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- Actor
- Soundtrack
Veteran character player Roy Roberts proudly claimed over 900
performances in a 40-year career. He might not have been known
necessarily by name, but the face was distinct and obviously
familiar. The prototype of the steely executive, the no-nonsense mayor,
the assured banker, the stentorian leader, Roberts looked out of place
without his patented dark suit and power tie. His silvery hair,
perfectly trimmed mustache, nonplussed reactions and take-charge
demeanor reminded one of the "Mr. Monopoly" character from the classic
board game.
Roberts was born Roy Barnes Jones on March 19, 1906, in Tampa, Florida,
the youngest of six children. The year 1900 is given as his birth date
in several reference books, which seems compatible with his noticeably
aged appearance in the last decade or so of his life, but his final
resting stone bears the year 1906. His early career was on the Broadway
stage, gracing such plays as "Old Man Murphy" (1931), "Twentieth
Century" (1932), "The Body Beautiful" (1935) and "My Sister Eileen"
(1942). In 1943 he made a successful switch to films, debuting as a
Marine officer in Guadalcanal Diary (1943). Usually billed around tenth in the credits,
he played a reliable succession of stalwart roles (captains, generals,
politicians, sheriffs, judges, et al.). He was also a semi-standard
presence in film noir, appearing in such classics as Force of Evil (1948), He Walked by Night (1948)
and The Enforcer (1951) as both good cop and occasional heavy.
When Roberts made the move to TV he began to include more work in
comedies. The 1950s and 1960s would prove him to be a most capable foil
to a number of prime sitcom stars, including Gale Storm and Lucille Ball. His
patented gruff and exasperated executives often displayed their
prestige by the mere use of initials, such as "W.W." and "E.J." While
he never landed the one role on film or TV that could have led to top
character stardom, he nevertheless remained a solid and enjoyable
presence, a character player who added stature no matter how far down
the credits list.
A stocky man for most his life, Roberts gained considerable girth in
the late 1960s, which made his characters even more imposing. He died
of a heart attack on May 28, 1975, in Los Angeles and was buried in
Fort Worth, Texas. He was survived by his wife, actress
Lillian Moore.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast
as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the
Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen
appearances later on. He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination)
for his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930). Four more Academy Award
nominations would come his way, and he would win the Oscar for Best
Actor twice: for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). He could play roles varying from
heavy drama to light comedy, and was often best portraying men in
anguish, such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951). As his career advanced he
progressed from leading man to character actor.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Richard Conte was born Nicholas Richard Conte on March 24, 1910, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of an Italian-American barber. He held a variety of jobs before becoming a professional actor, including truck driver, Wall Street clerk and singing waiter at a Connecticut resort. The gig as a singing waiter led to theatrical work in New York, where in 1935, he was discovered by actors Elia Kazan and Julius "Julie" Garfinkle (later known as John Garfield).
Kazan helped Conte obtain a scholarship to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he excelled. Conte made his Broadway debut late in "Moon Over Mulberry Street" in 1939, and went on to be featured in other plays, including "Walk Into My Parlor." His stage work lead to a movie job, and he made his film debut in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), in which he was billed as "Nicholas Conte." His career started to thrive during the Second World War, when many Hollywood actors were away in the military.
Signing on as a contract player with 20th Century-Fox in 1942, Conte was promoted by the studio as, ironically, as "New John Garfield," the man who helped discover him. He made his debut at Fox, under the name "Richard Conte", in Guadalcanal Diary (1943). During World War II Conte appeared mostly as soldiers in war pictures, although after the war he became a fixture in the studio's "film noir" crime melodramas. His best role at Fox was as the wrongly imprisoned man exonerated by James Stewart's reporter in Call Northside 777 (1948) and he also shined as a trucker in Thieves' Highway (1949).
In the 1950s Conte essentially evolved into a B-movie actor, his best performances coming in The Blue Gardenia (1953) and Highway Dragnet (1954). After being set free of his Fox contract in the early 1950s, his career lost momentum as the film noir cycle exhausted itself, although he turned in a first-rate performance as a vicious but philosophical gangster in Joseph H. Lewis film-noir classic, The Big Combo (1955).
Conte appeared often on television, including a co-starring gig on the syndicated series The Four Just Men (1959), but by the 1960s his career was in turnaround. Frank Sinatra cast him in his two Tony Rome detective films, the eponymous Tony Rome (1967) and Lady in Cement (1968), but Conte eventually relocated to Europe. He directed and starred in Operation Cross Eagles (1968), a low-budget war picture shot in Yugoslavia. His last hurrah in Hollywood role was as Don Corleone's rival, Don Barzini, in The Godfather (1972), which many critics and filmmakers, including the late Stanley Kubrick, consider the greatest Hollywood film of all time. Ironically, Paramount - which produced "The Godfather" - had considered Conte for the title role before the casting list was whittled down to Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. After The Godfather (1972), Conte - whose character was assassinated in that picture, so does not appear in the equally classic sequel - continued to appear in European films.
Richard Conte was married to Ruth Storey, with whom he fathered film editor Mark Conte. He died of a heart attack
on April 15, 1975, in Los Angeles, California, aged 65.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered
the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written
numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His
first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction
of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation. He was
arrested in 1962 when his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963)
was considered blasphemous and given a suspended sentence. It might
have been expected that his next film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) (The Gospel According to
St. Matthew), which presented the Biblical story in a totally
realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in
fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals
of Christ on screen. Its original Italian title pointedly omitted the
Saint in St. Matthew). Pasolini's film career would then alternate
distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of
classic literary texts: Oedipus Rex (1967) (Oedipus Rex); The Decameron (1971); The Canterbury Tales (1972) (The
Canterbury Tales); Arabian Nights (1974) (Arabian Nights), with his own more personal
projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism,
fascism and homosexuality, notably Teorema (1968) (Theorem), Pigsty and the
notorious Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), a relentlessly grim fusion of Benito Mussolini's Fascist
Italy with the 'Marquis de Sade' which was banned in Italy and many other
countries for several years. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious
circumstances shortly after completing the film.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrener in Brooklyn, New York, on June
30, 1917. Her father was a transportation worker, and Susan lived a
fairly comfortable life as a child, but the precocious little redhead
had no idea of the life that awaited her. She attended public school in
Brooklyn, where she graduated from a commercial high school that was
intended to give students a marketable skill. She had planned on
becoming a secretary, but her plans changed. She started doing some
modeling work for photographers in the NYC area. By 1937, her beauty in
full bloom, she went to Hollywood when the nationwide search was on for
someone to play the role of Scarlett O'Hara in
Margaret Mitchell's
Gone with the Wind (1939).
Although she--along with several hundred other aspiring Scarletts--lost
out to Vivien Leigh, Susan was to carve her
own signature in Hollywood circles. In 1937 she got a bit part in
Hollywood Hotel (1937). The bit
parts continued all through 1938, with Susan playing, among other
things, a coed, a telephone operator and an aspiring actress. She
wasn't happy with these bit parts, but she also realized she had to
"pay her dues". In 1939 she finally landed a part with substance,
playing Isobel Rivers in the hit action film
Beau Geste (1939). In 1941 she played
Millie Perkins in the offbeat thriller
Among the Living (1941). This
quirky little film showed Hollywood Susan's considerable dramatic
qualities for the first time. She then played a Southern belle in
Cecil B. DeMille's
Reap the Wild Wind (1942), one
of the director's bigger successes, and once again showed her mettle as
an actress. Following that movie she starred with
Paulette Goddard and
Fred MacMurray in
The Forest Rangers (1942),
playing tough gal Tana Mason. Although such films as
Jack London (1943),
And Now Tomorrow (1944) and
Deadline at Dawn (1946)
continued to showcase her talent, she still hadn't gotten the meaty
role she craved. In 1947, however, she did, and received the first of
five Academy Award nominations, this one for her portrayal of Angelica
Evans in
Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947).
She played the part to the hilt and many thought she would take home
the Oscar, but she lost out to
Loretta Young for
The Farmer's Daughter (1947).
In 1949 Susan was nominated again for
My Foolish Heart (1949) and
again was up against stiff competition, but once more her hopes were
dashed when Olivia de Havilland won
for The Heiress (1949). Now, however,
with two Oscar nominations under her belt, Susan was a force to be
reckoned with. Good scripts finally started to come her way and she
chose carefully because she wanted to appear in good quality
productions. Her caution paid off, as she garnered yet a third
nomination in 1953 for
With a Song in My Heart (1952).
Later that year she starred as Rachel Donaldson Robards Jackson in
The President's Lady (1953).
She was superb as Andrew Jackson's embittered wife, who dies before he
was able to take office as President of the United States. After her
fourth Academy Award nomination for
I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), Susan
began to wonder if she would ever take home the coveted gold statue.
She didn't have much longer to wait, though. In 1958 she gave the
performance of her lifetime as real-life California killer Barbara
Graham in I Want to Live! (1958),
who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the gas chamber.
Susan was absolutely riveting in her portrayal of the doomed woman.
Many film buffs consider it to be one of the finest performances of all
time, and this time she was not only nominated for Best Actress, but
won. After that role she appeared in about one movie a year. In 1972
she made her last theatrical film,
The Revengers (1972). She had been
diagnosed with cancer, and the disease finally claimed her life on
March 14, 1975, in Hollywood. She was 57.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod
Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of
television. Long before
The Twilight Zone (1959),
he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and
"Requiem for a Heavyweight," both later turned into films
(Patterns (1956) and
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)).
The Twilight Zone (1959)
featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War
paranoia and the horrors of war. His maverick attitude eventually drove
him from regular network television.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Menacing looking Italian American actor who developed into the
quintessential on-screen hoodlum via several strong roles in key crime
films of the early 1970s. Lettieri played the villain against some of
Hollywood's biggest screen names including chasing
Steve McQueen in
The Getaway (1972), intimidating
Charles Bronson in
Mr. Majestyk (1974), threatening
'John Wayne' in McQ (1974) and, arguably in
his most well known role, as Virgil "The Turk" Sollozo trying to
eliminate Marlon Brando in
The Godfather (1972).
He was already 36 years old when he made his on screen debut in
The Hanged Man (1964),
and remarkably several years later was associate producer on the
disturbing kidnapping drama
The Night of the Following Day (1969)
starring Marlon Brando. He really hit his
strides in the early 1970s starring in many high profile films, before
unfortunately succumbing to a heart attack at just 47 years of age. One
of the most convincing "heavies" of modern cinema.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Moe Howard, the "Boss Stooge" and brother of Stooges
Curly Howard and
Shemp Howard, began his acting career in
1909 by playing bit roles in silent Vitagraph films. At 17 he joined a
troupe working on a showboat and also appeared in several two-reel
comedy shorts. In 1922 he, brother Shemp and
Larry Fine joined roughhouse
vaudeville comic Ted Healy, forming the act
that would become The Three Stooges.
Howard toured vaudeville and appeared in films with Healy for ten years
before the Stooges left to pursue a separate career. Moe appeared in
more than 250 films during his 66-year career, including 190 Three
Stooges shorts. Over the act's 50-year history, the Stooges went
through several personnel changes; when Moe died, the act ended.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Burly American character actor with a deep gravelly voice who was
equally adept at comedy and drama. The son of a theatrical costume
designer, Strauss worked as a salesman and also as a singing waiter and
busboy before finding success in the stage version of "Detective Story"
on Broadway. He appeared with José Ferrer in the Broadway revival of
"Twentieth Century." Also on Broadway, he played "Animal" in "Stalag,
17", and repeated the role in the film version (Stalag 17 (1953)). The wildly
comic yet appealing character brought Strauss an Oscar nomination for
Best Supporting Actor. He had appeared in films as early as 1942 but
became most familiar during the 1950s in memorable roles in such films
as The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). He continued to appear on stage and also in
many television programs and commercials into the '70s. He died of
complications from a stroke, leaving a widow and three children from
his first marriage.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Seasoned London-born character actor, who had a lengthy career in American films and on television. The son of an Anglo-Italian music professor, Cyril also had a secondary career in Hollywood as a respected drama coach, engaged by Douglas Fairbanks, James Craig, and others. He appears to have divided the remainder of his time between films and the stage. For some time, around 1936, he was director in charge of production at the Little Theatre in Houston, Texas. Most of his movie roles, beginning in 1931, were uncredited bits. He appeared primarily in serials and 'B-horrors', for which dignified English gentlemen were continuously in demand as undertakers, coroners or townsfolk. Television offered him better opportunities in the early 1950's. Skeletal of build, with a heavily-lined face and a shock of white hair, Cyril always appeared rather older than his years. Something of a specialist in Cockney impersonations, his nonplussed features were also regularly glimpsed as assorted shopkeepers, accountants, butlers or academic types. He popped up to particularly good effect in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959), displaying deft comedic abilities as day-dreaming bank employee, Mr. Smithers, in "A Penny for Your Thoughts" (1961). However, Cyril's best on-screen moment came courtesy of The Night of the Iguana (1964), as Deborah Kerr's elderly grandfather Nonno - 'the oldest working poet in the world' - for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination.- William Hartnell was born on 8 January 1908, just south of St. Pancras
railway station in London. In press materials in the 1940s he claimed that his
father was a farmer and later a stockbroker; it turns out that he had
actually been born out of wedlock, as his biography "Who's There?"
states.
At age 16 he was adopted by Hugh Blaker, a well-known art
connoisseur, who helped him to get a job with Sir Frank Benson's
Shakespearean Company. He started as a general dogsbody--call-boy,
assistant stage manager, property master and assistant lighting
director--but was occasionally allowed to play small walk-on parts. Two
years later he left Benson's group and went off on tour, working for a
number of different theatre companies about Britain. He became known as an
actor of farce and understudied renowned performers such as
Lawrence Grossmith,
Ernest Truex,
Bud Flanagan and
Charles Heslop. He played repertory in
Richmond, Harrogate, Leeds and Sheffield and had a successful run as
the lead in a touring production of "Charley's Aunt." He also toured
Canada in 1928-29, acquiring much valuable experience.
On his return to
England, Hartnell married actress
Heather McIntyre. He starred in
such films as
I'm an Explosive (1933),
The Way Ahead (1944),
Strawberry Roan (1944),
The Agitator (1945),
Query (1945) and
Appointment with Crime (1946).
His memorable performance on the television series
The Army Game (1957) and the
movie
This Sporting Life (1963) led
to him being cast as the Doctor on
Doctor Who (1963), for which he is
best remembered. His son-in-law is agent Terry Carney. His
granddaughter is Jessica Carney (real
name Judith Carney), who authored a biography of her grandfather,
"Who's There?", in 1996. - Hank Patterson was born in Springville, Alabama to Green and Mary
Newton Patterson. Hank's great-grandfather, James Pearson, was an
original settler of St. Clair County, AL as was his mother's
great-grandfather, Thomas Newton. Between 1894 & 1897, the family left
AL to live in Taylor, Texas, where Hank attempted to work as a serious
musician, only to settle for playing piano in traveling vaudeville
shows. He worked his way out to California in the 1920s and here began
his film career followed by long runs on two television series Gunsmoke (1955)
and Green Acres (1965). - Actress
- Soundtrack
The personification of class and cultivation on the movie screen,
comely actress Kay Johnson forsook a prominent stage and film career in
order to play wife to actor
John Cromwell and mother to their
two children. Still and all, the elegant actress, reminiscent in looks
and style to that of Irene Dunne and
Judith Anderson, contributed to
a number of important '30s and early '40s films and is deserving of a
richer place in Hollywood history than has been acknowledged thus far.
Born Catherine Townsend Johnson, the daughter of a Michigan architect
(Thomas R. Johnson--who worked in the firm of Cass Gilbert the
architect of the impressive Woolworth Building in NYC), Kay received
her early education at the Drew Seminary for Young Women and later,
intent on becoming an actress, studied at Sargent's Dramatic School of
the American Academy of Dramatic Art (AADA). Her first professional
role came with the Theatre Guild's Chicago production of "R.U.R." in
the role of Helena, a robot. From there she appeared on Broadway in "Go
West, Young Man" and continued on with stage roles in "The Morning
After," "One of the Family," "No Trespassing" and "Crime".
Kay met actor/producer/director Cromwell while she was
appearing in the play "A Free Soul" in 1928 and he was involved in
another play. They married later that year (October) and moved to
California, where he directed her in a stage production of "The Silver
Cord". Her showy role as Christine earned the attention of none other
than Cecil B. DeMille, who cast her in
his film Dynamite (1929) opposite
Charles Bickford and
Conrad Nagel. While the movie received
lukewarm reviews, Kay, who suffered from appendicitis and had surgery
during filming, was instantly noticed. She continued on with
The Ship from Shanghai (1930),
This Mad World (1930) (directed by
William C. de Mille, the brother of
C.B.), The Spoilers (1930) (opposite
Gary Cooper), the title role as
Madam Satan (1930) (again for C.B.
DeMille), and Billy the Kid (1930)
starring Johnny Mack Brown as the
legendary gunslinger.
Kay alternated between stage and film parts in the following years. She
toured with another production of "The Silver Cord" and appeared as
Roxanne opposite
Richard Bennett's lead in
"Cyrano de Bergerac". Later she was on stage in "When Ladies Meet" and
"Living Dangerously". On screen Kay appeared in the mediocre films
The Single Sin (1931) and
The Spy (1931) before glowing onscreen in such fare as American Madness (1932)
and This Man Is Mine (1934), the
latter directed by husband Cromwell.
Kay's most noteworthy career assignment came with the screen role of
Nora in W. Somerset Maugham's
classic Of Human Bondage (1934)--again, directed by her husband Cromwell--with Leslie Howard and
Bette Davis completing the romantic
triangle. Cromwell went on to direct Kay on screen again in
Village Tale (1935),
Jalna (1935) and
Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942).
Other notable Kay Johnson films included
White Banners (1938),
Mr. Lucky (1943) and her last,
The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944).
Her final acting appearance was in a prime role opposite
Ralph Bellamy in a stage production of
"State of the Union" in 1945.
Kay never aggressively pursued her career, instead focusing on her
marriage to Cromwell and the raising of their two children. The
couple's first child was adopted in 1938; their second son, born in
January of 1940, became the noted character actor
James Cromwell. Following her
divorce from Cromwell in the
late '40s, Kay decided to remain out of the limelight. She died just
short of her 71st birthday at her Waterford, CT., home on
November 17, 1975, long forgotten.- At age 36, actress Barbara Colby was on the brink of TV-character
stardom when the native New Yorker was senselessly shot and killed one
evening on the streets of Los Angeles. The tall, toothy, husky-voiced,
frizzy-haired actress equipped with a keen, Brooklyn-tough sensibility
and dead-on comedy instincts had just started to make a name for
herself on the West Coast when tragedy occurred. Hollywood lost a
wonderful personality and promising talent that summer evening,
someone who was proving to the TV masses that she was a bona fide
contender.
Though born in New York City in 1939, Barbara was raised predominantly
in New Orleans where her interest in acting grew while attending high
school. After her graduation in 1957, she received a scholarship to
Bard College on the Hudson back in New York, followed by a single semester
at the Paris Sorbonne University in France.
While she tried to make a go of it professionally on the New York stage,
her spiritual world also began to open and develop. In contrast to her
tough, streetwise exterior, the gentle, deep-feeling lady avidly pursued
a metaphysical way of life. She didn't touch alcohol, was a strict vegetarian,
and meditated regularly as a devoted follower of the Indian Hindu guru
Swami Muktananda. She also was a firm believer in reincarnation.
Following a solid stage performance in "Six Characters in Search of an
Author" in 1964, Barbara took to the Broadway lights with a debut in
"The Devils" the following year. Throughout the rest of the decade, she
impressed in such plays as "Under Milk Wood", "Murder in the Cathedral"
and "Dear Liar", and also garnered fine notices for her Portia in "Julius
Caesar" in 1966 at the American Shakespeare Theatre Festival in
Stratford, Connecticut.
Marking her first prime TV role on a Columbo (1971) episode in 1971, Barbara
began a bi-coastal career and played a host of support/guest roles on
such established shows as The Odd Couple (1968), McMillan & Wife (1971), The F.B.I. (1965), Medical Center (1969), Kung Fu (1972) and Gunsmoke (1955). But it was MTM
Productions that took strongly to Barbara after she made a hilarious
appearance as worldly prostitute Sherry opposite an impossibly
naive Mary Tyler Moore in a now-classic
1974 jail-cell episode of the Moore comedy series. Producers were so
impressed by Barbara's dead-pan comic timing and appealingly sharp,
cynical edge that they brought her character back in a subsequent
episode.
Never giving up her love for the stage, Barbara continued to gain in
strength in such quirky '70s plays as "Aubrey Beardsley the Neophyte",
"House of Blue Leaves", "Afternoon Tea" and "The Hot L. Baltimore". She
also returned to the classics with an off-Broadway role as Elizabeth in
"Richard III," and was back on Broadway with the plays "Murderous
Angels" in 1971 and a revival of "A Doll's House" starring
Liv Ullmann in the early part of 1975.
Following the close of the latter show, Barbara returned to Los Angeles
with a career-making offer. MTM had just cast her as a regular player
on a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970). The new sitcom, Phyllis (1975),
starred actress Cloris Leachman who had
played one of Mary's self-absorbed, scatterbrained friends to
Emmy-winning effect. Barbara, who appeared earlier with Leachman in the
TV-movie
A Brand New Life (1973),
was now in "second banana" position playing Cloris' boss, Julie
Erskine, the owner of a commercial photography studio. The actress had
officially paid her dues and broken into the top sitcom ranks. With two
films also in the can,
California Split (1974) and
The Memory of Us (1974), Barbara seemed
poised for bigger things.
On July 24, 1975, just weeks after her 36th birthday and only
three episodes into the TV series, Barbara and her acting
colleague/boyfriend,
James Kiernan, were walking to
their car following the teaching of an acting class in Venice,
California, when they were deliberately shot by two gang members inside
a parking garage area. Barbara, who was estranged at the time from
Robert Levitt Jr., the son of legendary entertainer
Ethel Merman, died instantly from her
single gunshot wound; Mr. Kiernan, who had recently appeared in an
episode of MTM's "Rhoda," was able to describe the shooting to police
before he succumbed but could not recognize the two men who shot them,
noting that the shooting had occurred without warning, reason or
provocation. Police noted that there was no attempt to rob the pair and
appeared to be a random act of violence. The killers were never caught
and the homicide remains a "cold case". Barbara was later cremated and
a memorial service held at Will Geer's
Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon. She was survived by her mother
and younger sister Renee.
Following the tragedy, comedienne
Liz Torres came on board to replace
Barbara in the Julie Erskine part. The role itself lasted for only one
season before they changed the sitcom's setting in order to try and
improve the lackluster ratings. It didn't help. Despite a Golden Globe
win for Leachman, the show was canceled after only one more season. In
retrospect, one can't tell whether Barbara might have made a difference
in the sitcom's ratings or outcome, but the fact remains that a single
inexplicably brutal and senseless act snuffed out the life of a star
comedienne in the making. - Actor
- Soundtrack
James Robertson Justice was always a noticeable presence in a film with
his large stature, bushy beard and booming voice. A Ph.D., a
journalist, a naturalist, an expert falconer, a racing car driver, JRJ
was certainly a man of many talents.
He entered the film industry quite late in life (37) after he was
spotted serving as MC for a local music hall. He became a familiar
figure on-screen after a succession of "larger than life" roles during
the 40s and 50s, and particularly as Sir Lancelot Spratt in the
"Doctor" film series.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Irwin McGiver came to acting relatively late in life. He held B.A. and
Master's degrees in English from Fordham, Columbia and Catholic Universities
and spent his early years teaching drama and speech at Christopher
Columbus High School in the Bronx. He had an early flirtation with the
acting profession in 1938 as actor/director for the Irish Reperatory Theatre,
but found his weekly income of $26.42 insufficient for daily survival. The
next year he enlisted and saw action during World War II, fighting with the U.S.
7th Armored Division in Europe (including the Battle of the Bulge). When he
was demobbed after six years in the army, he held the rank of Captain. He
returned to teaching drama, with occasional forays into off-Broadway acting.
In 1947, he married Chicago scenic designer Ruth Shmigelsky and settled
down to live in a converted 19th-century former Baptist church.
There are conflicting stories as to how McGiver ended up becoming a
film and television actor, but it happened sometime after one of his
part-time acting performances in September 1955, either through the
offices of an old University classmate turned stage producer or
through the persuasive abilities of an agent from the Music Corporation
of America. In any case, the portly, balding, owl-like and
precisely spoken McGiver quickly developed an inimitable style as a
comic (and occasionally serious) actor on television and in films. He
was most memorable as the obtuse landscape contractor in
The Gazebo (1959), a pompous jewelry
salesman in
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
and an inept twitcher in
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962).
He also played Mr. Sowerberry in a television version of
Oliver Twist (1959)
and starred in his own (sadly short-lived) TV show,
Many Happy Returns (1964),
as the complaints manager of a department store. His dramatic roles
included a senator in
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
and, on television, the corrupt mayor in
The Front Page (1970),
plus a rare villainous role in the TV episode
The Birds and the Bees Affair (1966).
Among his numerous guest starring roles on television, he was at his
best as the self-absorbed Roswell Flemington, who learns a moral
lesson in
Sounds and Silences (1964)
(1964).- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Larry began performing as a violinist at a young age. During his
teenage years, he earned his living as a singer and boxer. At 18, Larry
began working vaudeville with "The Haney Sisters and Fine" and in 1925,
he joined Ted Healy and Moe Howard in the act that would eventually become
The Three Stooges. Fine made more than 200 films before a stroke forced him to
retire in 1970.- An enchantingly beautiful, luminous blonde, Mary Ure was born in
Glasgow on February 18th, 1933. Her first film was
Zoltan Korda's
Storm Over the Nile (1955), a
misfiring remake of
The Four Feathers (1939). Next
was Windom's Way (1957) - a tale of
rubber plantation strikes and marital strife, but more significant
events had been occurring off-screen. In 1956, she starred as "Alison"
in John Osborne's "Look Back in
Anger" at the Royal Court theatre in London. She began an affair with
the married Osborne and, after his divorce, they tied the knot in 1957.
By 1958, however, the marriage was falling apart. Osborne could be cold
and detached and he did not hold his wife in particularly high esteem,
as he wrote in the second volume of his memoirs, "Almost a Gentleman".
She began an affair with Robert Shaw
around 1959 though she wasn't divorced from Osborne until 1962 and was
complicit in the charade that the father of her first child, Colin born
31 August 1961, was Osborne's. In the meantime, she transferred her
fragile, captivating portrayal of "Alison Porter" from stage to screen
in the 1959 film adaptation of
Look Back in Anger (1959),
which also starred Richard Burton
and Claire Bloom. Her beautiful
performance of "Clara Dawes" in 1960's
Sons and Lovers (1960) won her an
Oscar nomination. In this time, she also performed a season at
Stratford and, while pregnant, "The Changeling" at the Royal Court with
Shaw. At the time she was pregnant, Jennifer Bourke, Shaw's first wife,
was also pregnant by him (at his death in 1978 he left 9 children).
In 1963, she married Shaw and, after an absence of three years,
returned to cinema screens with a good performance in
The Mind Benders (1963) with
Dirk Bogarde, a thought-provoking sci-fi
drama. Then it was
The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964)
and the flawed
Custer of the West (1967),
both with Shaw. Neither of these productions made a significant impact,
though Ure performed admirably. In 1968, she made her one and only
bona-fide big-budget blockbuster,
Where Eagles Dare (1968) with
Richard Burton and
Clint Eastwood. It was a huge success but
it would be two years before Ure's next, and last, film appearance.
In the meantime, she had continued to act on stage. Shaw's first wife, Jennifer
Bourke, had given up her career as an actress to be a wife and mother.
Ure didn't give up her career but the demands of motherhood (she bore
Shaw 3 more children) and her growing dependence on alcohol meant it
lapsed. Her final film was A Reflection of Fear (1972), an interesting horror psychodrama but Ure was absurdly
cast as the mother of Sondra Locke, only 11 years younger than herself. After this, she returned to the stage.
She died of an accidental overdose on April 3rd, 1975, taking too many sleeping pills on top of alcohol after a very late night, following an opening night on
the London stage. She was a wonderful
actress whose luster lingers in the mind long after the film has ended.
Sadly, her own life ended aged at just 42. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Genial, dark-haired, often bespectacled Ivan Lawrence Blieden
(pronounced Blee-den), better known as actor Larry Blyden, was born in
Houston, Texas, the son of a lawyer. He developed an early interest in
acting, appearing in various theater productions as a teen but never
entertained the notion of pursuing a career. Following a stint with the
Marine Corps, however, he went to college at the University of Houston
and supplemented his income with a job as a local radio announcer,
finding himself highly proficient at foreign accents.
Bitten by the acting bug, he decided to give performing a serious try this time,
first training at London's Royal Academy of Arts, then moving to New
York. It was Broadway that subsequently gave Larry marquee value,
contributing strongly to a string of successes. These included not only
such staple comedies as "Mr. Roberts", "Oh Men! Oh Women!" and "Absurd
Person Singular", but the musicals "Flower Drum Song" (Tony
nomination), "The Apple Tree" and "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to
the Forum", the last earning him the Tony award in 1972.
From the early 1950s throughout the decade, Larry was a valuable presence in TV anthologies ("The Silver Theatre," "The Philco Television Playhouse," "The Goodyear Playhouse," "Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Playhouse 90," "The Alcoa Hour," "Play of the Week") but, as
his career progressed, he also found a comfortable niche in breezy comedy, landing a couple of sitcoms Joe & Mabel (1956) (as Joe) and Harry's Girls (1963) (as Harry), short-lived as they were. Into the 1960's he appeared on such programs as "Thriller," "The Loretta Young Show," "The Twilight Zone," "Adventures in Paradise," "The United States Steel Hour," "Route 66," "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "12 O'CLock High," "The Fugitive" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
Larry projected a very temperate, clean-cut, albeit bland image. As a result, film roles were
scarce - three to be exact: Kiss Them for Me (1957) starring Cary Grant and Jayne Mansfield,
The Bachelor Party (1957) with Don Murray and Carolyn Jones, and Barbra Streisand's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970).
Larry was a noted game show enthusiast and was seen frequently as a panelist on
Password (1961) and To Tell the Truth (1969), among many others. In 1972, he became a familiar
daytime face after replacing Wally Bruner as host of the syndicated What's My Line? (1968).
Larry married Bob Fosse dancer/extraordinaire Carol Haney in 1955. They
remained a popular Gotham couple until their split seven years later.
Haney, who was pure electric in the Broadway and film versions of "The
Pajama Game", was a severe diabetic and died suddenly at age 39 in
1964, two years after their divorce. This left Blyden a single parent
with two children to raise. He never remarried. His last performances on TV included guest parts on "The Mod Squad," "Medical Center" and "Cannon."
Blyden himself died fairly young as well, killed in a car accident while traveling in Morocco. He
was only 49. Highly personable and modestly unassuming, Larry Blyden
may not have hit the heights, but he was a recognizable name and a
durable talent - one of Broadway's bright lights for over two
decades.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Writer
George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a
brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one
of the great American filmmakers, ranking with
John Ford,
William Wyler and
Howard Hawks as a creator of classic
Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen mytho-poetic worlds that were
also mass entertainment. One of the most honored and respected
directors in Hollywood history, Stevens enjoyed a great degree of
independence from studios, producing most of his own films after coming
into his own as a director in the late 1930s. Though his work ranged
across all genres, including comedies, musicals and dramas, whatever he
did carried the hallmark of his personal vision, which is predicated
upon humanism.
Although the cinema is an industrial process that makes attributions of
"authorship" difficult if not downright ridiculous (despite the
contractual guarantees in Directors Guild of America-negotiated
contracts), there is no doubt that George Stevens is in control of a
George Stevens picture. Though he was unjustly derided by critics of
the 1960s for not being an "auteur," an auteur he truly is, for a
Stevens picture features meticulous attention to detail, the thorough
exploitation of a scene's visual possibilities and ingenious and
innovative editing that creates many layers of meanings. A Stevens
picture contains compelling performances from actors whose interactions
have a depth and intimacy rare in motion pictures. A Stevens picture
typically is fully engaged with American society and is a chronicled
photoplay of the pursuit of The American Dream.
George Stevens was nominated five times for an Academy Award as Best
Director, winning twice, and six of the movies he produced and directed
were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. In 1953 he was the recipient of
the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award for
maintaining a consistent level of high-quality production. He served as
president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1958 to
1959. Stevens won the Directors Guild of America Best Director Award
three times as well as the D.W. Griffith
Lifetime Achievement Award. He made five indisputable classics:
Swing Time (1936), a
Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers
musical; Gunga Din (1939), a rousing
adventure film;
Woman of the Year (1942), a
battle-of-the-sexes comedy;
A Place in the Sun (1951), a
drama that broke new ground in the use of close-ups and editing; and
Shane (1953), a distillation of every
Western cliché that managed to both sum up and transcend the genre. His
Penny Serenade (1941),
The Talk of the Town (1942),
The More the Merrier (1943),
I Remember Mama (1948) and
Giant (1956) all live on in the front rank
of motion pictures.
George Cooper Stevens was born on December 18, 1904, in Oakland,
California, to actor Landers Stevens and
his wife, actress Georgie Cooper, who ran
their own theatrical company in Oakland, Ye Liberty Playhouse. Cooper
herself was the daughter of an actress,
Georgia Woodthorpe (both ladies'
Christian names offstage were Georgia, though their stage names were
Georgie). Georgie Cooper appeared as Little Lord Fauntleroy as a child
along with her mother at Los Angeles' Burbank Theater. George's
parents' company performed in the San Francisco Bay area, and as
individual performers they also toured the West Coast as vaudevillians
on the Opheum circuit. Their theatrical repertoire included the
classics, giving the young George the chance to forge an understanding
of dramatic structure and what works with an audience. In 1922 Stevens'
parents abandoned live theater and moved their family, which consisted
of George and his older brother John Landers Stevens (later to be known
as Jack Stevens), south to
Glendale, California, to find work in the movie industry.
Both of Stevens' parents gained steady employment as movie actors.
Landers appeared in
Little Caesar (1931),
The Public Enemy (1931) and
Citizen Kane (1941) in small parts.
His brother was Chicago Herald-American drama critic Ashton Stevens
(1872-1951), who was hired by
William Randolph Hearst for his
San Francisco Examiner after Ashton had taught him how to play the
banjo. An interviewer of movie stars and a notable man-about-town,
Ashton mentored the young Orson Welles, who
based the Jedediah Leland character in
Citizen Kane (1941) on him. Georgie
Cooper's sister Olive Cooper became
a screenwriter after a short stint as an actress. Jack became a movie
cameraman, as did their second son.
Stevens' movie adaptation of "I Remember Mama," the chronicle of a
Norwegian immigrant family trying to assimilate in San Francisco circa
1910, could be a mirror on the Stevens family's own move to Los Angeles
circa 1922. In "Mama", the members of the Hanson family feel like
outsiders, a theme that resonates throughout Stevens' work. Acting was
considered an insalubrious profession before the rise of
Ronald Reagan's generation of
actors into the halls of power, and being a member of an acting family
necessarily marked one as an outsider in the first half of the 20th
century. Young George had to drop out of high school to drive his
father to his acting auditions, which would have further enhanced his
sense of being an outsider. To compensate for his lack of formal
education, Stevens closely studied theater, literature and the emerging
medium of the motion picture.
Soon after arriving in Hollywood, the 17-year-old Stevens got a job at
the Hal Roach Studios as an assistant cameraman; it was a matter of
being in the right place at the right time. Of that period, when the
cinema was young, Stevens reminisced, "There were no unions, so it was
possible to become an assistant cameraman if you happened to find out
just when they were starting a picture. There was no organization; if a
cameraman didn't have an assistant, he didn't know where to find one."
As part of Hal Roach's company, Stevens
learned the art of visual storytelling while the form was still being
developed. Part of his visual education entailed the shooting of
low-budget westerns, some of which featured
Rex. Within two
years Stevens became a director of photography and a writer of gags for
Roach on the comedies of Stan Laurel and
Oliver Hardy.
His first credited work as a cameraman at the Roach Studios was for the
Stan Laurel short
Roughest Africa (1923). Stevens
was a terrific cameraman, most notably in Laurel & Hardy's comedies
(both silent and talkies), and it was as a cameraman that his aesthetic
began to develop. The cinema of George Stevens was rooted in humanism,
and he focused on telling details and behavior that elucidated
character and relationships. This aesthetic started developing on the
Laurel & Hardy comedies, where he learned about the interplay of
relationships between "the one who is looked at" and "the one doing the
looking." Verisimilitude, always a hallmark of a Stevens picture, also
was part of the Laurel and Hardy curricula;
Oliver Hardy once said, "We did a lot of
crazy things in our pictures, but we were always real."
From a lighting cameraman, Stevens advanced to a director of short
subjects for Roach at Universal. Within a year of moving to RKO in
1933, he began directing comedy features. His break came in 1935 at
RKO, when house diva Katharine Hepburn
chose Stevens as the director of
Alice Adams (1935). Based on a
Booth Tarkington novel about a young
woman from the lower-middle class who dares to dream big, the movie
injected the theme of class aspiration and the frustrations of the
pursuit of happiness while dreaming the American dream into Stevens'
oeuvre. Before there was cinema of "outsiders" recognized in the late
1970s, there were Stevens' outsiders, fighting against their
atomization and alienation through their not-always-successful
interactions with other people.
Stevens created his first classic in 1936, when RKO assigned him to
helm the sixth Astaire-Rogers musical,
Swing Time (1936). Stevens' past as a
lighting cameraman prepared him for the innovative visuals of this
musical comedy. Through his control of the camera's field of vision,
Stevens as a director creates an atmosphere that engenders emotional
effects in his audience. In one scene Astaire opens a mirrored door
that the scene's reflection in actuality is being shot on, and being
keyed into the illusion emotionally introduces the audience into the
picture, in sly counterpoint to
Buster Keaton's walk into the screen in
his _Sherlock, Jr. (1924)_ . Stevens' use of light in "Swing Time" is
audacious. He freely introduces light into scenes, with the effect that
it enlivens them and gives them a "light" touch, such as the final
scene where "sunlight" breaks out over the painted backdrop. The film
never drags and is a brilliant showcase for the dancing team. Rogers
claimed it was her favorite of all her pictures with Astaire.
Stevens' next classic was the rip-roaring adventure yarn
Gunga Din (1939), based on the
Rudyard Kipling poem. Though no longer
politically correct in the 21st century, the picture still works in
terms of action and star power, as three British
sergeants--Cary Grant,
Victor McLaglen and
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.--try to put
down a rampage by a notorious death cult in 19th-century colonial
India.
Having learned his craft in the improvisational milieu of silent
pictures, Stevens would often wing it, shooting from an underdeveloped
screenplay that was ever in flux, finding the film as he shot it and
later edited it. With filmmaking becoming more and more expensive in
the 1930s due to the studios' penchant for making movies on a vaster
scale than they had previously, Stevens' methods led to anxiety for the
bean-counters in RKO's headquarters. His improvisatory crafting of
"Gunga Din" resulted in the film's shooting schedule almost doubling
from 64 to 124 days, with its cost reaching a then-incredible $2
million (few sound films had grossed more than $5 million up to that
point, and a picture needed to gross from two to 2-1/2 times its
negative cost to break even).
Studio executives were driven to distraction by Stevens' methods, such
as his taking nearly a year to edit the footage he shot for "Shane."
His films typically were successful, though, and in the late 1930s he
became his own producer, earning him greater latitude than that enjoyed
by virtually any other filmmaker with the obvious exceptions of
Cecil B. DeMille and
Frank Capra. He made three significant
comedies in the early 1940s:
Woman of the Year (1942), the
darker-in-tone
The Talk of the Town (1942)
(a film that touches on the subject of civil rights and the miscarriage
of justice) and
The More the Merrier (1943)
before going off to war.
Joining the Army Signal Corps, Stevens headed up a combat motion
picture unit from 1944 to 1946. In addition to filming the Normandy
landings, his unit shot both the liberation of Paris and the liberation
of the Nazi extermination camp Dachau, and his unit's footage was used
both as evidence in the Nuremberg trials and in the de-Nazification
program after the war. Stevens was awarded the Legion of Merit for his
services. Many critics claim that the somber, deeply personal tone of
the movies he made when he returned from World War II were the result
of the horrors he saw during the war. Stevens' first wife, Yvonne,
recalled that he "was a very sensitive man. He just never dreamed, I'm
sure, what he was getting into when he enlisted." Stevens wrote a
letter to Yvonne in 1945, telling her that "if it hadn't been for your
letters . . . there would have been nothing to think cheerfully about,
because you know that I find much [of] this difficult to believe in
fundamentally."
The images of war and Dachau continued to haunt Stevens, but it also
engendered in him the belief that motion pictures had to be socially
meaningful to be of value. Along with fellow Signal Corps veterans
Frank Capra and
William Wyler, Stevens founded Liberty
Films to produce his vision of the human condition. The major carryover
from his prewar oeuvre to his postwar films is the affection the
director has for his central characters, emblematic of his humanism.
Stevens' second postwar film,
A Place in the Sun (1951),
was his adaptation of
Theodore Dreiser's "An American
Tragedy," updated to contemporary America. Released three years after
his family film
I Remember Mama (1948), it
features an outsider, George Eastman, trapped in the net of the
American Dream, the pursuit of which dooms him.
Sergei Eisenstein had written an
adaptation for Paramount of "An American Tragedy" (the title a sly
reversal of "The American Dream"), but Eisenstein's participation in
the project was jettisoned when the studio came under attack by
right-wing politicians and organizations for hiring a "Communist", and
the U.S. government deported Eisenstein shortly afterward. His script
was unceremoniously dumped, and
Josef von Sternberg eventually made
the picture, but his vision was so far from Dreiser's that the old
literary lion sued the studio. The film was recut and proved to be both
a critical and box-office failure.
Alfred Hitchcock maintained
that it was far easier to make a good picture from a mediocre or bad
drama or book than it was from a good work or a masterpiece. It
remained for George Stevens to turn a literary masterpiece into a
cinematic one--a unique trick in Hollywood. What was revolutionary
about "A Place in the Sun," in terms of technique, is Stevens' use of
close-ups. Charlton Heston has pointed
out that no one had ever used close-ups the way Stevens had in the
picture. He used them more frequently than was the norm circa 1950, and
he used extreme close-ups that, when combined with his innovative,
slow-dissolve editing, created its own atmosphere, its own world that
brought the audience into George Eastman's world, even into his embrace
with the girl of his dreams, and also into the rowboat on that fateful
day that would forever change his life. The editing technique of
slow-lapping dissolves slowed down time and elongated the tempo of a
scene in a way never before seen on screen.
Stevens' mastery over the art of the motion picture was recognized with
his first Academy Award for direction, beating out
Elia Kazan for that director's own
masterpiece,
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
and Stanley Donen and
Gene Kelly for THEIR masterpiece,
An American in Paris (1951),
for the Best Picture Oscar winner that year (most observers had
expected "Sun" or "Streetcar" to win, but they had split the vote and
allowed "American" to nose them out at the finish line. MGM's publicity
department acknowledged as much when it ran a post-Oscar ad featuring
Leo the Lion with copy that began, "I was standing in the Sun waiting
for a Streetcar when . . . ").
Stevens' theme of the outsider continued with his next classic,
Shane (1953). The eponymous gunman is an
outsider, but so is the Starrett family he has decided to defend, as
are the "sodbusters", and even the range baron who is now outside his
time, outside his community and outside human decency.
Giant (1956), Stevens' sprawling three-hour
epic based on Edna Ferber's novel about
Texas, also features outsiders: sister Luz Benedict, hired-hand
transformed into millionaire oilman Jett Rink, transplanted Tidewater
belle Leslie Benedict, her two rebellious children and eventually her
husband Bick Benedict, a near-stereotypical Texan who finally steps
outside of his parochialism and is transformed into an outsider when he
decides to fight, physically, against discrimination against Latinos as
a point of honor. The Otto Frank family and their compatriots in hiding
in
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959),
American cinema's first movie to deal with the Holocaust, are
outsiders, while Christ in his
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)--subtle,
complex and unknowable--is the ultimate outsider.
The Only Game in Town (1970)--Stevens'
last film with
Elizabeth Taylor, his female
lead in "A Place in the Sun" and "Giant"--was about two outsiders, an
aging chorus girl and a petty gambler.
Stevens' reputation suffered after the 1950s, and he didn't make
another film until halfway into the 1960s. The film he did produce
after that long hiatus was misunderstood and underappreciated when it
was released.
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965),
a picture about the ministry and passion of Christ, was one of the last
epic films. It was maligned by critics and failed at the box office. It
was on this picture that Stevens' improvisatory method began to take a
toll on him. It took six years from the release of "Anne Frank," which
had garnered Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director,
until the release of "Greatest Story." There had been a long gestation
period for the film, and it was renowned as a difficult shoot, so much
so that David Lean helped out a man
he considered a master by shooting some ancillary scenes for the
picture. The film has a look of vastness that many critics
misunderstood as emptiness rather than as a visual correlative of the
soul. Stevens' script is inspired by the three Synoptic Gospels,
particular the Gospel According to St. John. John stresses the interior
relation between the self and things beyond its knowledge. Though
misunderstood by critics at the time of its release, the film has
become more appreciated some 40 years later. Stevens is a master of the
cinema, and is fully in command of the dissolves and emotive use of
sound he used so effectively in "A Place in the Sun."
His last film,
The Only Game in Town (1970),
also was not a critical or box-office success, as
Elizabeth Taylor's star had
gone into steep decline as the 1970s dawned.
Frank Sinatra had originally been slated
to be her co-star, but Ol' Blue Eyes, notorious for preferring one-take
directors, likely had second thoughts about being in a film directed by
Stevens, who had a (well-deserved) reputation for multiple takes. His
filmmaking method entailed shooting take after take of a scene during
principal photography from every conceivable angle and from multiple
focal points, so he'd have a plethora of choices in the editing room,
which is where he made his films (unlike
John Ford, famous for his lack of
coverage, who had a reputation of "editing" in the camera, shooting
only what he thought necessary for a film).
Warren Beatty, typically underwhelming in
films in which he wasn't in control, proved a poor substitute for
Sinatra, and the film tanked big-time when it was released, further
tarnishing Stevens' reputation.
In a money-dominated culture in which the ethos "What Have You Done For
Me Lately?" is prominent, George Stevens was relegated to has-been
status, and the fact that he had established himself as one of the
greats of American cinema was ignored, then forgotten altogether in
popular culture. Donald Richie's 1984 biography "George Stevens: An
American Romantic" tags Stevens with the "R" word, but it is too
simplistic a generalization for such a complicated artist. Stevens'
films demand that the audience remain in the moment and absorb all the
details on offer in order to fully understand the morality play he is
telling. James Agee had been a great admirer
of Stevens the director, but Agee died in the 1950s and the 1960s was a
new age, an iconoclastic age, and George Stevens and the classical
Hollywood cinema he was a master of were considered icons to be
smashed. Film critic Andrew Sarris, who
introduced the "auteur" theory to America, disrespected Stevens in his
1968 book "The American Cinema." Stevens was not an auteur, Sarris
wrote, and his latter films were big and empty. He became the symbol of
what the new, auteurist cinema was against.
The Cahiers du Cinema critics attacked Stevens by elevating
Douglas Sirk. Sirk's
Magnificent Obsession (1954),
so the argument went, was a much better and more cogent exegesis of
America than "Giant," which was "big and empty" as was the country they
attacked (though they loved its films). The point of iconoclasm is to
smash idols, no matter what the reason--and Stevens, the master
craftsman, was an idol. However, to say "Giant" was empty is absurd. To
imply that George Stevens did not understand America is equally absurd.
"Giant" contains what is arguably the premier moment in America cinema
of the immediate postwar years, and it is an "American" moment--the
confrontation between patrician rancher Bick Benedict and diner owner
Sarge (Robert J. Wilke). Many critics
and cinema historians have commented on the scene, favorably, but many
miss the full import of it.
The film has been built up to this climax. Benedict has shared the
prejudices of his class and his race. All his life he has exploited the
Mexicans whom he has lived with in a symbiotic relationship on HIS
ranch, giving little thought to the injustice his class of overlords
has wrought on Latinos, on poor whites, or on his own family. His wife,
an Easterner, is appalled by the poverty and state of peonage of the
Mexicans who work on the ranch and tries to do something about it. Her
idealism is echoed in her son, who becomes a doctor, rejects his
father's rancher heritage, and marries a Mexican-American woman, giving
his father an Anglo/Mexican-American grandson.
While out on a ride with his wife, daughter, daughter-in-law and her
child, they stop at a roadside diner. Sarge, the proprietor, initially
balks at serving them because of the Latinos in their party. He backs
down, but when more Latinos come into his diner, he moves to throw them
out. Benedict decides to intervene in a display of noblesse oblige, and
also out of family duty. Sarge is unimpressed by Benedict's pedigree,
and a fight breaks out between the hardened veteran--recently returned
from the war, we are meant to understand--and the now aged Benedict.
Bick first holds his own and Sarge crashes into the jukebox, setting
off the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" while he recovers and then sets
out to systematically demolish Mr. Bick Benedict, the overlord. As the
song plays on in ironic counterpoint, shots of his distraught daughter
and other family members are undercut with the cinematic crucifixion of
Bick Benedict, the overlord, by the former Centurion. After Sarge has
finished thrashing Benedict, he takes a sign off of the wall and throws
it on Benedict's prostrate body: "The management reserves the right to
refuse service to anyone". This is not only America of the 1950s, but
America of the 21st century. For just as Sarge is defending racism, he
is also defending his once-constitutional right to free association, as
well as exerting his belief in Jeffersonian-Jacksonian democracy in
thrashing a plutocrat. This is a type of yahooism that
Bruce Catton, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning
history of the Civil War, attributed to the rebellion. There had always
been a very well developed strain of reckless, individualistic violence
in America, frequently encouraged, ritualized and sanctified by the
state. The diner scene in "Giant" could only have been created by a man
with a thorough knowledge of what America and Americans were (and
continue to be). Sarge will try to accommodate Benedict, who has
stepped out of his role as racist plutocrat into that of paternalistic
pater familias, just as the sons of the robber barons of the 19th
century--who justified their economic depravities with the doctrine of
social Darwinism--did in the 20th century, endowing foundations that
tried to right many wrongs, including racism, but Sarge will only go so
far. When he is stretched beyond his limit, when his giving in is then
"pushed too far," he reacts, and reacts violently.
This scene sums up American democracy and the human condition in
America perhaps better than any other. America is a violent society, a
gladiator society, in which progress is measured in, if not gained by,
violence. Yes, Sarge is standing up for racism and segregation (a huge
topic after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling
outlawing segregation), but he is also standing up for himself, and his
beliefs, something he has recently fought for in World War II. The
ironies are rich, just as the irony of American democracy, which
excluded African-Americans and women and the native American tribes
from the very first days of the U.S. Constitution, is rich. This is
America, the scene in Sarge's diner says, and it is a critique only an
American with a thorough knowledge of and sympathy for America could
create. It is much more effective and philosophically true than the
petty neo-Nazi caricatures of
Lars von Trier's
Dogville (2003), who are cowards.
Characters in a George Stevens film may be reluctant, they may be
hesitant, they may be conflicted, but they aren't cowardly.
Another ironic scene in "Giant" features Mexican children singing the
National Anthem during the funeral of Angel, who in counterpoint to
Bick's son, his contemporary in age, is of the land, to the manor born,
so to speak, but lacking those rights because of the color of his skin.
Angel had gone off to war, and he returns to the Texas in which he was
born on a caisson, in a coffin, starkly silhouetted against the Texas
sky as the Benedict mansion had been earlier in the film when Leslie
had first come to this benighted land. Angel, who had experienced
racial bigotry due to his birth into poverty on the Benedict ranch, had
fought Adolf Hitler. He is the only hero in
"Giant," and his death would be empty and meaningless without Bick
Benedict's reluctant conversion to integration through fisticuffs.
The great turning points in American cinema typically have involved
race. The biggest, most significant movies of the first 50 years of the
American cinema death with race:
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903),
Edwin S. Porter's major movie before his
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
and the first film to feature inter-titles;
The Birth of a Nation (1915),
D.W. Griffith's racist masterpiece--which
was a filming of a notorious pro-Ku Klux Klan book called "The
Clansman"--in which a non-sectarian America is formed in the linking of
Southern and Northern whites to fight the African-American freedman;
The Jazz Singer (1927), in
which a Jewish cantor's son achieves assimilation by donning blackface
and disenfranchising black folk by purloining their music, which he
deracinates, while turning his back on his Jewish identity by marrying
a Gentile; and
Gone with the Wind (1939), the
greatest Hollywood movie of all time--in which the Klan is never shown
and the "N" word is never used, although the entire movie takes place
in the immediate post-Civil War South--a sweeping, romantic masterpiece
in which a reactionary, ultra-racist plutocracy is made out to be the
flower of American chivalry and romance.
Stevens' "Giant" was a major film of its time, and remains a motion
picture of the first rank, but it was not the cultural blockbuster
these movies were. Yet it more than any other Hollywood film of its
time, aside from Elia Kazan's rather
whitebread
Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
and Pinky (1949), directly addresses the
great American dilemma, race, and its implications, and not from the
familiar racist, white supremacist point of view that had been part of
American movies since the very beginning. Those attitudes had been
rooted in the American psyche even before the days of
The Perils of Pauline (1914)
serials (simultaneously serialized in the white supremacist Hearst
newspapers), in which many a sweet young thing was threatened with
death or--even worse, the loss of her maidenhead--by a sinister person
of color (always played by a Caucasian in yellow or brown face).
A 1934 "Fortune Magazine" story about the rosy financial prospects of
the Technicolor Corp.'s new three-strip process contained a startling
metaphor for a 21st-century reader: "Then - like the cowboy bursting
into the cabin just as the heroine has thrown the last flowerpot at the
Mexican - came the three-color process to the rescue." It was this
endemic, accepted racism that Stevens challenged in "Giant," which is
at the root of America's expansionist philosophy of manifest destiny,
and which was at the root of much of the southern and western
economies. Those who died in World War II had to have died for
something, not just the continuation of the status quo. It was a direct
and knowing challenge to the system by someone who thoroughly knew and
thoroughly cared about America and Americans.
George Stevens died of a heart attack on March 8, 1975, in Lancaster,
California. He would have been 100 years old in 2004, and in that year
he was celebrated with screenings by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences, London's British Film Institute, and the Museum of Modern
Art in New York. His legacy lives on in the directorial work of fellow
two-time Oscar-winning Best Director
Clint Eastwood, particularly in
Pale Rider (1985), which suffers from
being too-close a "Shane" clone, and most memorably in his masterpiece,
Unforgiven (1992).- Pamela Brown trained at the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Her first appearance was as "Juliet" in
"Romeo and Juliet" at Stratford-on-Avon in 1936. She followed this with
a variety of roles for the Old Vic Company in London. She appeared on
Broadway in the 1947 production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" by
Oscar Wilde. Her screen debut was in
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)
for Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger. She went on to
star in two more of Powell's films and they lived together until her
unfortunately early death from cancer. Her memorable face with eyes you
can drown in & a resonant voice always made Pamela an actress worth
watching. She was often cast as an eccentric or mysterious character
which suited her perfectly. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Her father was a minister, and when she joined a local stock company as
a youngster she changed her name to avoid embarrassing her family. She
worked in vaudeville and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her film debut
was in A House Divided (1931). She repeated her stage role in Dead End (1937) as Baby Face
Martin (Humphrey Bogart)'s mother, which led to a number of slum mother parts.
She played very strong role of Lucy, the dude ranch operator in
The Women (1939). She achieved popularity as a comedienne in six 1940s movies
made with Wallace Beery e.g., Barnacle Bill (1941). The character which would dominate her
remaining career was established when she played Ma Kettle in The Egg and I (1947),
for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting
actress. She began her co-starring series with Percy Kilbride the following
year in Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' (1948) and continued through seven more. Her last movie was a
"Kettle" without Kilbride: The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957).- Actor
- Director
- Producer
This preeminent sitcom dad of the 50s had already started things off
studying law when he decided to put together a dance band in the 20s on
the sly. The band was so successful that he never looked back -- his
love for entertaining completely took over. The New Jersey-born
performer made a living for a time playing hotels and casinos on the
East coast, capitalizing on an easy-going singing style. In 1932
Harriet Nelson came aboard as lead
vocalist of his band and their easy rapport together provided some
marvelous spontaneous comedy relief that clicked with audiences. They
married in 1935 and soon extended their popularity to radio (with
Red Skelton, among others) and a few WWII
musical films such as
Sweetheart of the Campus (1941),
Strictly in the Groove (1942),
Honeymoon Lodge (1943) and
Take It Big (1944). Determined to
maintain a strong family unit as their family grew, they integrated
their two careers into one and seldom worked apart after this.
They were a huge hit together with the family radio program "The
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" in 1944 with two young actors playing
their sons. When the show transferred to TV in 1952, their real-life
sons, David Nelson and
Ricky Nelson, were incorporated.
This landmark show lasted 14 years, a record unbroken for what is
considered America's first "reality" TV sitcom. Although Ozzie's dad
character came off stammering, hesitant and slightly absent-minded,
which meshed perfectly with Harriet's smart, wisecracking appeal, he
was anything but offstage. A dynamo and workaholic as well as shrewd
businessman, he supervised his show completely as producer, director,
and editor. He virtually put son Ricky on the map as a pop singing idol
via his sitcom, incorporating the boy's musical talents into various
plots.
Ozzie's interests invariably spread to other aspects of show business
as well. He and Harriet occasionally toured together on the theater
stage in such light-hearted vehicles as "The Marriage-Go-Round." Later
on he took on the role of producer and director for some of TV's more
popular shows. Older son David followed in his father's footsteps as a
producer and director. In the early 70s Ozzie and Harriet attempted
another TV series entitled
Ozzie's Girls (1973), which was
syndicated to local stations, but the show had an outdated feel to it
and lasted a mere season. One of his very few failures. Ozzie died in
Laguna Beach, California of liver cancer in 1975 at age 69.- Actor
- Soundtrack
When amiable Columbia Pictures actor Larry Parks was entrusted the role
of entertainer Al Jolson in the biopic
The Jolson Story (1946), his
career finally hit the big time. Within a few years, however, his
bright new world crumbled courtesy of the House Un-American Activities
Committee after the actor admitted under pressure that he was once
affiliated with the Communist Party. Although he unwillingly testified
in 1951, he was still (unofficially) blacklisted. Never-say-die Larry
managed to continue his career in years to come - both here and abroad,
on stage and in nightclubs - alongside steadfast wife
Betty Garrett. His film career, however,
literally came to a standstill and would never be the same again.
Samuel Klausman Lawrence Parks was born in Olathe, Kansas, on December
13, 1914, of German and Irish descent. As a child growing up in Joliet,
Illinois, he was plagued by a variety of illnesses, including rheumatic
fever, but persevered with physical exercise and sheer strength of
will. Majoring in science at the University of Illinois, his plans to
become a doctor dissolved when, to the dismay of his parents, he found
a passionate sideline in college dramatics.
He began appearing in touring shows, then made the big move to New
York, finding initial employment as an usher at Carnegie Hall and a
tour guide at Radio City. Following a number of summer stock shows, he
made an inauspicious 1937 Broadway debut with a minor role in the Group
Theatre's presentation of "Golden Boy". Developing a close-knit
relationship with the Group, he was just beginning to build up his
resumé in such Broadway outings as "All the Living", "My Heart's in the
Highlands" and "Pure in Heart" when he had to return to his Illinois
home following the death of his father.
He toiled for a time in Chicago as a Pullman inspector on the New York
Central Railroad until the possibility of a film role had him
re-setting his acting sights on Los Angeles. Although the film deal
fell through, Larry stayed in L.A. and somehow made ends meet working
construction. Columbia expressed interest in the fledgling actor and
signed him up in 1941 after a favorable screen test. He stayed for nine
years. His buildup was slow-moving, taking his first small step with a
minor role in Mystery Ship (1941).
Time, however, did not increase the tempo or quality of his movies.
Either he was oddly cast, such as his role as an Indian opposite exotic
Yvonne De Carlo in
The Deerslayer (1943), or
completely dismissed, as co-star of such obscurities as
The Black Parachute (1944),
Sergeant Mike (1944) or
She's a Sweetheart (1944).
His association with the Group Theatre back in New York led to a chance
introduction to musical actress
Betty Garrett and the couple married in
1944. Larry had settled by this time in Hollywood but Betty was a hot
item on Broadway. MGM finally offered her a contract and she relocated
to Los Angeles to join her husband. The couple eventually had two
children, one of whom, Andrew Parks, became
a fine actor in his own right. Their other son,
Garrett Parks, served as composer for the
film Diamond Men (2000).
Larry scored an Oscar nomination playing Jolson (which was originally
offered to both James Cagney and
Danny Thomas), and hoped for
equally challenging roles. His hopes were dashed as the studio instead
continued casting him haphazardly in mild-mannered comedies and
swashbuckling adventures. Other than the box-office sequel
Jolson Sings Again (1949),
most of Larry's films were hardly worthy of his obvious talent. To
compensate somewhat, he managed to find a creative outlet in summer
stock, and both he and Betty put together a successful vaudeville act
with one tour ending up playing London's Palladium.
Following the completion of
Love Is Better Than Ever (1952)
with Elizabeth Taylor, the
political scandal erupted and erased all of his chances to do film. One
of many casualties of Hollywood "blacklisting", he was forced to end
his association with Columbia, and he and Betty, whose own career was
damaged, traveled to Europe to find work.
He found some TV parts after the controversy died down, and Betty and
Larry were a delightful replacement for
Judy Holliday and
Sydney Chaplin on Broadway in "Bells Are
Ringing". During the many meager times, he concentrated on becoming a
successful businessman, including building apartment complexes. He made
only two more films, last playing a doctor in the
Montgomery Clift starrer
Freud (1962). By the time he died of a
heart attack on April 13, 1975, at age 60, Larry had long faded from
view. Betty, however, managed to revitalize her career on TV sitcoms
with regular roles on
All in the Family (1971),
Laverne & Shirley (1976),
and roles on numerous other TV series before passing on February 12,
2011.- A former telephone engineer who dabbled in amateur dramatics, John
Gregson served aboard a minesweeper with the Royal Navy during World
War II. After demobilisation, he joined the Liverpool Old Vic, making
his stage debut in
'The Knight of the Burning Pestle'. Freshly married, he moved to London and acted alongside Robert Donat
and Margaret Leighton in 'A Sleeping
Clergyman' at the West End Criterion Theatre in 1947. During the same
period, he was also cast in his first movie, the romantic period
melodrama
Saraband (1948),
though his scenes ended up being cut. Undeterred, Gregson established
himself as a popular favorite in subsequent Ealing comedies and later
as a long term contractee with the Rank Organisation. His screen
personae tended to be men of integrity: regular guys who don't
necessarily finish on top, introspective, somewhat diffident, and often
troubled. His most fondly remembered role was that of vintage car
enthusiast Alan McKim, in the idiosyncratic (and typically British)
comedy Genevieve (1953). Ironically,
while he is featured in almost every scene behind the wheel, Gregson
couldn't drive a car when filming began - and proved to be a slow
learner.
For the remainder of the decade,he became somewhat typecast in
traditional 'stiff upper lip' military roles. As film opportunities
began to diminish, he turned more and more towards television, enjoying
his greatest popularity as titular star of the police drama series
Gideon C.I.D. (1964). Until his
untimely death at the age of 55, Gregson alternated television work
with acting on stage, as well as doing voice-overs and appearing in
commercials for Hamlet cigars. - Actor
- Soundtrack
The athletic William Lundigan stood 6' 2" and weighed 170 pounds. He
played football, basketball and tennis at Syracuse (NY) University. He
was discovered by Charles R. Rogers, head of production at Universal Studios.
Rogers happened to tune into radio station WFBL in Syracuse. He was so
intrigued by a voice he heard reading a commercial that he gave
instructions for the speaker to be located, brought to New York and
tested for movie possibilities. The speaker, of course, was Lundigan.
He had gotten the announcing job because his father owned the building
that housed WBFL. Later in his career Lundigan was successful as the
host of the CBS programs Climax! (1954) and Shower of Stars (1954). For these programs he
delivered on-air commercials for their sponsor, Chrysler Motors. Off
screen he traveled as a goodwill ambassador for the company, covering
over 100,000 miles on the road and visiting 560,000 people in 90
weeks.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
The man behind the low woodwinds that open
Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking
violins of Psycho (1960), and the
plaintive saxophone of
Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the
most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He
started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and
founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for
Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s
(including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he
was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut,
Citizen Kane (1941), and,
subsequently,
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942),
although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was
added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by
a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer,
producing some of his most memorable work for
Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he
wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once
said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he
blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that
Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no
music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock
after the latter rejected his score for
Torn Curtain (1966) on studio
advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film
scores, most famously
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951),
scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a
consultant on the electronic sounds created by
Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for
The Birds (1963). His last score was
for Martin Scorsese's
Taxi Driver (1976) and died just
hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights",
and a cantata, "Moby Dick".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Henry Calvin was born on 25 May 1918 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Babes in Toyland (1961), Zorro (1957) and Ship of Fools (1965). He died on 6 October 1975 in Dallas, Texas, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the
original A Star Is Born (1937),
was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a
nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life
personality and lifestyle.
A leap-year baby born in 1896 on the 29th of
February in Brookline, MA, Wellman was the great-great-great
grandson of Francis Lewis, one of the men who signed the Declaration of
Independence. Wellman's father was a stockbroker and his mother, the
former Cecilia McCarthy, was born in Ireland. Despite an upper-middle-class upbringing, the young Wellman was a hell-raiser. He excelled as
an athlete and particularly enjoyed playing ice hockey, but he also
enjoyed joyriding in stolen cars at nights.
Cecilia Wellman served as a probation officer for "wayward boys"
(juvenile delinquents) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and was
such a success in her field that she was asked to address Congress on
the subject of delinquency. One of her charges was her own son, as the
young Bill was kicked out of school at the age of 17 for
hitting his high school principal on the head with a stink bomb. He
tried making a living as a candy salesman and a cotton salesman, but
failed. He worked for a lumber yard but was fired after losing control
of a truck and driving it through the side of a barn. Eventually he
wound up playing professional ice hockey in Massachusetts. While playing at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, an actor
named Douglas Fairbanks took
note of him. Impressed by Wellman's good looks and the figure he cut on
ice, the soon-to-be silent-film superstar suggested to him that he
had what it took to become a movie actor. Wellman's dream was to become
an aviator, but since his father "didn't have enough money for me to
become a flier in the regular way . . .I went into a war to become a
flier."
When he was 19 years old, through the intercession of his uncle,
Wellman joined the air wing of the French Foreign Legion, where he
learned to fly. In France he served as a pilot with the famous
Lafayette Flying Corps (better known as the Lafayette Escadrille),
where he won his nickname "Wild Bill" due to his devil-may-care style
in the air. He and fellow pilot Tom Hitchcock, the great polo player,
were in the Black Cat group. Wellman was shot down by anti-aircraft
fire and injured during the landing of his plane, which had lost its
tail section. Out of 222 Escadrille pilots 87 were killed, but Wellman
was fated to serve out the duration of the war. In the spring of 1918
he was recruited by the US Army Air Corps, joining "because I was
broke, and they were trying to get us in." Commissioned an officer, he
was sent back to the US and stationed at Rockwell Field, in San Diego,
CA, to teach combat fighting tactics to the new AAC pilots.
Wellman would fly up to Hollywood and land on Fairbanks' polo
fields to spend the weekend. Fairbanks told the
returning hero that he would help him break into the movies when the war was over, and he was
as good as his word. Fairbanks envisioned Wellman as an actor and cast
him as the juvenile in
The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919)
and as a young officer in
Evangeline (1919), but acting was
something Wellman grew to hate, a hatred he later transferred to actors
in his employ. He was fired by fellow macho director
Raoul Walsh from "Evangeline" for slapping
the lead actress, who Wellman didn't know was Walsh's wife. Disgusted
with acting, Wellman told Fairbanks he wanted to be a director, and
Fairbanks helped him into the production end of the business. It was a
purely financial decision, he later recalled, as directors made more
money than supporting actors at the time.
Goldwyn Pictures hired him as a messenger in 1920 and he soon worked
his way up the ladder, first as an assistant cutter, then as an
assistant property man, property man, assistant director and
second-unit director before making his uncredited directorial debut
later that year at Fox with
Twins of Suffering Creek (1920)
starring Dustin Farnum (the silent film
B-Western star whom Dustin Hoffman's
star-struck mother named the future double-Oscar winner after). Wellman
later remembered the film as awful, along with such other B-Westerns as
Cupid's Fireman (1923), starring
Buck Jones, whose westerns he began
directing in 1923 after serving his apprenticeship.
Fox Films gave Wellman his first directing credit in 1923 with the
Buck Jones western
Second Hand Love (1923) and, other than the Dustin Farnum picture
The Man Who Won (1923), he turned
out Jones pictures for the rest of his time at Fox. The studio fired
him in 1924 after he asked for a raise after completing
The Circus Cowboy (1924),
another Buck Jones film. Moving to Columbia, he helmed
When Husbands Flirt (1925),
then went over to MGM for the slapstick comedy
The Boob (1926) before landing at Famous
Players-Lasky (now known as Paramount Pictures after its distribution
unit), where he directed
You Never Know Women (1926)
and The Cat's Pajamas (1926).
It was as a contract director at the now renamed Paramount-Famous
Players-Lasky Corp. that he had his breakout hit, due to his flying
background. Paramount entrusted its epic WW I flying epic
Wings (1927) to Wellman, and the film went
on to become the first Academy Award-winning
best picture.
Paramount paid Wellman $250 a week to direct "Wings". He also gave
himself a role as a German pilot, and flew one of the German planes
that landed and rolled over. The massive production employed 3,500 soldiers, 65
pilots and 165 aircraft. It also went over budget and
over schedule due to Wellman's perfectionism, and he came close to
being fired more than once. The film took a year to complete, but
when it was released it turned out to be one of the most financially
successful silent pictures ever released and helped put
Gary Cooper, whom Wellman personally
cast in a small role, on the path to stardom. "Wings" and Wellman's
next flying picture,
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)--in which Cooper had a starring role--initiated the genre of the World
War One aviation movie, which included such famous works as
Howard Hughes'
Hell's Angels (1930) and
Howard Hawks'
The Dawn Patrol (1930). Despite
his success in bringing in the first Best Picture Oscar winner,
Paramount did not keep Wellman under contract.
Wellman's disdain for actors already was in full bloom by the time he
wrapped "Wings". Many actors appearing in his pictures intensely
disliked his method of bullying them to elicit an performance.
Wellman was a "man's man" who hated male actors due to their
narcissism, yet he preferred to work with them because he despised the
preparation that actresses had to go through with their make-up and
hairdressing before each scene. Wellman shot his films fast. The
hard-drinking director usually oversaw a riotous set, in line with his
own lifestyle. He married five women, including a Ziegfeld Follies
showgirl, before settling down with
Dorothy Coonan Wellman, a former
Busby Berkeley dancer. Wellman believed
that Dorothy saved him from becoming a caricature of himself. She
appeared as a tomboy in
Wild Boys of the Road (1933),
a Depression-era social commentary picture made for the progressive
Warner Bros. studio (and which is a favorite of
Martin Scorsese). It came two years after
Wellman's masterpiece,
The Public Enemy (1931), one of
the great early talkies, one of the great gangster pictures and the
film that made James Cagney a superstar.
Scorsese says that Wellman's use of music in the film influenced his
own first gangster picture,
Mean Streets (1973) .
Wellman was as adept at comedy as he was at macho material, helming the
original A Star Is Born (1937)
(for which he won his only Oscar, for best original story) and the
biting satire
Nothing Sacred (1937)--both of
which starred Fredric March--for producer
David O. Selznick. Both movies were
dissections of the fame game, as was his satire
Roxie Hart (1942), which reportedly
was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite
films.
During World War Two Wellman continued to make outstanding films,
including
The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
and Story of G.I. Joe (1945),
and after the war he turned out another war classic,
Battleground (1949). In the 1950s
Wellman's best later films starred
John Wayne, including the influential
aviation picture
The High and the Mighty (1954),
for which he received his third and last best director Oscar
nomination. His final film hearkened back to his World War One service,
Lafayette Escadrille (1958),
which featured the unit in which Wellman had flown. He retired as a
director after making the film, reportedly enraged at Warner
Bros.'
post-production tampering with a film that meant so much to him.
Other than David O. Selznick, not many people in Hollywood particularly liked the hell-raising iconoclast Wellman.
Louis B. Mayer's
daughter Irene Mayer Selznick, the
first wife of David O. Selznick, said that Wellman was "a terror, a
shoot-up-the-town fellow, trying to be a great big masculine
I-don't-know-what". The Directors Guild of America in 1973 honored him with its Lifetime
Achievement Award.
William Wellman died (from leukemia) in 1975.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, MO, in 1906 to Carrie McDonald, a laundress, and Eddie Carson, a musician. Her early life hinted at her future career. She first
danced for the public on the streets of St. Louis for nickels
and dimes. Later she became a chorus girl on the St. Louis stage. At
age 15 she married Pullman porter William Howard Baker, but left him
when she ran away from St. Louis at age 17, feeling there was too much
racial discrimination in the city. She eventually made her way to
Paris, France. Her first job in Paris was in "La revue negre". Her next
significant job was at the Folies Bergere, where she was a member of
the club's all-black revue. It was there, in 1925, that she first performed
her famous "banana dance". She quickly became a favorite of the French,
and her fame grew, but she had many ups and downs during her career.
Although popular in France, during the "Red Scare" era of the
1950s, she was falsely accused of being a Communist and informed that
she was no longer welcome in the US (in 1937 she had
renounced her American citizenship, utterly disgusted by the blatant
and official racism against blacks, and became a French citizen).
In 1961 Josephine was awarded the Legion of Honor, France's highest
award. In the late 1960s she began having financial difficulties, and
stopped performing in 1968.
Grace Kelly, who by that time had
married
Prince Rainier of Monaco and
was now known as Princess Grace of Monaco, offered her a home in Monaco
when she learned of Josephine's financial problems. At the request of
Princess Grace, Josephine performed at Monaco's summer ball in 1974 and was a
great success. That same year she staged a week of performances in New
York City and called the show "An Evening with Josephine Baker". She
had just begun a Paris revue celebrating her half-century on the stage
when on April 10, 1975, she was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and went into a coma. She died
without regaining consciousness. Her funeral was held in Paris, and she
was buried in Monaco.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ian Hunter was born in the Kenilworth area of Cape Town, South Africa
where he spent his childhood. In his teen years he and his parents
returned to the family origins in England to live. Sometime between
that arrival and the early years of World War I, Hunter began exploring
acting. But in 1917 - and being only 17 - he joined the army to serve in
France for the year of war still remaining. Within two years he did
indeed make his stage-acting debut. Hunter would never forget that the
stage was the thing when the lure of moving making called - he would
always return through his career. With a jovial face perpetually on the
verge of smiling and a friendly and mildly English accent, Hunter had
good guy lead written all over him. He decided to sample the relatively
young British silent film industry by taking a part in
Not for Sale (1924) for British
director W.P. Kellino who had started out
writing and acting for the theater. Hunter then made his first trip to
the U.S. - Broadway, not Hollywood - because
Basil Dean, well known British actor,
director, and producer, was producing Sheridan's "The School for
Scandal" at the Knickerbocker Theater - unfortunately folding after one
performance. It was a more concerted effort with film the next year
back in Britain, again with Kellino. He then met up-and-coming mystery
and suspense director
Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. He
did Hitch's The Ring (1927) - about
the boxing game, not suspense - and stayed for the director's
Downhill (1927). And with a few more
films into the next year he was back with Hitchcock once more for
Easy Virtue (1927), the
Noël Coward play. By late 1928 he returned
to Broadway for only a months run in the original comedy "Olympia" but
stayed on in the United States via his first connection with Hollywood. The film
was Syncopation (1929), his first
sound film and that for RKO, that is, one of the early mono efforts,
sound mix with the usual silent acting. As if restless to keep ever
cycling back and forth across the Atlantic - fairly typical of Hunter's
career - he returned to London for Dean's mono thriller
Escape! (1930). There was an interval
of fifteen films in all before Hunter returned to Hollywood and by
then he was well established as a leading man. With
The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
with Bette Davis, Hunter made his connection
with Warner Bros. But before settling in with them through much of the
1930s, he did three pictures in succession with another gifted and
promising British director,
Michael Powell. He then began the
films he is most remembered from Hollywood's Golden Era. Although a
small part, he is completely engaging and in command as the Duke in the
Shakespearean extravaganza of Austrian theater master
Max Reinhardt,
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
for Warner Bros. It marked the start of a string of nearly thirty
films for WB. Among the best remembered was his jovial King Richard in
the rollicking
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
Hunter was playing the field as well - he was at Twentieth Century as
everybody's favorite father-hero - including
Shirley Temple - in the
The Little Princess (1939).
And he was the unforgettable benign guardian angel-like Cambreau in
Loew's Strange Cargo (1940) with
Clark Gable. He was staying regularly busy
in Hollywood until into 1942 when he returned to Britain to serve in
the war effort. After the war Hunter stayed on in London, making films
and doing stage work. He appeared once more on Broadway in 1948 and
made Edward, My Son (1949) for
George Cukor. Although there was some
American playhouse theater in the mid-1950s, Hunter was bound to
England, working once more for Powell in 1961 before retiring in the
middle of that decade after nearly a hundred outings before the camera.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born Arthur Veary Treacher in Brighton, East Sussex, England, he was
the son of a lawyer. He established a stage career after returning from
World War I, and by 1928, he had come to America as part of a
musical-comedy revue called Great Temptations. When his film career
began in the early 1930s, Treacher was Hollywood's idea of the perfect
butler, and he headlined as the famous butler Jeeves in
Thank You, Jeeves! (1936) and
Step Lively, Jeeves! (1937)--based
on the P.G. Wodehouse character. He
played a butler in numerous other films including:
Personal Maid's Secret (1935),
Mister Cinderella (1936),
Bordertown (1935), and
Curly Top (1935). By the mid 1960s,
Treacher was a regular guest on
The Merv Griffin Show (1962).
The image of the proper Englishman served him well, and during his
later years, he lent his name to a fast-food chain known as Arthur
Treacher's Fish and Chips.- This stunning, fragile starlet was born Henriette Michèle Leone Girardon in Lyon in August 1938. Having completed her acting studies at the local conservatoire she won a competition as "the most photogenic girl in France" by the age of twenty. Photo shoots followed and a minor career as a model with appearances on the cover of prestige magazines "Vogue" and ""Marie-Claire". She began on screen with prominent supporting roles as a deaf mute in Luis Buñuel's Death in the Garden (1956) and as a secretary in Louis Malle's The Lovers (1958). Her first starring role came courtesy of Éric Rohmer who cast her in the lead of Sign of the Lion (1962) -- one of the first films of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, shot on location in Paris. Though not a commercial success at the time, the acting received general praise throughout and Michèle attracted attention from Hollywood. Paramount approached her with an offer to appear as the owner of a Tanzanian game farm opposite John Wayne in the African adventure Hatari! (1962). According to a Life magazine profile of July 1961 Michèle 'taught herself English' on the set. Her role did not lead to a Hollywood contract. Nevertheless, for a while she remained in demand for European productions, the pick of the bunch being leads in the Spanish-made swashbuckler The Adventures of Scaramouche (1963) and the Italian comedy The Magnificent Cuckold (1964). Less high profile, but decidedly decorative, was her supporting role in the Franco-Italian "Alfie'-lookalike comedy Tender Scoundrel (1966).
By the early 70's, film offers had dried up and Michèle's career was seriously on the skids. She became increasingly despondent, especially after the end of an unhappy dalliance with a married Spanish aristocrat, José Luis de Vilallonga (a writer and occasional actor with a well-earned reputation as a cad and spendthrift). Michèle Girardon decided to end her life by ingesting an overdose of sleeping pills in her home town on March 25, 1975, aged just 36. In a tragic irony, two co-stars in Michèle's penultimate film Les petites filles modèles (1971), Marie-Georges Pascal and Bella Darvi, also committed suicide at the ages of 39 and 42, respectively. - Actor
- Soundtrack
A balding, bespectacled, bird-like British comic actor, Richard Wattis
was an invaluable asset to any UK comedy film or TV programme for
nearly thirty years. Much associated with the Eric Sykes TV series for
the latter part of his career. He was often seen in officious roles,
such as snooty shop managers, secretaries and policemen. He was working
right up to his sudden death from a heart attack in 1975.- "The girl with the lovely smile", Barboura Morris was born in L.A., and
went on to appear in many low-budget movies. She graduated from UCLA.
Barboura started her acting career at the Stumptown stock company,
where her acting coach was
Jeff Corey, and
Roger Corman was a classmate. Corman gave
Barboura a leading role in
Sorority Girl (1957), and more AIP
pictures followed; she was cast in varied roles such as an unrequited
love interest, a caring secretary, and a warrior woman. In addition to
movies, Barboura did some television work. Barboura died in Santa
Monica, one day after her 43rd birthday. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Sheila Ryan was born on 8 June 1921 in Topeka, Kansas, USA. She was an actress, known for Deadline for Murder (1946), The Lone Wolf in Mexico (1947) and Song of Texas (1943). She was married to Pat Buttram, Edward Norris and Allan Lane. She died on 4 November 1975 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Tall and gaunt American character actor prominent in a number of
classic American films. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, he attended Brown
University and subsequently went to work as an economist for the United
States Department of State. In 1941, he joined the American Red Cross
and served in Great Britain during the war. There he met director
John Huston, who took a liking to Dierkes and recommended that he try
Hollywood after the war. Instead, Dierkes went to work for the U.S.
Treasury Department, which, coincidentally, sent him to Hollywood to
function as technical adviser on the film To the Ends of the Earth (1948). 'Orson Welles' cast
him as Ross in his adaptation of Macbeth (1948). Dierkes returned to the
Treasury Department, but two years later, Huston called on him to play
The Tall Soldier in The Red Badge of Courage (1951). Dierkes took a leave of absence from his
job, a leave which lasted for the rest of Dierkes's life. His quiet
dignity and distinctive appearance led him to dozens of roles in film
and on television. In John Wayne's The Alamo (1960), Dierkes plays a Scot, "Jocko
Robertson", named after Dierkes's own maternal grandfather. He died in
1975, and was survived by his wife, two sons, and two daughters.- The real name of the dog who played the original "Benji" was Higgins,
owned and trained by famed animal trainer and breeder
Frank Inn. Inn adopted the dog in 1960 from
the Burbank Animal Shelter in Burbank, California. He trained the dog,
who went on to appear in the television series
Petticoat Junction (1963).
Soon after the series ended, Higgins was retired by Inn but returned at
age 14 in 1974 to star in his greatest success in
Benji (1974). Descendants of Higgins were
featured in the subsequent "Benji" films. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Brunette, convent-educated Mary Philips was an accomplished actress on
the New York stage by the time she met the actor
Humphrey Bogart in 1924 and became his
'speakeasy touring companion'. While both encouraged each other's
prodigious affinity for alcohol, Mary proved beneficial in getting
Bogie to approach his craft more seriously. Bogart considered her to be
an 'inspirational influence' and the couple duly married at the home of
Mary's mother in Hartford, Connecticut, in April 1928. They were
briefly co-starred in a play, "Skyrocket" (which received a mixed
critical reception), but soon both actors went their own way: Bogie
concentrating on his film career, while Mary decided to honour her
theatrical obligations on the East Coast, performing in her latest play
"The Tavern". About a subsequent performance in "A Touch of Brimstone"
(1935), the influential New York Times reviewer
Brooks Atkinson remarked on her 'spirit
and intelligence irradiating every scene'.
In keeping with the notion of a 'modern marriage', an agreement was
reached which permitted both partners to have relationships on the side
while separated. Mary was determined not to abandon her theatrical
career for Hollywood, her publicity even failing to intimate that she
was married. After another hit play in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"
(1936), it transpired that Mary had become rather more successful than
her husband. The couple drifted apart and the marriage came to an end
after ten years, though both ended up parting on friendly terms. Mary's
next husband was the actor
Kenneth MacKenna, a former friend of
Bogie from his days as a struggling actor in New York.
Though an unquestioned star of the stage, Mary's screen career was
desultory by comparison. Among only a handful of supporting roles, her
best performance (and her personal favorite) was as the stern nurse
Helen Ferguson, friend of
Helen Hayes in
A Farewell to Arms (1932).
There was little else of note and by the early 1940's, good theatrical
parts also began to dry up. Bogart's career had now well eclipsed that
of Mary Philips.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hardie Albright's parents had a traveling vaudeville act, in which he
made his stage debut at the age of six. He studied drama at Carnegie
Tech and was a member of Eva Le Gallienne's repertory theater. He appeared in
many Broadway plays before making his film debut in 1931. Appearing in
over 50 films, Albright retired from acting in 1948 and took a position
as a drama instructor at UCLA, where he authored several books on
acting and directing.- Ann Woodward was born on 12 December 1915 in Pittsburg, Kansas, USA. She was married to William Woodward. She died on 9 October 1975 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Sheikh Mujibur Rahman often shortened as Sheikh Mujib or Mujib, was a Bangladeshi politician, statesman and Founding Father of Bangladesh who served as the first President and later as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 17 April 1971 until his assassination on 15 August 1975.[1] He is considered to have been the driving force behind the independence of Bangladesh. He is popularly dubbed with the title of "Bangabandhu" (Bongobondhu "Friend of Bengal") by the people of Bangladesh.
- Jesslyn Fax was born on 4 January 1893 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was an actress, known for Rear Window (1954), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955). She died on 16 February 1975 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
His full name was Joseph Alexander Caesar Herstall Vincent Calleja - but he was better
known as Joseph or Joe Calleia, one of Hollywood's most recognized bad
guys. But Calleia's roots and talents ran much deeper than character
actor. He was Maltese, born on that barren but historically important
island of Malta between Italy and Africa in the Mediterranean. The
Maltese culture was a crossroads of peoples (partially Arabic) but as
intrepid fisherman, navigators, and warriors-as they proved to the 16th
century Turks - it was a proud one. But it could not hold Calleia, who,
blessed with a good singing voice and a talent for composing, joined a
harmonica band that left for the Continent in 1914. This was a Europe
feeling the initial blows of World War I, and Calleia's band toured the
length and breadth of it in music halls and cafes. He went to Paris and
eventually came to London to perform some concert singing engagements.
And from there the lure of the New World brought him to New York by
1926.
It was a natural enough transition for a talented singing performer to
acting. Calleia did his first play on Broadway in an original drama
suitably called "Broadway" for a long run from late 1926 early 1928.
This was the first of seven plays he did into early 1935. He took a
double role as actor and stage manager for the 1930-31 run of "Grand
Hotel". He received good reviews (once called him a "bright light" on
Broadway) and later recalled that his treading the boards were his best
years as an actor. By 1931 he had yet another course to steer.
Hollywood had noticed him, for his constrained intensity as an actor
was matched by a singular visage - heavy-lidded eyes and dark features
that gave him a disquieting and menacing appearance. Yet the sometime
telltale lilt in his voice betrayed the fine singer. He had just enough
accent to make him Latin or Greek or Middle Eastern - or indigenous
sorts. Of course, his look meant early heavy roles as he went under
contract to MGM, doing his first two films in that year of 1931.
By 1935 his looks landed him the role of Sonny Black, a mob boss with
many facets, and with a characteristic clenched-teeth delivery, Calleia
acquitted himself in fine fashion. Through the 1930s he was pretty much
typed-cast as a mobster-with variations. Always with the lean and
hungry look, he was a club owner in
After the Thin Man (1936) and
played a government cop in the atmospheric
Algiers (1938). He even had time to help
write a screenplay for the film
Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936)
with veteran Warner Baxter. Calleia ended
the decade with roles at opposite ends of the character acting
spectrum-somewhat center stage as a priest in the sometimes
heavy-handed
Full Confession (1939) and most
memorable as Vasquez, the brought-to-justice criminal on the ill-fated
DC-3 that crash lands in headhunter-infested Amazon highlands in
Five Came Back (1939). This is a
classic adventure drama -- remade with
Rod Steiger -- with a great supporting cast
that included everyone's favorite wisecracking redhead,
Lucille Ball.
Into the 1940s, Calleia was cast in more ethnic roles - particularly as
Hispanics of various sorts. But his roles were memorable nonetheless,
as El Sordo in
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
and Rodriguez in
The Cross of Lorraine (1943).
But two roles stand out. His Buldeo in the
Alexander Korda classic production of
The Jungle Book (1942) was a personal
favorite, a double role, as trouble-making villager and the selfsame
man now old and wise telling the story to the village children as
narrator. The makeup is so good-and Calleia enjoyed character
makeup-that most viewers are surprised when the old man reveals his
identity. More mainstream Hollywood was his intriguing role as
Detective Obregon in Gilda (1946). He's the
good guy-right? - but he comes off so sly with his sidelong looks and
the way he bates the principals -
Glenn Ford and
Rita Hayworth - that you just don't know.
In the end he has the task, like the chorus in a Shakespearean play, to
explain and summarize-perhaps not the best means of getting to the
point - but that was the director's choice. His secondary parts receded
a bit into the later 1940s and further into the 1950s with Calleia
typed to retrace former roles but giving them new nuance just the same.
He has little more than a cameo as Indian chief Cuyloga-Native American
chiefs being the lot of no few elder actors in 1950s Hollywood - in the
otherwise worthwhile Disney adaptation of
The Light in the Forest (1958).
Calleia ventured into the TV briefly about that time.
But also from that year was another of his favorite roles. Without
doubt Touch of Evil (1958) is one
of the strangest of Orson Welles later
efforts as director/star. It borders on the uneven but is so
off-the-wall that one cannot help watching and thoroughly enjoying all
the antics of Welles still brilliant film techniques: shadow and light,
wild camera angles, gringos playing
Mexicans-Charlton Heston is a wow and
stained darker than necessary-and over-the-top performances with
veteran dramatis personae like
Marlene Dietrich,
Akim Tamiroff, Calleia, of course, and
Welles himself looking like a police captain from skid row and using
that funny character voice of his that pops up in his films as an
aside. Calleia, with white hair, is tired old cop Sergeant Menzies,
long associate of Welles' seedy character. Doing what he has always
done, covering up and running interference, in the end Menzies has to
face the truth about his crooked captain. Calleia enjoyed the role as
going so against his usual type - showing a man harried by his past and
haunted by dirty secrets - vulnerable - and very human. It's a great
part.
By 1963 Calleia walked away - or, that is - sailed away from Hollywood.
He returned to his native Malta for a well deserved retirement. The
Maltese had followed the career of their native son, and he had made
several visits during his film career. Not surprisingly his biggest fan
club was right at home. He was a kind and generous man and very
appreciative of his fans wherever they were - quick to read all their
letters and quick to send autographed pictures. It was strictly
tongue-in-cheek when he supposedly quipped: "Everyone recognizes my
face, but no one knows my name." After his passing, the government of
the island state of Malta issued two commemorative stamps (1997) to
honor him. A bust was erected before the house in which he was born as
a further memorial to this Maltese VIP who had made good.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Frank Sully was born on 17 June 1908 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Escape to Glory (1940) and Sleepytime Gal (1942). He was married to Mary Kathleen McKee. He died on 17 December 1975 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Stunts
Buddy Mason was born on 30 October 1902 in Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Adventures of Superman (1952), Humanettes No. 1 (1930) and Humanettes No. 6 (1931). He died on 15 April 1975 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lester Matthews was born on 6 June 1900 in Nottingham, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Werewolf of London (1935) and The Three Musketeers (1939). He was married to Cicely Walper and Anne Grey. He died on 6 June 1975 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
George Marshall was a versatile American director who came to Hollywood
to visit his mother and "have a bit of fun". Expelled from Chicago
University in 1912, he was an unsettled young man, drifting from job to
job, variously employed as a mechanic, newspaper reporter and
lumberjack with a logging outfit in Washington state. Trying his luck
in the emerging film industry, he got his start at Universal and was
put to work as an extra. His powerful, six-foot frame served him well
for doing stunt work in westerns, earning him a dollar every time he
fell off a horse.
He was first glimpsed on-screen in a bit as a laundry delivery man in
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's
The Waiters' Ball (1916). The
acting gig wasn't to his taste, though, and, within a year he moved on
to writing and directing. The majority of his early assignments were
two-reel westerns and adventure serials, starring the popular
Ruth Roland. A jack-of-all-trades, he was
later prone to remark that in those days he often needed to double as
cameraman and editor, too, often cutting his film with a pair of
scissors and splicing it with cement. In the
1920's, Marshall worked with
cowboy star Tom Mix
and then became a comedy specialist for
Mack Sennett, turning out as many as 60
one- or two-reelers per year. At Fox, he served as supervising director
on all of the studio's comedic output between 1925 and 1930.
At the beginning of the sound era Marshall joined
Hal Roach and directed comedies with
Thelma Todd
(Strictly Unreliable (1932))
and two of Stan Laurel and
Oliver Hardy's best shorts:
Their First Mistake (1932)
and Towed in a Hole (1932)).
Always adept at visual comedy, Marshall directed (and also turned up to
good effect in a cameo as a hard-boiled army cop in)
Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).
Economic conditions forced a downsizing at Roach, and Marshall returned
to Fox in 1934, staying there for four years, then worked at Universal
(1939-40) and Paramount (1942-50, and 1952-54). One of his biggest
critical and financial successes was the classic western
Destry Rides Again (1939),
which re-invigorated the career of
Marlene Dietrich and became Universal's
top box-office hit for the year. He controlled the antics of
W.C. Fields in
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939);
helped Betty Hutton on her way to
stardom with the biopics
Incendiary Blonde (1945) and
The Perils of Pauline (1947);
and directed Alan Ladd in the film
noir classic
The Blue Dahlia (1946). There was
also a fruitful association with
Bob Hope, beginning with
The Ghost Breakers (1940).
Freelancing over the next two decades, Marshall turned out three
superior vehicles for Glenn Ford: a
western (The Sheepman (1958)) and
two comedies (The Gazebo (1959) and
Advance to the Rear (1964)).
He was one of three directors (the other two were
John Ford and
Henry Hathaway) assigned individual
segments of the blockbuster
How the West Was Won (1962).
Towards the end of his long career he helmed several episodes of the
Daniel Boone (1964) and
Here's Lucy (1968) TV series.
With at least 185 directing credits to his name (there may have been as
many as 400, given his prolific output of shorts during the 1910's),
George Marshall retired from making films in 1972 and died three years
later at the age of 83. He has a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood
Boulevard.- Jane Griffiths was born on 16 October 1929 in Peacehaven, Sussex, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Man with a Million (1954), Softly Softly (1966) and The Accursed (1957). She was married to Gerhard Heinz Herman Nell. She died on 11 June 1975 in London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Puglia started his career at age 15 when he joined a traveling operetta
company. Frank appeared in Italian opera from the age of 13. He came to
the U.S. in 1907 and worked in a laundry before joining an Italian
language theatre group in New York. In 1921, while appearing on stage,
he was spotted by D.W. Griffith and was hired immediately. Puglia played a
number of ethnic roles throughout his 150+ films career, as well as
frequently playing priests, diplomats and musicians.