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Actress, singer, comedienne and dancer. Gladys Blake left home at age 14 to join a stock company in Reading, Pennsylvania, and after two years she had developed her own vaudeville act, Gresham and Blake, with Lee Gresham. Coming to California, they were booked into the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles where she was spotted by film agent Edward Small. Her first small film roles were mostly for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Director Richard Thorpe personally offered Gladys her small role in "The Earl of Chicago" in which only her legs were seen.- Longtime Alaskan resident Merlin Arthur "Mac" Chesney, was born Feb. 26, 1938, in Luray, Kansas. He graduated from Paradise High School in Paradise, Kansas. He then attended Kansas State University in Hays, Kansas. and Bethany Nazarene College in Bethany, Oklahoma. He served in the U.S. Army from 1962 until his honorable discharge in 1965. He starred as himself, along with his own nephew, in the theatrical documentary A Time for Every Season (1972). Merlin married Joyce Thompson on Aug. 31, 1975, in Soldotna. He established Mac Chesney Construction, building custom homes. He was also the Kenai Peninsula foreman of a construction crew on projects throughout Alaska. "Mac" Chesney, 72, died Tuesday, June 8, 2010, surrounded by his family at Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna.