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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Woefully misused while in her prime screen years at Paramount during the late '30s and '40s, Patricia Morison, lovely and exotic with Rapunzel-like long, dark hair, nevertheless became a star in her own right -- as a supremely talented diva on the singing stage.
Born on March 19, 1915, in New York City, her father, William Morison, was a playwright and occasional actor who billed himself under the name Norman Rainey. Patricia's mother worked for British Intelligence during WWI. Graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Patricia studied at the Art Students League and proceeded to take acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse while also studying dance with the renowned Martha Graham. She earned a steady check at the time as a dress shop designer.
At age 19 Patricia made her Broadway debut in the short-lived play "Growing Pains" and proceeded to understudy the legendary Helen Hayes in her classic role of "Victoria Regina". She never went on. In 1938, shortly after opening in the musical "The Two Bouquets" opposite musical star Alfred Drake, Paramount talent scouts, looking for exotic, dark-haired glamour types then to rein in their star commodity, Dorothy Lamour, scoped Patricia out and tested her. The blue-eyed beauty who indeed resembled Lamour was signed and made her film debut the following year, showing bright promise in the "B" film Persons in Hiding (1939).
Patricia's stock did not improve, however, despite such promise, and she was relegated to such second-string westerns as I'm from Missouri (1939), Rangers of Fortune (1940), Romance of the Rio Grande (1940), and The Round Up (1941). When things didn't improve with such stilted fare as Night in New Orleans (1942), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), and Are Husbands Necessary? (1942), she left Paramount. She freelanced in 'other woman' roles which included the Tracy/Hepburn vehicle Without Love (1945) and The Fallen Sparrow (1943), and played Empress Eugenie in The Song of Bernadette (1943), but the focus was seldom on her. Overlooked when cast in top leads at 'poverty row' programmers, her best chance at film stardom came as Victor Mature's despairing wife who takes her own life (which was to have been shown on screen) in Kiss of Death (1947), but her juicy role was excised from the film by producers (or, more likely, the Breen Commission) who felt audiences weren't ready for such shocking displays.
During the war years, Patricia had trained her voice and performed in USO tours. Cole Porter heard her sing in Hollywood one evening and decided she had the right tenacity, feistiness and vocal expertise to play the female lead in his new show. In 1948, over the objections of both the producer and director, stardom was clenched in the form of Porter's classic musical-within-a-musical "Kiss Me Kate." As the sweeping, vixenish Lilli Vanessi, a severe-looking stage diva whose own volatile personality coincided with that of her onstage role (Kate from "The Taming of the Shrew"), Patricia found THE role of her career, giving over 1,000 performances in all. Playing again alongside her former Broadway co-star Alfred Drake, Patricia basked in the multitude of glowing reviews, and such songs as "I Hate Men," "Wunderbar" and "So In Love" rightfully became signature songs. Following this triumph, film work never became a top priority again.
Patricia continued on successfully in the London version of "Kate" and went on to conquer other classic leads in the musicals "The King and I," "Kismet," "The Merry Widow," "Song of Norway" and Pal Joey," among others. Her last movie role was a cameo part as writer George Sand in the mildly received biopic Song Without End (1960) starring Dirk Bogarde as composer Franz Liszt.
On TV Patricia recreated her Kate role with Mr. Drake and made a few scattered but lively appearances over the years. One of her later guest shots was on a 1989 episode of "Cheers" and a 1991 episode of "Gabriel's Fire." In later years the never-married actress devoted herself to painting (an early passion) and enjoyed many showings in the Los Angeles area. The lovely lady with the trademark long hair died in L.A. at the age of 103, on May 20, 2018.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a West Virginia druggist, Joanne Dru came to New York in 1940. In New York she worked as a model and was cast by Al Jolson as one of the showgirls in his Broadway play "Hold Onto Your Hats." When the show closed in 1941, she married popular singer Dick Haymes and went with him to Hollywood. Discovered by a talent scout while working in the theater, Joanne made her screen debut in Abie's Irish Rose (1946), and that picture almost ended her career. Two years later she "redeemed" herself with her role in the classic Howard Hawks western Red River (1948). She followed that with another western, John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), again playing opposite John Wayne. Unfortunately, her success in those two classics resulted in the scripts being submitted to her consisting of mostly westerns, and she got typecast (this from a woman who said, "I simply hated horses...").
In 1950 she was cast in another John Ford western, Wagon Master (1950), which became the basis for the Ward Bond TV series Wagon Train (1957). Even though she played in films other than westerns--All the King's Men (1949), The Pride of St. Louis (1952) and Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), for example--it was the westerns for which she was remembered. By the late 1950s westerns were running out of steam and so was her screen career, so she turned to TV, where she appeared on shows such as Playhouse 90 (1956).
In 1960 Joanne was cast in the role of the Eastern owner of a dude ranch in the comedy series Guestward Ho! (1960). Perhaps even funnier is that she would play an Easterner after all those westerns is the fact that her character name was Babs. The show ended in 1961.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Anne Archer was nominated for an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe and the British (BAFTA) Academy Award for her role as Michael Douglas' sympathetic, tortured wife, "Beth Gallagher", in Adrian Lyne's 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction (1987). Archer is also well-known for her poignant Golden Globe-winning performance in the ensemble cast of Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) and for playing CIA agent Jack Ryan's beleaguered wife, "Cathy", in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), both based on Tom Clancy bestsellers.
Archer was born into a show business family in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actors Marjorie Lord (née Marjorie F. Wollenberg), who appeared on TV's The Danny Thomas Show (1953), and John Archer (born Ralph Bowman), who starred in White Heat (1949). Her ancestry includes German, English, Czech, and Scots-Irish.
Archer studied theatre arts at Claremont College before debuting on the motion picture screen opposite Jon Voight in The All-American Boy (1973). She won critical acclaim for her leading role in Lifeguard (1976) as Sam Elliott's old flame.
Throughout her motion picture career, Archer has starred opposite some of Hollywood's most dynamic and respected leading men, not only Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford, but also Gene Hackman in Narrow Margin (1990), Tom Berenger in director Alan Rudolph's romantic comedy Love at Large (1990), Donald Sutherland in Eminent Domain (1990) and Sylvester Stallone in Paradise Alley (1978). In 2000, she appeared in The Art of War (2000) with Wesley Snipes and Rules of Engagement (2000) (her first project with Tommy Lee Jones), which was one of the box office hits in Spring of that year.
With husband Terry Jastrow (an Emmy-winning sports producer), she co-produced and starred in the feature Waltz Across Texas (1982), a modern romance set in the Texas oil fields. In 1998, Archer worked with husband Jastrow again as co-producer and co-host, with Isabella Rossellini, on ABC's World Fashion Premiere from Paris (1998), a history-making two-hour special. Again the following year, she served as a producer on the telecast. With complete backstage access, the shows spotlighted the haute couture shows of the most famous designers in the world.
Archer has essayed dramatic roles as complex and disparate characters in cable productions of equally distinct genres. She starred with Michael Murphy in the contemporary romantic drama Indiscretion of an American Wife (1998) for Lifetime and opposite William Petersen in Present Tense, Past Perfect (1995), based on a bittersweet story by Richard Dreyfuss, who also directed the Showtime drama. Previously, for the same network, she portrayed Dennis Hopper's sexy former wife in the contemporary, gritty Nails (1992) and for HBO, again, starred with Jon Voight in the period piece The Last of His Tribe (1992).
Her television performances have also included Neil Simon's Jake's Women (1996) opposite Alan Alda and CBS's Jane's House (1994) opposite James Woods. Recently, she received acclaim for a three episode arc on Fox-TV's series Boston Public (2000), created by David E. Kelley.
She had a starring role opposite Courteney Cox in the independent feature November (2004) and appeared in Revolution Studios' comedy Man of the House (2005), portraying Prof. Molly McCarthy, opposite Tommy Lee Jones. She also had a role on Showtime's provocative series The L Word (2004) with Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirshner and Pam Grier.
Her stage work includes the world premiere of "The Poison Tree" at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, the Williamstown Theatre Festival production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in Massachusetts and the starring role in the London West End production of "The Graduate", for which she received rave reviews. Archer's New York stage debut was as "Maude Mix" in the celebrated Off-Broadway production of John Ford Noonan's "A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking".The Mark of Zorro- Actress
- Director
Stunning Swedish born ex-model who broke into film in 1970, and quickly appeared in several high profile films including playing the ex-wife of James Caan in the futuristic Rollerball (1975) and the ill-fated lover of super-assassin Francisco Scaramanga played by Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). To date, the beautiful Maud Adams has appeared in three James Bond films... the other two performances were as one of the lead villains in Octopussy (1983) and as an extra in A View to a Kill (1985). She has appeared in numerous television specials on the Bond series of films, and also played the love interest of crazy Bruce Dern in Tattoo (1981). In the late 1990s, Adams had a regular role on a Swedish soap opera; however, she has not been seen on cinema screens since late 1996.2...The Christian Licorice Store (1971). '71- Mary Maguire Alden was born in New York City on June 18, 1883. She appeared in her first film when she was 31 years old in the production of The Second Mrs. Roebuck (1914). From that point on, Mary was kept very busy in the studios in New York. When the film companies moved west, Mary went with them. She continued her torrid pace in filmmaking. Mary did make the switch from silent to sound movies, but she retired from work in 1935 after The Great Hotel Murder (1935). She died in Woodland Hills, California, on July 2, 1946.2...The Plastic Age (1925), '25
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to Helen Marie Vasconcellos, an American of Portuguese and Irish ancestry from Illinois, and Otto Ludwig Langhanke, a German immigrant. Mary's parents were very ambitious for her and wanted something better for her than what they had, and knew that if they played their cards right, they could make her famous. Recognizing her beauty, they pushed her into various beauty contests. Luck was with Mary and her parents because one contest came to the attention of Hollywood moguls who signed her when she was 14.
Mary's first movie was a bit part in The Scarecrow (1920). It wasn't much, but it was a start. Throughout 1921-1923 she continued her career with bit or minor roles in a number of motion pictures. In 1924, she landed a plum assignment with a role as Lady Margery Alvaney opposite the great John Barrymore in the film Beau Brummel (1924). This launched her career to stardom, as did a lively affair with Barrymore. However, the affair ended before she could star with him again in the classic Don Juan (1926). By now, Mary was the new cinematic darling, with each film packing the theaters.
By the end of the 1920s, the sound revolution had taken a stronghold on the industry, and Mary was one of those lucky actresses who made the successful transition to "talkies" because of her voice and strong screen presence. Mary's career soared to greater heights. Films such as Red Dust (1932), Convention City (1933), Man of Iron (1935), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) kept her star at the top. In 1938, she turned out five feature films that kept her busy and in the spotlight. After that, she churned out films at a lesser rate. In 1941 she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Sandra Kovac in The Great Lie (1941). That same year she appeared in the celebrated film The Maltese Falcon (1941), but her star soon began to fall.
Because of her three divorces, her first husband Kenneth Hawks' death in a plane crash, alcoholism, a suicide attempt, and a persistent heart condition, Mary started to get smaller film roles. She appeared in only five productions throughout the 1950s. Her final fling with the silver screen was as Jewell Mayhew in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).Although it was her final film, she had appeared in a phenomenal 123 motion pictures in her entire career.
Mary lived out her remaining years confined to the Motion Picture Country Home, where she died of a heart attack on September 25, 1987. She was 81.1...Rose of the Golden West (1927), '27. Lead- A talented and personable B-movie actress, Teala Loring was born in Denver, Colorado, as Marcia Eloise Griffin, one of five siblings. Two of her sisters were actresses Debra Paget and Lisa Gaye. Her mother was a vaudeville dancer, comedienne and nightclub singer who billed herself as Marguerite "Maggie" Gibson. Marcia grew up in a show business environment and made her first foray to the stage at the age of three. At 17, her family moved permanently to California and the following year Marcia became a Paramount starlet under the name Judith Gibson. As it turned out, there already was a Judith Gibson on the lot and producer Irwin Allen's suggestion of a change of moniker to a rarely used "good Irish name" (that being 'Teala') was happily accepted.
Like so many other aspiring ingénues, Teala ran the usual gamut of ornamental bit parts in films like Holiday Inn (1942), The Powers Girl (1943) and Double Indemnity (1944). She had a brief furlough, though, when Paramount dispatched her to act on Broadway for a stint in Let's Face It with Danny Kaye. By 1944, she had made the decision not to renew her contract. Thus began the uneasy transition to Poverty Row and appearances in genre films for the likes of Sam Katzman's Banner Pictures, PRC and Monogram. She was third and fifth-billed, respectively, still on loan-out from Paramount, in Delinquent Daughters (1944) and Return of the Ape Man (1944) (with Bela Lugosi). After that, Teala found a (by her own admission) comfortable niche in assorted franchises ranging from the Bowery Boys to Charlie Chan and the Cisco Kid. She joined fading star Kay Francis in Allotment Wives (1945) and appeared in the lurid Black Market Babies (1945), which publicity touted as "an exciting tale of crime and corruption". Towards the end of her career, she also made two westerns despite being wary of horses.
Having retired from acting in 1950, she commenced raising a rather large family of six children, eventually added to by fifteen grandchildren. Teala died in 2007 from injuries sustained in a traffic collision at the age of 84. - Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV commercials, and had a bit part on Broadway. She studied at the Actors Studio and was married to director Jack Garfein (one daughter, Blanche Baker). Warner Brothers, sensing a future Marilyn Monroe, cast her in Giant (1956), Baby Doll (1956) (Oscar nomination for her thumb-sucking role), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Harlow (1965) (title role). Moving to Italy, she made films there and in England, Germany, Mexico and Spain . After returning to American films, she married Donald Burton in 1982 and resided in Hampstead, London in the 1980s. They remained together until Burton's death from emphysema in their home in Cathedral City, California in 2007.2...Cheyenne Autumn (1964). '64
- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
British-born actress who appeared in both British and American films, but who found her greatest success in Hollywood second leads. After a variety of jobs, including nurse, chorus girl and milkmaid, Barnes entered vaudeville. She appeared in more than a score of short comedies with comedian Stanley Lupino before making her feature bow in 1931. Two years later she achieved prominence as one of the half-dozen wives of the King in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). The following year she moved to Hollywood and began a career as the smart-aleck pal of the lead or as the angry "other woman." Barnes also played numerous leading roles, but spent most of the 1930s and 40s in strong supporting parts. In 1940 she married football star (and later producer) M.J. Frankovich and after the war, they moved to Italy and appeared in several films there and elsewhere in Europe. She retired from films in 1954, but returned for a few roles in the late 60s and early 70s. She worked busily with numerous charities until her death in 1998.1...Angels with Broken Wings (1941). '40. Lead- Actress
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Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.
In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).
In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).
After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.2...Three Violent People (1956). '56- Madge was born as Margaret Philpott in Texas. She got her start in theater working with a stock company in Denver. Put under a personal contract by a Broadway producer, Madge got her big break when she replaced Helen Hayes in the Broadway play "Dear Brutus". Her success as a stage actress led to her being signed by Fox Pictures. After appearing in a number of movies in the early 20's, Madge was best remembered for her performances in 'Lorna Doone (1922)' and 'The Iron Horse (1924)'. A strong will contrasted the screen image of innocence and led to disagreements over roles by the late 20's. Madge had been cast in a number of movies each year and was in Fox's first dialogue feature 'Mother Knows Best (1928)'. But her refusal to work in the film 'The Trial of Mary Dugan', which was bought expressly for her, led to her contract with Fox being terminated. It would be 3 years until she returned to the screen in the cult favorite 'White Zombie (1932)' with Bela Lugosi, but her career was not going anywhere as Madge was just one of those old silent stars. For the next few years, she appeared in a small number of low budget films and by 1936 her film career was over. In 1943, she would again appear in the headlines when she shot her lover, millionaire A. Stanford Murphy after he jilted her to marry another woman. She did marry two other men, Carlos Bellamy, whose last name she kept, and then to Logan F. Metcalf. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has no children.1...Gigolettes of Paris (1933). '33. Lead
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Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence. Her often absentee and brutish father could not or did not provide and her schizophrenic mother tried to slit Clara's throat when the girl spoke of becoming an actress. Bow, nonetheless, won a photo beauty contest which launched her movie career that would eventually number 58 films, from 1922 to 1933.
The movie It (1927) defined her career. The film starred Clara as a shopgirl who was asked out by the store's owner. As you watch the silent film you can see the excitement as she prepared for her date with the boss, her friend trying hard to assist her. She used a pair of scissors to modify her dress to try to look "sexier." The movie did much to change society's mores as there were only a few years between World War I and Clara Bow, but this movie went a long way in how society looked at itself. Clara was flaming youth in rebellion. In the film she presented a worldly wisdom that somehow sex meant having a good time. But the movie shouldn't mislead the viewer, because when her boss tries to kiss her goodnight, she slaps him. At the height of her popularity she received over 45,000 fan letters a month. Also, she was probably the most overworked and underpaid star in the industry. With the coming of sound, her popularity waned. Clara was also involved in several court battles ranging from unpaid taxes to being in divorce court for "stealing" women's husbands. After the court trials, she made a couple of attempts to get back in the public eye. One was Call Her Savage (1932) in 1932. It was somewhat of a failure at the box office and her last was in 1933 in a film called Hoopla (1933).
She then married cowboy star Rex Bell at 26 and retired from the film world at 28. She doted on her two sons and did everything to please them. Haunted by a weight problem and a mental imbalance, she never re-entered show business. She was confined to sanitariums from time to time and prohibited access to her beloved sons. She died of a heart attack in West Los Angeles, on September 26, 1965 at age 60. Today she is finding a renaissance among movie buffs, who are recently discovering the virtues of silent film. The actress who wanted so much to be like the wonderful young lady in It (1927) has the legacy of her films to confirm that she was a wonderful lady and America's first sex symbol.- Actress
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Petite, sultry leading lady of the 1920's and 30's who was born and schooled in Tampa, Florida, until the age of ten when she lost her mother. She moved to New York with her dad and started modelling while still in her teens. Her original intention was to go into the teaching profession. Instead, Evelyn became enamored with acting during a school visit to the Popular Plays and Players Studio in Ft.Lee, New Jersey, a production cooperative for distributors World Film, Pathe and Metro. Before long, she obtained a job as an extra for $3 a week using her birth name Betty Riggs. Between 1914 and 1920, she appeared in featured film roles with stars like Olga Petrova and John Barrymore (who hand-picked her as his leading lady for Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917)), then took a sabbatical for health reasons and went to England.
By making the acquaintance of American playwright Oliver Cromwell she was able to land a good role in the George Bernard Shaw comedy 'The Ruined Lady' on the London stage. This, in turn, led to her being cast as leading lady in several British films. In 1922, she even went to Spain as star of The Spanish Jade (1922), distributed in America by Paramount. Upon her return to the United States in 1924, she was briefly under contract to Fox, then joined Associated Authors, and, finally, Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky (1926-30). At the height of her career in silent films, the dark-haired, aquiline Evelyn became a matinee idol with performances as exotic temptresses and vamps, particularly in films by Austrian director Josef von Sternberg. She was notable as the gangster's moll 'Feathers' in Underworld (1927) (the proverbial tough broad with the heart of gold) and as a self-sacrificing Russian girl in love with an exiled Czarist general (Emil Jannings) in The Last Command (1928). She gave another interesting performance as a blackmailer in Paramount's first all-talking picture Interference (1928)
While Evelyn's voice proved no detriment to her success in talking pictures, the declining quality of her films certainly did. Her Alaskan epic The Silver Horde (1930) in which she portrayed another disreputable character named Cherry Malotte was described in critical review as 'dull and trivial' (New York Times, October 25). Her performances as gang molls in Framed (1930) and The World Gone Mad (1933), as well as her unlikely mission worker in Madonna of the Streets (1930) engendered lukewarm write-ups like 'satisfactory' or 'competent'. This did nothing to elevate Evelyn's post-Paramount career. By the end of the decade she had moved down the cast list from second leads to supporting roles, finally appearing in westerns and 'quota quickies' for poverty row studios, such as Monogram and PRC. One example of the 'cheap and cheerful' category in which she seemed to enjoy herself was the Columbia serial Holt of the Secret Service (1941), playing Kay Drew, partner of tough agent Jack Holt. She was also memorable in one of her last roles as a one-armed satanist in the eerie Val Lewton horror flic about devil-worshippers in Greenwich Village, The Seventh Victim (1943).
After making her last film in 1950, Evelyn found work as an actor's agent with the Thelma White Agency in Hollywood. After the death of her third husband, Harry Fox (who gave the Foxtrot its name) in 1959, Evelyn made a final screen appearance as a guest star on Wagon Train (1957). She left the limelight for good in 1960 and lived her remaining years in retirement in Westwood Village, California. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6548 Hollywood Boulevard.- Actress
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Creamy-complexioned brunette Marion Shilling was a beauty inclined to be overlooked when recalling those fairly well-known "B" leading ladies of the 1930s. Born in 1910, the Denver-born actress started her career promisingly enough with a featured role in MGM's Wise Girls (1929). From there she moved to lead and second lead status opposite William Powell in Shadow of the Law (1930) and Constance Bennett in The Common Law (1931). Among others, she appeared top billed in what would be considered "women's pictures" such as Forgotten Women (1931) and Shop Angel (1932). Although Marion was a charming addition to any film, her career began to wane within a few years, however, and she soon was relegated to love interest roles in poverty-row pictures. Westerns became her particular genre, with "prairie flower" roles opposite Buck Jones in the serial The Red Rider (1934) and Stone of Silver Creek (1935), Tim McCoy in The Westerner (1934) and Rex Bell in Idaho Kid (1936), among others. She retired from films at age 25 after co-starring with Hoot Gibson and Rex Lease in the oater Cavalcade of the West (1936). The following year she married a real estate mogul, a union that would last over 50 years. Little heard from over the years, Marion received a Golden Boot Award in 2002 from the Motion Picture and Television Fund for her contributions to the western genre. She died at age 93 of natural causes in Torrance, California.- Actress
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Born on December 5, 1951 in Los Angeles, California, Morgan Brittany was like most little girls and wanted to be an actress. She began her acting career as a child under her real name Suzanne Cupito. Her big break came in the musical film Gypsy (1962), where played the sister of Natalie Wood's character. Morgan's career would continue to grow and would make a name for herself when she landed a role on the soap opera Dallas (1978). On the soap opera, she played Katherine Wentworth, the scheming half-sister of Pamela Ewing and Cliff Barnes. She continues acting but now loves the job of raising her children.
Since 2009, Morgan has been a conservative political commentator appearing on such shows as "Hannity" (FOX News), "The Rick Amato Show" (One America) and "The Kudrow Report" (CNBC). She is also the co-author of the best-selling book "What Women Really Want", released on September 2, 2014. She continues to make appearances all across the United States speaking for conservative values and issues concerning out veterans. She is also the co-owner and anchor for "PolitiChicks", an online news site with a conservative perspective. Morgan also writes a weekly column for "World Net Daily" (WND) and "Townhall Finance".5...Land's End (1968). '68- Actress
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A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly) and four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane and Cole). She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Home Before Dark (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956) and The Big Circus (1959). While she was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. One time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly; he was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.
Among her co-stars over the years were Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan (with whom she made four films). In addition to motion pictures, Fleming made her Broadway debut in Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women", essayed the role of "Lalume" in "Kismet" at the Los Angeles Music Center and toured as "Madame Dubonnet" in "The Boyfriend". She made her stage musical debut in Las Vegas at the opening of the Tropicana Hotel's showroom. Later she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in a one-woman concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin compositions. She also starred in a national ten-week concert tour with Skitch Henderson, featuring the music of George Gershwin. She has guest-starred on numerous television series, including Wagon Train (1957), Police Woman (1974), The Love Boat (1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan & Wife (1971). Waiting for the Wind (1991) reunited her with former co-star Robert Mitchum.
In private life she resides in Century City, California, and was married for 23 years to Ted Mann, a producer and chairman of Mann Theatres, until his death in January 2001. She is a member and supporter of Childhelp USA, ARCS (Achievement Rewards For College Scientists); a Life Associate of Pepperdine University; a Lifetime Member of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge; a Founding Member of the French Foundation For Alzheimer Research; a Benefactor of the Los Angeles Music Center: and a Member of the Center's Blue Ribbon Board of Directors. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children and serves as a Board of Directors Trustee of World Opportunities International. Along with her husband she helped build the Jerusalem Film Institute in Israel. She also is a member of the Board of Trustees of The UCLA Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Revlon/UCLA Women's Health Research Program. In addition, she created at the City of Hope Hospital The Rhonda Fleming Mann Research Fellowship to further advance research and treatment associated with women's cancer.
In 1991, she and her husband established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center. This clinic provides a full range of expert gynecologic and obstetric care to women. Since 1992, she has devoted her time to a second facility at UCLA - the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women with Cancer, which opened in early 1994. This Center is the fulfillment of her vision to create a safe, warm place where women cancer patients and their families might receive the highest quality psychosocial and emotional care as well as assistance with the complex practical problems that arise with cancer. In August 1997, the Center opened "Reflections", a unique retail store and consultation suite that carries wigs, head coverings, breast prostheses and other items to help men, women and children deal with the physical appearance changes brought on by cancer and its treatments. The staffs of the clinic, center and store are guided by her belief that caring, compassion, communication and commitment are essential components of the healing process.- Actress
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Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 31, 1907, Argentina Brunetti began her show business career at the age of three with a walk-on role in the opera "Cavelaria Rusticana," and followed her famous mother Mimi Aguglia's footsteps in the theater, performing supporting roles on stages throughout Europe and South America. In 1937 she was placed under contract to MGM Pictures and began dubbing the voices of Jeanette MacDonald and Norma Shearer into Italian. Next she became a narrator for the Voice of America, interviewing American movie stars for broadcast in Italy. At the same time she began her movie career, debuting in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), as "Mrs. Martini." Throughout her career she also wrote and performed in daily radio shows, became a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association--writing numerous articles on Hollywood personalities--authored books, wrote music and acted in over 57 television programs and 68 movies in which she mainly played multi- ethnic roles.The Midnight Story- Actress
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French ballet dancer Leslie Caron was discovered by the legendary MGM star Gene Kelly during his search for a co-star in one of the finest musicals ever filmed, the Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), which was inspired by and based on the music of George Gershwin. Leslie's gamine looks and pixie-like appeal would be ideal for Cinderella-type rags-to-riches stories, and Hollywood made fine use of it. Combined with her fluid dancing skills, she became one of the top foreign musical artists of the 1950s, while her triple-threat talents as a singer, dancer and actress sustained her long after musical film's "Golden Age" had passed.
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron was born in France on July 1, 1931. Her father, Claude Caron, was a French chemist, and her American-born mother, Margaret Petit, had been a ballet dancer back in the States during the 1920s. Leslie herself began taking dance lessons at age 11. She was on holidays at her grandparents' estate near Grasse when the Allies landed on the 15th of August 1944. After the German rendition, she and her family went to Paris to live. There she attended the Convent of the Assumption and started ballet training. While studying at the National Conservatory of Dance, she appeared at age 14 in "The Pearl Diver," a show for children where she danced and played a little boy. At age 16, she was hired by the renowned Roland Petit to join the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, where she was immediately given solo parts.
Leslie's talent and reputation as a dancer had already been recognized when on opening night of Petit's 1948 ballet "La Rencontre," which was based on the theme of Orpheus and featured the widely-acclaimed dancer 'Jean Babilee', she was seen by then-married Hollywood couple Gene Kelly and Betsy Blair. Leslie did not meet the famed pair at the end of the show that night as the 17-year-old went home dutifully right after her performance, but one year later Kelly remembered Leslie's performance when he returned to Paris in search for a partner for his upcoming movie musical An American in Paris (1951). The rest is history.
Kelly and newcomer Caron's touching performances and elegant and exuberant footwork (especially in the "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and "Embraceable You" numbers, as well as the dazzling 17-minute ballet to the title song) had critics and audiences simply enthralled. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, won a total of six Oscar awards, including "Best Picture," plus a Golden Globe for "Best Picture in a Musical or Comedy". Leslie was put under a seven-year MGM contract where her luminous skills would also be featured in non-musical showcases.
While Leslie's dramatic mettle was tested as a New Orleans nightclub entertainer opposite Ralph Meeker's boxer in Glory Alley (1952) and as a French governess in The Story of Three Loves (1953), it was as the child-like urchin who falls for a cruel carnival puppeteer (Mel Ferrer) in Lili (1953) that finally lifted Leslie to Academy Award attention. The film, which went on to inspire the Tony-winning Broadway musical "Carnival," earned Leslie not only an Oscar nomination, but the British Film Award for "Best Actress" as well. At her waif-like best once again in the musical Daddy Long Legs (1955), Leslie was paired this time with the "other" MGM male dancing legend Fred Astaire. The story, which unfolded in an appealing Henry Higgins/Eliza Dolittle style, was partly choreographed by Roland Petit, who founded the Ballet des Champs-Elysees, Leslie's former dance company.
While the actress gave poignant life to the ugly-duckling-turned-swan tale, The Glass Slipper (1955), choreographed by Petit and co-starring Britisher Michael Wilding as Prince Charming, Leslie also played a ballerina in love with WWII soldier John Kerr in Gaby (1956), a lukewarm remake of the superior Waterloo Bridge (1940). It took another plush musical classic, Gigi (1958), to remind audiences once again of Leslie's unique, international appeal. Audrey Hepburn, who had played the title part on Broadway, was keen on doing the film, but producer Arthur Freed wrote the part expressly for Leslie. It was also Freed who called up Fred Astaire to suggest her as his leading lady in Gigi (1958). Leslie tried the role out on the London stage prior to doing the film version. The musical wound up receiving nine Academy Awards, including "Best Picture," and Leslie herself was nominated for a Golden Globe as "Best Musical/Comedy Actress".
A few more forgettable film roles came and went until she returned triumphantly in a non-musical adaptation of a highly successful 1954 Broadway musical. The film version of Fanny (1961) was more adult in nature for Leslie and was blessed with gorgeous cinematography, a touching script and the continental flavor of veterans, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Horst Buchholz. At the movie's centerpiece is a child-like Leslie (at age 30!) who is mesmerizing as a young girl with child who is deserted by her sailor/boyfriend. Even more adult in scope was the shattering British drama The L-Shaped Room (1962) wherein the actress plays a pregnant French refugee who is abandoned yet again. She earned her a second British Academy Award and a second Oscar nomination for this superb performance.
On stage in London with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Leslie earned applause in another Audrey Hepburn Broadway vehicle, "Ondine," in 1961. While the mid-1960s and 1970s saw her film career take a Hollywood detour into breezy comedy with a number of lightweight fare opposite the likes of Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Warren Beatty, she managed to shine with a complex working class mother role in the remarkable Italian film Il padre di famiglia (1967) starring Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi, and was spotted in the popular crossover film Valentino (1977) starring iconic Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev.
In the 1980s, Leslie appeared in stage productions of "Can-Can", "On Your Toes" and "One for the Tango". She also was invited and accepted to appear on American TV. At the age of 75, the actress won her first Emmy Award with her very moving portrayal of an elderly woman and closeted rape victim in a 2006 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). More recent filming have included Damage (1992) by Louis Malle, Chocolat (2000) by Lasse Hallström, and the Merchant Ivory romantic comedy/drama The Divorce (2003).
Leslie's private life has been more turbulent than expected. She is divorced from the late meat packing heir and musician Geordie Hormel; from avant-garde Royal Shakespeare director Peter Hall, by whom she has two children, Christopher and Jennifer (both of whom have careers in the entertainment field); and from her Chandler (1971) movie producer Michael Laughlin.
One of the few MGM post-musical stars to enjoy a long, lasting and formidable dramatic career, Leslie Caron is still continuing today though on a much more limited basis. In 2008, the actress published her memoirs, "Thank Heaven," later translated to French as "Une Francaise à Hollywood". In 2010, she triumphed on the Chatelet Theater stage in Paris with her portrayal of Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music. More recently the still mesmerizing octogenarian had a recurring role as a countess in the British TV series The Durrells (2016). Over the years, she has received a number of "Life Achievement" awards for her contributions to both film and dance.2...Glory Alley (1952). '52- Actress
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Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), billed as Lily Norwood. The same year, she played a Russian dancer in Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz. In 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly that made her a star. That was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career. She made appearances on television and performed in a nightclub revue with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. Cyd Charisse died at age 86 of a heart attack on June 17, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.2...Mark of the Renegade (1951). '51- Actress
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Valentina Cortese was born in Milan on New Year's Day of 1923. She made her movie debut in 1940 and played many "ingenue" parts in Italian films of that period, before making a real sensation in Caccia all'uomo (1948) and Tempesta su Parigi (1948), playing both female leads, Fantine and Cosette (the film was a competent screen adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic "Les misérables"). The international success of the British-made melodrama The Glass Mountain (1949) brought her some Hollywood offers: she was very sensual as a truck-driver's mistress in Jules Dassin's film noir Thieves' Highway (1949), and particularly effective in Robert Wise's thriller The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), in which she portrayed a woman pursued by a killer.
She then returned to Europe and worked with many great directors, like Michelangelo Antonioni, who cast her in The Girlfriends (1955), and Federico Fellini, who gave her a supporting part in his surrealist fantasy Juliet of the Spirits (1965). She had an especially robust part in Francois Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) as a fading alcoholic movie star (she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this performance). She also had a stage career, working with writers and directors such as Giorgio Strehler and Franco Zeffirelli and starring in the title roles of Schiller's "Mary Stuart" and Wedekind's "Lulu".3...Malaya (1949). '49.- Argentinian leading lady Marta Victoria Moya Peggo Burges was one of three siblings, born in Buenos Aires to a French father and Italian mother. When she was five years of age, her father, a publisher, fled with his family to Montevideo, Uruguay, where they went on to live for several years in somewhat reduced circumstances. According to one of two conflicting stories, her father had gotten into "into conflict with a criminal gang". According to another, he may have fallen foul of the ruling political elite. Whatever the case, both parents died prematurely in what was possibly a suicide pact (in their car of carbon monoxide poisoning) by the time Linda was 13.
Educated at the Conservatoria Franklin in Uruguay, she studied voice and piano. A brief marriage to the Argentinian actor Tito Gómez ended in an annulment after just five days and Linda briefly toyed with the idea of entering a convent (as had several of her aunts). Fate, of course, intervened. While vacationing in Mexico with her older brother, she was 'discovered' by the film producer and director Miguel Alemán Velasco, who also happened to be the son of the country's ruling president. Signed under contract, she adopted the moniker Linda Cristal and made several Spanish language films which soon established her as one of Mexico's rising stars. Conscious of her potential and hoping to break into Hollywood, she decided to learn English as her fourth language (already fluent in Spanish, French and Italian) and subsequently made her American film debut with a small role in the Dana Andrews western Comanche (1956). A dispute over the non-payment of her wages and a car accident in 1956 then led to a brief hiatus in her career.
Fast forward three years and a bit of publicity (she was named "Motion Picture Sweater Queen" in 1958) and Linda was lured back to Hollywood by Universal to again hit the saddle in a couple of back-to-back minor westerns, The Last of the Fast Guns (1958) and The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958). In between attempts to break free from typecasting as decorative Latinas (The Pharaohs' Woman (1960), Panic in the City (1968)) -- a metamorphosis which never happened -- she at least got herself noticed by some high profile people in the business (ie. John Wayne) and was able to thus secure roles in better productions like The Alamo (1960) and Two Rode Together (1961). While her motion picture career was at an impasse, she learned of producer David Dortort casting for the part of Victoria Montoya in the upcoming TV series The High Chaparral (1967). Invited to an audition, she found the set script as too saccharine and bland. Audaciously improvising, she re-imagined her character as more tempestuous, resourceful and proud, later saying in an interview that she knew the producers "were looking for a heroine with fire and spunk". Having secured the coveted role, she made it her own for four seasons (1967-71), ultimately winning two Primetime Emmy nominations and netting her the Golden Globe Award in 1970 as Best Actress in a TV Drama.
After High Chaparral ceased production in 1971, Linda made guest appearances in a handful of TV shows and played a Mexican migrant worker and union leader in Charles Bronson's robust action film Mr. Majestyk (1974). She later worked for some time as a realtor, presided over her own import/export business and invested wisely to become financially very well-off. She made a final comeback to acting as the mistress of a mob boss in the daytime soap General Hospital (1963), eventually calling it quits in 1988. Linda spent her remaining years between residences in Beverly Hills, Palm Springs and Buenos Aires and passed away at her Beverly Hills home on June 27 2020 at the age of 89. - Actress
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Elegance and femininity are fitting descriptions for Arlene Dahl. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses to have graced the screen during the postwar period. Audiences were captivated by her breathtaking beauty and the way she used to it to her advantage, progressing from claimer to character roles.
Of Norwegian extraction, Miss Dahl was born in Minneapolis. Following high school she joined a local drama group, supporting herself with a variety of jobs, including modeling for a number of department stores. Arriving in Hollywood in 1946, she signed a brief contract with Warner Brothers, but she is best remembered for her work at MGM. The Bride Goes Wild (1948) was her first work at Metro. It was an odd but rather humorous love story, which starred Van Johnson and June Allyson.
Although her beauty captivated audiences, it ultimately limited her to smaller roles, and the mark she made at MGM was small. Some of her best films were Reign of Terror (1949), which actually required some acting and she acquitted herself quite well, Three Little Words (1950), Woman's World (1954), Slightly Scarlet (1956) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).
Leaving films behind her in 1959, her typecasting would pay off financially as she became a beauty columnist and writer. She later established herself as a businesswoman, founding Arlene Dahl Enterprises which marketed lingerie and cosmetics.
She was married six times, two of whom were actors, Lex Barker and Fernando Lamas. She is the mother of actor / action star Lorenzo Lamas, and actually made a guest appearance in his film Night of the Warrior (1991).- Rosita Díaz Gimeno was born on 13 September 1908 in Madrid, Spain. She was an actress, known for Pepita Jiménez (1946), La vida bohemia (1938) and Rosa de Francia (1935). She was married to Juan Negrín Jr.. She died on 23 August 1986 in New York, USA.La vida bohemia (1938). '38. Lead
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Glenda Farrell began as the archetypal wisecracking blonde in 1930s gangland films like Little Caesar (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Diminutive, grey-eyed and undeniably sassy, she was a seasoned performer long before Warner Brothers snapped her up as a contract player in 1929. She made her debut on the stage as a 7 year-old playing Little Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Via provincial theatre Glenda eventually made her way to Broadway where she scored a palpable hit in "Life Begins" (later recreating her role for the screen). That attracted the Hollywood talent scouts and her movie contract followed in due course. Though seemingly destined for typecasting as hardboiled gangster molls, showgirls and gold diggers, it was her role as fast-talking, resourceful girl reporter Torchy Blane in her own series of films (beginning with Smart Blonde (1937)) that made her a star, albeit a minor one. She later recalled "Warners never made you feel you were just a member of the cast. They might star you in one movie and give you a bit part in the next...You were still well paid and you didn't get a star complex. We were a very close group..."
Glenda was also paired with another livewire, Joan Blondell, for a series of high octane, madcap farces which consistently made money at the box office. Inevitably, though, her roles became more and more repetitive. After her contract with Warner Brothers expired, she continued to appear with diminishing effectiveness in films for Universal (1938) and Columbia (1942-44). In the 50s, Glenda made the transition to more mature character roles, alternating screen work with Broadway plays -- pretty much throughout the remainder of her acting career -- eventually winning a Primetime Emmy Award in 1963 as Best Supporting Actress for the television series Ben Casey (1961). She took ill during a stage performance of "Forty Carats" in New York in 1969 and died at her home two years later. As the wife of a former U.S. Army colonel, Glenda became the only actress to be interred in the cemetery of West Point Military Academy.- Actress
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Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of "Richard III". She had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted by Hal Roach to star as Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his "Lonesome Luke" shorts, distributed by Pathe. Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife. The two eventually broke up but would remain lifelong friends. Bebe was sought out for stardom by Cecil B. DeMille, who literally pestered her into signing with Paramount. Unlike many actors, the arrival of sound posed no problem for her; she had a beautiful singing voice and became a major musical star, with such hits as Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In 1930 she married Ben Lyon, with whom she went to England in the mid-'30s, where she became a successful West End stage star. She and her husband also had their own radio show in London, and became the most popular radio team in the country--especially during World War II, when they refused to return to the US and stayed in London, broadcasting even during the worst of the "blitz".
They later appeared in several British films together as their radio characters. Her final film was one in that series, The Lyons Abroad (1955).- Actress
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Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.Juarez (1939). '39- Bella Darvi became a 50s symbol for one of the many movie "Cinderellas" whose bright and beautiful Hollywood fairy tale would come crashing down, ending in bitterness and tragedy. A self-destructive brunette beauty, her life was full of misfortune. Of Polish/French descent, she miraculously survived the tortures of a WWII concentration camp as a youth, only to get caught up in the phony glitter and high-living style of Monaco's casinos as a young adult in Europe. An inveterate gambler and drinker, she was, by chance, "discovered" by movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck and his wife, Virginia Fox, who thought she had a foreign cinematic allure à la Ingrid Bergman. Despite her lack of acting experience, the Zanucks paid off her gambling debts and whisked her away to Hollywood to be groomed for stardom. Her marquee name "Darvi" was derived from the combined first names of her mentors. It should have been a dream-come-true opportunity. Fate, however, would not be so kind. After three high profile roles in The Egyptian (1954), Hell and High Water (1954) and The Racers (1955) opposite three top male films stars (Victor Mature, Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas, respectively), Darvi's limited abilities were painfully transparent. Not only was she hampered by an ever-so-slight crossed-eyed appearance, she had a trace of a lisp which, combined with a foreign accent, made her speech appear slurred and difficult to understand. It didn't take long for the actress to go off the deep end. Within a short time, a major sex scandal involving Mr. Zanuck had wife Virginia packing Darvi's bags and any "career" she once had here in America was over. She retreated back to Europe, made a few inconsequential films, and quickly returned to her adverse habits -- liquor and the gambling tables. But this time there was no one to save her. Mounting debts and despair eventually turned her thoughts to suicide. After several attempts, Darvi finally succeeded in 1971 by turning on the gas stove in her apartment. She was only 42.The Racers (1955). '55
- Gorgeous was too tame a word for this foreigner stunner. Glamorous brunette beauty Ursula Thiess was born Ursula Schmidt in Hamburg, Germany on May 15, 1924, the daughter of Hans Schmidt, who managed a printing company, and Wilhelmine Lange, her turbulent childhood including working as compulsory farm laborer on the orders of the Nazi government when the teen refused to join the paramilitary Hitler Youth Movement. She later began her entertainment career in her native homeland appearing on the stage and dubbing female voices in American films.
Married to director Georg Thieß, the couple's marriage was a relatively unhappy one and they eventually divorced. With two children (Manuela and Michael) in tow, she found work in the late 1940s/early 1950s as a fashion model in Berlin. She left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed up with his RKO company for film representation.
Billed as "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" during her initial build-up, her debut movie was as a mixed-race English/Indian girl in the outdoor drama Monsoon (1952) opposite the handsome, frequently bare-chested George Nader. While she failed to weave the same kind of foreign magic as that of Marlene Dietrich, she was far more beautiful and was voted "Most Promising Star of 1952" by Modern Screen Magazine and a Golden Globe the next year. This exotic temptation remained a fetching distraction amid the rugged scenery where, percentage-wise, the story and action remained strongly focused on her handsome he-man co-stars: Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1954); Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954); and Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955); Robert Mitchum in Bandido! (1956), among others. Her Hollywood career wound up very short but sweet.
During her brief peak, Ursula met and eventually married the exceedingly handsome film star Robert Taylor (in 1954) and she subsequently abandoned her film career. Outside of her two children by her first marriage, Ursula had two more children (Terrance in 1955 and Tessa in 1959), by Taylor. Though she seemed quite content to be out of the limelight, she did appear with some regularity on her husband's TV series The Detectives (1959) during its first season, playing a police reporter who has a brief affair with Taylor's character. While raising her children was her prime job, she also became an active volunteer at a children's hospital.
Following her son Michael's tragic suicide from a drug overdose and husband Taylor's death shortly thereafter from lung cancer, both in 1969, Ursula was glimpsed here and there in a light sprinkling of film and TV appearances before bowing out completely. Her last film was the completely overlooked [error] with Richard Egan and Ian McShane.
Surviving an operation for a benign brain tumor in 1979, the former actress married wealthily for a third time and lived in Hawaii during part of that marriage, but would find herself widowed again in 1987 after 12 years. Known to be an excellent home decorator and gourmet cook, she eventually wrote an autobiography entitled "But I Have Promises to Keep" in 2003. Living in the Los Angeles area for the remainder of her life, she eventually entered an assisted facility in Burbank and died on June 19, 2010, at the age of 86, survived by her three remaining children.Bandido! (1956). '56 - Actress
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Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day, be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.
Although the film Harvard, Here I Come! (1941) was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In The Deerslayer (1943), she played Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat, but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same, with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945) for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for Universal. Now she was rolling.
Her next film was the western comedy Frontier Gal (1945) as Lorena Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as Cara de Talavera in Song of Scheherazade (1947), and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded Burt Lancaster prison film Brute Force (1947). Time after time, Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as Slave Girl (1947), Black Bart (1948), Casbah (1948) and River Lady (1948). She had a meaty role in Criss Cross (1949), a gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s, Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again showcased in movies such as The Desert Hawk (1950), Silver City (1951) and Scarlet Angel (1952). Her last film in 1952 was Hurricane Smith (1952), a picture most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.
In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best, The Ten Commandments (1956). She played Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston). The film was, unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today. Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time as Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash series The Munsters (1964). However, she still was not completely through with the big screen. Appearances in such films as McLintock! (1963), The Power (1968), The Seven Minutes (1971) and La casa de las sombras (1976) kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills, California.The Mark of Zorro- Actress
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Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamour and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose."
Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 6, 1913, to Gladys (Royal) and John Earle Young. Her parents separated when Loretta was three years old. Her mother moved Loretta and her two older sisters to Southern California, where Mrs. Young ran a boarding house. When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had a daughter, Georgianna, two years later.
Loretta was appearing on screen as a child extra by the time she was four, joining her elder sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (later better known as Sally Blane), as child players. Mrs. Young's brother-in-law was an assistant director and got young Loretta a small role in the film The Only Way (1914). The role consisted of nothing more than a small, weeping child lying on an operating table. Later that year, she appeared in another small role, in The Primrose Ring (1917). The film starred Mae Murray, who was so taken with little Loretta that she offered to adopt her. Loretta lived with the Murrays for about a year and a half. In 1921, she had a brief scene in The Sheik (1921).
Loretta and her sisters attended parochial schools, after which they helped their mother run the boarding house. In 1927, Loretta returned to films in a small part in Naughty But Nice (1927). Even at the age of fourteen, she was an ambitious actress. Changing her name to Loretta Young, letting her blond hair revert to its natural brown and with her green eyes, satin complexion and exquisite face, she quickly graduated from ingenue to leading lady. Beginning with her role as Denise Laverne in The Magnificent Flirt (1928), she shaped any character she took on with total dedication. In 1928, she received second billing in The Head Man (1928) and continued to toil in many roles throughout the '20s and '30s, making anywhere from six to nine films a year. Her two sisters were also actresses but were not as successful as Loretta, whose natural beauty was her distinct advantage.
The 17-year-old Young made headlines in 1930 when she and Grant Withers, who was previously married and nine years her senior, eloped to Yuma, Arizona. They had both appeared in Warner Bros.' The Second Floor Mystery (1930). The marriage was annulled in 1931, the same year in which the pair would again co-star on screen in a film ironically titled Too Young to Marry (1931). By the mid-'30s, Loretta left First National Studios for rival Fox, where she had previously worked on a loan-out basis, and became one of the premier leading ladies of Hollywood.
In 1935, she made Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable and it was thought they had an affair where Loretta got pregnant thereafter. Because of the strict morality clauses in their contracts - and the fact that Clark Gable was married - they could not tell anybody except Loretta's mother. Loretta and her mother left for Europe after filming on The Crusades finished. They returned in August 1935 to the United States, at which time Gladys Belzer announced Loretta's 'illness' to the press. Filming on Loretta's next film, Ramona, was also cancelled. During this time, Loretta was living in a small house in Venice, California, her mother rented. On November 6, 1935, Loretta delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Judith. It wasn't until the 1990s when she was watching Larry King Live where she first heard the word 'date rape' and upon finding out exactly what it was, professed to her friend and biographer Edward Funk and her daughter-in-law Linda Lewis, that she had gone through the same with Clark Gable. "That's what happened between me and Clark."
In 1938, Loretta starred as Sally Goodwin in Kentucky (1938), an outstanding success. Her co-star Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Peter Goodwin.
In 1940, Loretta married businessman Tom Lewis, and from then on her child was called Judy Lewis, although Tom Lewis never adopted her. Judy was brought up thinking that both parents had adopted her and did not know, until years later, that she was actually the biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. Four years after her marriage to Tom Lewis, Loretta had a son, Christopher Lewis, and later another son, Peter Charles.
In the 1940s, Loretta was still one of the most beautiful ladies in Hollywood. She reached the pinnacle of her career when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), the tale of a farm girl who rises through the ranks and becomes a congresswoman. It was a smash and today is her best remembered film. The same year, she starred in the delightful fantasy The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven and Cary Grant. It was another box office success and continues to be a TV staple during the holiday season. In 1949, Loretta starred in the well-received film, Mother Is a Freshman (1949) with Van Johnson and Rudy Vallee and Come to the Stable (1949). The latter garnered Loretta her second Oscar nomination, but she lost to Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949). In 1953, Loretta made It Happens Every Thursday (1953), which was to be her final big screen role.
She retired from films in 1953 and began a second, equally successful career as hostess of The Loretta Young Show (1953), a half-hour television drama anthology series which ran on NBC from September 1953 to September 1961. In addition to hosting the series, she frequently starred in episodes. Although she is most remembered for her stunning gowns and swirling entrances, over the broadcast's eight-year run she also showed again that she could act. She won Emmy awards for best actress in a dramatic series in 1954, 1956 and 1958.
After the show ended, she took some time off before returning in 1962 with The New Loretta Young Show (1962), which was not so successful, lasting only one season. For the next 24 years, Loretta did not appear in any entertainment medium. Her final performance was in a made for TV film Lady in the Corner (1989).
By 1960, Loretta was a grandmother. Her daughter Judy Lewis had married about three years before and had a daughter in 1959, whom they named Maria. Loretta and Tom Lewis divorced in the early 1960s. Loretta enjoyed retirement, sleeping late, visiting her son Chris and daughter-in-law Linda, and traveling. She and her friend Josephine Alicia Saenz, ex-wife of John Wayne, traveled to India and saw the Taj Mahal. In 1990, she became a great-grandmother when granddaughter Maria, daughter of Judy Lewis, gave birth to a boy.
Loretta lived a quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the home of her sister Georgiana and Georgiana's husband, Ricardo Montalban.Life Begins (uncredited Roland)- Actress
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Dolores del Rio was the one of the first Mexican movie stars with international appeal and who had meteoric career in the 1920s/1930s Hollywood. Del Rio came from an aristocratic family in Durango. In the Mexican revolution of 1916, however, the family lost everything and emigrated to Mexico City, where Dolores became a socialite. In 1921 she married Jaime Del Río (also known as Jaime Martínez Del Río), a wealthy Mexican, and the two became friends with Hollywood producer/director Edwin Carewe, who "discovered" del Rio and invited the couple to move to Hollywood where they launched careers in the movie business (she as an actress, Jaime as a screenwriter). Eventually they divorced after Carewe cast her in her first film Joanna (1925), followed by High Steppers (1926), and Pals First (1926). She had her first leading role in Carewe's silent version of Pals First (1926) and soared to stardom in 1928 with Carewe's Ramona (1928). The film was a success and del Rio was hailed as a female Rudolph Valentino. Her career continued to rise with the arrival of sound in the drama/romance Bird of Paradise (1932) and hit musical Flying Down to Rio (1933). She later married Cedric Gibbons, the well-known art director and production designer at MGM studios.
Dolores returned to Mexico in 1942. Her Hollywood career was over, and a romance with Orson Welles--who later called her "the most exciting woman I've ever met"--caused her second divorce. Mexican director Emilio Fernández offered her the lead in his film Wild Flower (1943), with a wholly unexpected result: at age 37, Dolores del Río became the most famous movie star in her country, filming in Spanish for the first time. Her association with Fernández' team (cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, writer Mauricio Magdaleno and actor Pedro Armendáriz) was mainly responsible for creating what has been called the Golden Era of Mexican Cinema. With such pictures as Maria Candelaria (1944), Las abandonadas (1945) and Bugambilia (1945), del Río became the prototypical Mexican beauty. career included film, theater and television. In her last years she received accolades because of her work for orphaned children. Her last film was The Children of Sanchez (1978).Cheyenne Autumn- Actress
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Angie Dickinson was born in Kulm, North Dakota, in 1931, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Brown. Mr. Brown was the publisher of The Kulm Messenger. The family left North Dakota in 1942 when Angie was 11 years old, moving to Burbank, California. In December of 1946, when she was a senior at Bellamarine Jefferson High School in Burbank, she won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights Contest. Two years later her sister Janet, did likewise. Being the daughter of a printer, Angie at first had visions of becoming a writer, but gave this up after winning her first beauty contest. After finishing college she worked as a secretary in a Burbank airplane parts factory for 3-1/2 years. In 1953 she entered the local Miss America contest one day before the deadline and took second place. In August of the same year she was one of five winners in a beauty contest sponsored by NBC and appeared in several TV variety shows. She got her first bit part in a Warner Brothers movie in 1954 and gained television fame in the TV series The Millionaire (1955) and got her first good film role opposite John Wayne and Dean Martin in Rio Bravo (1959). Her success then climbed until she became one of the nation's top movie stars.Danger Grows Wild- In her silent heyday, this ravishing and highly photogenic star, known for her voluptuous femininity on the silent screen, rivaled that of Mary Pickford, Marion Davies and Clara Bow in popularity. She retired after only a few years into the talking picture era, however, and is not as well-remembered in today's film circles as the aforementioned.
Billie Dove was born Lillian Bohny on May 14, 1903 (several sources list 1900), to Swiss parents Charles and Bertha Bohny who emigrated to New York City before she was born. Educated in private schools in Manhattan, she was already singled out as quite a beauty by her early teens. By 15 and 16 she was helping to support the family by working as both a photographer's and artist's model. It is said that the renowned poster painter/illustrator James Montgomery Flagg sketched her during this period. Although she could neither sing nor dance all that well, this stunning beauty was subsequently hired by Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. to appear in his famous Follies. She was eventually given solo entrances in his extravaganzas (one was for the song "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody"), and also appeared as gorgeous window dressing in a few of his Follies' sideshows--the "Midnight Frolics" and "Nine O'Clock Revues"--all between 1918-20. She also served as a dancing replacement in Ziegfeld's Broadway show "Sally," which headlined Marilyn Miller, in 1921.
A burgeoning affair between Dove and Ziegfeld prompted Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke to arrange work for the young starlet in Hollywood films. She made her feature debut in George M. Cohan's Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1921), based on the 1910 Broadway play; the cameras instantly fell in love with the beautiful newcomer. She was immediately put into a starring role in only her second picture, the backstage romantic drama At the Stage Door (1921), the story of a chorus girl and her sister (also a chorine) who compete for the affections of a wealthy patron. From there Billie went on to appear opposite some of Hollywood's most popular leading men--from glossy, dramatic stars such as John Gilbert and Warner Baxter to sturdy cowboy idols Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson--and in several different genres. Billie also graced a number of pictures helmed by Irvin Willat, whom she married in 1923. These included All the Brothers Were Valiant (1923) co-starring Lon Chaney; the Zane Grey western Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924); The Air Mail (1925) with Baxter and Douglas Fairbanks; and The Ancient Highway (1925).
Top stardom came while she was swept up in the arms of the dashing Fairbanks as the starry-eyed princess who is rescued by The Black Pirate (1926) in the classic silent adventure. Billie was the first actress to receive a color screen test via this pirate yarn. Lovingly dubbed "The American Beauty" after appearing in the movie of the same title, The American Beauty (1927)--in which she played a social-climbing hat check girl--her acting talent was considered modest. Her better pictures were those opposite stronger male actors by stronger directors. Pioneer female director Lois Weber fit the bill and brought out the best in Billie in two of her films--The Marriage Clause (1926) with Francis X. Bushman and Sensation Seekers (1927).
Divorced from Willat in 1929, Billie was still at the peak of her popularity with the advent of sound. The multi-millionaire eccentric and (at that time) budding producer Howard Hughes became an obsessed admirer, which resulted in an all-consuming three-year affair. Hughes, who tried to take over and control her career, actually proposed to the star and they were briefly engaged. She abruptly ended the relationship, however, when she was unable to handle his quirkiness and long, unexplained absences. For Hughes she appeared on screen in the dramatic The Age for Love (1931) and comedic Cock of the Air (1932).
In Blondie of the Follies (1932), the Marion Davies starrer, Dove was dismayed when her third-billed role was "trimmed" and "reshaped" at the urging of Davies' highly influential paramour William Randolph Hearst (who happened to own Cosmopolitan Productions, which made the picture). This was to be her last film; she retired from the screen shortly thereafter. By 1933 she had remarried and focused on having a family. Married to Robert Kenaston, a rancher, oil executive and real estate investor, they had one son (Robert Alan) and an adopted daughter (Gail). The couple divorced in 1970 after 37 years of marriage (he died three years later). A third marriage to architect John Miller also ended in divorce.
Other than an unbilled bit part of a nurse in the movie Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston, Dove never returned to the screen. She was eventually transferred from her Rancho Mirage (California) home to live out the rest of her life at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills. The nonagenarian died of pneumonia in 1997.The Love Mart (1927), '27. Lead - Perla Cristal was born on 29 September 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an actress, known for The Avenger of Venice (1964), Novela (1963) and Espionage in Tangiers (1965).
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Paulette Goddard was a child model who debuted in "The Ziegfeld Follies" at the age of 13. She gained fame with the show as the girl on the crescent moon, and was married to a wealthy man, Edgar James, by the time she was 17. After her divorce she went to Hollywood in 1931, where she appeared in small roles in pictures for a number of studios. A stunning natural beauty, Paulette could mesmerize any man she met, a fact she was well aware of. One of her bigger roles in that period was as a blond "Goldwyn Girl" in the Eddie Cantor film The Kid from Spain (1932). In 1932 she met Charles Chaplin, and they soon became an item around town. He cast her in Modern Times (1936), which was a big hit, but her movie career was not going anywhere because of her relationship with Chaplin. They were secretly married in 1936, but the marriage failed and they were separated by 1940. It was her role as Miriam Aarons in The Women (1939), however, that got her a contract with Paramount. Paulette was one of the many actresses tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she lost the part to Vivien Leigh and instead appeared with Bob Hope in The Cat and the Canary (1939), a good film but hardly in the same league as GWTW. The 1940s were Paulette's busiest period. She worked with Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), Cecil B. DeMille in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Burgess Meredith in The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). Her star faded in the late 1940s, however, and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949. After a couple of "B" movies, she left films and went to live in Europe as a wealthy expatriate; she married German novelist Erich Maria Remarque in the late 1950s. She was coaxed back to the screen once more, although it was the small screen, for the television movie The Female Instinct (1972).The Torch (1950). '50. Lead- Actress
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Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.
Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.
In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony". In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.The Bad and the Beautiful- Actress
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Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo Cansino Reina, was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita's American mother, Volga Margaret (Hayworth), who was of mostly Irish descent, met Eduardo in 1916 and were married the following year. Rita, herself, studied as a dancer in order to follow in her family's footsteps. She joined her family on stage when she was eight years old when her family was filmed in a movie called La Fiesta (1926). It was her first film appearance, albeit an uncredited one. Sotted by Fox studio head Winfield R. Sheehan, she signed her first studio contract, and make her film debut at age sixteen, in Dante's Inferno (1935), followed by Cruz Diablo (1934). She continued to play small bit parts in several films under the name of "Rita Cansino". Fox dropped her after five small roles, but expert, exploitative promotion by her first husband Edward Judson soon brought Rita a new contract at Columbia Pictures, where studio head Harry Cohn changed her surname to Hayworth and approved raising her hairline by electrolysis. She played the second female lead, Judy McPherson, in Only Angels Have Wings (1939). After thirteen minor roles, Columbia lent her to Warner Bros. for her first big success, The Strawberry Blonde (1941); her splendid dancing with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) made her a star. This was the film that exuded the warmth and seductive vitality that was to make her famous. Her natural, raw beauty was showcased later that year in Blood and Sand (1941), filmed in Technicolor.
Rita was probably the second most popular actress after Betty Grable. In You'll Never Get Rich (1941) with Fred Astaire, was probably the film that moviegoers felt close to Rita. Her dancing, for which she had studied all her life, was astounding. After the hit Gilda (1946) (her dancing had made the film and it had made her), her career was on the skids. Although she was still making movies, they never approached her earlier success. The drought began between The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Champagne Safari (1954). Then after Salome (1953), she was not seen again until Pal Joey (1957). Part of the reasons for the downward spiral was television, but also Rita had been replaced by a new star at Columbia, Kim Novak.
Rita, herself, said, "Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me". In person, Rita was shy, quiet and unassuming; only when the cameras rolled did she turn on the explosive sexual charisma that in Gilda (1946) made her a superstar. To Rita, though, domestic bliss was a more important, if elusive, goal, and in 1949 she interrupted her career for marriage - unfortunately an unhappy one almost from the start - to the playboy Prince Aly Khan. Her films after her divorce from Khan include perhaps her best straight acting performances, Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) and They Came to Cordura (1959).
After a few, rather forgettable films in the 1960s, her career was essentially over. Her final film was The Wrath of God (1972). Her career was really never the same after Gilda (1946). Perhaps Gene Ringgold said it best when he remarked, "Rita Hayworth is not an actress of great depth. She was a dancer, a glamorous personality, and a sex symbol. These qualities are such that they can carry her no further professionally." Perhaps he was right but Hayworth fans would vehemently disagree with him.
Beginning in 1960 (age 42), early onset of Alzheimer's disease (undiagnosed until 1980) limited Rita's ability. The last few roles in her 60-film career were increasingly small. With 20 years of symptoms, Rita was cared for by her daughter, Yasmin Khan, until Rita's death at age 68 on May 14, 1987, in New York City.Danger Grows Wild- Actress
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This approachable blue-eyed blonde with a striking, open-faced beauty had a very encouraging career going for her in 30s Hollywood but extenuating circumstances hurt her chances in the long run. In less than a decade and a half June Lang was out of pictures altogether (after appearing in over 30) and therein was glimpsed here and there on TV and commercials until her full retirement. Although June never lost her stunning looks and vivacity, she never managed to return, although she indeed contemplated it from time to time.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota as Winifred June Vlasek on May 5, 1917, June was encouraged to perform at a young age. Dancing at school functions and local amateur Elks Club events from age five, her family moved to Hollywood when she was around seven. There the child joined up with the "Meglin Kiddies" revues and performed with the outfit in various vaudeville shows. Attending the Hollywood Professional School, she matured quickly and began finding jobs in various chorus lines, including one at the Orpheum Theatre. The thirteen-year-old was even cast in the show "Temptations of 1930" after convincing the dance director she was 18.
June made an inauspicious debut in pictures as an extra in Young Sinners (1931) and was again unbilled in Barbara Stanwyck's The Miracle Woman (1931) and Janet Gaynor's Daddy Long Legs (1931). Fox Studios took an interest in her after the director of She Wanted a Millionaire (1932), John G. Blystone, saw bright promise in June after she performed a brief swimming pool bit. Given her first speaking role, a featured femme part, in Chandu the Magician (1932) starring Edmund Lowe and a scene-stealing Bela Lugosi, June's career began a steady incline.
Billed as June Vlasek at first and seen prominently in such films as The Man Who Dared (1933) and I Loved You Wednesday (1933), June received the second femme lead role in the plush yet whimsical, operetta-styled Music in the Air (1934) top-lining John Boles and Gloria Swanson, who played a temperamental Teutonic diva. Adapted from the 1932 Broadway show with a Billy Wilder screenplay and songs composed and written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, second lead ingénues June (now billed June Lang) and her partner Douglass Montgomery actually received more focus than the stars. June followed this with the Hal Roach-produced Laurel and Hardy comedy Bonnie Scotland (1935). She would work again with Hardy in his solo movie effort Zenobia (1939).
Fox did not renew June's contract in 1935 after production chief Winifield Sheehan, who had taken a professional interest in June, left the studio. Yet within a year she was back in the fold when the new studio casting director spotted her dancing at The Trocadero Club. June made one of her most impressive films at Fox in 1936, the war-themed The Road to Glory (1936) with the 19-year-old playing opposite the more-seasoned Fredric March and Warner Baxter. In addition to such regular fare as The Country Doctor (1936), which showcased the newsworthy Dionne Quintuplets, and Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937), in which she played a beautiful princess, June is perhaps best remembered for her co-starring roles in two Shirley Temple hearttuggers: Captain January (1936), in which she played a schoolteacher, and Wee Willie Winkie (1937), in which she portrayed Shirley's widowed mother. As fate would have it, the extremely photogenic June was relegated primarily to decorative roles in "B" films for the most part, but she tried to make the most of it until fate intervened and the beginning of the end began to show itself.
Fox sent June to England in 1938 to film So This Is London (1939) but the threat of war there so terrified her that she abandoned the set and returned home. Fox quickly ended her contract for making that choice. Worse yet, a disastrous and ill-conceived 1939 marriage to handsome Chicago mobster Johnny Roselli tarnished her Hollywood reputation completely. Roselli later became pals with film producer Bryan Foy and was brought into Foy's minor company, Eagle Lion Studios, to serve as a producer of a few gangster movies.
Although June maintained that she was initially naive to her husband's mob-related activities and the couple did eventually divorced in 1943 (Roselli was indicted and convicted of racketeering during their marriage and later found murdered amid controversy in 1976 at age 71), her career never recovered from such bad press. 1941 and 1942 were her last productive years as a "B" co-star with the "Poverty Row" offerings Too Many Women (1942), The Deadly Game (1941) and City of Silent Men (1942) most representative of what she was handed.
She made fleeting appearances after that, some of which were unbilled, and ended her movie career passively with the second-string programmers Three of a Kind (1944) Lighthouse (1947). TV appearances were sporadic come the 1950s and early 1960s. She was the on-the-air "telephone girl" for a local Los Angeles talk show for a time, pitched products on TV, and also served as a photo model before she gracefully left the limelight altogether.
June's first brief marriage (1937-1938) was to playboy agent-turned-producer Victor M. Orsatti). A third marriage to Lt. William Morgan in 1944 produced her only child, Patricia (she suffered a miscarriage earlier). The marriage to Morgan, who later became a businessman, ended bitterly in 1954 and June never remarried. In later years both her mother and daughter lived with her in her North Hollywood home. Daughter Patricia dedicated her life to working with handicapped children, at one time working for the Lowman School in the Los Angeles valley area. June died shortly after her 88th birthday and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetary in Los Angeles.Isle of Destiny (1940). '40.- Angela Clarke was born on 14 August 1909 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Great Caruso (1951), Houdini (1953) and The Harlem Globetrotters (1951). She died on 16 December 2010 in Moorpark, California, USA.
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Stardom somehow eluded this vastly gifted actress. Had it not perhaps been for her low-level profile compounded by her McCarthy-era blacklisting in the early 1950s, there is no telling what higher tier Marsha Hunt might have attained. Perhaps her work was not flashy enough, or too subdued, or perhaps her intelligence too often disguised a genuine sex appeal to stand out among the other lovelies. Two studios, Paramount in the late 1930s and MGM in the early 1940s, failed to complete her star. Nevertheless, her talent and versatility cannot be denied. This glamorous, slimly handsome leading lady offered herself to well over 50 pictures during the 1930s and 1940s alone.
Christened Marcia Virginia Hunt, the Chicago-born actress was the younger of two girls born to an attorney and voice teacher/accompanist. The family relocated to New York when she was quite young and she attended such schools as PS #9 and Horace Mann School for Girls. She developed an interest in acting at an early age (3), performing around and about in school plays and at church functions. Following her high school graduation the young beauty found work as a John Powers model and as a singer on radio, a gift obviously inherited from her mother. Marcia (she later changed the spelling of her first name to Marsha) studied drama at the Theodora Irvine Drama School (one of her fellow students was Cornel Wilde).
Encouraged to try Hollywood by various New York people in the business, the young photogenic hopeful moved there in 1934. She was only 17 but was accompanied by her older sister. It didn't take long for the studios to take an interest in her and she was signed up by Paramount not long after. Marsha's very first movie was in a featured role opposite Robert Cummings and Johnny Downs in the old-fashioned The Virginia Judge (1935). Displaying an innate, fresh-faced sensitivity, she moved directly into her second film, playing the title role in Gentle Julia (1936), this time with Tom Brown as her romantic interest.
Marsha continued to show promise but these well-acted roles were, more often than not, overlooked in mild "B"-level offerings. Appearing in co-starring roles in everything from westerns (Desert Gold (1936) and Thunder Trail (1937)) to folksy or flyweight comedy (Easy to Take (1936) and Murder Goes to College (1937)), she could not find decent enough scripts at Paramount. Though she was once deemed one of the studio's promising starlets, one of her last films there was another prairie flower role--[error]--with cowboys John Wayne and Johnny Mack Brown vying for her attention. At about this time (1938) she married Jerry Hopper, a Paramount film editor who turned to directing in the 1950s. This marriage lasted but a few years.
Freelancing for a time for many studios, Marsha's more noticeable war-era work in sentimental comedy and staunch war dramas came from MGM, and she finally signed with the studio in 1939. The roles offered, which included a featured part as one of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice (1940) starring Greer Garson, and again as a sister to Garson in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), which showed much more promise. Some of her better war-era roles came in the films Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), Kid Glove Killer (1942) and The Affairs of Martha (1942). During this time she also sang on extended USO tours and stayed busy on radio. Her best known film is arguably The Human Comedy (1943) but she wasn't the star. Other film roles had her in support of others, such as Margaret Sullavan in Cry 'Havoc' (1943), little Margaret O'Brien in Lost Angel (1943) and Garson again in The Valley of Decision (1945). Leading roles did not come in "A" pictures.
Her MGM contract was allowed to lapse in 1945 and a second marriage in 1946, to screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., became a higher priority. The marriage was long and happy (exactly 40 years) and lasted until his passing in June of 1986. The few pictures she made were, again, uneventful or in support of the star, although she did have a catchy, unsympathetic role in the Susan Hayward starrer Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) as a scheming secretary. In Raw Deal (1948), starring Dennis O'Keefe, she got the "raw deal" being overshadowed as a "good girl" by the "bad girl" posturings of Claire Trevor. At this point of her career she decided to try the stage and made her Broadway debut in "Joy to the World" (1948). Other plays down the road would include "The Devil's Disciple" with Maurice Evans, "The Lady's Not for Burning" with Vincent Price and "The Little Hut" with Leon Ames. She even had a chance to return to her beloved singing as Anna in a production of "The King and I" and (much later) in productions of "State Fair" and "Meet Me in St. Louis". TV also yielded some new work opportunities, including a presentation of "Twelfth Night" in which she portrayed Viola.
The seams of her film career fell apart in the early 1950s. During the late 1930s and into the 1940s she signed a number of petitions promoting liberal ideals, and was a member of the Committee for the First Amendment. A strong supporter of freedom of speech, these associations led to her name appearing in the pamphlet "Red Channels", a McCarthy-era publication that "exposed" alleged Communists and "subversives". Although she and her husband were never called before the House Un-American Activities Commission, their names were nevertheless smeared all over Hollywood as "Reds". While she still found film work on occasion, it was rare. Although she had worked steadily from 1935 until 1949, appearing in over 50 films, she made only three films in the next eight years. Her screenwriter husband would be credited for only one film from 1948 to 1955.
Semi-retired by the early 1960s, stage and TV became Marsha's focal points. She also devoted herself to civil rights causes and such humanitarian efforts as UNICEF, The March of Dimes and The Red Cross. She became actively involved with the United Nations. On the acting front she appeared only in smaller roles in five films but in numerous TV programs and made-for-TV movies, playing everything from judges to grandmas. She became the Honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks, California, in 1983, and published a book on fashion entitled "The Way We Wore" in 1993. Widowed in 1986, the ever-vibrant Marsha, in her 90s, continues to serve on the Advisory Board of Directors for the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, a large non-profit that advocates for adults and children affected by homelessness and mental illness. As recently as 2006, she appeared to good advantage in the movie Chloe's Prayer (2006) and, at age 91, was seen in Empire State Building Murders (2008).- Actress
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One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring actor Robert Walker. They soon married, and moved to Chicago in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming film stars. Though their plans (initially) fell through, Phyllis began working as a model; sporting mainly hats, gloves and jewelry, and also occasionally found some work on local radio stations, where she provided the voice for various characters in radio programmes, along with her husband.
In a last-ditch attempt to pursue her dream, Phyllis traveled to Selznick studios for a reading which would ultimately change her life. It was that day where she met David O. Selznick, and after that, her career began to take shape. Initially, Phyllis thought the audition went terribly and stormed out of the studios in tears, only to be chased by Selznick, who assured her she had been fine. Although she didn't get that particular part (which was for the iconic character, Scarlett O'Hara, which would ultimately go to Vivien Leigh, in one of the most famous castings in Hollywood's history), Phyllis was given a contract with Selznick studios. In short order, Phyllis was 'renamed' to the alliterative Jennifer Jones, and was cast over thousands of other hopefuls in the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943).
For her moving portrayal of the sickly teenager who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and devotes her life to her by becoming a nun, Jones won the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role on 2 March 1944 (coincidentally her 25th birthday) beating out stiff competition such as Ingrid Bergman (who later became a close friend of hers), Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine and Jean Arthur.
Now, considered a 'true' star, Jones' career was marked out and moulded for her by Selznick, who would become the love of her life. They began an affair and eventually she left her husband and two sons for the producer, which ultimately led Walker to an untimely death, attributed to alcohol and drug abuse instigated due to their separation. As for her career, Jones took on the supporting role of Jane Hilton, a headstrong teenage girl who grows up fast when her fiance is killed in action during WWII, in Since You Went Away (1944). For her performance Jones received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, but lost out to Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart (1944). Jennifer continued to deliver strong performances, receiving further best actress Oscar nominations for Love Letters (1945) (she lost to Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce (1945)) and Duel in the Sun (1946), (she lost to Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own (1946)) which saw her cast against type as the seductive biracial beauty Pearl Chavez.
Jones continued to produce memorable performances throughout the 1940s , including Portrait of Jennie (1948). In the 1950s she received her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), losing out to Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955).
Despite her success within the film industry, Jones was a very private person and managed to stay out of the spotlight that dominated so many other performers' lives. But a lack of publicity led to a lack of roles, a trend that amplified when Selznick died in 1965. She appeared in fewer and fewer films, and after a moderately successful supporting performance in The Towering Inferno (1974) Jones decided to make that role her swan song, bowing out of the film industry. She did, however, try to revive her film career in later years by campaigning for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but Shirley MacLaine was cast instead and as a result, won the Oscar for best actress.
Jennifer Jones died 17 December, 2009, in Malibu, California. In the 21st century, Jones may not be as well known as other actresses of her time such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Bette Davis etc. But for those who know of her and her extraordinary talent, she is alluring to watch and her acting abilities extended far greater than most of her contemporaries.We Were Strangers (1949). '49. Lead- Katy Jurado was born María Cristina Estela Jurado García into a wealthy family on January 16, 1924. Her early years were spent amid luxury until her family's lands were confiscated by the federal government for redistribution to the landless peasantry. Despite the loss of property, the matriarch of the family, her grandmother, continued to live by her aristocratic ideals. When movie star Emilio Fernandez discovered Katy at the age of 16 and wanted to cast her in one of his films, Jurado's grandmother objected to her wish to become a movie actress. To get around the ban, Katy slipped from the grasp of her family's control by marrying actor Víctor Velázquez.
Jurado eventually made her debut in No matarás (1943) during the what has been called "The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema". Blessed with stunning beauty and an assertive personality, Jurado specialized in playing determined women in a wide variety of films in Mexico and the United States. Her looks were evocative of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, and she used what she called her "distinguished and sensuous look" to carve a niche for herself in Mexican cinema. Indian features were unusual for a film star in Mexico--despite the success of Fernandez, the fabled "El Indio"--and her ethnic look meant she typically was cast as a dangerous seductress, a popular type in Mexican movies. The Mexican media reported that an American movie director at one of her first Hollywood auditions laughed at her derisively because she spoke English so poorly, and an outraged Jurado promptly stormed out of the audition room, cursing in Spanish. As it turned out, that kind of brazen behavior was exactly the type of personality that the director was looking for.
In addition to acting, Jurado worked as a movie columnist and radio reporter to support her family. She also worked as a bullfight critic, and it was at a bullfight that Jurado was spotted by John Wayne and director Budd Boetticher. Boetticher, who was also a professional bullfighter, cast Jurado in his autobiographical film Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), which he shot in Mexico. She was cast in her part despite having very limited English-language skills and had to speak her lines phonetically. Luis Buñuel cast her in his Mexican melodrama The Brute (1953), and then she made her big breakthrough in American films in the role of Gary Cooper's former mistress, saloon owner Helen Ramirez, in High Noon (1952). The role necessitated her moving to Hollywood. She received two Golden Globe nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for that part, for Most Promising Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress, winning the latter. "She planted the Mexican flag in the U.S. film industry, and made her country proud", said National Actors Association official Mauricio Hernandez. Her "High Noon" performance historically proved to be an important acting watershed for Latino women in American movies. Jurado's portrayal undermined the Hollywood stereotype of the flaming, passionate Mexican "spitfire." Previously, Mexican and Latino women in Hollywood films were characterized by an unbridled sexuality, as exemplified by such diverse actresses as Lupe Velez, Dolores Del Río (who came to loathe Hollywood and returned to Mexico in the 1940s), and Rita Hayworth, nee Margarita Cansino. Although Jurado's character was forced to kow-tow to the stereotype in "High Noon", delivering such lines as, "It takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man," the actress' great dignity in her role as a moral arbiter among the competing factions of the marshal and his fiancée, the townspeople and the gunmen out to kill the marshal showed her Helen Ramirez to be in control and controlled by nothing, not even her former love for the marshal. Her restrained performance, delivered with a great deal of conviction, emphasized the shortcomings of the rest of the other characters. Her moral integrity is the reason she, like the marshal, must abandon the town.
With her superb performance, Jurado proved that Latino women could be more than just sexpots in the American cinema. Importantly, working against the tropes of a racist cinema, she used her talent to introduce into the American cinema the model of the un-stereotyped Mexican woman who is identifiably Mexican. One of the best examples of this can be seen at the end of the middle of her career, when Jurado played sheriff Slim Pickens' wife and partner in Sam Peckinpah's elegiac Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Determined and tough as nails, Jurado's character was clearly her screen husband's equal, and she had a very moving scene with Pickens as his character faced death. Jurado was blessed with extraordinary eyes, which were both beautiful and expressive, their beauty and strength never fading with age. Two years after "High Noon", Jurado received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Spencer Tracy's Indian wife in Edward Dmytryk's Broken Lance (1954), making her the first Mexican actress thus honored.
She refused to sign a contract with a major Hollywood studio in order to be able to return to Mexico between her American roles to star in Mexican films. She +remained in Los Angeles for 10 years, marrying Ernest Borgnine, her co-star in The Badlanders (1958), in 1959. During their tempestuous relationship, Jurado and Borgnine separated and reconciled before finally separating for good in 1961. The tabloids reported that Borgnine had abused her, and their separation proved rocky as well, as they fought over alimony. Their divorce became final in 1964. Borgnine summed up his ex-wife as "beautiful, but a tiger", a bon mot that described her on-screen persona as well (she had two children with former husband Victor Velasquez, a daughter and a son, who tragically was killed in an automobile accident in 1981).
Jurado played the wife of Marlon Brando's nemesis Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando's sole directorial effort. In her role she also was the mother of a young woman who was Brando's love interest, thus marking a career transition point as she assumed the role of a mature woman. As Jurado aged, she appeared in fewer films, but notable among them included Arrowhead (1953) with Charlton Heston, Trapeze (1956) in support of Burt Lancaster and Man from Del Rio (1956) with her fellow Mexican national Anthony Quinn who, unlike Jurado, had become an American citizen. She also appeared with Quinn in _Barabbas (1962)_and The Children of Sanchez (1978).
She appeared on the Western-themed American TV shows Death Valley Days (1952), The Rifleman (1958), The Westerner (1960) and The Virginian (1962). Her career in the US began to wind down, and she was reduced to appearing in "B" pictures like Smoky (1966) with Fess Parker and the Elvis Presley movie Stay Away, Joe (1968). She attempted to commit suicide in 1968, and then moved back home to Mexico permanently, though she continued to appear in American films as a character actress. Her last American film appearance was in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country (1998), capping a half-century-long American movie career that continued due to her talent and remarkable presence, long after her extraordinary good looks had faded.
Aside from acting in films in the US and Europe, she continued to act in Mexican films. Her most memorable role in Mexican movies was in Nosotros los pobres (1948) (aka "We the Poor") opposite superstar Pedro Infante. Though in the latter part of her career she appeared occasionally in American films shot in Mexico (including an appearance with her former mentor, Emilio Fernandez, in "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" and John Huston's Under the Volcano (1984)), she appeared mostly in Mexican movies in the last decades of her career, becoming a prominent and highly respected character actress. She played the leader of a religious cult in the Bunuel-like satire Divine (1998). Jurado won three Ariel awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar, a Best Supporting Actress award in 1954 for Bunuel's The Brute (1953) a Best Actress Award in 1974 for Fe, esperanza y caridad (1974) and a Best Supporting Actress award in 1999 for "El evangelio de las Maravillas". She also was awarded a Special Golden Ariel for Lifetime Achievment in 1997. In the north, she was honored with a Golden Boot Award by the Motion Picture & Television Fund in 1992 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jurado was an avid promoter of her home state of Morelos as a location for filmmakers.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered from heart and lung ailments. Katy Jurado died on July 5, 2002, at the age of 78 at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was survived by her daughter. - A pretty, diminutive (4'11") actress of the silent and early sound era, Barbara Cloutman (later Kent) was born in Gadsby, Alberta, Canada on December 16, 1907. Upon graduating from Hollywood High School in 1925, Kent won the Miss Hollywood Pageant, and set her sights on a career in the movies. She was 18 when Universal Studios signed her; she made her film debut in the western Prowlers of the Night (1926). That same year, Kent established herself with the classic romantic melodrama Flesh and the Devil (1926), in which she played the rival to femme fatale Greta Garbo's affections for John Gilbert. She was loaned to MGM for that movie. Kent was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1927 as a result of the popularity of her film No Man's Law (1927), in which she had a nude scene.
Kent subsequently appeared opposite Richard Barthelmess in The Drop Kick (1927) and had a starring role in another silent classic, Lonesome (1928), before smoothly making the transition to talkies. She played Harold Lloyd's love interest in his first two sound movies, Welcome Danger (1929) and Feet First (1930). Kent had supporting parts opposite Gloria Swanson in Indiscreet (1931) and Marie Dressler in Emma (1932), as well as playing the role of the aunt in Oliver Twist (1933) (notable since the character is often omitted from dramatizations of the novel).
In 1933, Kent took a year-long hiatus from acting so that her new husband, talent agent Harry E. Edington, could groom her for what he intended to be a high-profile return. Unfortunately, Kent's popularity had declined by the time she did return. She made three more films between 1935 and 1941, before retiring from the screen.
Edington died in 1949, and Kent remarried in 1954, to Jack Monroe, an engineer. They settled in Palm Desert, California, where Kent remained after Monroe's death. Her retirement was long and peaceful; she passed away on October 13, 2011 at the age of 103. - Actress
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The daughter of a poet, Doris Kenyon made her stage and screen debuts in 1915. She was often cast as a pleasant heroine in many silent films. She co-starred with popular silent-era actors like Rudolph Valentino and her future husband Milton Sills. Due to her stage experience she made a smooth transition to sound films. She could still be seen on television in the mid-'60s.- Actress
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At just 18, Nancy Kwan was studying dance with England's Royal Ballet School, when she was spotted by producer Ray Stark, who tested her and gave her the starring role of a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She followed it the next year with the hit musical, Flower Drum Song (1961), and became one of Hollywood's most visible Asian actresses. Born in China to a Chinese father and British mother, Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe (including the pilot for Hawaii Five-O (1968)), but faded from view in the West, when she returned to her native Hong Kong in 1972 to be with her critically ill father. Divorced from her second husband, screenwriter David Giler, and with a young son from her first marriage to Austrian hotelier Peter Pock, Kwan intended to stay a year, but wound up staying a decade.
As managing director of her own production company, she produced and directed dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. She also acted in a spate of films made for Southeast Asian audiences, including "Fear" (1977) (aka Night Creature (1978)), which introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband. They returned to the US in 1979 so that her teenage son, Bernie Pock, could complete his education. He was a martial-arts master, fluent in Chinese, and became a stunt coordinator and actor before his untimely death.
After returning to the US, Kwan appeared in numerous TV series, the NBC miniseries, Noble House (1988), and the CBS made-for-TV movie, Miracle Landing (1990). She's politically active as the spokeswoman for the Asian-American Voters Coalition, and touts a beauty product, Oriental Pearl Cream, in TV spots. Kwan was at the ceremonies in Los Angeles at Hollywood Park, where the Asian community gathered to watch the handover of Hong Kong to the government of China.- Actress
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In addition to being Miss New Orleans in 1931, Dorothy Lamour worked as a Chicago elevator operator; band vocalist for her first husband, band leader Herbie Kaye; and radio performer. In 1936 she donned her soon-to-be-famous sarong for her debut at Paramount, The Jungle Princess (1936), and continued to play female Tarzan-Crusoe-Gauguin-girl-with make-up parts through the war years and beyond. The most famous of these was in the popular Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road" pictures - a strange combination of adventure, slapstick, ad-libs and Hollywood inside jokes. Of these she said, "I was the happiest and highest-paid straight woman in the business." As she aged, however, the quality of her films dropped. Among her serious films were Johnny Apollo (1940) and A Medal for Benny (1945).The Last Train from Madrid (1937). '37. Lead- Actress
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Elissa Landi was born in Venice, Italy on December 6, 1904. From an early age, she wanted to be an actress and writer. Her acting career started at the Oxford Repertory Company and on London's West End performing with actors such as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. She played Desdemona in "Othello" and appeared in plays with and by Noel Coward (most notably "Blithe Spirit, in which she was forced to enter through the fireplace when the door jammed). She made her London debut in "The Storm," which lasted for five months and for which she received rave reviews for her performances. That led to meaty leads in "Lavendar Ladies" and other plays. European film producers took notice of the photogenic beauty, and Elissa starred in eight films over the next two years. Her first film was the German-made Synd (1928). Her career didn't impress critics, though, until she played Anthea Dane in The Price of Things (1930). She felt that she would make more headway in the U.S., so she went to New York in 1931 to star in the stage version of "A Farewell to Arms." Although the play made no huge impression, Hollywood sat up and took notice, and she soon appeared in Body and Soul (1931) opposite Charles Farrell. However, it wasn't until Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932) that many moviegoers got their first glimpse of Elissa, and they were enthralled, although she was among such heavyweight stars as Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, and Vivian Tobin. Completed in under eight weeks, the film was a smash hit. After A Passport to Hell (1932) and Devil's Lottery (1932), Elissa scored again in The Warrior's Husband (1933), a film about the intrigues and intricacies of the old Roman Empire that starred Marjorie Rambeau and Ernest Truex. In 1934 Elissa co-starred with Robert Donat in the classic The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). The next year saw Elissa as world-class singer Lisa Robbia, (singing voice dubbed by Nina Koshetz) in Enter Madame! (1934) with Cary Grant, the era's greatest leading man. In Cary Grant's biography, he mentions seeing Elissa at a typewriter, pursuing her other passion, writing, between takes throughout the filming process. After a mediocre role in Mad Holiday (1936), Elissa had a better part as the tormented Selma Landis in the hit After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the series. She appeared in only three movies after that, the last being the low-budget Corregidor (1943) for bottom-of-the-barrel Producers Releasing Corporation. When that picture was completed, Elissa left films behind and concentrated on writing; she produced six novels and poetry volumes. After Hollywood she concentrated on Broadway, regional theater, and summer stock near Kingston, New York, where she lived with her husband Curtis Thomas and their daughter. Elissa succumbed to cancer on October 21, 1948 at just 43 years old.The Woman in Room 13 (1932). '32 Lead- Actress
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The daughter of a clergyman, Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith and encouraged to pursue an acting career by her father. After training at London's Royal Albert Hall, she took to the boards and later began appearing in English films, first as an extra, then working her way up to featured roles and finally earning the unofficial title "The Queen of the Quota Quickies". Lee and her husband, director Robert Stevenson, relocated to Hollywood in the late 1930s, and Lee began starring in stateside productions as well as becoming a fixture of the John Ford stock company (she appeared in How Green Was My Valley (1941), Fort Apache (1948) and a half-dozen others). In 1970, she became the seventh wife of novelist, poet and playwright Robert Nathan (Portrait of Jennie (1948), The Bishop's Wife (1947)); they married three months after they met. Now widowed, Lee continued despite adversity, regularly playing wealthy Lila Quartermaine on the soap opera General Hospital (1963). She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire at the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. On May 14, 2004, Anna Lee passed away from pneumonia at age 91 at her home in Beverly Hills, California.- Actress
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Picture-pretty brunette Margaret Lindsay was one of a number of pleasant, sweet-natured ingénues who could do no wrong in a score of 1930s stylish Hollywood pictures. Such altruistic love interests were often overlooked in pictures that were carried by the flashy histrionics of a jaunty James Cagney or temperamental Bette Davis, both of whom she supported in several films. Ergo, while she was a lovely distraction and a highly capable talent, Margaret failed to ignite and command the attention of a truer star.
The Dubuque, Iowa-born lovely was christened Margaret Kies in real life, the eldest of six (she had four sisters (Helen, Jane, Lori, Mickie), one brother (Jack)). Her father, a druggist, enrolled her at the National Park Seminary in Washington, DC. The acting bug hit Margaret quite early, however, and she subsequently attended New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts to pursue her dream. Unable to find work in New York, she traveled to England for further speech and acting study. Here she made her professional stage debut and gained experience and confidence in such plays as "Escape," "By Candlelight," and "Death Takes a Holiday". With her resume now consisting of strong theatre credits, she returned to the States hoping to finally make a mark on Broadway, but again her career stalled. While waiting for a show of hers to open following production delays (eventually she co-starred on Broadway opposite Roland Young in "Another Love Story"), Margaret had a number of screen tests arranged for her. Shelving her Iowa-based roots, Universal took an interest in the "British stage actress" and signed her on. She made her debut in Okay America! (1932) and toiled in a few minor roles before taking full advantage of her "English tea rose" reputation with a small but noticeable part in the "all-British" grand-scale epic film Cavalcade (1933) as an optimistic honeymooner on board the fateful H.M.S.Titanic.
Warner Bros. then picked up her option and began featuring her gracefully opposite such magnanimous stars as Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., George Arliss and Humphrey Bogart. "Americanized" as a lead and second lead, she was able to drop the British pretense and appeared opposite Cagney in Lady Killer (1933), Devil Dogs of the Air (1935), Frisco Kid (1935) and 'G' Men (1935). The studio had her work as a second-lead to Ms. Davis as well in such films as Fog Over Frisco (1934) and Bordertown (1935). Of note, she supported Davis in both her Oscar-winning "Best Actress" pictures -- Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938). She also took on a Davis castoff role in Garden of the Moon (1938), a musical in which Margaret did not sing.
Margaret's longstanding problem was that she was either involved in minor pictures that would do nothing to advance her career or was handed oblique secondary roles in "A" pictures wherein she played the star's best friend, light romantic rival or socialite. One of Margaret's sisters, Jane Gilbert was briefly an actress in the late 1930s/early '40s and was once married to Perry Mason (1957) co-star William Hopper, who played private investigator Paul Drake.
Following one of her best roles as Hepzibah in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1940), Margaret signed up with Columbia in the recurring "Ellery Queen" series (seven in all) as mystery writer Nikki Porter opposite either Ralph Bellamy or William Gargan's title crime solver. Probably her best remembered role, this renewed popularity did not guarantee "A" pictures and she remained for the most part in second tier filming. One of her more atypical roles came as a man-baiting saloon girl in The Vigilantes Return (1947). In the 1940s, she replenished her film resume with secondary ladylike roles behind Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street (1945), Lana Turner in Cass Timberlane (1947) and Barbara Stanwyck in B.F.'s Daughter (1948). Margaret also sought work on TV and on the legit stage in the next decade. Her final film was in typically pleasant mode as Nurse Colman in Tammy and the Doctor (1963) showcasing a nubile Sandra Dee.
Margaret never married in real life but remained close to her family. Her dating companions were typically "safe" stars such as Cesar Romero, Richard Deacon, and even Liberace. For much of her time in Hollywood, Margaret shared a home with a close sister. She died at age 70 in Los Angeles of emphysema in the spring of 1981.- Actress
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Myrna Williams, later to become Myrna Loy, was born on August 2, 1905 in Helena, Montana. Her father was the youngest person ever elected to the Montana State legislature. Later on her family moved to Radersburg where she spent her youth on a cattle ranch. At the age of 13, Myrna's father died of influenza and the rest of the family moved to Los Angeles. She was educated in L.A. at the Westlake School for Girls where she caught the acting bug. She started at the age of 15 when she appeared in local stage productions in order to help support her family. Some of the stage plays were held in the now famous Grauman's Theater in Hollywood. Mrs. Rudolph Valentino happened to be in the audience one night who managed to pull some strings to get Myrna some parts in the motion picture industry. Her first film was a small part in the production of What Price Beauty? (1925). Later she appeared the same year in Pretty Ladies (1925) along with Joan Crawford. She was one of the few stars that would start in silent movies and make a successful transition into the sound era. In the silent films, Myrna would appear as an exotic femme fatale. Later in the sound era, she would become a refined, wholesome character. Unable to land a contract with MGM, she continued to appear in small, bit roles, nothing that one could really call acting. In 1926, Myrna appeared in the Warner Brothers film called Satan in Sables (1925) which, at long last, landed her a contract. Her first appearance as a contract player was The Caveman (1926) where she played a maid. Although she was typecast over and over again as a vamp, Myrna continued to stay busy with small parts. Finally, in 1927, she received star billing in Bitter Apples (1927). The excitement was short lived as she returned to the usual smaller roles afterward. Myrna would take any role that would give her exposure and showcase the talent she felt was being wasted. It seemed that she would play one vamp after another. She wanted something better. Finally her contract ran out with WB and she signed with MGM where she got two meaty roles. One was in the The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), and the other as Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934) with William Powell. Most agreed that the Thin Man series would never have been successful without Myrna. Her witty perception of situations gave her the image that one could not pull a fast one over on the no-nonsense Mrs. Charles. After The Thin Man, Myrna would appear in five more in the series. Myrna was a big box-office draw. She was popular enough that, in 1936, she was named Queen of the Movies and Clark Gable the king in a nationwide poll of movie goers. Her popularity was at its zenith. With the outbreak of World War II, Myrna all but abandoned her acting career to focus on the war effort. After making THE SHADOW OF THE THIN MAN in November of 1941, Myrna more or less stayed away from Hollywood for five years. She broke this hiatus to appear in one Thin Man sequel while devoting most of her time working with the Red Cross. When she did return her star quality had not diminished a bit, as evidenced by her headlining The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The film did superbly at the box-office, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1947. With her career in high gear again, Myrna played opposite Cary Grant in back-to-back hits The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). She continued to make films through the '50s but the roles started getting fewer, her biggest success coming at the start of that decade with Cheaper by the Dozen (1950). By the 1960s the parts had all but dried up as producers and directors looked elsewhere for talent. In 1960 she appeared in Midnight Lace (1960) and was not in another film until 1969 in The April Fools (1969). The 1970s found her mainly in TV movies, not theatrical productions, except for small roles in Airport 1975 (1974) and The End (1978). Her last film was in 1981 called Summer Solstice (1981), and her final acting credit was a guest spot on the sitcom Love, Sidney (1981) in 1982. By the time Myrna passed away, on December 14, 1993, at the age of 88, she had appeared in a phenomenal 129 motion pictures. She was buried in Helena, Montana.The Woman in Room 13- Actress
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This alluring hazel-eyed 1940s leading lady was born Ardis Ankerson on the Philippine island of Negros, one of two siblings. Her father was Otto Peter Ankerson who held an important position as overseer of a large sugar plantation. Following the premature death of her mother in 1925, Ardis and her sister were packed off to San Antonio to complete their education. Ardis was voted Freshman Class Beauty of 1934 at Texas State College, acted in amateur dramatics and worked hard on diction and improvisation. By then, she was clearly determined to become a professional actress. Following her graduation, she moved to New York where she studied drama under the tuition of actor Richard Gaines (and eventually married him in 1936). Gaines helped her secure acting work in stock companies under the Federal Theatre Project, sponsored by the Works Progress Administration as part of the New Deal. While in New York, Ardis successfully auditioned for Paramount, but studio executives dropped the option to sign her due to what they deemed her excessive salary demands. Warner Brothers viewed the screen test some time later and proved less squeamish about picking her up. With the inevitable name change prompted by the studio, 'Brenda Marshall' went Hollywood. During her tenure in Tinseltown, she made it clear to friends and co-workers alike, that she be addressed not by her studio-fabricated cognomen, but by her given name (with the addition of her married name of Gaines).
Brenda made an almost immediate impact in her fourth outing for Warners as Doña Maria, providing the romantic interest in Errol Flynn's classic swashbuckler The Sea Hawk (1940). This should have established the brunette beauty as a tangible box office attraction. Alas, only routine material followed and Brenda saw out the remainder of her contract as exotic leads in second features like East of the River (1940), South of Suez (1940) and Singapore Woman (1941). There were to be two more A-grade productions, but Brenda ended up playing second fiddle to James Cagney's aviation heroics in Captains of the Clouds (1942) and was overshadowed in the charisma department by Joan Fontaine and Alexis Smith in The Constant Nymph (1943). By 1950, she quit the acting profession and devoted herself to other causes. A year after her divorce from Gaines in 1940, Brenda had wed the actor William Holden in Las Vegas. She was of help to him in setting up the Mt. Kenya Safari Club as a means of protecting African wildlife. The couple seemed content for a while. However, the marriage proved to be increasingly volatile and began to unravel by 1963, ending up in divorce eight years later. Brenda died from throat cancer in Palm Springs in 1992 at the age of 76.The Sea Hawk (1940). '40.- Actress
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Mercedes McCambridge was a highly talented radio performer who won a best supporting Actress Oscar for her film debut.
Mercedes McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, to Marie (Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She was of mostly Irish (with a small amount of English and German) ancestry. Despite a career full of supporting roles, she later became something of a cult figure. Her memorable voice-over for the demon child in The Exorcist (1973) has secured her place in movie history. Ironically, she took Warner Bros. to court over her being uncredited for the role, which was probably the most important in the film.
Mercedes enjoyed a quiet retirement starting from the early 1980s. She was a special guest star at the 70th Annual Anniversary Academy Awards in 1998 along with many other Oscar winners. Mercedes also made special television appearances to discuss her role in The Exorcist (1973) at the 30th Anniversary of the film's release.
She died in La Jolla in California on 2nd March 2004 from natural causes.The Sacketts- Actress
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It would have been pretty difficult for willowy actress/model Dina Merrill to have pulled off playing a commoner on stage, film or TV in her day. She reeked of elegance and class. The epitome of style, poise and glamour, the New York-born socialite and celebrity was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on December 29, 1923, the daughter of E.F. Hutton, the financier and founder of the Wall Street firm that bore his name, and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, of the Post cereal fortune. Although Dina made elegant, elaborate use of her upbringing over the decades, she handled it all positively and graciously without tabloid incidents, instilling these same refined credentials into a large portion of her characters.
Dina did not originally intend on an acting career. After studying at George Washington University, she suddenly dropped out after only a year (to the chagrin of her disapproving parents) after demonstrating a late desire to perform. Enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studying with Uta Hagen among others, Dina appeared in the comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner" before taking her first Broadway curtain call in "The Mermaids Singing" in 1945. She took some time off to play wife and mother to three children after marrying Stanley Rumbough, Jr., heir to the Colgate toothpaste fortune.
Dina finally made an official film debut with a smart and stylish support role in the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn vehicle Desk Set (1957). She continued to charm in the same upper crust vein playing some version of the model wife or blue-blooded maven in frequent posh outings. Some of her more noticeable roles came with Operation Petticoat (1959) with the equally classy Cary Grant; BUtterfield 8 (1960) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey; and The Young Savages (1961) opposite Burt Lancaster.
Following her divorce to Rumbough after 20 years, Dina married ruggedly handsome actor Cliff Robertson in 1966. The pair had one daughter and were a popular Hollywood fixture for nearly 20 years. With her film career on the wane in the mid 1960's, Dina gravitated toward TV guest spots on such popular shows as "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Burke's Law," "Rawhide," "Daktari," "Bonanza," "Daniel Boone," "Batman" (as the villainous "Calamity Jan" alongside Robertson's western bad guy "Shame"), "The Name of the Game," "The Virginian," "Night Gallery," "Marcus Welby," "The Love Boat" and "The Odd Couple." She also graced a number of TV-movie dramas beginning with The Sunshine Patriot (1968) co-starring husband Robertson and Seven in Darkness (1969) (as a blind survivor of a plane crash), and continuing with The Lonely Profession (1969), Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1971), Family Flight (1972), The Letters (1973), The Tenth Month (1979), and a featured part in the mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations (1979).
Dina returned to Broadway as the co-star of the drama "Angel Street" (1975) and again with the revival of the musical "On Your Toes" in which she played "Peggy Porterfield" in both the 1983 Broadway revival and 1986 national tour. In the same year that Dina divorced second husband Cliff Robertson (1989), she married actor/investment banker Ted Hartley. Together the couple bought RKO Studios and renamed it RKO Pavilion. He serves as chairman and she vice chairperson/creative director. The studio produced such popular efforts as Milk & Money (1996) and the remake of Mighty Joe Young (1998).
Admired for her tireless philanthropic contributions, Dina was a moderate Republican (vice chair of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition), and an active lobbyist for women's health issues. She also devoted much time working for the disadvantaged, particularly for the New York City Mission Society. She remained active and was an avid tennis and golf player for quite some time. Broaching age 90, the ever-glamorous actress appeared in a summer stock production of "Only a Kingdom" (2004) and continued to appear in occasional movie and television productions until developing dementia. Dina died on May 22, 2017, at age 93, survived by her third husband.- Actress
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An intelligent, slender leading lady of the 1960s and 70s, Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born in Hollywood, California, to Maria (Montemayor) and René Mimieux, an occasional movie extra. Her father was born in England, of French and German descent, and her mother was Mexican. While she was first persuaded to go into acting by a Hollywood publicist, her discovery for the screen can be attributed to the director Vincente Minnelli who saw her perform in a play and decided to cast her in his melodrama Home from the Hill (1960). Though Yvette's small role ended up on the cutting room floor, MGM producers were sufficiently impressed with her looks to sign her under a long term contract. Her first role of note, Platinum High School (1960), won her a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. She was then properly 'launched' with the part of Weena, the naive Eloi cave girl, in George Pal's version of The Time Machine (1960). This turned out to be one of the studio's biggest box office winners of 1960. That same year, Mimieux also played a carefree collegian in Where the Boys Are (1960), a teen comedy (with serious undertones) dealing with adolescent sexuality. Both of her performances were well received by critics, but also set the trend for the actress to become typed either as fragile or insecure characters, or as sex kittens.
After a two year hiatus, Mimieux gave a genuinely compelling performance as Clara Johnson, a retarded girl who captures the affections of a young Italian in Light in the Piazza (1962). Though disliking the film, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther described Clara as "played with sunshine radiance and rapturous grace." Having essayed more conventional heroines in Diamond Head (1962) (sister of blustering land baron), The Reward (1965) (a fugitive's girlfriend) and Dark of the Sun (1968) (girl caught up with mercenaries in the Congo), Mimieux began to concentrate on TV movies which gave her the opportunity to further expand her dramatic range. Her contract killer in Hit Lady (1974) and the unhinged stalker in Obsessive Love (1984) were based, respectively, on her own screenplay and story. Probably her last role of note was as the victim of a harrowing chain of events in Jackson County Jail (1976), a downbeat exploitation drama produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. In 1985, Mimieux had a recurring role in Berrenger's (1985), a glossy soap opera set in a luxurious department store. The series lasted just one season before being canceled. Though ultimately nominated for three Golden Globes, Mimieux came to bemoan the fact that scriptwriters of the period tended to depict women as 'one-dimensional'.
In 1992, Mimieux left the acting profession to form a partnership with Sara Shane (another ex-MGM contract player) in a Los Angeles-based enterprise called "Partners in Paradise", selling embroidered tapestries, bedspreads and pillows based on Haitian designs. She subsequently went on to find even more lucrative opportunities in real estate. In her spare time, Mimieux traveled extensively, painted and studied archaeology. At the time of her death at the age of 80, she was married to Howard F. Ruby, founder and chairman of Oakwood Worldwide, a large global corporation providing furnished apartments.The Reward (1965). '65- Actress
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In a world weary of war and dispirited by the ravages of the Great Depression, Hollywood at the turn of the 1940s concocted a wildly popular, effective lot of escapist fare (though often cheaply made) to regale the sick at heart worldwide. Universal Pictures, more often than not, led in producing such films. We know about the monster movies: wolf men, invisible men -- and invisible women too, for that matter. We know about Sherlock Holmes chasing not killer hounds in 1890 but chasing killer Nazis a half- century later. Such were among typical Universal "B" productions. Enter Maria de Santo Silas -- Maria Montez. This daughter of a Spanish diplomat traveled extensively after being educated in the Canary Islands and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish herself as a stage actress in Europe. In 1940 she found herself in New York City, a model. Her screen career began in 1941, with Universal casting her in bit parts. On account of her strikingly exotic looks and her exotic accent, the studio soon paired her with other "exotics" (Sabu and Turhan Bey), and usually with a more "home-style" hero (Jon Hall), in a series of low-budget adventures, filmed in Technicolor and situated in fantasy lands, with Montez herself often situated in revealing dress. With Montez threatened by all manner of nastiness -- from evil caliphs to man-eating sharks to her own cobra-worshipping twin sister (!) -- her pictures soon became immensely popular, even though she could not really act, could not dance and could not sing. Audiences flocked to see her films, just to witness the trials and endurance of an alluring beauty in distress (as well, perhaps, as to glimpse some scantily clad, beauteous flesh). The Depression having long since passed, the end of World War II meant also the end of flying carpets and sand dunes and deadly reptiles as potential subjects for attracting moviegoers. That bit of history, plus a bit of girth added to Montez's frame, led her and her husband, the actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, to abandon Hollywood for Europe, where she would appear in a handful of French and Italian adventure films. On 7 September 1951 Maria Montez was discovered drowned in her bath, possibly having first suffered a heart attack.Pirates of Monterey (1947). '47. Lead- Actress
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Born Helen Luella Koford on January 7, 1929, the Los Angeles, California native worked as a model before she made her film debut at age 11 in 20th Century-Fox's Maryland (1940). Through the 1940s, she worked under a variety of names (her own, Judy Ford and January Ford) before settling on Terry Moore in 1948. Placed under contract by Columbia Pictures, Moore was loaned out to RKO Radio Pictures for one of her most famous films, Mighty Joe Young (1949). By that time, Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn had changed her Swedish name Helen Koford to the Irish-sounding Terry Moore. In 1953, she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Paramount Pictures' Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). In the 1970s, she was in the news more than she was in films, asserting that she was the secret wife of the late billionaire Howard Hughes. She has starred in 77 feature films and listed among her leading men are such Hollywood legends including Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, Glenn Ford, Mickey Rooney and Robert Wagner. Since she was a pilot herself, Terry played a major role in preparing Leonardo DiCaprio for his portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004). In 1964, Terry published a memoir of her life with Howard Hughes, entitled 'The Beauty and the Billionaire'.- Actress
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Movita Castaneda was an American actress best known for having been the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. She was eight years older than Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio (1933) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), of which she was the last surviving cast member. She is the mother of Miko Castaneda Brando and Rebecca Brando Kotlizky.
Movita was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic women in American and Spanish language films in the 1930s, most notably as a Tahitian girl, Tehanni in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) alongside Clark Gable and Franchot Tone.
After appearing in a few more minor westerns and a few television parts, she met the actor Marlon Brando in the late 1950s, after his breakup with Anna Kashfi. They married in 1960, and they had two children. Brando played the role of Fletcher Christian in the 1962 remake of the 1935 film in which Movita had played a Tahitian girl, Tehanni. Brando then married his co-star Tarita Teriipaia.
Castaneda died on February 12, 2015 at the age of 98.
Six months later, Marlon's first wife, Anna Kashfi, died on August 16, 2015, at the age of 80.The Furies- Actress
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Actress Joy (Ann) Page (born Joy Cerrette Paige in Los Angeles on November 9, 1924) received her exotic good looks from her father, actor Don Alvarado (real name Jose Paige), who played dashing Latin-lover types in silent films. Her mother was actress Ann Boyar (1908-1990). Following her parents' divorce, Joy's mother married Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner.
It was this Warner Bros. association that jump-started Joy's acting career, with a minor role in Casablanca (1942). She played Bulgarian newlywed Annina Brandel, whose virtue is on the line because, if her young husband (Helmut Dantine) keeps losing all their money at Rick's roulette table, it is clearly implied (but never overtly stated, owing to the censorship of the time) that the only way they will get out of Casablanca is if she sleeps with Capt. Renaud (Claude Rains). Despite the meager role, she made quite an impression and it is still considered her best performance of the handful of films in which she's appeared.
Being Warner's stepdaughter should have garnered her many more opportunities than it apparently did. In 1945, she married actor William T. Orr, whose own career was on the wane. Her father made him a producer almost overnight and later put him in charge of Warner Bros. Television. Film roles were few and far between after her auspicious debut and, other than Bullfighter and the Lady (1951) (with Robert Stack, in which she played a sultry vixen whom Stack tries to impress), the films were thoroughly routine. In 1959, she appeared in the first season of Walt Disney's "Swamp Fox" series, then retired.
Divorced from Orr in 1970, their son, Gregory Orr is a screenwriter and documentary producer. Joy died on April 18, 2008, of complications arising from a stroke and pneumonia.[3]- Actress
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Maria Luisa Pierangeli and her twin sister Anna Maria were born in Sardinia, Italy. They were fraternal twins with different personalities as well. Anna Maria was dreamy and innocent; Maria Luisa was independent and studious. They moved to Rome in the late 1940s. In 1948 their lives changed when director Vittorio De Sica cast Anna in Tomorrow Is Too Late (1950). In 1950 the family moved to Hollywood, where Anna Maria changed her name to Pier Angeli.
Marisa was not interested in acting, but was cast by John Ford in What Price Glory (1952) starring James Cagney. She changed her last name to Pavan, the name of a Jewish officer her family had hidden from the Nazis during World War 2. Marisa signed a contract with Fox, but was relieved when it was broken. She wanted a wider choice of roles than her sister. Pavan's performance in The Rose Tattoo (1955) supporting Italian icon Anna Magnani, earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
She lost interest in Hollywood while filming Solomon and Sheba (1959). She remembered it as a bad experience, and not just because costar Tyrone Power died during the filming. Pavan turned her attention to television in the 1960s. She and husband Jean-Pierre Aumont toured America and Europe in plays and musicals, including "Gigi". Later in France, she returned to film.
As of 2018, Pavan lives in the South of France. Marisa is the founder and director of URMA (Unis pour la Recherche sur la Maladie d'Alzheimer), an organization she created to support research working to find treatments for Alzheimer's.- Actress
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Ruth Roman was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the youngest of three daughters of Lithuanian-Jewish parents Mary Pauline (Gold) and Abraham Roman. Her father, a carnival barker, died when she was a small child, forcing her mother to support the family by working as a waitress and cleaning woman. Ruth grew up in the poor tenement district of Boston, Massachusetts, where she went to school. However, she left school after just two years to pursue an acting career. Her chosen path proved to be strewn with obstacles: in New York, she obtained a job posing for stills for a crime magazine, but theatrical work eluded her. She then worked as a hat check girl at a night club before calling it quits and returning to Boston. There, she made ends meet as an usherette during the day while at night performing with the New England Repertory Company, her first steady acting job. She also studied drama and eventually graduated from the Bishop-Lee Theatre School.
Trying to get into films, Ruth unsuccessfully made the rounds of agents and producers for two years (1940-42), until a bit part as a WAVE came her way in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943). With $200 to her name, she purchased a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where she found shared accommodation with other aspiring starlets, naming it, optimistically, 'the House of the Seven Garbos'. After a screen test with Warner Brothers failed to result in a contract, Ruth had another run of six hard years playing bit parts, many of them uncredited, some ending up on the cutting room floor. A sole speaking part of consequence was in the titular role of Jungle Queen (1945), a Universal serial (after subsequent acting lessons, Ruth was aghast when the serial was rereleased in 1951).
Ruth finally got her big break when producer Dore Schary cast her (against character, as a murderess) in the RKO thriller The Window (1949). That same year, she successfully auditioned for Stanley Kramer's boxing drama Champion (1949) as the dependable wife of the fighter (Kirk Douglas). After this turning point in her life, the shapely, smoky-voiced brunette secured a contract with Warner Brothers. During the next phase of her career, she moved effortlessly from glamorous and seductive to demure and wholesome in films opposite stars like James Stewart, Errol Flynn, and Gary Cooper. Look Magazine billed her as the 'Big Time Movie Personality of 1950', and by the following year she was receiving some 500 fan letters per week.
While many of her leads were in westerns (albeit mostly A-grade ones), Ruth was somewhat more memorable in support of Farley Granger (as his upper-crust lover and the raison d'etre for the planned murder of his wife) in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). Another offbeat role was as a gangster's moll in the British-made updated adaptation of Shakespeare's Joe MacBeth (1955). As Lily, she is the power behind angst-ridden Paul Douglas ('Joe'), whom she easily manipulates to do her bidding. In The Bottom of the Bottle (1956), she was at her dependable best as the supportive wife of lawyer Joseph Cotten. Arguably, her last noteworthy performance on the big screen was in Alexander Singer's romance/drama Love Has Many Faces (1965).
By the 1960s, Ruth had made the transition to middle-aged character parts and began to appear mostly on television in shows like The Outer Limits (1963), Mannix (1967), Gunsmoke (1955), and (in a recurring role) in The Long, Hot Summer (1965). She also toured nationally with theatrical productions of "Plaza Suite", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", and "Two for the Seesaw". For the actress, who was said to disdain the trimmings of Hollywood stardom, real-life drama came when she and her son counted among the 760 survivors of the sinking of the luxury cruise liner 'Andrea Doria' in 1956. In September 1967, she jumped from her burning car but still managed to make her scheduled performance in "Beekman Place" at the Ivanhoe Theatre. Ruth died in September 1999 at her home in Laguna Beach, aged 76.- Actress
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Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in Canada but moved to California when he found employment there. The family was well-to-do and although Jane was the only girl among four brothers, her mother saw to it that she took piano lessons. In addition to music, Jane was interested in drama much as her mother had been and participated in high school stage productions. Upon graduation, Jane took a job as a receptionist for a doctor who specialized in foot disorders. Although she had originally planned on being a designer, her father died, and she had to go to work to help the family. Jane modeled on the side and was very much sought-after especially because of her figure.
She managed to save enough money to go to drama school, with the urging of her mother. She was signed by Howard Hughes for his production of The Outlaw (1943) in 1941, the film that was to make Jane famous. The film was not a classic by any means but was geared through its marketing to show off Jane's ample physical assets rather than acting abilities. Although the film was made in 1941, it was not released until two years later and then only on a limited basis due to the way the film portrayed Jane's assets. It was hard for the flick to pass the censorship board. Finally, the film gained general release in 1946. The film was a smash at the box office.
Jane did not make another film until 1945 when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow (1946). She had signed a seven-year contract with Hughes, and it seemed the only films he would put her in were those that displayed Jane in a very flattering light due to her body. Films such as His Kind of Woman (1951) and The Las Vegas Story (1952) did nothing to highlight her true acting abilities. The pinnacle of her career was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Dorothy Shaw, with Marilyn Monroe. This film showed Jane's comedic side very well. Jane did continue to make films throughout the 1950s, but the films were at times not up to par, particularly with Jane's talents being wasted in forgettable movies to show off her sexy side. Films such as Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) did do Jane's justice and were able to show exactly the fine actress she was.
After The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) (a flop), Jane took a hiatus from films, to dabble a little in television, returning in 1964 to film Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Unfortunately, the roles were not there anymore as Jane appeared in only four pictures during the entire decade of the 1960s. Her last film of the decade was The Born Losers (1967). After three more years away from the big screen, she returned to make one last film called Darker Than Amber (1970). Her last play before the public was in the 1970s when Jane was a spokesperson for Playtex bras. Had Jane not been wasted during the Hughes years, she could have been a bigger actress than what she was allowed to show. Jane Russell died at age 89 of respiratory failure on February 28, 2011, in Santa Maria, California.- Dominique Sanda was born in 1951, in Paris, France. When she was 16, she left her upper-class family and married, but divorced two years later. She found a temporary job as a Vogue model, when Robert Bresson gave her the starring part in his absorbing drama A Gentle Woman (1969); she was quite impressive as a young woman who commits suicide when she finds out that her husband is unable to love her for what she really is. She was then offered the female lead in Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), as the provocative daughter of a rich Jewish family. Afterwards, she worked with Bernardo Bertolucci on the much-discussed The Conformist (1970), as the sensual wife of an anti-fascist professor, and co-starred with Paul Newman in John Huston's spy thriller, The MacKintosh Man (1973). She worked again with Bertolucci in the epic, 1900 (1976), and won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Prize for her performance in Mauro Bolognini's The Inheritance (1976), as an Italian patriarch's daughter-in-law. She gave one more unforgettable performance in Jacques Demy's original musical, A Room in Town (1982), as a femme fatale. Today, in her seventies, she is still busy, appearing in international films and TV series.Cabo Blanco (1980). '80
- Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married director Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there. Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after she was discovered by director Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in his film Anthony Adverse (1936); she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred opposite Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard's most-remembered role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by Bette Davis' character in The Letter (1940). Sondergaard continued her career rise in films such as Juarez (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Black Cat (1941), and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the 1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86.Juarez
- A flashy, aggressive, cold and calculating villainess and eternally hopeless meddler on a number of daytime soap operas, Louise Sorel has given her opulent, show-stopping characters major doses of humor and grit that have allowed her to become one of daytime's more popular figures for over six decades.
Of Jewish heritage, Louise, whose roots are in theatre, was born on August 6, 1940 in Los Angeles to entertainment professionals. Studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, she made her Broadway debut playing a teenager in the 1961 comedy "Take Her, She's Mine" starring Art Carney and also had subsequent roles in "Lorenzo" (1963) and "Man and Boy" (1963). Her initial interest obviously was sparked by her actress/concert pianist mother Jeanne Sorel, and father Albert J. Cohen, who produced films in the 1940s and 1950s. Louise went on to co-star on Broadway with Rita Moreno in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" in 1964 and appeared with George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst as Princess Alais in the 1967 Bucks County Playhouse production of "The Lion in Winter."
Given a bit part (billed as Jacqueline Sorel) in the exploitation teen film Eighteen and Anxious (1957), Louise, in 1964, married comic actor Herb Edelman, best known for his recurring role of Bea Arthur's ex husband Stan in The Golden Girls (1985). Around this time, she began setting her sights on TV drama, appearing on various dramatic shows including "Dr. Kildare," "The Defenders," "The Trials of O'Brien," "Route 66," "The Rat Patrol," "The Virginian," "Run for Your Life," "Star Trek," "The Big Valley," "The Fugitive," "Night Gallery," "The Bold Ones," "Banacek," "Hawaii Five-0," "Owen Marshall," "Kojak," "Hart to Hart," "The Incredible Hulk," "Ironside" and several episodes of "Medical Center," as well as a recurring part on the short-lived nighttime soap opera The Survivors (1969) starring Lana Turner and George Hamilton. In a change of pace, Louise turned to comedy as Don Rickles' wife on his poorly-received series The Don Rickles Show (1972).
Though she divorced Edelman in 1972, Louise nevertheless co-starred with him again in the failed sitcom Ladies' Man (1980). She met second husband actor Ken Howard in 1972 while appearing with him in a Philadelphia stage production of "Volpone." They married a year later but divorced a couple of years later in 1975.
Appearing in support in the films Plaza Suite (1971), Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), Where the Boys Are (1984), and Crimes of Passion (1984), Louise moved quite steadily ahead not only with a regular role in the short-lived comedy series Ladies' Man (1980), but with co-star/featured roles in the TV movies The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped (1974), The Mark of Zorro (1974), When Every Day Was the Fourth of July (1978), Mazes and Monsters (1982), Sunset Limousine (1983) and A Masterpiece of Murder (1986).
Various daytime soap operas reinvigorated Louise's career tenfold in the late 1980s. She began her road to sudsy infamy in 1984 as the eccentric archvillainess Augusta Lockridge for the entire run of Santa Barbara (1984). From there she was given recurring roles as Judith Sanders on One Life to Live (1968) and as Donatella Stewart Port Charles (1997). In 1992, Louise joined the cast of Days of Our Lives (1965) as the manipulative Vivian Alamain. By the time she left in 2000, she had won five Soap Opera Digest Awards.
More recently, Louise has had devilish fun in the quirky soap Passions (1999) and in a recurring role on the political drama Beacon Hill (2014).The Mark of Zorro (1974). '74. - Actress
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Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the period from 1927 until 1964, after which she appeared on television until 1986. It was a career that lasted for 59 years.
Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, to working class parents Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens. Her father, from Massachusetts, had English ancestry, and her Canadian mother, from Nova Scotia, was of Scottish and Irish descent. Stanwyck went to work at the local telephone company for fourteen dollars a week, but she had the urge (a dream--that was all it was) somehow to enter show business. When not working, she pounded the pavement in search of dancing jobs. The persistence paid off. Barbara was hired as a chorus girl for the princely sum of $40 a week, much better than the wages she was getting from the phone company. She was seventeen, and was going to make the most of the opportunity that had been given her.
In 1928 Barbara moved to Hollywood, where she was to start one of the most lucrative careers filmdom had ever seen. She was an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (1932) and Stella Dallas (1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (1944), one of her best films, also starring Fred MacMurray (as you have never seen him before). She also excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (1939) and The Lady Eve (1941). Another genre she excelled in was westerns, Union Pacific (1939) being one of her first and TV's The Big Valley (1965) (her most memorable role) being her last. In 1983, she played in the ABC hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the eye of the public. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson.
Barbara was considered a gem to work with for her serious but easygoing attitude on the set. She worked hard at being an actress, and she never allowed her star quality to go to her head. She was nominated for four Academy Awards, though she never won. She turned in magnificent performances for all the roles she was nominated for, but the "powers that be" always awarded the Oscar to someone else. However, in 1982 she was awarded an honorary Academy Award for "superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting." Sadly, Barbara died on January 20, 1990, leaving 93 movies and a host of TV appearances as her legacy to us.- Actress
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The youngest of five children, and born with the drab, unlikely name of Josephine Cottle on April 5, 1922, this pleasantly appealing, Texas-born, auburn-haired beauty was only seventeen months old when her father, William, passed away. The family moved from Bloomington (her home town) to McDade (between Austin and Houston), where her mother, Minnie, made ends meet as a seamstress and milliner. The family eventually settled in Houston, where Gale took dance and ice skating lessons, developed a strong interest in acting, and performed in high school dramatics. Encouraged by her teachers, Gale by chance entered and was chosen the winner of a local radio talent contest called Jesse L. Lasky's "Gateway to Hollywood" in 1939. This took her and her mother to Hollywood, where she captured the national contest title.
Handed the more exciting stage moniker of "Gale Storm", she was soon put under contract to RKO Pictures. Although she was dropped by the studio after only six months, she had established herself enough to find work elsewhere, including at Monogram and Universal. Appearing in a number of "B" musicals, mysteries and westerns, her wholesome, open-faced prettiness made her a natural for filming. The programmers, however, that she co-starred in were hardly the talk of the town. Making her inauspicious debut with Tom Brown's School Days (1940), her '40s movies bore such dubious titles as Let's Go Collegiate (1941), Freckles Comes Home (1942), Revenge of the Zombies (1943), Sunbonnet Sue (1945), Swing Parade of 1946 (1946), and Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950), indicating the difficulty of finding material worthy of her talent. Arguably, her better movies include the family Christmas tale It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), which co-starred Don DeFore; the overlooked western comedy The Dude Goes West (1948) opposite Eddie Albert; and the film noir piece The Underworld Story (1950) with Dan Duryea.
After years of toiling in films, Gale finally turned things around at age 30 by transplanting herself to the small screen. Her very first TV series, My Little Margie (1952), which was only supposed to be a summer replacement series for I Love Lucy (1951), became one of the most watched sitcoms in the early '50s while showing up in syndicated reruns for decades. Co-starring the popular film star Charles Farrell as her amiable dad, Gale's warmth and ingratiating style suited TV to a tee, making her one of the most popular light comediennes of the time. She segued directly into her second hit series as a cruise ship director in The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), which was better known as "Oh! Susannah" after it went into syndication. Co-starring woebegone Zasu Pitts as the ship's manicurist and her "Ethel Mertz" counterpart, this show lasted a season longer than her first.
In the midst of all this, the (gasp!) thirty-something star dared to launch her own Las Vegas nightclub and pop recording careers. Always looking much younger than she was, she produced a number of Billboard chart makers, including "I Hear You Knocking" (her first hit), "Memories Are Made of This", "Ivory Tower" and her own cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Her most successful song of the decade was "Dark Moon", which peaked at #4.
Gale's film career took a sharp decline following the demise of her second series in 1960. Most of her focus was placed modestly on the summer stock or dinner theater circuit, doing a revolving door of tailor-made comedies and musicals such as "Cactus Flower", "Forty Carats", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "South Pacific". She finally appeared again on TV in a The Love Boat (1977) segment in 1979 after nearly a two-decade absence. It was later revealed in Gale's candid autobiography "I Ain't Down Yet" (1981) and on the talk show circuit that the disappearance was triggered by a particularly vicious battle with alcohol. Years later, Gale became an outspoken and committed lecturer, helping to remove the stigma attached to such a disease, particularly as it applied to women.
Fully recovered, she has been widowed twice (by actor Lee Bonnell in 1986 and Paul Masterson in 1996). Incredibly accommodating over the years, Gale has appeared on the nostalgia and film festival circuits to the delight of her many fans. She died on June 27, 2009, at a Danville, California convalescent home at age 87.- Actress
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Norma Talmadge was born on May 26, 1895, in Jersey City, New Jersey. The daughter of an unemployed alcoholic and his wife, Norma did not have the idyllic childhood that most of us yearn for. Her father left the family on Christmas Day and his wife and three daughters had to fend for themselves. Her mother, Peggy, took in laundry to help make ends meet. By the time Norma was 14 she took up modeling. She was successful enough that she attracted the attention of studio chiefs in New York City (where the Vitagraph studio was located at the time). Norma landed a small role in The Household Pest (1910). With her mother's prodding, she landed other small roles with the studio in 1910, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910), Love of Chrysanthemum (1910), A Dixie Mother (1910) and A Broken Spell (1910). By 1911 she was improving as an actress, so much so that she landed a good part in A Tale of Two Cities (1911). By 1913 she was Vitagraph's most promising young actress. In August of 1915 Norma and her mother left for California and the promise of success in the fledgling film industry there. Her first film in Hollywood was Captivating Mary Carstairs (1915). The film was not only a flop but the studio that made it, National Pictures, went out of business.
During this time her sister, Constance Talmadge, was working for legendary director D.W. Griffith. Constance managed to get Norma a contract with Griffith's company. Over the following eight months Norma made seven feature films and a few shorts. After the contract ran out, the family returned to the East Coast. In 1916 she met and married producer and businessman Joseph M. Schenck. With his backing they formed their own production company and turned out a number of films, the first of which was Panthea (1917). It was a tremendous hit, as was Norma. In 1920 the production company moved to Hollywood, where the big hits of the day were being produced. Her company produced hits such as The Wonderful Thing (1921), The Eternal Flame (1922) and The Song of Love (1923).
By 1928 Norma's popularity had begun to fade. Her film The Woman Disputed (1928) was a flop at the box-office. Her final film was Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930). By that time "talkies" were all the rage, but Norma's voice did not lend itself to sound and she was out of work. She divorced Schenck and married George Jessel. Jessel had his own radio show and Norma was added to the cast to help its sagging ratings. She thought this might be the vehicle by which she would revive her stalled film career, but the show continued its decline and was ultimately canceled, and with it the hopes of rebuilding her shattered career. She was finished for good.
She divorced Jessel in 1939 and married Dr. Carvel James in 1946. She remained with him until she died of a stroke on Christmas Eve of 1957 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was 62 and had been in a phenomenal 250+ motion pictures.Camille (1926), '26. Lead
The Dove (1927), '27. Lead
The Woman Disputed (1928), '28. Lead
New York Nights (1929), '29. Lead- Lilyan Tashman was born on October 23, 1896 in Brooklyn, New York to Rose (Cook) from Germany and Morris Tashman from Bialystock, Poland. After toying with stage work, Lilyan made her film debut with Experience (1921), followed the next year by Head Over Heels (1922) (this was at a time when some studios and their performers were turning out one film per week. She had no other offers for 1923, but her constant rounds of the casting offices finally did some good. In 1924 she appeared in no fewer than 6 films. For a while she averaged 7 films per year. She was one of relatively few performers who easily made the transition to the sound era, In 1934 she finished filming Frankie and Johnnie (1936) and went into a New York City hospital to have some tumors removed; she died there on March 21, 1934 at age 37. The film was released two years after her death.Camille
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Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a school production which set her on the path to acting. When she was in high school Jeanne was asked to take a screen test to appear in a film by Orson Welles. Unfortunately, she didn't get the part, but it did set her sights on being a movie actress.
After high school, Jeanne enrolled at UCLA to study drama. At the age of 18, Jeanne won a bit part in Fox Studio's film entitled The Gang's All Here (1943) and a small contract. Her next film saw Jeanne elevated to a more substantial part in Home in Indiana (1944) the following year, which was filmed in neighboring Kentucky. The movie was an unquestionable hit. On the strength of that box-office success, Jeanne was given a raise and star billing, as Maggie Preston, in the next film of 1944, In the Meantime, Darling (1944). Unfortunately, the critics not only roasted the film, but singled out Jeanne's performance in particular. She rebounded nicely in her last film of the year, Winged Victory (1944). The audiences loved it and the film was profitable.
In 1945, Jeanne was cast in State Fair (1945) as Margie Frake who travels to the fair and falls in love with a reporter played by Dana Andrews. Now, Jeanne got a bigger contract and more recognition. Later that year, Jeanne married Paul Brooks on New Year's Eve. Although her mother wasn't supportive of the marriage, the union lasted until her husband's death and produced seven children. The year 1947 was an off year for Jeanne, as she took time off to bear the Brooks' first child.
In 1949, Jeanne appeared in three films, A Letter to Three Wives (1949), The Fan (1949), and Pinky (1949). It was this latter film which garnered her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her role as Pinky Johnson, a nurse who sets up a clinic in the Deep South. She lost to Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress (1949). Jeanne left Fox after filming Vicki (1953) in 1953, with Jean Peters. She had made 23 films for the studio that started her career, but she needed a well-deserved change. As with any good artist, Jeanne wanted to expand her range instead of playing the girl-next-door types.
She went briefly to Warner Brothers for the filming of Duel in the Jungle (1954) in 1954. The film was lukewarm at best. Jeanne, then, signed a contract, that same year, with Universal Studios with promises of better, high profile roles. She went into production in the film Man Without a Star (1955) which was a hit with audiences and critics. After The Joker Is Wild (1957) in 1957, Jeanne took time off for her family and to appear in a few television programs. She returned, briefly, to film in Guns of the Timberland (1960) in 1960. The films were sporadic after that. In 1967, she appeared in a low-budget suspense yarn called Hot Rods to Hell (1966). Her final film was as Clara Shaw in 1972's Skyjacked (1972).
Jeanne died of a heart attack in Santa Barbara, California, on December 14, 2003. Her husband Paul Brooks had died two months earlier.2...Guns of the Timberland (1960). '60- Actress
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Claire Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Fifth Avenue merchant-tailor Noel Wemlinger, an immigrant Frenchman from Paris who lost his business during the Depression, and his Belfast-born wife, Benjamina, known as "Betty". Young Claire's interest in acting began when she was 11 years old. She attended high school in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York. After starting classes at Columbia University, she spent six months at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, also in New York. Her adult acting experience began in the late 1920s in several stock productions; she appeared with Robert Henderson's Repertory Players in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930. That same year, aged 20, she signed with Warner Bros. Not too far from her home haunts was Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, the last and best of the early sound process studios, which had been acquired by Warner Bros. in 1925 to become Vitaphone. Trevor appeared in several of the nearly 2000 shorts cranked out by the studio between 1926 and 1930. Then she was sent west to do ten weeks of stock productions with other contract players in St. Louis. In 1931 she did summer stock with the Hampton Players in Southampton, Long Island. Finally, she debuted on Broadway in 1932 in "Whistling in the Dark".
Trevor moved to the silver screen, debuting in the western Life in the Raw (1933). There would be three more films (one more western) that year and six or more through the 1930s. Although she had been typed playing gun molls and hard-case women of the world, she displayed her already considerable versatility in these early films, often playing competent, take-charge professional women as well as "shady" ladies. There was a disappointed-pout-vulnerability in her face and that famous slightly New York-burred voice that cracked with a little cry when heightened by emotion that quickly revealed an unusual and sensitive performer. Many of her early films were "B" potboilers, but she worked with Spencer Tracy on several occasions, notably Dante's Inferno (1935).
Hollywood finally took notice of her talents by nominating her for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her standout performance as a slum girl forced by poverty into prostitution in Dead End (1937), opposite Humphrey Bogart. That same year she did the radio drama "Big Town" with Edward G. Robinson, then teamed with he and Bogart again for the slightly hokey but entertaining The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938). Director John Ford tapped her for his first big sound Western film, Stagecoach (1939), the film that made a star of John Wayne. All her abilities to bring complexity to a character showed in her kicked-around dance hall girl "Dallas", one of the great early female roles. She and Wayne were electric, and they were paired in three more films during their careers.
In the 1940s, Trevor began appearing in the genre that brought her to true stardom: "film noir". She started in a big way as killer Ruth Dillon in Street of Chance (1942) with Burgess Meredith. She was equally convincing as the more complex but nonetheless two-faced Mrs. Grayle in the Philip Marlowe vehicle Murder, My Sweet (1944). However, she was something very different and quite extraordinary as washed-up, hopelessly alcoholic former nightclub singer and moll Gaye Dawn in Key Largo (1948), for which she won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, again working with Bogart and Robinson. Her pitiful rendition of the torch song "Moanin' Low", which her character was forced to sing, humiliatingly, for the sadistic crime boss played by Robinson (to whom she is, figuratively speaking, permanently tethered) in exchange for a desperately needed drink. There were more quality movies and an additional Academy nomination (The High and the Mighty (1954)) into the 1950s,, but she also was doing work on stage and in television.
She was enthusiastic about live TV and appeared on several famous shows by the mid-1950s. She won an Emmy for Best Live Television Performance by an Actress as the flighty wife of Fredric March in NBC's Dodsworth (1956). She alternated her career among film, stage and TV roles. As she aged she easily transitioned into "distinguished matron" and mother roles, one of her most unusual ones being the murderous Ma Barker in Ma Barker and Her Boys (1959). Her final film role was as Sally Field's mother in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982).
Trevor and her third husband, producer Milton H. Bren, had long been residents of tony Newport Beach, California, to which they returned when she finally retired from screen work. However, she did maintain an active interest in stage work, and became associated with the University of California-Irvine's School of Arts. She and her husband contributed some $10 million to further its development for the visual and performing arts (that included three endowed professorships). After her passing in April 2000 at 90 years of age, the University renamed the school The Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Her presence on the UCI campus is in more than spirit alone. She donated her Oscar and her Emmy to UCI; both are on display in the arts plaza at the campus theatre that bears her name.Elinor Norton (1934). '34. Lead- Actress
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Lana Turner had an acting ability that belied the "Sweater Girl" image MGM thrust upon her, and even many of her directors admitted that they knew she was capable of greatness (check out The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)). Unfortunately, her private life sometimes overshadowed her professional accomplishments.
Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Francis Turner in Wallace, Idaho. There is some discrepancy as to whether her birth date is February 8, 1920 or 1921. Lana herself said in her autobiography that she was one year younger (1921) than the records showed, but then this was a time where women, especially actresses, tended to "fib" a bit about their age. Most sources agree that 1920 is the correct year of birth. Her parents were Mildred Frances (Cowan) and John Virgil Turner, a miner, both still in their teens when she was born. In 1929, her father was murdered and it was shortly thereafter her mother moved her and the family to California where jobs were "plentiful". Once she matured into a beautiful young woman, she went after something that would last forever: stardom. She wasn't found at a drug store counter, like some would have you believe, but that legend persists. She pounded the pavement as other would-be actors and actresses have done, are doing and will continue to do in search of movie roles.
In 1937, Lana entered the movie world, at 17, with small parts in They Won't Forget (1937), The Great Garrick (1937) and A Star Is Born (1937). These films didn't bring her a lot of notoriety, but it was a start. In 1938 she had another small part in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) starring Mickey Rooney. It was this film that made young men's hearts all over America flutter at the sight of this alluring and provocative young woman--known as the "Sweater Girl"--and one look at that film could make you understand why: she was one of the most spectacularly beautiful newcomers to grace the screen in years. By the 1940s Lana was firmly entrenched in the film business. She had good roles in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Somewhere I'll Find You (1942) and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). If her career was progressing smoothly, however, her private life was turning into a train wreck, keeping her in the news in a way no one would have wanted.
Without a doubt her private life was a threat to her public career. She was married eight times, twice to Stephen Crane. She also married Ronald Dante, Robert Eaton, Fred May, Lex Barker, Henry Topping and bandleader Artie Shaw. She also battled alcoholism. In yet another scandal, her daughter by Crane, Cheryl Crane, fatally stabbed Lana's boyfriend, gangster Johnny Stompanato, in 1958. It was a case that would have rivaled the O.J. Simpson murder case. Cheryl was acquitted of the murder charge, with the jury finding that she had been protecting her mother from Stompanato, who was savagely beating her, and ruled it justifiable homicide. These and other incidents interfered with Lana's career, but she persevered. The release of Imitation of Life (1959), a remake of a 1934 film (Imitation of Life (1934)), was Lana's comeback vehicle. Her performance as Lora Meredith was flawless as an actress struggling to make it in show business with a young daughter, her housekeeper and the housekeeper's rebellious daughter. The film was a box-office success and proved beyond a doubt that Lana had not lost her edge.
By the 1960s, however, fewer roles were coming her way with the rise of new and younger stars. She still managed to turn in memorable performances in such films as Portrait in Black (1960) and Bachelor in Paradise (1961). By the next decade the roles were coming in at a trickle. Her last appearance in a big-screen production was in Witches' Brew (1980). Her final film work came in the acclaimed TV series Falcon Crest (1981) in which she played Jacqueline Perrault from 1982-1983. After all those years as a sex symbol, nothing had changed--Lana was still as beautiful as ever.
She died on June 25, 1995, in Culver City, California, after a long bout with cancer. She was 74 years old.- Actress
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A bizarre, gloriously one-of-a-kind Hollywood gypsy and self-affirmed outcast, San Francisco-born actress Susan Tyrrell (born Susan Jillian Creamer) was a teenager when she made her stage debut in "Time Out for Ginger" in 1962. A product of the entertainment industry, her father was a top agent at one time with the William Morris firm. She built up her resumé in summer stock and regional plays usually cast in standard ingénue roles. Her nascent career took an abrupt shift in direction, however, when, as a member of New York's Lincoln Repertory Company, she was cast in an array of seamy, salty-tongued, highly dysfunctional character parts. After striking performances on and off Broadway in such fare as "The Rimers of Eldritch" (1967), "A Cry of Players" (1968), "The Time of Your Life" (1969) and "Camino Real" (1970) Hollywood took keen notice of this special talent and, in the early 1970s, began to cast her in their more offbeat projects.
In only her fourth film, Susan earned an Academy Award nomination for her powerhouse portrayal of a cynical, low-life boozer girlfriend opposite Stacy Keach's has-been boxer in John Huston's potent but highly depressing Fat City (1972). Pulling out all the stops after this, she continued to show her fearless attraction toward the dark side throughout the late 1970s with flashy roles in lesser quality material such as The Killer Inside Me (1976), Andy Warhol's Bad (1977), Islands in the Stream (1977), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), and September 30, 1955 (1977) as various harridans and grotesques. The 1980s proved no different with manic behavior on full display in Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981), Forbidden Zone (1980), Liar's Moon (1981), Fast-Walking (1982), Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981), Big Top Pee-wee (1988) and underground director John Waters' more mainstream film Cry-Baby (1990), many of which have now achieved cult status.
Toned down a bit for TV, she nevertheless demonstrated in both the one-season series Open All Night (1981) and on MacGruder and Loud (1985) that she wasn't about to change. When her TV and movie career started to simmer down, the Los Angeles-based actress opted for the avant-garde stage with such productions as "Why Hannah's Skirt Won't Stay Down" (1986), "Landscape of the Body" (1987), "The Geography of Luck" (1989) and her trenchant one-woman piece "My Rotten Life: A Bitter Operetta" (1989), which she performed over a long period of time.
Real-life tragedy struck in late April of 2000 when Susan contracted a near-fatal illness. Both of her legs had to be amputated below the knee as a result of multiple blood clots due to a rare blood disease -- thrombocythemia. Never say die, she valiantly tried to maintain a positive outlook, and continued to perform on occasion while going through rehabilitation. She also spent time writing and painting before passing away on June 16, 2012. A wild, boisterous trooper, she was the definitive underground raconteur for those who desired the more sordid side of Hollywood.- Actress
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Isela Vega was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico on November 5, 1939. The young beauty was named Princess of the 1957 Carnaval in Hermosillo, and parlayed that into work as a model. She also had some success as a singer before turning to acting. (Her composition "Bennie's Song" was used in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), which features her singing.)
She made her film debut in the Pedro Armendáriz movie Verano violento (1960). From her beginning in small roles in Mexican films in the early 1960s, her career grew and Isela became very popular as a sex symbol in the late 1960s. (She would appear nude in a multi-page feature in Playboy Magazine's July 1974 issue.) In addition to her Mexican films, TV shows, and stage appearances, she also worked in a number of foreign films, most famously in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), for which she received a Best Actress Ariel Award nomination in 1975. (Previously, Vega had been nominated for a Best Actress Ariel for her turn in Las reglas del juego (1971) in 1972.) She had made her United States film debut the year previously in The Deadly Trackers (1973) (the U.S.-Mexico horror cheapie The Fear Chamber (1968) doesn't really count) and continued to appear occasionally in small parts in American films and TV until the late 1990s.
In addition to her work as an actress, Vega produced, wrote and directed Lovers of the Lord of the Night (1986), and has written and produced other films. She has a son whose father is Alberto Vázquez, and a daughter (Shaula, an actress) whose father is Jorge Luke.Barbarosa (1982). '82- Actress
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Senta Berger was born in 1941 in Vienna, Austria to her father Josef Berger who was a musician and her mother Therese Berger, a school teacher. Senta and her father performed together when she was just four years old. She sang and her dad played the piano. At five years old, she took ballet lessons and at 14, Berger turned to acting taking private lessons. She left her private school education at 16. In 1957, Berger was discovered by famous director Willi Forst and played a small role in a film. She was accepted to the Max Reinhardt Seminar. In 1958, Berger was the youngest member at the Vienna Theater in Josefstadt. Director Bernhard Wicki and producer Artur Brauner sought after Senta producing the film The Good Soldier, by Heinz Rühmann. It succeeded and Brauner used her in several films. In 1962, Berger moved to Hollywood and starred with Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Richard Harris, George Hamilton, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Yul Brynner. In 1969 she returned to Europe and was seen during the 1970's in Italian productions of various genres. In 1967, she returned to the silver screen with an Alain Delon film. In 1968, Berger played in the three-part thriller Babeck by Herbert Reinecker. 1970 was her debut as Producer of her own company. As director she put her husband's film before the camera. Further, international successful of films of her production company have included The White Rose, The Nasty Girl and Mother Courage. In addition, Berger expanded her European career in France and Italy. The birth of her two sons, Simon (b. 1972) and Luca (b. 1979) prompted Berger to turn back to the theater. In 1985/86, she managed her TV comeback in front of the German-speaking audience in the television series Kir Royal co-starring with Franz Xaver Kroetz , Dieter Hildebrandt and Billie Zöckler. Many TV series guest appearances followed.1...The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966). '66. Danger grows Wild.- Actress
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Lupe Velez was born on July 18, 1908, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, as Maria Guadalupe Villalobos Velez. She was sent to Texas at the age of 13 to live in a convent. She later admitted that she wasn't much of a student because she was so rambunctious. She had planned to become a champion roller skater, but that would change. Life was hard for her family, and Lupe returned to Mexico to help them out financially. She worked as a salesgirl for a department store for the princely sum of $4 a week. Every week she would turn most of her salary over to her mother, but she kept a little for herself so she could take dancing lessons. With her mature shape and grand personality, she thought she could make a try at show business, which she figured was a lot more glamorous than dancing or working as a salesclerk. In 1924 Lupe started her show business career on the Mexican stage and wowed audiences with her natural beauty and talent. By 1927 she had emigrated to Hollywood, where she was discovered by Hal Roach, who cast her in a comedy with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Douglas Fairbanks then cast her in his feature film The Gaucho (1927) with himself and wife Mary Pickford. Lupe played dramatic roles for five years before she switched to comedy. In 1933 she played the lead role of Pepper in Hot Pepper (1933). This film showcased her comedic talents and helped her to show the world her vital personality. She was delightful. In 1934 Lupe appeared in three fine comedies: Strictly Dynamite (1934), Palooka (1934) and Laughing Boy (1934). By now her popularity was such that a series of "Mexican Spitfire" films were written around her. She portrayed Carmelita Lindsay in Mexican Spitfire (1939), Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940), The Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941) and Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (1943), among others. Audiences loved her in these madcap adventures, but it seemed at times that she was better known for her stormy love affairs. She married one of her lovers, Johnny Weissmuller, but the marriage only lasted five years and was filled with battles. Lupe certainly did live up to her nickname. She had a failed romance with Gary Cooper, who never wanted to wed her. By 1943 her career was waning. She went to Mexico in the hopes of jump-starting her career. She gained her best reviews yet in the Mexican version of Naná (1944). Bolstered by the success of that movie, Lupe returned to the US, where she starred in her final film as Pepita Zorita, Ladies' Day (1943). There were to be no others. On December 13, 1944, tired of yet another failed romance, with a part-time actor named Harald Maresch, and pregnant with his child, Lupe committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. She was only 36 years old.- Actress
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Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part in Night After Night (1932), her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong (1933) was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee (1940) with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette (1977), which also came from a play. She died on November 22, 1980.She Done Him Wrong (1933). '33. Lead- Actress
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Auburn-haired Arleen Whelan was born in Salt Lake City, but spent her early childhood in Pueblo, Colorado, where she attended High School. Her father was an electrician, who, upon opening his own electrical store in Los Angeles, moved the family westward. Arleen was enrolled in a beauty college and learned hairdressing and manicure, soon finding work for $18 a week in a salon on Hollywood Boulevard. There, she was 'discovered' by director H. Bruce Humberstone, who dropped in for a shave and ended up suggesting her name, as a likely candidate for movie stardom to Darryl F. Zanuck. In May 1937, she was signed to a seven-year contract by 20th Century Fox, her salary now between $50 and $300 per week.
Within a year, she had her first co-starring assignment, opposite Warner Baxter in Kidnapped (1938) . Next, she landed the highly prized role of pioneer woman Hannah Clay in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and, by 1942, Arleen also made the jump to Broadway, appearing as one of "The Doughgirls" (the other two were Virginia Field and Doris Nolan). She was not cast in the 1944 film version, however - that part going to Jane Wyman. Still, Hollywood's publicity machine went into full gear, making the most out of Arleen's affairs with actors Richard Greene and Tyrone Power. In 1945, Arleen was voted 'the most perfect all-over beauty' by a panel of magazine illustrators, but her career was already on the wane. Out of contract, and dissatisfied with her roles thus far, Arleen left Hollywood to live with her New York-based second husband, a Paramount executive. Her stay was short-lived, as was her marriage.
There were still a couple of good screen roles to come for Arleen as a free-lance actress. She popped up as busybody Valerie Shepherd in the political satire The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947), a performance critic Bosley Crowther described as 'cute' (December 27, New York Times). There was also another good lead, opposite Charles Winninger in director John Ford's own favourite among his films, The Sun Shines Bright (1953). For the remainder, at least, Arleen lent some glamour to the B-western she made for Republic and for Albert C. Gannaway's independent production company. After 1957, one of Hollywood's best-looking redheads called it a day and left the screen to improve her already impressive golf handicap.Gateway (1938). '38- Actress
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Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift of very humble beginnings on August 18, 1920 (some sources list 1922) in East St. Louis, Illinois. Her mother, Rose Winter, was born in Missouri, to Austrian Jewish parents, and her father, Jonas Schrift, was an Austrian Jewish immigrant. She had one sibling, a sister, Blanche. Her father moved the family to Brooklyn when she was still young so that he, a tailor's cutter, could find steadier work closer to the city's garment industry. An unfailing interest in acting began quite early for Shelley, and she appeared in high school plays. By her mid- to late teens she had already been employed as a Woolworth's store clerk, model, borscht belt vaudevillian and nightclub chorine, all in order to pay for her acting classes. During a nationwide search in 1939 for GWTW's Scarlett O'Hara, Shelley was advised by auditioning director George Cukor to get acting lessons, which she did. Apprenticing in summer stock, she made her Broadway debut in the short-lived comedy "The Night Before Christmas" in 1941 and followed it with the operetta "Rosalinda" (1942) initially billing herself in both shows as Shelley Winter (without the "s").
Within a short time, Shelley pushed ahead for a career out west. Hollywood proved to be a tough road. Toiling in bit roles for years, many of her scenes were excised altogether during her early days. Obscurely used in such movies as What a Woman! (1943), The Racket Man (1944), Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945), her breakthrough did not occur until 1947, and it happened on both the stage and big screen. Not only did she win the replacement role of Ado Annie Carnes in "Oklahoma!" on Broadway but, around the same time, scored excellent notices on film as the party girl waitress who ends up a victim of deranged strangler (and Oscar winner) Ronald Colman in the critically-hailed A Double Life (1947) directed by Cukor. From this moment, she achieved a somewhat earthy film stardom, playing second-lead broads who often met untimely ends (as in Cry of the City (1948) and The Great Gatsby (1949)), or tawdry-black-stockinged and feather-boa-adorned leads, as in South Sea Sinner (1950) in which her eclectic co-stars included Macdonald Carey and Liberace!
As a tarnished glamour girl and symbol of working-class vulgarity in Hollywood, Shelley was about to be written off in pictures altogether when one of her finest movie roles arrived on her front porch. Her best hard luck girl storyboard showed up in the form of depressed, frumpy-looking Alice Tripp, a factory girl seduced and abandoned by wanderlust Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951). Favoring gorgeous society girl Elizabeth Taylor who is totally out of his league, Clift is subsequently blackmailed by Winters' pathetic (and now pregnant) character into marrying her. For her desperate efforts, she is purposely drowned by Clift after he tips their canoe. The role, which garnered Shelley her first Oscar nomination, finally plucked her out of the sordid starlet pool she was treading and into the ranks of serious femme star contenders. But not for long.
Winters just couldn't escape the lurid bottle-blonde quality she instilled in her characters. During what should have been her peak time in films were a host of badly-scripted "B" films. The obvious, two-dimensional chorines, barflies, floozies and gold diggers she played in Behave Yourself! (1951), Frenchie (1950), Phone Call from a Stranger (1952), Playgirl (1954), and also Mambo (1954), in which co-starred second husband Vittorio Gassman, pretty much said it all. She grew extremely disenchanted and decided to return to dramatic study. Earning membership into the famed Actors' Studio, she went to Broadway and earned kudos, thereby reestablishing her reputation as a strong actress with the drug-themed play "A Hatful of Rain" (1955). Co-starring in the show was the up-and-coming Anthony Franciosa, who became her third husband in 1957. Her renewed dedication to pursuing quality work was shown by her appearances in a number of heavyweight theater roles including Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1955). In later years, the Actors' Studio enthusiast became one of its most respected coaches, shaping up a number of today's fine talents with the Strasberg "method" technique.
By the late 1950s, she had started growing in girth and wisely eased into colorful character supports. The switch paid off. After a sterling performance as the ill-fated wife of sadistic killer Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), she scored big in the Oscar department when she won "Best Supporting Actress" for the shrill and hypertensive but doomed Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). From this period sprouted a host of revoltingly bad mamas, blowsy matrons, and trashy madams in such film fare as Lolita (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), The Balcony (1963) Wives and Lovers (1963), and A House Is Not a Home (1964). She topped things off as the abusive prostitute mom in A Patch of Blue (1965) who was not above pimping her own blind daughter (the late Elizabeth Hartman) for household money. The actress managed to place a second Oscar on her mantle for this riveting support work.
With advancing age and increasing size, she found a comfortable niche in the harping Jewish wife/mother category with loud, flashy, unsubtle roles in Enter Laughing (1967), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) and, most notably, The Poseidon Adventure (1972). She earned another Oscar nomination for "Poseidon" while portraying her third drowning victim. At around the same time, she scored quite well as the indomitable Marx Brothers' mama in "Minnie's Boys" on Broadway in 1970.
In the 1970s and 1980s, she developed into an oddly-distracted personality on TV, making countless talk show appearances and becoming quite the raconteur and incessant name dropper with her juicy Hollywood behind-the-scenes tales. Candid would be an understatement when she published two scintillating tell-all autobiographies that reached the bestsellers list. "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" (1981) and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" (1989) detailed dalliances with Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, William Holden, Sean Connery and Clark Gable, to name just a few.
Thrice divorced (her first husband was a WWII captain; her only child, Vittoria, was the daughter of her second husband, Gassman), she remained footloose and fancy free after finally breaking it off with the volatile Franciosa in 1960. Her stormy marriages and notorious affairs, not to mention her ambitious forays into politics and feminist causes, kept her name alive for decades. She worked in films until the beginning of the millennium, her last film being the easily-dismissed Italian feature La bomba (1999). She enjoyed Emmy-winning TV work and had the recurring role of Roseanne Barr's tell-it-like-it-is grandmother on the comedienne's self-named sitcom. Her last years were marred by failing health and, for the most part, she was confined to a wheelchair. Suffering a heart attack in October of 2005, she died in a Beverly Hills nursing home of heart failure on January 14, 2006.
It was reported that only hours earlier on her deathbed she had entered into a "spiritual" union with her longtime companion of 19 years, Gerry McFord; a relationship of which her daughter disapproved. Gregarious, brazen, ambitious and completely unpredictable -- that would be Shelley Winters, the storyteller, whose amazing career lasted over six colorful decades.- Actress
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Jane Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917, in St. Joseph, Missouri (she was also known later as Sarah Jane Fulks). When she was only eight years old, and after her parents filed for divorce, she lost her father prematurely. After graduating high school she attempted, with the help of her mother, to break into films, but to no avail. In 1935, after attending the University of Missouri, she began a career as a radio singer, which led to her first name change to Jane Durrell. In 1936 she signed a contract with Warner Bros. Pictures and that led to another name change, the more familiar one of Jane Wyman. Under that name she appeared in "A" and "B" pictures at Warners, including two with her future husband, Ronald Reagan: Brother Rat (1938) and its sequel, Brother Rat and a Baby (1940). In the early 1940s she moved into comedies and melodramas and gained attention for her role as Ray Milland's long-suffering girlfriend in The Lost Weekend (1945). The following year she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Ma Baxter in The Yearling (1946), and won the coveted prize in 1949 as deaf-mute rape victim Belinda MacDonald in Johnny Belinda (1948). She followed that with a number of appearances in more prestigious films, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom (1951), Michael Curtiz's The Story of Will Rogers (1952) and the first movie version of The Glass Menagerie (1950). She starred opposite Bing Crosby in the musical Just for You (1952). She was Oscar-nominated for her performances in The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). She also starred in the immensely popular So Big (1953), Lucy Gallant (1955), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Miracle in the Rain (1956). In addition to her extensive film career, she hosted TV's Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre (1955) and starred in most of the episodes of the show, which ran for three seasons. She came back to the big screen in Holiday for Lovers (1959), Pollyanna (1960) and her final film, How to Commit Marriage (1969). Although off the big screen, she became a presence on the small screen and starred in two made-for-TV movies, including The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel (1979). In early 1981, in the 49th year of her career, she won the role of conniving matriarch Angela Channing Erikson Stavros Agretti in the movie "The Vintage Years", which was the unaired pilot for the prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest (1981), later in the year. For nine seasons she played that character in a way that virtually no other actress could have done, and became the moral center of the show. The show was a ratings winner from its debut in 1981, and made stars out of her fellow cast members Robert Foxworth, Lorenzo Lamas, Abby Dalton and Susan Sullivan. At the end of the first season the story line had her being informed that her evil son, played by David Selby, had inherited 50% of a California newspaper company, and the conflicts inherent in that situation led to even bigger ratings over the next five years. Wyman was nominated six times for a Soap Opera Digest Award, and in 1984 she won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series Drama. By the show's eighth season, however, she was emotionally drained and the strain of constantly working to keep up the quality of a hit show took its toll on her. In addition, there was friction on the set among cast members. All of these events culminated in her departure from the show after the first two episodes of the ninth season (her character was hospitalized and slipped into a coma) for health reasons. After a period of recuperation, she believed that she had recovered enough to guest-star in the last three episodes of the season (her doctor disagreed, but she did it anyway). She then guest-starred as Jane Seymour's mother on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993) and three years later appeared in Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1995). In the late 1990s she purchased a home in Rancho Mirage, California, where she lived in retirement. Her daughter, Maureen Reagan (who died in August 2001), was a writer who also involved herself in political issues and organized a powerful foundation. Also, she placed her 3200-sq.-ft. Rancho Mirage condominium on the market. Jane Wyman died at the age of 90, at her Palm Springs, California home, on September 10, 2007, having long suffered from arthritis and diabetes. It was reported that Wyman died in her sleep of natural causes at the Rancho Mirage Country Club.- Radiant to a tee, well-coiffed and well-dressed Barbara Britton looked like she stepped out of a magazine when she entered into our homes daily as the 'Revlon Girl' on 50s and 60s TV. She sparkled with the best of them and managed to capture that "perfect wife/perfect mother" image with, well, perfect poise and perfect grace. Co-starring opposite some of Hollywood's most durable leading men, including Randolph Scott (multiple times), Joel McCrea, Gene Autry, Jeff Chandler and John Hodiak, it's rather a shame Barbara was rather obtusely used in Hollywood films, but thankfully her beauty and glamour, if not her obvious talent, would save the day and put the finishing touches on a well-rounded career.
It all began for sunny, hazel-eyed blonde Barbara Maureen Brantingham in equally sunny Long Beach, California on September 26, 1920 (1919 is incorrect, according to her son and several other sources). Attending Polytechnic High School, Barbara eventually taught Sunday school and majored in speech at Long Beach City College with designs of becoming a speech and drama teacher. Her interest in acting, however, quickly took hold and she decided, against the wishes of her ultra-conservative parents, to pursue the local stage. Barbara's own personal 'Hollywood' story unfolded when, as a Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade representative of Long Beach, she was seen on the front pages of the newspaper, scouted out and signed by Paramount movie agents.
The surname Britton was a cherished family name and Barbara picked it as her stage moniker when Paramount complained that Brantingham was "too long to fit on a marquee." She made her film debut with Secret of the Wastelands (1941), a Hopalong Cassidy western, and continued in bit parts for a time before finding modest but showier roles in such fare as Louisiana Purchase (1941), So Proudly We Hail! (1943) and Till We Meet Again (1944). She eventually earned higher visibility as a lead and second femme lead but was underserved for most of her film career, confined as a pretty, altruistic, genteel young thing in such durable but male-oriented films as The Great John L. (1945), The Virginian (1946), The Return of Monte Cristo (1946), Albuquerque (1948), and Champagne for Caesar (1950).
Barbara wisely turned to the stage and TV in the 1950s, making her TV debut on an episode of "Robert Montgomery Presents" in 1950 and her Broadway debut co-starring in the short-lived Peggy Wood comedy "Getting Married" the following year.
After co-starring a couple of seasons with Richard Denning on the TV program Mr. & Mrs. North (1952), Barbara earned major attention as Revlon's lovely pitchwoman and remained on view in that capacity for 12 years. She appeared in Revlon commercials live for a number of programs, including "The $64,000 Question," "The $64,000 Challenge," "Revlon's Big Party" and "The Ed Sullivan Show." In between Barbara graced several of the top dramatic shows of the day, and co-starred intermittently in such "B" films as Bandit Queen (1950), The Raiders (1952), Bwana Devil (1952), Dragonfly Squadron (1953) and Night Freight (1955) before ending her movie run with The Spoilers (1955) opposite Jeff Chandler and Rory Calhoun.
Various Broadway shows included "Wake Up, Darling (1956), "How to Make a Man" (1961), and "Me and Thee" (1965). Other stage credits on the dinner theatre and summer stock circuits include "Last of the Red Hot Lovers", "Mary, Mary," "Barefoot in the Park" and "No, No, Nanette." As time passed, more and more would be devoted to raising her family. Only occasionally seen in the 1970, Barbara sometimes appeared with her two children in such regional shows as "Best of Friends," "Forty Carats" and "A Roomful of Roses".
Married in 1945 to Eugene Czukor, a naturopathic physician at the time, he later became a psychiatrist when the family moved to New York City (Manhattan) in 1957. The couple raised two children -- son Theodore (Ted or Theo) who appeared on the Canadian Shakespearean stage and later became a yoga instructor, and daughter Christina who grew up to become a model, actress, opera singer, music therapist and romance novelist. Both used the surname Britton in their respective performance careers. Sadly, two other children born to Barbara and husband Eugene, a girl and a boy, died at the hospital shortly after birth.
One of Barbara's last roles was as a regular on the daytime soap One Life to Live (1968) in 1979. Her enjoyment on this show was short-lived as the vivacious actress was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer not long after. She died in January of 1980 at age 60.Captain Kidd (1945). '45 - Actress
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Sometimes described as a poor man's Kay Francis, brunette, hazel-eyed Mona Barrie possessed neither quite the looks nor the personality required to become a major player in 1930's Hollywood. Nonetheless, the London-born and Australian-educated former childhood ballerina (born Mona Barlee, daughter of veteran comedian Phil Smith) enjoyed a fairly substantial career as a versatile 'second lead' for more than two decades. Soon after being spotted by a talent scout on a Fifth Avenue bus in New York, Mona signed with Fox in 1932 and was immediately cast as one of two female leads in Sleepers East (1934), a failed attempt by Fox to remake MGM's all-star mega hit Grand Hotel (1932) as a train-bound crime drama. That same year, she also played a supporting role in the post-Civil War romance Carolina (1934), which established the fact that she wore elaborate gowns exceedingly well. The New York Times (January 9, 1935) caustically commented about her role in Mystery Woman (1935): "The players go through the required motions with a minimum of effort, except perhaps for Mona Barrie, who must have had to spend a great deal of time and energy being fitted for the extensive wardrobe she displays". In fact, Mona was voted by several newspapers as one of the best dressed women in Hollywood and acclaimed by the designer Royer for her innate fashion sense.
During her tenure at Fox, Mona's varied career encompassed an entry into the Charlie Chan series, as well as starring roles in the mystery-comedy Ladies Love Danger (1935) and the action adventure Storm Over the Andes (1935), opposite Antonio Moreno. There were others. However, none of these second features generated much publicity or box office success and Mona took a chance, walked out on her contract and was out of work for six months. Picked up by Warner Brothers, she bought a house in Beverly Hills, complete with swimming pool and croquet lawn. Loaned out to MGM, she at last appeared in distinguished company, alongside Joan Crawford and Clark Gable in Love on the Run (1936). In the course of the next decade, as before, Mona made the most of her limited opportunities, often typically cast as 'the other woman', as perfunctory western heroines, the occasional villainess or glamorous clothes horse, or even popping up as Franklin Pangborn's wife in W.C. Fields's madcap farce Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). There were some good reviews, too, for films like Skylark (1941) and Cairo (1942). By the end of the 40's, the law of diminishing returns began to apply, with ever fewer roles on offer. After an uncredited bit in Warner's Plunder of the Sun (1953), Mona called it a day and retired from films. She maintained her residence in Los Angeles, where she died in June 1964, aged just 54.- Actress
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Character actress Beulah Bondi was a favorite of directors and audiences and is one of the reasons so many films from the 1930s and 1940s remain so enjoyable, as she was an integral part of many of the ensemble casts (a hallmark of the studio system) of major and/or great films, including The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Our Town (1940) and Penny Serenade (1941). Highly respected as a first-tier character actress, Bondi won two Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations, for The Gorgeous Hussy (1936) and Of Human Hearts (1938), and an Emmy Award in 1976 for her turn in the television program The Waltons (1972).
She was born Beulah Bondy on May 3, 1888, in Chicago, and established herself as a stage actress in the first phase of her career. She made her Broadway debut in Kenneth S. Webb's "One of the Family" at the 49th Street Theatre on December 21, 1925. The show was a modest hit, racking up 238 performances. She next appeared in another hit, Maxwell Anderson's "Saturday's Children," which ran for 326 performances, before appearing in her first flop, Clemence Dane's "Mariners" in 1927. Philip Barry's and Elmer Rice's "Cock Robin" was an extremely modest hit in 1928, reaching the century mark (100 performances), but it was Bondi's performance in Rice's "Street Scene," which opened at the Playhouse Theatre on Jamuary 10, 1929, that made her career. This famous play won Rice the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was a big hit, playing for 601 performances. Most importantly, though, it brought Bondi to the movies at the advanced age of 43. She made her motion picture debut in 1931 in the movie adaptation (Street Scene (1931)), recreating the role she had originated on the Broadway stage. The talkies were still new, and she had the talent and the voice to thrive in Hollywood.
Bondi appeared in four more Broadway plays from 1931 to 1934, only one of which, "The Late Christopher Bean", a comedy by Sidney Howard, was a hit. Her last appearance on Broadway for a generation was in a flop staged by Melvyn Douglas, "Mother Lode" (she made two more appearances on the Great White Way, in "Hilda Crane" (1950) and "On Borrowed Time" in 1953; neither was a success). For the rest of her professional life, her career lay primarily in film and television.
She was typecast as mothers and, later, grandmothers, and played James Stewart's mother four times, most famously as "Ma Bailey" in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Her greatest role is considered her turn in Leo McCarey's Depression-era melodrama Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), in which she played a mother abandoned by her children.
Beulah Bondi died on January 1, 1981, from complications from an accident, when she broke her ribs after falling over her cat. She was 92 years old.High Conquest- Dominique Boschero was born on 27 April 1937 in Paris, Île-de-France, France. She is an actress, known for Full Hearts and Empty Pockets (1964), Faccia di spia (1975) and Secret Agent Fireball (1965).
- Age has not taken the flower off this Bloom. The well-known and highly respected stage, screen and television actress Claire Bloom continues to be in demand as an octogenarian actress and looks as beautiful as ever.
She was born Patricia Claire Blume on February 15, 1931, in Finchley, North London, to Elizabeth (Grew) and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales. Her parents were from Jewish families from Belarus. Educated at Badminton School in Bristol and Fern Hill Manor in New Milton, Claire expressed early interest in the arts and was stage trained as an adolescent at the Guildhall School, under the guidance of Eileen Thorndike, and then at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Marking her professional debut on BBC radio, she subsequently took her first curtain call with the Oxford Repertory Theatre in 1946 in the production of "It Depends What You Mean". She then received early critical accolades for her Shakespearean ingénues in "King John", "The Winter's Tale" and, notably, her Ophelia in "Hamlet" at age 17 at Stratford-on-Avon opposite alternating Hamlets Paul Scofield and Robert Helpmann. By 1949 Claire was making her West End debut with "The Lady's Not For Burning" with the up-and-coming stage actor Richard Burton.
A most becoming and beguiling dark-haired actress whose photogenic, slightly pinched beauty was accented by an effortless elegance and poise, Claire's inauspicious film debut came with a prime role in the British courtroom film drama The Blind Goddess (1948). It was her second film, when Charles Chaplin himself selected her specifically to be his young leading lady in the classic sentimental drama Limelight (1952), that propelled her to stardom. Her bravura turn as a young suicide-bent ballerina saved from despair by an aging music hall clown (Chaplin) was exquisitely touching and sparked an enviable but surprisingly sporadic career in films.
Despite the sudden film attention, Claire continued her formidable presence on the Shakespearean stage. Joining the Old Vic Company for the 1952-53 and 1953-54 seasons, she appeared as Helena, Viola, Juliet, Jessica, Miranda, Virgilia, Cordelia and (again) Ophelia in a highly successful tenure. Touring Canada and the United States as Juliet, she made her Broadway bow in the star-crossed-lover role in 1956, also playing the Queen in "Richard II". A strong presence on both the London and New York stages over the years, she gave other powerful performances with "The Trojan Women", "Vivat! Vivat! Regina!", "Hedda Gabler", "A Doll's House" and "A Streetcar Named Desire". Much later in life she performed in a superb one-woman show entitled "These Are Women: A Portrait of Shakespeare's Heroines" that included monologues from several of her acclaimed stage performances.
Claire's stylish and regal presence was simply ideal for mature period films, and she appeared opposite a roster of Hollywood's most talented leading men, including Laurence Olivier in the title role of Richard III (1955), Richard Burton and Fredric March in Alexander the Great (1956), Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), and Brynner and Charlton Heston in the DeMille epic The Buccaneer (1958), in which she had a rare dressed-down role as a spirited pirate girl. On the more contemporary scene, she appeared with Burton in two classic film dramas: the stark "kitchen sink" British stage piece Look Back in Anger (1959) and the Cold War espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). In addition she courted tinges of controversy, playing a housewife gone bonkers in the offbeat sudser The Chapman Report (1962) and a lesbian in the supernatural chiller The Haunting (1963).
Claire met first husband Rod Steiger while performing with him on stage in 1959's "Rashomon". They married that year and in 1960 had a daughter, Anna, who grew up to become a well-regarded opera singer. Claire and Rod appeared in two lesser films together, The Illustrated Man (1969) and Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), in 1969. That same year, they divorced after 10 tumultuous years.
As with other maturing actresses during the 1970s, Claire looked toward classy film roles in TV movies for sustenance, appearing in Backstairs at the White House (1979) as First Lady Edith Wilson and in Brideshead Revisited (1981), for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Also lauded were the epic miniseries Ellis Island (1984); a remake of Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables (1983); The Ghost Writer (1984), an acclaimed adaption of Philip Roth's novel ; and Shadowlands (1986), the latter earning her a British Television Award. Claire married Roth the writer (her third marriage) in 1990 after a brief second marriage to producer Hillard Elkins (1969-1972). The union with Roth lasted five years.
Claire appeared in several Shakespearean teleplays over the decades while also portraying a choice selection of historical royals, including Czarina Alexandra and Katherine of Aragon. On daytime drama, she delightfully played matriarch and murderess Orlena Grimaldi on the daytime drama As the World Turns (1956) starting in 1993. She left the role in 1995 and was replaced.
Continuing sporadically in films from the 1970s on, Claire graced such films as the stylish British social comedy A Severed Head (1971), the tender coming-of-age drama Red Sky at Morning (1971) as Richard Thomas's mother, and one of that year's versions of Ibsen's A Doll's House (1973) (Jane Fonda starred as Nora in the other). She also movingly played George C. Scott's estranged wife in Islands in the Stream (1977) and had a very brief cameo as Hera in Clash of the Titans (1981), a small part as a manipulative mother in Déjà Vu (1985), and mature parts in the romantic dramedy Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and classic Woody Allen drama Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
In the new millennium, Claire has been seen in such quality films as and The Book of Eve (2002), Imagining Argentina (2003), The King's Speech (2010) (as Queen Mary), And While We Were Here (2012), Max Rose (2013) starring a dramatic Jerry Lewis, and Miss Dalí (2018). She has also made appearances on such TV miniseries as The Ten Commandments (2005) and Summer of Rockets (2019).
Claire wrote two memoirs. The first was the more career-oriented "Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress," released in 1982. Her more controversial second book, "Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir," published in 1996, focused on her personal life.Islands in the Stream - Actress
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Independent, outspoken Constance Bennett, the first of the Bennett sisters to enter films, appeared in New York-produced silents before a chance meeting with Samuel Goldwyn led to her Hollywood debut in Cytherea (1924). She abandoned a burgeoning career in silents for marriage to Philip Plant in 1925; after they divorced, she achieved stardom in talkies from 1929. The hit Common Clay (1930) launched her in a series of loose lady and unwed mother roles, but she really excelled in such sophisticated comedies as The Affairs of Cellini (1934), Ladies in Love (1936), Topper (1937) and Merrily We Live (1938). Her classy blonde looks, husky voice and unerring fashion sense gave her a distinctive style. In the 1940s she made fewer films, working in radio and theatre; shrewd in business, she invested wisely and started businesses marketing women's wear and cosmetics. Loving conflict, she feuded with the press and enjoyed lawsuits. Her last marriage, to a U.S. Air Force colonel, was happy and gave her a key role coordinating shows flown to Europe for occupying troops (1946-48) and the Berlin Airlift (1948-49), winning her military honors. Still young-looking, she died suddenly at age 60 shortly after completing the last of her 57 films.- Actress
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Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her surname comes from her paternal grandfather, whose family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California.
After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland, where she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935. She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract than Olivia appeared in three more films: The Irish in Us (1935), Alibi Ike (1935), and Captain Blood (1935), this last with the man with whom her career would be most closely identified: heartthrob Errol Flynn. He and Olivia starred together in eight films during their careers. In 1939 Warner Bros. loaned her to David O. Selznick for the classic Gone with the Wind (1939). Playing sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film, Hattie McDaniel.
After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films. In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warners had been fitting her. The studio responded by placing her on a six-month suspension, all of the studios at the time operating under the policy that players were nothing more than property to do with as they saw fit. As if that weren't bad enough, when her contract with Warners was up, she was told that she needed to make up the time lost because of the suspension. Irate, she sued the studio, and for the length of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The result, however, was worth it. In a landmark decision, the court said that not only would Olivia not need to make up the time, but also that all performers would be limited to a seven-year contract that would include any suspensions handed down. This became known as the "de Havilland decision": no longer could studios treat their performers as chattel. Olivia returned to the screen in 1946 and made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her: To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s.
In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948). As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). After a three-year hiatus, Olivia returned to star in My Cousin Rachel (1952). From that point on, she made few appearances on the screen but was seen on Broadway and in some television shows. Her last screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), and her last career appearance was in the TV movie The Woman He Loved (1988).
Her turbulent relationship with her only sibling, Joan Fontaine, was press fodder for many decades; the two were reported as having been permanently estranged since their mother's death in 1975, when Joan claimed that she had not been invited to the memorial service, which she only managed to hold off until she could arrive by threatening to go public. Joan also wrote in her memoir that her elder sister had been physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive when they were young. And the iconic photo of Joan with her hand outstretched to congratulate Olivia backstage after the latter's first Oscar win and Olivia ignoring it because she was peeved by a comment Joan had made about Olivia's new husband, Marcus Goodrich, remained part of Hollywood lore for many years.
Nonetheless, late in life, Fontaine gave an interview in which she serenely denied any and all claims of an estrangement from her sister. When a reporter asked Joan if she and Olivia were friends, she replied, "Of course!" The reporter responded that rumors to the contrary must have been sensationalism and she replied, "Oh, right--they have to. Two nice girls liking each other isn't copy." Asked if she and Olivia were in communication and spoke to each other, Joan replied "Absolutely." When asked if there ever had been a time when the two did not get along to the point where they wouldn't speak with one another, Joan replied, again, "Never. Never. There is not a word of truth about that." When asked why people believe it, she replied "Oh, I have no idea. It's just something to say ... Oh, it's terrible." When asked if she had seen Olivia over the years, she replied, "I've seen her in Paris. And she came to my apartment in New York often." The reporter stated that all this was a nice thing to hear. Joan then stated, "Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel. We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words. And all this is press." Joan died in 2013.
During the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of GWTW in 1989, Olivia graciously declined requests for all interviews as the last of the four main stars. She enjoyed a quiet retirement in Paris, France, where she resided for many decades, and where she died on 26 July, 2020, at the age of 104.
As well as being the last surviving major cast member of some of cinema's most beloved pre-war and wartime film classics (including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939)), and one of the longest-lived major stars in film history, Olivia de Havilland was unquestionably the last surviving iconic figure from the peak of Hollywood's golden era during the late 1930s, and her passing truly marked the end of an era.That Lady (1955). '55. Lead- Frances Drake was born on 22 October 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Mad Love (1935), The Preview Murder Mystery (1936) and The Invisible Ray (1935). She was married to David Brown and Lt. Cecil John Arthur Howard. She died on 18 January 2000 in Irvine, California, USA.Midnight Taxi (1937), '37
- Helen Amelia Gilbert was one of those finds for whom everyone had high hopes, and who quickly made a splash in Hollywood, though not due to her acting, which was average at best. She appeared more in gossip columns than on the silver screen, and as her acting career waned, her notoriety grew because of her affairs, marriages, separations, and divorces. And then suddenly she vanished from the spotlight only to have her name appear just one last time in an obituary column.
Helen is born into a musical family, her father, Vaughn Gilbert, owning a music store where she played a variety of instruments as a child. She's inspired by Pablo Casals and dives into studying the cello, winning a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
After graduating, Helen becomes a concert artist, playing at a variety of locations, but it's while performing at the Hollywood Bowl where she is discovered by Herbert Stothart and is given a seat in his MGM orchestra.
In November of 1936, she marries the assistant musical director at Columbia, Mischa Bakaleinikoff, in Tijuana, Mexico. He's 46; she's 21.
Two years later while her orchestra is recording for the upcoming musical Sweethearts (1938), director Fred M. Wilcox spots her and her acting career begins.
Her first role is as Miss Rose Meredith, Andy Hardy's high school "crush" and drama teacher in Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939).
Not long after that she separates from her husband in October of 1939, declaring that she will soon file suit for divorce. When asked, she claims, "It was an amicable separation," and is next spotted around the town with Lew Ayres. She responds to gossip columnists that they are just "good pals who happen to be working on the same picture," The Secret of Dr. Kildare (1939).
In November she wins an uncontested divorce from Bakeleinkoff on charges that he was rude to her and her friends. She's next spotted with Howard Hughes at the annual Motion Picture Guild Christmas charity party. Now Hughes was quite famous for his attraction to Hollywood beauties, and Helen Gilbert is most definitely a beauty, but it's her fling with Hughes that starts to quash her rise to stardom.
Over the next two years she's seen everywhere by columnists, accompanied by a host of gentlemen friends: Victor M. Orsatti, William Marshall, Billy Blackewell, Richard Denning, Tom Harmon, and finally Seymour J. Chotiner, whom she marries in March of 42.
All this time she's been receiving star treatment from MGM. She's touted as "the new personality" in the trailer for the upcoming Dr. Kildare film in which she plays a patient with psychosomatic blindness. She's also landed the lead in Florian (1940). But as film historian David J. Hogan writes, "In the eyes of MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer, a contract actress who associated with Hughes was foolish and probably not deserving of star treatment."
Hogan also believes that it was because of Hughes that Gilbert lost the role of Glinda the good witch in the The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Billie Burke.
In 1942 she plays the role of the femme fatale in The Falcon Takes Over (1942) and separates from Chotiner after five short months of marriage.
This time it's Chotiner who gets the uncontested divorce, complaining that "during five months of marriage, I had only one meal at home," but she and Chotiner soon reconcile before the divorce decree becomes final.
Less than two years later, they part again. Helen files for divorce, and this time while Chotiner tells columnists that "careers and marriages do not mix," she's charging him with extreme cruelty without provocation. It's during this roller coaster of a marriage that Helen is cast in the not very coveted role of "girl on a trolley" in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
She might not have had much to offer movie goers at that time, but the tabloids are quickly lit up again when, after a whirlwind romance with Victor Makzoume, the owner of Victor's Café on Sunset Strip and ex-husband of Claire Alexander, they marry. He is 12 years her senior.
She lands a lead role in the 1946 film God's Country (1946), shot in Cinecolor, but the reviews are mixed and the next time we hear about her is again in the newspapers when she and her husband, Makzoume report that their Hollywood home had been burglarized of jewelry, clothing, and a number of bottles of expensive perfumes. The take is estimated at $15,000.00.
After finishing up Death Valley (1946), lauded as "A Dramatic Screen Triumph in Gorgeous Color, Set Against the Background of Nature's Most Treacherous and Mysterious Land," moviegoers are not at all impressed, so Helen decides to take time off to escort her husband to Lebanon to visit his family. Unfortunately, Makzoume has a heart attack at the Grand Hotel in Rome, and Helen is at his bedside as he passes away at age 45.
Helen had been preparing to make her movie comeback while in Europe with one film being shot in Paris and another in Rome, but in June of 1948, Dorothy Manners reports in her column that, "She is so shaken and grief stricken she called off both contracts to bring his body back to this country."
The courts grant Helen an allowance of $650 (nearly $6,000 in today's money) pending distribution of Makzoume's estate, of which she'll eventually get half, with the rest going to his mother and sister.
By September of that year, gossip columnists report her back "as pretty as ever" at the Band Box, a jazz and comedy club in Hollywood, accompanied by Jimmy Valentine, a famous one-legged dancer.
But it's the following February when newspapers are deliciously abuzz with the story of her secret marriage to Johnny Stompanato, a bodyguard and money man for Mickey Cohen, head of the Cohen crime family. This time Helen is 33 and Stompanato is 23.
In July of that same year, she testifies at her divorce hearing that, "Johnny had no means. I did what I could to support him."
Johnny would eventually be killed by Lana Turner's daughter, who stabbed him to death in 1958. In court it came out that he'd been violent with Turner and his death was ruled justifiable homicide, because Cheryl had been defending her mother from a vicious beating.
Just two months after divorcing Stompanato, Helen marries James E. Durant, the Flamingo Hotel casino manager. The ceremony is short and sweet, and performed by a Justice of the Peace, but the gossip columns get it wrong when they report this being her sixth marriage. Somehow in the count, they'd tossed in Bill Marshal, with whom she'd had a fling, but never married.
Historians aren't quite sure why the Las Vegas marriage had to have a "do-over" but in February of 1950, they are again married, this time in Coolidge, Arizona. It would be just four short months' later when Helen files for divorce, charging him with cruelty.
Not one to rest on her reputation, while awaiting her divorce she promises herself to Charles, A. Hubbard, heir to a fortune in the Bahamas. He gives her a $17, 000.00 ($180,000.00 in today's money) diamond ring on Christmas Day, 1949 with the understanding that they will soon be wed.
However, in January, her love for Hubbard has cooled, and she refuses to return the ring, opting instead to reconcile with Durant. They will stay married for almost two years, and their divorce will make history as the courts cannot decide if they are married or not.
She claims that he tried to throw her out of a window of an 11th floor apartment, and he claims they were already divorced back in Phoenix.
So two months later she marries her seventh and final husband, H. O. Bryant, someone who apparently has no background, no history, but just a future with the lovely Helen Gilbert who is now 35.
Now that she's happily married and the distribution of Makzoume's estate puts her late husband's restaurant in her control, she finally drops her divorce suit against Durant, no longer claiming their Arizona divorce to be invalid.
Her sister, Mari Finley would soon move in with her and producer Alex Gordon starts seeing both of them on a professional basis. He's thinking of casting Helen in the title role of The She-Creature (1956), but the part eventually goes to Marla English.
Helen has been out of films for six years and yearns to make a comeback. She lands a key role in the film Thief of Damascus (1952), which turns out to be a pot boiler made on a tight budget by recycling all the scenery from big budget epics of the forties such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1943) and Arabian Nights (1942). The color is spectacular and the scenery is offset by a beautiful female cast in flowing gowns, all spouting quotable lines written tongue in cheek. But the satire falls flat and it bombs at the box office. Her next three appearances are in TV series, but it's Girls in Prison (1956) where she expects finally to make her comeback.
She lands a rather racy role as Joan Taylor's lesbian cellmate, but is overshadowed by the tough-talking, plump-cheeked, peroxide blonde Adele Jergens whose performance steals the show. Helen's sister lands a bit part in the film, but other than another bit part in The She-Creature, her film career goes nowhere.
Helen would do two more episodes in TV series and then, because she is happily married, the gossip columns go silent. She quietly walks away from Hollywood never to be heard from again until her death.
Her husband, H. O. Bryant will die of a heart attack in 1987, and she follows him 8 years later having also succumbed to cardiac arrest.
Her body is cremated; her ashes scattered at sea. - Actress
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Angela Greene was born on 24 February 1921 in Dublin, Ireland. She was an actress, known for Night of the Blood Beast (1958), The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946) and King of the Bandits (1947). She was married to Stuart Warren Martin. She died on 9 February 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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Sandra Dee was born Alexandria Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Mary (Cymboliak) and John Zuck. She was of Carpatho-Rusyn descent. Her mother envisioned a show business career for her daughter and would often lie about her age in order to get Sandy where she wanted to go. For example, her mother enrolled her in school early so she could have a head start. Sandy was only four years old when she entered the second grade. Sandra was an extremely pretty young lady, which enabled her to get into modeling. In fact, she was already very successful at her craft by the time she was 12 years old. This in turn led to television commercials for local companies, an added benefit for the young model.
Through her mother's prodding and the talent scouts, Sandra was signed to do a movie when she was 14 called Until They Sail (1957), released in 1957. While the film didn't exactly top the charts, it would lay the foundation for Sandra's career. The new young actress was then signed to two more films for 1958, The Reluctant Debutante (1958) and The Restless Years (1958), both with a young actor, John Saxon. In 1959, Sandra appeared in five productions with Gidget (1959) and A Summer Place (1959) being the two most popular. Sandra was 17 years old and becoming the heartthrob of teenage boys all across America. In 1960, Sandra appeared in only one film, Portrait in Black (1960), but is remembered by her for something else. She married teen idol Bobby Darin in December of that year. It may have sunk a few teen boys' hearts, but most still were enamored of her. Her work, once again, took off. The 1961 releases were Come September (1961), Romanoff and Juliet (1961), and as Tammy Tyree in Tammy Tell Me True (1961).
Sandra had replaced the ever-popular Debbie Reynolds in the "Tammy" series, but the film and its 1963 sequel, Tammy and the Doctor (1963), didn't do all that well at the box-office. The films were now slowing for Sandra. The last few that she made were I'd Rather Be Rich (1964), That Funny Feeling (1965), A Man Could Get Killed (1966), Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967), and Rosie! (1967). By 1967, her marriage to Darin ended and so did her film career. There was little call for a teenage movie star to play daughters and such, when everyone knew that she was a divorcée. Plus, the face of movies had changed and sugary stories were not the ones that people wanted to see. Sandra did nail down the part of "Nancy Wagner" in 1970's The Dunwich Horror (1970).
In the 1970s, Dee made a few appearances in made-for-television movies, but it was the film Grease (1978) that made her famous to a new generation. While she was not in the film, one of the popular songs was "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee".
Sandra's last silver screen role was in Lost (1983). She died of kidney complications on February 20, 2005.The Wild and the Innocent- Actress
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The entrancing and exotic-eyed "B"-level leading lady Jody Lawrance, whose 1950s career was spotty at best, provided lovely diversion from the manly adventure movies she helped bring to the screen. Personal turmoil and studio conflicts, however, ultimately hurt her career and the remainder of her life was spent out of the limelight.
She was born Nona Josephine Goddard in Fort Worth, Texas, on October 19, 1930. Her childhood was troubled and disruptive. Parents Ervin S. ("Doc") and Eleanor (née Roeck) Goddard divorced while Jody was a child. Ervin, nicknamed "Doc" although he was not one, was an amateur inventor and research engineer at the Adel Precision Products Company at one point. Moving to California, he eventually married Grace McGee in 1937. Jody subsequently migrated to California and lived with her father and stepmother in their Van Nuys bungalow. Marilyn Monroe (then Norma Jeane Baker) was a foster child of her stepmother Grace, who knew Norma Jeane's mother when both worked for Columbia -- Grace as a film librarian and and Gladys as a film cutter. Jody and Norma Jeane lived together briefly in 1941-1942.
Jody went on to attend Beverly Hills High School (studying under Benno Schneider and his wife) and the Hollywood Professional School. Excelling as a swimmer, Jody's first shot was appearing in a water show operated by Larry Crosby, who was also a publicity manager for famous younger brother Bing Crosby.
The teenager was awarded her first on-camera professional part on the TV show "The Silver Theatre" in 1949. Because her real name, Nona Goddard, lacked glamour, she changed it to Jody (short for Josephine, her middle name) Lawrance (her maternal grandmother's maiden name). Jody's drama teacher Schneider managed to get her an introduction to Columbia. The studio took an immediate interest in the 19-year-old beauty and signed her to a 7-year contract at $250 per week.
Jody made four relatively strong films in 1951. She provided damsel-in-distress duty in her screen debut between up-and-coming screen hero John Derek and established villain Anthony Quinn in the spirited swashbuckler Mask of the Avenger (1951). This was followed by The Family Secret (1951) playing the altruistic fiance to a murder suspect (again, John Derek. Things looked even more promising when she co-starred an exotic love interest to robust Burt Lancaster in the Eastern adventure yarn Ten Tall Men (1951). Her final film that year was a horror opus portraying the fiance to Louis Hayward as the The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951).
She started the following year off with the adventure film The Brigand (1952) opposite handsome, sliver-eyed Anthony Dexter, better known for his captivating Valentino-like looks than for his acting ability. In 1953 career problems surfaced when the studio assigned Jody, who had now completed six film projects, to a lackluster role in one of its minor musicals, a poor man's version of "On the Town" entitled All Ashore (1953) which starred sailors-on-leave Mickey Rooney, Dick Haymes and Ray McDonald. Peggy Ryan, Barbara Bates and Jody were cast as their the love interests. Set this time on California's Catalina Island instead of New York, Jody balked at the assignment while citing a lack of confidence in her singing and dancing abilities. She ask the studio to replace her but Columbia refused and the actress begrudgingly filmed the movie. Her "difficulty" with the studio on this assignment ultimately led to a break of her contract. Feeling overlooked by the studio at the time, she supposedly did not regret her release too much.
On her own, however, the quality of Jody's films declined markedly with her the "Poverty Row" independent film, the sub-par and highly distorted biographical piece Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953) again starring Anthony Dexter. It was revealed that Jody suffered a frightening allergic reaction on the set after dying her lighter hair jet black for the role. Among many other problems, the 23-year old, blue-eyed actress was quite miscast in the role of the much younger Indian maiden. The released film was a dismal failure and Jody's career suffered as a result.
Finding almost no offers in 1954-1955 and in order to make ends meet, Jody took on employment as an ice cream shop waitress near the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The story goes that one day one of her customers was her former co-star Burt Lancaster. He came to her aid by introducing her to his friend, director Michael Curtiz, who reignited her career with his minor film noir The Scarlet Hour (1956) which starred Tom Tryon and had Jody playing a second femme role behind Carol Ohmart, who was being built up as Paramount's supposed answer to a difficult Marilyn Monroe at the time. Jody was promoted as one of the "Deb Stars of 1955" along with other hopefuls including Cathy Crosby, Anita Ekberg, Mara Corday, Marisa Pavan and Lori Nelson, among other lesser known actors.
Back on the boards again, Jody revived her look on screen as a blonde again. Things looked hopeful when Paramount Studios signed her to a contract, earning $300 a week. In the spiritual drama The Leather Saint (1956), she plays a platinum-blonde nightclub singer (and even sings a bit of "I'm in the Mood for Love" in the film) and temptress to (once again) John Derek whose Episcople minister agonizes over his decision to box for money in order help medically finance church/community projects for special needs children.
Things fell apart once more, however, when Paramount released her the following year. It seems that the studio was perturbed when, while promoting her to the public as a sexy single, Jody resisted the cheesecake angle and also secretly married Bruce Tilton (1930-2007), an airplane parts company executive, in Las Vegas on April 7, 1956 and was pregnant. A daughter, Victoria, was born a year later.
She remained unproductive career-wise during this period of new marriage and more family. By April of 1958, however, the Tilton marriage had dissolved and a bitter custody suit ensued (in the end, Jody lost). While she returned to the screen, the pickings were slim. She landed minor parts in the Shirley Booth vehicle Hot Spell (1958) and Barry Sullivan film The Purple Gang (1959), and found isolated work on TV in such dramatic fare as "Perry Mason," "The Loretta Young Show" and "The Rebel". Her last screen role of any substance was the minor western Stagecoach to Dancers' Rock (1962) starring Martin Landau.
Jody met second husband Robert Wolf Herre and they married in November of 1962. Two children, Robert Jr. and Abigail ("Chrissy") were born from this relationship. Other than an isolated TV appearance on "The Red Skelton Show" in 1968, little was heard of Jody following this period until it was learned that she had died in Ojai, California on July 10, 1986, at age 55.Ten Tall Men (1951). '51.- Kathleen Lloyd was born on 13 September 1948 in Santa Clara, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The Car (1977), The Missouri Breaks (1976) and Equal Justice (1990). She is married to John Steven Mansfield . She was previously married to Peter Joseph Jenvay.
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Sultry, sleepy-eyed Argentine brunette Mona Maris was born Rosa Emma Mona Maria Marta Capdevielle, of Spanish-French parentage. Her well-to-do background ensured a quality education with an emphasis on foreign languages. Mona mastered three of them, but, alas, English was not among them. This mattered little early on, as her career began in silent films in 1925, first in England and France, then with Universum AG in Germany. Moving to the U.S. in 1929, she was signed by Fox to co-star opposite Warner Baxter in two above-average westerns: Romance of the Rio Grande (1929) and the The Arizona Kid (1930) (in which she was rather overshadowed by a young Carole Lombard). In fairness, neither film gave her much to do, except be ornamental. In 'Arizona Kid', she was also unwisely permitted to sing, which was not her forte. Combined with her rather strained command of English, it was somewhat inevitable that she would find herself relegated to acting in a string of Spanish-language versions of American films.
Mona Maris is remembered today less for her sojourn in Hollywood, than for her on-screen chemistry with legendary singer Carlos Gardel in the musical drama Cuesta abajo (1934). Filmed in Argentina, it co-starred Mona as a femme fatale and proved to be her defining screen role. She auditioned for the part via telephone from the Paramount lot (having just completed shooting of Kiss and Make-Up (1934)) for French-born director Louis J. Gasnier, winning out over fellow candidates Raquel Torres and Rosita Montenegro. "Cuesta abajo" was well-received upon its release in the U.S., becoming the most successful Spanish-language film up to that time. Following Gardel's untimely death in 1935, Mona absented herself from the screen for six years.
She returned to Hollywood again in the early 40's, free-lancing for most of the majors, in films like The Falcon in Mexico (1944) and Tampico (1944). Even though, her English was now fluent, she remained mostly typecast as south-of-the-border senoritas. After an uncredited bit in the Bob Hope comedy Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), her career wound down with a third-billed part in a third rate swashbuckler for Republic, The Avengers (1950). Shortly after that, she called it a day and in 1960 retired to Lima, Peru, with her second husband, Dutch millionaire Herman Rick.- Actress
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She was one rowdy, no-holds-barred entertainer. Comedienne Polly Moran was considered second only to perhaps Louise Fazenda as Mack Sennett's funniest lady during her silent-era heyday. Born in 1883, Polly was made for vaudeville, touring all over the world, notably Europe. Sennett snapped her up in 1915 and she clowned around for him for several years in scores of his classic one- and two-reelers. At age 40 she, just by happenstance, paired up with, of all people, equally homely and down-to-earth Marie Dressler. The two scene-stealing man-chasers created comedy magic together as a cinematic MGM team, riotous in their eight films together including The Callahans and the Murphys (1927), their first, Chasing Rainbows (1930), Caught Short (1930), and Politics (1931). Sound was not quite the kick in the pants Polly had experienced in silents but she survived, trooper that she was, in both servile and dowager roles. By the 40s, however, she had been reduced to a smattering of bit parts. A small but showy role in Adam's Rib (1949) might have sparked a possible resurgence, but Polly died of heart problems into her 69th year before she was able to seize the moment.- Actress
- Music Department
American leading woman of films and television in the 1950s, whose career was hampered by injuries. Raised in San Francisco, Paula Raymond studied music, dance, and opera as a child. She made her film debut as a child by chance in Keep Smiling (1938) during a visit to Los Angeles. She remained to attend Hollywood High School and to appear in local theater productions. She returned to San Francisco for studies at San Francisco Junior College and, while there, entered into a brief marriage. Divorced, she came back to Hollywood and modeled. Although contracted to Paramount in 1947, she was released without working there and signed instead with Columbia. She made numerous television appearances and low-budget features before MGM signed her and began placing her in more important projects, starting with Adam's Rib (1949). Despite good notices and some successful films, she was eventually released from her contract. She made several unimportant pictures as a freelancer, then left the industry in 1955. She worked a number of non-film related jobs under a variation of her married name, then returned to acting in 1958. She had a long string of success in television, including State Trooper (1956), Mike Hammer (1958), Yancy Derringer (1958), Peter Gunn (1958), and others. This string of successes was shattered in a 1962 car crash. She was very nearly killed and had severe facial damage, requiring massive plastic surgery. Her beauty miraculously recovered, she managed to return to acting within a year and appeared occasionally into the 1970s. A series of subsequent falls injured her repeatedly, and she moved into business interests, though remaining an actor at heart.Crisis (1950). '50- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ziva Rodann was born on 2 March 1933 in Haifa, Palestine [now Haifa, Israel]. She is an actress, known for The Story of Ruth (1960), The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) and Macumba Love (1960).Samar (1962). '62- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Kathleen Freeman's introduction to show business came very early in life. Her parents were vaudevillians, and she made her debut at age 2 in their act. Later she attended UCLA with intentions of becoming a pianist, but was bitten by the acting bug and never looked back. She gained experience on stage in various stock and repertory companies, and made her film debut in 1948. One of the most memorable character actresses in recent memory, her stocky build, incredibly expressive face and hearty laugh have kept audiences convulsed for decades, playing a variety of neighborhood gossips, busybodies and eccentrics. Memorable as Sister Mary Stigmata ("The Penguin"), Dan Aykroyd's and John Belushi's nemesis, in The Blues Brothers (1980). She was used as a comic foil by Jerry Lewis in many of his films, always to great advantage. She did much television work, playing in everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) to Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964) to Hogan's Heroes (1965) to Married... with Children (1987), where she was the voice of Peg's monstrous but never-seen mother, Al Bundy's nemesis. She was working on Broadway in a production of "The Full Monty" when she died of lung cancer in 2001.The Midnight Story- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her notable stage works included the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played first in the 1920s, and gave an Emmy Award-winning television performance in Macbeth (1960). Anderson's long association with Euripides' "Medea" began with her acclaimed Tony Award-winning 1948 stage performance in the title role. She appeared in the television version of Medea (1983) in the supporting character of the Nurse.
Anderson made her Hollywood film debut under director Rowland Brown in a supporting role in Blood Money (1933). Her striking, not conventionally attractive features were complemented with her powerful presence, mastery of timing and an effortless style. Anderson made a film career as a supporting character actress in several significant films including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She worked with director Otto Preminger in Laura (1944), then with René Clair in And Then There Were None (1945). Her remarkable performance in a supporting role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) fit in a stellar acting ensemble under director Richard Brooks.
Anderson was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1960 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Living in Santa Barbara in her later years, she also had a successful stint on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984. In the same year, at age 87, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as the High Priestess, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for that role. She was awarded Companion of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Anderson died at age 94 of pneumonia on January 3, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.The Furies- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso, later known as Gilbert Roland, was born in 1905 in Mexico. Following his parents to the USA, he did not become the bullfighter he had dreamed of being but became an actor instead. His Mexican roots, his half macho half romantic ways, his handsome virile figure helped him land roles in movies from the early twenties to 1982. A long and varied career in which Roland was in turns an extra, a matinée idol (Armand Duval in Camille (1926)), a Latin Lover, a star of English-speaking films made in Hollywood in the early 1930s, a Mexican bandit in B-Movies, The Cisco Kid in a series of six popular Westerns, a brilliant character in major A movies (John Huston's We Were Strangers (1949), Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); Anthony Mann's Thunder Bay (1953), John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964)), a sinister character in Spaghetti Westerns... When he retired in 1982, twelve years before he died, he could be satisfied. His career had spanned six decades, the coming of sound had not ended it, he had played in all kinds of movies, he had held the most beautiful women in his arms, and maybe the most important thing, he had been given the opportunity to show his acting talents. Not every actor can boast such a life achievement.He worked from the silent era on, in fascinating movies, with interesting casts, directors. Also in some spaghetti westerns.
1905-1994, 88
143 acting credits, 1923-1982.
First movie, uncredited - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). '23.
First movie, credited - The Lady Who Lied (1925). '25.
Last credit - 4... Barbarosa (1982). '82.
A few IMDb genres : 108 drama. 56 westerns. 41 adventure. 40 romance. 33 comedy.
Roland's character names- a few: Zach, Miles, Monty, Achmed, Dominic, Pierre, Baron Paul, Greg, Tony, Graham, Ralph, Mason, Enrique.- Rosita Ballesteros was born in 1914 in Spain. She is an actress, known for La boda de Rosario (1929), Viva la vida (1934) and Sevilla de mis amores (1930).Monsieur Le Fox (1930). '30.