmer Francisco José "Paco" Alverío. Her mother moved to New York City in 1937, taking Rita with her while leaving her reportedly unfaithful husband and Rita's younger brother behind. Rita's professional career began before she reached adolescence.
From the age of nine, she performed as a professional dancer in New York night clubs. At age 11, she landed her first movie experience, dubbing Spanish-language versions of US films. Less than a month before her 14th birthday on November 22, 1945, she made her Broadway debut in the play "Skydrift" at the Belasco Theatre, costarring with Arthur Keegan and a young Eli Wallach. Although she would not appear again on Broadway for almost two decades, Rita Moreno, as she was billed in the play, had arrived professionally. In 1950, she was signed by MGM, but the studio dropped her option after just one year.
The cover of the March 1, 1954, edition of "Life Magazine" featured a three-quarters, over-the-left-shoulder profile of the young Puerto Rican actress/entertainer with the provocative title "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence". It was sexpot time, a stereotype that would plague her throughout the decade. If not cast as a Hispanic pepper pot, she could rely on being cast as another "exotic", such as her appearance on Father Knows Best (1954) as an exchange student from India. Because of a dearth of decent material, Moreno had to play roles in movies that she considered degrading. Among the better pictures she earned featured roles in were the classic Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The King and I (1956).
Director Robert Wise, who was chosen to co-direct West Side Story (1961) (the film version of the smash Broadway musical, a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" with the warring Venetian clans the Montagues and Capulets re-envisioned as Irish/Polish and Puerto Rican adolescent street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks), cast Moreno as "Anita", the Puerto Rican girlfriend of Sharks' leader Bernardo, whose sister Maria is the piece's Juliet.
However, despite her talent, roles commensurate with that talent were not forthcoming in the 1960s. The following decade would prove kinder, possibly because the beautiful Moreno had aged gracefully and could now be seen by filmmakers, TV producers and casting directors as something other than the spitfire/sexpot that Hispanic women were supposed to conform to. Ironically, it was in two vastly diverging roles--that of a $100 hooker in director Mike Nichols' brilliant realization of Jules Feiffer's acerbic look at male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge (1971), and Milly the Helper in the children's TV show The Electric Company (1971)--that signaled a career renaissance.
Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to "The Electric Company"'s soundtrack album, following it up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for "The Ritz" (a role she would reprise in the film version, The Ritz (1976)). She then won Emmy Awards for The Muppet Show (1976) and The Rockford Files (1974).
She has continued to work steadily on screen (both large and small) and on stage, solidifying her reputation as a national treasure, a status that was officially ratified with the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in June 2004.- Actress
- Soundtrack
In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made her entrance into this caring haven on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh (a suburb of Dublin), Ireland. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team "The Shamrock Rovers." Maureen was the second of six FitzSimons children - Peggy, Florrie, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Margot Fitzsimons and James O'Hara completed this beautiful family.
Maureen loved playing rough athletic games as a child and excelled in sports. She combined this interest with an equally natural gift for performing. This was demonstrated by her winning pretty much every Feis award for drama and theatrical performing her country offered. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. This course was to be altered, however, when Charles Laughton, after seeing a screen test of Maureen, became mesmerized by her hauntingly beautiful eyes. Before casting her to star in Jamaica Inn (1939), Laughton and his partner, Erich Pommer, changed her name from Maureen FitzSimons to "Maureen O'Hara" - a bit shorter last name for the marquee.
Under contract to Laughton, Maureen's next picture was to be filmed in America (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)) at RKO Pictures. The epic film was an extraordinary success and Maureen's contract was eventually bought from Laughton by RKO. At 19, Maureen had already starred in two major motion pictures with Laughton. Unlike most stars of her era, she started at the top, and remained there - with her skills and talents only getting better and better with the passing years.
Maureen has an enviable string of all-time classics to her credit that include the aforementioned "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Sitting Pretty (1948), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Parent Trap (1961). Add to this the distinction of being voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world and you have a film star who was as gorgeous as she was talented.
Although at times early in her career Hollywood didn't seem to notice, there was much more to Maureen O'Hara than her dynamic beauty. She not only had a wonderful lyric soprano voice, but she could use her inherent athletic ability to perform physical feats that most actresses couldn't begin to attempt, from fencing to fisticuffs. She was a natural athlete.
In her career Maureen starred with some of Hollywood's most dashing leading men, including Tyrone Power, John Payne, Rex Harrison, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Sir Alec Guinness and, of course, her famed pairings with "The Duke" himself, John Wayne. She starred in five films with Wayne, the most beloved being The Quiet Man (1952).
In addition to famed director John Ford, Maureen was also fortunate to have worked for some other great directors in the business: Alfred Hitchcock, William Dieterle, Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Jean Renoir, John M. Stahl, William A. Wellman, Frank Borzage, Walter Lang, George Seaton, George Sherman, Carol Reed, Delmer Daves, David Swift, Andrew V. McLaglen and Chris Columbus.
In 1968 Maureen found much deserved personal happiness when she married Charles Blair. Gen. Blair was a famous aviator whom she had known as a friend of her family for many years. A new career began for Maureen, that of a full-time wife. Her marriage to Blair, however, was again far from typical. Blair was the real-life version of what John Wayne had been on the screen. He had been a Brigadier General in the Air Force, a Senior Pilot with Pan American, and held many incredible record-breaking aeronautic achievements. Maureen happily retired from films in 1973 after making the TV movie The Red Pony (1973) (which on the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence) with Henry Fonda. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, "The Virgin Islander," writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says."
Tragically, Charles Blair died in a plane crash in 1978. Though completely devastated, Maureen pulled herself together and, with memories of ten of the happiest years of her life, continued on. She was elected President and CEO of Antilles Airboats, which brought her the distinction of being the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States.
Fortunately, she was coaxed out of retirement several times - once in 1991 to star with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991) and again, in 1995, in a made-for-TV movie, The Christmas Box (1995) on CBS. In the spring of 1998, Maureen accepted the second of what would be three projects for Polson Productions and CBS: Cab to Canada (1998) - and, in October, 2000, The Last Dance (2000).
On St. Patrick's Day in 2004, she published her New York Times bestselling memoir, 'Tis Herself, co-authored with her longtime biographer and manager Johnny Nicoletti.
On November 4, 2014 Maureen was honored by a long overdue Oscar for "Lifetime Achievement" at the annual Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governors Awards.
Maureen O'Hara was absolutely stunning, with that trademark red hair, dazzling smile and those huge, expressive eyes. She has fans from all over the world of all ages who are utterly devoted to her legacy of films and her persona as a strong, courageous and intelligent woman.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Considered by many to be one of the greatest American actresses of all time, Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today's great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Geraldine Sue Page was born on November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri to Dr. Leon Elwin Page, an osteopathic physician and Pearl Maize Page, a homemaker. She had an older brother named Donald. The family moved to Chicago when Page was five years old. Growing up, her interests and hobbies always were directed toward the arts. She tried writing and painting while younger, but that proved to be too frustrating. She wanted to be a concert pianist, but her family couldn't afford all that training. While she was still a preteen, she joined the drama club at her church and soon found her passion. She began reading all kinds of plays as well as reading about actors. She was fascinated with the careers of actresses like Lucille La Verne, Maude Adams, and Eva Le Gallienne.
Upon graduation from high school in 1942, she entered the Goodman Theater School, where she performed in just about everything in which students could perform, as well as earning money working for a children's theater group. When she completed the three-year program in 1945, she and several other students organized a summer stock theater in Lake Zurich, Illinois. After the summer season, she headed for New York City. Unfortunately, by Christmas she was working three part-time jobs just to get by and not finding any work as an actress. She returned to Chicago that winter and accepted a position as a part-time instructor in the theater department at DePaul University for the spring semester. After another summer at Lake Zurich, Miss Page headed for New York again, this time joining a stock company in Woodstock, New York. She spent the next two summers in Lake Zurich, and the rest of the time performing in Woodstock playing everything from young girls to grandmothers.
In 1948, she made her New York City debut with an Off-Broadway production of "Seven Mirrors." She spent the next four years performing with Off-Broadway groups and summer stock in New Jersey. She also performed character parts on radio shows. In 1952, she had the lead in an Off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke." That production caused a sensation, not only with critics but with a growing audience marking the first big hit Off-Broadway. Page won the Drama Critics Award, becoming the first person from a non-Broadway production to receive such an award.
Page put off a number of film offers and instead played leading roles on radio and television, and made her Broadway debut in January 1953 in Vina Delmar's play "Mid-Summer." Although the play was dismissed by most critics, she was hailed by critics for her portrayal of an uneducated woman married to a schoolteacher.
In the fall of 1953, she made her film debut opposite John Wayne in the western Hondo (1953). Although she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, she wasn't offered any good parts in Hollywood and returned to New York.
During the 1950s, Page's theater career flourished. She played a variety of roles on Broadway including a vindictive wife of a homosexual in "The Immoralist," to a lonely spinster in "The Rainmaker." She also made frequent radio and television appearances and honed her craft at the Actors Studio. It was in the fall of 1959 that Page starred opposite Paul Newman in Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth." Her role as a pathetic fading movie star earned universal praise, her first Tony Award nomination, and interest again from Hollywood. It was also when she met and married one of her co-stars, actor Rip Torn.
In 1961 she starred in the film version of Summer and Smoke (1961) and in 1962 in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). She earned consecutive Golden Globe awards as well as Academy Award nominations for these two performances.
From now on, Page divided her time between the stage and the screen. Her selectivity was high, whatever the medium. She turned down many famous roles, including the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and the role of Chris MacNeil in the film "The Exorcist." She was first and foremost a character actress who believed in repertory. She tended to accept parts that were very different from the one she had just played and often liked to rotate between leading roles and supporting roles.
Despite the fact that she was such a highly respected stage actress, very few of her Broadway productions after "Sweet Bird of Youth" were hits, and often closed after just a few performances. The few productions that were hits included revivals of "Strange Interlude" and "The Three Sisters." Most of her better stage work through the rest of her life came in productions Off-Broadway, or in regional theaters across the country. She liked touring the United States and performing theater in states and cities often neglected by Broadway touring companies. In the 1960s, some of her notable film work included "The Happiest Millionaire," "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice" and "You're a Big Boy Now." She earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the latter. She also won two Emmy Awards for television work.
In the 1970s one of her few hits on Broadway was as a banker's alcoholic wife in "Absurd Person Singular." This role netted her a second Tony Award nomination. One of her bigger triumphs on the stage was the Sanctuary Theater Company which she and her husband Rip Torn founded off-Broadway. Although it only lasted a couple of years, it gave young actors a chance to work, and many of the productions were given rave reviews by critics. Some of her more memorable film roles in the 1970s included a nosy matchmaker in Pete 'n' Tillie (1972) (Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), a controversial religious leader in The Day of the Locust (1975), the voice of the villain Madame Medusa in The Rescuers (1977) and the suicidal mother in Interiors (1978) (Oscar nomination as Best Actress).
In the 1980s, she began teaching acting at the Pelican Theater School. In 1982 she had another triumph on Broadway as Mother Superior in "Agnes of God," a role which earned her a third Tony Award nomination. In 1983 she co-founded the Mirror Repertory Company, an Off-Broadway theater group dedicated to preserving the art of repertory theater. She performed and directed in a variety of productions with the group. She continued to work in films despite her hectic theater schedule. One of her film roles in 1984 was a scene stealing bit part as a chain-smoking mother of a murdered cop in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). She received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. With that she became the first woman to receive seven Oscar nominations for acting without a single win. In 1985, she starred in the independent film The Trip to Bountiful (1985). Based on Horton Foote's play, it tells the story of a 60-year-old woman who yearns to run away from her cramped city apartment that she shares with her son and daughter-in-law, to see the old country town where she grew up. Page's performance was hailed by critics and she began to rack up a number of award nominations. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, making it her eighth try for the golden boy. Although Meryl Streep looked like a sure bet for Out of Africa (1985), many critics predicted Page would emerge as the dark horse winner. When F. Murray Abraham opened the envelope on Oscar night he announced "Ah! I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language. The winner is Geraldine Page in 'The Trip to Bountiful!'" As Page scrambled to find her shoes which she had kicked under her seat, Meryl Streep led the long standing ovation for her.
In the 1980s she received a number of other honors. She received several lifetime achievement awards from various theater groups. In 1983, she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a Tony Award. In the spring of 1987, Page took a break from the Mirror Theater, to return to Broadway in a revival of "Blithe Spirit." For her leading performance as the wacky medium, she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award. Many critics predicted her to be the sentimental favorite for the award. She did not win. Six days after the Tony Awards ceremony, she died of a heart attack, leaving behind her husband and their three children. She was 62 years old. A memorial service was held at a Broadway theater and numerous actors and celebrities paid their respects including Meryl Streep, Jessica Tandy, and Paul Newman among others. Ronald and Nancy Reagan had flowers sent from the White House to the memorial service.
Page dedicated her life to her craft and is regarded as one of the most important actresses of the 20th century. She appeared in 28 films, 16 Broadway plays, memorable television plays and radio plays, and innumerable repertory, stock, regional and Off-Broadway performances. As People magazine noted: "Geraldine Page wasn't resting on her laurels at the time of her death; she was on a role. After a performance, she asked, 'I wasn't overdone, was I?' Then she added with a smile, 'Wasn't I exquisite?' As ever, she was."- Producer
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Alan J. Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer. He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Best Director for All the President's Men (1976) and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sophie's Choice (1982).
He also directed Presumed Innocent (1990), The Pelican Brief (1993) and The Devil's Own (1997), his last film.
From October 19, 1963, until 1971, Pakula was married to actress Hope Lange. He was married to his second wife, Hannah Pakula from 1973 until his death in 1998.
Pakula died on November 19, 1998, in a car accident, he was 70 years old.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Donna Reed was born in the midwestern town of Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921, as Donna Belle Mullenger. A small town - a population of less than 3,000 people - Denison was located by the Boyer River, and was the county seat of Crawford County. Donna grew up as a farm girl, much like many young girls in western Iowa, except for one thing - Donna was very beautiful. That wasn't to say that others weren't as pretty, it's just that Donna's beauty stood out from all the other local girls, so much so that she won a beauty contest in Denison. Upon graduation from high school Donna left for college in Los Angeles, in the hopes of eventually entering movies. While at Los Angeles City College, she pursued her dream by participating in several college stage productions. In addition to the plays, she also won the title of Campus Queen. At one of those stage plays Donna was spotted by an MGM talent scout and was signed to a contract. Her first film was a minor role in MGM's The Getaway (1941). That was followed by a small part in Babes on Broadway (1941), with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland as a secretary. She then won her breakthrough role in Shadow of the Thin Man (1941). Afterwards, MGM began giving her better parts, in films such as The Bugle Sounds (1942), The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942) and The Man from Down Under (1943). In 1944 she received second billing playing Carol Halliday in See Here, Private Hargrove (1944), a comedy about a reporter drafted into the army who eventually meets up with Donna's character as a worker in the canteen. The following year Donna starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), her best role to date. It was a love story set in London in 1890. It got mixed critical reviews but did well at the box-office. Donna was now one of the leading ladies of Hollywood. In 1946 she starred in what is probably her best-known role, as the wife of James Stewart in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). This timeless story is a holiday staple to this day. The film also starred Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Mitchell. The next year Donna starred as Ann Daniels in Paramount's Beyond Glory (1948) with Alan Ladd, which did well at the box-office. Her next role was the strongest she had had yet--Chicago Deadline (1949), again with Ladd. It was one of the best mystery dramas to come out of Hollywood in a long time, and did very well at the box office. As the 1940s faded out and the 1950s stormed in, Donna's roles got bigger but were mainly of the wholesome, girl-next-door type. In 1953, however, she starred as the hostess Alma in the widely acclaimed From Here to Eternity (1953). She was so good in that film she was nominated for and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, beating out such veterans as Thelma Ritter and Marjorie Rambeau. The film itself won for Best Picture and remains a classic to this day. Later that year Donna starred in The Caddy (1953), a comedy with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Three years later she landed the role of Sacajawea in The Far Horizons (1955), the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, starring Charlton Heston and Fred MacMurray. After finishing The Whole Truth (1958), Donna began her own TV series (produced by her husband), The Donna Reed Show (1958), a hit that ran for eight years. She was so effective in the show that she was nominated for TV's prestigious Emmy Award as Best Actress every year from 1959-1962. She was far more popular in TV than on the screen. After the run of the program, Donna took some time away from show business before coming back in a couple of made-for-TV movies (in 1974, she had made a feature called Welcome to Arrow Beach (1973), but it was never released). She did get the role of Ellie Ewing Farlow in the hit TV series Dallas (1978) during the 1984-85 season. It was to be her final public performance. On January 14, 1986, less than two weeks before her 65th birthday, she died of pancreatic cancer in Beverly Hills, California. Grover Asmus, her husband, created the Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts in her hometown of Denison. The foundation helps others who desire a career in the arts. Donna never forgot her roots. She was still a farm girl at heart.- Actress
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Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy Southern majorette in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Her next role was also southern: Eula Varner in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). She emerged as a real star in the role of an apparent rape victim in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). And she won an Academy Award nomination for her role as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (1962). After more work in TV and movies, she moved to England in 1970, making more movies there. In 1988 she formed a production company with partners James Garner and Peter K. Duchow.- Actress
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Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri on July 16, 1911, the daughter of Lela E. Rogers (née Lela Emogene Owens) and William Eddins McMath. Her mother went to Independence to have Ginger away from her husband. She had a baby earlier in their marriage and he allowed the doctor to use forceps and the baby died. She was kidnapped by her father several times until her mother took him to court. Ginger's mother left her child in the care of her parents while she went in search of a job as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and later to New York City. Mrs. McMath found herself with an income good enough to where she could send for Ginger. Lelee became a Marine in 1918 and was in the publicity department and Ginger went back to her grandparents in Missouri. During this time her mother met John Rogers. After leaving the Marines they married in May, 1920 in Liberty, Missouri. He was transferred to Dallas and Ginger (who treated him as a father) went too. Ginger won a Charleston contest in 1925 (age 14) and a 4-week contract on the Interstate circuit. She also appeared in vaudeville acts which she did until she was 17 with her mother by her side to guide her. Now she had discovered true acting.
She married in March 1929, and after several months realized she had made a mistake. She acquired an agent and she did several short films. She went to New York where she appeared in the Broadway production of "Top Speed" which debuted Christmas Day, 1929. Her first film was in 1929 in A Night in a Dormitory (1930). It was a bit part, but it was a start. Later that year, Ginger appeared, briefly, in two more films, A Day of a Man of Affairs (1929) and Campus Sweethearts (1930). For awhile she did both movies and theatre. The following year she began to get better parts in films such as Office Blues (1930) and The Tip-Off (1931). But the movie that enamored her to the public was Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). She did not have top billing, but her beauty and voice were enough to have the public want more. One song she popularized in the film was the now famous, "We're in the Money". Also in 1933, she was in 42nd Street (1933). She suggested using a monocle, and this also set her apart. In 1934, she starred with Dick Powell in Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934). It was a well-received film about the popularity of radio.
Ginger's real stardom occurred when she was teamed with Fred Astaire where they were one of the best cinematic couples ever to hit the silver screen. This is where she achieved real stardom. They were first paired in 1933's Flying Down to Rio (1933) and later in 1935's Roberta (1935) and Top Hat (1935). Ginger also appeared in some very good comedies such as Bachelor Mother (1939) and Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), both in 1939. Also that year, she appeared with Astaire in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). The film made money but was not anywhere successful as they had hoped. After that, studio executives at RKO wanted Ginger to strike out on her own.
She made several dramatic pictures, but it was 1940's Kitty Foyle (1940) that allowed her to shine. Playing a young lady from the wrong side of the tracks, she played the lead role well, so well in fact, that she won an Academy Award for her portrayal. Ginger followed that project with the delightful comedy, Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) the following year. It's a story where she has to choose which of three men she wants to marry. Through the rest of the 1940s and early 1950s she continued to make movies but not near the caliber before World War II. After Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1957) in 1957, Ginger didn't appear on the silver screen for seven years. By 1965, she had appeared for the last time in Harlow (1965). Afterward, she appeared on Broadway and other stage plays traveling in Europe, the U.S., and Canada. After 1984, she retired and wrote an autobiography in 1991 entitled, "Ginger, My Story".
On April 25, 1995, Ginger died of natural causes in Rancho Mirage, California. She was 83.- Actor
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Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero actually had two claims to fame in Hollywood. To one generation, he was the distinguished Latin lover of numerous musicals and romantic comedies, and the rogue bandit The Cisco Kid in a string of low-budget westerns. However, to a younger generation weaned on television, Romero was better known as the white-faced, green-haired, cackling villain The Joker of the camp 1960s TV series Batman (1966), and as a bumbling corporate villain in a spate of Walt Disney comedies, such as chasing a young Kurt Russell in the fun-packed The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969). Fans and critics alike agreed that Romero was a major talent who proved himself an enduring and versatile star in an overwhelming variety of roles in a career as an actor, dancer and comedian that lasted nearly 60 years.
Cesar Romero was born of Cuban parents in New York City in February 1907. He attended the Collegiate School and Riverdale Country School before working as a ballroom dancer. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1927 production of Lady Do, and then in the stage production of Strictly Dishonorable. His first film role was in The Shadow Laughs (1933), after which he gave strong performances in The Devil Is a Woman (1935) and in the Shirley Temple favorite, Wee Willie Winkie (1937).
Critics and fans generally agree that Romero's best performance was as the Spanish explorer Cortez in Captain from Castile (1947). However, he also shone in the delightful Julia Misbehaves (1948) and several other breezy and lighthearted escapades. In 1953 he starred in the 39-part espionage TV serial Passport to Danger (1954), which earned him a considerable income due to a canny profit-sharing arrangement. Although Romero became quite wealthy and had no need to work, he could not stay away from being in front of the cameras. He continued to appear in a broad variety of film roles, but surprised everyone in Hollywood by taking on the role of "The Joker" in the hugely successful TV series Batman (1966). He refused to shave his trademark mustache for the role, and close observation shows how the white clown makeup went straight on over his much loved mustache! The appearances in Batman were actually only a small part of the enormous amount of work that Romero contributed to television. He guest-starred in dozens of shows, including Rawhide (1959), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Zorro (1957), Fantasy Island (1977) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). However, it was The Joker for which his TV work was best remembered, and Romero often remarked that for many, many years after Batman ended, fans would stop him and ask him to chuckle and giggle away just like he did as The Joker. Romero always obliged, and both he and the fans just loved it!
With a new appeal to a younger fan base, Romero turned up in three highly popular Disney comedies: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975) as corrupt but inept villain A.J. Arno. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s Romero remained busy, and even at 78 years of age the ladies still loved his charm, and he was cast as Jane Wyman's love interest in the top-rated prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest (1981), playing Peter Stavros from 1985 to 1987.
Although Romero stopped acting in 1990, he remained busy, regularly hosting classic movie programs on cable television. A talented and much loved Hollywood icon, he passed away on New Year's Day 1994, at the age of 86.- Actress
- Producer
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Actress and producer Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 on Newark, New Jersey. She is known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Her film career also includes roles in Raintree County (1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), Grand Prix (1966), Nothing in Common (1986), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Superman Returns (2006) and Winter's Tale (2014).
Saint made her feature film debut in On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan - a performance for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was a major success and launched her movie career. She starred in the pioneering drug-addiction drama A Hatful of Rain (1957) with Don Murray and Anthony Franciosa. She also starred in lavish the Civil War epic Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale role in what was to become a suspense classic North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and James Mason. Written by Ernest Lehman, the film updated and expanded upon the director's early "wrong man" spy adventures of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), and Saboteur (1942). North by Northwest (1959) became a box-office success and an influence on spy films for decades.- Actor
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Of Greek descent on both sides, the son of immigrants, Savalas was a soldier during World War II, although most of his enlistment records were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. He later studied psychology at Columbia University under the GI Bill.
Iconically bald, he often played character roles, sometimes as sadists or psychotics. He became famous in the 1970s when his role as Det. Theo Kojak in the TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973) was expanded into the gritty Kojak (1973) TV series (1973-78).- Actor
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Maximilian Schell was the most successful German-speaking actor in English-language films since Emil Jannings, the winner of the first Best Actor Academy Award. Like Jannings, Schell won the Oscar, but unlike him, he was a dedicated anti-Nazi. Indeed, with the exception of Maurice Chevalier and Marcello Mastroianni, Schell was undoubtedly the most successful non-anglophone foreign actor in the history of American cinema.
Schell was born in Vienna, Austria on December 8, 1930, but raised in in Zurich, Switzerland. (Austria became part of Germany after the anschluss of 1938), then was occupied by the allies from 1945 until 1955, when it again joined the family of nations.) He learned his craft on the stage beginning in 1952, and made his reputation with appearances in German-language films and television. He was a fine Shakespearean actor, and had a huge success with "Richard III" (he has also appeared in as the eponymous prince in a German-language version of "Hamlet").
Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions (1958) quite by accident, as the producers had wanted to hire his sister Maria Schell, but lines of communication got crossed, and he was the one hired. He impressed American producers as his turn as the friend of German soldier Marlon Brando, and subsequently assayed the role of the German defense attorney in the television drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) on "Playhouse 90" in 1959. He was also cast in the big screen remake, for which he won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actor, beating out co-star Spencer Tracy for the Oscar. He also won a Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for the role. Schell ultimately won two more Oscar nominations for acting, in 1976 for Best Actor for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and in 1978 as Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977) (which also brought him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor). He has twice been nominated for an Emmy for his TV work, and won the 1993 Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, mini-series or made-for-TV movie for Stalin (1992).
Schell has also has directed films, and his 1974 film The Pedestrian (1973) ("The Pedestrian"), which Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and won the Golden Globe in the same category. His documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene (1984), was widely hailed as a masterpiece of the non-fiction genre and garnered its producers a Best Documentary Oscar nomination in 1985. In 2002, Schell released Meine Schwester Maria (2002) (My Sister Maria), a documentary about the career of and his relationship with Maria Schell. Since the 1990s, Schell has appeared in many German language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser Erde (2003) (All the Luck in the World) and in the mini-series The Hard Cops (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel. He has also continued to appear on stage, appearing in dual roles in the 2000 Broadway production of the stage version of "Judgment at Nuremberg", and most recently in Robert Altman's London production of Arthur Miller's play "Resurrection Blues" in 2006. He died on 31st of January 2014, aged 83, in Innsbruck, Austria.- Actor
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"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975), he was originally named Charles Langford Modini Stack at birth by his mother but his father soon changed the name to Robert Langford Stack. (The name Robert reportedly referred to no one in particular.) His elder brother and only sibling was James Langford Stack (1916-2006).
His parents had divorced when he was one-year-old, and his mother took him to Europe when he was three. He did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. His brother, James Langford Stack Jr., stayed in the United States with their father. Young Robert spoke fluent Italian and French, but had to learn English when they returned to Los Angeles. His mother and father remarried in 1928. Robert took drama courses at USC. He was not interested in team sports, so he took up skeet shooting. In 1935, he came in second in the National Skeet Shooting Championship (held in Cleveland) and, in 1936, his 5-man team broke the standing record at the National Skeet Championships (held in St. Louis).
Stack arrived at Universal City Studios in 1939, when the movie studio (once riding high on the successes of movies such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)) was in financial trouble, and looking for a superstar. That superstar was Deanna Durbin (acquired from MGM), and Stack made his screen debut as her lover in First Love (1939). At first, he did not want to listen to the makeup man who had told him, "no blond has ever made it as a leading man", and insisted on dyeing his hair black and uncurling it. That makeup man was genius and Oscar winner, Jack P. Pierce (who had done all the monsters for Universal), and Stack became a matinee idol, overnight. After two more movies, he was teamed with Durbin again, in Nice Girl? (1941). he was now a bona-fide star, but Universal was still only paying him $150 a week. For the next 10 years, Stack did Westerns, war movies and romantic comedies.
Stack had fond memories for Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), a movie produced by his friend, John Wayne, which meant 12 weeks filming in sunny Mexico. The movie had a great script; unfortunately, two bullfighters were gored while filming. There were several weeks of delays, they could not get a crew or a sound stage, until they realized that, in Mexico, it is necessary to bribe the local union; some money was passed and filming started, immediately. There were wild times, and lots of tequila. Robert became a local legend; when some Mexicans asked him what he did in the War, Robert said: "I taught machine gun." The rumor spread: "Roberto teaches chingas!" (that's Spanish for "hookers"). In 1952, he made movie history (much like Al Jolson had done in 1927, being in the first "talkie") -- he starred in Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3-D movie. This gave startling effects to the story, which was based on real-life lion attacks in Africa.
Stack attended the premiere, and recalled people's reactions to the 3-D lion scenes: "People in the audience jumped out of their seats, some even fainted." The movie broke box office records, and immediately started the demand to film more movies in 3-D (such as House of Wax (1953)). Around 1955, Robert (Hollywood's most eligible bachelor) was introduced to Rosemarie Bowe, by mutual agent Bill Shiffrin. Rosemarie had been under contract to MGM and Columbia, making such movies as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and The Golden Mistress (1954). The couple wed two years later and had two children: Elizabeth Stack and Charles Stack. The former perennial bachelor found out he liked being married and being a father. His onscreen fame had grown and, for Written on the Wind (1956), he received an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, this did not sit well with 20th-Century Fox, which had him under contract, and had lent him to Universal for this picture. His contract with Fox came to an end. Stack made the transition to the new medium that was sweeping the country: television. He delivered breakout performances in his signature role as T-man (Treasury agent) Eliot Ness on The Untouchables (1959) which, after the pilot, ran for four seasons (118 episodes). And there was also the television movie, The Scarface Mob (1959).
There were some funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes, such as this one: there is no scene which stood out more as the most potentially evil, and risky in terms of audience acceptance, as the "bacio di morte" ("kiss of death"), the Sicilian gesture whenever a Capo (Neville Brand) kissed a Mafia soldier (Frank DeKova) to send him out as an executioner. The two actors were nervous enough about this scene (two guys had never kissed on television before), but then some crewman decided to be a prankster and told each star, in private, just before filming, "look out -- your co-star likes kissing guys" (a complete deception, of course). There were some unfortunate anecdotes: Joseph Wiseman was a fine actor, but trained to work on the New York stage with props; he was not accustomed to real Hollywood sets. In a 1960 episode of "The Untouchables", Stack was supposed to take an axe and smash up a brewery. He hit a real pipe, the axe ricocheted off the metal, and cut through his Achilles tendon. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life", Stack commented. They wrote a role for Wiseman as a crippled, renegade chemist a few weeks later in "The Antidote", which Stack noted, "was one of our half-dozen top shows". Stack went on to do television series, such as The Name of the Game (1968) alternating lead with Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa, then later Most Wanted (1976), and he pleasantly surprised everyone with his flair for comedies in movies like 1941 (1979) and Airplane! (1980).
Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries (1987) and did more zany humor in Caddyshack II (1988), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice of the character Ultra Magnus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He portrayed the no-nonsense G-man Ness again in The Return of Eliot Ness (1991). Stack was being treated for prostate cancer when he died at age 84 on May 14, 2003 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Miyoshi Umeki was born as the youngest of 9 children. The daughter of a prominent Japanese iron factory owner, she developed an early passion for music, learning to play the mandolin, harmonica & piano. She also enjoyed singing American-styled tunes, much to the chagrin of her parents. This propensity for Americanized pop songs later paid off.
Although she projected the typical Japanese female stereotype of humbleness, delicacy & subservience in most of her prime film & stage roles, she was nevertheless an assertive scene-stealer. This docile & deceptive-looking talent w/ cropped hair as well as a heart-shaped face radiated charm in addition to innocence so effortlessly, she managed to make history at Academy Awards time as the 1st Asian actor to receive an acting Oscar for her superb work in the tragic post-WWII film drama Sayonara (1957).
Following World War II, she traveled w/ a U.S. Army G.I. jazz band in Japan as Nancy Umeki & was the 1st to record American songs for RCA Victor Japan. She became an extremely popular radio & nightclub artist, which sparked a move to the U.S. in 1955. Again, she demonstrated a demure prowess for gaining attention w/ her 1-season regular role (1955-1956) on the musical variety show Arthur Godfrey and His Friends (1949). W/ that popularity, she was able to sign w/ Mercury Records, eventually releasing 2 albums.
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. From this recognition, she was immediately cast in Sayonara (1957), which was based on James A. Michener's best-selling romantic tale. Inspired casting opposite comedian Red Buttons in a tragic, counterpoint romance as a World War II airman & his naive Japanese war bride who fall victim to post-war prejudice led to supporting Academy Awards for both actors. Despite her win, she would not make another film for 4 years.
Following her Oscar win, she starred on Broadway w/ the 1958 musical Flower Drum Song, in which she proved a highlight as a starry-eyed Chinese immigrant/mail-order bride w/ her captivating rendition of A Hundred Million Miracles, earning a Tony nomination in the process. She scored additional points after recreating her role for the film version of Flower Drum Song (1961).
In total, she made only 5 American films in all. Her other appearances were supporting roles in the naval comedy Cry for Happy (1961), The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962) & A Girl Named Tamiko (1962). She also tread fairly lightly on TV w/ random 60s appearances on The Donna Reed Show (1958), Dr. Kildare (1961), Rawhide (1959) & Mister Ed (1961), among others.
Duing the 50s & 60s, she was an occasional guest on variety shows for TV titans such as Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin, Andy Williams & Ed Sullivan. Arguably her biggest claim to fame was Mrs. Livingston in the heart-tugging TV comedy The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969). Following this renewed attention, she went into a complete self-imposed retirement.
She lived a sedate family life for more than 3 decades. Her 1958 marriage to TV producer/director Win Opie ended in divorce after 9 years. She subsequently married TV director Randall Hood in 1968. They ran a business renting editing equipment to film studios & university film programs until his sudden death in Los Angeles in 1976. A longtime resident of North Hollywood, she eventually moved to Missouri w/ advancing age to be nearer to her son & his family. She died of cancer at age 78 on August 28, 2007 in Licking, Missouri.- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
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Oscar-winning costume designer Mary Lillian Wills studied at universities in New Mexico and Arizona before graduating with an M.A. from the Yale School of Drama. She worked in Hollywood for forty years, mostly free-lancing, except for a spell between 1948 and 1952, when she was under contract at RKO (for Samuel Goldwyn). She became known as 'the fabulous Miss Wills' for her excellence in creating authentic-looking period, dance and folk costumes for prestige films like Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and The Virgin Queen (1955). Her intricate pencil sketches often included subtle backgrounds, which provided a measure of additional context. Wills won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). In addition to her film work, she also designed for ice revues and Wild West shows.- Actress
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Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St. Louis, Illinois. Her mother, Rose Winter, was born in Missouri, to Austrian Jewish parents, and her father, Jonas Schrift, was an Austrian Jewish immigrant. She had one sibling, a sister, Blanche. Her father moved the family to Brooklyn when she was still young so that he, a tailor's cutter, could find steadier work closer to the city's garment industry. An unfailing interest in acting began quite early for Shelley, and she appeared in high school plays. By her mid- to late teens she had already been employed as a Woolworth's store clerk, model, borscht belt vaudevillian and nightclub chorine, all in order to pay for her acting classes. During a nationwide search in 1939 for GWTW's Scarlett O'Hara, Shelley was advised by auditioning director George Cukor to get acting lessons, which she did. Apprenticing in summer stock, she made her Broadway debut in the short-lived comedy "The Night Before Christmas" in 1941 and followed it with the operetta "Rosalinda" (1942) initially billing herself in both shows as Shelley Winter (without the "s").
Within a short time, Shelley pushed ahead for a career out west. Hollywood proved to be a tough road. Toiling in bit roles for years, many of her scenes were excised altogether during her early days. Obscurely used in such movies as What a Woman! (1943), The Racket Man (1944), Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945), her breakthrough did not occur until 1947, and it happened on both the stage and big screen. Not only did she win the replacement role of Ado Annie Carnes in "Oklahoma!" on Broadway but, around the same time, scored excellent notices on film as the party girl waitress who ends up a victim of deranged strangler (and Oscar winner) Ronald Colman in the critically-hailed A Double Life (1947) directed by Cukor. From this moment, she achieved a somewhat earthy film stardom, playing second-lead broads who often met untimely ends (as in Cry of the City (1948) and The Great Gatsby (1949)), or tawdry-black-stockinged and feather-boa-adorned leads, as in South Sea Sinner (1950) in which her eclectic co-stars included Macdonald Carey and Liberace!
As a tarnished glamour girl and symbol of working-class vulgarity in Hollywood, Shelley was about to be written off in pictures altogether when one of her finest movie roles arrived on her front porch. Her best hard luck girl storyboard showed up in the form of depressed, frumpy-looking Alice Tripp, a factory girl seduced and abandoned by wanderlust Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951). Favoring gorgeous society girl Elizabeth Taylor who is totally out of his league, Clift is subsequently blackmailed by Winters' pathetic (and now pregnant) character into marrying her. For her desperate efforts, she is purposely drowned by Clift after he tips their canoe. The role, which garnered Shelley her first Oscar nomination, finally plucked her out of the sordid starlet pool she was treading and into the ranks of serious femme star contenders. But not for long.
Winters just couldn't escape the lurid bottle-blonde quality she instilled in her characters. During what should have been her peak time in films were a host of badly-scripted "B" films. The obvious, two-dimensional chorines, barflies, floozies and gold diggers she played in Behave Yourself! (1951), Frenchie (1950), Phone Call from a Stranger (1952), Playgirl (1954), and also Mambo (1954), in which co-starred second husband Vittorio Gassman, pretty much said it all. She grew extremely disenchanted and decided to return to dramatic study. Earning membership into the famed Actors' Studio, she went to Broadway and earned kudos, thereby reestablishing her reputation as a strong actress with the drug-themed play "A Hatful of Rain" (1955). Co-starring in the show was the up-and-coming Anthony Franciosa, who became her third husband in 1957. Her renewed dedication to pursuing quality work was shown by her appearances in a number of heavyweight theater roles including Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1955). In later years, the Actors' Studio enthusiast became one of its most respected coaches, shaping up a number of today's fine talents with the Strasberg "method" technique.
By the late 1950s, she had started growing in girth and wisely eased into colorful character supports. The switch paid off. After a sterling performance as the ill-fated wife of sadistic killer Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), she scored big in the Oscar department when she won "Best Supporting Actress" for the shrill and hypertensive but doomed Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). From this period sprouted a host of revoltingly bad mamas, blowsy matrons, and trashy madams in such film fare as Lolita (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), The Balcony (1963) Wives and Lovers (1963), and A House Is Not a Home (1964). She topped things off as the abusive prostitute mom in A Patch of Blue (1965) who was not above pimping her own blind daughter (the late Elizabeth Hartman) for household money. The actress managed to place a second Oscar on her mantle for this riveting support work.
With advancing age and increasing size, she found a comfortable niche in the harping Jewish wife/mother category with loud, flashy, unsubtle roles in Enter Laughing (1967), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) and, most notably, The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She earned another Oscar nomination for "Poseidon" while portraying her third drowning victim. At around the same time, she scored quite well as the indomitable Marx Brothers' mama in "Minnie's Boys" on Broadway in 1970.
In the 1970s and 1980s, she developed into an oddly-distracted personality on TV, making countless talk show appearances and becoming quite the raconteur and incessant name dropper with her juicy Hollywood behind-the-scenes tales. Candid would be an understatement when she published two scintillating tell-all autobiographies that reached the bestsellers list. "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" (1981) and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" (1989) detailed dalliances with Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, William Holden, Sean Connery and Clark Gable, to name just a few.
Thrice divorced (her first husband was a WWII captain; her only child, Vittoria, was the daughter of her second husband, Gassman), she remained footloose and fancy free after finally breaking it off with the volatile Franciosa in 1960. Her stormy marriages and notorious affairs, not to mention her ambitious forays into politics and feminist causes, kept her name alive for decades. She worked in films until the beginning of the millennium, her last film being the easily-dismissed Italian feature La bomba (1999). She enjoyed Emmy-winning TV work and had the recurring role of Roseanne Barr's tell-it-like-it-is grandmother on the comedienne's self-named sitcom. Her last years were marred by failing health and, for the most part, she was confined to a wheelchair. Suffering a heart attack in October of 2005, she died in a Beverly Hills nursing home of heart failure on January 14, 2006.
It was reported that only hours earlier on her deathbed she had entered into a "spiritual" union with her longtime companion of 19 years, Gerry McFord; a relationship of which her daughter disapproved. Gregarious, brazen, ambitious and completely unpredictable -- that would be Shelley Winters, the storyteller, whose amazing career lasted over six colorful decades.- Dean Miller was born on 1 November 1924 in Hamilton, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for December Bride (1954), Skirts Ahoy! (1952) and Small Town Girl (1953). He was married to Ida Miller. He died on 13 January 2004 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA.
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Big-band vocalist of the 1940's who, duetting with singer Bob Eberly for the bandleader Jimmy Dorsey, was responsible for such million-selling recordings as "Green Eyes" and "Tangerine" as well as hit solo performances for Dorsey like "Six Lessons from Madame LaZonga." This vivacious blonde appeared with Dorsey and his orchestra in a few early-40's films and later became a TV personality.- Jack Linkletter was born on 20 November 1937 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Zane Grey Theatre (1956), Hootenanny (1963) and Life with Linkletter (1950). He was married to Charlene Just Croul and Barbara Mae Hughes. He died on 18 December 2007 in Cloverdale, California, USA.
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Art Linkletter was born on 17 July 1912 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. He was an actor and producer, known for Champagne for Caesar (1950), Philippine Adventure (1964) and The Jack Benny Program (1950). He was married to Lois Marguerite Foerster. He died on 26 May 2010 in Bel-Air, California, USA.- Actor
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The stocky-framed, lookalike son of singing legend Bing Crosby who had that same bemused, forlorn look, fair hair and jug ears, Gary was the eldest of four sons born to the crooner and his first wife singer/actress Dixie Lee. The boys' childhood was an intensely troubled one with all four trying to follow in their father's incredibly large footsteps as singers and actors. As youngsters, they briefly appeared with Bing as themselves in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy's Tavern (1945). Gary proved to be the most successful of the four, albeit a minor one. As a teen, he sang duet on two songs with his famous dad, "Sam's Song" and "Play a Simple Melody," which became the first double-sided gold record in history. He and his brothers also formed their own harmonic singing group "The Crosby Boys" in subsequent years but their success was fleeting. Somewhere in the middle of all this Gary managed to attend Stanford University, but eventually dropped out.
Gary concentrated a solo acting career in the late 50s and appeared pleasantly, if unobtrusively, in such breezy, lightweight fare as Mardi Gras (1958), Holiday for Lovers (1959), A Private's Affair (1959), Battle at Bloody Beach (1961) (perhaps his best role), Operation Bikini (1963), and Girl Happy (1965) with Elvis Presley. Making little leeway, he turned to TV series work. The Bill Dana Show (1963) and Adam-12 (1968) as Officer Ed Wells kept him occasionally busy in the 60s and early 70s, also guesting on such shows as The Twilight Zone (1959) and Matlock (1986). Getting only so far as a modestly-talented Crosby son, Gary's erratic career was hampered in large part by a long-standing alcohol problem that began in his teens. In 1983, Gary published a "Daddy Dearest" autobiography entitled "Going My Own Way," an exacting account of the severe physical and emotional abuse he and his brothers experienced at the hands of his overly stern and distant father, who had died back in 1977. Mother Dixie, an alcoholic and recluse, died long before of ovarian cancer in 1952. All four boys went on to have lifelong problems with the bottle, with Gary hitting bottom several times. The tell-all book estranged Gary from the rest of his immediate family and did nothing to rejuvenate his stalled career. Two of his brothers, Dennis Crosby and Lindsay Crosby, later committed suicide. Gary was divorced from his third wife and was about to marry a fourth when he learned he had lung cancer. He died on August 24, 1995, two months after the diagnosis.- Actor
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Don Murray is an American actor. He is best known for playing Governor Breck, the authoritarian ruler in the science fiction film "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" (1972).
Murray was born in 1929 to Dennis Aloisius Murray and his wife Ethel Cook. Dennis worked as a dance director and stage manager, while Ethel was a singer. Ethel Cook served as a performer for the Ziegfeld Follies (1907-1931), an elaborate theatrical revue production in Broadway.
Murray attended the East Rockaway High School in East Rockaway, a village of Nassau County, New York. During his high school years, Murray served as a member of the school's football team, its track team, and its glee club. He graduated in 1947, at the age of 18. He later attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, New York. He graduated in 1951.
Murray made his Broadway debut in 1951, when cast as Jack Hunter in a stage version of the play "The Rose Tattoo" (1951) by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). In the play, Hunter is a sailor and the boyfriend of Rosa Delle Rose, the daughter of the play's female protagonist.
Murray's stage career was interrupted when he was drafted into the United States military. He registered as a conscientious objector during the Korean War (1950-1953), as he was a member of the Brethren Church. The Brethren Church is an Anabaptist Christian denomination, which strictly adheres to pacifism and non-violence. Murray was assigned to alternative service in Europe. He was honorably discharged from the military in 1954, and resumed his acting career.
In 1956, Murray made his film debut in the romantic drama film "Bus Stop". The film was an adaptation of a 1955 theatrical play by William Inge (1913-1973). Murray was cast in the role of Beauregard "Beau" Decker, a naive, overly enthusiastic, and socially inept cowboy from Montana. The film depicts Beau's infatuation with young singer Cherie (played by Marylin Monroe), which causes him to first kidnap her and then coerce her into marrying him. He is tragically unaware that Cherie barely knows him, and that his love is unrequited. The film was a box office success, and Murray was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1956, however the Oscar for that year was won by rival actor Anthony Quinn (1915-2001) for his role in Lust for LIfe.
Murray's successful debut helped him receive offers for more film roles. He was cast as Charlie Samson in the drama film "The Bachelor Party" (1957). Samson is the film's main character, a hard-working bookkeeper who struggles with the temptation to cheat on his wife. He was then cast as morphine-addict Johnny Pope in "A Hatful of Rain" (1957), a film about the then-innovative topic of drug addiction.
In 1958, Murray played in his first Western film, "From Hell to Texas". In the film, he was cast as Tod Lohman, an impoverished ranch hand who is suspected of murdering the son of a powerful cattle baron. The film deals with Lohman being hunted by the cattle baron's other son and his mercenaries, who seek revenge.
Murray's second Western film was "These Thousand Hills" (1959). The film depicts the rags-to-riches story of Albert Gallatin "Lat" Evans (played by Murray). But as Lat grows richer, he becomes a colder and harsher man. Leading him to betray his own lover, to alienate his only friend, and to marry a banker's daughter for her money.
Murray was also cast in a lead role in the war film "Shake Hands with the Devil" (1959), which depicts the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). During the 1960s, Murray continued to appear regularly in films, often cast in period dramas. He played Wild Bill Hickok in the The Plainsman (1966), and ambitious ruler Justinian in "The Viking Queen" (1967).
In 1968, Murray gained a co-starring role in the Western television series "The Outcasts" (1968-1969). He played the character Earl Corey, an American Civil War veteran and formerly wealthy slave owner. In the series, Corey was cheated out of his wealth by a treasonous brother, and started making a living as a bounty hunter. He teams up with fellow bounty hunter Jemal David (played by Otis Young), an African-American freedman. The two men are not friends, but they are both social outcasts and need each other's skills to gain a profit. The series was considered groundbreaking for featuring an interracial team of characters, but was criticized for being overly violent. The series lasted only 26 episodes.
In 1972, Murray played the major role of Governor Breck in"Conquest of the Planet of the Apes". Breck is the authoritarian ruler of a human civilization using apes as a slave force, and he is the owner of the film's heroic protagonist Caesar. He eventually fails to defeat a slave revolt, and gets captured alive by his own slave. The film earned 9.7 million dollars in theatrical rentals at the North American box office.
Murray was offered the role of Breck in the film's immediate sequel, "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" (1973), but he refused to return. He reportedly felt that there was no fun in playing the tyrant twice. A character called Governor Kolp (played by Severn Darden) was introduced in the film as Breck's replacement.
In 1975, Murray starred in the thriller film "Deadly Hero", as the villainous protagonist Officer Lacy. In the film, Lacy is a veteran police officer of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) who has been demoted for violent tendencies and being overly trigger-happy. While on duty, Lacy kills the common mugger "Rabbit" (played by James Earl Jones) and briefly gains a heroic reputation. But a female witness to the death has seen that Lacy is a cold-blooded murderer, and that Rabbit was killed after disarming himself and surrendering to Lacy. Lacy decides to kill the witness in order to protect his reputation. The film was a box-office flop as film critics blamed its overly pessimistic attitude toward law enforcement. Among the few critics who actually liked the film was Gene Siskel (1946-1999), writing for the newspaper "Chicago Tribune".
In the late 1970s, Murray was reduced to mostly appearing in television films. In 1979, Murray had a career comeback when cast in the major role of Sid Fairgate in the soap opera "Knots Landing" (1979-1993). Fairgate was depicted as the owner of used car dealership Knots Landing Motors, and pater familias to a large family. Murray played this role until 1981, when he left the series due to a salary dispute. His character was written out as having died during a surgery.
During the 1980s, Murray had few appearances in theatrical films. They included the romantic drama "Endless Love" (1981), the mystery film "I Am the Cheese" (1983), the post-apocalyptic science fiction film "Radioactive Dreams" (1985), the time-travel film "Peggy Sue Got Married" (1986), the spy film "Scorpion" (1986), the reincarnation-themed fantasy film "Made in Heaven" (1987), and the ghost film "Ghosts Can't Do It" (1989).
In 1989, Murray gained a new co-starring role in the comedy-drama television series "Brand New Life" (1989-1990), playing the character of wealthy lawyer Roger Gibbons. In the series Gibbons marries novice court reporter Barbara McCray (played by Barbara Eden). Each of them has three children from previous marriages, and they now struggle to raise 6 kids. The series' creator and show-runner was young screenwriter Chris Carter (1956-), and its themes were mostly based on the old sitcom "The Brady Bunch" (1969-1974). The series was not successful, and only a pilot and 5 regular episodes were ever broadcast.
Murray next had a recurring role in the short-lived comedy-drama television series "Sons and Daughters" (1991), concerning the struggles of a single mother who tries to maintain the peace between the members of a large extended family. The series only lasted for 13 episodes, but 6 of them remained unaired at the time of its cancellation.
For the rest of the 1990s, Murray had guest star roles in various television series, and appeared in a hand full of television films. During the early 2000s, he had roles in three theatrical films: the romantic comedy "Internet Love" (2000), the stalker-themed thriller "Island Pray" (2001), and the comedy film "Elvis is Alive" (2001). In 2001, the 72-year-old Murray went into retirement.
Murray returned to acting in 2017, when offered the recurring role of insurance-company executive Bushnell Mullins in the third season of the mystery series "Twin Peaks" (1990-1991, 2017). Mullins was the boss of insurance agent Douglas "Dougie" Jones, one of several doppelgangers to FBI agent Dale Cooper (the series' main protagonist). The season was critically praised but there were no plans for a fourth season.
In 2019, Murray reached his 90th year and was still appearing in some films and on television into 2021.- Actor
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Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.- Actress
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Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in Canada but moved to California when he found employment there. The family was well-to-do and although Jane was the only girl among four brothers, her mother saw to it that she took piano lessons. In addition to music, Jane was interested in drama much as her mother had been and participated in high school stage productions. Upon graduation, Jane took a job as a receptionist for a doctor who specialized in foot disorders. Although she had originally planned on being a designer, her father died, and she had to go to work to help the family. Jane modeled on the side and was very much sought-after especially because of her figure.
She managed to save enough money to go to drama school, with the urging of her mother. She was signed by Howard Hughes for his production of The Outlaw (1943) in 1941, the film that was to make Jane famous. The film was not a classic by any means but was geared through its marketing to show off Jane's ample physical assets rather than acting abilities. Although the film was made in 1941, it was not released until two years later and then only on a limited basis due to the way the film portrayed Jane's assets. It was hard for the flick to pass the censorship board. Finally, the film gained general release in 1946. The film was a smash at the box office.
Jane did not make another film until 1945 when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow (1946). She had signed a seven-year contract with Hughes, and it seemed the only films he would put her in were those that displayed Jane in a very flattering light due to her body. Films such as His Kind of Woman (1951) and The Las Vegas Story (1952) did nothing to highlight her true acting abilities. The pinnacle of her career was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Dorothy Shaw, with Marilyn Monroe. This film showed Jane's comedic side very well. Jane did continue to make films throughout the 1950s, but the films were at times not up to par, particularly with Jane's talents being wasted in forgettable movies to show off her sexy side. Films such as Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) did do Jane's justice and were able to show exactly the fine actress she was.
After The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) (a flop), Jane took a hiatus from films, to dabble a little in television, returning in 1964 to film Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Unfortunately, the roles were not there anymore as Jane appeared in only four pictures during the entire decade of the 1960s. Her last film of the decade was The Born Losers (1967). After three more years away from the big screen, she returned to make one last film called Darker Than Amber (1970). Her last play before the public was in the 1970s when Jane was a spokesperson for Playtex bras. Had Jane not been wasted during the Hughes years, she could have been a bigger actress than what she was allowed to show. Jane Russell died at age 89 of respiratory failure on February 28, 2011, in Santa Maria, California.- Bill Leyden was born on 1 February 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964), It Could Be You (1956) and Your First Impression (1961). He died on 11 March 1970 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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Mark Damon was born on 22 April 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for House of Usher (1960), Monster (2003) and 11:14 (2003). He has been married to Margaret Markov since October 1976. They have two children. He was previously married to Barbara Frey.